[HN Gopher] Triforce - a beamformer for Apple Silicon laptops
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Triforce - a beamformer for Apple Silicon laptops
Author : tosh
Score : 397 points
Date : 2025-03-24 14:45 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (crates.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (crates.io)
| pvg wrote:
| Github repo https://github.com/chadmed/triforce
| derhuerst wrote:
| blog post with the background story why this was created:
| https://asahilinux.org/2025/03/progress-report-6-14/#is-this...
| boesboes wrote:
| > Much like with the speakers, Apple are trying way too hard to
| be fancy here, and implement an adaptive beamformer in userspace
| to try and isolate the desired signal from background noise.
|
| Might be fancy, but it does make for surpisingly good audio from
| a laptops.
| p_l wrote:
| Honestly, with speakers it was mainly a patent avoidance thing
| (patent on essentially the same thing but done with dedicated
| hardware, doing it with software on "application processor"
| bypassed the patent claims)
|
| A lot of similar stuff is done in firmware on x86 laptops, to
| the point that both AMD and Intel now share considerable
| portion of the stack, with both using Xtensa cores for DSP,
| with Sound Open Firmware as SDK. When I use built-in microphone
| array on my laptop, it's parsed through the DSPs
| "transparently" to end user.
|
| But technically you can load your own firmware there.
| foobiekr wrote:
| If it was just patent avoidance why aren't there any non-
| apple laptops either their sound quality? Both the
| microphones and the speakers are some of the best audio I've
| ever encountered.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Aren't there? I haven't had any trouble with background
| noise in calls from my ThinkPad, which also does some
| microphone array trickery as far as I can tell.
| Unfortunately the drivers for Linux are nowhere near as
| good so the extra processing the Intel driver does isn't
| useful for my day to day experience, but I've never had any
| quality issues.
|
| Apple does have some excellent audio engineers for the
| speakers, although these days the difference isn't as stark
| as it was five or ten years ago.
|
| Of course you need to get a good Windows laptop to get any
| such quality, and many people and companies seem to only
| bother spending money on premium laptops if they're made by
| Apple.
| p_l wrote:
| Is it? I mean, compared to some laptops where I explicitly
| was not interested in paying extra for audio, sure.
| Especially with them being older than "standard" presence
| of audio coprocessor on board.
|
| Compared to the two new-ish AMD laptops? For the rare use
| case that warrants using built in speakers and mic, I see
| no real difference. Maybe latest macs are better, but...
| Usually the only use of built in speakers and mic are as
| last chance backup, or watching movies in bad conditions.
| Otherwise it's always a proper headset or standalone
| speakers
| pabs3 wrote:
| Usually you can't load your own SoF firmware, on most
| hardware it has to be signed by Intel, with exceptions like
| Chromebooks, where you have to sign it with a "community" key
| that is publicly available. There was talk of a way for
| device owners to add keys, but that isn't implemented yet.
|
| https://github.com/thesofproject/sof/issues/5814
| sintax wrote:
| "Time Domain Fixed Beamformer (TDFB)" -- https://thesofprojec
| t.github.io/latest/algos/tdfb/time_domai... might be relevant
| here.
| montag wrote:
| Is it the same story with the Apple touchpad? Is the fancy
| palm rejection implemented completely in software?
| p_l wrote:
| No idea - audio just happens to be something I once looked
| into because claims about superiority of apple software
| solution on M-chip macbooks to the speaker quality made me
| look more in depth.
| extr wrote:
| It's not just good, I found it to be way better than a
| standalone shotgun mic connected via USB. I researched this for
| WFH and found a lot of people saying you were going to spend
| hundreds to replicate the quality in a more "professional" mic
| setup. Super impressive.
| mmastrac wrote:
| As someone looking to replicate it from a pro mic setup, what
| do people recommend?
|
| I've been trying to record audio in my noisy server room but
| only deepfilternet is able to deal with the fan noise in the
| background.
| extr wrote:
| Biggest thing is you need a nice mic that's very close to
| your face, like you might see on a twitch stream. Good
| noise isolation via a directional mic off-camera is quite
| difficult/expensive apparently.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I bought a rode wireless mic which definitely helped. It
| gives deepfilternet enough good signal:noise to work
| reasonably well, but I was hoping there was an even
| better solution.
| schrijver wrote:
| A lot of dialogue in movies is dubbed for this very
| reason, it's very hard to not pick up noise. What you can
| deal with is how close the mic is to you (which is why
| news reporters rely on hand held mics, not just the boom
| mike) and the pattern of the mic: a cardoid, hypercardoid
| or shotgun mic facing the opposite direction of the noise
| source would pick up less than an omnidirectional one
| (which is why the mics you see in studios are not used on
| a loud stage--not only are they fragile and expensive,
| they also tend to be omnidirectional).
| crazygringo wrote:
| There's definitely an ADR (dubbing) component to movies,
| but it's not very much these days. (In comparison to
| decades ago.)
|
| Instead, sound engineers spend weeks cleaning up spoken
| dialog by hand in spectrogram editors. It's honestly
| astounding the magic they can do, but it's also labor-
| intensive and therefore expensive. They're literally
| individually EQ-ing every vowel, splicing consonants from
| one word to another... it's wild.
| snozolli wrote:
| Does it record a fixed point, or does it do something fancy
| like using the camera to attempt tracking the user's
| movement? Just curious, and I don't have access to a modern
| Mac. The article seems to imply that it's focusing on a fixed
| point.
| extr wrote:
| No idea, I believe it's just a fixed point. Personally I
| use it while sitting in front of my Mac about 1-2 feet from
| my face. I've done tests, it's better than every other form
| of audio input I have available, including standalone
| shotgun mic, Airpods Max, Airpods Pro V2, etc.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Indeed. I can't help but think that anyone thinking Apple is
| trying _too_ hard to be fancy on something like "audio quality
| from microphone in a laptop" doesn't quite grasp what Apple's
| about.
|
| There are many advantages to vertical integration as regards
| end-user-experience.
| swyx wrote:
| ok noob here - what can i use this thing for? a better desktop-
| only voice app?
|
| is there a reason apple hasn't exposed a higher level api for
| this given the hardware (mic array) looks like it's already
| sufficient in macs?
| kfarr wrote:
| Looks like the ability to use MacBook mic when not using Macos
| everfrustrated wrote:
| Apple did it as a software function so it's not in hardware,
| hence this implementation for people wanting to run
| (presumably) Asahi Linux.
| Aissen wrote:
| It's a component of Asahi Linux. It's integrated and enabled by
| default if you have the right laptop.
| rogerbinns wrote:
| This is how Apple addressed audio hardware and do something
| similar for speakers. Instead of trying to make speakers that
| have the desired frequency response or microphones that produce
| the desired signal, they let the analog hardware do whatever it
| does.
