Macbook Pro Audio Quality

[MOSA500]

The chipset in my laptop is a sigmatel. It is older than the one in the macbook but it is the same chipset. It is horrible, far worse than the integrated audio in my desktop(nvidia nforce2). I guess it would be different than the one in the d620, although id assume also that it is the same chipset that HP uses in their laptops with spdif.

First, do you have proof that its the same chipset?

Second, how can you say the Sigmatel chipset is terrible and then go and do this:

You can either get the audigy2 zs pcmcia card(which may or may not fit in your laptop)

You go from calling one chipset terrible to recommending one of the worst sound cards in the history of sound cards?

I HAVE an Audigy 2 ZS Notebook, infact I have it right behind my MacBook and could easily take a picture to prove it. That soundcard is one of the worst cards I have ever heard. It's only marginally better than the old Live! 5.1 I had and not even close to the Chaintech AV-710.

How can you even begin to say the MacBook sounds bad, when there are more people here who disagree with you than agree with you, then go and recommend one of the worst sound cards ever?

Again, do you have proof that the Sigmatel chipset is bad? Provide real PROOF. Infact, provide proof that the Realtek chipset was bad too. I'd like to see that. Not published specs either, because we all know published specs don't mean jack. Just look at Creative's specs and how awful their cards sound.

And did you even read my post? You're assuming far too much in this little debate. HP uses Conexant chipsets in their laptops. How do I know? My HP dv6000t is sitting in the other room unused. Infact, heres the link to the driver download: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/s...s=2093&lang=en Conexant.

Again, where is your proof that the Sigmatel chipset is bad? Do you have ANY proof? And not your Dell please. Your Dell system is a business model notebook, not designed for any kind of multimedia. Not to mention Dell is renowned for the fact that they cut corners every possible place they can and their build quality, even in the business line, is only slightly above "Awful". The D620 is also a system that was being sold for well under $900, which is significantly cheaper than the MacBooks in question here. You know how Dell gets their prices so "low"? By cutting corners on the hardware and loading it with crapware.

So your comparison based on your experience holds no ground. Why? First, you're using hardware that is much lower end than even the original base model MacBook with Core Duo and no DVD burner. Lower end hardware means, even if the same chipset was used, cheaper and lower end electronics leading all the way to the headphone jack were used. Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro have much higher quality components compared to any Dell, especially those that sell for hundreds less than the Macs. Secondly, you're using Linux. Your sound is being resampled in Linux and then forced through lower quality components resulting in extremely bad sound for you. This will NOT be the case with a Mac considering (again) the higher quality components being used and the fact that OS X is BIT PERFECT via SPDIF and analog output.

You want an example of an audio chipset sounding better with higher quality components? Case in point, look at all of the Envy24 based cards that cost 2-3x as much as the Chaintech AV-710.

Though one thing I do like in this whole "debate" is that you've simply ignored the fact that I pointed out how you using the AV710 under Linux is absolutely pointless because of the fact that Linux cannot take advantage of any of the "Features" that make the AV710 a decent card.

Anyway, as for installing codecs in ubuntu/kubuntu, all you have to do is install the "ubuntu-restricted-extras" package. You dont have to enable any extra repositories to do this.

Last time I installed it, with 7.04, I did. But its okay because I've moved on to a modern OS

As for video card drivers, Intel integrated video works out of the box(along with intel audio and intel wifi). In other words, you can install ubuntu on a macbook and you would have 100% of the hardware supported out of the box.

Thats not the case at all. MacBooks don't use Intel ethernet or Intel Wifi.

Not to be a jerk here, but you really do keep showing how little you know about the Mac by your comments. If you knew anything about MacBooks, or MBPs, or OS X in general, you'd know things such as the little fact that Macs do NOT use Intel wireless cards or Intel ethernet. MacBooks may use Intel GMA graphics and a Core 2 Duo, but other aspects of the system are MUCH higher quality than those you find in your Dell, such as the wireless card.

Some ATI cards like my 9600xt have opensource drivers for them that ati developed and are included with all linux distributions.

So you have to use extremely outdated hardware to get good driver support?

In fact, beryl runs on many video cards that vista wont work with, such as slightly older intel laptops.

And, consequently, doesn't look as good as Aero or Aqua/Quartz Extreme.

As for nvidia cards, a new driver is being developed by the community which will allow nvidia cards to also have 3d acceleration out of the box. It will be a few months before it is included by default, but so far development is going well. If you dont want to use this driver, all you have to do to install the nvidia one is go into Add/Remove programs and click on "nvidia driver".

Welcome to Windows 98.

