Windows 7 better sound?

[thunderlizard]

I swear that since upgrading to Windows 7, the sound coming out of the speakers of my (fairly old) laptop is higher quality. Is that possible or am I going round the bend?

[Cliphead]

I swear that since upgrading to Windows 7, the sound coming out of the speakers of my (fairly old) laptop is higher quality. Is that possible or am I going round the bend?

Down to the soundcard drivers shirley.

[Spacecadet]

Down to the soundcard drivers shirley.

which possibly come with the windows 7 install

[amcdonald]

Down to the soundcard drivers shirley.

I thought he was only Shirley on Fridays

[thunderlizard]

which possibly come with the windows 7 install

That's kind of what I hoped - and a slightly deeper Google than last time suggests that they do. I'd always assumed that old tinny sound was down to rubbish built-in speakers, ut now it's good enough to watch films without wanting to plug in the 'proper' speakers.

[amoeba]

I believe Microsoft change the audio architecture/API in windows Vista.....

Quick google finds this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectSound);

Windows Vista features a completely re-written audio stack based on the Universal Audio Architecture. Because of the architectural changes in the redesigned audio stack, a direct path from DirectSound to the audio drivers does not exist. DirectSound and other APIs such as MME are emulated as WASAPI Session instances. DirectSound runs in emulation mode on the Microsoft software mixer. The emulator does not have hardware abstraction, so there is no hardware DirectSound acceleration, meaning hardware and software relying on DirectSound acceleration may have degraded performance.