|
| Then in software they use digital signal processing. For
| speakers they modify what gets sent to the hardware so that the
| actual output then does match the frequency response, and for
| the microphones they do this work to extract the desired
| signal.
|
| If Linux addressed the speakers as is, you would get unpleasant
| sound, and if it read the microphones as is, it would get a lot
| of noise. That is why Asahi had to add digital signal
| processing to the audio input and output, to get the "correct"
| audio.
|
| It does mean the processing is specific to the analogue audio
| hardware in each of the different Mac models.
|
| The processing could be done in additional hardware, but why
| bother when you have a very good CPU that can do the work.
| codedokode wrote:
| > For speakers they modify what gets sent to the hardware so
| that the actual output then does match the frequency response
|
| As I understand, this is not a magic pill: it probably won't
| help to pull out frequencies which are suppressed by 30-40 dB
| and I assume that if the frequency response graph is too wavy
| (lot of narrow peaks and dips), it won't help either.
|
| Also, you need to have calibration files to use this method,
| right?
| cship2 wrote:
| Interesting, does that means Mac speakers may be great for
| certain sounds, but not others.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I mean, Apple uses high quality speakers to begin with, as
| far as laptops go. I'm sure they're not making 40 dB
| corrections, that would be ginormous.
|
| Yes, I would be very surprised if they weren't using
| specific calibrations for each model. That's pretty basic.
| grayhatter wrote:
| your question was non specific so guessing a bit at what you're
| asking, because some of it is already answered in the docs...
| but conceptually it's similar how gps triangulation works, but
| in the other direction, (information flows from the source
| point, speaker in this case, to the mic array) and with audio
| waves instead of rf waves. Each mic will have a slightly
| different view of the audio coming in, and using the timing
| between them, you can use the wave form that one mic records to
| figure out what's to early or too late to be audio from
| directly in front of the laptop. And then delete that audio,
| leaving just audio from the speaker directly in front of the
| laptop.
|
| eg
|
| A ------ MIC1 --- B --- MIC2 ------ C
|
| any sound coming from A, will be picked up by MIC1 well before
| MIC2, same for sounds coming from C. If you delete that audio
| from the income waveform, you have beam forming. And thus much
| better audio noise filtering.
|
| And as it says in the link, Apple decided to implement this is
| software, not hardware, so you'd need to reimplement it if
| you're not using macos.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| I can't speak for this implementation, but on MacOS, the
| beamforming is amazing. When used in a noise office or cafe
| environment it eliminates background noise to an extent I can
| always tell if a colleague is using it or their worse headphone
| mic.
| bustling-noose wrote:
| I was sitting at a Starbucks next to a VERY noisy street on a
| google meet call on an M1 Air with usb-c AirPods (the cheap 19$
| one) and I asked the person on the other end if they can hear
| me at all. To my surprise they couldn't hear any noise just my
| voice. No idea which part in the whole setup achieved this but
| I feel like stuff like AI and all have some applications that
| can blow you away. Not putting the damn thing in everything!
| gerad wrote:
| That could definitely be Google Meet. I think it does some
| pretty fancy AI background noise reduction.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Due to some unfortunate circumstances I had a customer call
| on Google Meet once while walking across Paris. I ware
| barely understandable while holding the earphones' mic in
| front of my mouth...
|
| Good hardware definitely beats software trying to make
| something out of nothing: can't make directionality out of
| 1 mic, so Google Meet couldn't filter out background noise
| in that situation. Though it didn't help that these USB-C
| DACs seem to all be terrible (I tried several with the best
| findable reviews) compared to any old headphone jack where
| the device's internal DAC just worked
| pja wrote:
| In that situation you're better off using Meet audio only
| & holding the phone as if doing a video call - the
| background noise cancellation modern phones do is very
| impressive but it only really works if you use the phone
| as a phone & hold it up to your ear / mouth.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Yeah, maybe I should have forfeited being on video for
| the sake of audio, didn't think it would be this bad. I
| do attribute at least half the problem to the removal of
| headphone jacks though, I don't remember this being that
| big a deal with the regular DAC in any old phone
| crazygringo wrote:
| For sure. The Apple hardware is going to make your voice
| sound better/richer/clearer to begin with, and then Meet's
| AI is great at removing background noises entirely.
|
| In comparison, if you're on Meet with a crappy mic, it will
| still remove background noise, but your voice will still
| sound crappy. I.e. like a crappy mic in a quiet room.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| For the software to perform beamforming it must be provided the
| discrete microphone inputs, as opposed to being provided some
| sort of pre-mixed feed. As such, why is Apple "trying way too
| hard to be fancy here" if you can just use one of those mics? Or
| is the alternative that they do the "beamforming" in hardware
| regardless of the OS?
| p_l wrote:
| Avoiding extra coprocessor and/or avoiding patent dispute like
| they did with speakers (which differ from a H-K patent by not
| having a discrete chip implementing it)
| bri3d wrote:
| > if you can just use one of those mics?
|
| They're extremely omnidirectional and very sensitive. With a
| single mic with no beamforming you get basically all of the
| sounds from every part of the room, including and especially
| horribly loud sounds from (eg.) the keyboard and mouse.
|
| Apple selected their microphones based on the constraints their
| system had (beam formed array) rather than the "usual" laptop
| microphone which is physically not very sensitive and highly
| directional towards the front of the laptop, and in turn, those
| microphones are not particularly useful without beam forming.
|
| Other laptops with beamformed arrays simply don't expose the
| raw mics to userland, by doing the beamforming in firmware, but
| this of course comes with its own set of issues.
| com2kid wrote:
| > Other laptops with beamformed arrays simply don't expose
| the raw mics to userland
|
| Not always true, back in the Windows XP days (!!!) some
| laptops would expose the array to software and let the user
| configure where the mics record from.
|
| It is unfortunate that user control has been polished out of
| modern systems in exchange for "it just kind of works".
| amelius wrote:
| It would be great if this was implemented in a way that also
| other manufacturers can easily start building mic arrays such
| that it would make them immediately useful.
| TheDong wrote:
| I would be surprised if Apple didn't have patents on their mic
| array, meaning that another manufacturer would ideally prefer
| if their setup is different and incompatible to reduce the
| chance of accidental patent infringement.
|
| I'd search to see, but reading patents is an info-hazard which
| increases your chance of infringing, so I've quit reading them
| entirely.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Golly isn't IP great
| amelius wrote:
| Maybe they can still install the array, and we can simply
| "apt-get install illegal-package".