Notice nowhere above did it say compiling. I used to compile everything by hand when I first started using linux. I cant even remember the last time I compiled a program anymore. With 20,000 packages available straight from ubuntu as well as thousands of packages from the net.

Then you haven't used any modern hardware. My ATI and Broadcom cards in my HP required all kinds of compiling, configuring, etc.

And again, why are you even bothering with a Chaintech AV710 when Linux will not be able to take advantage of the cards capabilities? The card is known for its high resolution output. But only if you're using Foobar with the proper resampling and kmixer bypassing methods. Same goes for its SPDIF output, which can be bitperfect with the right settings. But Linux cannot take advantage of any of that (infact, good luck getting Dolby Digital/DTS pass-thru with DVDs) which, in reality, puts the AV-710 only slightly above intergrated soundcards from many years ago.

There are no programs, no utilities, nothing to tweak, noothing.

No programs? Do you have proof?

I have a piece of software in OS X for EVERYTHING I could do in Windows. And nearly all of the software that is multiplatform absolutely FLIES in OS X compared to Windows. Look at Photoshop CS3. It runs like a dream in OS X, but its sluggish and bloated in Windows.

No utilities? Such as? Want a utility to keep your system in top shape? Onyx. Better than any equivalent on Windows, and I know this because I used Windows for longer than most people on the internet have even owned a computer.

Nothing to tweak? What is it you'd like to tweak? OS X is based on Unix, which is easily hundreds of times more advanced and customizable than Windows. Lets not forget Apple Script which lets you automate all kinds of little tasks.

The basic mac mouse is a sick joke.

AS opposed to the $2 optical mice that come with PCs? The "Mighty Mouse" is a multi-button mouse that offers just as much functionality as most "PC" mice in a much nicer and more advanced package.

So if you supposedly use a Mac for video editing, as you claim to do, how can you say theres "nothing to tweak" and "no programs" and "no utilities" when to someone like me, someone who hadn't used a Mac in 11 years when I bought my first one 3 months ago, that, within 5 minutes of booting OS X up, it was clear that there were more options, tweaking capabilities, etc. available to me than there ever was in Windows? Not to mention EVERY piece of OS X software I have used has been of MUCH higher quality than any Windows counter-part, except for maybe MSN messenger.

Yours probably an ALC885. His uses a Sigmatel. Both are nothing more than the successor to AC97 integrated audio chips. Both are comparable only to low quality, several-year-old separate cards. That is all there is to it.

Anything else is wishful thinking by the impecunious but ostentatious.

Again, where is the proof?

No "published specifications" either. Creative proved a long time ago that those mean nothing. No loopback tests either, as those rely on the same soundcard and never take the ADC quality into account.

[MOSA500]

Just booted into Ubuntu.

Ethernet worked, using a generic ethernet driver. I would doubt its gigabit capable, like the MacBook is. But you never know.

Sound worked, but unsurprisingly, did NOT sound good when playing a couple of songs encoded as .wav files on a USB drive. Sounded significantly worse than OS X. Obviously due to the resampling.

Wireless did NOT work. Guess what? The only way to make it work is through ndiswrapper. Off to the command line to make something work! Oh and it includes compiling! Fun fun.

Thats all I tried. Keyboard/trackpad support was just as flaky as I remember it being.

Oh and the fonts and fonts in webpages were absolutely hideous. When will Linux developers realize that they've got the most ugly fonts of all OSes?

[bangraman]

Originally Posted by senns&nonsense

Not gonna be a popular opinion but I believe people with Macs have a completely different decision from those with PCs. The standard advice about....

- needing to get away from the noise in the box
- neeeding to get an external DAC to improve what is on the sound card
- needing an amp to drive good phones
- and on and on and on.....

is all less relevant to us so-called Apple fanboys.

Not so so-called when you consider you have the same chipset / audio path as a large number of Windows laptops.


Ah, the Kool-Aid...


... didn't work on me. It's perfectly usable and there is no doubt about that, but I'd say it's no worse and no better than most of the better Windows laptops costing the same or less than a comparable MBP. The optical IO is handy in certain situations, but I have to say that in in general for me if I'm taking a digital feed out of the system I'm usually relying on an external soundcard because I'm doing other stuff too. Is the resampling a major issue? Not if we're talking about the deficiencies of the internal soundcard audio path vs the deficiencies of the resampling.


As I've said elsewhere, it's amazing how much expectation, assumption and above all how you want things to be influences your perception of things such as audio. And if you are a fanboy and you have fanboy expectations, you aren't going to settle for anything else.

