Sound quality?

Framework Laptop 13
1

Hi,

For those who have already bought the Framework laptop, how’s the sound quality?

2

Depends on your use case. For me it is great. But I am not an audiophile… I listen to the beeps and boops of apps, watch YouTube and Netflix, do videoconferencing and such. Often with the speakers only… But also use a headset.

It’s really a personal thing. I am very satisfied with it, and it beats the pants off of my old laptop.

1 Like
3

Thank you for the reply, it’s very interesting. I guess we’ll have one day an option to upgrade the speakers via the Marketplace or similar. Can’t wait to get my hand on an unit.

4

You can find several more reviews in the more recent posts to this thread:

1 Like
5

I found that the sound level is a little weak compared to my wife’s Lenovo notebook. While watching a movie with the level up to 100%, it wasn’t quite loud enough for comfortable listening. The side-mounted speaker doesn’t help.

1 Like
6

If you use linux try install pulsesudio-equalizer and allow your system volume to go over 100%. The speakers are very good when you get the right configuration.

3 Likes
7

Using Windows, but thanks.

8

How about the quality of the built in headphone jack? Can anyone who has a sensitive pair of IEMs see if there is any audible hiss?

9

Not sure if these are good enough, but I played a (well recorded) YouTube music video using my old Etymotic ER6i and I could not detect any hiss. This is over Linux.

1 Like
10

My unit has abhorrently bad Bluetooth audio quality. I know it’s my laptop and not my headphones because the gap between my phone + headphones & laptop + those same headphones is absolutely massive. The bass is almost nonexistent and the mids & highs sound tinny. I thought it was a driver issue, but updating the drivers didn’t help at all. My unit is from batch 3 if that matters. Its also got 3.06 bios.

12

Which OS are you using?

14

I’m using Windows 11

16

My Bluetooth issue was fixed. I can safely say that all outputs for this laptop give good audio quality. If any of you with Windows 11 have Bluetooth issues, try removing your headphones from the list, restarting your computer, and reconnecting your headphones. Apparently Win 11 can’t read Win 10’s settings files properly and just uses the shittiest codec for devices that existed before the upgrade. New devices should be fine, though.

2 Likes
18

I just tried out the headphone jack with IEMs for the first time, notable hiss on my end. Just starting to investigate. More the background radio-static white noise type hiss, but I may go crazy tracking this down over the next couple days/weeks. Same thing is not there with my cans (ATH-A700). Pretty sure I have the Tempo codec. IEMs are something relatively cheap, with a TRRS jack (and a pretty crappy mic). Using Fedora 35 KDE-remix at the moment (not Kinonite, just KDE)

19

I find the quality of the speakers to be acceptable.

When using the headphone jack I’ve run into intermittent noise that appears to be related to CPU load, or maybe wireless network traffic. This was with my Etymotic Hf5 IEMs.

I’m running Kubuntu 21.10, so I probably need to tweak some things.

20

Hoping that a quad dac module will be available for the audio jack. Current speaker kit sounds hollow for down firing style design but pretty balanced. Could use more bass and Volume is relatively low at 100%

21

I just tried putting other speaker through the headphone jacke. The sound was pretty awful. I’m running kubuntu 22.04. I just ut the same speakers through my desktop running ubuntu 220.4, and the sound quality is way better. Something for framework to consider improving in future motherboard upgrades.