Speakers on macbook 2011 compared to..

I am not sure if this deserves a thread but i ll ask -)

Comparing my new macbook 15 2011 to my macbook 15 2008 (a1226) and i can definitely hear the difference. 2008 sound is so much deeper and basically better while 2011 sounds really cheap and flat it hurt my ears.

Sure i have external headphones and speakers but sometimes i was too lazy to plug it in, now it seems like i will have to..

Am i missing something or did they drop higher quality speakers at some point?
Hell, even my white macbook 2007 have way more solid sound.

 

I actually noticed the same thing when I played with the new Macbook pros. my late 2008 unibody has much better sound than the new ones. They may have used a different part. I have external speakers so I don't really care, however.

 

I don't know if Apple has changed parts over the years as I don't have other MBP models to comapre to but my 13" is about on par with other modern 13"-14" non-Apple notebooks. They are actually worse than my 2005/2006 14" Toshiba tablet and that was worse than my 17" Dell Inspiron XPS Gen. 2 from 2005 (which was still the best on-board sound setup I have ever heard).

It seems like built-in speaker quality has generally decreased over the years for many different manufacturers and models. My guess is that they stopped worrying about it when so many people decided just to use headphones as even a $20 pair will produce better sound. I can tell you that my 13" MBP speakers are better than the USB powered Dell units hooked up to my desktop. They are huge (each one is about twice is large as a can of soda) yet produce terrible quality (I say they are huge in that they should be about the size of silver dollars for their sound quality).

 

Yeah but the 15" has better sound that the 13" models in my opinion.

 

they have a subwoofer built in.

 

my 17" sounds pretty dang good

 

One thing about the Dell XPS speakers, they blow away most notebooks out there in terms of sound.

 

Right, which is why I said that the 13" MBP was similar to other 13-14" notebooks I have come across. I would hope that larger notebooks (particularly ones in the same price range) have better speaker quality than the 13" MBP. That is one of the reasons why my 17" XPS Gen. 2 (from 2005) had better audio quality in that the two front speakers were pretty large and the "subwoofer" was right on the bottom of the thing and it was pretty damn large (I want to say it had a diameter of ~1-1.25").

I have only heard the sound coming from a 15" 2010 MBP but it was from too far away for me to properly "judge" it. On a side note, I think it is funny that manufacturers are now putting more subwoofers in their notebooks yet, for various reasons, built-in speaker quality still has not drastically improved. The only line that really shocked me was the Envy notebooks with Beats audio. I hate over-hyped audio technology and brands (I am looking at you Monster) that don't backup their claims with proper testing but HP seemed to nail the speakers on the Envy 17 and even the Envy 14. Again, a $20 pair of headphones offers a much better experience but the Envy releases weren't bad at all.

 

Well 2007-2008 line up really have some BASS even on 13 inch macbook.
I was listening to it yesterday and then put my 2011 mbp next to white macbook 2007 — 2011 sucked ><
I am nowhere near one of those sound quality people yet i can clearly hear the difference, its like a $10 chinese radio vs $100 active speakers.

 

Well, that's disappointing to hear....


Bad puns aside, I don't think I've listened to the built-in speakers on any MBP for years. If I'm out traveling, I'd either mute it or have headphones (would bother others too much). If I'm at home, I have external speakers. It's actually pretty hard to think of an instance where I'd use the built-in speakers.