|
| But all joking aside, there is a tremendous amount of
| literature on the mathematics of beamforming. I'd be
| surprised if any of it is patented in a way that isn't
| circumventable.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Yes, I'm sure they have some patents because that's what big
| companies do/have to do. But the basic idea has been around
| for a long time, not just in audio but also in microwave
| space/domain. So I'm sure there's plenty of prior art.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Maybe they're doing something new, but beamforming microphone
| arrays can be found in just about any brand of laptop if you
| go high end enough.
|
| I do think most such devices will present themselves as less
| capable than they actually are (I.E. just a stereo input) for
| maximum OS compatibility, but the technique isn't Apple
| exclusive as far as I know.
| internetter wrote:
| > beamforming microphone arrays can be found in just about
| any brand of laptop if you go high end enough.
|
| Are you sure? I've never heard a laptop microphone better
| than the MacBook. Maybe they do beamform and there's other
| issues, but
| wbl wrote:
| There is a customer who has deployed beamforming microphones
| for decades. They do however have a somewhat different goal
| and medium.
| pzo wrote:
| > the microphone array found in the following Apple Silicon
| laptops: > MacBook Pro 13" (M1/M2) > MacBook Air 13" (M1/M2) >
| MacBook Pro 14" (M1 Pro/Max, M2 Pro/Max) > MacBook Pro 16" (M1
| Pro/Max, M2 Pro/Max) > MacBook Air 15" (M2)
|
| Does it mean M2/M3 don't have similar array of microphones or
| rather not tested?
|
| I'm even curious if this is only supported on Linux or MacOS as
| well - not sure if apple provides dedicated microphone stream for
| each mic?
| skygazer wrote:
| asahi Linux doesn't yet support m3 and m4 processors.
| monocasa wrote:
| They list M2 devices. M3 is just not supported by Asahi Linux,
| so not being listed is just orthogonal to if M3 has any mics
| like this.
|
| MacOS has its own software deep within the system for handling
| this; it's only exposed as a normal microphone to application
| software.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| It's made just for Asahi Linux. MacOS does some very similar
| beamforming math behind the scenes, so it just presents you
| with a single unified mic.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| I think the title should say "for asahi linux", else it's
| misleading.
|
| of course Apple has this implemented.
| rob74 wrote:
| Well, if it's available on crates.io, I guess nobody will think
| that it's from Apple. Also, it _could_ conceivably be used in
| other software besides Asahi too...
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| narrator: it wasn't. :)
| vulcan01 wrote:
| Could also be used by folks running OpenBSD on their M1
| Macs.
| pvg wrote:
| Incomplete or 'not 100% obvious' is not really 'misleading'.
| Titles don't say everything about a story or we wouldn't need
| stories.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| lucb1e wrote:
| Does it not also run on macOS? It could be useful if you want
| to tweak usage of the mic array yourself, rather than relying
| on proprietary magic that gives you the output it deems best
| com2kid wrote:
| Over 20 years ago I had a Toshiba Tablet PC convertible that had
| a beam forming array of microphones and it came with software
| that let you point where you wanted to record from.
|
| The use case was for lectures, you could tell the laptop to just
| record from behind it, pointing the beam in the direction of the
| professor.
|
| Amazing idea and something I haven't seen since.
| bayindirh wrote:
| In the golden age of mini camcorders, some Sony Handycams had
| "zoom" microphones which used beam forming to limit gathered
| sound to roughly the area equal to the what your sensor sees.
|
| Another great idea.
|
| Oh. They still make similar stuff:
| https://electronics.sony.com/imaging/imaging-accessories/all...
| atorodius wrote:
| I feel like my iPhone does it. But not sure. Sound definitely
| changes when you zoom while recording
| bayindirh wrote:
| Mine is too old to test the claim, but knowing that it has
| at least three microphones on board, It'd be absurd if
| Apple didn't implement it.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| It's pretty computationally cheap, too, as long as you've
| got the math right and an easy way to choose where to aim
| the beam
| internetter wrote:
| They do. They rarely mention it but they do:
|
| https://devstreaming-
| cdn.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2019/249a0jw9...
| ghostly_s wrote:
| The only content regarding audio I saw here are slides
| 124-140, which cover beam-forming but I didn't see
| anything about a default beam-forming profile tied to
| virtual zoom.
| ThomasBb wrote:
| On current iPhone Pro (16) you can even select the audio
| mix you want for recorded video after recording.
| elijahciali wrote:
| This is a feature of iPhone, yes. Believe it came around
| the 11 (?) but it can really help when recording concerts
| if you're into that sort of thing.
| regularfry wrote:
| I wonder how that worked. Assuming the microphones were on the
| screen plane rather than the body, it wouldn't be able to tell
| the difference between "straight in front" and "straight
| behind".
| nine_k wrote:
| The attenuation provided by the tablet case / shell is quite
| significant. I bet they had some extra foam, or, something,
| to make it even stronger. So the "right behind" signal would
| be heard only if "right in front" is not readily drowning it.
| lucb1e wrote:
| As someone who made the mistake of putting a webcam cover
| over the tiny little microphone hole above the screen (it
| picks up very little besides impact noises now), it wouldn't
| be hard to have a mic hole facing in both directions to solve
| that problem
| inetknght wrote:
| Straight in front is likely to be unobstructed while straight
| behind is likely to be obstructed by computer hardware.
| Therefore, straight in front is likely to have crisp sound
| while straight behind is likely to be muffled and/or
| distorted by reflections.
| numpad0 wrote:
| They're in somewhat random locations, not symmetric and
| parallel as one might expect.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's used widely in fancy videoconferencing setups.
|
| The mic array for the room figures out who's talking and
| isolates the audio from them.
|
| (Videoconferencing in large rooms has long picked the loudest
| microphone to use at any time, to avoid mixing in noise from
| other mics, but then the beamforming makes it that much
| better.)
