Surface 2 Speaker/Sound Problems

Anonymous
2013-10-23T17:22:07+00:00

I just purchased two new Surface 2's and I am noticing a significant reduction in volume from the speakers compared to my old Surface RT.  The speakers also lack any kind of bass.  They are very "tinny" and shallow sounding.  When using headphones, there is plenty of bass sound and the volume level is not an issue.

I am also experienceing a significant amount of sound crackling (from the speakers and attached headphones) when streaming video from Amazon Instant Video using both the desktop and metro versions of IE.  I do not experience this crackling problem with other sound sources like Xbox music, gaming, or other website streaming video (i.e. YouTube).

Since I was experiencing this on two different Surface 2's, it seems unlikely that this is a hardware issue.  This is most likely a software/driver issue.  Is there anything that I can do to resolve this problem, other than wait for a possible software or firmware update?

Thanks.

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-11-01T08:52:55+00:00

    No idea but you can try.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-11-02T08:31:38+00:00

    The final part of the puzzle that confirms to me that this is a software issue is that like many, I have now disabled the 'enhancements' checkbox to improve the sound quality (which it has) and have noticed that in Xbox Music whenever a song starts, for the first half a second the volume is much much louder and then dips to the default volume level meaning that there is a process running to do this. So its either a bug, or MS purposefully reduces the audio output as the speakers are clearly able to go louder. In the split second though, I can't confirm sound quality at the increased volume, so the quality at that level might be poor thus giving us the reason MS limits the volume level.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-11-02T12:51:07+00:00

    The final part of the puzzle that confirms to me that this is a software issue is that like many, I have now disabled the 'enhancements' checkbox to improve the sound quality (which it has) and have noticed that in Xbox Music whenever a song starts, for the first half a second the volume is much much louder and then dips to the default volume level meaning that there is a process running to do this. So its either a bug, or MS purposefully reduces the audio output as the speakers are clearly able to go louder. In the split second though, I can't confirm sound quality at the increased volume, so the quality at that level might be poor thus giving us the reason MS limits the volume level.

    I can confirm that the sound level dips shortly after a song starts.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-11-03T16:49:19+00:00

    The final part of the puzzle that confirms to me that this is a software issue is that like many, I have now disabled the 'enhancements' checkbox to improve the sound quality (which it has) and have noticed that in Xbox Music whenever a song starts, for the first half a second the volume is much much louder and then dips to the default volume level meaning that there is a process running to do this. So its either a bug, or MS purposefully reduces the audio output as the speakers are clearly able to go louder. In the split second though, I can't confirm sound quality at the increased volume, so the quality at that level might be poor thus giving us the reason MS limits the volume level.

    I can confirm that the sound level dips shortly after a song starts.

    Me too. I also had a problem with different tone and output from left and right speakers... If I set the balance to little more in right channel it sounds better... Do you have this problem?

    Here are the diferent failures I have found in my unit during 1 week of use...

    http://forums.wpcentral.com/microsoft-surface-2/248246-post-your-surface-2-defects-failures-after-some-use.html

    Hope this is solved, but I'm thinking of an exchange of my unit...

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  5. Anonymous
    2013-11-03T19:12:18+00:00

    Yesterday a new sound driver was released. I wonder if that helped.

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