[maarek99]

Originally Posted by MOSA500

I have a piece of software in OS X for EVERYTHING I could do in Windows. And nearly all of the software that is multiplatform absolutely FLIES in OS X compared to Windows. Look at Photoshop CS3. It runs like a dream in OS X, but its sluggish and bloated in Windows.

Image editing is the only thing that mac has going for it and that's only because of a larger font base. Everything else is way behind the pc world. 3d apps? No such luck. Free utilites? How about the equivalent to virtualdub? Or audacity? How about programs I can use to convert video files, extract audio, use directcopy to rip without encoding in between etc? Cleaner sucks. Final Cut Pro is inferior to Premiere pro. Mac is the one that's bloated, sluggish and fcp even fails more often than premiere. That's saying alot. Quicktime is one of the worst containers I've ever used and I have to use that **** daily. Thankfully I can use Quicktime Alternative in the pc-world so I don't have to load up that pos player.

Photoshop cs3 doesn't run any better in this mac pro I'm writing right now than in my vista 64-bit machine.

Apples software skills suck ass. A good prove of that is the new Safari port to windows. And ofcourse iTunes and quicktime.

Nothing to tweak? What is it you'd like to tweak?

How about I'd like to tweak my harddrives to go down after 3 hours of idleing (instead they go every 5 minutes!)? How about if I'd want to disable that indexing? I'd also like to monitor my cpu usage without wondering around the applications folder. Why is the folder navigation so horrible? etc etc etc.

So if you supposedly use a Mac for video editing, as you claim to do, how can you say theres "nothing to tweak" and "no programs" and "no utilities" when to someone like me, someone who hadn't used a Mac in 11 years when I bought my first one 3 months ago, that, within 5 minutes of booting OS X up, it was clear that there were more options, tweaking capabilities, etc. available to me than there ever was in Windows?

Probably because you're a new Mac fanatic and don't know anything? You bought your first one just 3 months ago? Macs are good for people who only care about using safari and a bit of photoshop. That's it.

Besides my boss is an Apple fanatic. Everything is apple this or apple that. Gets a bit ridiculous. Thank god we can also boot the mac into windows vista to run our render engine on.

[ChaseD13]

From my experience with macs (its limited though) ive found the mac apps easier to use and more powerful than MOST windows apps. However, the pro level windows software usually far more powerful than the mac app. For instance, garageband is pretty sweet for what it is, but when you get into the adobe software etc... there is much more you can do with windows, but it takes some practice/training to get to it.


Since i'm a current xp user, and i HATE Vista from what ive seen from i, i probably will end up with either mac or linux soon.

to me linux is the best of both worlds.

[jumapeg]

Originally Posted by MOSA500

Just booted into Ubuntu.

Ethernet worked, using a generic ethernet driver. I would doubt its gigabit capable, like the MacBook is. But you never know.

Sound worked, but unsurprisingly, did NOT sound good when playing a couple of songs encoded as .wav files on a USB drive. Sounded significantly worse than OS X. Obviously due to the resampling.

Wireless did NOT work. Guess what? The only way to make it work is through ndiswrapper. Off to the command line to make something work! Oh and it includes compiling! Fun fun.

Thats all I tried. Keyboard/trackpad support was just as flaky as I remember it being.

Oh and the fonts and fonts in webpages were absolutely hideous. When will Linux developers realize that they've got the most ugly fonts of all OSes?

Drivers, drivers, drivers, and drivers. As I said before, Linux developers have to write those drivers, reverse engineering. You didn't mention problems with the graphics card. (maybe an intel graphics card??).

The fonts are bad...you should say Ubuntu fonts, I love my Slackware fonts (after some tweaking).
Do you know that some rendering/hinting functions are blocked due to several software patents from Apple and other companies?

[mushishi]

Originally Posted by MOSA500

Again, where is the proof?

No "published specifications" either. Creative proved a long time ago that those mean nothing. No loopback tests either, as those rely on the same soundcard and never take the ADC quality into account.

Sigmatel only produces 3 HD audio chipsets, and not one of them is better than mediocre. It has to be one of them, unless you now mean to resile from the triumph of your very trivial success in showing that yours was not one lame HD audio chipset, but another lame HD audio chipset.

Which will it be? Is yours a Sigmatel, and one of the three it produces, or is it not a Sigmatel, and you should begin apologizing to me?

