[HN Gopher] A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder th...
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A reason why Mac speakers sound better and louder than most
Author : 1915cb1f
Score : 353 points
Date : 2023-02-25 10:18 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (social.treehouse.systems)
(TXT) w3m dump (social.treehouse.systems)
| bob1029 wrote:
| 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.
| tcrenshaw wrote:
| Most, if not all, of the class D amps at the large scale pro
| audio level have that DSP built into the amplifier itself. More
| and more speaker manufacturers are also selling their own
| amplifiers (not necessarily made in house) with limiting that
| takes specific drivers into consideration, along with FIR
| correction for the whole box.
|
| I've also used a few that you can tell exactly what kind of
| power you're hooked up to (120v @ 25 amp perhaps) and it will
| draw just up to that limit and stop. Neat stuff
| bob1029 wrote:
| > More and more speaker manufacturers are also selling their
| own amplifiers (not necessarily made in house)
|
| Indeed. I've had _horrible_ luck with reliability of these
| products (i.e. loudspeakers with integrated class-D
| amplifiers).
|
| I would strongly recommend going for external amplification
| wherever possible, _especially_ if you are running cabinetry
| that weighs more than 100lbs.
| amelius wrote:
| We're talking about laptop speakers here, where power
| consumption is important.
| bob1029 wrote:
| 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.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I saw a nice demo recently of the use of chargepump power
| control to stop the _backlight_ dimming if the audio got
| too loud, a microcosm of the "PA so loud your lights dim"
| situation.
|
| (no, I've not been able to find it to show hn)
| kkielhofner wrote:
| While you're probably right technically speaking laptops
| compete heavily on battery life. I wouldn't be surprised at
| all if (like mobile devices) they're at the point of
| optimizing relatively minuscule points of power draw.
|
| Like most things once you start looking at dozens of
| factors that are 0.5% wins each you end up with a
| substantial improvement that in the case of battery powered
| productivity devices is significant from a sales
| standpoint.
| mjb wrote:
| 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.
| bob1029 wrote:
| You are implying that there are 2 discrete states: fully
| charged and fully discharged. In reality, this is an infinite
| spectrum.
|
| You will know when the capacitors are _actually_ empty. When
| you flip on a 2-4kW pro audio amp, you can hear the
| electromagnetic forces for about a second. If you have a UPS
| on the same circuit, it will likely trip. _That_ is empty.
| During normal use, there is no such thing as empty.
| ansgri wrote:
| The post is interesting itself, but the addendum,
|
| > This post brought to you by gdb and grep -a
|
| Where author recovers text from Firefox core dump, is just
| hilarious.
| _flux wrote:
| Plug: Could have maybe used https://github.com/eras/memgrep/
| switch007 wrote:
| [flagged]
| Thev00d00 wrote:
| What is with these asterisk posts recently? have I missed a
| memo
| switch007 wrote:
| What are you on about?
| kalleboo wrote:
| 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.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| 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.
| switch007 wrote:
| I've had showdead on for years, as I don't always agree
| with the 'moderation'/groupthink
| arkitaip wrote:
| That's an incredibly useful trick and now I wonder if there is
| a small Windows utility that makes it easy to recover similar
| ghost data?
| omnicognate wrote:
| gdb is a general-purpose debugger. The equivalent tool for
| Windows is windbg [0] which is free and extremely powerful,
| though famously arcane. You can certainly do this with it.
|
| [0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-
| hardware/drivers/d...
| sva_ wrote:
| https://x64dbg.com/
| no_time wrote:
| GDB and grep but built for windows.
|
| Or you could use Cheat Engine if you have a fear of
| terminals.
| gary_0 wrote:
| > GDB and grep but built for windows
|
| Beat me to it. Windows would be intolerable for me without
| MinGW/MSYS[0]. (Sure, there's WSL2, but that's not quite
| the same, and I was using MinGW and friends long before it
| existed.)
|
| [0] https://www.msys2.org/wiki/MSYS2-introduction/
| pxc wrote:
| FWIW, ripgrep has a native build for Windows which is
| much, much faster than using grep or rg via WSL2. (I'm
| not sure how it compares to grep from MinGW/MSYS2.)
| grishka wrote:
| The task manager had the option to dump the memory of a
| process. It's been a while since I last used Windows though,
| so I don't remember whether that does, in fact, dump all of
| its pages.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Windows Sysinternals
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yeah I was going to ask how does FF know about Mac speakers,
| but I was not expecting that
|
| (Neither that it would have kept the text there, I guess he was
| lucky)
| mandarax8 wrote:
| The buffer could have been freed but not zeroed out maybe.
| lynguist wrote:
| 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?)
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| 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.
| lathiat wrote:
| You can use 'gcore' (from gdb) to dump the process memory
| (on Linux) - it tries to create a core file as if it
| crashed, without crashing it. It's not 100% reliable it
| sometimes fails - not entirely sure why - but often works.
|
| Then as above you dont really need to understand the memory
| or variables with debug symbols (though on Linux they
| generally are available.. and increasingly on the newest
| distros will automatically be downloaded by debuginfod).
| You can jsut grep for the text you are looking for and
| likely it's roughly together in memory.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| 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.
| kleiba wrote:
| How do you attach gdb to a running process?
| stefncb wrote:
| gdb <path> -p <pid>
| zamadatix wrote:
| I wonder how much energy/CPU all this uses compared to not
| monitoring and compressing the sound channels per speaker. It
| seems like "don't run the daemon and let it go to -14db" is a
| valid option if it's problematic though. I don't really listen to
| music, I'm just looking forward to terminal dings and conference
| calls without headphones so will lean towards battery life.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| 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.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I have a question, suppose I came up with something similar or
| even identical on my own, wrote the code and published it, and
| I have no clue that a patent exists, am I liable in any way?
|
| Isn't absurd that algorithms and mathematical solutions can be
| patented?
| brundolf wrote:
| Yes, that's how patents work. I believe patents normally
| expire ~20 years after being filed. The idea is to
| incentivize people/companies to invest the resources in
| solving really hard problems, knowing they'll be able to make
| back their investment in the time before it expires (at which
| point everyone can then use it)
|
| Software patents are controversial because of the rate things
| move in software; a software discovery from 20 years ago is
| likely worthless by the time the patent expires. I think the
| window should be shorter for software (5 years? 3 years?),
| just enough to make back the investment but not milk it until
| it's dead
|
| But as they go, this kind of real problem-solving is one of
| the more defensible kinds of software patents imo. Many
| software patents out there are things like "do X but store it
| in a database", which is obviously nonsense
| gptgpp wrote:
| Broadly speaking there does exist a defense of "innocent
| infringement." You can use that keyword to read about it more
| yourself.
|
| IANAL but I believe it only reduces your damages in an
| infringement suit. It's considered your responsibility to
| check if something infringes on an existing patent. Yes, I
| know there are patents on absurd things like doubly linked
| lists, and the whole thing is a bit of a mess, seemingly
| created to give lawyers a job and present a barrier to people
| who can't afford to do patent discovery and all that.
|
| As for it being absurd.... I don't know.
|
| Would you prefer that companies never file patents, revealing
| their algorithms and mathematical solutions, so it never
| becomes public knowledge (and useable by everyone once the
| patent expires), and they just keep it indefinitely as trade
| secrets?
|
| Because that's the alternative :(
| brundolf wrote:
| Where do they use it? The control center pulldown shade in iOS?
| marcellus23 wrote:
| iOS has blurs almost everywhere, not just control center.
| brundolf wrote:
| There are others, that was just one example that came to
| mind
| fortran77 wrote:
| They're "louder and better" for techno fans who like the sssssst
| ssssssst ssssssst.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| 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.
| causality0 wrote:
| Most laptop speakers can be significantly improved by applying a
| calibration profile using a program like Fxsound. Took mine from
| "godawful" to simply mediocre.
| endorphine wrote:
| 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.
