E6400 sound quality/Vista

I can't seem to get decent sound out of my E6400 through the headphone/speaker jack. Low level, almost no bass at all. Has anybody with Vista been able to fix this problem? It's really my only major complaint with this machine. The IDT Control Panel is worthless. The "Advanced" button doesn't even do anything!

Thanks,
Scott

 

some suggested to use Vista provided High Definition Audio driver.

you can read the thread named "E6400/ E6500 best drivers, apps and tidbits" for more info there.

 

Disable the internal speaker when using external audio and you will get the bass and extra volume. Dell should have built-in detection to do this change automatically. They evidently filtered out the bass because the internal speakers are actually tweeters.

John

 

Thanks. The internal speakers are not playing when the external speaker jack is plugged in (actually to the Advanced Port Replicator). The volume control applet in Vista doesn't seem to have the advanced option to disable the pc speaker like the WinXP version does. Would it be somewhere else?

 

right click "volume mixer" icon at the system tray and select "playback devices"
then right click the playback device and select "properties"
in the "custom" tab, you can mute the pc speaker.

 

Thanks, but I already found and tried that option. While it does mute the internal speakers with the external jack unplugged, it has no affect on sound quality with them plugged in, unlike the Windows XP option. I'm starting to think the Dell IDT audio driver for Vista is severely lacking.

 

I would just uninstall the audio driver and use the Vista one, I haven't had any problems with it at all.

Greg

 

Im using the vista driver, and the sound through the headphones is low, i got more out of my oldschool ipod shuffle... what gives?

im about to install the IDT drivers from dell.com, and tinker with them and see if i can get some more volume.

 

Back to report, i saw no increase or change in volume through headphones or otherwise after installing the IDT driver from dell over vista's default PC speaker enable or disable proved uneventful

The search continues for a volume boost!

 

No problems with Vista on an e6400 with the default Vista driver (clean install) and the headphone jack. Plenty of volume (anything more than 10% and it's too loud) driving Ultimate Ears super.fi.5 pro canalphones.

Something simple like a software volume control or master volume slider or headphone volume control turned down?