Thinkpads Forum

hey guys we all know these t510 speakers live at www.weaksauce.com. ive found that some media players play louder/sound better. example windows media player is horrible even after playing with equalizer. itunes is much better but still grrrrrrr. any older threads that i wasnt able to find/ideas?

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t510
i5 520 2.4
8gb ram(lotttttttta virtual server labs...)
500gb hd

WinAmp is an old school classic, try that one

VLC allows you to boost volume beyond 100%, which will make it louder, but at this point it will likely sound distorted.

For Windows Media Player try.

Right clicking on the speaker icon> Playback Devices> Click on Speakers> Click on properties> Choose Enhancements tab> finally tick Loudness Equalization.

I use VLC and WMP on my T400 and the situation is pretty much similar.

I'm guessing b/c the Thinkpads are business-class laptops multimedia usage is not a top priority! The tip I just gave will work fine with WMP but when you use VLC the volume might sound weaker w/that player so it's sort of like a choice between the two players. Regardless I still use either player as they each have their own good attributes. Hope that helps somewhat!

Hi IAMBATMAN,

Altec makes the Orbit USB IML237 speaker that sounds better and goes louder than many built-in laptop speakers.

Good health, Weogo

You could always consider installing one of the SRS technologies (Audio Sandbox or HD Audio Lab). Both of them, when properly calibrated for my T400's speakers makes a world of difference.

(It also makes playing FPS's more immersive by presenting a 5.1 surround output and processing it into two speakers while retaining directionality. L4D2! )

If you listen to mp3, foobar used to ship with MAD mp3 decoder, back in the days I was pretty blown away by the difference of the dynamics, space, and natural sound it gave. Some 'studies' said it was all a legend .. but my ears said otherwise.

And foobar is a neat lightweight player with tons of uses ( mass rename, mass recode, quick n easy song database ) can also play songs in zip/rar on the fly. Portable installation is possible too; the only 'cons' would be that it's less shiny/modern in term of GUI but well that doesn't matter a lot since it's most of the time minimized (cause you can setup Global Hotkeys to control it even when gaming or whatever )

http://www.foobar2000.org/download

I'm not very familiar with the foobar decoders, but I'm pretty sure that (excluding equalizer settings) it doesn't explicitly compensate for the weaknesses in the response curve of the laptop built-in speakers. SRS as a psychoacoustic program with a mode designed to compensate for speaker and cheap headphones' weaknesses will produce very noticeable results.

Alternatives include Breakaway (kept BSODing on load for me) and DTS Sound Enhancer.

SRS HD Audio Labs:
http://www.srslabs.com/store/store/download_hal.asp

wow guys thanks for the replies looks like i have a lot of things to try!!!

Too bad the volume doesn't already go to 11.

Try DFX for Windows. http://www.fxsound.com/

It might work for you.

Oops, yeah, I meant DFX not DTS (d'oh)