Hi guys,

I got a Z61t and i have a problem with the loudness of the speakers when i watch a movie/DVD. I don't have any hearing problems but whatever i do (even in a very quiet enviroment) i can't hear the audio from the movies. I have the WAVE and General volume at MAX but still... please help...

(only with PowerDVD the situation improves a bit as it has an option for laptops/noisy enviroments, but still... not good enough.

Thanks in advance!

The Z61t has a whimpy sound system. You are not alone about the lack of volume. My T23 had excellent sound...and outperformed the Z61t hands down. I was very disappointed when I received my new Thinkpad.

There is no solution to my knowledge. Perhaps you can invest in a nice pair of Motorola Bluetooth headphones. Sony also make a small plug in set of speakers that sound very good.

http://www.1800mobiles.com/sony-srs-t33blue.html

Good luck!!!!

thanks bill for you reply, but isn't there some utility maybe that "pumps up" the loudness? Some equalizer maybe?

I mean PowerDVD had an option that did make up a bit, but still

No utility that I know of...perhaps you can call Lenovo and report back?

best option is to install AC3Filter and let it decode ac3 audio. You can then go in and adjust the gain and range normalization.

Even so you're not going to get room filling sound; but it should be somewhat better.

Just my two cents...I tried the recommended AC3Filter on my X30 and there is an increase in audio. When I return from my cruise I will try it on my Z61t and report back. Give it a try.

I'm also unpleasantly surprised with the lack of volume -- for some reason I thought the Z series would have better than average multimedia performance.

Max hardware and software volume gives me about half the volume of my Dell Inspiron 8100 from 8 years ago. It's fine if I'm in a completely silent environment, but with any background noise whatsoever, it takes far too much effort to listen.

As far as I can tell AC3Filter will only work with DVD audio. Is this correct? Are there any other options for boosting volume for everything else -- i.e. youtube videos, presentation audio, podcasts, and so on?

I tested the speakers on my T41 and Z61 while playing the same DVD movie ... the Z is much much better with regular earphones over the T, volume was excellent had to turn it down... However, the T sounded better than the Z with just its speakers, bottom front of all places = )

if you want louder sound at DVD's, AVI's, MPEG's, try PowerDVD... you can't go wrong. In the setup options of the player, it has an option for "noisy enviroment/Laptop Speakers"

A 25% improvement

Hello,

I joined the forum to answer this question. I have a new ThinkPad Z61t and was having the same problem with a very low volume.

The volume controls for the laptop appear to function separately from the Master Volume control in Windows. There are volume control buttons located next to the blue ThinkVantage button on the keyboard. Their setting is not affected by volume adjustments in Windows.

After changing this volume, I noticed a great improvement in the volume for CDs and DVDs, although it still does not seem to have as much output as my old Dell.

I have the same problem. I use zoom player, which has an option to boost the audio 2 times.

You can in fact do this without speaker distortion. The speakers must be of proper material. I've been doing this to mine for 8 month now, and there is no evidence of damage to the speakers.

Will the Zune Player increase the volume for DVD movies?

I use VLC Player and Power DVD. VLC has also some setting where it's possible to improve the sound (even more that Power DVD and it's actually pretty loud on my Z60m) and the best thing is that it comes for free.

Overall the speaker quality is not really that good especially when you think about the Z Series as a Multimedia machine.

I tried Zune Player on my X21...not change was seen. The Z series cannot hold a candle to the T23 for volume.

I agree...The Z61t was meant to be a mulitmedia machine. Sure missed the target on speaker volume.

HELLO this is about the low SYSTEM VOLUME where the mixer and system tray all say 100% but it's not really 100%. You can see the difference with the control panel, sound, audio devices where's it's bumping up to 50% or less.
The answer IS the VOLUME KEYS NEXT TO THE ACCESS IBM BUTTON do override the OS/ software settings, and if you press the DOWN ARROW that's where they'll stay until you push the UP ARROW. Sometimes asking the wrong question doesn't get you where you want to be.

Others could please comment on how to work around this little misadventure so they match and the OS delivers true volume control.

Your answer is incorrect, it's a hardware problem on that machine.
Besides, this is a 4-year old thread!