31 July,2011 09:24 AM IST | | Sowmya Rajaram
HP Beats Audio, now available on its Pavilion series of laptops, will introduce you to a previously-undiscovered level of thump and treble in your favourite track, albeit only when you plug in speakers or headphones
Do a search for HP Beats Audio on YouTube, and you're greeted with over 30 videos of the magical beats technology at work that alert you that this has got to be more than just marketing hype. Created in association with Dr Dre, the American rapper and music producer, Beats Audio purports to redefine the your laptop's audio quality, so that your music sounds the way artists and musicians recorded it.
In plain English, that means the tin-like quality of music you hear on those woefully inadequate laptop speakers will make way for stereophonic music that moves you, the way the artist who recorded it meant for it to. Already a feature of the HP Envy series of laptops, created for professional audio editing and production, Beats Audio has now also found its way into the Pavilion series of laptops, promising to enrich your audio and multimedia experience on the machine even if you're just a music aficionado.
Where are the beats?
Eager to be enveloped in what we imagined to be Dolby digital-quality surround sound in the confines of our tiny Mumbai flat, we switched on the review machine of the HP DV6 6017tx, equipped with Beats Audio, with great anticipation, and proceeded to load a YouTube video of Dr Dre explaining the technology. After all, our logic was that if HP's PR exercise for the 'pathbreaking' audio feature wouldn't sound best on it, what would?
To our utter disappointment, even on full volume, we had to strain to catch Dr Dre's voice, even with the doors and windows shut, and fans turned off to minimise background noise. Surprised, we repeated the test on a couple of audio CDs, with the same fumbling result. What the hell were all the videos and happy comments underneath them on YouTube about, we wondered.
Plug into the magic
It was when, courtesy of some more online research, we discovered the Fn+B button, to turn on the Beats Audio, that the game changed. Suddenly, Beyonce's gravity-defying dance moves seemed a lot more in sync with the thump of the background score.
Kicked and pleasantly surprised, we proceeded to do another soundcheck with Coldplay's Viva La Vida. To our ears, Life in Technicolour is a track that has put most of Coldplay's other efforts to shame, causing us to play it on loop incessantly during the first month we acquired the CD. Two years after the album came out, it still finds a spot on our iPod's Top 25 Most Played list. And yet, listening to it with Beats Audio turned on, and with speakers plugged in, introduced us to nuances that we'd never known about the song.
The rhythmic tabla at the back, which had so far been just a faint rumbling blanked out by white noise, was a clear, encouraging beat that cut through the medley of other instruments in a musical arrangement made in heaven.
Not without my speakers
A word about Beats Audiou00a0-- even with the Beats function on, the real magic happens only when you plug in headphones or speakers into the jack on the side. That's when the elimination of metal in the redesigned headphone jack and the discrete headphone amplifier kick in to give you authoritative bass and treble that's not muddled by interference from electronic noise.
With Life in Technicolour, each beat flowed from right to left in perfect stereo sync, like it was taking place on a stage in a soundproofed roomu00a0-- exactly the way Dr Dre wanted it to sound. Without speakers or a headphone though, and even with the Beats Audio turned on, it's only a couple of notches higher than your regular laptop sound.
Even so, Beats Audio is definitely more than just an overactive promotional drive. Switch it on, slide in your favourite CD, plug in those headphones, close your eyes and get set to be able to hear new worlds in songs that are old favourites.
HP Pavilion DV6 6017tx is available at stores for between Rs 40,000 to Rs 60,000, depending on configuration.
