Audio problem with a M6400 laptop

[kuja killer]

Ah sorry, my bad. :| I took the time to try taking as much screenshots I could of these registry settings if anyone's willing to look. I didnt get shots of "every" single folder or key cause there are quite a few entries that are empty or just only have a blank "default" - but i tried to screenshot all the most relevant and important ones.

I already tried every single "1" or "0" registry key as i mentioned, and i also tried all the ones like "enabled PCM bits/dac bits" to FFFFFFE ...but doesnt affect it obviously. There's nothing in the "plugins" area. I dont know what all the "pins" and "bands" are about, i didnt take shots of all those cause there all completely random numbers on each one. And i assume all the stuff about "jack" and "mic" are related to microphones, which i dont have any such accessories. -- "AFG Power State Policy" sounded promising.. i tried 0, 1, 2, and 3.. but of course nothing.

https://ufile.io/h96expi6 - heres the screenshots

Edited February 28, 2022 by kuja killer

[kuja killer]

Just an update since no one else has replied.

I recently talked with someone on discord - whom i originally found from a random youtube showing off a M6400 laptop before i bought this, which has something called "windows XP integral" instead of SP3 apparently. I dont know anything about this integral edition as i've never heard of it before (also win 10 as a dual boot with it)

the video was here - https://youtube.com/watch?v=JG1RpJgy5Qw

so i talked to him a few days ago wondering if he could test the whole audio problem too on his M6400, i described briefly about this whole stupid annoying "low quality/power 10 khz-like" muffled problem with the laptop's speakers, and apparently he expereienced this exact same issue too - on the Win XP "integral" ...he also tested it on Windows 10 too and said the same thing happens there... though i cant confirm myself cause i dont know what it sounds like on there

So he believes it's NOT XP - just this laptop was manafactured very poorly in reguard to the speakers.. ughhh. - So i think i'll finally accept the reality that nothing can ever be done about this crap. And that it's not worth trying to waste more endless hours trying a million things, and re-installing XP to start over, again and again trying different things. None of the "modded" drivers are possible to download from the laptopvideo2go forum cause every freaking thing says "404 not found"

Also i noticed another problem I can never figure out while i was testing other things. the program "RightMark CPU Clock Utility 2.35" used for controlling the CPU voltages to lower tempatures. This here:

https://cpu.rightmark.org/products/rmclock.shtml

right clicking it in the taskbar and exit or restart ...just keeps it frozen there forever...it never will close no matter how many times i try, reboot, or anything. thus not saving settings. i compared side by side with my Dell Latiutude D620 laptop every single loaded DLL file and version number using Process Explorer, and everything matches exactly 100%.

It works just perfectly fine on my Latitude D620 XP laptop, closing the program normally i mean. So i have to force-exit it via Task Manager on the M6400 laptop...which means it's impossible to save any settings from the program.

I'm so freaking dang fed up with this god dang M6400 laptop, i cant stand it anymore. This was a waste of time, waste of 200 dollars, i gotten MANY headaches from sleepless nights trying EVERYTHING.

Just will stay with my Latitude D620 once again.  Also i apoligize for anyone bothering to read my stupidly super long posts. It's very hard for me to explain things as "short" as possible, please forgive me for this.

Edited March 29, 2022 by kuja killer

[dotexe1337]

hi, it seems that the m6400 sound system is just total junk. i have a m6400 and the audio sounds just as you described: crunchy, muffled, washed out. doesnt matter what OS or drivers i use, mac and linux have the same problem. its unfortunate that such an otherwise great laptop has a flaw like this, i also have the m90 precision which is the older model by a couple years, and the audio is amazing on it unlike the m6400

[dotexe1337]

Just now, dotexe1337 said:

hi, it seems that the m6400 sound system is just total junk. i have a m6400 and the audio sounds just as you described: crunchy, muffled, washed out. doesnt matter what OS or drivers i use, mac and linux have the same problem. its unfortunate that such an otherwise great laptop has a flaw like this, i also have the m90 precision which is the older model by a couple years, and the audio is amazing on it unlike the m6400

i just use headphones when i need to do anything with sound on it. rest of the laptop is fine but the speakers are total crap

[we3fan]

@kuja killer - Is the sound better with headphones or external speakers?

[kuja killer]

On 3/26/2022 at 4:09 AM, dotexe1337 said:

hi, it seems that the m6400 sound system is just total junk. i have a m6400 and the audio sounds just as you described: crunchy, muffled, washed out. doesnt matter what OS or drivers i use, mac and linux have the same problem. its unfortunate that such an otherwise great laptop has a flaw like this, i also have the m90 precision which is the older model by a couple years, and the audio is amazing on it unlike the m6400

Hello there, thank you very much for confirming for me, I really needed to know this from other people who may have had this laptop model. it's really depressing to know.