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I'm wondering if that's why those kinds of setups offer good
| audio if only one person speaks and there's clear pauses
| between people, but as soon as you have a quick back and
| forth or two people talking the audio turns into complete
| mush.
| dheera wrote:
| Idea I've had for years but never got around to testing due to
| lack of compute:
|
| Use a microphone array and LIDAR for ground truth, and train a
| diffusion model to "imagine" what the world looks like
| conditioned on some signal transformations of the microphone
| data only.
|
| Could be used by autonomous vehicles to "see" pedestrians
| through bushes, early detect oncoming emergency vehicles, hear
| bicyclists before they are visible, and lots of other good
| things.
| crazygringo wrote:
| So basically a kind of passive echolocation?
|
| I like it. I think you'd need to be in known motion around
| the area to build up a picture -- I don't think it would work
| with a microphone just sitting in place.
| dheera wrote:
| Sort of!
|
| If you shut your eyes off and you hear footsteps to your
| right you have a good idea of exactly what you're hearing
| -- you can probably infer if it's a child or adult, you can
| possibly infer if they are masculine or feminine shoes, you
| can even infer formal vs informal attire based on the sound
| of the shoes (sneakers, sandals, and dress shoes all sound
| different), and you can locate their angle and distance
| pretty well. And that's with just your organic 2-microphone
| array.
|
| I imagine multiple microphones and phase info could do a
| lot better in accurately placing the objects they hear.
|
| It doesn't need to build an accurate picture of everything,
| it just needs to be good at imagining the stuff that
| actually matters, e.g. pedestrians, emergency vehicles.
| Where the model decides to place a few rustling leaves or
| what color it imagines a person to be wearing is less
| relevant than the fact that it decided there is likely a
| person in some general direction even if they are not
| visible.
|
| I just think diffusion models are relatively good at coming
| up with something explainable and plausible for a given
| condition, when trained on some distribution of data.
|
| Like "oh I hear this, that, and that -- what reality could
| explain those observations from the distribution of
| realities that I have seen?"
| MITSardine wrote:
| This already exists, it's the domain of inverse problems.
| Inverse problems consider a forward problem (in this case
| wave propagation) depending on some physical parameters or
| domain geometry, and deduce the parameters or geometry from
| observations.
|
| Conceptually, it's quite simple, you need to derive a
| gradient of the output error with respect to the sought
| information. And then use that to minimize the error (= "loss
| function" or "objective" depending on field terminology),
| like you do in neural networks.
|
| In many cases, the solution is not unique, unfortunately. The
| choice of emitters and receivers locations is crucial in the
| case you're interested in.
|
| There's a lot of literature on this topic already, try
| "acoustic inverse problem" on google scholar.
| raphlinus wrote:
| Regarding the SIMD optimizations, the authors may want to look
| into faer. I haven't had a great experience with its underlying
| library pulp, as I'm trying to things that go beyond its linear
| algebra roots, but if the goal is primarily to accelerate linear
| algebra operations, I think it will go well.
|
| I've got a blog post and associated podcast on Rust SIMD in the
| pipeline, we'll touch on this.
|
| [1]: https://docs.rs/faer/latest/faer/
| rob74 wrote:
| Wow, this really puts into perspective how much work has to be
| put into even the most insignificant details of getting Linux to
| run on (Apple Silicon) Macs. I say "insignificant" with all due
| respect because, well, the built-in microphone sees very little
| use (except if you have forgotten your headset).
|
| Or, to quote the progress report
| (https://asahilinux.org/2025/03/progress-report-6-14/#is-
| this...): "This is Apple though. Nothing is ever simple."
| beng-nl wrote:
| I always prefer headset too, but I did find it striking how
| good the audio quality of the built in mic was compared to
| headset when I tried it once..
| brundolf wrote:
| The built-in microphone is actually excellent, I often use it
| even when I have my AirPods Pro in because the sound quality is
| so much better
|
| If you've got headphones with a wraparound microphone on its
| own arm then it could be better, but everyday headphones are
| limited by the position of the microphone
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Plenty of good headsets do beamforming with their microphones
| as well, just depends on what you're running. Macbook mics
| are well above average, though, so I agree in most cases
| they'll be better unless you're picky about your headset mic
| quality.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| This is also a great example counterpoint for the folks who
| constantly complain about Apple hardware being
| "overpriced". Most laptop mfgs are happy to just solder on
| whatever tiny $0.50 compatible MEMS mic and put a little
| toothpick-sized hole in the case and call it good enough,
| or add two and rely on whatever generic beam forming that
| isn't adapted to their specific mic choice, placement, case
| acoustics, etc the Realtek ALC262 or whatever gives them,
| and call it a day.
|
| Apple puts a ton of R&D into making things work well. As
| another example: Macbooks have been, for 15+ years now, the
| only laptops that I can trust to actually sleep and
| conserve battery when I close the lid and slip into a
| backpack for a few-hr flight. Windows and Linux on laptops
| seem to have about a 70% chance of either not sleeping, not
| waking up right (esp with hybrid graphics), or trying to do
| forced Windows updates and killing the battery, then waking
| back up to 20+ minutes of waiting for updates to resume /
| finish with no meaningful progress indicator or way to
| cancel / delay.
|
| Not everything they do is perfect, and I'm not some huge
| Apple fanboy, but they do offer a significantly better
| experience IMO and feel "worth" the premium. It's not as if
| modern gaming laptops are any cheaper than MBPs, but they
| certainly feel much jankier, with software and UX to match.
| As an example, the IEC plug on the power supply of my Asus
| Zephyrus Duo wiggles enough that it disconnects even with
| different IEC cables. I've had to wrap some electrical tape
| around the plug body to get it to be less flaky. Asus
| Armoury Crate is a terrible buggy and bloated piece of
| software that runs about a dozen background processes to
| deliver a "gamer" UI to...control fans, RGB lights, and
| usually fail to provide updates. They also have utilities
| like https://www.asus.com/us/content/screenxpert3/ and "ROG
| ScreenPad Optimizer" that are largely buggy garbage, but
| sometimes required to get their proprietary hardware to
| work properly.
|
| Does Apple gouge users for extra RAM and SSD space?
| Absolutely, but you're paying for the R&D as much as the
| actual hardware. I wish they'd just price that into the
| base models and make upgrades cheaper, but their pricing
| strategy seems to be lowering the base entry point to
| something more appealing with "it barely works" levels of
| spec, while making increasingly ridiculous margins on
| higher specs -- an _additional_ $4,600 to go from 1TB - >
| 16TB on the Mac Studio is pretty bold considering consumer
| QTY=1 pricing on a fast M.2 SSD is around $600 for 8TB, and
| I'm sure their BOM costs are around the same for 16TB worth
| of silicon in huge quantities.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Keep in mind you can't just upgrade a Mac Studio to 16 TB
| for $4,800. You can go to 8 TB for $2,400, but to move up
| to 16 TB you _also_ need to upgrade to the Ultra chip for
| an additional $1,000, which _also_ necessitates moving up
| to 96 TB RAM. So when all is said and done, you 're
| looking at an additional cost of $6,599.
|
| As a photographer, this is a bit maddening.
| tracker1 wrote:
| For what it's worth, you do get a 10gb nic option and can
| just connect to a NAS with lots of fast storage and nvme
| caching drives.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Yeah, for the Mac Studio, which is likely to stay in one
| place, this probably works well. In actuality, I use a
| Macbook Pro, which has the same pricing issue.
|
| In my experience, the fastest option for this is NFS
| without encryption, which is only really viable on a
| local network as it's hecking insecure (sure, wrap it in
| Wireguard, but now you're slowing it down again) and over
| Wifi at least, it's definitely slower than using an NVMe
| drive plugged into the Macbook, at least for 40 MP files
| coming out of my Fuji.
