Shoutbox

Winamp's pre-amp increases the "volume" of the sound by 20dB by increasing the amplitude of the sound wave before it's output.

TBH, my HP laptop has Altec Lansing speakers built in which can put out some fairly loud sound. The thing is, by trying to put the sound past the systems maximum you might just end up distorting the sounds.

Media Player Classic has a boost option, and there's a codec that should do the same (both are included with the CCCP)

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Originally posted by Voldemort

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Originally posted by Voldemort
alter the frequency

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Originally posted by Effexor
alter the frequency balance

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meaning you can set a different volume for each frequency range. This has nothing to do with altering the pitch in any way.

ZrednaZ: An equalizer can help you out; you can lower the volume of the lower frequencies and amplify the better supported higher frequencies a little more. Then you can adjust the preamp to a point where the sound is almost distorted to get the maximum out of your laptop speakers.

Most sound card manufacturers include an equalizer in their driver software. If your sound card uses default windows drivers the equalizer may not be included. I don't know which sound card you have, but you can try downloading the drivers from the manufacturer's website to get the extra software.

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Originally posted by ZrednaZ
While a bit of theory is always nice, do you guys have any concrete suggestions to downloadable equalizers? I guess it all boils down to this: Basically I need something like Winamp's equalizer

which has the "Preamp" bar that will actually make most any audio source LOUD when cranked up (and I frankly don't care about how that's achieved) Only difference is that it needs to be able to affect ALL sound output on the puter.
This is a terribly common laptop problem, I'm surprised the web isn't oversaturated with solutions to this...

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Because it is not a solution.
Moreover, all the equalizers which are talked about here are for players which send the sound on their turn to your drivers, the equalizers will not work for the sound output of your sound drivers. If you need to equalize the sound of the drivers, you need to look for an equalizer in your driver software itself. If it isn't present, you're out of luck.

Also, I don't see how it is a "common" problem. I never seen a laptop which has too silent sound output. A laptop isn't a discobar, but the sound is quite often more than loud enough. If you're laptop sound is really silent I would check if the speakers aren't busted, or if you really have the correct drivers and really have set up the volumes of all the individual components correctly, or if the sounds you're playing are recorded properly and with a normal volume, instead of trying to totally distort the sound in order to hear 'something'.

The laptop model (Lenovo ThinkPad T61) should be able to play sounds with a decent volume (so this is not a problem of your speakers not being able to play loud enough, it is a problem of what you are playing or how you've set up the drivers, an equalizer is not going to fix that).

The driver doesn't have an equalizer of its own.

>I don't see how it is a "common" problem

Well, it is, whether it be due to the software or a limitation of the speakers. Of the five different laptop models I've tried turning up to max volume, two of them were quiet (one of them being the Lenovo T61, the other being some sort of Acer Ferrari). I don't know about the Acer, but in my case it's a software limitation, making the problem theoretically solvable. The speakers are not busted; as I said, they play loudly if the source is loud.

>The laptop model (Lenovo ThinkPad T61) should be able to play sounds with a decent volume (so this is not a problem of your speakers not being able to play loud enough, it is a problem of what you are playing or how you've set up the drivers, an equalizer is not going to fix that).

No it ain't, it's a problem with the (preinstalled and correct) driver and not the way I've configured it. I'm not the only Lenovo T61 owner with this problem. Reviews confirming that the speakers are quiet:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=...eview=ThinkPad+T61 (search for 'quiet')
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=123374 (search for 'quiet')
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-IBM-Lenovo-Th...tebook.3972.0.html (search for 'Speakers'. "During DVD playback the maximum volume was just sufficient")
Come to think of it, the audio on this system also tends to glitch a few times a minute, so the driver sucks in several ways..


For any other T61 users who happen to read this: Apparently the only known workaround for this is to use playback applications that have an option to turn up the volume. For WAV/MP3, Winamp is a good bet. For DVD/AVI, PowerDVD can be used as it has a 'laptop option' that boosts audio by 25%.