| captainmuon wrote:
| I 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 people are very correct, but I'd be
| tempted to just throw the Apple libraries into Ghidra and see
| what they do.
|
| And a completely unreleated thought, maybe it is possible to
| remove the safetly limits on speakers of other brands and apply
| the same strategy to get better sound?
| povik wrote:
| Hi, I wrote the Linux kernel drivers for speaker output on the
| new ARM64 Macs, so I can shed some light on this.
|
| > I wonder how they model the energy output of the speakers.
|
| Simple. The speaker codecs (special made for Apple, but e.g.
| compatible to https://www.ti.com/product/TAS2764) give you
| current/voltage measurements you can calculate the power from.
| It's what they call I/V sense.
|
| > In principle you could have a function that calculates the
| energy of the spectrum and integrate that over time.
|
| Right. You don't want to do the calculation in frequency domain
| since that would be wasteful. You can integrate the power of
| the samples straight away (here by multiplying the
| instantaneous voltage and current, if we didn't have that, we
| could at least estimate it by assuming a constant resistance of
| the speaker coils).
|
| > If you put out too much energy, what do you do? Reduce the
| overall volume, apply a frequency cutoff, or a low-pass-filter?
|
| You model the coil's temperature. If it comes near a dangerous
| level, you reduce the volume on the particular speaker. You
| don't need to worry too much about this since usually you don't
| hit the limits, you are merely guarding against especially
| nasty sound input.
|
| > I feel there are so many variables here, and it is going to
| be hard to replicate what Apple does.
|
| We don't need to replicate what Apple does. Though we are
| stealing the parameters for the coil temperature model Apple is
| using (at least for some machines).
| hgsgm wrote:
| You can run some empirical tests to find a safe limit.
| bottled_poe wrote:
| That's a really interesting topic. I hope an audiophile shows
| up to give some thoughts..
| dsr_ wrote:
| 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.
| ziftface wrote:
| To be honest I'm not sure what the parent comment was
| expecting, this is kind of a normal audiophile response.
| But it shows that the engineering that apple does with
| their speakers is not made for audiophiles, it wows people
| who are used to other laptops.
| izacus wrote:
| Maybe we just don't want to constantly wear crap on our
| head?
| toastal wrote:
| Counterpoint: your neighbors don't want to hear the crap
| on your laptop speakers
| fsociety wrote:
| I'm confused - are you suggesting that people use
| headphones instead of small laptop speakers to not annoy
| their next door neighbors?
| lukas099 wrote:
| They probably mean 'neighbors' as in people nearby in the
| same room. This is indeed a good use case for
| headphones/IEMs.
| toastal wrote:
| Both. A lot of folks live in apartments, condos, dorms
| where the walls aren't good at sound insulation. Putting
| in your IEMs gives you better sound and isnot going to
| disturb anyone.
| dgacmu wrote:
| It's often said that the best camera is the one you have
| with you.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| > And a completely unreleated thought, maybe it is >
| possible to remove the safetly limits on speakers >
| of other brands and apply the same strategy to get >
| better sound? That's a really interesting
| topic. I hope an audiophile shows up to give some
| thoughts..
|
| Probably want an audio engineer instead of an audiophile
| hobbyist, for a more proper and informed opinion. =)
|
| However, as an audiophile hobbyist, getting good sound from
| bad hardware (or excellent sound from good hardware) via DSP
| is definitely a thing! In fact, it's essentially the reason
| why anything sounds any good at all these days, and why
| things like tiny laptop speakers and tiny portable Bluetooth
| speakers can sound halfway decent. Even inexpensive factory
| car audio can sound great these days, because you can throw a
| cheap DSP chip in front of not-very-special speakers.
|
| I would suspect that many laptop manufacturers are doing
| _some_ hardware /firmware/software magic already, in order to
| get decent sound from their hardware.
|
| Hobbyists can do this as well. You can buy e.g. cheap
| speakers, measure their output with a microphone, and create
| a DSP profile to fix much of what they're doing wrong. The
| underlying principle here is that "good" sound is absolutely
| measurable, and it essentially is nothing more low-distortion
| playback that is tonally correct. The results can sound
| excellent. Here's an example of the process:
| http://noaudiophile.com/Micca_Club_3/
|
| However, there are some physical limitations to this. Much of
| the sound we hear is reflected, not direct, and therefore
| part of a speaker sounding "good" is that it is emitting
| "correct" sound in a wide enough angle. If a speaker is
| shooting correct sound directly at you, but various and
| incorrect sound off at various angles, the result will not
| sound great because what actually reaches your ears is going
| to be a mixture of good (the direct sound) and bad (the
| indirect, reflected) sound. If a speaker is bad at this, that
| is not something that can really be fixed by DSP, so you need
| to get some elements of the physical design correct in the
| first place.
|
| The software power management aspects of Apple's secret sauce
| ("you can dump more than max power into the speakers for x
| milliseconds, but after that, back off") are also beyond the
| limits of simple DSP solutions. There would presumably need
| to be some kind of stateful solution there like Asahi is
| doing.
|
| There are also other things that Apple does in hardware.
| Their 16-inch laptops actually have _six_ drivers. Two
| tweeters, and two pairs of dual-opposed woofers. Dual-opposed
| woofers give you twice the sound pressure and drastically
| reduce distortion caused via vibration. This of course takes
| more room, more hardware engineering, more expense, and isn
| 't something we can software our way around. You actually
| don't see this in commercial subwoofers until you get up
| around the $2000 price level, though you could also build one
| yourself for much less if you don't mind DIY work.
| https://us.kef.com/products/kf92-subwoofer
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Also, one of the hilarious things about this hobby &
| engineering science is that 98% of that insane hardware &
| software engineering work is only necessary because we're
| trying to cheat the laws of physics in order to deliver
| decent sound from tinier and tinier speakers.
|
| If you're willing to go in the other direction, and
| tolerate bigger speakers, you can have very very enjoyable
| sound from the sorts of dumb big-box speakers folks
| commonly had in their living rooms up through the 1980s or
| so.
| eropple wrote:
| I've got room for the big boxes. Does anyone sell
| reasonably affordable ones these days?
| toast0 wrote:
| Thrift stores, generally.
| eropple wrote:
| I was afraid of that. I _can_ re-box them to look nice,
| but that would be yet another project...
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Most of the fun old speakers from the 1980s and earlier
| had paper speaker cones, which actually sound(ed) really
| nice.
|
| However, the paper from the speaker cones and the rubber
| surrounds have nearly all rotted away at this point. If
| there are capacitors in the crossovers, those may need
| replacing too.
|
| So unfortunately resurrecting old vintage speakers (a
| noble and worthwhile thing!) from thrift stores is often
| more involved than refinishing the box.
|
| However if you're willing to put in some legwork, scroll
| through lots of crap, and deal with safety concerns, you
| can get some nice higher end gear on Craigslist. (A
| decent seller will understand you need to demo the
| speakers to make sure they work)
| JohnBooty wrote:
| 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 not
| identical.
|
| As far as widely available brands, Sony and Polk sell
| some nice affordable tower speakers for a few hundred
| dollars. Those put out enough bass to be fun on their own
| without a subwoofer, depending on what you're looking
| for.
|
| I actually tend to not love these quite as much as some
| of the old 80s style "monkey coffin" speakers but that's
| probably nostalgia talking. There aren't many of those
| around any more, affordable or otherwise. The cheapest
| are the BIC EV-15s, which have ridiculous 15" red
| woofers, but sound pretty nice and the grill covers do a
| good job of hiding the red woofers.
|
| There are also a lot of great bookshelf style speakers
| and Wirecutter does a great job maintaining a leaderboard
| of sorts. Compared to what most people want these days,
| maybe these are considered "big."
| https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-
| bookshelf-sp...
|
| So...
|
| You can have a nice, simple 2-channel stereo system with
| a receiver and two tower speakers for as little as $500.
| It will sound great with nearly zero complexity and you
| can stop there. That is enough to be happy until the end
| of your days!
|
| You can substitute bookshelves for towers, but
| practically speaking you'll probably need to buy speaker
| stands as well and at that point you've spent as much as
| towers would have cost.
|
| If you're willing to spend a little more and add a
| subwoofer or two and tolerate more complexity, you can
| have something extremely good and full-range for
| $500-$1000 total.
|
| There are options such as DIY that can deliver much
| greater price/performance, and are a lot of fun if you're
| into that and don't mind buying up half of the wood
| clamps at your local Harbor Freight. Very roughly
| speaking the DIY flat pack kits will give you about 2-3x
| the price/performance of commercial speakers.
| eropple wrote:
| 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!