|
| The external NVMe drive w/ Thunderbolt works... OK. But
| it's annoying (both physically and in terms of sleep/wake
| causing dismount warnings, etc.)
| virtue3 wrote:
| counter point; as a gamer I don't want to waste even a
| penny on a built in microphone on my laptop -> maybe nice
| to have as a last resort; but even then I could just
| discord on my phone.
|
| I just want a heatset aux port and I'm GTG. I want my
| money put into the GPU/CPU/Display/Keyboard.
|
| Now my macbook pro for work? Yeah; high expectations
| there for AV quality in terms of joining meetings etc.
| tracker1 wrote:
| > the only laptops that I can trust to actually sleep and
| conserve battery when I close the lid
|
| +1 on this one... I can close my lid (from on) and set my
| M1 air aside for a few weeks and still have plenty of
| battery left. I don't use it much when not traveling,
| it's mostly my desktop, work laptop or phone.
|
| Also +1 on the hardware feel... it's got an above average
| stiffness, keyboard feel (for what little that's worth)
| and the best touchpad experience hands down. The screen
| is also on the higher end (I've seen slightly better in
| some really expensive laptops). All around, it's a pretty
| great value on the mid-high range. What I don't like is
| the aging UI/UX, the variance from other platforms (I use
| Linux and Windows pretty regularly) and some things that
| I just find harder on the platform in general.
|
| I don't think I'd every buy a maxed out Apple product all
| the same, I don't use an iPhone or anything else but my
| laptop. That sometimes makes the ecosystem integrations
| slightly annoying. That said, my current laptop is still
| running well, and my prior laptop from over a decade ago
| is still running fine for my Daughter's needs... though
| she may get my m1 if/when I move to a Framework 13 (strix
| halo).
| overfeed wrote:
| > Macbooks have been, for 15+ years now, the only laptops
| that I can trust to actually sleep and conserve battery
| when I close the lid and slip into a backpack for a few-
| hr flight.
|
| Even the cheapest of Chromebooks sleep and resume
| reliably. I suspect the reason is not purely R&D, but
| limiting the number of supported devices/chipsets and
| testing the supported configuration thoroughly.
| Chromebook OEMs can only manufacturer specific hardware
| combinations blessed by Google, and in exchange Google
| updates the drivers during the support period.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > the only laptops that I can trust to actually sleep
|
| They don't actually sleep. Apple remarketed the concept
| of never sleeping as "Power Nap".
|
| You can choose to have it actively updating the system or
| not, but it never actually sleep, just go into a
| ridiculously low power mode. You'll get the same on
| Surface Pro laptops or Chromeboks for instance.
|
| Actual sleep only happens when the battery is about to
| die.
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/turn-power-nap-
| on-o...
| eptcyka wrote:
| I hope you do not take notes or brush dust off the macbook
| whilst in a video call.
| gabrielhidasy wrote:
| Why, are they not able to reject these types of noise? My
| X1 doesn't even register typing in a video call
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Even on Linux?
| jrockway wrote:
| Software noise cancellation is actually kind of amazing.
| During the pandemic when I was doing 8 hours of video
| calls a day, I paid for Krisp and it eliminated any
| background noise pretty much perfectly. One time a very
| loud fire truck was slowly driving by. It was so loud I
| couldn't even hear myself think and just stopped talking.
| People were confused because that noise was eliminated
| but I was just talking very weirdly ;)
|
| In the interim, they raised the price and added a ton of
| bloat so I don't use it anymore. (The bloat killed it,
| not the price. And the popup that's like "you're so
| stupid that you can't even figure out how to enable Krisp
| Speaker, you idiot". I'm well aware of how to enable it,
| but I have chosen not to, as I do not want to heavily
| process the audio that I'm listening to. Only emitting.
| "Don't ask again" would have probably made them an extra
| $110 at least.)
| nucleardog wrote:
| Pretty much the same boat. Early 2020 I was spending so
| much time on calls headphones were just tiring. So it
| started as "get a microphone + speaker setup that doesn't
| echo" and just kind of spiraled into a half decade of
| incremental improvements.
|
| Don't know that I've had anything as loud as a fire
| truck, but more than a few times I've had a 75lb dog a
| few feet away from me barking like mad, whining at me,
| playing by throwing a cow femur up in the air and letting
| it crash down on the vinyl floor, etc and apologized
| about the noise only to have people look at me funny and
| tell me they didn't hear anything but that explains why I
| seemed like I was having trouble speaking.
|
| I think the only time I had anyone say anything about
| anything was when I accidentally had an air conditioner
| blowing directly on my microphone. They couldn't hear it,
| but my voice was coming through a little less crisp than
| usual as the noise cancellation was trying to remove the
| constant, high volume white noise.
|
| Don't know what OS you're on, but on Linux I can
| definitely recommend Easy Effects
| (https://flathub.org/apps/com.github.wwmm.easyeffects).
| Been using RNNoise + Speex along with some other
| filtering for quite a while now to great effect.
|
| One thing I found worked _really_ well if you're already
| using an external microphone of some sort--using the
| webcam microphone as part of a noise gate. On top of the
| filtering and existing gating, my audio only opens if my
| webcam _also_ picks up sound of sufficient volume. Lets
| me keep the microphone in front of my face fairly
| sensitive while still entirely eliminating echo and most
| off-axis sounds.
| eptcyka wrote:
| I constantly hear a harsh swoosh when people wipe stuff
| or drag their palms across their macbooks.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Yeah, no matter how good the microphone actually is on a
| headset, it uses an ancient codec so until we get Bluetooth
| 5.3 everywhere with lc3 codex then we won't actually have
| good mic input from headphones and headsets. I predict that
| this is all going to change this year and next year. But the
| full stack has to support it from headphones to Bluetooth
| chips to OS.
| kenferry wrote:
| Are AirPods limited to the Bluetooth spec though? I think
| they extend it.
| whiddershins wrote:
| i don't know the details but airpods pro sound noticeably
| terrible and bluetooth-y. It's almost shocking.
| brundolf wrote:
| They extend it in some ways, but I'm not sure if they do
| in this way. They do sound kind of terrible, but I always
| assumed it was due to the microphones being way back by
| your ears. I'm not sure though
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I think the bigger issue might be the microphone placement.
| Humans tend to prefer microphones that are closer to
| microphones which are further away (this is one reason
| headsets w/ a boom arm usually sound better than a built-in
| microphone.) Having the microphone behind you / to the side
| (as in the case of an AirPod) is not great either. Of
| course, audio processing can fix a lot of this.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| I cannot wait to not take an audio quality hit while the
| mic is on on the airpods.
