The Mystery Of MacBook Speakers

MacBook Speakers are so far ahead of everything else out there.

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[DaveD]

Apple DOMINATES the audio game so hard.
Can your speakers/headphones tell the difference from that early recorded sample?

[aadithyen]

The most surprising thing for me is that, many audio centric brands sign off and put their logo on these devices, Bang and Olufsen, Dolby... The 2015 chassis MacBook Air had better sound than a newer HP Spectre with B&O speakers, I think.

[ReneRitchie]

That huge audio lab they invested in outside Apple Park just keeps paying off. Tons of modeling, tons of testing, tons of tuning, and sharing that across the whole speaker and mic line. Crazy it took so long, but the audio team is becoming as important as the camera team and I'm here for it

[PapaPanda]

As an Audio Engineer who frequently watches tech reviews, Most people are not aware of how to explain audio and acoustics to a general consumer let alone professionals shopping for new tech. Thank you for your concise and effective explanation of this topic

[matthewclinton]

You’re the first channel I’ve ever seen to quantify speakers like this and show visually comparable frequency response curves. Super cool stuff. Great video

[pqfamilyadventures]

Reviews are fine and all, but you should make more content like this. This is good.

[A.Y.]

When I upgraded my 2009 MBP to a 2021 M1 MBP, the speakers are what surprised me the most. They are insanely impressive! The sound isn’t just loud, it’s rich and deep too. It sounds better than my TV.

[dannywinget]

This was great that you measured it. MacBook speakers are just so great.

[bizmonkey]

You don’t realize how damn good the MacBook speakers are until you hear them in person. It’s an experience in itself.

[The-Rest-of-Us]

Apple always cared deeply about the stuff you can’t just put on a spec sheet. Rich audio. Fit and finish. Aluminium and glass. Big trackpad.
Steve Jobs engrained this deeply into their DNA and I hope they never lose it.

[Macusercom]

As an audio engineer I found this video very interesting and I'm glad someone made a video about this. It always seemed odd why Macs have very good speaker systems while Windows laptops promote Dolby Atmos, but actually still sound not even close to Macs.

I still want to point out some things on the graphs (just some suggestions in case of future audio comparisons) :)

- *The x axis begins at 80 Hz not at 20 Hz meaning the bass and sub-bass is missing entirely*
> It now looks like the MBP can play every audible frequency except the lowest frequency while in reality the MBP cuts off at the base frequency of low human voices while the graph doesn't show the bass (< 80 Hz)

- *Every line should be normalized to hit the same maximum for showing the frequency response except if it is the intention to also show its max loudness compared to others*
> It can be quite misleading since you want to compare the frequency response and not the max loudness. Normalizing them makes it easier to spot the graph's differences

- *Also some kind of methodology would be great, maybe in the description or something (I guess this was a simple sine sweep at 1–2 seconds, which distance to the microphone, position)?*
> That's just some good practise in general so that one could replicate the results. What would be especially interesting is, if the measurement mic is calibrated. Usually good measurement mics feature a calibration file to correct for the mics individual deviation from the ideal "neutral" sound. I'm not sure if this has or hasn't been used and without that calibration, the mic's own deviation could offset the results of the graphs in certain or all frequencies.

Software I could recommend is FuzzMeasure which gives you more control about that data. I'm not sure which software has been used for this video.

I'm happy that someone finally made a video about this. The things I've pointed out are just good practise points I've had to check while writing my research papers and I'd thought it's worth sharing. I know your videos aren't research papers and that time for such videos is limited. But maybe my feedback helps you or someone else. Keep up the awesome videos! :)

[Vanuatoo]

I got my first MacBook pro M1 14 inch on my job. My jaws dropped when I've heard the sound from speakers. I've never heard anything like that from pc laptops.I'm sure 16 inch is even better. It's so good I don't use headphones when I can. Waiting for M2 16 inch to upgrade to.

[georgenassr]

I've never personally watched a video about speakers that is this informative, thank you for the obviously large effort you put into your videos and especially this one

[bluezklewz]

That audio experience of Dave moving through the frequencies was insane. Really cool

[MichaelProtacio]

Dave, I wonder if there’s some computational audio going on, maybe built into macOS itself. I installed Windows 10 via Boot Camp on my 2019 16” MBP and noticed a huge difference when running Windows: the max volume was much quieter, and it sounded tinnier (less bassy?) in general. Might be interesting to test in a future video—running Windows or Linux, then playing audio on the same built-in Mac speakers.

[wndwker]

As an audiophile and producer, I loved this deep dive into analyzing the MB speakers. Apple is absolutely the top dog when it comes to on-board speakers!

[third_dimension]

Thank you so much for featuring our song "No Ego" in your video. It is a great honor that you have chosen our song to evaluate the quality of the MacBook speakers!

[timclark]

I hope you include the audio graph in every laptop review from now on. Incredibly useful.

[user_anthony]

I love these “conversation” tech topic videos. Its a fresh air type beat from review vids but also cause dave adds details and personality that isnt replaceable.

Theres just something unique about dave2d vids that you know carry info along side his personality/tastes but yet is presented in a down to earth and dialogue opening type of way.

Great vid, love to see more of these vids 👏👏

[marufbh]

So, I have been hearing about lows, mids and highs when people talk about speakers and headphones but I never quite understood them properly. This video presented these things so visually, now it all makes sense to me.

Awesome video. Great work Dave!👏