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Happy to help. Good luck to you! It's a fun hobby,
| potentially a rabbit hole, but also a _fun_ rabbit
| hole... and also it doesn 't need to be a rabbit hole at
| all.
|
| If you decide to look into the DIY route, PartsExpress
| and DIYSoundGroup are two of the most popular sources for
| affordable flat-pack kits.
| shrx wrote:
| 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?
| erdewit wrote:
| > If I had a pair of decent speakers and a microphone
| hooked up to my PC, how would I go about "tuning" the
| speakers?
|
| Blatant plug: https://github.com/erdewit/HiFiScan
| shrx wrote:
| Thanks, will give it a try.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| 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 or one from Dayton Audio. That's about $100,
| though, so that sort of kills the value equation in a lot
| of situations.[1]
|
| 2. You then measure the speaker's output with something
| such as a free tool called Room EQ Wizard:
| https://www.roomeqwizard.com/
|
| 3. REQ can then output the necessary DSP configuration
| files, that can be then be used by a MiniDSP,
| EqualizerAPO, etc. Or it can just tell you the necessary
| corrections that can then be manually typed into anything
| that supports parametric EQ settings.
|
| Here's a video fully demonstrating all of that:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1aYsjPc2m4&t=2s
|
| ____
|
| [1] There are community efforts to take these kinds of
| measurements and open source them so everybody can
| benefit. The largest I'm aware of is these open-sourced
| headphone measurements (which require a different sort of
| measurement rig) and corrections: https://github.com/jaak
| kopasanen/AutoEq/tree/master/results/...
|
| For speakers, there are the measurements and EQ
| corrections published by places like
| AudioScienceReview.com and NoAudiophile.com
|
| If you do software EQ and use other peoples' measurements
| you can do this for $0, without the grunt work of
| measurements.
| shrx wrote:
| Thanks a lot, will look into EqualizerAPO.
|
| > You need a calibrated microphone
|
| Ah, of course, it's a chicken and egg problem... :)
|
| edit: typos
| JohnBooty wrote:
| The way I got started was using the measurements +
| corrections from NoAudiophile.com -- so I cheated and
| sidestepped the chicken/egg. =)
|
| His corrections for cheap Micca speakers were my gateway
| into hi-fi. For under $100 I had true hi-fi sound at my
| desk. However, he's not active any more, and most of the
| speakers he's measured are no longer available.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > as an audiophile hobbyist, getting good sound from bad
| hardware (or excellent sound from good hardware) via DSP is
| definitely a thing!
|
| Acknowledging this lifts you out of the category of
| "audiophile" into "person who actually knows about audio"
| ;) There's a lot of what I can only describe as outdated
| prejudice about what can be achieved with class D systems.
| Your explanations in this thread are excellent.
|
| > I would suspect that many laptop manufacturers are doing
| some hardware/firmware/software magic already, in order to
| get decent sound from their hardware.
|
| Correct, especially in mobile phones. My employer has some
| products in this area, e.g.
| https://www.cirrus.com/products/cs35l41/ , which has
| exactly the sort of speaker protection under discussion
| done by on-chip DSP.
| jdiez17 wrote:
| > I'd be tempted to just throw the Apple libraries into Ghidra
| and see what they do
|
| The Asahi people usually reverse engineer things like the audio
| system by running macOS under the m1n1 hypervisor, which lets
| you inspect interactions with the hardware using a Python API
| zamnos wrote:
| The other question is how much is done in software vs hardware?
| I can imagine an opamp doing the integration to kick in a
| volume reduction to avoid damaging the speakers when there's
| been too much power pushed, and Ghidra could never show you
| that.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It does appear it's done in software, this post is talking
| about the Free reimplementation: https://github.com/chadmed/s
| peakersafetyd/blob/main/src/type...
|
| (Nobody does maths with opamps any more, it's less area and
| lower power to ADC the signals you want and do it in digital.
| It's also much easier to tune)
| alright_scowl wrote:
| 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 over Macs.
| Kiro wrote:
| The speakers are amazing on my M1. I'm constantly surprised how
| beefy bass and clean sound they can produce. Don't recall them
| being so great on my previous MacBooks though.
| alright_scowl wrote:
| I wouldn't describe the speakers on the M1 I use as amazing.
| It's more or less as bad as the speakers of previous laptops
| I used.
|
| I mean, it is a speaker. Good enough for simple sound
| feedback on most applications. Music on it sounds bad.
| Kiro wrote:
| Yeah, ok. I presume that by your standard anything less
| than FLAC on a Bowers & Wilkins Nautilus is unworthy your
| ears but for us mere mortals the MacBook M1 speakers sound
| amazing for music as well. It's a massive improvement
| compared to any other laptop speakers I've heard.
| alright_scowl wrote:
| [dead]
| danaris wrote:
| 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.
| fsociety wrote:
| I am going to be less generous and suggest that some people
| just want to hate on macs for the sake of hating on macs.
| Sticking it to the "man".
|
| I'm a bit obsessed with audio.. and I never expect my laptop
| speakers to match the quality of my fancy headphone setup
| that probably nets for about $4K.
|
| They are no high-end speaker, but compared to any other
| laptop speaker I have heard they are amazing.
| alright_scowl wrote:
| > I am going to be less generous and suggest that some
| people just want to hate on macs for the sake of hating on
| macs. Sticking it to the "man".
|
| Far more common is the group that love on macs for the sake
| of loving on macs? Apple can sell in iTurd, and they will
| gush on its unique aroma and exquisite taste.
|
| I have a Mac, it's the laptop issued by my employer. It's
| an okay laptop. Ridiculously overpriced, but since I was
| not the one that paid for it, I don't really care.
|
| I personally like my personal laptop a lot more (not a
| Mac). The sound of both speakers is comparably bad, much
| worse than the set of speakers and subwoofer I have plugged
| into my dock. I wouldn't describe any of those speakers as
| "so good".
| [deleted]
| danaris wrote:
| Thanks for proving his point.
| alright_scowl wrote:
| Except, you're proving mine.
|
| In a thread full of people gushing on Mac speakers, me
| saying it's an okay but overpriced machine is considered
| "hating for the sake of hating"
| danaris wrote:
| But that's not what this subthread is about. It _was_
| about different people having different priorities.
| fsociety remarked (quite correctly) that there are a
| _large_ number of people who constantly feel the need to
| denigrate Macs, no matter the context--and you came in
| and said, basically, "That's not true. I have a Mac, and
| I don't like it very much."
|
| Were those your _words_? No, but it sure sounded like it
| was your _implication_. You didn 't just say they were
| overpriced (which would be a common complaint, but these
| days needs a lot more citation, given their extremely
| good performance per watt, and overall build quality).
| You said they were _ridiculously_ overpriced, which
| implies that no reasonable person could look at one and
| think it was worth buying.
|
| You came into a subthread that pointed out that _there
| are people who like to gratuitously hate on Macs_ , and
| you tried to paint it as being the opposite, _while_
| damning them with, at the very best, faint praise.
| alright_scowl wrote:
| > fsociety remarked (quite correctly) that there are a
| large number of people who constantly feel the need to
| denigrate Macs
|
| And in response I remarked (very accurately) that there's
| an even larger number of people who constantly feel the
| need to always gush over anything Mac. This very thread
| is full of such examples.
|
| > "That's not true. I have a Mac, and I don't like it
| very much."
