Poor Audio from internal speaker

Support Sound
1

The Audio output from my computer’s internal speakers sounds tinny and distorted; the quality using earphones (USB or cable) or external speakers (USB) is valuable better.

$ inxi -A
Audio:     Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor driver: snd_rn_pci_acp3x 
           Device-3: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 17h HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.10.53-1-MANJARO running: yes 
           Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes 
           Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.32 running: yes

$ cat /etc/pulse/daemon.conf
How to improve internal speakers’ quality?

2

:+1: Welcome to Manjaro! :+1:

  1. Please read this:
    How to provide good information
    and post some more information so we can see what’s really going on. Now we know the symptom of the disease, but we need some more probing to know where the origin lies… :grin:
  2. An inxi --admin --verbosity=7 --filter --no-host --width would be the minimum required information for us to be able to help you. (Personally Identifiable Information like serial numbers and MAC addresses will be filtered out by the above command)
    Also, please copy-paste that output in-between 3 backticks ``` at the beginning and end of the code/text.
  3. The output of pacmd list would be helpful as well.

:+1:

P.S. If you enter a bit more details in your profile, we can also see which Desktop Environment you’re using, which CPU/GPU or Kernel, … you have without typing it every time

3
  1. to reconfigure PulseAudio for improved audio quality, copy this to terminal
cat <<EOT > ~/.config/pulse/daemon.conf
resample-method = speex-float-3
default-sample-format = s24le
default-sample-rate = 48000
EOT

then restart PulseAudio

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio
  1. Install pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa to add some boost bass for laptop speakers

No sound whatsoever after trying to fix crappy sound

  1. Pipewire might need to be stopped and disabled if it is causing any problem with PulseAudio
systemctl --user disable --now pipewire.socket && systemctl --user stop pipewire
2 Likes
4

Thank you @nikgnomic,

  1. The daemon.conf was changed, these are my actual settings: $ pulseaudio --dump-conf
    $ systemctl --user restart pulseaudio
    I could not hear a real difference after this step.
  2. $ systemctl --user stop pipewire
    Again I could not hear a real difference after this step.
  3. pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa is installed:
    • SuperBassBoost: Speech from Radio broadcast is almost not understandable.
    • BassBoost is better than SuperBassBoost, but worse than it was without equalizer.
    • Actually I’m running with “Soft”, which is a bit better than it was without equalizer.

Any recommendation highly appreciated!

5

Thank you @Fabby,
my profile has been amended by CPU and GPU specs.
Right now I’m using Kernel 5.10.53-1-MANJARO (64-bit).

$ inxi --admin --verbosity=7 --filter --no-host --width
$ pacmd list

1 Like
6

I see another setting has been changed – alternate-sample-rate = 96000
you might want to try resample-method=speex-float-5 for resampling to a higher bitrate
or resample-method=soxr-hq – soxr resampler can offer better quality but might add latency to the audio stream
But you will only likely to hear any difference on headphones

Pulseaudio and Pipewire are both shown in inxi data as running: yes , so the suggested commands were not effective for stopping Pipewire (but stopping Pipewire would not affect audio quality)

I found a picture of the internal speakers and a benchmark of the audio response

Lenovo ThinkPad T490s (i5, Low Power FHD) Laptop Review - NotebookCheck.net Reviews
The focus of the speakers is the clear production of high tones, so the device is mainly suited for calls/conferences. This is obviously not a bad thing for an office laptop, but you quickly want better speakers when you watch a video or listen to music. We recommend headphones or external speakers for better quality.

not very loud speakers (70.2 dB)
nearly no bass - on average 19.1% lower than median
73% of all tested devices in this class were better

These micro speakers are not good for music even with all the proprietary OS tweaks

You might want to try out AUR packages Viper4Linux or JamesDSP4Linux instead of just an equalizer. Or easyeffects if you replace PulseAudio with Pipewire

1 Like
7

Thank you @nikgnomic,

I see another setting has been changed – alternate-sample-rate = 96000
you might want to try resample-method=speex-float-5 for resampling to a higher bitrate
or resample-method=soxr-hq – soxr resampler can offer better quality
but might add latency to the audio stream

Shall I keep or replace alternate-sample-rate = 96000?
Shall I try the `resample-method=’ - lines in parallel or as alternatives?

It’s clear, that the built-in - speakers are not best Studio quality.I used a LENOVO X240 earlier with UBUNTU and that quality was quite better. The actual sound (T14s / Manjaro) is specially poor for speech (radio) and wors for male speakers than for women. Is there and test-file (mp3?) that I could use for for setup the equalizer or Viper4Linux?

Thanks a lot!

8