Thinkpads Forum

Let's be honest. The worst thing about old thinkpads is the terrible quality and volume of the speakers.

Before my x230, I had an ideapad y50, and I was absolutely blown away by the JBL speakers it came with.

Has anyone thought about putting some higher quality speakers in the x220/x230 and maybe even wire in an audio amplifier like this one:
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1712

This amplifier takes 5V (can probably source that many places on the motherboard) and can be controlled via I2C. I've heard that you can wire things up to the I2C bus and control them from within linux.

Here are my questions:

[*] Where can I tap 5V from the motherboard safely?
[*] Where can I access the I2C bus on the motherboard?
[*] What laptop speakers would be good to retrofit? It seems the ideapad Y series has good sound quality mostly across the board.

#1 USB port (maybe)
#2 VGA port (VESA DDC is an I2C bus IIRC)

The 2011-2012 generation of Thinkpads was the worst for speakers and plastic parts quality. My T520 sounded like a baby rattle and was just as annoying. But if you go a little older you'll find surprisingly decent, clear-sounding speakers. R500 was good, T500 is good, Z60m is great, X201 is surprisingly good, T410 is good. It must be a Lenovo conspiracy to associate the last classic designs with bad quality, so their radical new design choices feel better.

yeah i agree the speakers in the x230 are terrible compared to my T410 which sounded great for a almost 7 year old machine soon.
but you have to take in mind with these "Ultra-Portable" laptops they have to make sacrifices for the "Portability" so in our case speaker quality.
i guess they get the job done but they just sound bad in my opinion but at least its better than no speakers i guess, and because of the size of the X230 only being 12.5' they have to make everything compact which leads to us getting tiny speakers :3

after 7 days of owning the X230 which in my opinion is a amazing machine, for build quality, performance and the price.
but the only issues im having are the speakers and the battery which needs replacing asap. i will miss my T410 speakers they were simply amazing.

Thanks for reading!

You might give this a try. Been using it awhile on my X220 with Windows 7 64-bit. It helps.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads ... ad.657971/

That guide is outdated. Please use my newer version instead: https://www.thinkscopes.com/2015/12/02/ ... heater-v4/

Sorry, I exclusively use linux on my x, so I can't try out the Dolby stuff.

TPFanatic wrote:The 2011-2012 generation of Thinkpads was the worst for speakers and plastic parts quality. My T520 sounded like a baby rattle and was just as annoying. But if you go a little older you'll find surprisingly decent, clear-sounding speakers. R500 was good, T500 is good, Z60m is great, X201 is surprisingly good, T410 is good. It must be a Lenovo conspiracy to associate the last classic designs with bad quality, so their radical new design choices feel better.

Considering that I have never heard about how terrible these speakers are, until now, I'd say that the conspiracy did not work.

Speakers need size. You cannot shrink them past a certain point without losing quality, and all but the largest laptops, or those where special attention was given to speakers during the design process, are past that point. That is not to say, that there cannot be big variations, as your examples show. But that is to say, that 99% of the time even the crappiest set of desktop speakers will sound better. Not to mention headphones.

As a result, I think that most people who regularly use their laptops for playing music / videos, will use external speakers/headphones, and somebody who only needs it once in a while, would typically not care so much about the quality. Which is probably why there isn't a great outrage about built-in speaker quality as there is about some other things.

The speaker outrage is real, if you look for it. The problem is that manufacturers can't improve it without compromising another area. It is possible to not increase the size of the speaker and still drastically improve sound quality by using higher quality drivers, a better sound box design or even just hardware tuning (instead of crappy software tuning like Dolby). All those things add cost however, so that is a no-go. Lenovo is only offering FHD IPS displays as the entry option nowadays because it has become an industry standard and there are cheap and crappy FHD IPS displays readily available on the market. As such, the outcry for better displays still exists. If Reddit is anything to go by, the second most lamented "feature" on ThinkPads are the speakers and DAC.

Of course, if you want to keep it cheap, you could just increase the size, as you have stated. However, that would result in smaller batteries, less space for the motherboard and some other inconveniences, and for what? Companies that buy these in bulk don't care about speakers, just like they don't care about displays. The employees might, but that doesn't really influence much.

