Poor audio from headphone jack

[iaptzke]

I just recenlty bought a pair of CL harman kardon headphones and after plugging them into my W530 they are as flat as can be and sound horrible to tell the truth.  I plugged them into my Iphone5s and they sound amazing.  Anyone might know what would be causing this?

[lead_org]

bad sound DAC chip. I use an external DAC and headphone amp when i listen to music on the ThinkPad.

[zalbard]

Pretty much the same issue with W540. Very flat sound. Fairly low volume, too. I wonder if it just cannot provide enough voltage...

[DSperber]

Are you using the Realtek+Dolby application to "spiff up audio"?  Or are you not, but simply using straight Realtek audio?

The audio driver downloaded from Realtek does NOT include the Dolby app.  Only the audio driver downloaded from Lenovo includes the Dolby app.

I have Shure SRH940 headphones and they sound excellent through my W530, but I'm using the Dolby app and have selected one of the presets in the EQ.

[iaptzke]

how would I go about turning off the realtek?  I had tried to disable it, but then it seemed to have fully turned off all sounds coming out of my computer.

[DSperber · Accepted solution]

Are you running with the Lenovo-provided Realtek audio driver, or the straight Realtek audio driver from the Realtek site?

This is the correct audio driver from Lenovo which includes the Dolby app.

[iaptzke]

I believe its the Lenovo provided

[iaptzke]

ok totally uninstalled realtek from the computer and it works again!

Thank you guys for the help!

[DSperber]

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@iaptzke wrote:
ok totally uninstalled realtek from the computer and it works again!

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Huh??  What did you do???  You obviously cannot just UNINSTALL the Realtek audio driver (which also uninstalls the Dolby app if it was previously installed) and have any sound at all!  You must have reinstalled SOME audio driver, in order for it to "work again"... and I assume you mean WORKS WELL ON YOUR HEADPHONE AUDIO QUALITY.

You mean you uninstalled whatever audio driver you currently had installed, and then reinstalled that Lenovo+Dolby driver I pointed to?

And now you have the Dolby app, and that DOES improve the headphone audio quality?

Or you're still not using the Dolby app, but simply reinstalling the Lenovo Realtek+Dolby driver package has somehow improved the headphone audio quality?

Please clarify what you did, and why/how it now "works again", whatever that means.

[iaptzke]

So I dont know if this is good or bad.  But I simply went to "uninstall programs"  found Realtek unistalled it.  The computer restarded and then I went to pandora played a song and the bass and fullness was back.  I didn't add anything I will probly look into the Dolby program again but I think just taking off Realtek killed the flatness and the poor audio problems I was having.

Sorry there isn't much more to say I know you were looking for something a bit deeper but that was simply all I did.