|
| Misrepresenting much? I said it's an okay laptop. Gets
| the job done.
|
| > You said they were ridiculously overpriced, which
| implies that no reasonable person could look at one and
| think it was worth buying.
|
| That's true. I can get other okay laptops for perhaps
| half the price. But they won't be as sexy as Apples. They
| certainly don't have fanboys taking offense at someone
| saying they are just okay.
|
| > You came into a subthread
|
| I was the one that started the subthread, by daring to
| say that the M1 I use has a speaker as bad as any other
| laptop I used. Oh the horror.
| Kiro wrote:
| [dead]
| jacksgt wrote:
| 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.
| alanfranz wrote:
| Once upon a time this was called a "blog post".
| nicce wrote:
| You might like it even more when reading through elk.zone
|
| https://elk.zone/infosec.exchange/@marcan@treehouse.systems
|
| There is popup about the preview, but that might be acceptable.
| There is zen mode to remove all disturbances on right bottom.
| mrtksn wrote:
| 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.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > The content was produced for free and the distribution was
| handled by VCs
|
| And even that, content distribution was handled by a
| volunteer happy to chip in a few bucks to pay for shared
| hosting.
|
| Content distribution (and infrastructure in general) nowadays
| is cheaper than ever thanks to technological advances
| (today's entry-level MacBook is more powerful than a lot of
| _servers_ from 10 years ago).
|
| There is absolutely a way to distribute content for very
| cheap nowadays if you know how to - you just have to avoid
| the rent-seekers like cloud providers.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Everything is much more fun when it's paid by someone else,
| that's why the old web was so nice.
|
| What are you talking about? The old web was filled with ads.
| They just weren't tracking you every nanosecond of your life.
|
| Google's AdWords was launched in 2000. DoubleClick that
| Google acquired in 2008 was launched in _1995_. Ad exchanges
| are from 1998. And so on
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_online_advertising
| mrtksn wrote:
| > They just weren't tracking you every nanosecond of your
| life.
|
| Exactly.
|
| But only some of that was paid by ads.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > But only some of that was paid by ads.
|
| Ah yes. They were paid by altruists who had the foresight
| to know that 30 years later they will be able to track
| everyone and collect their dues.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Those who relied on making profits were decimated as VC
| funded user experience was much superior. It was an era
| of land-grab.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Those who relied on anything were decimated in the bubble
| of 2001.
|
| Also, you're pretending that all of those sites were
| making a profit, or operated under the assumption of
| making a profit. There was _a lot_ of money thrown at any
| and all internet companies by the end of 1990s. It 's
| just that the market was much smaller.
| makapuf wrote:
| 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 ?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > If I need more because my content is way popular, I guess
| a monetization scheme (asking for a tip) might cover it ?
|
| Hetzner will give you a powerful server for ~30 bucks/month
| and includes 20TB of bandwidth for free (and overages are
| charged at ~1$/TB, almost 90x less than AWS). That's enough
| to host and serve _a lot_ of content.
| mrtksn wrote:
| If you are not getting paid for your servers you are the
| VC/Angel.
| ysavir wrote:
| How does that make them the VC/Angel?
| mrtksn wrote:
| They provide the capital required for that venture.
| recursive wrote:
| So if I order lunch, am I providing the capital required
| for the venture of ordering lunch? Is there anything in
| the universe that's not venture capital?
|
| When all you know is a hammer...
| mrtksn wrote:
| No. If you are s 14 years who is into hobbits and you are
| writing a fan fiction, your mom is a venture capitalist
| when feeds you and gives you pocket money which you used
| to buy a domain. She can be a venture capitalist or angel
| investor depending on her expectations. I guess it also
| can be a case of racketeering if she does that you just
| shut up, then you are the VC investing in your own stuff
| with the money you extorted by being a really annoying
| kid :)
|
| Anyway, it doesn't matter. The gist is, someone else than
| the user paid for the experience without immediate
| expectation for profit from side channels and that's how
| we had free and awesome things.
| recursive wrote:
| Most of the time, it wasn't other people. People were
| paying for their own hosting for their own purposes, much
| like how I order lunch.
| mrtksn wrote:
| No, you miss the point. Because of those who were paying
| their own hosting the rest was able to have free and
| awesome stuff. The paying out of pocket to show your own
| stuff to other people was the act of funding a venture.
| Some ended up turning these into profitable businesses.
| recursive wrote:
| I just think it's weird calling hobbies "venture
| capital". But if that's your thing, at least now I
| understand it.
| zopa wrote:
| A bit of a difference in motivation between a hobbyist
| and a VC.
| eaplmx wrote:
| Agreed! Here you are more a patron or sponsor who's
| disinterestedly giving spare money for something you
| think is good for the rest of the people.
|
| Although the Angel investor expects a few shares of a
| company, I like the analogy of an 'angel sponsor'.
| ziftface wrote:
| I really hope you're right but I don't think it will play
| out that simply for mastodon. I have high hopes for it,
| hopefully these problems are solved but with this rate of
| growth, what will happen when there's a big political event
| that used to cripple Twitter back in the day? I don't think
| tips will cover it.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Mastodon (and the general "fediverse") is an inefficient
| disaster by design, but if you ignore that and go back to
| old-school forum software, your Raspberry Pi will be just
| fine for a few hundred _concurrent_ users (and way more
| for read-only traffic).
| eloisant wrote:
| No, all the bloggers I was reading on the old web were paying
| for their hosting a few bucks a month and no VC were
| involved.
|
| Some of them included ads but they were mostly in a sidebar.
| mrtksn wrote:
| They were paying for the costs? Then they were the VC. Some
| of them actually grew to be huge and wealthy.
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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)
| mrtksn wrote:
| The size of the capital doesn't change the reality of the
| financial structure.
| makapuf wrote:
| You equate VC with tracking and then equate VC with
| anyone that provides money whatever the intention. By
| that logic, you imply that anyone providing money
| (including a mom for his 14yo son) will track everyone
| and gather a lot of stats and push an app ? Remember
| WhatsApp did cost a few bucks a year and was self
| sufficient, it was bought by fb not because of cost of
| operation but to ensure market share.
| duckfruit wrote:
| On that vein, I recently joined home-barista, an old school
| web forum for coffee geeks.
|
| That site is seemingly frozen in time from the early 2000s.
| There are no trackers - there's no need, since it is already
| filled with a self selected group. The ads are just simple
| banners. And best of all it filled with a group of
| passionate, kind and helpful folks. A simpler site from a
| simpler time. One of my favorite haunts on the web.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Doesn't have an app
|
| It does have an app. See https://joinmastodon.org/apps for
| not only the official app, but also literally dozens of
| third-party apps.
| amluto wrote:
| 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 course it can't use V/I sense
| data to do understand the upcoming heat input.
|
| So, at best, one estimates the coil temperature and comes up with
| an upper bound on how much heat can be added over time t (either
| based on worst-case music, e.g. a 0dBFS square wave or based on
| the actual samples), and either allows the next group of samples
| to be sent to the amp or not.
|
| But this is all a tradeoff with real-time performance and battery
| life. You want t to be long to minimize performance impact and
| power consumption, especially if user code is involved. But you
| want t to be short to maximize the ability to play loud music,
| especially if you aren't looking at the actual upcoming waveform.
|
| And you don't want your speakers to burn out of you are doing
| something CPU intensive and your userspace daemon doesn't
| schedule.
|
| To me, this all suggests that an in-kernel solution could work a
| lot better. The kernel is involved in sending samples to the
| hardware anyway -- it has the opportunity to look at those
| samples _right then_ , calculate the integrated power (could be
| as simple as the sum of the squares or even just a constant!),
| and decide whether it's safe. And fetch the V/I sense data to
| figure out the status, and reduce the volume if it fails. And if
| the kernel code pushing samples to hardware stops running for
| whatever reason, the sound is inherently muted as long as the
| hardware isn't configured to loop '90's broken CD style.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Is this post part of a longer one? Because after reading it I
| still don't understand a thing.
