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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

#71

Post by dgacmu »

dsr_ wrote: post #56
bottled_poe wrote: post #42

Earlier 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…

It's often said that the best camera is the one you have with you.

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

#72

Post by Lalabadie »

cassianoleal wrote: post #44
fnord123 wrote: post #10

This is curious reading since my Intel MacBook speakers crackled all the time as it grounded through me.

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 case.

Add to this that the two prong power bricks mean the chassis grounds through your hands in (worse in low humidity), and in the right building it's a lot of worrying symptoms all at once.

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

#73

Post by mrtksn »

jacksgt wrote: post #61

Off topic: it's such a breath of fresh air to read this content without 1) having to close half a dozen popups and 2) all in a single post and not painfully spread out across multiple messages.

Doesn't do targeted ads, so doesn't have to have an EU cookie popup.

Doesn't have an app, so doesn't have to try to make you install the app.

Doesn't do registered users growth hacking, doesn't have to have sign-up dialog.

The problem is, if and when they decide to monetise this thing they will have to have all of these because the money people and the analytics will tell them they have to.

Everything is much more fun when it's paid by someone else, that's why the old web was so nice. The content was produced for free and the distribution was handled by VCs. Today, these VCs are recouping their investments.

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

#74

Post by bluedino »

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 my desk while I work on my corporate machine.

This could probably be fixed by buying an external speaker but...

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

#75

Post by danaris »

alright_scowl wrote: post #60

Except 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 ov…

Different people are going to have very, very different standards for what sounds good in speakers.

For me, the MacBook Pro speakers sound great. My HomePod mini sounds fantastic. Because a) they're literally the best speakers I have ever owned, and b) I have never made Getting The Very Best Sound a priority; it just doesn't matter that much to me. Most of the time, I listen on AirPods.

For other people, music and high-quality sound are more of a way of life. They probably own speakers that cost high three figures (or more) individually. They are more likely to find the MBP speakers to be subpar. I'm guessing you fall into this category. And that's fine: it's just a question of different priorities.

The important thing, for people on either side of that fuzzy line, is to recognize that the other people exist, and in the latter case to recognize that the former group is by far the larger one, and most people in it haven't really heard what day-to-day audio is like from really high-end speakers.

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

#76

Post by bob1029 »

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. Thermals can be tolerated over brief durations.

I have found (in larger scale pro audio) that the amplifier topology can have a major impact on the amount of real power you can put into a loudspeaker. One of the most popular is Class D because it requires virtually no magnetics (i.e. no toroidal transformers). The tradeoff is that it needs to have a lot of safety nannies at the extremes and will have to attenuate aggressive program material. You almost always have to put a full-time DSP on these amplifiers.

Compare this to Class A,A/B, G or H topologies which can be pushed well-beyond rated supply amperage for brief durations (i.e. your lights will dim slightly, rather than the amp/DSP limiting its power draw). You can drive these with any kind of signal you please, filtered with nannies or otherwise. These topologies are where I go when I want to be able to reach to DC on a loudspeaker and am willing to replace the drivers if I bump a knob the wrong way.

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

#77

Post by bob1029 »

Mizza wrote: post #43

My Mac speakers sound like shit because running a loud filter sweep in VCV Rack will break them and make them sound buzzy forever.

This happened on my late 2013 MBP. I left some stupid YT video playing for hours and I think the DSP engine finally tripped and fell at some point.

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by seba_dos1 »

2636381321 wrote: post #52

I 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?

There are and always have been lots of ways for malware to damage hardware.

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

#80

Post by kkielhofner »

golergka wrote: post #8

> during the dubstep parts of the song, the snares sound nice and crisp. At those points, the tweeters are probably putting out 2-4x the amount of power they could handle without melting - briefly. But then when the nasty clipped lead comes in, that overloads them a lot more and the safety daemon clamps down on the tweeter volume. That's called compression.

I don’t know of any other compressors/limiters that are monitoring temperature sensors connected to each driver and modifying the parameters of the compressor and amplifier in real-time based on audio signal level and carefully calibrated driver amplification and temp vs time.

All in a way that (to the casual listener) isn’t noticed other than “Wow this sounds really good for laptop speakers”.

A picture is worth a thousands words and seeing temperature in anything having to do with compression should jump out any anyone familiar with these concepts as something novel/interesting.

More here:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20130329898

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