| therein wrote:
| Especially since OSX is terrible at input/output
| preferences.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| If you alt(opt)+click the sound icon in the menu bar you
| can easily select your inputs and outputs. I really just
| want airpods with a mic and no audio quality hit so I can
| use it in simracing so I don't have to have an external
| mic arm.
| therein wrote:
| It switches back on a whim for the most arbitrary things,
| though. In Windows the same can happen but I can at least
| temporarily disable an input if it is doing that.
|
| Doing some things like disabling an input/output device,
| or an internal keyboard, or a webcam. Almost impossible.
| Even if there are some ways, they change so often. Let's
| say you have two cameras and an application that always
| picks the internal one. I couldn't find a way to disable
| the internal camera so that this app would pick the only
| available one.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| Ah yeah you're right. Does the "Audio MIDI Setup" Mac
| utility app help you here at all?
| therein wrote:
| It gets close, but no way to truly pin it still. It
| effectively does the same thing that System Settings >
| Sound > Output & Input does but with a better UI making
| it clearer that you are making a change to the primary.
| But the change is still just as unpinned as it would be
| from the other location.
| arghwhat wrote:
| Headsets can and do use other codecs already. This is
| especially true for Enterprise headsets with dongles -
| these still use Bluetooth but by controlling both sides
| they can pick codecs.
|
| LE Audio is great though - and is already, as "the full
| stack" has had support for quite a while... Assuming you
| don't happen to get your equipment from a certain fruit
| supplier that is notoriously slow at implementing open
| standards, almost as if they want to not give you a choice
| outside buying their own proprietary solutions...
| derefr wrote:
| It's so strange (and frustrating) to me that "Bluetooth
| audio" means "you pass the Bluetooth hardware PCM samples,
| and it encodes them itself in hardware; or the Bluetooth
| driver decodes packets in hardware to PCM samples, and then
| passes them to userspace."
|
| It reminds me of the telephone network, where even though
| the whole thing is just another packet-switched network
| these days, the abstraction exposed to the handset is an
| analogue baseband audio signal.
|
| ---
|
| Why can't we get another type of "Bluetooth audio", that
| works like VoIP does between handsets and their PBXes --
| where the two devices will:
|
| 1. do a little handshake to negotiate a set of hardware-
| accelerated audio codecs _the devices_ (not _the Bluetooth
| transceivers_!) both support, in descending order of
| quality, constrained by link throughput + noise; and then
|
| 2. open a (lossy, in-order) realtime "dumb pipe" data
| carrier channel, into which both sides shove frames pre-
| encoded by their _separate_ audio codec chip?
|
| Is this just AVDTP? No -- AVDTP does do a capabilities
| negotiation, sure, but it's a capabilities negotiation
| about the audio codecs the _Bluetooth transceiver chip
| itself_ has been extended with support for -- support
| where, as above, userland and even the OS kernel both just
| see a dumb PCM-sample pipe.
|
| What I'm talking about here is taking audio-codec handling
| out of the Bluetooth transceiver's hands -- instead just
| telling the transceiver "we're doing lossy realtime data
| signalling now" and then spraying whatever packets _you the
| device_ want to spray, encoded through whatever audio-codec
| DSP _you_ want to use. No need to run through a Bluetooth
| SIG standardization process for each new codec.
|
| (Heck, presuming a PC/smartphone on the send side, and a
| sufficiently-powerful smart speaker/TV/sound bar on the
| receive side, both sides could actually support new codecs
| the moment they're released, via software updates, with no
| hardware-acceleration required, doing the codec part
| entirely on CPU.)
|
| ---
|
| Or, if we're talking pie-in-the-sky ideas, how about a
| completely different type of "Bluetooth audio", not for
| bidirectional audio streaming at all? One that works less
| like VoIP, and more like streaming VOD video (e.g. YouTube)
| does?
|
| Imagine a protocol where the audio source says "hey, I have
| this 40MB audio file, it's natively in container format X
| and encoding Y, can you buffer and decode that yourself?"
| -- and then, if the receiver says "yeah, sure", the source
| just blasts that audio file out over a _reliable stream_
| data carrier channel; the receiver buffers it; and then the
| receiver does an _internal_ streaming decode from its own
| local buffer from that point forward -- with no audio
| channel open, only a control channel.
|
| Given the "race to sleep" argument, I presume that for the
| average use-case of "headphones streaming pre-buffered M4As
| from your phone", this third approach would actually be a
| lot less battery-draining than pinging the receiver with
| new frames of audio every few-hundred milliseconds. You'd
| get a few seconds of intensive streaming, but then the
| transcievers on both ends could both just go to sleep until
| the next song is about to play.
|
| Of course, back when the Bluetooth Audio spec was written,
| something the size of AirPods couldn't have had room to
| support a 40MB DRAM buffer + external hardware parse-and-
| decode of M4A/ALAC/etc. But they certainly could today!
| miki123211 wrote:
| Everyday headphones are limited by the fact that people often
| use Bluetooth, and Bluetooth audio is just terrible tech that
| hasn't improved by much in the last 10 years, and still can't
| do more than 16kHZ when doing both input and output at the
| same time.
|
| I think this isn't a problem if you're using Apple headphones
| with Apple devices, but anything else falls back to crappy BT
| quality, usually with some kind of terrible ANC to boot.
|
| FOr me, crappy audio setups and apps trying to do too much
| audio processing are the primary reason of "Zoom fatigue".
| I've done a lot of calls over apps that transmit raw, high-
| quality audio with no processing whatsoever, and the
| experience is just so much better.
| blep-arsh wrote:
| Apple-Apple Bluetooth speech codec is a variation of AAC, I
| believe. AAC-LD if I remember correctly. But still, having
| microphones in one's ears is suboptimal. There's a lot of
| processing required even though the codec is no longer
| completely awful.
|
| On an unrelated note, I tried doing calls with a stereo mic
| setup but participants were actually uncomfortable with the
| ASMR-like effect of the audio.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The three-mic array is also found in Intel-based Retina
| MacBooks, so this might also be useful for proper audio support
| on that older hardware. (Some early Retina MacBook Pros have a
| two-mic array only, but most have the full three-mic array.)
