525: The Glory Speakers
09 Mar 2023John buys speakers.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show:
- Declan made an interesting observation
- Marco files a bug report… AND ACTUALLY GETS A RESPONSE
- unlike FB12026558: “Media services reset repeatedly upon initiating audio playback in iOS 16.4 betas”
- John has…returned.
- Follow-up:
- Avoiding Shoulder Surfing
- Screen Time passcodes, turns out™, do not protect against takeovers
- Protecting iCloud Photos (via Erik Smets)
- Could you previously protect Settings?
- You can actually set a many-digit numeric-only passcode
- Scam Authenticator App Steals QR Codes 😱
- Some absolute maniacs YOLO enthusiasts use no passcodes 😱 × ∞ (via Bob Von Scio)
- However, the kids are alright
- Mikael’s good point on ISP bandwidth
- Apple TV remote with touch disabled has an Achilles heel
- Yellow Things
- Avoiding Shoulder Surfing
- Apple Spring Event… Maybe?
- More on John’s COVID project
(Affiliate links abound!)
- John’s old 5.1 system: Energy 5.1 Take Classic
- Pioneer VSX-LX305
- SVS Prime Center & map
- Micca MB42X-C & map
- ELAC UC52 & map
- Polk R100
- Polk XT15
- Sonos Sub (Gen 3)
- KEF KC62
- SVS SB-1000
- Sealed vs. Ported subs
- Audio Science Review speaker forum & reviews index
- The problem with most center channel speakers
- KEF Q150
- KEF Q350
- Post-show: Some more home theatre talk
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- Kolide: Cross-platform endpoint security for teams that value privacy and transparency.
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Chapters
- Phbug reporting
- COVID 2: Electric Boogaloo
- Follow-up: Passcode security
- App Store authenticator scams
- The only winning move
- Stealing Screen Time PINs
- Upstream bandwidth matters
- ATV screensavers & touch
- Sponsor: Trade Coffee
- Yellow things
- Mac Pro?
- Sponsor: Kolide
- Rumored 15” Air
- “Compute Card”?
- ATP Membership
- John buys speakers
- Ending theme
- After-show
Phbug reporting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just a few minutes ago, Declan has shown probably more because he was procrastinating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting in bed than because of genuine enthusiasm, but he was showing an unusual amount of enthusiasm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the mechanism and machinations of recording. And so I was explaining,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, that’s the chat room, and he was talking into the microphone, wait, nobody can hear me right now, right? No, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, no, no. Actually, what Marco does is he plays music, and I logged into atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash live and put on my speakers and let it play for a few moments. And I have to concede
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, actually, whatever you were playing didn’t sound bad. This is about five, 10 minutes ago. And he listens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a beat. This sounds like Dave Matthews. Yes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Now in the defense of Marco, when I do play, and especially lately, I’ve been on a bit of a kick.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And oh yeah, when were you not on a kick? Ha ha. No, genuinely, I don’t listen to that much Dave Matthews
⏹️ ▶️ Casey except lately I kind of have been. So in the defense of Marco, when all he hears is Dave Matthews, I’m sure everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sounds like Dave Matthews, but he said that completely on his own, of his own volition. And I’m not sure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve ever loved my son more than I did that one moment. So, I just wanted to share that with the group. **Matt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Stauffer** Well, I’ll tell you what, so, you know, I’m not even going to touch that because it’s adorable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But so, you know, there’s new fish out from a recent Mexico
⏹️ ▶️ Marco series of shows. I have had one of the most productive weeks I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had in months. Like I’ve just been going through these shows on repeat.
⏹️ ▶️ John A fish-powered month.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even sent in a bug report to Phish about because they had like a what I think is a mix error where like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the middle of a song they panned Trey’s guitar a little bit to the left of center
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then it stayed that way the whole rest of the tour.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I emailed them like, hey I think this was a mistake. If you happen to ever adjust that mix
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And did that go did that go going to dev null just like feedback assistant does?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s been escalated to the audio team and we’ll see if we hear back. Whoa,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey whoa, whoa, stop! This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the second mix bug report I’ve filed with them and they fixed the first one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about six months ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m blue screening over here. You’re saying that you filed a report,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bug report of some sort. To a band. And a human
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looked at it and acknowledged it. I’m not even talking about fixing it. saying there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exists a bug reporting system wherein you get a response even if the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey response is screw you no way you got a response impossible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t believe it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco meanwhile I have this huge bug that’s that’s killing me on iOS 16.4 betas iOS audio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app developers are probably familiar with the audio services were reset notification
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a notification you can you know subscribe to in the SDK to tell your app when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quote, the audio services have been reset. And you’re supposed to like, you know, if you created any audio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco objects in your app, you gotta like recreate them at that point, reset it all up. You know, if you use audio graphs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reset that up. If you use audio engine, reset that up. Now what this really, I think means is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a process crashed, like some, you know, system process for dealing with audio, you know, core audio D or whatever, some process
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has crashed. What this has resulted in is the 16.4 betas Overcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost every time it crosses a podcast boundary, like if you’re between episodes, and so it recreates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the audio engine, it crashes that background process. I get usually two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or three of those services where we set notifications in a row, and playback stops until you go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over and hit play again. And I filed a bug report at least one beta ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and nothing. No response, no marked as duplicate, no just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sitting there wide open. Same as it ever was. And my bug report, I had a sys diagnose. I had the logs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Overcash showing the exact moment that they should be looking in the sys diagnose for what exactly happened. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say you’ve done everything they’ve asked for except perhaps a sample app, and I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they must have told you how appreciative they are of all the details that you’ve provided in this bug report.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, God. You know, I hope at some point in the future, you know, if you look at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, the boring boring stuff that like you know whenever you ask people what what do you want of Apple in the future
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone’s like oh I want a VR headset I want a car you know what I want is much more boring stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like make Siri better that’s like number one and number two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hey maybe fix the developer story in ways that you actually can and might like you know obviously they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never gonna get rid of 30% cut you know that you know there’s gonna be some kind of app store cut that’s big for a long time and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna require IAP as long as they possibly can, which is probably forever in practice in most places.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, you know, documentation, that’d be great. And man,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would do wonders for developer relations if radar slash feedback was better. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a functioning system where like we could file bug reports and they would get seen in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a timely manner and responded to in a useful way that wasn’t just seemingly some bulk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco process trying to close as many bugs as possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that is a fantasy world that I will surely never see. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What do you think comes first, self-driving cars or that?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, self-driving cars, full stop. I bet Tesla will ship their full self-driving
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before Apple gets any better developer story around feedback assistant. Oh God,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I can’t even.
COVID 2: Electric Boogaloo
⏹️ ▶️ John As the last host of this podcast to catch COVID, I’ve sort of been playing catch
⏹️ ▶️ John up with you two when it comes to infectious diseases. Oh no,
⏹️ ▶️ John Tonight, I’d like to close the gap a little further by recording my second podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John episode while COVID positive, presumably tying the record held by Marco. What? I got the rebound,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You took the Pax Lovid and got the rebound.
⏹️ ▶️ John I got the rebound, although there is some debate whether Pax Lovid gives you more rebound than nothing because you can
⏹️ ▶️ John get rebound without taking Pax Lovid. But regardless, whatever the cause is, I got it, baby. I’ve been trapped in my
⏹️ ▶️ John room and I’m going stir crazy. Oh my God. Oh, I’m sorry, buddy. I got two days of peace. I got last Wednesday when we recorded,
⏹️ ▶️ John I was negative. And then the Thursday after that, I was negative and I was out of my house and I did a bunch of stuff that we’ll talk about later in
⏹️ ▶️ John the podcast if we get to it. And then Friday, I went back into my room and I’ve been there since and it sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, you’re probably, I mean, I’m not an expert, but I would assume you’re probably not contagious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at this point, but I don’t know. No, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John contagious during rebound. Oh man. You just do the same thing again, the rules for it are the
⏹️ ▶️ John same as the first infection, you isolate, blah, blah, blah. I mean, the good thing is my symptoms haven’t been as bad. Like I didn’t really have
⏹️ ▶️ John a fever at all except for maybe the first day, a tiny one, and it’s just mostly been a stifling nose. I’m just sick of being
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey room. Yeah, of course. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what prompted you to test again? You were feeling
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah, on Friday I felt bad. I’m like, you know what, I was feeling better and I had two days of negative, but on Friday I felt
⏹️ ▶️ John worse. I felt, you know, not as bad as I did at the beginning, but I felt like, oh, headachy and kind of weird. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I knew the feeling. I was like, this doesn’t feel good. So I tested again and positive. And then I’ve been testing after that
⏹️ ▶️ John to see, oh, well, maybe the rebound will go away quickly. Nope. I was like super duper positive, like more positive than
⏹️ ▶️ John I was in the beginning.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You know, so anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I’ve just mostly been stuck with stuff, you know? And in fact, today is the first day that my symptoms, I feel like, have gotten better. I have,
⏹️ ▶️ John as judged by the number of tissues in my garbage can, I’m I think I’m definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John on the mend. So tomorrow I’m going to, you know, hopefully, hopefully I’ll see the line fading on my tests, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you want to see what rebound looks like. I’ll put it in the slack so you can see. These are not consecutive
⏹️ ▶️ John days, but they’re multi-day gaps between here, but that’s what rebound looks like. It’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my. So I’m looking at one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine tests.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love that you lined these all up, that you kept them all. And you lined them all up. It was in my room.
