Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Get bigger sound from your laptop speakers

I've been listening to music on my laptop speakers lately. Yeah, I know don't ask. Obvious issues aside, if you are in a similar situation, you might consider downloading audio processors aimed at webcasters and radio broadcasters.

The problem all boils down to a limited bandwidth, namely the laptop speakers have very little of it! In this way, they are very similar to FM radio broadcasts. Laptop speakers are very bright, because of their small size. Simple equalization does bring out the lower sounds, but the dynamics leave the listener with a rough to endure sound with a very limited volume range.

This software FM radio processor, combined with some aggressive equalization, will solve these and other problems. The end result is more output from tiny speakers with a fuller overall sound that I find more listenable than I would otherwise expect. Of course, the real solution is headphones or some other respectable speaker, but in a pinch this is better than you think it is.