Apple Customer Service- just blew my mind!

[alent1234]

you're paying for the nice case, better power supply, OS features and software

the internals are the same as wintel

 

[vbuggy]

Hm? Please enlighten me.

As far as I know, I can still get direct digital output from the audio out of a Macbook, so the internal DAC wouldn't do much in that case. Or is it still relevant in some way that I don't know?

Also for a DAC, 96kHz 32-bit is still better than 44.1kHz 16-bit unless I'm missing something as well.

There's no special sauce that the Apple-addled love to talk about like some playground 'my made up thing is better than your made up thing' dispute.

The Air's and MBPros have for the most part exactly the same audio hardware (and capabilities thereof) as many Windows notebooks. Last time I checked, there's no digital audio on my Air's - and in any case, if you are actually serious about audio you'd not be using even the onboard digital IO of the MBPro's, because there are limits to the capabilities of those same low-cost codecs. And especially on the MBPro's, you actually need to use the digital IO if you want to get halfway clean audio out of one in the same way as you can get out of many comparable Windows machines.

As alent said, what you're paying for is the great design, excellent customer service, OS and the utterly shit form-over-function engineering.

 

[runawayprisoner]

you're paying for the nice case, better power supply, OS features and software

the internals are the same as wintel

Nah, just looked it up. At least the sound codec chip used in the Macbook is different. It's a Cirrus Logic chip instead of the standard Realtek found in regular Wintel laptops. You can't even install random drivers on here, and most of the time, anything aside from Apple's Bootcamp drivers cause issues.

But you and vbuggy seem to know something else that I don't, so please feel free to point it out.

There's no special sauce that the Apple-addled love to talk about like some playground 'my made up thing is better than your made up thing' dispute.

The Air's and MBPros have for the most part exactly the same audio hardware (and capabilities thereof) as many Windows notebooks. Last time I checked, there's no digital audio on my Air's - and in any case, if you are actually serious about audio you'd not be using even the onboard digital IO of the MBPro's, because there are limits to the capabilities of those same low-cost codecs.

There is a special cable that you can use to get digital audio out on the Macbook Pro.

I just realized that the Air doesn't have an Optical Output. But it still uses that Cirrus Logic CS4206 chip and not the Intel HD Audio as per other Wintel notebooks. Please feel free to point out anything I'm missing.

 

[Geekbabe]

you're paying for the nice case, better power supply, OS features and software

the internals are the same as wintel

I really like my computer, I also like doing business with the people who sold it to me. I feel good about this transaction 🙂

 

[Geekbabe]

If you don't like fan noise while watching Youtube, try installing Click2Plugin. It blocks Flash and replaces it with an HTML5 player that is far easier on the resources.

Now I wish something similar would just happen to Netflix... my Air roars when it has to handle Netflix.

Also if you want more transparency while listening to music, you can try upping the sampling rate in the Audio/MIDI controller. That's another perk of a Mac computer that you don't get in a PC. Most PC (laptops especially) come equipped with onboard sound cards that are barely good enough for music listening. But oh no, not on a Mac. You can up the usual 44.1kHz 16-bit goodness to 96kHz 32-bit on all modern Mac (Macbook Air included), and with the upconversion technique that Apple uses, sound quality is markedly better.

Give it a try. I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised.

thank you for these tips! 🙂

 

[runawayprisoner]

thank you for these tips! 🙂

No problem. I'd also note that there is an option in Click2Plugin that you can tick to make it show the Flash content when it can't convert the video, and that should help smooth things out for you if you don't like clicking all the time.

Also install Adblock and it should get rid of a significant amount of page-blocker elements. It helps keep things cool even if you run 20 tabs. 🙂

 

[Ns1]

Yeah I need to sell my 21" iMac for something with more power....wasn't expecting to get addicted to TOR. =X

 

[vbuggy]

Nah, just looked it up. At least the sound codec chip used in the Macbook is different. It's a Cirrus Logic chip instead of the standard Realtek found in regular Wintel laptops. You can't even install random drivers on here, and most of the time, anything aside from Apple's Bootcamp drivers cause issues.

But you and vbuggy seem to know something else that I don't, so please feel free to point it out.



There is a special cable that you can use to get digital audio out on the Macbook Pro.

I just realized that the Air doesn't have an Optical Output. But it still uses that Cirrus Logic CS4206 chip and not the Intel HD Audio as per other Wintel notebooks. Please feel free to point out anything I'm missing.