There is some good to come out of the whole Ultrabook craze. Some companies that lead rather than follow have pioneered better integrated speaker designs. Surprisingly, Lenovo has done so too in their Yoga 900 series. An excellent set of speakers for modding though are the XPS 13 speakers (2015 and newer). They are square in shape, very thin, have large wires to work with and sound excellent (for the size). The sound signature is nicely balanced, they are loud and sound full enough to enjoy a couple of songs on the go. I once installed them on a T410s and the results were amazing. I'd almost call it a revelation. However, such mods often require cutting the frame, so it's not something I'd necessarily recommend.

The best way to improve sound is to just get a laptop that has good speakers to begin with. There are a couple of options on the market. Dell has been pushing the limits of what is possible in their recent Latitude 7000 series machines. The E7440 had great speakers for what it is, as did the E7240, especially when comparing them to their ThinkPad counterparts. The XPS 13, as already mentioned, is very decent too. The E7370, for those who want a business version of the XPS 13, has good speakers too.

Currently, I own a Chromebook Pixel, which has the best speakers I have ever heard in a Notebook smaller than 15". If you want to stick with ThinkPads, the X301 is your only option. I can't vouch for it, but the ThinkPad 13 is supposed to be decent too, which I can believe when looking at the driver size, but don't take my word for it. I haven't heard it myself yet.

600X wrote:An excellent set of speakers for modding though are the XPS 13 speakers (2015 and newer). They are square in shape, very thin, have large wires to work with and sound excellent (for the size).

These look great, just the right shape -- but bigger. I'll grab a pair of these and mess with them.

Surely you guys have actually seen the little speaker?

Arent they all mono speakers about the size of your little finger up to your knuckle with a little lead wire?

Its a mono thing that fires thru a small port on the bottom. Of course its going to be poor, its only for very basic notification bings and voice.

You cant do anything about it. Even if you found a better drop in replacement, the location kills any quality.

Of course the full size like the T420 w/ the stereo speakers on the front sound better... they face the user!

Maybe I can cut holes in the palm rest and face the speakers up :p

Sure your hands will block it while typing, but if you want to watch a video or something that's not a problem.

There have been discussions about this. I think that in certain cases, if the machine is on a hard surface, you can get better sound from a bottom-facing speaker (at an angle) with the sound bouncing off the surface back towards you, than from speakers facing up (which is not directly towards you, since in most situations you are not above the laptop, but in front of it). It would be interesting to see a real acoustic study.

But of course, there is the quality of the speaker to begin with.

TonyJZX wrote:Surely you guys have actually seen the little speaker?

Arent they all mono speakers about the size of your little finger up to your knuckle with a little lead wire?

Its a mono thing that fires thru a small port on the bottom. Of course its going to be poor, its only for very basic notification bings and voice.

You cant do anything about it. Even if you found a better drop in replacement, the location kills any quality.

Of course the full size like the T420 w/ the stereo speakers on the front sound better... they face the user!

Actually, the X220 and X230 have Stereo speakers. Also, the T420 hardly sounds any better than the X220. Furthermore, size is not everything. A smaller driver can sound better than a bigger driver if the other variables are just right. While the speakers in the T400s to T430 generation are definitely too small, the bigger problem is that they are horribly designed. And by horribly designed, I mean there is no design to them at all.

@OP

If the XPS 13 speakers don't work out (although they should, I successfully fitted them in a T410s), then try the Yoga 900 speakers.

I don't think that without a case redesign (or some smart air flow) the speakers can sound much better.
Regarding size, my iPad Air (1st gen) and S7 sound incredibly well at a much lower occupied space. Looking higher up the range any later Macbook Air sounds decent and new Pros sound incredible (so I've heard) in a thinner body.

My complain is that Dolby keeps switching between its automatic modes (music, cinema) and without it activated everything sounds much worse. With it activated, I would like to have adjustable volume leveler, so something like 3-6 dB instead of the 12+ dB it currently does.

Someone on the Thinkpad subreddit shoehorned speakers from a Nexus 6p into his X230.