I’ve got the latest audio drivers. The volume has always seemed rather low even though audio quality was supposedly one of this models selling points.
Is there any sort of hidden setting or tweak that can increase volume level? If not does anyone know of any programs that can do it? There are some MP3 players that manage to increase the volume through some settings on the equalizer. Thats fine if i’m listening to an MP3 but i want a system wide increase for youtube, DVD’s etc.
I use DFX Audio Enhancer for this. The actual purpose of the software is to give you advanced mixing and effect controls, but it works quite well as a volume booster if you only use that slider. I eventually bought the pro version for $40 (looks like it’s on sale for $30 at the moment), but you can get decent results from the trial version for as long as you like if you don’t mind the occasional nag pop-up.
My HP laptop has low audio so I plugged a pair of speakers from one of my old desktops into the headphone jack and now it sounds great. The separate speakers have their own built-in amp that must be plugged into 120v which makes the laptop much less portable though. I leave mine in the same spot all the time so it’s not a problem.
Click on your speaker icon on the bottom right. Select “Playback Devices”. Then you want to look at the Properties for your speakers. There should be an option in there somewhere (the Enhancements tab?) for “Loudness Equalization”. Check that, and you should get a boost. Sorry, can’t be more specific, I don’t have a bare-bones Windows setup to check right now.
Are your laptop speakers underneath the laptop or on top of the keyboard area? if it’s the former, your laptop has shitty speakers. Nothing will improve max volume aside from buying external speakers.
Just FYI: The main way the DFX gizmo would increase volume would be by “dynamic range compression”, which makes quieter signals louder and leaves loud signals loud. There’s actually no way to get your system to go over “0dBFS”, which is the maximum loudness in the fixed-point digital signal domain (which is what you have just before the audio hardware converts the signal to an analog electrical signal.)
That’s not a criticism. One of the problems with some audio sources is that they’re not “normalized”. However, most modern pop/rock music is already heavily compressed, and additional compression generally won’t even kick in or make a difference (unless you crank up the compression parameters so that it turns everything into a wall of sound, which is rarely pleasant).
If the built-in speakers aren’t loud enough, the best solution is external speakers. But software solutions are worth a try.