Reverse-engineering my speakers' API to get reasonable volume control

Why do they do this? The problem is so obvious that you'd reckon they're doing it to deliberately annoy users.

The problem doesn't stop there, the lack of gain with Bluetooth is notorious. Almost every Bluetooth device I own has insufficient gain, franky it's a damn nuisance. The audio in the two sound bars that I own is so low on some audio material that I'm thinking of pulling them apart to see if I can find an op amp and increase its feedback resistor to obtain more gain. I should NOT have to do this.

Let me give you an example, the audio levels on many YouTube videos can be all over the place. Often the audio can be 6 to 10 dB below what it ought to be, thus it's impossible to listen on a laptop's speakers, especially so when one is listening in a location where the background noise is high.

What's wrong with the designers who design this digital stuff, don't they ever use the equipment themselves?

Haven't they ever seen a traditional radio or HiFi where the volume potentiometer is off at the 7 o'clock position, 12 noon is the maximum volume with a nominal one volt input signal or a radio station that's using normal levels of modulation, and the reserve gain is the range from the noon position to the 5PM one?

Do I have to say it again? The reserve gain is for when the input signal is lower that it ought to be. The world is not ideal, audio signals can be far from ideal—even from high tech companies like Google.

Occasionally help comes along, VLC has settings that allow the gain to be set to over 100℅ but I've often had situations where even VLC hasn't had the necessary reserve.

I've come to the conclusion the designers and programmers of this digital equipment haven't a clue about how ordinary amplifiers work. Or they have never taken the trouble to find out. They just assume a 16-bit input has 65536 levels and that's the range. Full stop! They never give consideration to what happens when the peak audio input covers perhaps less than one third that range of bits.

To get enough volume I've even had to use the audio equalizer, that's when one has been available, and often there is not. To get the extra gain I slide all sliders to maximum. Having to do this frequently is an ergonomic nightmare.

This is what happens when the arrogant digital world is too prowd to take a leaf out of the analog world—the world that managed to get these issues right about a century or more ago.

So they don't damage users' speakers, their hearing, or generally cause annoyance.

> They just assume a 16-bit input has 65536 levels and that's the range. Full stop! They never give consideration to what happens when the peak audio input covers perhaps less than one third that range of bits.

1/3 of 65536 is still +-11,000 voltage levels, or 14.4 bits of information. That's a really good place for a signal to be! It leaves a bit (literally) of room for the peaks without clipping.

Now if you meant 1/3 of 16 bits = 5.3 bits of information, that is indeed a poorly recorded signal. +-20 voltage levels. It's going to sound terrible whether you boost it digitally or analogly. (is that a word?)

Damage speakers? Simply, not an issue unless they're one step removed from rubbish. Also, have you ever heard of output compression and clipping that would protect them? That approach is 101 electronics.

Hearing is not an issue as they're driven by flea power (they're not headphones). Even hearing these pissy little speakers when running flat out is difficult enough. And my hearing is fine.

And where are the regulations that specify a maximum sound level rating for laptops?

By comparison, my 4.5 x 2.5" palm-size Sony transistor radio type ICF-510MK2 (which I'm currently holding in my hand) not only has stacks and stacks of gain on very low level audio (I've never needed to turn the volume up past halfway), and it simply blows my expensive Lenovo laptop away when it comes to maximum output level (I've no trouble hearing it several rooms away). There are no regulations covering how loud it sounds. OK, I've now given everyone a reference device for comparison. I'd put it up against any laptop I've heard in recent times and it'd win hands down every time. BTW, I only paid $9 for it but that was a few years back.

You're right about the bits, it was a throwaway figurative comment to make a point.

I cannot understand why so many people come to the defence of poor ratshit design. My expensive Lenovo laptop, like my Dell laptop, are not fit for purpose when it comes to the audio subsystem. If I can't hear it on a nominal range of audio signals such as those mentioned from Google then, by definition, they're not fit for purpose.

The same nonsense has been wheeled out in recent days in defense of Microsoft's BSOD/crash. As I said on another post that Dark Ages Windows OS ought to be ditched or rewritten (once running, BSODs should never occur unless there's a hardware fault no matter what's loaded into the kernel). If it goes belly-up then it's bad design, QED.

Why defend the indefeasible? That people do and don't complain is why our lives are surrounded by so much shitty partially-functioning tech.

My M1 Air has great sound and a solid max output level.

Recently, I was given an old Sound Pop gen 2. That thing also delivers a lot of sound while also handling low input levels decently.