Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The Dolby Experiment -- What would be your idea for fun?

It was one those  regular  week offs,that I would exchange new ideas with some folks in a group in Facebook. While I was skimming through some older posts,one of them caught my attention.And although I was not an audiophile by nature,I wondered if I could try out a new suggestion which was  posted by one of the member in the group. The discussion was about enhancing  the audio output of  our notebooks,particularly on Lenovo ThinkPads. While my knowledge about ThinkPads is still in the nascent stages,the post was definitively intriguing in nature as  lengthy discussions about its success rates were being   posted  at Lenovo's community portal - where I also  often participate as a moderator.

I would seldom use a ThinkPad at home and would generally use it only while I travel.Since the technique in question was working for Conexant based audio devices,I would not wait but immediately download  the application in discussion. It's called  Dolby tuning and profile creator.This application package also comes with the latest incarnation of Dolby's audio technology namely Version 4.0. The test bed for this small experiment would be a Lenovo Ideapad Y560 which I have with me. This is a  notebook which I use occasionally for high-end gaming and for watching my  movie collection .Because it already has an excellent set of JBL speakers which are also Dolby certified,using this profiling app would in effect increase its acoustic output -- at least that was what my first assumption.

To make sure that the Dolby Drivers were installed and were compatible by the system , I checked the sound driver status in the device manager section and indeed - the device seemed to be compatible with my built-in audio system.It was now time to put the Profiling app to test. While I could have tested the app with any audio song in my collection,I really wanted to make sure that all the  audio tweaking options would work out as expected,which required me to search for a song which had a mix of  both high and mid range frequencies.



The profile app has an excellent mix of tweaks,which can be used in a variety of combinations to change the output frequencies,depending upon the user's taste. Another useful or I daresay a beautiful feature is the mini version of the app which is can be accessed via the quick launch area.If you are watching a film in a full screen mode and would just want to toggle between important settings,this would be the best option for you to tinker with.



I managed to find a song which I thought would be the best to run along with the app,not sure if this is the best fit.But it was a satisfying and a fun experience as a whole.Thanks to Peter from Lenovo forums for the pointer!