Proceeding on the assumption that it is one of the 3 Sigmatel chipsets, whyever should I not use published specifications? I'm sure that Sigmatel is solicitous to represent the performance of its products to be as good as is possible. Your use of Creative was a particularly poorly chosen example, because I am quite happy to accept your logic and conclude that the performance of the Sigmatel chipset can only be inflated rather than understated, and can in reality only be worse than the stated figures

This is like arguing with a profoundly retarded child

[bigshot]

You guys can talk about chip sets and specs all you want, but the proof is in the pudding. I have a Macbook that's the main source for my A/V system... it plays DVDs, MP3s, every video format I throw at it... it has bit perfect optical out for 5:1 sound... and it sounds absolutely fantastic.

That doesn't even begin to mention the incredible usefulness of the OS, the best bargain in software ever- iLife, and pro-grade applications like Final Cut Pro. I use a Mac every day at home, on the road and at work, and I have never found a situation where software isn't available to do what I want it to do. You couldn't pay me to ever use a PC for anything. Certainly not for the paltry $200 or so price difference between comparable PCs and Macs. (If there is a difference at all- I read a recent comparison of the MacBook Pro with comparable PCs and the Mac came out cheaper.)

If you want a $500 computer, PCs are great. But if you are willing to spend over a grand, Mac is the best bargain going.

See ya
Steve

[bangraman]

That simply indicates you're happy with what you've got.


Duh.

[drizek]

Im not going to spend two hours with quotes and whatnot,

I have never heard the audigy 2zs, so maybe it doesnt sound good. It was just the first pcmcia soundcard that came to mind. I know it does spdif out though.

You want proof that the sigmatel chipset in my laptop is bad? It sounds worse in vista than the av710 sounds in linux, happy? And im not talking about the d620, im talking about my $1500 Inspiron 9300 "Multimedia Powerhouse". I already said that it uses an older generation of a sigmatel driver, but I seriously doubt that they managed to improve it much in the few months between when I bought my laptop and when the new models came out.

OK, so I guess HP does use conexant. Who cares? I wasnt even sure of it when I posted and ive never listened to the hp out of an hp anyway.

From the reviews ive read, all have said that the AV710 sounds only slightly worse than the m-audio 7.1. Im not really seeing your point. I guess now you are going to tell me that Bose sounds good too because it is expensive.

I dont know where you get off insulting my 9600xt. It can run Half Life 2 at 1280x1024 with near max settings. It runs circles around the integrated video in the macbook and really isnt too far behind the 8600 mobile chip. It is the same card that is found in the midrange imacs. The X1600 is just a pci-express and slightly overclocked version of the 9600xt. So thank you for agreeing with me that the imac uses extremely outdated components.

But none of that matters anyway, because my 17" 1920x1200 laptop has a 7800gtx overclocked to faster than desktop speeds. Just FYI, my 18 month old $1500 laptop can beat the pants off of a $2500 brand new macbook pro in gaming. Before you start talking about how well Photoshop runs on a macbook, remember I said gaming. Oh, and my 7800gtx works perfectly well in linux. In fact, it was easier to get the driver installed and get dual screens working in linux than it was in vista(you have to get a hacked driver to be able to install it for the mobile graphics cards in windows).

Beryl doesnt look as good as Aqua? I disagree, but w/e, you are entitled to your opinion. As for not looking as good as Aero, now you're just talking crap. Hell, if you love windows so much, you can just install a theme for it that looks exactly like vista.

"Welcome to Windows 98. "

errr... OK. Im not sure nvidia was even making video cards back in 98. Didnt the Geforce 2 come out in 1999 or 2000?

"
Then you haven't used any modern hardware. My ATI and Broadcom cards in my HP required all kinds of compiling, configuring, etc."

Its not about using modern hardware, its about using the right hardware. You may have noticed that dell is selling laptops preinstalled with Ubuntu. They all use the latest generation of intel products(not santa rosa yet though) and they work perfectly well out of the box. You dont get Broadcom cards when you use linux the same way you dont get a Dell when you use OSX.

As for OSX itself, itunes is horrible. I remember using the first version ported to windows(4.0, i believe, might have been 4.3) and it was pretty nice. I downloaded the latest version yesterday and it was bloated garbage. I also downloaded Safari, which was buggy as all hell, and the interface was a complete pain in the ass. Not to mention the MASSIVE amount of ram it uses. I still want to get some more sit down time with OSX before I make any final conclusions, but right now it isnt looking good. I actually was more interested in it back in the 10.2 days than I am now.

As for your ubuntu experience, what were you booting it on? The HP or the macbook?

And I find it hillarious that you think that linux isnt gigabit capable.

Keyboard/trackpad support was flaky? In Ubuntu I can use the touch pad, right click, middle click, left click and scroll all out of the box. In vista the touchpad is useless without installing drivers for it. As for the keyboard, im pretty sure you are talking out of your ass if you are claiming that the keyboard didnt work.