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Most modern laptops use DSP to get the speakers to sound the way they do. If you switch that off they have the same ‘flat’ sound described in this review. Wonde

Most modern laptops use DSP to get the speakers to sound the way they do. If you switch that off they have the same ‘flat’ sound described in this review. Wonder if this can be solved in software ?

marcan_42 5y ago
This is one of those things where Linux is a decade behind everything else because nobody has bothered to solve this problem yet. Yes, most laptops require DSP for the speakers to sound the way they're supposed to, and Linux has no way of handling this. The Windows driver provided by the OEM would normally do this, AIUI. While you can certainly manually add DSP to your system (PulseEffects, some random JACK or PipeWire flow, etc. - I do exactly this for headphone calibration on my desktop), what we need is a standardized mechanism for storing speaker profiles and having the audio subsystem seamlessly and transparently apply the right EQ and crossover profile for your device (there are usually more than 2 speakers). This is already a thing on e.g. Android, but not desktop Linux. This is required for MacBooks too. For Asahi Linux, once the underlying sound hardware works, we'll be spending some time working out a sane way to do this; I consider it a mandatory feature in this day and age. And once that's all done, everyone will be able to use it to get proper sound on any laptop as long as they can obtain or make an EQ profile. For the Macs, our plan is to measure impulse responses of what macOS does (we have the ability to snoop on its hardware accesses, so we can just play a test sound and capture the raw samples going to the speakers) and use them on Linux. This should give identical audio at moderate volumes. I'll have to check whether it also does some kind of compression or volume-dependent EQ worth replicating or emulating too, at higher volumes.
- matheist 5y ago
  > For the Macs, our plan is to measure impulse responses of what macOS does (we have the ability to snoop on its hardware accesses, so we can just play a test sound and capture the raw samples going to the speakers) They do some sort of crosstalk cancellation to make stereo sound better, it'd be interesting to look at those impulse responses and see that happening!
- caskstrength 5y ago
  Yes, the terrible sound on my Lenovo x1c is the only driver-related issue I have with this laptop on Linux. In all other aspects it is either same or superior experience compared to Windows.
  - akvadrako 5y ago
    The X1 Carbon 7th edition has pretty good sound with Linux. It does require quite recent kernel versions to get the good driver.
- FeepingCreature 5y ago
  You can handle it with Pulse (qpaeq), but it's pretty janky.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    That's doing it manually; there are a million ways of doing that, but the point is it should be transparent and automated and select the right EQ profile for you based on your hardware.

marcan_42 5y ago

This is one of those things where Linux is a decade behind everything else because nobody has bothered to solve this problem yet. Yes, most laptops require DSP for the speakers to sound the way they're supposed to, and Linux has no way of handling this. The Windows driver provided by the OEM would normally do this, AIUI. While you can certainly manually add DSP to your system (PulseEffects, some random JACK or PipeWire flow, etc. - I do exactly this for headphone calibration on my desktop), what we need is a standardized mechanism for storing speaker profiles and having the audio subsystem seamlessly and transparently apply the right EQ and crossover profile for your device (there are usually more than 2 speakers). This is already a thing on e.g. Android, but not desktop Linux. This is required for MacBooks too. For Asahi Linux, once the underlying sound hardware works, we'll be spending some time working out a sane way to do this; I consider it a mandatory feature in this day and age. And once that's all done, everyone will be able to use it to get proper sound on any laptop as long as they can obtain or make an EQ profile. For the Macs, our plan is to measure impulse responses of what macOS does (we have the ability to snoop on its hardware accesses, so we can just play a test sound and capture the raw samples going to the speakers) and use them on Linux. This should give identical audio at moderate volumes. I'll have to check whether it also does some kind of compression or volume-dependent EQ worth replicating or emulating too, at higher volumes.

matheist 5y ago
> For the Macs, our plan is to measure impulse responses of what macOS does (we have the ability to snoop on its hardware accesses, so we can just play a test sound and capture the raw samples going to the speakers) They do some sort of crosstalk cancellation to make stereo sound better, it'd be interesting to look at those impulse responses and see that happening!
caskstrength 5y ago
Yes, the terrible sound on my Lenovo x1c is the only driver-related issue I have with this laptop on Linux. In all other aspects it is either same or superior experience compared to Windows.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  The X1 Carbon 7th edition has pretty good sound with Linux. It does require quite recent kernel versions to get the good driver.
FeepingCreature 5y ago
You can handle it with Pulse (qpaeq), but it's pretty janky.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  That's doing it manually; there are a million ways of doing that, but the point is it should be transparent and automated and select the right EQ profile for you based on your hardware.