Bad sound on Dell 8600

thereeper · 04-24-2005, 01:26 PM

I recentely installed Suse 9.2 on my dell inspirion 8600, , and the sound works with the included ac'97 driver, but it sounds incredibly flat (i.e not great) compared to when it has the sigmatel drivers working in windows.

I have it set as using 16 bit sounds and using ASLA in control center of suse, but my sound still sounds very flat, any suggestions to improve the sound quality??

jaws_tas · 04-26-2005, 04:40 AM

Try downloading the latest ALSA driver specifically for the model. I know that the onboard sound on the 8600 works properly in Fedora 3 using the included ALSA drivers.

Alternatively, try Fedora

thereeper · 04-26-2005, 08:42 AM

The sound works with ALSA, it just sounds like crap compared to using the real sigma Tel drivers in windows. Sigma Tel Cards aren't supported for ALSA

rpz · 04-26-2005, 08:52 AM

The sound on the 8600 sounds like crap regardless of drivers/operating system. Background noise and clicks are impossible to avoid (it gets slightly better when the AC adapter is unplugged). If you need high quality audio, get an external USB soundcard.
If there is a clear difference between linux/windows, try downloading the latest ALSA and build from source.
EDIT: Just a suggestion, the S/PDIF works fine. If possible, use that instead of analogue output.