Since getting my laptop, when playing video, my volume level has always been low. I thought that I just had a laptop with bad speakers.
Every now and then, though, I’d notice, a browser window with sound would give me very loud sounds. And I never had any trouble hearing sound in games.
So the problem is localized to video.
Moreover I’ve just discovered that if I go to control panel, then hardware and sound, then manage audio devices, then go to the “advanced” tab and hit “test,” the resulting sound is extremely loud compared to the youtube video I’m watching.
So it seems that when watching video (this has been tested, so far, just at Youtube and on Hulu) my sound is capped at a very low level, but not otherwise.
The mixer (the one I get by clicking on “mixer” after clicking on the speaker item on the right of my task bar) does not offer a way to control these sound levels separately. Besides, I have everything in the mixer maxed.
The video sounds only cause the green volume indicator to fluctuate to about a 20th of the whole. Meanwhile the Test sound causes the green volume indicator to shoot all the way up.
And of course, I do have volume in Youtube and Hulu videos maxed in-app as well.
Upon further fiddling, I find a setting labeled “Loudness Equalization” and turn it on and things are better. But is this the actual solution, or is it a stopgap that I would find screws something else up somewhere down the line?
The term “loudness” usually refers to a boost in bass to compensate for human ears when sound is played softly. It won’t hurt anything, but if you connect your laptop to a decent sound and/or speaker system and play it loud, you might want to turn it off.
For that matter, if you are trying to hear sounds with the builtin laptop speakers, they are a joke as far as high fidelity goes – but maybe that doesn’t matter much with games.
Many people, having heard only the terrible and tinny sounds that come out of most computer speakers, laptop or desktop, assume that that’s the best a computer can do. Not true. It’s the sound system and the speaker quality that makes the difference; given a typical MP3 or WAV file, a computer is capable of the highest quality of sound you can get from any other system.
As far as your level problem, check to see if each function in the chain has its sound set to the desired level. For example, your video playing software has a level control, and so does your sound card. If you’re playing a video thru a browser, it does, too, and also the source web site. They interact.
Thanks Musicat. “Loudness” may properly refer to a bass boost of some kind, but I’m certain that’s not what Windows 7 is doing with that setting–it makes even the highest pitch test sounds quite a bit louder than they were before.
You know this illustrates a generic problem in all computers these days: Nothing is documented. If you don’t what to put in the help search box, you can get no information. I had a laptop whose sound level was nearly inaudible. My computer guru (I used to have one but since he speaks Mandarin he has more lucrative contracts) installed new sound driver software and, voilà, problem solved. Of course, the quality was still lousy.
1: Look on the notebook surface and around the chassis and make sure there is not some external audio control slidebar or wheel or similar. This direct hardware control will usually supercede all windows system controls.
2: Use external powered speakers to see if the loudness issue is specific to the speaker hardware or to the system output in general (ie external and internal speakers).
3: Go to “advanced” mode under speaker properties then under the advanced mode tab try toggling the check box that gives applications exclusive control of a device.
4:Go to the website of the notebook manufacturer and download the latest BIOS and audio drivers and install them.