Digital Home Thoughts: Boosting Audio Volume with MaxxPlayer: Does It Really Work?

Suhit posted about Maxxplayer a few months ago, and I was curious to see if it worked for a very specific scenario I had in mind. I have a Fujitsu P7010 laptop, which is a wee thing with a 10.6" LCD widescreen and fairly small speakers. As such, audio loudness is not something it excels at. Because it's so portable, I find myself taking it with me fairly often, and quite often I end up showing family/friends video clips that I've saved. Here's where the scenario always falls apart: the built-in speakers on the P7010 aren't loud enough unless the room is very quiet. I was at a Thanksgiving dinner a few weeks ago (Canadian Thanksgiving is in October) and some family members were talking about Terrible Terry Tate. I happened to have my laptop there with four of his video clips. I queued them up, and two people had to lean into the speakers just to hear them. Eventually they took the laptop to another room just so they could hear the audio. I really wish Fujitsu had put louder speakers in this thing. :roll:



So when I got back I wanted to take MaxxPlayer for a spin and see if it would help. It definitely does! The install is pretty straightforward, though I dislike it when programs ask me to reboot before they'll work. MaxxPlayer is a plugin for Windows Media Player 10, so it shows up under the plugins menu. There are a few ways you can configure it: music or spoken word audio, different speaker types (2.1, notebook, etc.), and you can tweak the audio by adjusting the MaxxBass, MaxxTreble, MaxxStereo, and iVolume. If you drop the trendy first half of each of those terms, you'll know exactly what they do. On my laptop speakers, the first three didn't do a whole bunch. I could tell the audio was changing, but on a laptop that small you're not going to hear much bass, no matter how you punch up the signal. The iVolume level is really where MaxxPlayer shines: the level goes up to +20dB, and while I didn't have any decibel measuring tools, any audio signal that's spoken word got a lot louder - I'd say at least twice as loud, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

The boost in audio volume was much less noticeable with music, but it's usually already tweaked to be as loud as possible. I imagine this would make DVDs quite a bit louder as well. And if you listen to your laptop with headphones, you'll appreciate being able to tweak the audio with MaxxBass and MaxxTreble. The plugin is only $9, which I consider a good deal to get that extra boost when you need it.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Alberta, Canada.