⏹️ ▶️ John What else do I have to do?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m looking at these nine tests going from left to right. It’s very red. And then actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the second one is kind of pinkish.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there’s a big gap between them. So that first one was my first infection, and then obviously I didn’t bother testing for a while because it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you’ve got it, like, what’s the point? So there’s a big gap between those first two.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so then it gets weaker and weaker over time. I would say one, two, three, four. The fifth one,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if there’s something there, I can barely
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s my first negative.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so then six, also negative. Seven, looking pretty positive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and eight is like, oh baby, I’m back and better than ever. So
⏹️ ▶️ John Friday, and then that’s Saturday, and I think that’s Monday or Tuesday. It’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sorry, John, that stinks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Man, I had two years between my infections.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this is still the same infection. Like, I feel like probably the two negatives were just like Paxilova
⏹️ ▶️ John just wiped it out or whatever, but it was like there was one left in the corner somewhere, and it’s like, you know what, I’m coming back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If it makes you feel better, some very good friends of ours, the husband and wife team of the family,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they got COVID. This was maybe a month or so ago. And they did take Paxlovid. And I don’t recall
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if the wife rebounded, but I know that the husband absolutely did. And so he was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, he was feeling like garbage, took Paxlovid, complained incessantly about how bad it tasted, which from what I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gather from what you’ve said is completely justified. And then as he’s starting to feel better,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he starts to come out of his hidey hole and then, oh, nope, nevermind, I’m back. Same story.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would still take it again though because my symptoms weren’t getting better and it was like I cannot my brain cannot be boiling
⏹️ ▶️ John in my skull any longer so I’m very thankful that it took away and also there’s some uh
⏹️ ▶️ John it is possible that taking Paxilovir can help reduce the risk of long COVID as well. I don’t think there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John anything conclusive on that but there’s some promising studies pointing in that direction so but just for the symptom relief
⏹️ ▶️ John alone I was glad to take and glad to have it but yeah rebound sucks uh but hopefully I mean
⏹️ ▶️ John by my past schedule it took me basically a week to go from positive to negative. So I figure rebound is probably going to be similar.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’ll probably be negative by Friday and I’ll be out of this ridiculous situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I’m sorry. That is stinky.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m alright that ties the record because Marco definitely recorded at least one episode of a pod with COVID. And so did
⏹️ ▶️ John you, Casey, but I don’t know if Marco got two of them. Maybe he did. No, I thought you did, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, yeah, I definitely did. Did you have three? Well, depends on, you know, how you define, you know, an episode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John my first I mean the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first time I had it, it lasted like nine days. So I would have done two episodes, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. It’s not fun.
Follow-up: Passcode security
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what’ll cheer you up, John? What’ll cheer you up is some follow-up. And we have all kinds of follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with regard to the screen time and shoulder surfing stuff. So we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were told that the screen time passcode doesn’t actually protect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey against iPhone takeovers like we thought it did last week. So we gave you some crummy advice, and I’m sorry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about that. Multigreg writes, I set a screen time restriction with the passcode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey without the option to remove it using the Apple ID. I tapped cancel and hit skip. When I try
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the forgot passcode link, it still guides me through the options to enter my Apple ID or device password or find
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a forgotten Apple ID. Whoopsie-dipsy. And also just FYI, this is us talking, disallowing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey account changes in screen time also grays out the entire Apple ID item in settings, which is undesirable
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not necessarily undesirable, but it’s confusing. I noticed that and I’m like, what the hell, why can’t I go into my Apple ID? Why is this grayed
⏹️ ▶️ John out? And when you tap it, nothing happens. So you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like, is my phone
⏹️ ▶️ John broken? Do I need to force quit settings or whatever? And you remember, oh, I disabled that in screen time. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would blame Apple for this because the UI explicitly says, hey, do you want to allow your screen time passcode to be
⏹️ ▶️ John reset with your Apple ID? And when you hit cancel, it says, are you sure you want to skip this? You won’t be able to reset your
⏹️ ▶️ John screen time password with your Apple ID. And you say, yeah, totally skip. And then it’s like, no, you can still reset it with
⏹️ ▶️ John your Apple ID. Like, what’s the point of that UI? And I tried it multiple times and confirmed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even though you say cancel and you confirm that, yes, you want to skip it, you don’t want to reset it, you can still reset
⏹️ ▶️ John it with your Apple ID. So the mitigation that we said last time, that specific one about the screen time password,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you did that on your phone, just remove it because it’s not actually helping. I mean, I don’t know if you want to remove it because it will slow
⏹️ ▶️ John them down. It will slow down the thief a little bit because now they have to go through the forgot password flow, which is kind of annoying.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know, so it’s a speed bump, a tiny speed bump, but that’s about it. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m kind of annoyed that it doesn’t work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and it might be like, you know, a little bit of security of obscurity in the sense that like they might not realize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why the giant bar of your accountantop is grayed out, because again, it doesn’t tell you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interesting point. Mm-hmm. But yeah, it’s still not as good as just having a really good passphrase that you never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually enter with people watching.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but I just wanted to tell people right up front, if you took our advice last week, be aware that does not actually,
⏹️ ▶️ John actually protect you. It is either a speed bump or security through obscurity at best.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and it will not slow down a sophisticated attack. Right. Sigh.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Eric Smets writes, I made an extra, oh, I’m sorry, this is with regard to protecting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your iCloud photos from an Apple ID takeover. Eric writes, I made an extra fake family member with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a separate Apple ID and I added them to the iCloud shared library. This way I can always use this Apple ID to retrieve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the important shared pictures. The only requirement is that you have room for an extra person in your shared library.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I strongly recommend not saving the password for this new Apple ID in iCloud Keychain. I don’t think that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is necessarily something that I am going to do, but it’s a very clever approach. and I see no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey particular problems with it, and it was worth sharing.
⏹️ ▶️ John The most relevant piece of information here is that, you know, if you have an actual family member, iCloud Shared Library
⏹️ ▶️ John gives more than one person access to presumably your shared pool of photos that you care about.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if someone steals your iPhone, takes over your Apple ID, and changes the password and totally locks you out, and you
⏹️ ▶️ John never get that Apple ID back, someone else has a copy of those photos
⏹️ ▶️ John in a live Apple ID that still works. I don’t know how this works, but in terms of like, well, who was the
⏹️ ▶️ John one who initially shared the photo library? Like my wife is the iCloud photo library owner and she
⏹️ ▶️ John created the shared library and shared it with me or whatever. So does it make a difference if her Apple ID is taken over or if mine
⏹️ ▶️ John is? Either way, this is just another form of, probably a weaker form of backup. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s something that I think people are doing. If you have shared an iCloud shared library and you put most of your photos in it,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re kind of getting a secondary backup just by doing that because someone’s got the photos on their phone
⏹️ ▶️ John and their device and stuff like that. It’s not as good as a real backup because a real backup, you would
⏹️ ▶️ John take care to take all the photos and make sure you download them all and save them somewhere that is disconnected from your Apple ID and all
⏹️ ▶️ John that good stuff. So backups are still the solution, but having someone else in the
⏹️ ▶️ John shared, the iCloud shared library is a good way to have separate copies of those photos accessible by an Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John ID that may still be live if only one of your Apple IDs gets taken over.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pete Fernandez writes, if my memory is not betraying me, I think in the very first version of iPhone OS,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you could set up a password for settings, kind of like a root password. I think Apple should give us that option. I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey zero recollection of this, but that does not mean it is not true.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I tried to look that up. I had a vague memory of it, but I couldn’t really confirm. Do you remember this, Marco? Could
⏹️ ▶️ John you set a passcode on the settings app?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You might’ve been able to, but I don’t remember this at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t either. Yeah, it’s difficult to say. Someone should find one of those, like, you have all these websites,
⏹️ ▶️ John like system7.app or whatever the hell thing is, where you can just run old Mac OS and JavaScript in a browser.
⏹️ ▶️ John An original iPhone version of that runs the original version of iPhone OS with WebAssembly or something, it would be a
⏹️ ▶️ John cool thing to have. And I’m sure it will turn up in a few years. And we’ll find out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. AF Waller writes, there’s a third option besides a short, convenient numeric passcode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a long alphanumeric passcode. That option is a long numeric passcode. This has the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey advantage of easy numeric keypad, but has an indeterminate number of digits. A 10-digit or 20-digit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey number is a good compromise for some. For older people, you can tell them to use a childhood phone number or even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two phone numbers combined. I didn’t even know this was possible. It is somewhat undocumented that if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey choose an unlock code but set it to only numbers more than eight or so digits, you get a numeric keypad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for entry instead of the normal keyboard. Again, I had no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’ve never seen this. Someone claimed that they heard about this by listening to ADP. So that is possible, and
⏹️ ▶️ John we all three of us just forgot about it. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think so. I mean, I think people might have heard from us that you can set a password
⏹️ ▶️ Marco style passcode, not just numbers like you know we thought about that before but I did not know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that if if you go through that process set a you know custom pass password
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and only use numbers then it shows you the number pad for input and just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of like a text box above it so instead of having like you know the four or six dots so that to see like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how many characters you need to fill in it just has like a text field so if somebody gets your phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and has not seen you into the password they don’t know even how long it is, which is one of the benefits
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, you know, the passphrase style password to begin with. But if it’s just numbers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get the advantage of easy, you know, large number pad entrance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John which is also makes it
⏹️ ▶️ John easier to shoulder. Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it does. I know
⏹️ ▶️ John making it longer is better, but telling which of the numbers you hit on the numpad is way easier
⏹️ ▶️ John than telling which of the tiny keyboard things you hit on the keyboard, even though they have the pop up thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John goes above. But it’s, you know, It’s all trade-offs, but just to put this on the table, this is one more
⏹️ ▶️ John option. If you know you’ll never be able to force yourself to use that tiny little
⏹️ ▶️ John QWERTY keyboard to type things in, but you can use a numeric one, try a phone number
⏹️ ▶️ John or something like that, to something longer that you’ll remember.
App Store authenticator scams
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, tell me about some what the latest scam is in the App Store, please.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is related to actually a Twitter thing when Twitter was getting rid of SMS or I don’t know if they ever actually did this.