It's an Apple-specific version, but the performance is in line with any comparable codec, as well as others that Cirrus makes. And a less-than-optimum location on e.g. the Macbook Pro gives pretty cruddy analog output, much like many other constrained notebooks. As I said, there is no special sauce. There's usually a business or perhaps a packaging (as in has to fit somewhere specific that Apple has in mind for it) case and not usually a spec-case to be made in terms of a custom Apple-badged item: You're not going to e.g. tell me that the Apple-badged SSD's in the original Air's were faster than the standard versions, are you? Or maybe you are.

 

[runawayprisoner]

It's an Apple-specific version, but the performance is in line with any comparable codec, as well as others that Cirrus makes. And a less-than-optimum location on e.g. the Macbook Pro gives pretty cruddy analog output, much like many other constrained notebooks. As I said, there is no special sauce. There's usually a business case and not a spec-case to be made in terms of an Apple-badged item: You're not going to e.g. tell me that the Apple-badged SSD's in the original Air's were faster than the standard versions, are you? Or maybe you are.

Compared to what other manufacturers include as "standard", the audio chip in the Macbook Pro is still "better". Unless you are trying to say 48kHz 24-bit audio output is the same as 96kHz 32-bit.

Also the SSD example is irrelevant since the original discussion was about the audio chip. I never stated anything like "anything Apple makes is better". But if you'd like another case, try to look back at the 2010 lineup. Are you suggesting that nVidia made another integrated GPU as good as the GeForce 320M back in 2010?

 

[vbuggy]

Compared to what other manufacturers include as "standard", the audio chip in the Macbook Pro is still "better". Unless you are trying to say 48kHz 24-bit audio output is the same as 96kHz 32-bit.

Also the SSD example is irrelevant since the original discussion was about the audio chip. I never stated anything like "anything Apple makes is better". But if you'd like another case, try to look back at the 2010 lineup. Are you suggesting that nVidia made another integrated GPU as good as the GeForce 320M back in 2010?

Most HD Audio codecs support 192K sampling rates. And it doesn't have to be Realtek (which again offers comparable codecs) - Cirrus makes HD Audio codecs, as do Conexant, etc. The base point is that as I've said before, there is no special sauce.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Most HD Audio codecs support 192K sampling rates. And it doesn't have to be Realtek (which again offers comparable codecs) - Cirrus makes HD Audio codecs, as do Conexant, etc. The base point is that as I've said before, there is no special sauce.

It's like saying that as Intel and AMD both make x86, there is no difference in performance...

I'm not sure if we can continue the discussion at this rate if you keep bring it up like that. In fact, why not just say that since Realtek, Conexant and Cirrus Logic all make audio chips, they must be equal?

 

[repoman0]

Also if you want more transparency while listening to music, you can try upping the sampling rate in the Audio/MIDI controller. That's another perk of a Mac computer that you don't get in a PC. Most PC (laptops especially) come equipped with onboard sound cards that are barely good enough for music listening. But oh no, not on a Mac. You can up the usual 44.1kHz 16-bit goodness to 96kHz 32-bit on all modern Mac (Macbook Air included), and with the upconversion technique that Apple uses, sound quality is markedly better.

Are you sure? Unless Apple created some magic that any other industry or academic engineers haven't figured out, upsampling 44.1kHz to 96kHz typically is not a good idea; it should be an integer multiple of 44.1kHz. All the sampling rate means is that the digital waveform can accurately reproduce half of that frequency - hence the reason for 44.1kHz in the first place (22.05kHz max real audio frequency - comfortably above the human hearing range while allowing for a reasonable 1980 data rate).

Upsampling and correspondingly upconverting bits per sample can help with audio quality because less aggressive cutoff filters can then be used. High order low pass filters used to filter standard 44.1kHz audio can be detrimental to audio quality compared to sampling the data stream at say 88.2kHz or 176.4kHz, which would interpolate every second or every three out of four bits based on the original data. The bandwidth of this signal would then be much higher and less aggressive filters could then be used. But, you're still interpolating, and converting 44.1kHz to 96kHz is a tricky and not very transparent operation like 88.2 or 176.4 would be. How do you interpolate every 96/44.1 = 2.1768707... bits? Actually I wouldn't be surprised at all if the results were worse than just using aggressive filtering at standard 44.1kHz, 16b/sample CD quality.

