How to test if my subwoofer is working?

I've had my M14x R2 for 3 weeks now, and everything is working fine, but I feel like there's no bass when playing anything. How can I test my subwoofer? Is there any software that can do this? In this creative software bundled with the laptop, I can only test the 2 front speakers.

 

you can take off the backplate on the bottom and feel (lightly) the subwoofer moving while playing a song , though id advise caution from static, etc, but its fairly safe. It's located on the bottom towards the front, underneath the mousepad. I did this once because I too felt like i wasn't receiving bass, turns out i just got used to the bass. either that or play r&b/rap loudly

 

or you could play with equalizer settings and set it to clean no bass or smth and than bass boost if there's no difference then it's gone. if there's difference it's working

 

When it's working it's really noticeable, you can feel the vibrations with musics with a lot of bass.

 

I don't feel a damn thing

Is this a hardware issue? Or do I miss some kind of driver or something? I kinda hesitate to open the backplate, would that void my warranty?

 

Okay I removed the backplate and played a song, I could feel the little subwoofer vibrating. So can it be a software issue?

 

I believe the subwoofer channel is derived from the left & right in hardware, so there is no way from windows to seperate it out. This was confirmed when I dropped the volume of the left and right, leaving the subwoofer level up high, there was no sound at all. Also the reverse, when the subwoofer channel was all the way down, and left and right up, there was still sound coming from it.

The sound is very slight. The "bass" is maybe 200hz-250hz, so not what most people think of as a subwoofer.

When I play music, I can feel the very font below the touchpad vibrating slightly, that lets me know that it is working.

I think maybe you are expecting more from it that it can do. It is likely a less than 1 watt, 1/2" suboofer. It's not going to make booming bass, but rather just add a tiny about of very high bass that the other two speakers could not do at all.

 

Maybe you're right. I must have grown too used to the sound of my sister's Dell XPS 15 :/

Still, the front speakers provide great sound.
PS: Do you have any great profiles you created through the sound blaster trustudio software?

 

i find the m14x r2 to have some of the best sound i've ever heard from a laptop (esp that size). but the difference is huge when the soundblaster sw is disabled. night and day, sounds very crappy w/out it enabled.