[jeffmd]

So, many years ago I picked up asus's Q550lf from best buy to be my light(ish) duty casual laptop (to use in bed or where ever). It was an impressive beast at the time with a great looking ips touch screen and a 745m for some gaming if you wanted. However the star of the laptop was an external housing unit just slightly bigger then a bathroom water cup that housed a medium sized speaker for low frequencies, a subwoofer. It worked quite well and the laptop's sound dominated that of any other laptops at the time (and still continues to do so).

The laptop is still running good although stuck on windows 8.1 because some key drivers are not so hot running in windows 10 (actually powering down during a shut down can be a gamble). Unfortunately the sonicmaster technology asus used did not carry on past these generations of laptops. I currently have a 17" MSI gaming laptop I use as a replacement for my gaming setup but the internal subwoofer it used is pretty abysmal. Although the feature was clearly more of an after thought.

Has anyone come across any regular sized or lightweight laptops (ie not gaming) of recent origin that have tackled built in sound as one of its primary bullet points, and was successful with it?

 

[gimmeheadroom]

That just doesn't seem possible due to space and power constraints.

 

[properlydeafnd]

I agree. I've never seen one that I would consider remotely impressive .

 

[ZMG885]

So, many years ago I picked up asus's Q550lf from best buy to be my light(ish) duty casual laptop (to use in bed or where ever). It was an impressive beast at the time with a great looking ips touch screen and a 745m for some gaming if you wanted. However the star of the laptop was an external housing unit just slightly bigger then a bathroom water cup that housed a medium sized speaker for low frequencies, a subwoofer. It worked quite well and the laptop's sound dominated that of any other laptops at the time (and still continues to do so).

The laptop is still running good although stuck on windows 8.1 because some key drivers are not so hot running in windows 10 (actually powering down during a shut down can be a gamble). Unfortunately the sonicmaster technology asus used did not carry on past these generations of laptops. I currently have a 17" MSI gaming laptop I use as a replacement for my gaming setup but the internal subwoofer it used is pretty abysmal. Although the feature was clearly more of an after thought.

Has anyone come across any regular sized or lightweight laptops (ie not gaming) of recent origin that have tackled built in sound as one of its primary bullet points, and was successful with it?

For one thing, your talking about a bygone era in laptops, when 6 - 8lbs was common and a large enough speaker could be implemented. I had a 2008 17" macbook pro that sounded decent for a laptop (but not great by any standard I hold). Since then, smaller and lighter is the theme and they all sound weak. Yes, the huge gaming laptops seem to have space, but once the giant fans start whirring to cool the GPUs any quality sound is drowned out. I always ad 2.0 desktop speakers at home, or IEMs on the road.

 

[jeffmd]

Ehh, this laptop was in the same era as ultra thins. Ultra thins of course won out. As for big laptops, I actually find my 17" MSI won't get too loud, it can easily cool enough at around 3k rpms during gaming. Still I was hoping someone would do a line of laptops that centered on bringing video and audio quality to the forefront for either media production or movie watching.

 

[properlydeafnd]

I just think realistically you can blow away any speakers they would ever put in a laptop w/ a Chord Mojo and a set of headphones. Or if you want something really small with nothing to charge, say an Audioquest Dragonfly and some IEMs. Aside from size, there isn't really a market. Nobody is going to plan to do serious media production (especially sound) using built in laptop speakers. For one they probably aren't using a laptop as a serious DAW, and they're going to be using a set of proper studio quality monitors regardless. Physically you can't move enough air w/ laptop speakers to do anything really good.

 

[ZMG885]

I just think realistically you can blow away any speakers they would ever put in a laptop w/ a Chord Mojo and a set of headphones. Or if you want something really small with nothing to charge, say an Audioquest Dragonfly and some IEMs. Aside from size, there isn't really a market. Nobody is going to plan to do serious media production (especially sound) using built in laptop speakers. For one they probably aren't using a laptop as a serious DAW, and they're going to be using a set of proper studio quality monitors regardless. Physically you can't move enough air w/ laptop speakers to do anything really good.

+1

 

[hungping]

While adding a killer DAC with a great amp to a PC, would be a brilliant idea to Head-fi people here, I wonder how this could convince more general PC buyers to pay more for this feature.

 

[properlydeafnd]

It will never happen. My point really was that YOU should get a portable DAC/Amp

 

[wotef]

Chasing inherent onboard laptop sound quality is a dubious goal. Better would be optimizing offboard USB or ethernet to USB/SPDIF/AES out.

 

[jeffmd]

The idea was not to rely on anything external since that defeated the purpose (exception granted to the sub(actually a mid range speaker) unit connected via headphone jack on my current laptop). Every now and then some manufacturer tries including something different to make themselves unique, I was just entertaining the idea a better built in speaker set would be one of them.

 

[plazzo]

A cheap usb sound card sound better than surface soundcard?

 

[ZMG885]

A cheap usb sound card sound better than surface soundcard?

Yes (Assuming you mean external USB DAC vs surface-mounted mainboard DAC). I had an Audioengine D1, a USB DAC ($169 retail) that outperformed every laptop I attached to including a MacMini and the $99 Schiit Fulla 2 would do the same.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

I have a Huwaei tablet with Harman Kardon speakers and an AKM DAC. It sounds fantastic for what it is. But it does not provide a real hifi experience...