I’m always amazed how big the soundstage is on a MacBook Air. Sometimes in certain content I hear things coming from left and right of me, as if it’s surround sound.
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
#52I wonder if malware could bypass the speaker safety daemon and potentially damage hardware or even start a fire? Looks like Apple is relying too much on TrustZone and Secure Boot to prevent physical hardware damage?
Also, Apple can now say that jailbreaking the devices could present a physical safety issue. So one more reason for making jailbreaking illegal?
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
That part also grabbed my attention. How would I do the core dump? (How do I attach gdb to Firefox? Doesn’t it need debug data from the compiler like what you get with gcc -Og?)
You can attach gdb to any process. Debug information is not needed unless you want nice things like knowing which lines of code you are stepping through.
On macOS most binaries now use the hardened runtime which prevents attaching a debugger by default, so you can only attach to arbitrary processes when SIP is disabled.
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your experience might be outdated. My M1 Mac's screen broke recently and I'm forced to use it with the lid closed and an external screen until I get a replacement. I'm using the cheapest external screen I can get because I don't like using external screens and am just bridging the gap until I get a new laptop. The monitor speakers are absolutely horrible, frankly I don't understand why they even added them. I…
Bought an M1 for my SO two years ago. You can tell she's playing sound through it from another room, even the TV built-in speakers sound better. I am not dissing Apple devices in particular, but rather all laptops. With speakers so small, there's only that much one can do. But then again, criticizing Apple hardware is a downvote bonanza every time, because Apple users need to feel like a particular demographic .
M1 air, 13, 14 or 16 inch?
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#55I 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.
Curious to know, which competition caught up Apple on software?
I think it's more that Apple has dropped down to normal reliability levels. With Apple's focus on shipping a new OS every year no matter what, they have started shipping broken features by default, and you just have to hope they get around to fix the bugs next year.
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#56I wonder how they model the energy output of the speakers. In principle you could have a function that calculates the energy of the spectrum and integrate that over time. If you put out too much energy, what do you do? Reduce the overall volume, apply a frequency cutoff, or a low-pass-filter? I feel there are so many variables here, and it is going to be hard to replicate what Apple does. I know the Asahi-Linux peopl…
That’s a really interesting topic. I hope an audiophile shows up to give some thoughts..
An audiophile opinion: there are so many good cheap systems out there, why would you mistreat poor hardware this way?
- Any number of excellent in-ear monitors under $100 - Truthear Zero ($50)
- Quite a few good-to-excellent headphones under $200, and under $50 if you can run a convolver equalizer for them - Superlux 668B ($35)
- Several excellent powered monitor speakers regularly on sale under $450/pair (JBL 305, 308, Kali LP8v2)
Laptop speakers are for getting your attention from across the room so you can plug in something appropriate.
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#57I 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 good stuff together. You can beat the M2 in CPU performance for less money but your battery won't last as long, you can beat the screen quality if you pay extra for the better screen, you can buy a usable GPU with your laptop if you want to play games but don't get the machine learning boost, there are so many deliberations to be made.
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s a really interesting topic. I hope an audiophile shows up to give some thoughts..
An audiophile opinion: there are so many good cheap systems out there, why would you mistreat poor hardware this way? - Any number of excellent in-ear monitors under $100 - Truthear Zero ($50) - Quite a few good-to-excellent headphones under $200, and under $50 if you can run a convolver equalizer for them - Superlux 668B ($35) - Several excellent powered monitor speakers regularly on sale under $450/pair (JBL 305, 3…
Maybe we just don't want to constantly wear crap on our head?
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#59IDK, 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 resonance channel, and I think they are glued to the aluminium chassis which appears sturdier than any previous Mac I've opened.
They are optimized to sound best when you are sitting in front of your laptop, and the volume is of course limited, but there is nothing "cardboard box" like about the new Macbook Pro's speakers.
Re: A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
#60Except they don't? I hate the speaker sound on the Mac I use for work.
Unless "so good" in the title means "not as awful as other shitty laptop speakers", but even that is a poor statement, when the text in the link makes only mentions some vaguely interesting technical musings, without comparing it to anything else.
The way the title is written makes it sound just like any other inane data point of people gushing over Macs.