Sound options via Control Panel

May 21, 2013 9:12 PM

Sound options via Control Panel

Tonight I Learned that my laptop came with preinstalled Sound Enhancement modules that acted on my headphone jack. I disabled them and suddenly my music became much, much, *much* clearer. These options are accessed via Control Panel. I almost dread going back and listening to the stuff I recorded and mixed on this computer.

Just thought I'd pass this along in case anyone else had overlooked this potential problem area.
posted by Ardiril (3 comments total)

Wow, some of that stuff is just plain horrible. What an eye-opener this discovery has been.
posted by Ardiril at 9:40 PM on May 21, 2013


That's a useful discovery. What model of laptop, what OS?

If you use iTunes, check your settings there as well. There's a normalization function and an EQ, which can make checking mixes there deceptive.
posted by dubold at 1:22 AM on May 22, 2013


An old Sony Vaio with Vista.

I was convinced that my hearing had gone bad because of this. I am 54 and I have listened to loud music through headphones since I was a teen, so loss of hearing wouldn't be too surprising.

I went through my songs on Soundcloud and found three that were unlistenable because the highs and upper mids were mixed way too loud.

This isn't the first time something similar happened. I have a Boss BR-600 multitrack recorder and the default is to add a bit of reverb to incoming signal and a bit more to each outgoing track. There is no way to change that default and I must start each song by going through the menus and zeroing out the sends.

The moral of the story is don't trust consumer gear. Check everything.
posted by Ardiril at 8:23 AM on May 22, 2013


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