⏹️ ▶️ John They say all sorts of things and I can’t keep track of which things they actually did that they said or not. But at one point, they were saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, if you wanted to use SMS for for two factor authentication, you have to pay us money because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s insecure and only the people who pay can use the insecure whatever. They’re very confused company.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, once they said that there was a kind of run on the app store of like everyone trying to download authenticator apps like
⏹️ ▶️ John Google Authenticator. Similarly with this story about Apple ID takeovers, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, if I keep everything in my Apple ID and keep it all in iCloud keychain, then it’s like once they get my phone passcode, they
⏹️ ▶️ John can get everything I should use, you know, insert application here, whether it’s one password or Google Authenticator
⏹️ ▶️ John for my two factor things are like just some other app, some other third party app with its own
⏹️ ▶️ John password passkey, you know, one password has it’s obvious one password and authenticator apps
⏹️ ▶️ John can have their own passwords and passcodes to get into them and stuff so that if someone does Shoulder surf your phone
⏹️ ▶️ John unlock then they get to your phone They still won’t be able to get to your passwords or your two-factor unless
⏹️ ▶️ John they know how to get into those third-party apps So that was sending people to the App Store as well to say hey, I want
⏹️ ▶️ John an authenticator app I mean, I need to you know I’m gonna go see what’s available on the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ John because I know I want something that you know Either stores passwords or stores two-factor codes or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John and miscord and to say many iPhone users are asking us to recommend safe authenticator apps. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John the App Store is making it useless to recommend any app no matter what app you search for the top hit is almost always
⏹️ ▶️ John an ad for some scam app. So you can’t even say Hey, go to the App Store and check out Authy
⏹️ ▶️ John because people will type in Authy and the first hit will be an ad that’s very enticing. It looks like it’s vaguely Authy
⏹️ ▶️ John related to people hit and it’s actually a scam. And you know, you would think Apple would be there knocking
⏹️ ▶️ John down all the scam apps, but the scammers are there ready for their moment. Like, oh, there’s a flood of people trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to find authenticator apps. Now’s the time. I don’t know, you know, what the scam is. Do they steal your passwords? Do they? Do
⏹️ ▶️ John they get you to mine Bitcoin? I don’t even know what the scam is. But the scam, it’s just, it’s another disappointing example
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, when people are in need, they’re like, go to the App Store, the one safe, trusted place for you
⏹️ ▶️ John to find all your apps. And you have a goal in mind, even if you know the name of the app, someone recommended an app
⏹️ ▶️ John to you. This person saying, we’ve just given up recommending apps because we know they’ll go to the app store,
⏹️ ▶️ John type in that word, hit search, and then see an ad search result that they don’t realize an ad and think, oh, the top hit, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got to be it, and go get it, and it’s not. What a shame. App Store, bad show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s like, does anybody besides Apple believe, like, oh, this is a great,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco safe place? So I, you know, look, I like Apple in general.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s been proven over the years. But man, the app store is such a sad state
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of affairs, and it could be so much better. And it’s a good thing Netflix can’t tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people to go sign up on their website, because that’s protecting them against all these scams. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knowing what I know about the security of the iPhone and everything else, I don’t even trust the App Store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The good side of the trust there is that I know that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worst case scenario, I can always delete the app. And unlike on the Mac, this is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the case. On the iPhone, I know that if I download an app from the App Store, and then I later delete it, I know that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gone. You know, that there’s no trace of it left. So I am, you know, more willing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to try things and it is more secure than say a Mac in that way. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as far as like what happens in the app, I don’t trust that at all. Because the history
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the App Store has been just a slew of horrendously, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spying, tracking, misleading, crappy subscription scam apps and they don’t do what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they say they will. They don’t work, they crash, They show a bunch of ads, they interrupt you constantly, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco railroad you into a payment sheet that they hope you’ll double click on or whatever. Like there’s just, there’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many crappy apps that I get from the app store. Anytime I try to do anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that requires me to download a new app, I know I’m gonna run into a whole bunch of crap. And it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John a shame. It was an analogy for the old people, speaking of phone numbers. The analogy is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you just have the app store, like I download an app, I can easily delete it. I’m sure that it’s not destroying my phone It can’t like steal
⏹️ ▶️ John my contacts out from under me because it has to ask permission It’s like that’s the type of assurances you have it’s like saying with the
⏹️ ▶️ John phone system I can be assured that the phone lines are secure People aren’t tapping into them because
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to get a warrant and if someone does tap into it It’s a federal crime and result or you know
⏹️ ▶️ John or the US mail or any of these type of sort of older transport mechanisms where we have laws and Strictures
⏹️ ▶️ John around them that make them fairly secure and safe with very onerous penalties for people who you know go
⏹️ ▶️ John against that right? not the newer ones, but the older ones, when we could still pass laws like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, so that means there’ll never be any fraud over the telephone line or the mail system, will there?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the telephone line is secure, but telemarketers still call up old people and get them to reverse
⏹️ ▶️ John mortgage their house and stuff. So the app store, yes, the installation process is secure
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s not gonna screw up, the line is secure. That is as safeguarded
⏹️ ▶️ John as it can be. One company controls it, it’s like back in the old AT&T days, One company controls it, you have to buy a phone from them. Huh,
⏹️ ▶️ John you actually do have to buy a phone from Apple, isn’t it? See that? And everything’s secure on that line.
⏹️ ▶️ John But then someone calls you up and talks you into, you know, doing a reverse mortgage on your house or gives you your credit card number or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. And that’s exactly what’s happening. Once the app gets on your system and it says, hey, you should sign up for our thing and type your
⏹️ ▶️ John credit card number here, do it like, and how did that get through App Review? I don’t know, how the hell does anything get through
⏹️ ▶️ John App Review? Like the securing of the line and the mechanism to deploy
⏹️ ▶️ John the apps is nothing without the securing of the actual apps that arrive. And Apple is just not up to that task.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even if it’s a benign scam, where it’s like wasting your time and trying to get you
⏹️ ▶️ John to, you know, sign up for a $1 a month subscription or something that you don’t know you need.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like there’s all sorts of ways that these applications can be user hostile while still being within the letter of the
⏹️ ▶️ John law. And somehow they get through app review, but Untitled Goose Game gets rejected twice by the Mac App
⏹️ ▶️ John Store and then they give up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s so bad. It’s so bad. And I mean, they’re so petulantly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey refusing to listen to reason that it sounds like they’re going to be forced to. And honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they deserve it. We’ve talked about this many times. You don’t need to belabor it again. Not yet, anyway.
The only winning move
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Bob then show skio I’m not sure there I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John Bob before you go there do you know the the title the heading there has gives you ample opportunity to get a reference case
⏹️ ▶️ John war games thank you very good
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the making up for your missing the net last episode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah God I’m so mad at myself for that I genuinely am now in my defense I haven’t seen that movie in like 20 30
⏹️ ▶️ John I got it I heard Marco get it and I knew he got it we’ve talked about it before on the show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe I don’t I issue myself several demerits I’m so sorry. I have been, I have shamed all of us. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the heading in the show notes is strange game. The only winning move is not to play, which is war games. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Bob Von S. writes, this is going to sound bananas, but here it goes. I have no password,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey touch ID, face ID in my phone. When touch ID came out, I could not get it to work consistently. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey turned it off and never bothered with face ID. I live on a farm homestead thing. And so there are many instances
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where I’m wearing gloves, some kind of hat, face covering, my hands are wet, dirty, scratched up, etc. Touch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ID never worked beyond two or three days. I also don’t have a passcode because that’s just cumbersome with these hand conditions.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That said, there really isn’t a lot on my phone that would cause me material harm if someone got my phone. I use a small regional
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bank whose app is basically a web view to their site, so you have to log in with a username and password.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Otherwise you can see pictures of my dog, what I listen to in Overcast, and about 10,000 spam emails. Good for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But the point is, when I go into iCloud in Settings and tap Password and Security, I’m only prompted for my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iCloud password. So if all you’ve done is stolen my phone, you can’t lock me out of my Apple ID without my iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ Casey password. And since there isn’t anything particularly interesting or useful on the phone itself, you only have a short amount of time to capitalize
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the device by selling it or whatever, because I’m pretty sure I can wipe the phone from my Mac. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unless I’ve missed something obvious, my lack of security has come full circle, where I have ultimate convenience and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minimal exposure to badness. This horrifies me, but I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the logic does add up, at least on the surface.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are some vulnerabilities here, but the perverse thing is by not having a passcode, you can’t use
⏹️ ▶️ John your passcode to unlock your Apple ID.
⏹️ ▶️ John You just can’t, because there isn’t one. So there’s no mechanism for it to say, hey, I forgot my
⏹️ ▶️ John password to my Apple ID, right? The bad side is I think even if you don’t have a passcode, the
⏹️ ▶️ John I forgot the password to my Apple ID may find its way through your trusted device of the iPhone, because
⏹️ ▶️ John there are other ways that Apple can prompt you on your supposedly trusted device of an iPhone to say, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John I see you’re trying to reset your password. Is this you? I know Apple doesn’t do the text message thing, but they have those pop-ups
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. So I’m not a hundred percent willing to endorse this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, they do have text message fallbacks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hmm, yeah. I mean, yeah, I suppose, because yeah, you could be, if you have a telephone number or whatever. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think this is maybe as secure as he thinks, but the other thing that he’s doing is
⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t have anything of value on your phone, when someone gets your phone, then they don’t have anything of value. Like that works.
⏹️ ▶️ John That, you know, the only winning move is not to play. Hey, don’t have anything valuable on your phone. someone’s on the steals your phone, you don’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ John Probably not the best solution, but I did think it was funny that by literally not having a passcode at all,
⏹️ ▶️ John and no biometrics, which I think is silly, but not having a passcode at all, as if you’re living in like, you know, 2008
⏹️ ▶️ John with your iPod touch like me, where you just slide to unlock. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s one interesting way of looking at it. I just hope there aren’t any, a lot of iPhone thieves stalking you out there on the farm.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you’re probably safe.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would just like to quickly note that the only winning move is not to play also war games. I just want to make sure now that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the appropriate credit. All right.
