Even HP has the same policy which I found to my dismay three years back.
Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty
11–20 of 224 posts
Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty
#12Not speaking of Dell's behavior but VLC should maybe add a warning to the settings when the user goes over 100% if it damages the speakers.
The VLC creators claim the player cannot be used to damage speakers.
That and hard clipping is obvious and sounds awful, so it should be apparent you're doing something wrong.
Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty
#13VLC is incapable of increasing the actual power past 100%, all that is being done is the waveform is being modified to be louder within the allowed constraints. If this wrecks the speaker, any other non-VLCed sound could just as easily, and the speakers are therefore underpowered for the laptops internal amplifier. Class action sounds in order.
Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty
#14What kind of person uses crappy laptop speakers for media consumption?
far too many people do, and many annoyingly listen to music through the crappy speakers on their phone, usually in public.
Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty
#15As the main developer of VLC, we know about this story since a long time, and this is just Dell putting crap components on their machine and blaming others. Any discussion was impossible with them. So let me explain a bit...
In this case, VLC just uses the Windows APIs (DirectSound), and sends signed integers of 16bits (s16) to the Windows Kernel.
VLC allows amplification of the INPUT above the sound that was decoded. This is just like replay gain, broken codecs, badly recorded files or post-amplification and can lead to saturation.
But this is exactly the same if you put your mp3 file through Audacity and increase it and play with WMP, or if you put a DirectShow filter that amplifies the volume after your codec output. For example, for a long time, VLC ac3 and mp3 codecs were too low (-6dB) compared to the reference output.
At worse, this will reduce the dynamics and saturate a lot, but this is not going to break your hardware.
VLC does not (and cannot) modify the OUTPUT volume to destroy the speakers. VLC is a Software using the OFFICIAL platforms APIs.
The issue here is that Dell sound cards output power (that can be approached by a factor of the quadratic of the amplitude) that Dell speakers cannot handle. Simply said, the sound card outputs at max 10W, and the speakers only can take 6W in, and neither their BIOS or drivers block this.
And as VLC is present on a lot of machines, it's simple to blame VLC. "Correlation does not mean causation" is something that seems too complex for cheap Dell support...
Maybe Dell should advise against playing Metal music and should only allow Céline Dion music, because Metal saturates more...
EDIT: more details...
PS: they even provide a BIOS update for the fix... So, of course, VLC was the issue... http://www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/04/KCS/Kcs...
Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty
#16Shouldn't instead Dell make the speakers not be able to get physically damanged by software?
It would probably either cost more or the speakers would have a lower peak volume.
I don't think it is a wild compromise to make some assumptions about the sounds people will play through the speakers (and it's not like a spec relating the max energy/time is going to help most shoppers).
Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty
#17That kind of amplitude abuse is the equivalent of pounding very hard on the keyboard for long periods of time - it will break sooner than it would normally have, and can rightfully be considered abuse. However, voiding the warranty simply because of VLC installed is, again, the equivalent of voiding the keyboard warranty simply because you are a bodybuilder. Ok enough metaphors.
"Ok enough metaphors."
Not so fast, I see no car metaphor yet. And there is no comparison of Dell's practices to those of Hitler or the Nazis, either. We are far from 'enough' metaphors, my friend.
Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty
#18This is stupid. They are making speakers that can't withstand some cases of within-the-bounds PCM signal. If we had a normal society anywhere on earth they would be sued to the ground there.
Speakers are built to be able to withstand short peaks with high power to reflect the dynamic in the music or your movie. This is what is abused to be able to play loud sounds continuously. You could take the possibility to do that away, but then you would of course also remove some of the dynamics out of the music.
But of course, the people that burn their speakers this way don't care about dynamics or evidently about sound quality if they press their computer speakers like this. Can't sound not even a little good.
Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty
#19That kind of amplitude abuse is the equivalent of pounding very hard on the keyboard for long periods of time - it will break sooner than it would normally have, and can rightfully be considered abuse. However, voiding the warranty simply because of VLC installed is, again, the equivalent of voiding the keyboard warranty simply because you are a bodybuilder. Ok enough metaphors.
If I am understanding this correctly, a specially crafted mp3 file, played in Windows Media Player or similar, could cause the same symptoms that Dell is indicating VLC could create. Surely that would be considered a totally normal operating condition that the speakers should be tolerant against. It may be heavy use, but does that mean it is abuse?
Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty
#20That kind of amplitude abuse is the equivalent of pounding very hard on the keyboard for long periods of time - it will break sooner than it would normally have, and can rightfully be considered abuse. However, voiding the warranty simply because of VLC installed is, again, the equivalent of voiding the keyboard warranty simply because you are a bodybuilder. Ok enough metaphors.
If I am understanding this correctly, a specially crafted mp3 file, played in Windows Media Player or similar, could cause the same symptoms that Dell is indicating VLC could create. Surely that would be considered a totally normal operating condition that the speakers should be tolerant against. It may be heavy use, but does that mean it is abuse?
Yes, exactly. Use Audacity to increase the volume and play with WMP to get the same result.