|
| Did they mean it's done in software (i.e. not hardware)?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Software, surprisingly:
| https://github.com/chadmed/speakersafetyd/blob/main/src/type...
|
| I'm aware of hardware solutions that do the same thing.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Isn't it for Linux? I thought Macs use MacOS.
|
| Again I feel like I'm reading something out of context.
| wtallis wrote:
| I think the context that you're missing is that the author
| of the post is one of the main developers for the Asahi
| Linux project that is porting Linux to the Apple M1/M2
| family of Macs. They're trying to implement for Linux
| software support for all the Mac hardware capabilities that
| macOS already supports. Since the speaker safety model is
| apparently done in software under macOS, an equivalent
| needs to be reverse engineered and implemented for Linux in
| order for Linux to be able to use the speaker hardware as
| effectively as macOS does.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Some people like to run Linux on their Apple hardware
| because they like the quality of the hardware but don't
| like Apple's software decisions.
| Maursault wrote:
| So it's about control, the preference of reigning in Hell
| to serving in Heaven.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I get that, but I don't get why this is "[a] reason why
| Mac speakers sound better and louder than most". Because
| Macs' speakers sound great even in MacOS.
| alanfranz wrote:
| It's a mix of hardware and software. Hardware monitoring and
| software control, if I understand things correctly.
| wyager wrote:
| I've noticed that my M1 MBP provides a seemingly implausible
| degree of stereo width (the left and right channel sound as if
| they are at a physically more extreme angle relative to your head
| than they actually are) but only if you are in the right place
| relative to the laptop. Also, if you play a pure R tone, you will
| hear it in the L speaker (wlog). This leads me to suspect they
| are doing some phasing tricks to increase the perception of
| stereo (again, assuming you're in the right place relative to the
| laptop).
| kkielhofner wrote:
| 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 is the filing (priority) date and the grant
| (publish date).
|
| It's patents so it gets really complicated but essentially the
| later grant (after patent office/authority "review") more or less
| makes the effective date the priority date - which to complicate
| matters even further can actually be the filing date of a
| referenced provisional patent that (in the US) can be as long as
| 12 months before the non-provisional (real) patent filing.
|
| Clear as mud, right?
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| That's not a patent. That's a published version of a patent
| _application_.
|
| The patent has actually been granted thought. It's here:
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US9131302B2/
| kkielhofner wrote:
| It was the first result when I put together the right search
| terms to find it and shows granted. Good enough for me.
|
| If you can find any differences in the claims or figures I'd
| be interested.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| I'm not gonna go through and compare the wording, but the
| difference is that one set is enforceable and the other
| isn't.
| foobiekr wrote:
| 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 approaches are not
| available when a single approach is patent-walled off.
| brudgers wrote:
| 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 requirements and other
| streaming encodings.
|
| And why the threat of Apple's patent may be providing a moat.
| Like Dolby, except that licensing patents isn't a core
| revenue stream for Apple.
|
| [1] TFA doesn't cut a bright line between power and loudness
| within its argument. But that's a critical part of
| contemporary audio engineering in today's commercial music
| production.
| hn92726819 wrote:
| I don't know much about patents. Can you explain why this
| patent is avoided by other manufacturers, but other apple
| patents seem to be happily copied?
|
| For example, the Apple/Samsung saga, the notch, and I'm sure
| there are others
| kkielhofner wrote:
| It's a classic risk vs reward calculation. Basically "does
| this impact/benefit the user experience and therefore
| marketability and potential sales enough to justify
| potentially 'going to the mat' in court if they call us out
| on it". Where "going to the mat" is absurdly expensive patent
| litigation up to and including building an outdoor ice
| skating rink[0] (in TEXAS) to potentially influence jurors in
| Marshall, TX (a 22k person town which happens to be home of
| the Federal Eastern District of Texas - a court known to be
| very friendly to patent infringement suits, AKA a "rocket
| docket"[1]). Not only is the litigation and associated stunts
| like ice skating rinks expensive, if you lose there can be
| significant damages - like in the Apple vs Samsung case where
| Samsung lost and was ordered to pay over $1B in damages. Then
| you get to decide if you want to keep paying legal fees to
| appeal, etc. It's called the Apple/Samsung patent war because
| this stretched on for at least seven years - likely to the
| tune of 10s of millions or even 100s of millions of dollars
| in legal expenses. Then, when/if you lose, you're usually
| ordered to also pay the legal expenses of the other party.
|
| Apple vs Samsung was largely over key UI/UX components that
| are more or less standards for what users expect from a
| modern device. Samsung had to essentially calculate "do we
| try to work around these patents (and maybe get sued anyway)
| or offer a product in the marketplace that is markedly sub-
| standard vs a competitor product".
|
| Somewhat paradoxically, at the "startup scale" when I've
| dealt with patent prosecution (filing patents - terminology
| is kind of backwards) I've been specifically instructed by IP
| counsel not to do in-depth patent searches for
| existing/competing patents. If it can be proven you knowingly
| infringed on a patent the damages increase significantly
| because it can then be considered "willful infringement".
| Good IP counsel often offers a service that (essentially)
| puts up a little bit of a firewall between the "inventor" and
| this issue - the firm does searches you're not privy to and
| usually channels some information to you while not disclosing
| specifics of the patent. This communication has the benefit
| of being protected by attorney-client privilege which is
| almost impossible to pierce.
|
| For something like this I doubt many consumers are making a
| purchasing decision solely on what laptop speakers sound
| like. Most people don't really care, sure, it's a "nice to
| have" for your laptop speakers to sound better but from a
| sales and revenue standpoint the difference is likely
| minuscule.
|
| [0] - https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-south-korea-s-samsung-
| built-t...
|
| [1] - https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/patently-
| unfair/
| hgsgm wrote:
| Samsung and notch are maybe copies Apple's ridiculous design
| (and some functional software) patents that they reasonably
| believed would never hold up in court.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| This is another excellent point. The standard (traced back
| to Thomas Jefferson and in The Constitution) is that
| patents are intended to be granted on "inventions" that are
| "novel and non-obvious"[0]. Obviously, as shown in cases
| like this, that's highly subjective and as I've been
| educated, this all comes down to a jury (with the games of
| jury selection and all) - a bunch of random people off the
| street with no background or understanding of any of this -
| and that's just how the attorneys want it.
|
| In modern times "To promote the Progress of Science and
| useful Arts"[1] usually ends up having the opposite effect.
| Literally in The Constitution (a document from 1787) -
| Article I, Section 8, Clause 8.
|
| [0] - https://ipwatchdog.com/2021/03/05/balancing-
| innovation-compe...
|
| [1] - https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S
| 8-C8-1/...
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The Apple/Samsung saga was about design patents, which are a
| completely different beast.
|
| Things like the shape of the Coca-Cola bottle are under
| design patents and that's why Pepsi can't just 1:1 copy it
| without an expensive lawsuit.
| golergka wrote:
| TBH, this is exactly the kind of innovation that patents are
| intended for.
| kergonath wrote:
| > 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.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Sure, but as I've noted elsewhere if it goes to court it ends
| up in the hands of a jury. Let's just say that 12 random
| jurors off the street aren't exactly the HN crowd. In fact, I
| doubt a single HN user would ever make it on a jury for
| anything technical unless they lied or deliberately mislead
| counsel during juror questioning.
|
| "Juror number 7, what is your occupation?"
|
| "I'm a software developer..."
|
| "We move to dismiss this juror".
|
| In this case it could probably be argued for cause due to
| prejudice which means they can do it all day.
|
| A big part of the calculus here is banking on that.
| Nitrolo wrote:
| Are parents disputes decided by a jury in the US? I know we
| have a different system in Germany and don't have juries to
| begin with, but patent disputes are generally handled by
| specific courts here and, given how specific and technical
| these cases can be, I wouldn't trust twelve random people
| to decide them.