I bought this cause I wanted to try out a little higher specs than my D620 here. The highest possible Core 2 Duo year/generation that im still able to use "RMClock" and "ThrottleStop" with to under-volt for lower temps...while 1st to 3rd gen i3/i5/i7 are not possible (this is QX9300 2.5 GHZ, but i really would have bought a individual T9900 3.06 GHZ someday "after" setting everything up). This video card is a "ATI firepro m7820" which was originally only in the Precision M6500, but works fine in M6400. I spent several months of research before I bought this via ebay, as i've heard the Nvidia models would have all kinds of overheating, and "black screen" issues, while the ATI doesn't.

But i NEVER in my life, expected to be stopped dead cold in my tracks because of the stupid audio muffled-ness problem. I just dont understand why i can influence this by sounding normal based on how fast or slow I click that slider button on the Volume Control window for testing ...only for those clicks - or any programs, or "voice test" or youtube, video players, etc only if there active/running. But closing them returns it back to instant muffle.

If it's doing something to a specific driver or file, theres way too many to know what, like wdmaud.sys, hdaudbus.sys, directX stuff, i dont know. If only it could be forced somehow to not lower itself back to crap after half a second or whatever. But ugh, im sick and freaking tired of trying.

@we3fan i know i keep hearing that headphones wont have the problem, and I dont have any first hand confirmation as I've never owned any headphones before, so i officially do not know sadly. Im willing to buy a pair of headphones, but I dont have a clue where or what i would buy, not something like "latest greast 2022 model" of something that might not even work at all on the 2009 laptop. So i would not know "what" to buy exactly.

i actually did try some external speakers a week ago, i have a pair of left/right speakers seperately that I havent touched since around 2008, they worked fine obviously on the last Windows XP desktop PC i used them with around that time.. i plugged into the headphone port on that M6400 laptop.. and no...it made zero difference, the stupid "muffled" B**S** is still there coming through the 2 speakers away from the laptop...but I have no clue about actual real headphones still.

Edited March 30, 2022 by kuja killer

[RainyShadow]

You can also try some cheap USB sound card. 

Obviously, you will need external speakers/headphones for it. 

 

I wonder how it would sound if you connected the output of such USB audio directly to the microphone connector of the built-in audio... 

[dotexe1337]

On 3/29/2022 at 10:18 AM, kuja killer said:

Hello there, thank you very much for confirming for me, I really needed to know this from other people who may have had this laptop model. it's really depressing to know.

I bought this cause I wanted to try out a little higher specs than my D620 here. The highest possible Core 2 Duo year/generation that im still able to use "RMClock" and "ThrottleStop" with to under-volt for lower temps...while 1st to 3rd gen i3/i5/i7 are not possible (this is QX9300 2.5 GHZ, but i really would have bought a individual T9900 3.06 GHZ someday "after" setting everything up). This video card is a "ATI firepro m7820" which was originally only in the Precision M6500, but works fine in M6400. I spent several months of research before I bought this via ebay, as i've heard the Nvidia models would have all kinds of overheating, and "black screen" issues, while the ATI doesn't.

But i NEVER in my life, expected to be stopped dead cold in my tracks because of the stupid audio muffled-ness problem. I just dont understand why i can influence this by sounding normal based on how fast or slow I click that slider button on the Volume Control window for testing ...only for those clicks - or any programs, or "voice test" or youtube, video players, etc only if there active/running. But closing them returns it back to instant muffle.

If it's doing something to a specific driver or file, theres way too many to know what, like wdmaud.sys, hdaudbus.sys, directX stuff, i dont know. If only it could be forced somehow to not lower itself back to crap after half a second or whatever. But ugh, im sick and freaking tired of trying.

@we3fan i know i keep hearing that headphones wont have the problem, and I dont have any first hand confirmation as I've never owned any headphones before, so i officially do not know sadly. Im willing to buy a pair of headphones, but I dont have a clue where or what i would buy, not something like "latest greast 2022 model" of something that might not even work at all on the 2009 laptop. So i would not know "what" to buy exactly.

i actually did try some external speakers a week ago, i have a pair of left/right speakers seperately that I havent touched since around 2008, they worked fine obviously on the last Windows XP desktop PC i used them with around that time.. i plugged into the headphone port on that M6400 laptop.. and no...it made zero difference, the stupid "muffled" B**S** is still there coming through the 2 speakers away from the laptop...but I have no clue about actual real headphones still.

i use headphones 99% of the time on my computer. with laptops it's either just bad audio like on the m6400, or on most machines its just too quiet for my ears. its very rare to find a laptop for a decent price with actual good audio.

i had the dell precision m90 though which did have pretty good sound, very loud and had a 5w subwoofer on the bottom to give it a bit of punch. not a lot of bass though

EDIT: if you want to try a pair of headphones, i suggest the Shure SRH440. i have been using those as my daily for about 5 years, they are $79 on amazon which is not bad since they are studio headphones with pretty darn good sound quality with a neutral sound stage. you could also try the Shure SRH840 which is the higher end model, i havent tried those myself but they get very good reviews and are $129 on amazon

Edited May 7, 2022 by dotexe1337