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Wow not my experience at all.
|
| The MBP mic is generally preferable to most headset boom mics
| in my experience with good noise reduction. You also get the
| benefit of not picking up extraneous mouth noises (gum chewing,
| coffee slurping, whatever)
|
| I feel like 99% of people I conference with use regular
| headphones + MBP mic
|
| Main problem with that setup is not being able to hear your own
| voice in the headphones (feedback, or whatever that's called)
| which can be annoying sometimes if using NC headphones
| lloeki wrote:
| > feedback, or whatever that's called
|
| Monitoring.
|
| There are umpteenth ways to do that, and I find headsets
| themselves do it the most poorly of all (if they have the
| feature at all).
|
| > The MBP mic is generally preferable to most headset boom
| mics
|
| Another benefit is not paying the '90s GSM handsfree BT
| profile codec pain (at the cost of A2DP having slightly
| higher latency)
| arghwhat wrote:
| > Monitoring
|
| It's called sidetone. Headsets do it so your ears don't
| feel clogged and to avoid subconscious yelling.
|
| Some headsets let you adjust it either through a regular
| Sidetone volume control or some dedicated app. Soundcards
| also often have this feature in the form of a Mic output
| volume control, done in hardware to reduce latency.
|
| A significant difference in headset quality is in sidetone
| latency. The heavier the DSP processing required to get a
| reasonable mic output, the harder it is to hit latency
| targets. Headset SoCs have dedicated hardware for this - a
| user-space solution like Apple pulls on their laptops would
| not be able to meet a usable latency target.
|
| > Another benefit is not paying the '90s GSM handsfree BT
| profile codec pain
|
| LE Audio includes the LC3 codec, solving this once and for
| all.
|
| In the meantime while this rolls out, various alternate
| codecs exist that are fairly widely supported. This is
| especially true when using fancier headsets with a
| dedicated bluetooth dongle as they have more flexibility
| when it comes to codecs and compatibility.
| arghwhat wrote:
| I don't think I recall having a meeting with anyone using
| plain headphones with the laptop mic instead of a headset of
| some kind. Wired headphones without a mic are somewhat
| unusual nowadays to begin with outside audio file circles.
|
| AirPods of various versions is common, as is many other buds.
| Enterprise headsets like those from EPOS (the old Sennheiser
| Communication) and Jabra (with or without boom) and
| speakerphones are common in corporate settings, casual
| headsets (e.g., Sony, Bose) and wired gaming headsets are
| common at home.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| Actually my complaint relates to open office designs, the
| macbook mic picks up louder people from across the room. So
| if I do use headphones and the MBP mic, other people will
| hear random noise blurbs from anywhere in the office .
| argsnd wrote:
| If you click the orange microphone icon in the menu bar
| while it's in use it lets you switch to a mode that only
| captures your voice
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Because most mics are still using Bluetooth 5.0 I use the
| microphone on my Mac even when I'm wearing a headset.
| Otherwise, it puts me into a weird codec mode of ancient
| history where I get downgraded to a low bit rate and even my
| audio input to my ears sounds horrible then. So I always use
| the Mac microphone when possible.
| tracker1 wrote:
| It's more annoying on Linux where you have to manually
| switch... at least most apps in windows/mac will
| automagically put my headset in the correct mode.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I exclusively use the built-in microphone for work meetings. I
| don't even have any other work-issued microphone unless we
| count my phone.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Much like with the speakers, Apple are trying way too hard to
| be fancy here, and implement an adaptive beamformer in userspace
| to try and isolate the desired signal from background noise.
|
| That's a rather unfair characterization. I've found the array to
| work very well in practice. It's hardly trying to hard.
| Terretta wrote:
| Perhaps the author meant "Apple is succeeding too hard". :-)
| marmarama wrote:
| You can get surprisingly good results from cheap laptop hardware
| (as well as fancier hardware like an MBP) using software DSP
| techniques. One of the things I'm pleased about is that quite a
| bit of Asahi's audio work is just as applicable to generic
| laptops as it is to Macs.
|
| I already use the Bankstown bass harmonics synthesis plugin
| developed for Asahi and a convolution EQ on a cheap HP laptop,
| with startlingly impressive results, using the Pipewire plugin
| chain autoload feature also developed for Asahi.
|
| I suspect there are quite a few use cases for this beamformer
| outside of the Asahi ecosystem as well.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Much like with the speakers, Apple are trying way too hard to be
| fancy here
|
| Could the author of this package comment on this statement? I'd
| be really interested in their opinion of their speaker
| implementation.
|
| What's overly complicated there? The hardware? The software?
|
| As a MBP user and hobbyist audio guy I've been really impressed
| with the implementation of those speakers, particularly on the
| larger MBP models.
|
| But I'm just a hobbyist and don't have any knowledge of them
| other than the driver arrangement (tweeter + dual opposed
| woofers). It certainly seems like they're pulling the same tricks
| used by "good" bluetooth speaker designers in order to wring
| acceptable perf and bass extension from teeny tiny speakers
| (adaptive EQ etc)
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm confused too. These days, "spatial audio" on speakers
| (different from on headphones) and beamforming mics is starting
| to feel standard, at least on premium hardware.
|
| Dumb, noisy, cramped, unbalanced audio just doesn't cut it
| anymore.
| numpad0 wrote:
| if you think fake 5.1ch _sounds_ better, not like better for
| enjoying action movies, you 've never had exposure to a >$99
| pair of bookshelf speakers with a non-USB powered class D
| amp. change my mind.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Huh? Who's talking about bookshelf speakers?
|
| This is about laptop speakers that just pass audio directly
| through, vs. laptop speakers that process the audio
| including spatially. Yes, it sounds _dramatically_ better.
| And it 's not just about "fake 5.1" but even just mono or
| stereo.
|
| External speakers are a totally different conversation.
| brundolf wrote:
| My guess (without value judgement) is he was referring to the
| fact that they don't really work without such software
| qoez wrote:
| Seems like a common pattern lately that apples hardware
| people continues to be top notch and the software group is
| slacking.
| CamouflagedKiwi wrote:
| I don't think that's really fair here? The comment suggests
| the hardware doesn't work well without relatively complex
| software to support it, which seems to be the case on
| macos. That suggests the software group are keeping up
| their end at least.
| brundolf wrote:
| That's not at all the takeaway. macOS has the requisite
| software built-in; the hardware is _designed_ in such a way
| that it requires software assistance to function, which is
| a choice that has advantages and disadvantages. The OP
| exists for situations where you aren 't running Apple's own
| beamforming software on this hardware (to my understanding)
| robertoandred wrote:
| How's hardware supposed to work without software?
| stefan_ wrote:
| With a hardware DSP? It's gonna have software in it, but
| doing this kind of processing in the upper most top level
| OS stack is certainly a choice.
| argsnd wrote:
| It seems like a good choice. It's computationally
| extremely light and you can update it much more easily
| with new features (they actually did this once - to let
| you change the beamforming mode in the menu bar)
| stefan_ wrote:
| It is also notoriously time sensitive however, and while
| likely the hardware can already ensure the
| synchronization between mics, processing in the OS itself
| necessarily means buffering for a significant period so
| you don't run the risk of draining the pipe in a non-
| realtime system.
