[Ma8ee]

Speakers are built to be able to withstand short peaks with high power to reflect the dynamic in the music or your movie. This is what is abused to be able to play loud sounds continuously. You could take the possibility to do that away, but then you would of course also remove some of the dynamics out of the music.

But of course, the people that burn their speakers this way don't care about dynamics or evidently about sound quality if they press their computer speakers like this. Can't sound not even a little good.

[guard-of-terra]

"Speakers are built to be able to withstand short peaks with high power"

And they should be built to be able to withstand any valid signal.

[philliphaydon]

Not sure if you've ever owned a Dell laptop, but I'll never buy one again. On a couple of occasions I have tried to play DVD's on them and cannot hear people talking with the volume up. Put headphones on and its too loud. Dell speakers are junk.

[EpicEng]

I've owned two. Both "died" shortly (very shortly) after the warranty expired. On both, the connector from the mobo to the power input cracked right off (I never yanked, dropped, or otherwise abused them. Just normal use.) I could fix it, but it was a pain, and the stress points didn't change, so it just happened again.

On the second, the screen began to go at 14 months. I would never by consumer electronics from Dell again.

[aestra]

Um in my experience all laptop speakers of all brands are like that.

[TillE]

I've watched a number of films on a Macbook Air without that particular problem.

They are still terrible speakers, though. I almost laughed when showing a friend Star Wars for the first time; it doesn't even come close to doing the soundtrack justice.

[philliphaydon]

I run Windows 8.1 on my MBP/r and don't have that issue at all.

External DVD Drive, play one of my DVDs on the Mac, audio is perfectly fine.

Play the same DVD on my Asus UX31, cannot hear the people talking, use VLC player to up the audio to 125% and its fine.

[skriticos2]

No. I have a System76 Ubuntu laptop and the speaker quality is excellent. Plays music nicely and sound is clear and crisp. How many quality laptops do you have experience with?

[aestra]

Never had a System76, but I've owned a few Asus and a Toshiba and when I lived with 5 other people in college, the topic came up and we all agreed on the quality of our respective laptop speakers. Of course I was in college quite a while ago.

[iSnow]

If it was a fundamental problem like you indicate, then every manufacturer would be hit by it, from Apple to Lenovo. It rather seems a problem of Dell using shoddy components and/or not issuing a driver that protects the speaker from the amp.

[KaiserPro]

Thats what limiters are for. The whole point of hard clipping is that +256 or -256 (or the 16bit equivalent) is below the point at which your speakers, amps, cabling or anything else starts to melt.

Speakers/amps should have DC protection builtin.

[lutusp]

> Thats what limiters are for.

Limiters cannot either distinguish or protect against the technical difference between a sine wave and a square wave:

http://i.imgur.com/oE5NFZ9.png

The red trace is a normal audio signal that doesn't exceed the dynamic range of the amplifier. The green trace is an example of the kind of signal one gets by turning the volume up way above normal.

In a hypothetical speaker of one ohm and a peak voltage of one volt, the red trace has a time-averaged power level of 1/2 watt. The green trace has a power level of one watt -- twice as high, and possibly too high for the speakers to tolerate.

> Speakers/amps should have DC protection builtin.

This example should show that this isn't possible without taking the temperature of the speaker's activation coil -- and even that might not work.

[userbinator]

DC protection = a <$0.01 capacitor. The bigger the value, the lower the frequency cutoff. A square wave passing through a high-pass filter gets cut off and the power is reduced.

IMHO everyone who is saying "this should be fixed by software" is doing it wrong. How much would it cost to write, test, debug, etc. the appropriate firmware/drivers? And it would still be subject to "warranty is void because you didn't use the right software". That cost could buy a lot of capacitors... and then if the values were chosen correctly, whatever the software does, it would not be able to put more power through the speaker than designed.

[caf]

An analogue bandpass filter could be used. Passing a square wave through such a filter will remove much of the power present at inaudible frequencies. Unfortunately, they also require bulky inductors/capacitors.

[tmzt]

Couldn't he codec chip do it by averaging the amplitude? I'm not sure if they are more than a DAY though or whether they have a microcontroller and firmware.

[lutusp]

> Couldn't he codec chip do it by averaging the amplitude?

Yes in principle, but it would be rather complicated -- it would need to have its own microprocessor just to save the speaker. D/A ICs with included amplifiers are already pretty complex. Also, if a user was listening to music that had an occasional high level, the special limiter might kick in and spoil the sound of the audio for a transient that wouldn't actually jeopardize the speakers.