Stealing Screen Time PINs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on, the headline for this is Those Darned Kids, which I’m assuming is a Scooby-Doo reference. Gosselgold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey writes, my son got the screen time pin when he handed me his phone over so that I could give him
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more time. I made sure that he could not watch me enter the pin, except
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he had started a screen capture before giving the phone to me. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John so good. Totally owned. So good. This is amazing. It makes me so happy. There
⏹️ ▶️ John are so many people giving the same story that their kids, I guess this is going around in like the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the kid circles of like, just start a screen recording and ask for more time and give your parents the device and then
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll see what they typed in. Because it’s amazing, because the screen recording will show what things highlighted, you know, when you hit the numbers
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco or whatever. That’s very,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey very good. Very clever.
⏹️ ▶️ John incredible. There’s so many more exploits people have sent us, though. Like the iMessage apps,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if iMessage itself is secure, like the exploits my kids were using, the iMessage apps have ways to get through
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Someone was saying that if you ask for one more minute time in three separate apps,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a bug that just totally stops all screen time descriptions. Like not if you don’t have to get
⏹️ ▶️ John it, go to app number one and say one more minute, go to app number two, say one more minute, grab number three, say one more minute. You don’t need a
⏹️ ▶️ John parent to approve those things at all. Just by merely requesting it in three different apps, then downtime
⏹️ ▶️ John for the phone just goes away. That’s amazing.
Upstream bandwidth matters
⏹️ ▶️ Casey With regard to ISP bandwidth, and I think it was NASK ATP asking, you know, what do you do with your gigabit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey connections anyway? Michael Hansen writes, one thing that you didn’t mention in the discussion about asymmetric
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bandwidth, TCP needs the uplink speed for ACMES or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey acknowledge packages. If you saturate your uplink, download speeds will suffer heavily too. So in other words, you know, the way TCP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey works, which is the way most of the Internet is hung together, when you download something, you need to acknowledge, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve got this. And so what Michael is saying is, if you’re downloading something crazy fast, well, you need to send those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, I’ve got it messages back to where it’s coming from. And it can end up that you you have more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey download bandwidth to spare, but you’re flooding your upstream bandwidth with Yep, got it messages.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that would be very unfortunate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this is why like, you know, nowadays, most routers that people have in their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco houses and everything a little bit better at dealing with this. But it used to be a problem back in the day, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you like, you know, took a video on your iPhone and then you plug your iPhone into charge, it would upload
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to iCloud and it’s uploading this 2 gig video you just shot on your phone, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Wi-Fi is quote down for the entire rest of the house because everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else is trying to do stuff and your phone is saturated in the upstream and so nothing else works.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s it’s one of the many reasons why having a whole bunch of headroom on your upstream bandwidth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as well is very important because you can’t do that. And of course, you know, if you have a modern router that supports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco prioritization and QoS kind of kind of stuff, then this problem is largely mitigated but it definitely
ATV screensavers & touch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on John tell me about a problem with the Apple TV remote with touch disabled, please
⏹️ ▶️ John Last episode we were talking about the ability to force quit apps without the ability to swipe them up And of course
⏹️ ▶️ John the answer there is to double tap the up button Something that many many people sent us
⏹️ ▶️ John on mastodon while they were listening to the show Only to learn minutes later that we said that so
⏹️ ▶️ John we caught a lot of people in that one We don’t do this on purpose by the way But it is fun to see how many people do respond in
⏹️ ▶️ John real time as they’re listening right and the answer is a lot Anyway, one more thing
⏹️ ▶️ John from Eric Hemeter, it says when you disable touch on the Apple TV remote,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have a way to find out what the screensaver location is. So the screensaver shows like different places on earth, like
⏹️ ▶️ John with a slow camera pan over them or whatever, and if you just touch the touch pad,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like not click
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but just touch it, it says, oh, this is London, or this is whatever. Like it tells you the location, because you’re always curious, like what city
⏹️ ▶️ John is that, where is that? So now we’ll do it again. We don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John how to get that to appear without touch enabled, but maybe before the end of the show, we’ll find out and say it in the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John if you know, you should probably finish listening to the whole show before you send a message to Massad on telling us how
⏹️ ▶️ John to do it. Now chat room, the race is on. You have to figure this out before the end of the show so the people who send us a
⏹️ ▶️ John message will feel embarrassed the fact that they didn’t wait to hear the answer.
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Yellow things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, we have some yellow things follow up. Joel McIntosh writes, the best and worst
⏹️ ▶️ Casey car colors for resale value, according to carpro.com, which I’ve never heard of, but that’s neither here nor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there. According to carpro.com, they write, while it may be among the least popular color
⏹️ ▶️ Casey choices, because it’s gross, yellow is the vehicle color that holds its value
⏹️ ▶️ Casey best overall, depreciating 70% less than the average vehicle.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Well, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so just for reference here. I saw this too, and I was gonna do a victory lap But then I thought but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the same time though most cars aren’t available in yellow so the ones that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are available in yellow are Already like you know more rare more specialty models
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most likely and so I think that might be skewed the data like you know You can’t get like a Honda Accord in yellow
⏹️ ▶️ John is it not normalized for within each car like it would is it just?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t know. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. Look at the stats. I figured they would do it within each car. So this car comes in five colors, one of which is yellow, and the yellow
⏹️ ▶️ John one depreciates 70% less. Like, that would be the stat, not what you’re saying across all cars.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure. Well, I believe it, because you know why? Yellow is a fun color. When people buy a used car, they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, I also would like to point out that it says in the same article,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I am pointing this out because I’m trying to be better, the colors that retain the best value by segment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are. And for the SUV segment, the answer was yellow. Similarly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even though this isn’t a car thing, well, I f***ed around and found out because Apple has released
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a yellow iPhone. So this could not have been a better troll. To be honest,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and genuinely, I’m not trying to be funny. I think this is not my favorite yellow, but I’m in full support
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of fun iPhone colors. Just because I don’t like yellow cars doesn’t mean I don’t like yellow other things. I have my Playdate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sitting on the desk in front of me. I adore the yellow, although it’s honestly like an orangey yellow, but I adore the Playdate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yellow. This is a little aggressive, but I’m still here for it. I’m in favor of it. I wish
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we could get the pros and fun colors as we’ve all lamented many times, and particularly the colors ours on upgrade.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, this is cool. I dig it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it looks fun. It is fairly light. And in fact, Apple also released a whole bunch of yellow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accessories in their spring color refresh. They got some new watch bands, new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone cases, nothing that jumps out at me necessarily, but I wanna go see him
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in person. There’s what might be a promising orange on the sport band. But yeah, going back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the yellow phone, it looks fun. Whenever they do this in the spring, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do some kind of minor iPhone color refresh in the spring in the last few years. It’s a fun
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. I don’t know a lot of people who get them because most people in our circles will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make their buying decisions in the fall. So this is more for people who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco haven’t upgraded yet and don’t just jump on it in the fall and they just kind of get it whenever their previous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone dies or breaks. And it looks like a pretty good color. And like KC and like Upgrade, I do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wish they would give us these fun color options on the Pro phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So maybe in our titanium USB-C future, maybe they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a little bit more generous with the colors,
⏹️ ▶️ John Rumor is it’s like some darkish magenta type thing is the new Pro color, but we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, it’s like a maroon. Actually, I don’t know if they’re renders or what, but like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the mockups using that color actually looked pretty cool to me, but we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s hard to guess colors. You know, when I saw this yellow phone, I thought it looked like the E36, the yellow E36 BMW 3 Series.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was trying to figure out what that color was, so I put a picture of it, a link in the chat room. I
⏹️ ▶️ John guess before I put it in the show notes, it was a Dakar Yellow 2, Roman numeral 2.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a little bit more, because there’s a Dakar yellow that looks really like deep, saturated yellow,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I always remember the one from walking down Com Ave in the 90s at BU, seeing
⏹️ ▶️ John all the BMWs that belonged to the wealthy students. And I saw this yellow all the time and it was definitely kind of a
⏹️ ▶️ John pale yellow. That’s what I feel like the phone is. The phone is not like, even though people have been holding it up next to the Playdate, the Playdate
⏹️ ▶️ John is richer and more orange. This is more kind of like, it’s not totally
⏹️ ▶️ John pale yellow. It’s not like, you know, springtime pastel yellow, but a little bit more pale. It’s not, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not big bird yellow, right? Is it, is it a R1S yellow? I don’t know, because I can’t figure
⏹️ ▶️ John out what yellow that freaking car is. Every time I see a picture of it, it looks a different color.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, me too. I have yet to, like, I just, I feel like I don’t have a good handle on what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the color is. Like, it’s, in pictures I’ve seen, it has looked everything from basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like champagne gold to like super, like, you know, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t drink enough water kind of yellow. Big Bird yellow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sometimes it looks Big Bird yellow. How is this the same color?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if this is my reformed BMW fan speaking or something, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this Dakar yellow, as yellows go, and I stand by that yellow cars are gross, as yellows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go, this is pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hey, if I ever buy my old classic Toyota MR2 that I’ve always wanted, that comes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in yellow. I thought you gotta get that in fake
⏹️ ▶️ John Ferrari red because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it’s a fake Ferrari Toyota. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Red is kind of like the default, like MR2 color, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is. But that is a cool yellow. And when they catch fire, they turn orange.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This yellow, Marco, is not good. It is not good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do not approve. I would drive it straight to your house.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would love for you to do that because it has been too long since we’ve seen each other and you visited and vice versa,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I do not approve of this yellow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, if I’m honest, the correct color for the MR2 Turbo is red, but, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh well, someday. one day.
