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A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most

social.treehouse.systems

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

#171

Post by eropple »

JohnBooty wrote: post #165
eropple wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got room for the big boxes. Does anyone sell reasonably affordable ones these days?

Yes and no, depending on our definitions of "big" and "affordable." What's our version of big and affordable? If we say "affordable" is about $500-$1000, all in... For amplification you can get a factory refurbished Denon or similar 5.1 receiver for under $200. This is what I usually recommend because it will give tremendous flexibility over the long haul and honestly, receivers/amplifiers all sound very similar if n…

This is great advice, thanks. :) The DIY route is immediately tempting, and I have a wood shop so I'm not afraid of hacking problems away in a medium-density fiberboard fashion, but I am looking to avoid new projects!

I hear you on the bookshelf speakers. My desk speakers are a couple of Edifier S1000DB's (cheap Mackie CR3's before that) and for work stuff that's fine. I never thought about sticking them anywhere else, but that might be enough; my living room is small.

Definitely some stuff to chew on. Thank you again!

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

#172

Post by icegreentea2 »

zamadatix wrote: post #150
kkielhofner wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The "bunch of stuff" is precisely the part where estimation comes in. There is no direct temperature sensor to measure from, the only thing available is the voltage levels on the speaker. As the patent says it's a 2 level estimate: estimate of impedance from voltages -> estimate of temperature from modelling the speaker's physical parametrs as a function of the driving signal and impedance estimate. With patents it's…

Yes. In this case it's maybe a little face palmy how fill in the blanks are... but heh.

It cites a Bang & Olufsen patent (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20090257599A1/en) which implements voice-coil protection via measuring the resistance/impedance of the speaker while it's being driven.

It also cites another patent (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20120020488A1/en) which implements control of a speaker via combination of impedance measurements of the speaker while it's being driven + a baseline ("binding") measurement of impedance + ambient temperature that is taken at device power up - ie generating a per device calibration curve.

From quickly staring at these, the Apple patents threads the needle by:

* Implementing speaker control using the output of a temperature model (which is fed by the resistance measurement), instead of "directly" operating on speaker resistance.

* Not implementing per-speaker calibration.

(Note! There are other cited patents that I didn't look at, this wasn't meant to be exhaustive, just illustrative... and just to generally satisfy an itch)

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

#173

Post by ericpauley »

hgsgm wrote: post #122
bluedino wrote: post #74

This becomes apparent when people join calls with others who are using MacBooks and iPads. Why does everyone else sound better? Why is my company-issued Dell/HP laptop equipped with terrible speakers and microphone? This can be fixed by giving them a headset. It sounds dumb but one thing that keeps me from dropping my Mac for a Lenovo 100% is the speaker quality. It's nice enough to play music at a moderate level on…

Until you plug in an external monitor and the MacBook Pro overheats and fans up so you have to close the lid which muffles the mic.

What year is this? I have not heard of these issues substantially affecting any modern ARM Mac.

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

#174

Post by matthew-wegner »

tokamak-teapot wrote: post #95
graderjs wrote: post #38

When 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 Air (and new design MBP), speakers bounce the sound off the screen. I think if you were to remove the screen and listen to those speakers in open air it'd sound quite odd.

Probably they're pre-distorting the sound so it's correct only after bouncing off the screen, kind of like how VR distorts the image to account for headset optics undoing that distortion.

I had an M1 Air before the MBP release. The sound was good, but the sound stage is eerily wide on the M1 MBP (and presumably the M2 Air), compared to the normal side speakers.

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

#175

Post by jbverschoor »

zamnos wrote: post #7
jbverschoor wrote: post #5

Ok, buggy software might explain why my M1 speakers, and the motherboard had to be replaced within a year?

Or just a case of bad hardware from the factory. QC is run by humans and sometimes out of spec (aka busted) hardware makes it out of the factory. Was your replacement covered by Apple care?

Yeah it was still under warrantee, but it's just a hassle, because the solution was to replace the board + speakers. Which means restoring a backup and a week without my main machine. Just weird they had to change that, as it just sounded as if the speakers were blown up

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

#176

Post by switch007 »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #114
kalleboo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've had showdead on for years, as I don't always agree with the 'moderation'/groupthink

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

#177

Post by andrewmcwatters »

Patents are interesting. IIRC, Apple has a patent on a method of creating a fast Gaussian blur by combining multiple low-radius blurs to create a large radius blur in real-time.

I remember looking into this because I was so confused how Apple could create a fast real-time Gaussian blur with a large radius with no latency.

Even game developers fail to do this, utilizing other blurs like box blurs instead to create the effect.

Turns out this approach is mathematically equivalent or such a close approximation that it's visually indistinguishable.

Not related to laptop speakers, of course, but just a thought that came up as I was thinking about patents on small but important concepts.

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

#178

Post by analog31 »

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?

Speaker engineers have been doing this for decades too. Not necessarily by the specific method chosen by Apple (didn't read the patent), or with laptop speakers, but dynamic control of signals to achieve greater loudness within a specific power rating has been a thing for a long time AFAIK. Here's an example:

https://testing.eminence.com/d-fend/

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

#180

Post by kergonath »

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…

> 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”.

It is not exclusive. I cannot believe that there is only one way of doing something like this. They just need to care enough to put some R&D money into this.

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