Surface 2 Speaker/Sound Problems

Question

I just purchased two new Surface 2's and I am noticing a significant reduction in volume from the speakers compared to my old Surface RT.  The speakers also lack any kind of bass.  They are very "tinny" and shallow sounding.  When using headphones, there is plenty of bass sound and the volume level is not an issue.

I am also experienceing a significant amount of sound crackling (from the speakers and attached headphones) when streaming video from Amazon Instant Video using both the desktop and metro versions of IE.  I do not experience this crackling problem with other sound sources like Xbox music, gaming, or other website streaming video (i.e. YouTube).

Since I was experiencing this on two different Surface 2's, it seems unlikely that this is a hardware issue.  This is most likely a software/driver issue.  Is there anything that I can do to resolve this problem, other than wait for a possible software or firmware update?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Brought the Surface 2 home last night.  Such an improvement over my 1st gen in every way!  Totally in love with it.  However, I notice a weird issue with websites that stream video using flash in Internet Explorer.  When streaming video from Amazon Prime or Xfinity, the performance seems pretty good when audio is played through the built in speakers.  Plug in some headphones, although, and the audio starts to skip and stutter.  This happens when using Metro IE and Desktop IE.  Also tried multiple wired headphones and observed the same problem.  Anyone else see this issue?

Answer 2

I also noticed this problem, but specifically with Amazon Instant Video.  The only other web streaming that I tested was YouTube, and that audio sound fine.

Answer 3

I would like to add that I am also suffering from the same problem.  My speakers lack bass and are annoyingly quiet when compared to my original Surface RT.  Furthermore, I get frequent audio pops when using computers speaker or headphones.

Answer 4

my speaker has cracking noise when playing loud with certain songs.  is this a software or hardware problem?

Answer 5

Yeah, youtube seems fine.  The other site was http://xfinitytv.comcast.net/.  Which I suppose uses flash in a similar way.  Its kind of a bummer since I was hoping to watch a lot of Amazon Prime shows.