Mac Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s talk about some other stuff. Is there a spring event? What’s the story here?
⏹️ ▶️ John We just talked about the yellow phone. And the yellow phone was one of the things rumored for the spring event.
⏹️ ▶️ John But of course, they released the yellow phone and gave it to they had like, you know, press briefings remotely
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, and handed out the yellow phones to people and stuff. They did all the thing right? Like, and they did it without an event.
⏹️ ▶️ John So is there going to be an event? Or was there going to be event? They said no, no event would have sent people yellow phones.
⏹️ ▶️ John We don’t know, but either way, the rumors about the things that might have been in that event are some
⏹️ ▶️ John vaguely interesting developments in the Macs that I care about at least. So the first one
⏹️ ▶️ John is the one we talked about a couple of past episodes is the Mac Studio. We talked about the rumor like, oh, the Mac Studio is
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to be updated that often. Oh, is it a dead machine or is it just going to skip a generation or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ John The rumors are stronger now that have the Mac Studio skipping the M2 Ultra. Right now, the Mac Studio,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get an an M1 Ultra in it, and it would make sense if you think like, oh, we’re just going to update all the Macs every year
⏹️ ▶️ John with the next big M number. The Mac Studio had the M1 Ultra, and it will get the M2 Ultra, because we’ve got the M1
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro and Macs and a bunch of other Macs, right? And it’s time for the M1 Ultra to be in the new version of the Mac Studio.
⏹️ ▶️ John Seems like that’s not going to happen. That is related to everyone’s favorite Mac, the Mac Pro, where the rumor
⏹️ ▶️ John that we talked about in a past show is about that is the 4X1, the one that would have been two M2 Ultras shoved
⏹️ ▶️ John together somehow magically. that that chip was canceled, that Apple’s not making it. Part of the
⏹️ ▶️ John reason why that chip may have been canceled is, you know, what we talked about before,
⏹️ ▶️ John low volumes, not a lot of people are gonna buy that, it’s gonna be super expensive, and high cost.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this is something I think we didn’t get into as much in that past episode when we talked about it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John when Apple put Xeons in its Mac Pros, like the one I have here, Intel Xeons, those are expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John chips, right? And Apple didn’t get to make them, Intel made them,
⏹️ ▶️ John then Apple had to pay Intel’s markup on them and so on and so forth, and they were still expensive chips. But Apple benefited
⏹️ ▶️ John greatly from the fact that Mac Pros are not the only place Xeons appear.
⏹️ ▶️ John Xeons are mostly sold into the server market. And what Intel hopes is tons
⏹️ ▶️ John and tons of them sold it, way more than Apple’s ever gonna sell Mac Pros. They’re selling servers
⏹️ ▶️ John from Dell, I don’t know if HP still sell things, and just into data centers everywhere. Xeons
⏹️ ▶️ John being a server chip, a big expensive server chip. That’s what Intel is selling. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John and by the way, Apple, since we’re your chip supplier and you need some big honking CPU for your top end computer,
⏹️ ▶️ John you should probably buy a Xeon from us. Here’s the ones we have to offer. And that was frustrating for Apple. So they’re like, we don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John want the Xeons. If we can make a chip for a Mac Pro, it would be different. It would be better, right? Well, now
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has its wish. They can make their own chip for the Mac Pro. But lo and behold, when it’s time for
⏹️ ▶️ John them to make a chip for the Mac Pro, they’re like, geez, it costs a lot of money to make this chip
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s two M2 Ultra stuck together. You know, and cause it’s not like Apple’s making it
⏹️ ▶️ John themselves, they have to farm it out. They have to, you know, have it done in the fabs for, you know, TSMC fabs
⏹️ ▶️ John at three nanometers or whatever. Then they have to package everything together with whatever weird interconnect, you know, we only
⏹️ ▶️ John know what the M1 Ultra has as an interconnect and Brazil M2 Ultra will have on. We don’t know what the plan was for four
⏹️ ▶️ John because geometrically, like the M2, the M1 Ultra is just connected to end to end. If you’ve got four of
⏹️ ▶️ John them, how do you connect them? And there was all those rumors that we talked about before about how that would work. But anyway, that is a weird
⏹️ ▶️ John thing to do. And then you have the packaging where you have to put all that thing in a package with all the RAM chips around it and
⏹️ ▶️ John put it all together. And that’s expensive, really, really expensive. Because again, Apple has to pay
⏹️ ▶️ John manufacturers to do all that. They have to pay someone to, you know, print the Silicon chips. They have to pay someone
⏹️ ▶️ John to do whatever interposer stuff that they do. They have to pay someone to package it together and they have to pay someone for all the RAM
⏹️ ▶️ John chips. And it’s like, and the people who they’re paying to do that, they’re like, okay, so how many
⏹️ ▶️ John of these do you want? And Apple’s like, I don’t know a dozen, who’s gonna buy them? How many people are gonna buy this Mac Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like the volume, not that they’re that low, but like the volumes are low compared to Intel’s Xeon, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And so now it’s like, it’s a reckoning. It’s like, well, if you wanna make your own ship for the Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John you think you can do a better job than a Xeon, you’re only gonna sell a 10th, a hundredth as
⏹️ ▶️ John many Xeons. And so everybody you pay to do this is gonna charge you arm and a leg because you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not ordering, you know, 10 million from them. That you’re ordering in small volumes. You are a small
⏹️ ▶️ John volume manufacturer of like bespoke artisanal Mac Pro chips. Now, even though you’re trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to reuse all the building components from like the Mac Studio and the laptops and stuff like they’re already trying to save
⏹️ ▶️ John money that way. But the one way you can’t save money as well, if you want, if you want four of those things in here, you have to connect
⏹️ ▶️ John them some way and you have to package them. And that costs a lot of money. And it seems like Apple ran away screaming
⏹️ ▶️ John from the idea of actually paying for that chip because their volumes are just not
⏹️ ▶️ John high enough. And I guess even Apple thought we can’t, you know, if you’re going to charge us that much, then we have to charge our customers
⏹️ ▶️ John so much money, then they’re going to be like, no one’s going to buy this Mac Pro because instead of it being a $10,000 machine, now it’s an $80,000 machine.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s, you know, not as, not eight times faster for
⏹️ ▶️ John that advantage. Now, I don’t know any of that for a fact, that’s just speculation, but it’s something that occurred
⏹️ ▶️ John to me when I thought about why they bailed on the 4X chip. And it’s irrelevant to the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Studio skipping the M2 Ultra because if the Mac Studio skips the M2 Ultra,
⏹️ ▶️ John then you can roll out the Mac Pro with an M2 Ultra and say, it’s the fastest Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because the Mac Studio still has the M1 Ultra. So if you had updated
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac Studio, it’d be like, why would I ever buy a Mac Pro? It’s got the same system on the chip as the Mac Studio.
⏹️ ▶️ John They both have the M2 Ultra. I don’t need any slots, I don’t understand, and I can’t put GPUs in the slots anyway or whatever the hell the story is
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna be there. Why would I ever buy a Mac Pro? But now by intentionally, not intentionally, but
⏹️ ▶️ John basically like logically, as we discussed previously, not updating the Mac Studio every year because it is
⏹️ ▶️ John also a low volume device. The Mac Studio stays stuck with the M1 Ultra, the Mac Pro gets the M2 Ultra,
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple gets to put a bunch of graphs on stage showing how much faster the Mac Pro is than any of their other Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think that makes a perverse kind of Apple sense in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ John how they explain the machine, how they run away screaming from the cost of making the big 4X thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John and how the Mac Studio update cycle can skip a chip generation. Just like, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m presuming eventually the ARM Mac Pro will also skip chip generations just because
⏹️ ▶️ John the lower the volume, the less Apple seems to be able to justify updating the machine every single year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The rumors and quote information that we keep hearing about the Mac Pro are so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all over the place. The more I think about it and the more time goes on, the more I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either you are right, that the Mac Pro will basically just be the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco studio with slots of some kind, and same chips and everything otherwise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or the rumors are way off, just totally wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or option three, the Mac Pro will actually never ship. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know which of those is the most likely at this
⏹️ ▶️ John point. An Apple person recently in an interview gave vague reassurances
⏹️ ▶️ John that the Mac Pro is still coming, like as in, I think like less than a month ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, they said air power was coming and then it didn’t. I
⏹️ ▶️ John know, but like, so they said the Mac Pro was coming in that event presentation, or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John it was last year sometime, right? And it’s like, okay, well maybe the plans have changed since then. But I feel like if many, many
⏹️ ▶️ John months have passed since then and an Apple person officially is saying to the press, oh
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, the Mac Pro is coming, I feel like that means it’s coming. What’s coming? And I agree with
⏹️ ▶️ John you that we could be totally wrong because this is the type of stuff that doesn’t leak because no one cares about it except for us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the thing is, again, the rumors are so all over the place. Whatever the Mac Pro is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco currently rumored to be is usually something that is so far different from everything else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the Apple Silicon lineup that it seems like kind of a reach that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s what they would be doing. And so it’s just, I don’t know, I’m starting to get worried, really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the Mac Pro. Like, I’m starting to think-
⏹️ ▶️ John Then you’re doing it right. This is the Mac Pro experience. I know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? This is our show for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the last decade. You’re starting to get worried about the Mac Pro, you say, Marco. We can
⏹️ ▶️ John play this clip at any time in the next 20 years and it’ll be true. Or the past 10.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah. So I hope the answer is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the rumors are just wrong, or at least largely, because they’re just, they’re so all over the map and kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of not encouraging that. Yeah, I’m hoping that’s the real answer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that does happen too. Yes, Apple does fail at things and change their minds. Also, rumors are wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot. So I wouldn’t say which one is more likely to be the case, but the rumors, they just don’t make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sense with what else we know and what else we expect. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, either they’re gonna kind of, you know, chicken out of the high end, like you were, like your theory about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the, you know, the Mac Studio being skipped a little bit and stuff like that, or something’s
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Rumored 15” Air
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s some other Macs that were rumored potentially for a March event that may or may not
⏹️ ▶️ John happen. The iMac, the 24-inch iMac. That hasn’t been updated in a
⏹️ ▶️ John while. It still has the plain old M1, no modifier, no suffix. And it’s fine
⏹️ ▶️ John for that size of computer, but the idea is, okay, well that will eventually get the M2, won’t it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Seems like maybe not, because the M2 has been out for a while, and the machines that Apple would update with the M2
⏹️ ▶️ John have mostly been updated to the M2 but still not the iMac. So most recently, German thinks
⏹️ ▶️ John that there won’t be an update to the 24-inch iMac until the second half of the year at the earliest, and by that point
⏹️ ▶️ John the M3 will be available, so it could be that the iMac also skips a generation and
⏹️ ▶️ John goes from M1 to M3, presumably for similar reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not a lot of people buy desktops, right? I guess the iMac is probably, well, I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ John which sells more, the 24-inch iMac or the Mac Mini?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Probably the iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Oh, yeah. Those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are sold in a lot of offices and stores. And yeah, they do sell a good number of those.