| counttheforks wrote:
| You're really spelling out how toxic and evil the american
| patent system is.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Out of curiosity, why would they not want to select someone
| who's a subject-matter expert? Is it regulatory capture or
| is there a more innocent reason?
| shagie wrote:
| People with expert knowledge on the jury bring additional
| information into the jury room that isn't presented in
| the court proceedings.
|
| ...
|
| Years ago, when I was on the jury for a OWI case one of
| the questions to the jury was "do you speak Spanish." I
| don't, I answered "no." I don't speak and haven't studied
| any languages derived from Spanish.
|
| Part of the case was about a defendant from Puerto Rico
| who wasn't responding to an officer who was a native
| Spanish speaker claiming that he couldn't understand that
| dialect. Note that this wasn't relevant to the case - it
| was trying to explain why the defendant wasn't responding
| to the officer.
|
| The question of Spanish didn't come up in jury
| deliberations.
|
| After the case, I noted that while I didn't speak
| Spanish, I did understand French and could read ancient
| latin and greek... and took linguistics... and my mother
| was fluent in Spanish and understood several dialects
| (and used that fluency in a professional capacity)
| including Puerto Rican (where she had lived for several
| years). The differences between the PR Spanish and
| Mexican Spanish are things like the word for the fruit
| "orange" is a "china" ( http://speakinglatino.com//wp-
| content/uploads/2012/09/Cartil... )... but we're getting
| to things like is it a water fountain? or drinking
| fountain? No - it's a bubbler ( https://www.reddit.com/r/
| MapPorn/comments/9010e8/what_do_you... ).
|
| This got a scowl from the public defender because I had
| beyond common knowledge that that line of questions of
| the officer about if he spoke PR Spanish was trying to
| catch him in something that he could come back to later
| (which he didn't).
|
| If the case had been decided on that he didn't understand
| the instructions of a different dialect (rather than he
| couldn't stand up, slurred his speech and had a strong
| oder of malt on his breath (note this was another bit
| that the public defender tried to bring into question as
| the officer said he smelled of alcohol which doesn't have
| a smell itself) my understanding of linguistics and
| language may have been grounds for disqualification and a
| mistrial.
|
| ---
|
| Subject matter expert evidence should be presented - not
| something that someone has more than a layman's
| understanding of being brought into the jury room (as
| that could also be wrong).
| hcks wrote:
| Lol, does Apple also owns a patent that prevents other
| manufacturers from making something else than pieces of plastic
| trash devices ?
| sbaiddn wrote:
| 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?
| analog31 wrote:
| 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/
| kkielhofner wrote:
| 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).
| zamadatix wrote:
| 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 not the general idea that's being
| patented. The patent itself cites many earlier patents
| which operate around the same general idea just with
| slightly different implementations on how the control
| process is fed and how it reacts.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Appreciate the clarification - like I said this is well
| outside my area of expertise and my eyes glazed over
| pretty quickly in reading but at this point we're
| borderline in semantics.
|
| Exactly. In this case it's a "process". Generally
| speaking my take is there's almost never entirely new
| process (or design or anything else) in any "invention" -
| humans have been at this for hundreds of years and
| there's almost nothing that's entirely new.
|
| I don't think I've ever seen a filing without tons of
| references.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I suppose the non-semantics point of everyone in this
| chain is: there is nothing about this patent from Apple
| that explains why using a dynamic temperature/power limit
| model for the speakers is uncommon in laptops. They are
| neither the first nor last to get a patent to do this,
| why then should it be the "real" reason most laptops
| don't?
| freejazz wrote:
| If its really this obvious, it should be trivial to get
| this patent knocked out.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| See my other comments about patents in practice. They
| don't matter until you end up in front of a jury (or
| settle with a troll, which is a different case). A jury
| comprised of 12 random people off the street,
| specifically selected by counsel to be as ignorant as
| possible on the subject matter at hand (easier to
| influence).
|
| My original point - this isn't enough of a distinguishing
| feature to drive sales and revenue for any manufacturer
| to risk that.
|
| Ok, you sold 1% more laptops because you have good
| speakers. Then Apple sues you and potentially wins
| damages on a larger percentage of ALL of your sales of
| that "infringing" product.
|
| Not worth it, not even close. Not even worth it to try to
| circumvent and still risk getting sued.
| freejazz wrote:
| Patents do matter, you can get a patent knocked out at
| several phases in litigation prior to actually arriving
| at a trial. That's not even assuming the defendant goes
| and gets a stay to IPR the patent.
| zamadatix wrote:
| 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 just care about crappy
| laptop speaker sound enough to write a driver modeling
| each device and speaker combination for a significantly
| wider variety of shipping hardware. But I suppose it's
| impossible to know without asking every manufacturer.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| 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
| their core market/demographic anyway.
| [deleted]
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| 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)
| ofrzeta wrote:
| I was expecting to learn more about the hardware (planar magnetic
| speakers as far as I know). There's surprisingly little info on
| this.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Ok, buggy software might explain why my M1 speakers, and the
| motherboard had to be replaced within a year?
| [deleted]
| zamnos wrote:
| 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?
| jbverschoor wrote:
| 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
| tiborsaas wrote:
| I've given this 3 reads and I still don't understand what he
| wants to say and I'm producing music since 2001, not a
| professional level, but still :) Is it a software or a hardware
| trick by Apple? I'm totally confused :)
|
| I've assumed that Macbook Pros sound great because Apple put
| decent speakers into it and the alu-body picks up resonances much
| better than plastic ones.
| graderjs wrote:
| 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 first was very
| fucking cool!
| [deleted]
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| 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.
| kalleboo wrote:
| 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.
| lukas099 wrote:
| This would not matter to the parent poster listening to
| Spotify, which is not a Dolby Atmos source.
| audiothrowaway wrote:
| 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
| matthew-wegner wrote:
| 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.
| lukas099 wrote:
| 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)?
| singularity2001 wrote:
| The speakers of the mac mini sounds absolutely horrendous!
| Mizza wrote:
| My Mac speakers sound like shit because running a loud filter
| sweep in VCV Rack will break them and make them sound buzzy
| forever.
| bob1029 wrote:
| 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.
| viraptor wrote:
| That sounds like something a warranty repair should cover.
| krono wrote:
| It's so frustrating even pursuing that with Apple for these
| very common issues. They'll gaslight you with the friendliest
| of words and nicest of smiles until you just give up and
| bugger off for good.
| creddit wrote:
| Meta comment: the UI of mastodon is really bad.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Can't speak of other elements, but the color combination is
| definitely burning my eyes.
| nyadesu wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's bad, it looks above average for an open
| source project but definitely could use some improvements. What
| I hate about it is that it's not plain-looking (like HN, which
| has its own charm!) or very polished (like twitter, instagram,
| yooutube)
| golergka wrote:
| > 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.
| capableweb wrote:
| Or it's just a limiter.
| golergka wrote:
| Limiter is merely a very fast brickwall compressor.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| 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
| golergka wrote:
| Well, it is an original implementation, but you have to
| admit, it sounds pretty similar to optical compressor, just
| with temperature sensors instead of photocells.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| I'm definitely not trying to argue the validity of the
| patent, just saying that if you're trying to argue against
| the (beyond broken) patent system there are far better
| egregious examples of completely ridiculous patents that
| have been granted.
| golergka wrote:
| Oh, please don't get me wrong -- I'm in awe of this
| system and definitely think it's worth the patent! I just
| pointing out that it is essentially the same overall
| principle, but it doesn't make it any less awesome.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Tbf, there are varying levels in complexity, and it is near
| impossible to limit in a way that is foolproof without severly
| crippling volume.
| jesprenj wrote:
| Came here to say that. It's essential in every step of music
| production and playback, but mostly available to end users
| either on relatively expensive sound mixing stations in the
| entertainment industry or under ambiguous names, like "enchance
| sound" or "sound safety" for home usage.
| thefz wrote:
| IDK, it pales in comparison to any decent monitor speaker. Even
| the cheapest.
