Thinkpads Forum

I recently got a great x230. I love it.

My biggest issue is the volume of the speakers.
At 100% volume in Windows, they are the quietest laptop speakers I have ever heard. They are inaudible in a semi busy room. Never have I had a laptop with that issue. I have the RealTek drivers installed from Lenovo's website.

Any suggestions?

You may need to rely on headphones and/or external speakers. This is one pet peeve of mine in respect to most of the Thinkpads I have owned! The speakers in my Chromebook trump the speakers in my x220T by a mile. Two Thinkpads come to mind that had decent sound and that is a T500 and the 600X I once owned. Everyother model I have owned at one time or another (including a business model Dell E6510) seemed to be lacking in volume IMO. I bought a pair of X-mini II speakers 4 years ago to use with my Thinkpads and they are not too bad- impressive actually since I can still practically run them all day without any interruptions to recharge YMMV.

http://www.amazon.com/X-Mini-XAM7-B-Por ... rds=x+mini

Sans external speakers here is a method that might help you out https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-T ... a-p/442725

and if you use VLC you might try using the "Loudness Equalization" setting + using VLC's volume slider in order to tweak the sound to a more acceptable level however take care not to blow the speakers in your x230. Good luck!

Thanks for the info.

Wondering if there are any hardware 'hacks' that could be done to improve the output of the speakers?

I have used search engine to look for any possibility that someone may have hacked the hardware but I could not find any. If you get around to hacking yours please do share the details!

For years I thought my X230 speakers were pathetic too.

Well, they still are, but not as pathetic as I thought.

Make sure you have Dolby Advanced Audio installed (should come standard with the realtek drivers). Open the Dolby Advanced Audio settings via the bottom right menu (next to the clock). There will be a movie, music, and game preset, along with three other presets under it.

Toggling between these will make a huge difference, I also made my own custom preset with everything maxed when the X230 is still too quiet. Sound quality drops, but it's louder when you need it to be.

This should literally increase output by about 100%.

The speakers are still one of my biggest problems with the X230. Hope it's fixed on the X240.

Cheers,

Carthik

Carthik wrote:For years I thought my X230 speakers were pathetic too.

Well, they still are, but not as pathetic as I thought.

Make sure you have Dolby Advanced Audio installed (should come standard with the realtek drivers). Open the Dolby Advanced Audio settings via the bottom right menu (next to the clock). There will be a movie, music, and game preset, along with three other presets under it.

Toggling between these will make a huge difference, I also made my own custom preset with everything maxed when the X230 is still too quiet. Sound quality drops, but it's louder when you need it to be.

This should literally increase output by about 100%.

The speakers are still one of my biggest problems with the X230. Hope it's fixed on the X240.

Cheers,

Carthik

When I move the sliders they seems just to fall back to their original spots. (Dolby app)

MekkelRichards wrote:Thanks for the info.

Wondering if there are any hardware 'hacks' that could be done to improve the output of the speakers?

X220/230 speakers are the worst I've heard in any Thinkpad ever. I do like almost everything in my X220, apart from the speakers, they sound really tinny and low.

Has someone tried to mount X200t speakers in a X220 speaker bar? I have some X200t speakers at home. They aren't that good, but, in any case, they are much better than my X220's speakers.

If you can mod a pair of Chromebook Pixel speakers, you are set.
But yes, they are pretty quiet, I have trouble listening to audio on my T430s. It is such a shame.
I am not sure if the T420s Dolby Digital drivers can be installed on your X230.