⏹️ ▶️ John The volumes compared to the laptops have to be smaller. Is that why it’s skipping a generation? We
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. Because of supply chain COVID and because of the ARM transition, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John still very difficult to pick up patterns in Apples because it’s still
⏹️ ▶️ John much chaos. What is their pattern? What is their update cadence? Related to that, again, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it was German, not AppleSparks person. Gurman said something to the effect that Apple, again, declaring
⏹️ ▶️ John this with no sourcing or anything, but just saying, Apple seems to want to update their
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac SOCs on a yearly cycle, just like the iPhone. So, you know, A15, A16, A17, they wanna
⏹️ ▶️ John do M1, M2, M3 every year. Not a 1.5 year cycle, not a two year cycle.
⏹️ ▶️ John Every year, they want the M number to go up one, just like the A number goes up one. If that’s true,
⏹️ ▶️ John I endorse that plan. Apple is, you know, go for it. But that doesn’t mean they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to put those updated numbers in every one of their Macs on a yearly cycle, as evidenced so far
⏹️ ▶️ John by the Macs that have not come along to the M2 generation, and the rumor is that some of them may wait for the M3.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we’ll see. By the end of 2023, presumably, 24-inch iMac will be updated. Will it be updated with an M2? Or
⏹️ ▶️ John will it be updated with an M3? Related to that, one more Mac, the 15-inch MacBook Air that
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone’s been talking about. The MacBook Air already has an M2 in it. They already updated that one from M1 to M2,
⏹️ ▶️ John so that’s out. That’s here. The 15 inch one, the sort of,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, straightforward rumor is it’ll be just like the existing 13 inch MacBook Air, except it’ll be 15 inches. It’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John have a bigger battery and it’ll have a bigger screen and it’ll have an M2 in it. And that’s a perfectly fine product. I think it’s great. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it fills the hole in their line. I think it’s cool. There are some rumors that it might have an M2 Pro in it instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of an M2, because you’ve got more room and more cooling. The thing that I’ve been thinking about that I haven’t seen anyone say yet,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s been weeks and I figure someone would have done it by now, but if not, I’m gonna say it.
⏹️ ▶️ John They talk about the room, but like, maybe it won’t even be called a MacBook Air. Huh, I wonder what it will be called. And they never, they
⏹️ ▶️ John never let the other shoe drop. Wonder what it will be called. What will it be called? Two co-hosts of ATP.
⏹️ ▶️ John If it’s not called MacBook Air and it’s 15 inch, what will it be called? According to Apple’s current naming conventions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe MacBook just by itself, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s what I was gonna say.
⏹️ ▶️ John Am I the only one who thinks this? MacBook Studio. That’s what’s between the bottom
⏹️ ▶️ John end and the pro. It’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco studio suffix. It’s the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s 15 inches, it’s got an M2 Pro, the MacBook Studio, it’s right there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Studio is higher up the line.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically means desktop pro right now.
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s below pro, right? Because the Mac Pro is above the Mac Studio. The MacBook Pros
⏹️ ▶️ John are above the MacBook Studio.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I see what you’re saying. I don’t think, I think it’s just gonna be the 15 inch MacBook Air. Yes, it
⏹️ ▶️ John probably just should be. I mean, this was predicated on it coming with the M2 Pro, which is one of the rumors, right? If it just comes with the
⏹️ ▶️ John M2, it’s a 15-inch MacBook Air. That’s literally what it is, right? And that is the most straightforward
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. And that’s what I would expect that. Like, I don’t think they would give it the Pro chip.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or best, you could option the Pro chip and it would not come by default.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, it definitely won’t come by default.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, I feel like this really depends on whether Apple does what they did with the 14 Plus,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is like, we want to have a larger version of the cheap phone, right? Yes.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s basically, like, it’s 14 inside there. It’s just bigger. Like that is straightforward what it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or they could say, no, we still refuse to do that. If you want anything with a 15 inch screen, you’re gonna pay more because that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a step up. And even though we could make a 15 inch MacBook Air, we’re not going to, we’re gonna make
⏹️ ▶️ John a like, you know, scaled down 16 inch MacBook Pro and we’ll call it the MacBook Studio. I hope they make
⏹️ ▶️ John the 15 inch MacBook Air. They call it the Air, it has the Air motherboard, it has Air-like pricing. It’ll be more expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John than 13 inch, but not that much more. Cause I think that’s the product they need to make. But if they can’t resist saying, well, no, As
⏹️ ▶️ John soon as that screen gets bigger than 13 inches, we’re getting more money from you. If they do that, then it’s a MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Studio. Although I do admit that that naming convention is too consistent for Apple to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, and I expect, first of all, I expect this 15 inch MacBook Air,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this seems to be a real deal. The rumors are very strong and I hope it’s real because I think they’ll sell a ton
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them. I think it’s a great idea for a product. And I don’t think that it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will too badly cannibalize the 16 inch, just because I don’t think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you look at the current price gap here, the MacBook Air, even if you get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new M2 model, it’s like 1200 bucks, and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cheapest 16 inch is $2500. This is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge gap, and so I would expect a MacBook Air, 15 inch, going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from $1200 from a 13 inch, I would guess maybe it’s two or $300 more. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe it’s like $1,500. That’s still very far from $2,500.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s the kind of difference I would expect there. And if they do that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s otherwise the same computer with no other changes, no pro chip, nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco higher spec, just a bigger screen MacBook Air for a few hundred dollars more.
⏹️ ▶️ John And a bigger battery importantly, which I think is gonna make that machine extremely attractive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but you know, honestly, I don’t even know how much, I mean, the battery would need to be proportionally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bigger just to have the more screen area be lit up, but it doesn’t need more battery life. The MacBook Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has tons of battery life already.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but what I’m saying is I think the battery, the amount of extra area they have for battery is more than
⏹️ ▶️ John enough to account for the larger screen size. I don’t know if I’m right about that calculation, but that’s my gut feeling, that
⏹️ ▶️ John they will have excess battery. And since the M2 MacBook Air already has good battery life, this thing will
⏹️ ▶️ John be a battery camel, and I think it will make it very popular, is hey, you pay a little bit more money, you get a bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John screen and even more battery life, that is a very attractive machine. Like I’ve wanted Apple to make a machine like this for
⏹️ ▶️ John a long time. That’s why I kind of feel like I can’t believe they’re actually gonna do it. They did do it with the iPhone and the rumor is
⏹️ ▶️ John the 14 plus or whatever is not selling that well. It disappoints me and I hope they don’t get scared by that and pull a
⏹️ ▶️ John mini and be like, oh, we did that once and people didn’t buy enough of them so we’re not doing it again. It’s like Apple, every
⏹️ ▶️ John model can’t be the best seller and they’re not all gonna sell evenly. Someone’s, one phone is
⏹️ ▶️ John always gonna be the one that sells the least. I mean, you cancel that one. Just have a cheap phone in
⏹️ ▶️ John big and small, an expensive phone in big and small. And Apple seems to be like, well, we made a cheap phone in big and small and not enough people
⏹️ ▶️ John bought the big one. So we’re back to just small. Want more, pay more. I don’t like that attitude.
