A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most • Hacker News Board

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#11

Post by jesprenj » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:26 AM UTC

golergka wrote: post #8

> during the dubstep parts of the song, the snares sound nice and crisp. At those points, the tweeters are probably putting out 2-4x the amount of power they could handle without melting - briefly. But then when the nasty clipped lead comes in, that overloads them a lot more and the safety daemon clamps down on the tweeter volume. That's called compression.

Came here to say that. It's essential in every step of music production and playback, but mostly available to end users either on relatively expensive sound mixing stations in the entertainment industry or under ambiguous names, like "enchance sound" or "sound safety" for home usage.

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#12

Post by retskrad » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:27 AM UTC

I keep trying out Android phones and Windows laptops but the hardware are always inferior to Apple products. The competition has caught up and even surpassed Apple in Software but Apple has a big lead in chips, speakers, build quality.

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#13

Post by blackhaz » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:27 AM UTC

I still don't get it why, because they drive them past the nominal volume limit?

MacBooks definitely sound much better than anything else I've tried. Just bought a new ThinkPad P14s and despite featuring the Dolby logo, speakers there are just unusable - I can barely understand words in YouTube videos sometimes, and it's not related to volume. (Still using T430 for bedtime YouTube.)

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#14

Post by lynguist » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:27 AM UTC

ansgri wrote: post #2

The post is interesting itself, but the addendum, > This post brought to you by gdb and grep -a Where author recovers text from Firefox core dump, is just hilarious.

That part also grabbed my attention.

How would I do the core dump? (How do I attach gdb to Firefox? Doesn’t it need debug data from the compiler like what you get with gcc -Og?)

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#15

Post by tomashubelbauer » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:28 AM UTC

thefz wrote: post #9

IDK, it pales in comparison to any decent monitor speaker. Even the cheapest. Laptops unfortunately always sounds "from inside a cardboard box".

I think your experience might be outdated. My M1 Mac's screen broke recently and I'm forced to use it with the lid closed and an external screen until I get a replacement. I'm using the cheapest external screen I can get because I don't like using external screens and am just bridging the gap until I get a new laptop. The monitor speakers are absolutely horrible, frankly I don't understand why they even added them. If is some cheap BenQ, not sure the exact model. The Mac speakers on the other hand sound good even with the lid closed! They sound miles and miles better than the external screen speakers to the point where I use them over the screen ones.

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#16

Post by kleiba » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:28 AM UTC

ansgri wrote: post #2

The post is interesting itself, but the addendum, > This post brought to you by gdb and grep -a Where author recovers text from Firefox core dump, is just hilarious.

How do you attach gdb to a running process?

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#17

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:29 AM UTC

arkitaip wrote: post #3

ansgri wrote: post #2

The post is interesting itself, but the addendum, > This post brought to you by gdb and grep -a Where author recovers text from Firefox core dump, is just hilarious.

That's an incredibly useful trick and now I wonder if there is a small Windows utility that makes it easy to recover similar ghost data?

Windows Sysinternals

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#18

Post by capableweb » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:30 AM UTC

golergka wrote: post #8

> during the dubstep parts of the song, the snares sound nice and crisp. At those points, the tweeters are probably putting out 2-4x the amount of power they could handle without melting - briefly. But then when the nasty clipped lead comes in, that overloads them a lot more and the safety daemon clamps down on the tweeter volume. That's called compression.

Or it's just a limiter.

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#19

Post by stefncb » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:30 AM UTC

kleiba wrote: post #16

ansgri wrote: post #2

The post is interesting itself, but the addendum, > This post brought to you by gdb and grep -a Where author recovers text from Firefox core dump, is just hilarious.

How do you attach gdb to a running process?

gdb -p

Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

#20

Post by bayindirh » Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 11:31 AM UTC

blackhaz wrote: post #13

I still don't get it why, because they drive them past the nominal volume limit? MacBooks definitely sound much better than anything else I've tried. Just bought a new ThinkPad P14s and despite featuring the Dolby logo, speakers there are just unusable - I can barely understand words in YouTube videos sometimes, and it's not related to volume. (Still using T430 for bedtime YouTube.)

Because they both build tuned and big enclosures into their speaker assemblies, and also use the whole body of the device as an acoustic chamber. That’s why.