Dell 9100 Audio Problem

For some odd reason I am not able to adjust the advanced audio base and treble sliders - they are greyed out and Dell tech support has not a clue other than to blame it on Microsoft. My 9100 sounds like a 2 dollar transistor radio and I attempt to adjust with this sequence - adjust speaker volume > Sigma Tel Audio Advanced > Volume Control Advanced > Bass and Treble are greyed out and this thing sounds baaad. I have read on the forums how great the sound is on one of these bad boys -i wish my 9100 sounded that way and why on earth would they put this giant subwoffer in the unit without a way to control anything? Any help would be most appreciated and this issue has already stumped 3 tech support technoids...[?]

Stephen L. Burgauer

 

I can't adjust those controls either, they are greyed out for me, but my sound is just fine by my ears, maybe your an audiophile and more picky or maybe your speakers are screwed up somehow?

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by sburg

 

hm. mine does it too. im gona play around with it.. let u know if i find anything out

.:Inspiron 9100:.
-:2.8 P4:-
-:1GB 400 MHz RAM:-
-:60GIG 7200 RPM HDD:-
-:128MB ATI Radeon 9700:-
-:800MHz FSB:-

 

All you can reasonably do is compare this with other laptops.
Compared to most, this laptop sounds great.
But its a laptop. Have you SEEN the speakers?
Theyre quite small.

I dont know why the treble and bass adjustments are not moveable but
I wouldnt move them if they were. Treble and bass adjustments are the worst things you can do to sound. Sorry but engineers like me hate the idea that we spend so much time sending audio through so much gear and time to make it sound good and then people put it through treble and bass controls turned all the way up which 1. degrades the sound - yes this is true esp with analog controls that physically add noise to the sound by nature of the electronics which are cheap. and 2. are WAY too broad of an adjustment.

Oh by the way, blasting your car speakers with loud rap music every day (or any music for that matter - just tend to hear rap the most being blasted beyond safe levels in cars), will make everything sound duller over a short period of time. Which will make things sound crappier to you and make you want to turn up the treble more and more. If you find you do this, you are losing your hearing. Top end is the first to go.

A graphic EQ is better cause you can grab smaller portions of the whole range.
But its a laptop!!! its only gonna do so much. This is improved with the "sub" cause when one speaker handles low end, it makes it really hard to simultaneously move to handle the high end - and vice versa.
So in the 9100 the low end is separated to the sub. But still, these are small speakers. One can only do so much to improve on this.
Get some good speakers and plug them in. I dont mean the crappy computer speakers for little desktops, I mean speakers you use for a stereo. If you have a receiver, just get a long cable to plug in from your laptop out to your stereo receiver input. Have the cable close to where your laptop normally sits. Theres only a headphone out on the 9100 and not a "line out" so levels may be off a bit. But it will still sound better than the laptop by far.

The best bet is getting something like winamp as was suggested. There you can get a graphic eq and tweak it a bit. But beware!!..if you are playing loud, turning up one small band of frequencies
way above the rest is very wearing on the speaker itself.
And the more you blast small speakers, the faster they will wear and sound much duller.
In studios we replace speaker cones a lot. Sometimes weekly if theres a lot of sessions blasting music through them.


an "audiophile"