Studio 17 weak sound

Update the latest Bios in your Studio laptop from Support.dell.com and chk out the sound as running the bios will take care of almost 70% of issues with the Studio laptops but donot compare this with your old computer as the sound of this computer is not better than the older laptops..

"but donot compare this with your old computer as the sound of this computer is not better than the older laptops.."?

wow, why not? it doesn't make any sense. Last night I tested both laptops side by side for mp3 music, DVD movies and youtube clips. The old Inspiron 8500 rocks. Studio 17 sounds like a midi player.:smileysurprised:

Go to the Creative Audio Center, click the Speaker picture, click the Bass Settings button, check Enable Bass Boost, and peg the sliders all the way to the right.  This will help the audio quality.

Unless you plug in external speakers or headphones, in which case there will be waaay too much bass and you'll have to turn the option off.

Ridiculous that a 17" laptop would have worse sound than an 8" Eee PC... but this tweak makes it almost tolerable.

Not only do i have bad sound, I also have this annoying popping that happens every so often

I have also had this issue. There has to be some sort of software problem going on with the dual cores. I know on the 1501 inspirons, the AMD dual cores aren't synchronized properly or something, and so an ATI/AMD fix is necessary to get them synching.

Ok I think I've found solutions for both of these issues. I have a Studio 1535 and my wife has a Studio 1735. Both systems have been suffering from quiet and crackling sound.

To solve the lack of volume I installed the latest IDT Driver software from Dell's Site. After doing so you should have a new utility called "IDT Audio Control Panel" within "Control Panel > Additional Options". Open this utility. In the left column you will have 3 categories. Under the "Speakers/Headphones" category select "Equalization". This will show a 10 band equalizer. Drag all the sliders all the way to the top. This will greatly increase the volume of the speakers since the equalizer has a rediculous 15db gain. This was just really poorly designed.

Ok now to fix the audio crackling/glitching you have to change the drivers for the 1510 wireless card. I found the following instructions in another thread, and it's been working perfectly on both mine and my wife's computers. The instructions are just a little rough, but here they are.

"I was having the same issue and believe it may have been resolved. I've already had the motherboard replaced and the dell 1510 wireless n card replaced and no luck.

I just finished chatting with Samuel at Dell Support and have may have the answer....

He gave me a link to a different driver:

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14644

I have the dell 1510 wireless n card, so I'm not sure if this will work if you have a different card.

I was hesitant because Windows Vista thinks it's incompatible but it worked.

I downloaded the 1st driver on the link. It will only give you the driver, so you have to manually install.

Below are the steps -

1 - Downloaded the new driver from the above link. Ran the application.

2 - I uninstalled the existing driver

3 - After that's completed. Go to Control Panel, and Device Manager. Do a "Scan for hardware changes". (OR you can restart your computer).

4 - When asked to install driver, Choose "browse for driver software on your computer", **Do not do the "search for driver" Windows will not use the new driver because it thinks it's incompatible.  Choose the other option "Let me pick from a list of device drivers', Then "have disk". Go to the location where you saved the drivers.

5 - Choose the "Broadcom 4321AG 802.11a/b/g/draft-n Wi-Fi Adapter". It will give you a message stating that the driver is not compatible and is not recommended...etc.. etc.. Choose OK."

Well I hope this helps.

Hi, I am having terrible problems with the sound on my studio 17. Could you explain to me how to get in to the creative audio centre. Be glad of any help. Thanks. Iain