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    Conexant Smart Audio Headphone Limiter

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by stutter, Jul 21, 2011.

  1. stutter

    stutter Notebook Guru

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    Hi,

    (this being from an x220, but probably relevant to other models)

    In case you don't know, when you plug something into the headphone jack, the Conexant Smart Audio driver introduces a limiter to maintain a "healthy" level which will not damage your hearing. It's pretty quiet. You can disable it by opening the Smart Audio icon in Control Panel, and clicking on the Headphones image.

    I find this pretty annoying - does anybody know of any way to make Off the default?

    I could uninstall the driver I suppose, or try removing the process/service from running at startup.

    Ideally, if anyone knows how of some way to recognise a change of state in the process when I click the icon, I could create a batch to turn it off with one click from the desktop.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks
     
  2. BrendaEM

    BrendaEM Notebook Consultant

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    In order to devise such a thing, they had to make assumptions about the impedance of headphones, which are not all the same.

    Audio on computers is getting worse and more restricted as the days pass.
     
  3. ThVortex

    ThVortex Newbie

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    The workaround I found is to install the generic Microsoft driver for "High Definition Audio Device". No more limiter. Of course, the "SmartAudio" control panel doesn't work anymore either, but the regular "Sound" control panel has more options now (like showing Speakers and Headphones separately).
     
  4. Colonel O'Neill

    Colonel O'Neill Notebook Deity

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    I thought it remembered it's setting?
     
  5. ThVortex

    ThVortex Newbie

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    The generic Microsoft driver doesn't have a limiter option.
     
  6. david1274

    david1274 Notebook Evangelist

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    the work around is this:

    First disable the limiter in Smart Audio by clicking on the picture of the headphones (when you have headphones or speakers connected)

    enable the smartaudio tray icon. To do this, open the smartaudio control panel. In the upper right hand corner of the window, there is a down icon. Go to settings, enable tray icon.


    your settings will keep!