Not that any of this really matters that much since it's going through a cheap audio I/O chip and cheap output jack, but the point is that bigger numbers in the audio world does not necessarily imply better. Actually I'm sure all the chips you mentioned above perform just fine. What really matters is the part after the DAC - the analog amplifier circuit. High quality opamps and well specced analog components are much more important, along with good noise shielding and optimal placement within the chassis.

On topic: Wish I could afford a 13" Macbook pro / air 😛 Very nice machines (but not because of their audio output...)

 

[runawayprisoner]

Are you sure? Unless Apple created some magic that any other industry or academic engineers haven't figured out...

Off-topic a little bit, but this is exactly what happened with iOS and MobileSafari. I think it's for another discussion, but please feel free to point out how Apple implemented GPU acceleration on iOS in this instance. I haven't seen any industry or academic engineers figure that part out. At least at Google's HQ. They have partially figured it out at Microsoft for sure, but not quite.

upsampling 44.1kHz to 96kHz typically is not a good idea; it should be an integer multiple of 44.1kHz. All the sampling rate means is that the digital waveform can accurately reproduce half of that frequency - hence the reason for 44.1kHz in the first place (22.05kHz max real audio frequency - comfortably above the human hearing range while allowing for a reasonable 1980 data rate).

Upsampling and correspondingly upconverting bits per sample can help with audio quality because less aggressive cutoff filters can then be used. High order low pass filters used to filter standard 44.1kHz audio can be detrimental to audio quality compared to sampling the data stream at say 88.2kHz or 176.4kHz, which would interpolate every second or every three out of four bits based on the original data. The bandwidth of this signal would then be much higher and less aggressive filters could then be used. But, you're still interpolating, and converting 44.1kHz to 96kHz is a tricky and not very transparent operation like 88.2 or 176.4 would be. How do you interpolate every 96/44.1 = 2.1768707... bits? Actually I wouldn't be surprised at all if the results were worse than just using aggressive filtering at standard 44.1kHz, 16b/sample CD quality.

There is a 88.2kHz intermediary in between. I suspect that when set to 96kHz, it wouldn't just convert anything to 96kHz. If they would just convert it to 88.2kHz, then as you said, it should be the better choice.

In fact, it's limited to 96kHz only in Mac OSX. Under Windows, the driver support also goes up to 176.4kHz and 192kHz.

I have two theories for the missing higher frequency. The first being that perhaps the chip was really capable of 192kHz, but Apple shows only 96kHz as a means of saying that it's actually 192kHz but heavily filtered. In that case, the 32-bit float processing capability shown under Mac is just there for show.

Another being that the 32-bit float capability is for real, and it can actually convert using floating point instead of integer. In which case, any arbitrary ratio, like 2.1768707... like you said should work just fine. Single-precision floating point (32-bit) can go up to 23-24 digits, so the precision should be quite high. Of course, assuming the DSP is really 32-bit, which as I read is not too far out.

Not that any of this really matters that much since it's going through a cheap audio I/O chip and cheap output jack, but the point is that bigger numbers in the audio world does not necessarily imply better. Actually I'm sure all the chips you mentioned above perform just fine. What really matters is the part after the DAC - the analog amplifier circuit. High quality opamps and well specced analog components are much more important, along with good noise shielding and optimal placement within the chassis.

And as mentioned, the Cirrus Logic 4206a is a chip that you don't see in just about every laptop out there, so its capability is not really directly comparable to every Realtek chip. I wouldn't call myself an audiophile per se, but boosting the sampling rate to 96kHz under Mac OSX does give much higher clarity and separation to the sound going through my ATH-M50 headphones, and to my dad's ancient but still kicking Pioneer setup.

I do realize that there are Windows laptops with the same capability. Heck, my dad's Vaio also does 192kHz. But it doesn't sound as nice to my ears. It could be just me, and do take note that I'm not saying that Apple added any special sauce. That's what you and vbuggy decided. I simply stated that it sounded better than most PC laptops/

Perhaps it's misleading to say that 96kHz on Mac sounds better than 96kHz on Windows. For that, I apologize. But there is a difference, and whether you believe it or not is really up to you, I guess. The fact is that the audio chip is different, and I don't think you can just group it together with the usual laptop suspects.

 

[Toughbook]

You keep stating that because the Audio Chip is different then it has to be better. How do you come to that conclusion? I hope that is not how you compare other items in your life. Not trying to argue with ya, just don't get the rational.