Sound issue on Dell laptop (not hardware issue)

Dell Insiron 1525
Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit

Okay, so I have an issue with the sound on my laptop that makes no sense. All programs on my laptop output sound very low, low enough that you can't really hear anything if you have background noise. This means the volume control is always all the way up. Now, if you plug headphones in, you have to turn it down because it is much louder. Also, specifically when I use mediadirect to watch a DVD, the sound is much much louder than any other program running a DVD. The Dell CSR gave me a BS run around about it being a hardware limitation (which makes no sense since MediaDirect outputs much louder, thus the speakers are capable) and then switch to a "that is how the system is designed" story. Now, if it is some software limiting it, it should be able to be changed. No luck there. All settings are full volume and I can find nothing else that would affect it. I have unstalled and reinstalled audio drivers with no luck. I can't figure this out and Dell won't say its a system flaw and thus must be fixed. They claim design (but of course they can't explain the purpose of such design). So, I want to know what your thoughts are. I cannot find anything online to suggest a fix, though I have found a few complaints just like mine. Could it be possible for a Registry entry to govern this. The sound is obviously being limited somewhere. But how? Any suggestions?

Are you talking about the inbuilt speakers?

speakers on laptops usually aren't very good, so could be a hardware limitation, I think even its limited by software only and you managed to increase, it would lead to sound distoration (poor sound quality).

Yes, the builtins, but what I am talking about is not low like with a bunch of background noise you dont hear anything, I mean low, like 15% of what they should output. I have proven that the speakers are capable of doing much more without distoration because when I run MediaDirect to watch a DVD the volume is much much higher, but when I watch that movie in Media Center or Media Player the volume wont even get to half of what MediaDirect will output. Its not a hardware limitation as shown by the example i just gave. Something else must be limiting it.

I see what you mean, so watching the same movie on two different applications you get different sound levels? could be a software setting then, does Media Center allow you to change the output e.g. to mono, stereo, 2.1 etc

Media Center using the main windows settings to determine stereo, mono, etc. Can't figure this out.

This seems to have worked for me:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Scrunch\CodecPack\MSDVDNote If you cannot locate the registry subkey, go to step 3 to create the registry subkey. If you can locate the registry subkey, go to step 6.

3. Right-click the Microsoft registry subkey, point to New, click Key, type Scrunch, and then press ENTER.

4. Right-click the Scrunch registry subkey, point to New, click Key, type CodecPack, and then press ENTER.

5. Right-click the CodecPack registry subkey, point to New, click Key, type MSDVD, and then press ENTER.

6. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

7. In the details pane, type the following new value, dolby_rf_on, and then press ENTER.

8. Right-click dolby_rf_on, and then click Modify.

9. In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, under Base, click Decimal. 10. In the Value data box, type the value 1, and then click OK.

Click to expand...

proper install the sound driver by proper setup then restart computer and then check it