Laptop audio

[the bacon]

Ok i want good sound on my laptop and i got a screenshot:

it's off of ibuypower.com on the "Battalion 101 S550-Turbo" specs.

i know the AC'97 is an Intel integrated sound chip right? so does it offer surround sound (5.1 at least)? and then there's a "," so i'm guessing their not the same thing and then "SoundBlaster Compatible" WTF is that supposed to mean? i hope it's not that i can buy the pcmcia augity SB, cuz i can do that with any laptop

i'm a little clueless here and i hope i dont suond like a noob lol but any help is greatly appreciated TY

 

[Nodsu]

No, that wee little integrated sound controller has no idea what surround sound is.
Your only option for that is either a PCMCIA or an USB soundcard.

Soundblaster Compatible means that the AC97 can emulate a SoundBlaster card for compatibility. Mind you, this is the original SB or maybe SBPro/SB16/AWE32, not anything fancy like SBLive or, heaven forbid, Audigy

 

[the bacon]

darn, that's not good

No, that wee little integrated sound controller has no idea what surround sound is.
Your only option for that is either a PCMCIA or an USB soundcard.

but y does it say "3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard" ?
look (i shouldda posed this earlier):

te reason i like this laptop is it's got a Turion64 ML-44 CPU i can get wich'll pown any other singlecore processor now

 

[Nodsu]

That's just marketing bull**** They probably refer to the 3D stereo "enhancement" feature meant to give you some spacial effect through stereo output.

Although the AC'97 spec allows for trues surround (4 channels) configuration, this is supposedly for "audiophile" motherboards. I have never seen something like this and such a version most certainly does not live in your laptop.

Think about it - you need at least two analog outputs (front, rear) or a digital output to drive a surround speaker set. And what would be the purpose of a surround audio chip if 99% of the users will never use anything but the crappy builtin speakers?

 

[the bacon]

lol...i want to use it with my 4 samson rubcon speakers and i plan to get their $400 subwoofer

noth'n crappy bout that...i wish tere was some way to know if there r more than 1 output...is there a way i could mod the mobo to give me 4.0 ss at least? btw do you know wich mobo this laptop is using? find it here: http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/store/configurator.aspx?mid=169
ty for all ur help
i think i'll contact them

EDIT: ok i contacted them and the guy said that it has 5.1 surround sound and 3 minijacks in front WOOT! but i've never seen integrated 5.1 in a laptop b4...wich makes me kind suspicious if the guy actually knew what he was talking about

EDIT 2: Ok i dug up some more info, it's got the "ATI® RX 480M + ATI® SB 400" Chipset and i think they just bought a MSI computer and painted it differently, but the specs for it only list a mic in and a sterio haedphone out...so could i buy this barebone and stick a sound blaster in it?