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Precision 5550 / XPS 9500 - Only two out of four speakers seem to be playing, in Ubuntu
No sound is coming from the speaker grills by the keyboard. I see the tiny section where the actual speaker grill is, near the bottom of the larger grill, and there is zero difference when covering that section with my thumbs.
When I open up the system sound control, one of the sound profiles is Surround sound 4.0
A speaker test only plays from two of the four corner options.
In a separate distro, I've launched hdajackretask, and tried to send sound to unused "pins" but nothing is working so far.
The reason I mention this at all, is that the sound out of the speakers is surprisingly harsh. Does anyone have any experience getting better sound out of the 4-speaker array on the new XPS 9500 or Precision 5550?
Thanks for your help!
briggs_1978
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July 4th, 2020 13:00
I guess the real question is whether or not the speaker modules on each side have one driver or two. We can easily see the main driver firing down through the metal slots on the base plate, but is there a second driver firing up through the speaker grill? If so, is it treated as a separate channel, or wired directly to the main down-firing speaker. If there is not a separate driver, is that tiny hole in the "Speaker grill" just a sound port for the down-firing speaker? I'm trying to avoid peeling up the speaker module as they are often secured with foam tape that can easily be damaged.
Thanks for any help you can offer!
briggs_1978
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July 4th, 2020 14:00
Oops. Had problems with the images and couldn't edit anymore.
briggs_1978
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July 7th, 2020 17:00
Fun fact, there is in fact a second speaker behind the grill.
Now the real question is, is the smaller upward-facing speaker addressed separately, from the big downward-facing speaker, or is there a hardware crossover in that module?
Any ALSA/Pulse wizards out there?
patrick.graham
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November 11th, 2020 07:00
This is an issue for me as well, I briefly had windows on this laptop and was impressed by the speakers. After moving to Ubuntu the quality is massively reduced.
I can see a bass speaker registered in Alsa Mixer but cannot get it off 0 volume.
Tylor Daniel
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November 26th, 2020 17:00
I just wanna know where I can buy a new set of speakers for this because this does not seem to be a software issue
briggs_1978
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December 1st, 2020 10:00
Taylor,
I can tell you that I have had three of these in my hands and they all sounded exactly the same in Linux. The issue seems to be that the MAXaudio Dell loaded into Windows is doing a LOT of frequency management.
I was able to replicate the sound quality using PulseEffects, in Linux, but it added almost a quarter second of lag.
That being said, support will probably give you the parts number for the speaker assembly (I couldn't find it in a quick search) and it's quite east to replace them. No foam tape or anything.