Upgrading bad laptop speakers

[Jtraner]

Does anyone know if its possible to upgrade laptop speakers? I have a thinkpad w540 with pretty good specs, but the onboard speakers are just terrible. I would not mind some diy, but just wondering if anyone has done this before. The speakers are so bad, like i would rather watch a youtube video without sound than with my speakers. 

[Beef Boss]

Have you tried updating drivers? 

[dj_ripcord]

Ehh, probably not gonna happen. They are almost always proprietary. I used to have one of these just for that reason.

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, Jtraner said:

Does anyone know if its possible to upgrade laptop speakers? I have a thinkpad w540 with pretty good specs, but the onboard speakers are just terrible. I would not mind some diy, but just wondering if anyone has done this before. The speakers are so bad, like i would rather watch a youtube video without sound than with my speakers. 

Headphones or portable speaker

https://www.amazon.com/Rokono-Speaker-iPhone-Player-Laptop/dp/B007NJ3SIM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1536531662&sr=8-4&keywords=Portable+USB+Speaker

[Ross Siggers]

If you really want to do it DIY, you could probably find aftermarket speakers that fitted the same space. But with limitations on power draw and diaphram size....you probably wouldn't see a huge improvement in audio. I reckon it's just a compromise made when designing the machine.

I use a Sony SRS-X2 bluetooth speaker with my laptop when I'm at home. It more than does the job, they're not too expensive. But you can go even cheaper and probably still get a better audio experience than you seem to be now. 

 

[EPENEX]

Your best bet is to get portable speakers that you can hook-up to it or use headphones. Someone on Reddit has replaced their speakers in the x230 https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/5wmmc6/lenovo_x230_speaker_upgrade/ but it required soldering, and may not work on your laptop.

 

[Jenshiye]

You could literally screw / glue speakers onto a laptop and have better sound than trying to fit new ones inside it. 

 

I ripped the optical bay out of mine, fed an eGPU adapter cable through it, installed a second SSD into the space and attached the eGPU onto the end of the bay so it is now one piece with the laptop.

 

Drill + nuts & bolts + aluminium pieces = possible speaker mounts

[s0u11ess]

On 9/10/2018 at 2:16 AM, Jtraner said:

Does anyone know if its possible to upgrade laptop speakers? I have a thinkpad w540 with pretty good specs, but the onboard speakers are just terrible. I would not mind some diy, but just wondering if anyone has done this before. The speakers are so bad, like i would rather watch a youtube video without sound than with my speakers. 

Yes yes i do. I did it an an old latitude. It is not worth a try as it is too time consuming and needs ability to solder. Your best bet in that case would be to get a tiny amplifier hook it up before the input of stock amplifier an kill stock amplifiers inputs and power from stock amp chip.  Next you need to finde power legulator that meets the need of the amp that you went with, usually 5v so getting them form usb bus would be a solid choice! Now the speaker drivers. THATS A HARD ONE BUDDY. On my build i went with dual slimline high power dayton speaker driver. And a pair micro twitters. 

 

 

I went with thees twittwers couse thay were small. https://www.daytonaudio.com/product/1576/dsn25ti-4-1-titanium-dome-neodymium-tweeter-with-steel-frame-4-ohm

 

Firing from top

 

 

For mains i got https://www.daytonaudio.com/product/1192/ce140-30s-8-1-x-5-extended-range-driver-8-ohm

 

Firing from front.

 

As for the amp doard:

https://sl.aliexpress.ru/p?key=CttFZBG

 

 

 

But i dont think you will be able to do it. Thats why i offer you to do it for you. 

 

Also try fxsound. Gave me good results. 

[nicksmithy]

Just for anyone stumbling upon this thread.

 

1. Open up your laptop, check if the speakers use 2 pin connectors.
2. Is there any free space in your laptop near said connectors? (previous speaker locations etc)
3. Purchase some surface laptop 2 or surface laptop 3 speakers from eBay. (Surface Laptop 2 Speakers, Surface Laptop 3 Speakers) The benefit of these speakers are the thinness and rather impressive sound they can achieve.
4. Acquire some double sided foam tape.
5. Dependent on the chosen location of your speakers, you may need to do some soldering to add extra length to the wires.
6. The surface laptop speakers have tiny plugs, but these plugs do fit on the 2 pin connectors. If your not keen on that idea, cut the old speakers off the original cables and solder the surface speakers to the ends.
7. Make sure your speakers sit flat on the surface in the area you have chosen to place them. Apply foam tape to the back.
8. Plug the speakers in, turn on your laptop, test for sound. (If you opted for the surface connectors and are now not getting any sound from one or both sides, unplug them and then plug them in again, give them plug a wiggle too.)
9. If all went well, you've got better sound, not all that hard.

For further sound improvement, download Equalizer APO from source forge, then download Peace, also from source forge.

With a little EQ magic, you can tailor the sound to your liking.

 

If anyone wants any further info, I have done this modification to my own Gigabyte G5 KF, so I can provide further help for those who don't want to lug an external speaker around.

 

(Anyone that's ever heard a G5's speaker quality would completely understand why this had to be done)

[cmndr]

As others hinted at, this would be hard. It might be possible to swap to better drivers (not software drivers, physical speaker-drivers which produce sound) but I doubt there's much of a viable selection. 

Keep in mind that the drivers interact with the chassis. 

OTHER speakers (portable or otherwise) is a better and easier approach.