SOund level in vista...explanation if no fix??

Well, as everyone knows vista is a piece of #$%&^#@!

If you ask google about "sound level vista" you will retrieve a bunch of frustrated commentaries about how the sound level coming out of vista is barely audible, at least when compared to XP. As far as I saw, THERE IS NO FIX to this. Just a few tweaks of installed codecs or other BS. As anything else (laptop included), I feel that everything is poorly made these days. Things are just lasting enough time to, not turn the consumers postal, but to just make them frustrated enough to make them consume a little bit more.
I don't want to buy loud speakers.
Could Anyone help to fix the low sound level in vista?

 

Who's this "everyone" you're on about? Unless "#$%&^#@!" means better than XP, then I'm afraid I have to disagree with you.

 

Hmmm... maybe attached a power set of speakers? Plug in a pair of headphones? I don't really have this sound problem on my X200, and it only has mono sound.

 

I have a Dell XPS M1530 running Vista and so far my sound isn't that terrible. Perhaps it's your notebook speakers that are the problem?

Anyways, for boosting sound and low-volume issues in Vista, there are many fixes or whatever which claim to work.

However, If you really want a significant and noticeable boost in volume, check out The DFX 9 Audio Enhancement by Fx Sound.

My first Asus notebook had abysmal speakers which had no tone, clarity, or volume. However, I downloaded a trial version of the DFX Sound Enhancement and it signifiantly improved the sound in media players. Note that the actual program is actually pretty costly for a plug-in enhancement (around 40 bucks I think). The trial also does not maximize the adjustable levels of the program (you can't do max volume), but is already significantly louder.

 

Everyone? Really? Everyone I know like Vista just fine. And just so you understand how Vista and XP operating systems REALLY work, neither of them have any control over the output volume. The drivers are what control this. Vista and XP do nothing except hand of a stream of numbers to the drivers. The drivers and the hardware in turn convert those numbers into analog signals that drive an amplifier and then the speakers. So your beef is NOT with Vista it is with the hardware drivers.

Case in point the Realtek drivers for my Sony VAIO suck. The original set were great, the updated ones that came from Realtek for SP1 compatibility had lower output and no "loudness" pre-emphasis options like the original had. So I deleted them and used the Microsoft ones and voilà I have good volume again and the "loudness" settings back.

So before you rant at Vista, you might want to do your homework and find out a) how the audio functions REALLY work in an OS and b) what drivers you might be able to use to fix your problem.

Gary

 

Thanks steelroots7xe for the DFX Sound Enhancement, I'll definitely try it. Also, as ScuderiaConchiglia suggested, I'll try the Microsoft drivers since I also have the last realtek driver and this may be the cause of the problem.

Sorry for being too loud about Vista.
I thought that it was a widely shared opinion. I probably have (as many, not everyone as I initially claimed) a level of expectation for an OS that is not realistic. It seems that this feeling is shared by most professionals that are are holding off on Vista because they are expecting reliable/compatible OS for productivity (I'm not talking about sound level here) (e.g., http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199500729) without teh need of tweaking it for weeks. Seems to me that Vista is adopted because it comes pre-installed on new machines, there is no real choice. Many time, I have been very tempted to roll back to XP when my brand new Asus V1S was chocking on simple office tasks or when Vista was not compatible with some of my previous software. It seems to me that XP on an older generation PC runs waaay faster and smoother than Vista on high end laptops. I know, some are going to rightfully say that Vista is way better on everything else, especially things that regular consumers are not seeing like security, networking. Vista frustrates a lot of regular users that don't want to buy new set of compatible productivity software and that don't want to spend time trying to fix their OS.

 

Just to join the fry - the key things have been said very nicely by Gary.

But the link you gave - its from May 2007 !!!!

Everybody will agree that Vista had its problems at the start and has since matured to be a (very - opinion) good OS.

 

that was my reaction, too

A survey released in May 2007 a mere 5 months after it was released, taking into account that the article probably had 4 months of data, and you just have to laugh.

Plus, people have very short memories. Frankly, Vista had FAR greater driver support at its release date than XP did. People had just become used to an old stable OS by that time.

The biggest problem with Vista were expectations and Microsoft caving to big OEMs with crap computers the had to get off the shelves.

Vista didn't run well under old and underpower systems, and also had problems with cutting edge equipment, but it ran fine on any system with 1gb of ram and a reasonable CPU and GPU. It ran most software just fine, other than some security software that operates at the kernal level.

I always here people say it didn't run my software, but they never mention what software.

 

I will never consider XP as a main OS ever again.

Vista and Win7 are >>>>> XP IMO.

Sure it had troubles to begin with, but the blame is not all Microsoft's. Much of the trouble can be attributed to hardware vendors (ex. nvidia drivers are what caused 30% of crashes at one time).

 

*Case solved!
I used the loudness option of the vista sound enhancement panel and it increases the sound volume by about 2 folds. Most of you are going to shake their head but this option is named "Egalisation du niveau sonore" in my French OS. I realized this when I re-installed the last version of the realtek driver that translated this option by "Loudness". Personnaly, I would translate Loudness by "Intensite du volume" rather than "Egalisation du niveau sonore". Then, as Gary said, no need of a third party sound driver that clutter the memory (4Mb) such as realtek for basic sound options.


*2 more questions:
-What are the parameters of the loudness option about? Sorry, I tried to do my homework but google is no help and there is no help in vista about the sound panel. I of course played with it but it seems that nothing changed.

-Is the vista driver able to control my microphone? Teh microphone seems to be dead now while the realtek driver was doing just fine with it.


Thanks

PS: I tried the DFX Sound Enhancement and winamp 5.5 refused to work anymore...

 

Herv,

There is a HUGE caveat with the native Vista drivers. It does not handle switching of internal to external microphones or internal to external speakers well.

For the microphone, you MUST go into the settings and switch between internal and external mic manually. Just plugging in an external mic does not work. The realtek drivers automatically recognize the switch, but the native Vista drivers do not.

For internal versus external speakers, the native drivers will recognize the plugging in of headphones or external speakers automatically, but only BEFORE you start an audio app. Once the audio app is started you MUST exit the app and then plug (or unplug) the external speakers/phones.

RE: the parameters in the Loudness function, the only setting is a release time. And I see no real change when playing with it either.

I am not sure I agree we are getting a 6db boost (two fold increase) but it is a substantial boost nonetheless. The down side is the manual switching is a pain in the ...

Gary

 

Thanks Gary,
I've just figured out the microphone with your helpful reply.
Right, it tooks me a while to figure the loudness related option because the app
to test the sound with needs to be restarted after any modification made in the sound panel.

But Gary, by HUGE caveat, do you mean that vista can be improved?? Do you mean that for a user like me (a random user that does not want to expose to the world the many problems that he experiences with his laptop), Vista can be a pain in the !#$%@#$ (see the very initial post of the thread)?

 

By huge caveat I meant that the stock driver, while it does provide better sound output, is a pain to deal with the selection of external input or output devices. The Realtec drives do this flawlessly, but their output is not as good.

Gary