⏹️ ▶️ John And instead what they’re gonna do is the iPhone Ultra, right, it’s like, well, we have the iPhone Pro and that wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive enough. So we’re going super high end. It’s the iPhone, that is, we haven’t talked about the rumor, but the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John Ultra rumor is out there that there’s an even higher price point for the one that’s made out of diamond or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but going back for a sec to the 15 inch Air. So first of all, your battery camel theory is good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not sure they would necessarily do it though because batteries are heavy and the Air brand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco means thin and light. I mean, it means mainstream really, but. I’m saying they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John making it any thicker than the 12. They just get more battery because it’s 15 inches. Like that’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco free real estate. But it’s not free weight though. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John why like I. I know,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they’re gonna fill, they’re not gonna leave it empty with air, ha ha.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, but. It’s gonna fill battery.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They could put a cellular modem in there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, stop it. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John they can’t. That’s impossible. It’s been proven. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, gosh. But yeah, also, you know, so anyway, this machine I expect to be great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It feels a little early to be seeing any M3 Macs. You know, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M2 MacBook Air just came out last summer. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John right? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, the MacBook Air is not rumored to be, the 15-inch is not rumored to be M3. The only ones that have rumored to be M3
⏹️ ▶️ John is potentially the iMac, which will be second half of the year. And that’s, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John and well, there was a couple other M3 ones rumored about more of this, but even the Mac Pro, that would be M2 Ultra, not M3 Ultra.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so we’ll see about all that. But anyway, the 15-inch Air, it sounds real. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re gonna do a good job with it. And I think, you know, it continues there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It fills in a huge gap in the lineup, because right now, if you want a bigger screen than 13-inch, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to, again, like more than double the price. And I don’t, and again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the, the like, you know, cannibalizing the 16 inch, I don’t think is a huge problem because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you get with the 16 inch is not just one more inch of screen space. You’re getting way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco higher end components in other areas. Like when you compare to what the MacBook Air offers today, versus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the MacBook Pro offers today, MacBook Pro has way better screen, way better performance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way higher resource limits, better speakers, better microphones, like there’s, it’s, It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot better in a bunch of ways. And so a 15 inch Air would not really eat into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Meanwhile, if you are looking at the MacBook Air at $1,200, and you’re like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wish the screen was a little bit bigger. You don’t go look and say, oh, well, okay, I’ll pay $2,500 for the extra couple inches.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, you just buy the smaller MacBook Air or you go buy a cheap PC. So I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that upsell process is working that way very well now. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think this would be a pretty big thing. Also, I think where this would sell a ton is in corporate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sales. Tons of companies buy large quantities of MacBook Airs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they also like to have a little bit bigger options. And I think if there’s a 15-inch MacBook Air,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they would sell so many of those in bulk to like, you know, fleet buyers. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco another reason why I think they’re not gonna go super high-end with anything. I don’t think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even gonna go with the ProChip there. again, because the purpose of the MacBook Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is large volume, inexpensive model that satisfies most people’s needs. And the regular M2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does that. You don’t need the M2 Pro to do that. I know right now a lot of companies do just buy a bunch of 16-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pros as their stock computer, but that’s mostly for higher-end uses, like developers, designers, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of thing. Not a lot of people are buying those for their sales staff. They’re, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Apple’s stupid price structure for the big laptops cost a ton of money was passed
⏹️ ▶️ John on to me in my corporate life because companies in general want to offer
⏹️ ▶️ John computers to their employees. They’re like, you can get a big screen or a small screen. And so with like the Dell laptops
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, that’s what they would offer you. And yeah, the big one is a little bit more expensive, but they basically gave you a choice. Do you want it small and portable or is
⏹️ ▶️ John it a bigger screen more important to you? Right, because the difference was like a few hundred bucks. Right, but with the Macs, it
⏹️ ▶️ John was this whole regimented system. And people were like, okay, well, I want a Mac, but I want one with a big screen. They’re like, oh, oh, wait
⏹️ ▶️ John a second. If you want the Mac with the big, because it literally doubled the price. It’s not like a hundred dollars, right? If
⏹️ ▶️ John you want the one with the big screen, you have to be this level or your boss has to approve it or whatever. And you’re like, I don’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like they don’t, people who ask for that, they don’t know or care anything about Macs. They just want a bigger laptop screen because it’s easier for them to do
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. And they work a lot on their laptops when they’re not on the road even, but just in meetings and rooms. People are like, oh, why don’t you
⏹️ ▶️ John just hook a monitor up? Nobody cares, buy a cheap Dell monitor. Like that’s fine for when they’re at their desk, but people are on quote unquote on
⏹️ ▶️ John the go, even within the office back in the day when we were all in the office, just going from conference room to conference room and a 15
⏹️ ▶️ John inch screen is bigger. And people would request, and the companies that I work for, I want a Mac laptop and I want
⏹️ ▶️ John one with a big screen and they got so much pushback because of Apple’s stupid pricing structure. So if the 15 inch was available,
⏹️ ▶️ John corporations would snap it up because they do not want to buy, to the cheap corporations, do not want, which is most of them, don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want to buy every employee who wants one, a big screen Mac laptop because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John so expensive. And honestly, employees don’t need a 16 inch MacBook Pro if all they’re gonna do is
⏹️ ▶️ John check email all day and look at web browsers and have Excel open, right? 15-inch MacBook Air will do that perfectly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would go even broader than that. Almost everyone doesn’t need a 16-inch MacBook Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Almost everyone’s needs could be solved just fine with a 15-inch MacBook Air if it was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you maybe bumped the storage and RAM up for some people. But otherwise, many of us are still stuck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the old way of thinking, like, well, the low-end consumer-priced entries
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the Apple lineup are not suitable for if you’re a video editor or a heavy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coder or whatever. And that maybe used to be true. That’s not true anymore. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost anybody’s job can be done perfectly well and not just like barely done, can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be done well on a MacBook Air class processor. Almost no one actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs the larger resource. I’m very happy to keep making them. I’m gonna keep buying them. But the fact is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I had to do my job entirely on a MacBook Air, I could. A year ago, I did. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was fine. Like the Apple Silicon class low-end chips, quote
⏹️ ▶️ Marco low-end, are so good, we are not even coming close to filling that headroom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and actually using it in most fields. And every year as those chips get better and better,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the number of tasks that you really benefit with the higher-end hardware for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is getting smaller. It’s a very good place to be. Like if they, already the 13-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Air is an amazing computer for almost everything. make it a little bit bigger and you cover
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way more needs and you don’t need to make the chip any faster if you don’t want to.
⏹️ ▶️ John One other thing they could do, a couple of things they could do with 15-inch MacBook Air if they wanted, because we were talking about, oh, if they fill that space with
⏹️ ▶️ John battery, it makes it heavier or whatever. You know what you could fill that space with? I know they’re not gonna do this, but just throwing that out
⏹️ ▶️ John there for Apple, I know it’s too late, but 15-inch MacBook Air, plenty of room for an SD card slot.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, we were talking about what do you get with a 16-inch? You get an SD card slot? That is one thing I really would like.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You get an SD
⏹️ ▶️ John card slot and you get an HDMI port. I’m not saying on the Air, put HDMI, it might not be thick enough, right? But SD
⏹️ ▶️ John is very slim and it will fit. And if you have all that space, maybe think about that. The other thing you can do, you’re not gonna get
⏹️ ▶️ John the cool HDR screen on the MacBook Pro that’s part of what makes it expensive. Those are amazing screens, but the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Air ships with a default resolution that’s not native res for its screen. The 15 inch
⏹️ ▶️ John potentially could ship with native res for its screen instead of a scale resolution.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now that’s a pro thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not gonna do that. I don’t know. It’s 15 inch though. I’m saying like, it’s not 16 inch native resolution.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s 15 inch native and honestly screens for native res 15 inch that are an HDR
⏹️ ▶️ John like you’re not breaking the bank on that Apple that is not advanced technology that is a known quantity you can get those
⏹️ ▶️ John screens it’s not that much more expensive. And because so few people even know about what we’re talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that the MacBook Air comes at non native res out of the box. People don’t even know that so it’s not even like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a selling proposition where you’re pushing people up to the high end line. But that I just at a certain
⏹️ ▶️ John point, not having native res even on your cheapest laptop becomes We’re not at that point yet, but we’re getting
⏹️ ▶️ John close. And I feel like with the 15-inch MacBook Air, it’s a chance for Apple to take that next step up.
“Compute Card”?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, on Upgrade, when I guested a week, I think it was last week, we discussed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this rumor about a compute card. And there were references for this found
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the iOS 16.4 beta. And Mike and I had a conversation trying to figure out, well, what does that even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean? And I don’t think we came up with any particularly great conclusions or solid conclusions.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is this about? Is this something for the Mac Pro or is this something else entirely?
