Macbook Sound and Volume

I'm sorry, but that seems particular to your machine. I find that mine plays iTunes music solidly. The sound is certainly inferior and low but at half level I still hear music. Is something blocking your speakers? They're right where your screen meets the keyboard. Try plugging in a set of earphones. How is the sound now? Try playing a cd, a dvd, and some music content off the Internet. In other words, try different qualities of recordings. How does it sound now? If you're still unsatisfied and live in a city with an Apple Store, you could make an appointment with one of those Genius Bars and have Apple's people tell you what the story is. But, in short, I think your machine may have an issue.

While all laptop Macs do now have substantially lower maximum volumes than they used to do, the volumes you are decribing do sound unusually low.

How are you checking volume?

If you go to the Sound System Preference be sure to turn up BOTH the output volume setting and the alert volume setting are both set to maximum.

Then I would contact AppleCare to see what they have to say.

Mirty, I think my MacBook's internal speakers and headphone output is way too quiet as well. But here's a trick I found:

1. Open Applications/Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup
2. Somewhere in the middle of the opened window, select "Properties For" as "Built In Output"
3. Then on the bottom right corner, slide the two bars all the way to the left.

That should give you some extra volume. I'd also double check your sound preferences pane in System Preferences.

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You can also boot into bootcamp/windows and check your hardware that way. In my experience, the volume is way loud in Windows, but too soft in OSX. I'm not sure what causes this difference. If your sound is also soft in windows bootcamp, it could be a real hardware issue. But since others have also complained about the macbook volume being too low, it's most likely not a hardware malfunction (though it may be poor design).

How does MacBook compare with MBP for sound perfomance ?

Even the entry level MB would be fine for me but my brother is insisting we go in for a MBP because sound is better.

I was not really satisfied with my iBook as far as sound quality was concerned but here in MB can it be a problem while watching movies ?

Thank you.

It would be best to compare your Macbook to another Macbook - apples to apples - so to say, and preferably at an Applestore. This way you could hear for yourself if there are any differences.

John

iMac G5 20'' 2GHz rev B Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Well, the macbook does have 3 internal speakers vs. the iBook's 2. That makes the sound ever so slightly better. As laptop speakers go, it's decent.

And comparing to the MacBook Pro, I'm pretty sure that the sound chipset is identical, so the raw sound quality should be the same. And in fact I think my MacBook speakers sound a bit better. (That's totally subjective though)

I found that watching DVD's through the FrontRow experience has somewhat small volume. (I wish it was louder!)

Hey everyone, I would like to report that my Macbook that I just received yesterday has this problem as well. It is most frustrating because the volume is at such a wimpy level when I maxed it out at both system and application level. I'm a new Mac user, and in Windows, the usual advice is to leave your system volume at 50% and tune your volume using the application's settings in order to prevent distortion or damage to the speakers. That's a no-can't-do here.

Too bad, because the acoustics for this speaker is quite decent.

I will be heading down to my local Applestore tomorrow to ask them what the **** is going on here. This cannot possibly be one of Apple's public health service message, could it?

I'm having the same problem and have posted about this before. I think there are a number of users seeing this. By way of comparison, I had a Powerbook G4 before and it had much, much louder audio.

To the people who have the problem: Did you migrate your settings from a prior Mac or did you use the machine without migration?

The only way I've been able to get acceptable levels of audio on this new Macbook is in iTunes by boosting the gain in equalizer. Everything else is way too soft. I should have to have everything set to near max to be able to hear things.

Changing the hardware audio settings via the method I outlined above will give you a significant boost. Afterwards, I think the volume is comparable to the 12" G4 powerbook I had previously.

And as far as I know, Apple has purposefully set the maximum volume of all their computers to a "safe" level in OSX by some kinda software control - probably to avoid distortion and blowing out the internal speakers. Just try maxing out the volume under boot camped windows - you might blow out the speakers though!

To MichaelJonston4: I'm using this new Macbook without prior migration.

To Yongwon Lee: I tried using your method and I see the dialog box that you described. But when I tried to slide those 2 sliders all the way to the left, it just snapped back to its original position. I cannot slide it all the way to the right either. Am I doing something wrong here?

And yeah, now that you mentioned it, I did hear something about Apple doing something like this. Think I might have read this on AppleInsider.

Thanks in advance for any advice given!

Hi there,
I am just in the process of setting up my girlfriends new white MB. After using her itunes for the first time i immedieately noticed that even with both volumes at full, the MB is much, much quiter than my 15" G4 Powerbook. There has been no migration yet and everything is as standard.

I too am having problems with this. The Audio MIDI util doesn't really do anything except set the volume to 100%, the same as using the volume keys to turn the volume up and down. In fact if you hit the volume keys while that app is open, you can watch the sliders going up and down.

I've noticed that not only is the loudest volume low compared to my PowerBook G4 12", when the system is set to about 3 dots on the Volume bezel, it's nearly inaudible in an absolutely silent room. So 2 dots is really like 0. This thing needs to go to 11!

I did use the migration tool also, hopefully it's something as simple as deleting an inappropriate pref file somewhere.

I have not migrated anything and the volume is almost completely silent on half. I am sure this will be something addressed soon. There is no way the audio is to be that low with only half the bars down. I hope it gets addressed soon.