|
| Laptops unfortunately always sounds "from inside a cardboard
| box".
| newaccount74 wrote:
| 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.
| oblak wrote:
| > 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).
|
| That's rather hyperbolic. I think superlatives such as
| "fantastic" and "extremely good" should be reserved for stuff
| that's truly exceptional. I have a 14 inch M1 MBP and yes,
| the speakers are surprisingly good for what they are, but
| comparing them to monitors tells me your love for this
| product is clouding your judgement. Or that your hearing
| isn't all that great.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| If you look at my post history you'll find comments
| complaining about the shitty webcam and the poor software
| quality. I just happen to think the speakers are one of the
| best parts of this machine, and when someone compares them
| to a "cardboard box" I felt like hyperbole was warranted.
|
| I'm not sure if the 14" sounds the same, I've never heard
| it.
|
| Anyway, these speakers are the first laptop speakers where
| I don't hear any obvious distortions. I haven't done any
| listening tests, but subjectively these speakers feel
| closer to monitors (at low volume) than to other laptop
| speakers.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > 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 < 100hz.
|
| 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.
| hgsgm wrote:
| And they have slower chips and smaller screens than deaktops,
| and lack ergonomics keyboards. Useless products.
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| 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. If is some cheap
| BenQ, not sure the exact model. The Mac speakers on the other
| hand sound good even with the lid closed! They sound miles and
| miles better than the external screen speakers to the point
| where I use them over the screen ones.
| thefz wrote:
| 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_.
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| > _Please don 't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including
| at the rest of the community._
|
| > _When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead
| of calling names._
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Perhaps you're being downvoted because saying "tiny laptop
| speakers worse than big, expensive, dedicated studio
| monitor speakers" doesn't add anything to the discussion?
|
| Any 14"+ Apple laptop since 2019 sounds _much_ better than
| any other laptop that 's ever been in the market. The 2019
| 15" and all 16" models even more so.
|
| They're so good that before covid we stopped using the
| Jabras at the office for confs and started using the
| laptops.
|
| They're good enough for lightweight music playing and even
| watching some TV.
|
| No, they don't compare to monitor speakers. No, they don't
| compare to my 7.1.4 surround system. No, they don't compare
| to any decent room-sized stereo or surround setup. They are
| still pretty great.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _They 're good enough for lightweight music playing and
| even watching some TV._
|
| This is such a low bar.
|
| I have a 2019 16" MBP. The speakers are good _for a
| laptop_. That 's it. I'm connecting the headphones or
| external speakers for any listening requirement. A $30
| pair of Logitechs destroys the built-in speakers.
|
| > _No, they don 't compare to my 7.1.4 surround system._
|
| I'm having trouble reconciling the number of people in
| the thread who will do things like implement an entire
| Atmos home theatre setup (which is awesome, but in a lot
| of ways _excessive_ ), and yet are saying "MBP speakers
| are all you need!"
| cassianoleal wrote:
| I'm trying to understand which of these is true:
|
| - You can't interpret text; or
|
| - You just don't like anyone who has anything good to say
| about Apple or their products; or
|
| - You're just not very smart at all.
|
| > This is such a low bar.
|
| Low bar for what?
|
| > The speakers are good for a laptop.
|
| We're talking about laptops. That's the whole point!
|
| > I'm having trouble reconciling the number of people in
| the thread who will do things like (...) and yet are
| saying "MBP speakers are all you need!"
|
| Who's doing that?
| vardump wrote:
| M1 air, 13, 14 or 16 inch?
| sarabob wrote:
| Studio monitor speaker (speaker for monitoring what you're
| creating, eg https://www.musicradar.com/news/the-best-studio-
| monitors-and...), not speaker-in-a-monitor
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| Oooooh, whoosh. Sorry! Yeah in that comparison of course
| laptop speakers pale in comparison. My girlfriend has a
| home studio and I wouldn't dream of comparing the sound of
| her monitors to my laptop speakers. But I wouldn't expect
| them to be comparable. In the context of the post talking
| about laptop speakers I think you're better off using the
| built in M1 speakers over almost any other kind of a built
| in speakers like a TV or external monitor speaker or a
| cheap set of external speakers not meant for audio
| production.
| branko_d wrote:
| There is a difference between "monitor speaker" and "speaker
| built-into the monitor". The parent might have had the former
| in mind.
|
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_monitor:
|
| _Among audio engineers, the term monitor implies that the
| speaker is designed to produce relatively flat (linear) phase
| and frequency responses._
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| Yep I misunderstood their comment completely. I think
| you're right and that's what they had in mind. In which
| case they're right but I think are making a comparison that
| is not exactly useful.
| [deleted]
| fnord123 wrote:
| This is curious reading since my Intel MacBook speakers crackled
| all the time as it grounded through me.
| esperent wrote:
| Before anyone jumps in to say the issue is grounding and that
| it's your fault for having bad wiring: ground wires are not
| installed by default in all countries.
|
| If you live in one of these countries, in rented accomodation,
| there's not much you can do about this.
|
| And yet, most electronics are fine. It seems like MacBooks are
| some of the worst though, giving you shocks and crackling
| audio.
| eastbound wrote:
| No grounding on Mac adapters by default, they're only 2-pin.
| The 3-pin is available separately.
| hoschicz wrote:
| Oh so this is why I feel a slight tingling every time I
| touch my Mac while it's charging! I was looking for this
| info for quite some time, thanks
| cassianoleal wrote:
| That sounds like a QC issue. Have you sent it in for repairs?
| Lalabadie wrote:
| 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.
| kalleboo wrote:
| The only time I've ever had the problem, across Intel and
| M1 Pro Macs, is with the iOS Simulator open, so I assumed
| it was an OS mixing bug related to some magic the simulator
| does
| eimrine wrote:
| The article gives an answer to "louder" question but not "better"
| one.
|
| As far as I have understood the screen after the text, Mac
| speakers are not 1-way but at least 2-way (every channel contains
| a speaker for bass and a speaker for higher frequences). That is
| the answer about quality of sound, there are no speakers which
| can play both highs and lows in nice quality.
| harby2000 wrote:
| 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.
| 2636381321 wrote:
| 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?
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| There are and always have been lots of ways for malware to
| damage hardware.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| "Modification can lead to danger." has been an excuse used
| against end-user modification for as long as the concept of
| legal liability has existed.
|
| It's why most things have "warranty void if removed" stickers
| and warnings against messing around all over the place. Once
| anything is intentionally moved out of spec, the manufacturer
| wants nothing to do with it (and rightfully so).
| bluedino wrote:
| 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...
| hgsgm wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| klausa wrote:
| Sidenote: on recent(those with T2 and newer, so ~2018)
| laptops this doesn't merely "muffle" the mic, there's a
| physical hardware disconnect happening with the lid closed
| [1].
|
| [1]: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/hardware-
| microphone...
| avalys wrote:
| This hasn't happened since Apple ditched x86 processors.
| ericpauley wrote:
| What year is this? I have not heard of these issues
| substantially affecting any modern ARM Mac.
| lostlogin wrote:
| To go the whole distance the wrong way, you could make nearly
| all of it external.
|
| All the peripherals, wifi and Bluetooth on a USB dock, and run
| the monitor off a thunderbolt GPU. Think you'd then just be
| using the two ports and the CPU. The ultra non-portable laptop.
| brundolf wrote:
| Love this PS:
|
| > This post brought to you by gdb and grep -a, because after
| typing all that out as a quote toot and deciding that nah, I
| wanted it standalone, I clicked the "x" next to the quote box
| (which implies removing the quote association) and that didn't
| just cancel the quote, it deleted all the text.
|
| > So I attached gdb to the Firefox content process hosting this
| tab, took a core dump, and grepped it for the lost text. I wasn't
| about to write all that again from scratch.
| 650 wrote:
| Anywhere to learn more about doing this kind of stuff?
| worldsavior wrote:
| Experience.
