I have an HP laptop, and even with all of the volume sliders maxed out, I can barely hear the sound. While I’m clearly not expecting miracles in terms of deep rich bass, it would be nice to be able to distinguish English words while I’m watching a DVD. Are there any settings/programs that jack up the output volumes?
I’m not sure you really want to do that. It’s easy to blow out laptop speakers, they’re little tiny things that melt easily if you apply too much voltage for too long. But if your audio isn’t audible, you do have some sort of problem. Maybe it’s a software problem, or maybe they’re blown already.
I should note, I have a Mac PowerBook G3/500 and the sound is perfectly audible to me. It’s not the greatest sound (I’m spoiled by my desktop Mac’s audio, I have a 3-piece Boston Acoustics MediaTheater) but it is good enough and loud enough, even at medium volume settings.
My suggestion, use headphones or get an external battery-powered speaker. I have a Sony SRS-T50 which can fill a room with pretty good sound, but apparently they don’t make that model anymore. Here’s the SRS-T70 that replaced it, it looks really cool but I haven’t heard it so I don’t know if it’s sound is any good.
http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/ss5/home/accessories/personalspeakers/srs-t70_specs.shtml