Why only Apple laptops have an 3,5mm audio port that is of super sonic quality?

All other audio ports suck. It's the literal truth. It's the killer feature in Apple products.

Try to connect your Thinkpad directly to a stage sound system and it will be hell. This applies to all PC laptops I've ever tried.

Why it is like this?

I don't have personal laptop at the moment but soon going to get a new one, and it definitely will be Apple laptop, and it is ONLY because of 3,5mm audio port.

Noteworthy is that also the latency metrics of Apple's audio are in par with an external audio interface.

#laptop #audio #apple

@jarkko I think this is the result of just putting more electrical engineering hours into each individual product than most other companies, probably supported by making few models and keeping them around for years with only minor changes. It seems like everyone else makes a lot more different models with all sorts of specs and changes most of them out every 6mo, so the effort they spend even on the high end units is small, using a lot of off the shelf parts shared with cheaper models, not bspke

@jarkko Didn't know they had audio ports that large, but three and a half inches is definitely big. 2540% bigger than all the 3.5 mm audio jacks I've seen. Maybe bigger is better?

(Just kidding. I couldn't help myself from taking the idea of a 88.9 mm laptop cable out for a bit of fun. No experience with hi-fi soundsystems or apple products for that matter, so can't really comment further on the subject.)

@jarkko plus they know they are making a high end product so they have a culture of putting in the effort to design and test it well, rather than just slapping something "good enough" from off the shelf maybe more than a little NIH syndrome as well, like Honda

@raven667 I can accept Honda, and sometimes it is way more robust car. All I ask for is a glitch-free audio :-)

@jarkko the funny thing is that few of the unique engineering successes get on a feature list because that is too nerdy for their target customers, I don't think they advertise their analog audio latency or noise floor, just like they didn't advertise the video output switch connecting the dedicated and onboard GPU in their old models, so they could operate and powersave independently, too nerdy detail, but someone built it that way on purpose

@aumalatj lol ya a type thanks for pointing out :--)

@raven667

PC Audio Story in short in consumer hardware:

1. Adlib
2. Few generations of Sound Blaster that all sucked. My friends with Amiga 500s and/or 1200s were laughing at me because its 8bit DAC's had "the sound'.
3. Gravis Ultrasound. One of a kind event in this story. These were awesome and beat shit out of Amiga.
4. Motherboard audio i.e. back to forever lasting "Sound Blaster crap".

@raven667 Gravis Ultrasound is such a legend that some crazy person from Sweden has started to make remakes of it: https://www.tindie.com/products/kdehl/gravis-ultrasound-gus-pnp-replica/

@jarkko @raven667 Such a legend soundcard. There is also PicoGUS from @polpo

@paulthenerd I only limit my endorsement to the audio port when you connect it to a stage amp (as a test case) ;-) No opinions on touch pad's they're all equally bad to me...

Audio port is no that special either. You get the same level of quality from 50 EUR audio interface. That's the main point here actually... It would not cost a lot to have better (about that sum to the retail price).

@paulthenerd My guess from this that audio parts of e.g. Thinkpad hae TCO of few euros or something :-) I.e. complete and total garbage. Better if the audio chipset did not exist at all. In fact, I often disable the laptop audio chipset from BIOS as the first thing. PC speaker at least does its job

@jarkko love the GUS, had a Max back in the day and I ended up buying another Classic off eBay because missed it. Now I wished I hadn't pitched my Aureal Vortex ;-)