| pitched wrote:
| For a quick starting point, try gcore[1]. Open the file it
| pops out into your favourite editor and hope that search
| works.
|
| For gentler introduction, look for CTF sites. The one that
| gets recommended most is tryhackme.com. There are a bunch of
| great ones though.
|
| 1 - https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/gcore.1.html
| jasoneckert wrote:
| A month ago, Hector did an amazing talk on Asahi that was
| essentially was a talk on "What it takes to make an open source
| project work": community, tooling, considering users
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COlvP4hODpY).
|
| And one of the examples he gave regarding "considering users" was
| why they chose to disable speaker support until they could ensure
| user safety, as well as ensure a quality sound experience.
|
| When discussing open source projects and communities in academia,
| we often try to categorize every aspect, as well as focus on
| projects that failed and why. I try to do the opposite and
| instead focus on what worked and why - and the Asahi project is a
| stellar example of how to do an open source project well on every
| level.
| retskrad wrote:
| I 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.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Yeah, shopping for non-Apple laptops is basically a big game
| of "choose your caveats". That's fine if you only need one
| particular quality of the laptop in question to be good, but
| I think most people are best served by well-roundedness.
|
| Your chances at getting something somewhat well rounded
| improve if you get up into MacBook price ranges, but even in
| that range there are a lot of machines with weirdly
| lackluster aspects.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Laptop manufacturers are absolutely terrible in this
| aspect. They flood the market with confusing models so they
| can push expensive, overpriced models around and keep
| minimal stock so sales are often at full price.
|
| If you need a good laptop, you need to look towards the
| professional line. Not too professional ("workstation"
| laptops) but also not too amateurish (the cheaper laptops
| seemingly aimed at small business).
|
| Thinkpad and similar product lines often deliver excellent
| value, especially in bulk, as long as you don't go for
| their bottom-of-the-barrel configurations.
| brookst wrote:
| Curious what beats the M2 CPU for a lower price?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Many Intel laptops beat the M2 in pure CPU performance for
| several hundred euros less, in some models for almost half
| the price. The i7 12650H drains your battery much faster
| (and hotter) but beats the M2 in most real world
| applications. You also get other benefits (like easily
| upgradeable and cheaper RAM) for heavy workloads that make
| the price difference even greater.
|
| Sadly, AMD has fallen behind Intel again, but their chips
| often pose just as good a performance-per-euro advantage.
| traveler01 wrote:
| Curious to know, which competition caught up Apple on software?
| newaccount74 wrote:
| 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.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Mountain Lion please, 3 years in a row.
|
| My new battle is that Apple Mail search just stops working.
| Quitting and reopening doesn't do anything. When it works,
| it's almost like crafting the ultimate regex at times.
| blackhaz wrote:
| I still don't get it why, because they drive them past the
| nominal volume limit?
|
| MacBooks definitely sound much better than anything else I've
| tried. Just bought a new ThinkPad P14s and despite featuring the
| Dolby logo, speakers there are just unusable - I can barely
| understand words in YouTube videos sometimes, and it's not
| related to volume. (Still using T430 for bedtime YouTube.)
| bayindirh wrote:
| Because they both build tuned and big enclosures into their
| speaker assemblies, and also use the whole body of the device
| as an acoustic chamber. That's why.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| MacBooks have margin so there is room for engineering time.
|
| Also, companies like Lenovo care about their primary customer -
| enterprise. Apple designs for the end user first.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Is there anything that's made better for the enterprise
| market?
|
| Network switches and wifi access points come to mind, and
| that's it?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Lwkl summed it up well. A great example is an HP z laptop -
| good build quality, sort of the equivalent to an old T
| series thinkpad.
|
| With two Phillips screwdrivers, you can disassemble and
| replace most parts within 15m.
|
| When I did this work, the other key thing was OEMs would
| guarantee image/driver compatibility for 4 years. I don't
| think they do that anymore, but the hardware is very stable
| - consumer PC hardware will often have variance based on
| cost and supply chain.
|
| Enterprise doesn't want surprises and cares about total
| cost. So keeping it boring and predictable rules the day.
| Depending on scale, repairs are important because at some
| point it's much cheaper pay for service by the drink vs
| warranty.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > A great example is an HP z laptop - good build quality,
| sort of the equivalent to an old T series thinkpad.
|
| Last year I abandoned a low spec z laptop day one of
| getting given it at work. The trackpad alone was so poor
| that the laptop wasn't usable without a mouse. I am a
| longtime Mac user but I don't think I was being snobby or
| difficult.
|
| I use a MacBook and have windows in a VM when needed.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's a great point. I'm always baffled by touchpads...
| does apple have some secret formula? Their touchpads are
| consistently excellent.
|
| Other vendors vary dramatically, even between models.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| It's the magic sauce of software and hardware
| integration. Also the hardware is just bonkers.
|
| I thought for the longest time that the whole trackpad
| clicked when you pressed down on it. Nope, it's just a
| taptic engine hidden in there. If you turn off the haptic
| click, it's just a flat pane of glass.
|
| Then there's the palm detection, I've used Macbooks for
| almost a decade for work and I can't remember when was
| the last time I had a misclick on the trackpad when I was
| typing. I did have a ton of issues with Dell and Lenovo
| laptops. On Lenovos I just used the red nub and disabled
| the touchpad from BIOS =)
| lwkl wrote:
| Laptops for the enterprise markets are better for the
| enterprise market.
|
| They are often relatively easy to repair (at least for the
| most common repairs). They offer 5 years and longer
| warranty contracts with on-site repairs. They offer driver
| and software package for automated deployments and more.
|
| Most of these things are not important for the consumer
| market but very important for the enterprise market. There
| isn't a product that is the perfect fit for all markets.
| scrlk wrote:
| Are you using Windows or Linux on your P14s? Lenovo relies a
| lot on software processing to make ThinkPad speakers sound
| reasonable; without the drivers + configuration UI installed,
| they sound tinny and horrible.
|
| On Windows, the EQ settings can be tweaked if you have the
| Lenovo audio drivers installed along with the "Dolby Access"
| UWP app.
|
| Not sure if something equivalent exists on Linux.
| blackhaz wrote:
| Actually, FreeBSD. This makes sense. :-D
| odiroot wrote:
| I don't think this is always the case. My old T460p had crappy
| speakers that were facing downwards (leveraging flat surfaces).
| My newer T14 G1 and X1C G9 have great speakers. I usually have
| them at ~55%, never more than 75%.
|
| In the end, these are just laptop speakers. I wouldn't listen
| to music on them anyway.
| sarabob wrote:
| It's because "volume limit" is fuzzy. It's more like cpu turbo
| boost - if you put a lot of frequency energy into the speakers
| they will overheat, but not instantly. Most vendors just say
| "In worst case (square wave) you can shove 2W continuous energy
| into the speakers and they'll probably be ok", but this is
| saying "you can spike more energy into the tweeters/woofers for
| a short time, but they'll heat up. Make sure they don't go over
| 140C. Oh, and by the way, my woofers and tweeters have these
| gains, so you can balance them properly rather than just
| guessing"
|
| If you look at Marcan's video stream you can see how the system
| watches the temperatures of the coils
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjuYJjkGhRo&t=22214s
| pjc50 wrote:
| > why, because they drive them past the nominal volume limit?
|
| Yes. For almost everyone almost all of the time, louder=better
| (until you get clipping or you hit uncomfortable levels of dB
| at the ear). In this case, there's a safety system that
| prevents the speakers overheating and self-destructing, which
| allows them to be louder most of the time.
| kilianinbox wrote:
| Actually, I did indeed blow out the left speaker on my back then
| new MacBook Pro late 2016 - no tweaks to the hardware or
| software. It happened while I was experimenting with Ableton and
| the synth operator. I think I held a pure sine tone at either
| 66.6 Hz or 82.222222 Hz for an extended period at near-maximum
| volume, possibly with some frequency modulation. Sadly, the
| speaker became permanently distorted as an aftermath of that
| little mishap.
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