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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

#271

Post by astrange »

amluto wrote: post #258

The idea of feedback-based userspace software thermal management like this seems suboptimal to me — the failure modes are nasty. (By feedback-based, I mean using V/I sense from the amp.) The goal is to prevent the voice coil from overheating, ever. So some kind of calculation runs at some interval t, and it needs to ensure that, over the upcoming time t, the input to the amp can’t possibly overheat the coil, and of c…

There's no distinction between "user" and "kernel" that would mean kernel code gets scheduled more reliably than realtime userland threads. Or even that it necessarily has better access to the audio hardware.

If it's really really important then you'd want to move it to a custom core on the SoC of course, but that'd make a Linux port harder.

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

#272

Post by astrange »

endorphine wrote: post #191

Kinda off-topic: I remember reading that Apple laptops from 2021(?) onwards got a DAC (digital-to-analog converter) upgrade, making their DAC a pretty decent option with which you can avoid buying an external one. Anyone knows how much truth there is to the above? I'm sure the answer is more nuanced than that and depend on various factors.

Amp, not DAC.

The DAC was always good. Audiophile DACs are scams and are worse quality than the $9 official iPhone headphone adapter, and probably had smaller QC budgets than it does.

The amp can make a real difference because they don't always support high-impedance headphones.

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

#273

Post by rendaw »

brudgers wrote: post #245
foobiekr wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is the thesis here that there is no other way to have non-crap sound on a laptop than this Apple patent? No alternative? No patent-non-infringing approach? Because if not, the real reason is as the author suggests: other manufacturers don't bother. I have been working a long time - decades - in a part of the industry that is not just patent happy but patent berserk and it has never been my experience that other ap…

I’m not saying there might not be another way. But iTunes and the other big music distribution power players have requirements and use encoding technologies based on loudness rather than power. [1] This is why your playlists don’t require adjusting the volume between songs from different artists/albums/eras/genres. So it is likely that Apple’s method works hand in hand with the technical constraints of iTunes require…

What audio encodings are loudness rather than power based? Does that mean they don't encode waveforms directly?

> I’m not saying there might not be another way.

Are you ggp?

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

#274

Post by rendaw »

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…

The author replied in mastodon:

> "Nobody else does it because Apple patented it" - except non-Apple phones do do it. I'm pretty sure Apple didn't invent this, even if they got a patent. Apple have a lot of BS patents.

Other comments here: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/109925910155970064

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

#275

Post by zamadatix »

kkielhofner wrote: post #206
zamadatix wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt e.g. Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others have been shipping >100 million laptops per year longer than this patent has been around with most, if not all, without the feature primarily because Apple was one of many (and not the last) to file a patent on their implementation of a common feature in the sound industry and they are now afraid of and upreprade for legal battles related to making laptops. More likely few ju…

We're saying the same thing. They don't care because it doesn't impact sales enough to care. If some R&D person in these orgs took interest in this it would get smacked down by PMs, execs, etc because it doesn't matter and they don't care. That's all well before it even gets to legal where this patent would be discovered. With these factors compounded it doesn't happen - and Apple has a tiny edge on what is probably…

Hmm I don't think we're saying the same thing at all. I'm not saying patents are part of the reason companies don't care, I'm saying they didn't care before the patent and there is no reason to suspect the patent is the real reason they don't care since. If any part of the reasoning for why not has to do with the patent being there then it's not what I'm saying, even if it would sound similar.

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

#276

Post by mholm »

lukas099 wrote: post #213
matthew-wegner wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Does the laptop have knowledge of the screen angle, or does its calculations just assume an 'average' angle? Or does it not matter too much (it seems like it would to me)?

Yes, modern MacBooks have a sensor for detecting screen angle

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

#277

Post by mathgorges »

mrtksn wrote: post #164
pjc50 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

me paying $5 to wordpress: i'm a venture capitalist now mom (seriously, this is a very silly way of using terms to cover extremely small amounts of capital)

The size of the capital doesn't change the reality of the financial structure.

I don’t think I understand the argument that you’re making.

Are you saying that anyone that pays for anything is a venture capitalist?

That doesn’t seem like a very useful definition, so I think I’ve misunderstood you ’:-)

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

#278

Post by dzhiurgis »

bob1029 wrote: post #142
amelius wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about laptop speakers here, where power consumption is important.

In a laptop's energy budget, power spent driving the loudspeakers is probably one of the last concerns. If you integrate the actual power consumed over the playback duration of typical program material, you would find figures that are essentially irrelevant compared to the cost of running the backlight or WiFi radios.

Screenshot says 1W or so. My laptop uses about 10W on light scrolling.

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

#279

Post by dzhiurgis »

brookst wrote: post #162
jeroenhd wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Curious what beats the M2 CPU for a lower price?

€700 Beelink gtr6 (latest ryzen) NUC/mini-pc beats my m1 pro

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

#280

Post by graderjs »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #174
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 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…

What a great way to describe it!

> the sound stage is eerily wide on the M1 MBP (and presumably the M2 Air), compared to the normal side speakers.

Thank you for giving me the new language to express this! :) ;p x

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