When someone migrates from Windows to Linux, the first worries comes into mind that: "Will I get the same graphics and sound quality as I get in Windows?" because generally motherboard's vendors don't provide any drivers for Linux.
I've been using Ubuntu since 2013. When I play audio loudly, the bass distorts and I don't have any real issues with my sound system. Graphics performance is also not so good as Windows. I am including my system's configurations with graphics and sound card details.
Can any experienced users suggest how to solve these issues? How can I improve the audio quality and get faster graphics? I have checked additional drivers found nothing.
Here are the hardware details:
pnath@Ubuntu:~$ sudo lshw -short
H/W path Device Class Description
======================================================
system System Product Name (SKU)
/0 bus H61M-K
/0/0 memory 64KiB BIOS
/0/4 processor Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G2020 @ 2.90GHz
/0/4/5 memory 128KiB L1 cache
/0/4/6 memory 512KiB L2 cache
/0/4/7 memory 3MiB L3 cache
/0/1 memory
/0/1/0 memory 4GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0.8 ns)
/0/53 memory System Memory
/0/53/0 memory 4GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MHz (0.8 ns)
/0/2 memory
/0/3 memory
/0/100 bridge Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Controller
/0/100/1 bridge Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor PCI Express Root Port
/0/100/2 display Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller
/0/100/16 communication 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1
/0/100/1a bus 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2
/0/100/1b multimedia 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller
/0/100/1c bridge 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1
/0/100/1c.5 bridge 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 6
/0/100/1c.5/0 eth0 network RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
/0/100/1d bus 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1
/0/100/1f bridge H61 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller
/0/100/1f.2 storage 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller
/0/100/1f.3 bus 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller
/0/5 scsi0 storage
/0/5/0.0.0 /dev/cdrom disk DVDRAM GH22NS70
/0/6 scsi1 storage
/0/6/0.0.0 /dev/sda disk 500GB ST500DM002-1BD14
/0/6/0.0.0/1 /dev/sda1 volume 80GiB Windows NTFS volume
/0/6/0.0.0/2 /dev/sda2 volume 377GiB Extended partition
/0/6/0.0.0/2/5 /dev/sda5 volume 104GiB HPFS/NTFS partition
/0/6/0.0.0/2/6 /dev/sda6 volume 104GiB HPFS/NTFS partition
/0/6/0.0.0/2/7 /dev/sda7 volume 105GiB HPFS/NTFS partition
/0/6/0.0.0/2/8 /dev/sda8 volume 61GiB Linux filesystem partition
/0/6/0.0.0/3 /dev/sda3 volume 7812MiB Linux swap volume
/1 power To Be Filled By O.E.M.
pnath@Ubuntu:~$
This is a highly subjective question because as a general rule cheaper hardware = worse quality sound/graphics. The reason why this problem is worse on Linux is because the hardware vendor has written special drivers to get around hardware limitations and all Linux developers can do is guess at what they've done to fix problems.
You can't just compare Windows and Linux and say that one is better than the other. All that said, sound in Linux is an enigma. It always has been since the 90s. Multiple drivers and daemons for managing the sound has made for a giant mess.
One program you can run to give you a quick idea of what might be causing the distortion is the program
alsamixerfrom the command line. It will show bar graphs of each channel's sound level. You can scroll right or left using the arrow keys and adjust sound levels up or down using up/down arrow. If any of the channels are set to the max (in the red), then that may be where your distortion problem lies. Sometimes these sound channel levels don't show up in the GUI and you have to use a program like this to adjust the levels. Like I said, sound is a mess because of multiple sound daemons (alsa vs. pulse vs. whatever other sound system is in fashion this year).Most of these problems can be fixed and you're more likely to get a more helpful answer if you give more specific details about your problem instead of asking general questions about quality.