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A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

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

#131

Post by bob1029 »

newaccount74 wrote: post #59
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 disagree. The new 16" Macbook Pro design introduced in 2021 has fantastic speakers. They sound extremely good, and I'm not sure I would hear the difference to my 3.5" studio monitors in a blind test (assuming you volume match them). I don't know how they are doing it, but listening to those speakers seems unreal. I opened the Macbook to look at them, the speakers look pretty big and they seem to have a long resonan…

> I'm not sure I would hear the difference to my 3.5" studio monitors in a blind test (assuming you volume match them).

I promise I could tell the difference if you are feeding the same signal into both and it features anything The MBP speakers are nearly impossibly good, but they are not and never will be a match for dedicated studio monitors, pro audio, home theater, or even DIY contraptions. There are fundamental physical limits to how far this suspension of disbelief can be taken. We are pretty much at the limits of this trickery right now.

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

#132

Post by hgsgm »

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".

And they have slower chips and smaller screens than deaktops, and lack ergonomics keyboards. Useless products.

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

#133

Post by shrx »

JohnBooty wrote: post #129
shrx wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

are you talking about hardware or software DSP? You could do it either way. Hardware solution like a MiniDSP, although it appears they have unfortunately discontinued their more affordable products. Or a software solution like EqualizerAPO (Windows) or SoundSource (Mac). If I had a pair of decent speakers and a microphone hooked up to my PC Quick summary. 1. You need a calibrated microphone like the uMik from MiniDSP…

Thanks a lot, will look into EqualizerAPO.

> You need a calibrated microphone

Ah, of course, it's a chicken and egg problem... :)

edit: typos

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

#134

Post by sbaiddn »

kkielhofner wrote: post #82

Interesting 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…

Power engineers have been doing this for decades (a century?); estimating the temperature of a transformer or motor from a simple ODE to see if the relays need to trip. The parameters are derived from the electrical parameters of the transformer.

Aside from applying it to speakers, whats novel?

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

#135

Post by audiothrowaway »

kalleboo wrote: post #112
tokamak-teapot wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry to be the um actually guy, but every supported MacBook [0] (including some Intel ones at least on Monterey - like my 15” from 2019) will do a transaural rendering over the laptop speakers for Dolby Atmos content.

The tech needed to do that doesn’t require fancy silicon, though it does seem they restrict the headtracked binaural (over headphones like AirPods Pro).[0]

Though you can plug any headphones in and, at least in Apple Music, force it to do a binaural rendering (without headtracking) on any headphones.

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212182

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

#136

Post by mjb »

bob1029 wrote: post #76

I have always noted this when listening to music on my M1 MBP. "There is NO way my tweeters aren't about to explode!" I recall how quickly the speakers in my Microsoft surface laptop self-destructed... In my experience, the #1 prerequisite to driving a speaker this aggressively without destroying it is having a clean source of power. Hard distortion and clipping are what break voice coils in direct, physical terms. T…

If your lights are dimming, you've wrecked your THD+N by feeding your amp AC for the period the power supply filtering caps are empty. (It's even worse than AC, transiently, because of the effect of trying to refill the caps while driving the amp).

Also, the tweeter killing effect is because of the harmonic effects of clipping, so if you're hitting the rail voltages with any topology you're going to have a bad time.

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

#137

Post by kkielhofner »

sbaiddn wrote: post #134
kkielhofner wrote: post #82

Interesting 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…

Power engineers have been doing this for decades (a century?); estimating the temperature of a transformer or motor from a simple ODE to see if the relays need to trip. The parameters are derived from the electrical parameters of the transformer. Aside from applying it to speakers, whats novel?

I'm not arguing the merits of this patent (see my other comments). I'm attempting to provide some background on how this messed up system "functions".

That said, this process is not "estimating" anything. It's taking high resolution direct measurements[0] of driver temperature with awareness of the frequency and amplitude of the audio signal (also factoring in crossover frequency) and doing a bunch of stuff (this is well outside my area of expertise) to essentially overpower the individual driver(s) well past their intended electrical and physical specifications.

If I ever ended up on a jury for this (I wouldn't - I would get dismissed after one question in voir dire) even I would have a tough time associating (and recognizing as prior art) what you described with this process.

[0] - I've since been corrected on this - it is an estimation (of sorts).

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

#138

Post by ysavir »

mrtksn wrote: post #93
makapuf wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distributing a static HTML page content does not need a VC. Nginx on an RPI on my home connection does provide sufficient level of performance and availability. If I need more because my content is way popular, I guess a monetization scheme (asking for a tip) might cover it ?

If you are not getting paid for your servers you are the VC/Angel.

How does that make them the VC/Angel?

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

#139

Post by RicoElectrico »

Dell bundles Waves MaxxAudio Pro with its laptops and apart from cheesy stereo widening it does the job of boosting bass and making the sound louder.

Theoretically it's possible to replicate it using Windows filter drivers. It's something I would like to do - some multi-band compressor is what's probably needed.

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