Meta comment: the UI of mastodon is really bad.
Can't speak of other elements, but the color combination is definitely burning my eyes.
A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
111–120 of 301 posts
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#112When I first got my current MacBook Air the sound totally surprised me. It seemed like it was coming from places to the left and to the right of the actual device. I kept moving my head around that space to try to find the weird source of the sound! It truly blew me away. But then that sensation disappeared. Now I don't notice this? I like the AirPod head tracking, but this "spookily surround sound" that I noticed at…
M1 Air user here too. I am convinced there must be some kind of ‘spatial’ processing going on, even though I’m as certain as I can be that I’m listening to a plain stereo source, Spotify web version on Firefox. Why does it sound like a particular instrument is up in the air to my right? I’ve found myself getting up and looking for the source of a sound before realising it was in the music.
On the M2 series laptops (Air and Pro) they tout "Support for Spatial Audio when playing music or video with Dolby Atmos on built-in speakers", but it's not on the M1 laptops.
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#113Meta comment: the UI of mastodon is really bad.
I wouldn't say it's bad, it looks above average for an open source project but definitely could use some improvements. What I hate about it is that it's not plain-looking (like HN, which has its own charm!) or very polished (like twitter, instagram, yooutube)
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you on about?
Occasionally a post will show up that is just three asterisks: "* * *". I assume it's some bug in the HN software. Edit: I just tried opening this reply itself in a private window, and it shows up as three asterisks. I presume it's some kind of placeholder for posts that have not been cached/processed somehow Edit 2: Now it loads properly, 3 minutes later.
Go to your profile and set "Show Dead?" to "Yes". People I think are just tired of hearing about the chatGPT stuff, which I definitely get.
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds like a QC issue. Have you sent it in for repairs?
Intel MBPs are notorious for this longstanding issue. You can get multiple hardware swaps from Apple and will probably find no improvement. My layman understanding is that it stems from an issue in voltage management, both on the power rail itself and on the software side. Certain types of CPU load trigger heavy crackling and popping in the speakers. Having the iOS simulator open makes it particularly egregious in my…
The only time I've ever had the problem, across Intel and M1 Pro Macs, is with the iOS Simulator open, so I assumed it was an OS mixing bug related to some magic the simulator does
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s a really interesting topic. I hope an audiophile shows up to give some thoughts..
> And a completely unreleated thought, maybe it is > possible to remove the safetly limits on speakers > of other brands and apply the same strategy to get > better sound? That’s a really interesting topic. I hope an audiophile shows up to give some thoughts.. Probably want an audio engineer instead of an audiophile hobbyist, for a more proper and informed opinion. =) However, as an audiophile hobbyist, getting good…
Also, one of the hilarious things about this hobby & engineering science is that 98% of that insane hardware & software engineering work is only necessary because we're trying to cheat the laws of physics in order to deliver decent sound from tinier and tinier speakers.
If you're willing to go in the other direction, and tolerate bigger speakers, you can have very very enjoyable sound from the sorts of dumb big-box speakers folks commonly had in their living rooms up through the 1980s or so.
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#117Interesting the author says “other manufacturers don’t bother”. Unsurprisingly the real reason is “Apple was granted a patent on this over a decade ago and no one is risking an Apple patent infringement lawsuit over laptop speakers”. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20130329898 EDIT: I say granted because that’s how most people understand patents and when they take effect. What really matters on the timeline here…
I don't know much about patents. Can you explain why this patent is avoided by other manufacturers, but other apple patents seem to be happily copied? For example, the Apple/Samsung saga, the notch, and I'm sure there are others
It's a classic risk vs reward calculation. Basically "does this impact/benefit the user experience and therefore marketability and potential sales enough to justify potentially 'going to the mat' in court if they call us out on it". Where "going to the mat" is absurdly expensive patent litigation up to and including building an outdoor ice skating rink[0] (in TEXAS) to potentially influence jurors in Marshall, TX (a 22k person town which happens to be home of the Federal Eastern District of Texas - a court known to be very friendly to patent infringement suits, AKA a "rocket docket"[1]). Not only is the litigation and associated stunts like ice skating rinks expensive, if you lose there can be significant damages - like in the Apple vs Samsung case where Samsung lost and was ordered to pay over $1B in damages. Then you get to decide if you want to keep paying legal fees to appeal, etc. It's called the Apple/Samsung patent war because this stretched on for at least seven years - likely to the tune of 10s of millions or even 100s of millions of dollars in legal expenses. Then, when/if you lose, you're usually ordered to also pay the legal expenses of the other party.
Apple vs Samsung was largely over key UI/UX components that are more or less standards for what users expect from a modern device. Samsung had to essentially calculate "do we try to work around these patents (and maybe get sued anyway) or offer a product in the marketplace that is markedly sub-standard vs a competitor product".
Somewhat paradoxically, at the "startup scale" when I've dealt with patent prosecution (filing patents - terminology is kind of backwards) I've been specifically instructed by IP counsel not to do in-depth patent searches for existing/competing patents. If it can be proven you knowingly infringed on a patent the damages increase significantly because it can then be considered "willful infringement". Good IP counsel often offers a service that (essentially) puts up a little bit of a firewall between the "inventor" and this issue - the firm does searches you're not privy to and usually channels some information to you while not disclosing specifics of the patent. This communication has the benefit of being protected by attorney-client privilege which is almost impossible to pierce.
For something like this I doubt many consumers are making a purchasing decision solely on what laptop speakers sound like. Most people don't really care, sure, it's a "nice to have" for your laptop speakers to sound better but from a sales and revenue standpoint the difference is likely minuscule.
[0] - https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-south-korea-s-samsung-built-t...
[1] - https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/patently-unfair/
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s a really interesting topic. I hope an audiophile shows up to give some thoughts..
> And a completely unreleated thought, maybe it is > possible to remove the safetly limits on speakers > of other brands and apply the same strategy to get > better sound? That’s a really interesting topic. I hope an audiophile shows up to give some thoughts.. Probably want an audio engineer instead of an audiophile hobbyist, for a more proper and informed opinion. =) However, as an audiophile hobbyist, getting good…
Total audio noob here: are you talking about hardware or software DSP? If I had a pair of decent speakers and a microphone hooked up to my PC, how would I go about "tuning" the speakers?
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am going to be less generous and suggest that some people just want to hate on macs for the sake of hating on macs. Sticking it to the “man”. I’m a bit obsessed with audio.. and I never expect my laptop speakers to match the quality of my fancy headphone setup that probably nets for about $4K. They are no high-end speaker, but compared to any other laptop speaker I have heard they are amazing.
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Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#120I 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.
Only in laptop speakers do I think Apple is the very best. I'm sure their audio company acquisition helped them with that, I don't think any other laptop manufacturers have gone out of their way to buy audio companies just for their laptops. Apple's trackpad is also pretty good, but I prefer Lenovo's myself. Better hardware exists in every range (cheaper, faster, less power hungry), but Apple manages to put a lot of…
Yeah, shopping for non-Apple laptops is basically a big game of “choose your caveats”. That’s fine if you only need one particular quality of the laptop in question to be good, but I think most people are best served by well-roundedness.
Your chances at getting something somewhat well rounded improve if you get up into MacBook price ranges, but even in that range there are a lot of machines with weirdly lackluster aspects.