| brundolf wrote:
| Here's a similar situation with the macbook pro's speakers,
| from the Asahi Linux team (scroll down to "Audio
| Advances"):
| https://asahilinux.org/2022/11/november-2022-report/
|
| Similarly they can't be used very effectively without
| special, complex software that involves physical simulation
| of the speaker hardware. Doing things this way allows them
| to reach an amazing level of compactness + volume, but at
| the cost of complexity
|
| If Apple intended to support platform openness, they'd
| likely have made such software available to hackers. But
| they never enthusiastically encouraged that, so people like
| the Asahi team are left to reverse-engineer and reinvent
| everything they need that lives in software
| jervant wrote:
| firmware
| threeseed wrote:
| Which is just software at a different layer.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have a feeling that this package is for folks that want to
| run Linux distros on the laptops, and have access to the same
| capabilities as native MacOS.
| raphlinus wrote:
| Getting reasonable speaker support in Asahi Linux was a big
| deal. Part of the problem is that limiting the power usage to
| prevent overheating requires sophisticated DSP. Without that,
| you get very limited volume output within safe limits.
|
| Probably the best overview to find out more is here:
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/asahi-audio
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| > Much like with the speakers, Apple are trying way too hard to
| be fancy here
|
| It is just a reference that Apple Laptop speakers have been
| waaay above anything the competition uses - and this is true
| since multiple generations. Had a MBP from 2014 and multiple
| friends were astonished about the sound when we watched a movie
| on the go. Same with the M4 MBP - sounds quality from the
| speaker is at a level that you probably don't actually need.
| Sharlin wrote:
| In my experience MBP 2015 sound is pretty thin and high
| frequencies are prone to clipping at even a moderate volume -
| soprano vocal parts suffer from this quite a bit. Of course
| for most uses that's not a big problem and I'm sure the sound
| is still much better than that of many other laptops though.
| But the M series MBP speakers are a crazy improvement.
| wk_end wrote:
| I feel like this must be some kind of a language barrier
| thing - the dev's name appears to be Spanish, so English may
| not be their native language. And I think that most native
| English speakers - as demonstrated by multiple comments
| asking about it in this thread - would interpret "trying too
| hard to be fancy" as implying "because you can get similar
| high-quality results without using such sophisticated
| techniques"; but it seems like you're saying (and this makes
| sense) they meant "because getting such high-quality results
| is overkill for a consumer laptop".
|
| Language is fascinating - I can convince myself with enough
| effort that the latter is just as valid as the former, given
| the literal meaning of the words, but my linguistic intuition
| is screaming at me that it's wrong. How does someone ever
| learn that? How would a textbook ever explain it?
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| Agree with you, I was confused why everybody else
| interpreted in a different way. Am not spanish but german
| and not a native speaker, so the language barrier thing
| might be a good explanation.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > It is just a reference that Apple Laptop speakers have been
| waaay above anything the competition uses
|
| More like the opposite. The MacBook speakers are absolutely
| rubbish, just like all laptop speakers (there's only so much
| you can do when constrained to a laptop body). The reason why
| MacBooks sound good is entirely god-tier signal processing
| which manages to extract extraordinary performance out of
| some decidedly very ordinary speakers.
|
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/asahi-audio#why-this-is-
| necess...
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| Not sure what you are saying (or just ranting?) - MBP
| speaker are the opposite as in the rest of non-apple
| Laptops have way better sounding speakers? That is
| definetely not my experience at all.
|
| If they are all rubish together, well, they are laptop
| speakers - and as such you have to treat them. Still there
| is nothing preventing some set of laptop speakers being
| objectively better than others.
| apitman wrote:
| > This is an attempt at a beamformer armed only with first year
| undergrad level engineering maths and some vague idea of the
| principles gleaned from various webpages and PDFs
|
| Not certain if OP is saying they are currently an undergrad, but
| impressive if so
| qoez wrote:
| You should be able to send data and record it in a way that
| measures local geometry like hands since there's a microphone
| array like this, interesting.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| There is a more general discussion on the latest Asahi Linux
| progress report.
|
| > Unfortunately, PDM mics are very omnidirectional and very
| sensitive. We cannot get by without some kind of beamforming.
|
| https://asahilinux.org/2025/03/progress-report-6-14/
|
| Also, it turned out that some previous work done for the speaker
| output was reused here for mic input.
|
| > Thanks to the groundwork laid in PipeWire and WirePlumber for
| speaker support, wiring up a DSP chain including Triforce for the
| microphones was really simple. We just had to update the config
| files, and let WirePlumber figure out the rest!
| Tade0 wrote:
| My (never finished) master's thesis was about something similar -
| taking advantage of the fact that (almost) all smartphones have
| at least two microphones I wanted to locate and separate a
| speaker in 3D.
|
| A few takeaways:
|
| -The sampling rate is slightly off between devices -
| approximately +-1 sample per second - not a lot, but you need to
| take that into account.
|
| -Spectral characteristics in consumer microphones are all over
| the place - two phones of the same model, right out of the box,
| will have not only measurable, but also audible differences.
|
| -Sound bounces off of everything, particularly concrete walls.
|
| -A car is the closest thing to an anechoic chamber you can
| readily access.
|
| -The Fourier transform of a Gaussian is a Gaussian, which is very
| helpful when you need to estimate the frequency of a harmonic
| signal (like speech) with a wavelength shorter than half your
| window, but just barely.
| gpm wrote:
| > - A car is the closest thing to an anechoic chamber you can
| readily access.
|
| I recall a youtuber solving the anechoic chamber problem by
| finding a big empty field - nothing to reflect off of except
| the ground - and maybe putting some foam below the experiment.
|
| It doesn't kill environmental noise, of course, but it
| apparently did a very good job of killing reflections from his
| own instruments.
| Tade0 wrote:
| In my case wind noise disturbed the signal too much. Normally
| there's additional processing which deals with it, but I was
| working with (next to) raw data.
| ipunchghosts wrote:
| >The Fourier transform of a Gaussian is a Gaussian, which is
| very helpful when you need to estimate the frequency of a
| harmonic signal (like speech) with a wavelength shorter than
| half your window, but just barely.
|
| I get the gaussian link. But, can you explain your point with
| more detail?
| neuroelectron wrote:
| I'm really enjoying this trend of minimal dependencies, but I'm
| not taking off my tinfoil hat yet.
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder if there's a way to do this in reverse for people who
| use the speakerphone or play a video in a restaurant.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Is this akin to a phased array RF antenna (like the Starlink
| dish) but for audio?
| jedisct1 wrote:
| How to download and install the app? There are no instructions.
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