well....this is not a unique or a new question. i have a laptop with windows and a desktop with Ubuntu 14.4. believe me...the sound quality in ubuntu is very poor in comparison with windows. i copied some mp3 songs with higher bit rate (256 kbps to 320 kbps) from laptop to desktop. windows gives very high 3d output but the same songs played with any player like vlc player or rythmbox in ubuntu the quality is drastically poor. any solution???? i felt this thing in almost every version of Ubuntu from year 2010.
can you post the lspci output related to audio? Code: lspci Code: lsmod | grep -i snd i think you arent loading the kernel modules with proper options. and which kernel? since you mentioned 2010 i think you need to get the latest stable distro. p.s. are you loading the snd modules with some parameters? if so what are those? thanks! -paul