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The speakers... A while back, my wife and I went for a week way out in the sticks. We live in Oregon, and our favorite place is out in the Ochoco high desert
by ddingus 4y ago
The speakers...
A while back, my wife and I went for a week way out in the sticks. We live in Oregon, and our favorite place is out in the Ochoco high desert National Forest. And nothing works there. I mean nothing except for AM radio late at night.[1]
After a few days, our hearing settles back to what is supposed to be normal. City life is loud and our hearing system compensates in various ways that reduce our ability to really appreciate sound.
After hearing that our ability to listen has relaxed into high potential mode, we decided to get the MacBook out and watch a movie. We had been saving this experience for a good time and it all came together nicely!
We were blown away![0]
Seriously. The amount and quality, fidelity of sound coming out of that MacBook was insane! Of course it all was soft on the low end. Not too much we could do about that because physics, but otherwise the whole experience was a real treat!
I find it difficult to communicate the impact. Here we are, gentle noises from our camp fire a modest distance away, various crackles, pops, hisses and an equally gentle breeze and our own bodies were the only sounds present outside of the movie sound track.
Mixed in nicely with all that was our movie. Actually a couple of them because we repeated the experience a couple times. It was so damn good!
All I can really say here is you should definitely give this a try!
So much engineering, better materials, better software, and it all adds right the fuck up. I really did not expect what I heard at all. Very highly recommended.
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[0] And to be clear, I am talking about all that we did hear when we did not expect to. Truth is, we were camping with a MacBook. The sound we heard wea respectable, despite it being small speakers and all that goes mobile devices.
It seemed sci-fi like to us. The tech advances, engineering all add up. And that's the blown away part. Experiencing a sum like that, rather than incrementally. The context really helped raise the impact.
[1] And that is a great experience! Any radio will be fun, but if you can get hold of a 70's maybe 80's era one with multiple frequency bands, say short wave, broadcast, and any others, the isolation means getting to connect to the world old school tuning stuff in from all over the place!
AM, on a good radio, is an interesting experience and again on a good radio optimized for what the tech actually does, will sound better than you think. And how it colors the material is something I crave. Comes from growing up listening to a fine Zenith "Trans Oceanic" radio with almost god like performance, but I digress...
- dreamcompiler 4y ago100% agree. I got a new MBP in 2020 and its sound is shockingly good. I had never experienced decent sound from laptop speakers before.
- ddingus 4y agoNothing like those speakers, agreed. In a more normal office setting, I am far more inclined to use the built in speaker and mic combo myself when using my Apple device. Otherwise, my goto is actually the Samsung AKG pack in earbuds that came with my Note phones. Mic is great, audio quality also great. Those have a wire. I do not mind a wire. Always works.
- javajosh 4y ago>my goto is actually the Samsung AKG pack in earbuds Me too! They are falling apart at this point, 3 or 4 years later, but wow. They have so many nice little features like a cloth braided cable that helps keep them from knotting themselves, and very comfy ear pieces. And of course they sound great, and because they are cheap (~$15) I never worry about losing them. AKG found some sort of global minima of price/performance, and it's cool Samsung recognized that. I will admit, though, that not having a wire is really nice, it's just all the trade-offs are awful. In particular the cost is high AND the likelihood to lose a component of them is very high (for me). Plus the rigamarole around keeping them charged and getting them paired...to all that I say "bah humbug!"
- ddingus 4y agoLate reply, but I just checked my stash! I have 4 of these, in the bags, ready to go. Love them so much! Their response curve works for my sense of hearing. Hard to get better, just different. Overstock had those things for $10 some time back and I bought a handful, and I am glad I did.
- javajosh 4y agoGreat story. Sounds like nights at Joshua Tree, where I am more familiar. Apple's laptop speakers are the best in the world. But even the best laptop speakers aren't "good hifi system good", especially in bass and stereo separation, but these qualities are not needed by lots of music. Even cheap modern portables with li-ion batteries and rare-earth magnets are startlingly good, a real feat of engineering, and perfectly acceptable to blast Pharrel at a pool party. But if I'm listening to Dark Side of the Moon, I want good headphones!