Ugh.. sound and speaker issue with XPS M1210

I want to talk about Sound and Speaker of XPS M1210 and I plan to record how XPS M1210 play a sound, a video or any media file but I feel embarass to record and publish one this time as there is no great sound coming out from it.

When I received the M1210, there is audio in Windows but there is little sound if I play a movie or audio using the optical drive. There is no problem with the DVD, VCD, Audio CD or any album in a CD. There is also no problem with the media file but the sound is like coming from the ocean... deep.

So I tweak the audio settings a little and enabled the bass feature in Creative's Audigy software that came with the notebook. The sound improved but still not good. The sound is really a shame. I am planning to purchase a 5.1 surround speakers for notebook but I thought I delay buying any accessories for now until I'm sure that the notebook is doing just fine.

Yesterday I noticed that there is no sound coming from the left channel. I test it but there is really no sound coming from the left channel of the speakers. I bring up the Sigmatel Audio control panel to test the 2 speakers but there is only working speaker and that is the right channel. I test by using the Creative audio settings by listening to noise or channels but still no noise or channel coming out from left speaker. I can feel that there is a problem now with my new M1210 notebook. I turned if off then I boot to Dell Diagnostic utility to run the test for Audio. Bang!.. there is hardware error code in audio tests. I noted the error code to report to Dell. I re-installed the sound drivers and any other related audigy software but no go. There is really no sound coming from the left speaker and then when I recorded a voice, it didn't playback correctly. It didn't playback what I recorded. It simply played a squeaking sound instead of my voice.

I phoned Dell Tech support and they want to send a tech guy here to fix the speakers and audio issue. I rejected it because this notebook is only 7 days old. I demand for a replacement. The tech guy understood that I'm eligible with a replacement because the notebook is new and the 30-days policy to return the notebook is still valid. He escalated the incident and provided me the case #. I will now wait for their Customer Care to call me to process the return and replacement of M1210.

I hope the replacement notebook will have no issue. I actually prefer not to ask for a replacement because I'm worried that the new one will have bad screen, bad this and that... Crossing my fingers that all will be fine. No perfect notebook but I want a no hardware issue out-of-the-box.