Always look at the date when you read an article. Some of the content in this article is most likely out of date, as it was written on
April 13, 2013. For newer information, see
our more recent articles.
Introduction
Laptops feature thin profiles, getting thinner with each generation it seems, so the size of built-in speakers is very limited – and hence audio quality often suffers. Such small speakers behave in a very different way from larger, stand-alone speakers or even headphones. In order to get the best listening experience from them, or any output device, audio settings should be tuned to match the speakers as best as possible.
THX TruStudio Pro
That is exactly why our Traverse and Traverse Pro laptops come with THX TruStudio Pro software. It is a small application that adjusts audio output on the fly to give you the best quality possible from the built-in speakers, and it does this with great results. Normally we avoid installing extra software – but this is a case where the software is really needed in order to get the best performance out of the computer’s hardware, so we install it and set it up for use with the speakers to give our customers the best out-of-box experience we can.
Using Headphone or External Speakers
However, if you are using one of our THX-equipped laptops with headphones or external speakers, this setup is far from ideal. The sound output through any devices other than the built-in speakers is made far worse by this software, or to put it more correctly by the default settings in the software. There are two easy ways to correct this:
1) You can simply turn off the entire THX TruStudio Pro software package, by clicking on the orange power icon in the upper left corner.
2) Better yet, you can change the settings within the THX software to reflect the sort of speaker or headphone setup you are using. This is done in the Settings menu, as shown here:
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The latter option involves one extra step, but gives you some added flexibility. You can adjust the “crossover” level – the frequency below which the audio is cut off, to avoid trying to push bass levels through to your headphones which they may not properly be able to reproduce. There are also some other controls within the TrueStudio Pro software available this way which we will not be going into detail on here; you would lose access to those if you turn it off entirely.
Conclusion
THX TruStudio Pro is a great example of the sort of software that we do include on our systems, because it has a direct tie to the functionality of the hardware. As with all software, though, when set up incorrectly for your specific needs it can become a problem rather than a solution. Hopefully this information can help prevent such a problem, but of course our support department is here to help as well if any customers need further advice on how to get the most out of their Puget Systems computer.