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is such an age old rumor for Apple stuff, but I think for
⏹️ ▶️ John computers in general, because it’s like a sci-fi thing, right? I remember back, I guess this was around
⏹️ ▶️ John the PowerPC time, perhaps, when the Mac was transitioning to PowerPC, and especially
⏹️ ▶️ John when the G5 was rumored to be coming out after the G4. It’s an evergreen rumor,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the idea is that it’s some kind of powerful computer that gets more powerful
⏹️ ▶️ John the more building blocks you buy and plug into it. And it’s a thing that makes sense
⏹️ ▶️ John to non-technical people, but anyone who has ever done programming or ever studied computer science and understands
⏹️ ▶️ John just the basic theoretical limits of parallelism, and then the financial
⏹️ ▶️ John and practical limits of wide buses that are very fast and what
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of intertexts are needed between different components, it very quickly becomes
⏹️ ▶️ John the realm of fantasy to think that you’re going to have just a bunch of these interchangeable modules and you’ll click
⏹️ ▶️ John them together. And if you want your computer to be more powerful, you just click two more modules on it, it gets twice as fast because
⏹️ ▶️ John you had two modules and you put two more and now you have four and it’s just, things don’t scale
⏹️ ▶️ John that way. If you look at what the speeds are and the interconnects between a computer and its caches
⏹️ ▶️ John and its memory and its SSD and how all those buses work and the idea that you, oh, we’ll just make one backbone that carries
⏹️ ▶️ John everything and we’ll plug things into it and it’s like, I mean, anything’s possible if you give enough money, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John not at prices consumers are going to spend. Even at the supercomputer level, this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John is very expensive and very difficult to do in a way that the interconnect does not cause bottlenecks and give you diminishing returns.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this compute card rumor, people quickly said, this is for the Mac Pro, you’ll be able to buy a Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’ll come with one M2 Ultra. But if you want it to be faster, you can buy a compute module that has another M2 Ultra.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s like, well, if you want two computers, just get two Mac Minis. Like, I mean, do you want two computers? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John two computers sitting next to each other, unless you can split up your video render between the two of them, which is possible, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, you could farm out the job and blah, but there is some overhead of that. You don’t magically get twice as fast by putting two SOCs
⏹️ ▶️ John in there. It’s like, how do they talk to each other? How do they have memory coherence? Like this is not, this is not something new, but
⏹️ ▶️ John in sci-fi, it’s cool to think that everything is modular. And if you don’t have to think about what happens when you plug
⏹️ ▶️ John a module, and if you’re just a user reading a book about sci-fi or whatever, you’re like, I’ll just plug it in and everything will be faster.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you’re someone who has to design this, you’re like, wait, so how does that work? Like how, how, how
⏹️ ▶️ John do they share information and, and resources and IO and how do they interact with memory
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, you’ve got a non-uniform memory architecture where some memory is more distant than others and it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John overlapping cache hierarchies and cache coherence between the CPUs and how the jobs bounce around it. It’s like an on
⏹️ ▶️ John and on and on. Like part of the reason that Apple’s SoCs are as amazing as they are is because they are systems
⏹️ ▶️ John on a chip where within that system on a chip, you’ve got your memory, you’ve got all your computing
⏹️ ▶️ John resources, you got everything locally, you know where everything is and you can make all the paths between
⏹️ ▶️ John them to be as efficient as possible because everything is close together and everything designed
⏹️ ▶️ John by the same party. Once you say, oh, there’s going to be another physical box that’s going to plug into a plug.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now you’re sipping through a straw. You’re like, well, we won’t make it a straw. We’ll make it really wide. Well, now you’re spending lots
⏹️ ▶️ John and lots of money. So this compute card stuff as an idea that it’s going to be a thing to make the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro faster. Daughter cards for or whatever you want to call them for
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac Pro that add computing? Sure, we have that FPGA thing, the Afterburner.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can buy cards to accelerate video things. They’re called video cards. I don’t know if Apple will support those, we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are cards that you can plug in that will do a specific task faster, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the idea that you’ll just be able to make the whole computer twice as fast by plugging in something that is
⏹️ ▶️ John basically a second Mac Pro on a card. If you plug in a second Mac Pro on a card, you’ve got a second Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is fine and well and good didn’t probably cost you a lot of money, but that’s kind of like the old like 486 card
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can plug into a Mac. Now my Mac can run Windows things. Yeah, because you plugged in a 486 PC into your Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John So now you have two computers in one, which is great, but you didn’t just make your Mac twice as fast. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John basically entirely discount the fantasy rumor of just adding resources to
⏹️ ▶️ John your Mac Pro by plugging in compute cards. I don’t discount the idea of cards that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John plug in that can do a special job faster, because again, the Afterburner card does that, and there’s a long history of cards that you plug into a
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro that can do a special job faster on behalf of the host computer. That makes perfect sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even if that card has some other SoC on it, like a specially made SoC that just has neural engines
⏹️ ▶️ John all over it, right? If Apple wanted to make that, they could. And that is a reasonable application of
⏹️ ▶️ John an accelerator card, where you would farm out a job to the accelerator card, it would do the ML job, the ML card
⏹️ ▶️ John might even have its own memory, kind of like GPUs have VRAM or whatever, and then it would give you the result
⏹️ ▶️ John back. But the idea that there would be two peer SOCs that are exactly the same and they would magically
⏹️ ▶️ John make your computer twice as fast, not gonna happen, so don’t worry about that. All that said,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think that’s what this compute card thing is. I don’t know what it is, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of related to the rumors we’ve heard about like the AR VR headset
⏹️ ▶️ John and how whether all the computing is going on inside the AR VR headset or
⏹️ ▶️ John whether like your phone is doing some of it or whether there’s an external compute module that you have to connect it to or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it’s some leftover from that. Maybe that’s, you know, maybe the AR VR
⏹️ ▶️ John headset will work that way somehow with a compute card that you can plug into a Mac Pro to do development work when you’re projecting
⏹️ ▶️ John onto the headset. Or maybe it’s something really boring. As unrelated to either one of these things,
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that it’s in the iOS 16 4.4 beta doesn’t mean that it’s a phone feature.
⏹️ ▶️ John It just means that, you know, the compute card might run iOS because if iOS has references to compute card,
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS would have to run on the compute card. And so it would have to know about the compute card the same way that iOS probably has references to
⏹️ ▶️ John the studio display, because apparently inside the studio display is a little version of
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS running all of the speakers and the camera and all the other stuff. So I’m assuming the
⏹️ ▶️ John compute card thing is way, way, way, way less exciting than people think it is. But until and unless Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John releases something related to this, we can speculate. Just try to tamp down the idea that you’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John plug modules into your Mac Pro to make it twice as fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Noted. I’ll be aware of that when I buy my Mac Pro for $80,000. If they ever ship it.
⏹️ ▶️ John it will take, you know, 1500 watts to power it because…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Small price to pay, am I right, John? Yeah.
ATP Membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are brought to you this week by ATP membership. You should become
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like big initial sale, you get 15% off as a member. All that is great. And you also just you help support
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we hope you become one of them. And thank you so much for listening.
John buys speakers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, so do you need us for this next thing or can Marco and I just like come back in an hour?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I don’t know. Like, as I, as I said, I had a two day break in my COVID
⏹️ ▶️ John isolation where, where I could unpack all the boxes that had arrived in my house
⏹️ ▶️ John and have fun with my little project. I talked about it last week. I said, you know, I had a bunch of boxes arrived
⏹️ ▶️ John to upgrade my sound system, but I hadn’t been able to unpack them yet. And eventually I wouldn’t, I would talk about it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I did do what I could in that two day. I didn’t know it was going to be today period, but practically speaking, I didn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John time to complete it, but I figured I’ll just give an overview of what I did. To review,
⏹️ ▶️ John my project was upgrade my sound system because I bought a new TV
⏹️ ▶️ John and a new receiver and a new Blu-ray player recently, and I’ve talked about that on the show. I didn’t buy
⏹️ ▶️ John new speakers. My speakers are very old, they’re very small, they’re fairly cheap, and I figured every other part of my system
⏹️ ▶️ John has been updated. I should update the speakers too. And it wasn’t just like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I should just do it because I just need to spend money. I felt like they were not holding up their end of the bargain
⏹️ ▶️ John in the television and movie watching experience. Not that they were bad, but now my TV was so much better.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the speakers, it’s 4K now, my Blu-ray player is 4K.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the speakers, they’re fine. It was a 5.1 system. I’ll see if I can put
⏹️ ▶️ John a, I didn’t put a link in here, Casey, but I’ll see if I can find one to my 5.1 system. I think they still sell it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s pretty cheap. It comes with all the speakers you need. It comes with front, left, right, and
⏹️ ▶️ John back surrounds, and a center channel, and a subwoofer. But they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John small. These are small speakers. I like the fact that they were small because originally I was like, oh, how am I going to even find room for 5.1
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers in here? Is my family going to accept it? So it was good that they were small, but
⏹️ ▶️ John small also means not great sound reproduction. Obviously none of these
⏹️ ▶️ John small speakers have any bass. That’s where the subwoofer comes in, but cheap subwoofer trying to fill in the bass. for all these tiny speakers.
⏹️ ▶️ John And practically speaking, one of the things that would always come up, and I talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about this when I was setting up my receiver, is people complain that they can’t hear the dialogue. Now that’s not just my sound system. There’s many
⏹️ ▶️ John articles about how sound mixing in television and movies has been making it harder and harder to hear dialogue.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wait, I thought that your surround system with your center channel was supposed to make that a problem of the past, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t have that problem with my basic two-channel stereo setup.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t watch movies or TV shows, or at least not recent ones. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the center channel-
⏹️ ▶️ John What are you talking about? The center, you’re watching sitcoms. I know you can hear the dialogue there and the laugh
⏹️ ▶️ John track. I know you’re watching Last of Us with Tiff though. That’s good that you’re getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m watching Last of Us. We’re watching New Girl. That’s not that old.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re not watching Christopher Nolan movies where everybody mumbles.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the center channel, as I talked about with the receiver, really does help there because
⏹️ ▶️ John you know where the dialogue is coming from. It’s coming from the center channel. And you can do what I did, which is turn
⏹️ ▶️ John up the center channel, which makes the dialogue louder than the other stuff. Because if you just turn up the volume,
⏹️ ▶️ John everything gets louder. And if it’s mixed poorly, again, the problem is not necessarily the speaker’s interval, but if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John mixed in such a way that the dialogue is overwhelmed by the other sound effects, just turning up the
⏹️ ▶️ John volume doesn’t help because it just makes everything louder. So having a center channel, you can just turn up the center channel
⏹️ ▶️ John and pretty much just the dialogue will be there. And that really does help. But it’s not just that. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not just the center channel. My center channel speaker is small. And also,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’ve seen the diagram of my room that we talked about last week, I’ve got two couches in my room and when we’d have
⏹️ ▶️ John like my family was visiting for the holiday or whatever, even just my local family just sitting
⏹️ ▶️ John around at the various seats in the couch, especially if someone wants to lay on one couch, they take up half the couch and they have the dog with them, so two other
⏹️ ▶️ John people on the other couch. We are spread pretty widely in our weird room around the television
⏹️ ▶️ John screen. And the center channel speaker is only really
⏹️ ▶️ John pointing at one person. And if you have a cheap, small, center channel speaker
⏹️ ▶️ John without sort of a wide dispersion, the person who’s sitting in the quote-unquote good seat can
⏹️ ▶️ John hear the dialogue fine. But the people in the other seats feel like they don’t hear it as well, because first
⏹️ ▶️ John of all, the volume is lower, and second of all, who knows which frequencies are reaching them, right? So you can turn up the volume,
⏹️ ▶️ John but then the person sitting in the good seat says, the dialogue’s too loud now, right? So these are the problems
⏹️ ▶️ John that we’re solving. Better sound system in terms of just like, just better sound overall, right? you know, small
⏹️ ▶️ John tiny speakers that can’t reproduce lots of frequencies, and also, and you know, better dialogue, better clarity of
⏹️ ▶️ John dialogue, but also better in more seating positions, which means a speaker
⏹️ ▶️ John that is able to send the same sound information to a wide
⏹️ ▶️ John array of people, like instead of just a beam that goes straight out from the speaker, more of a fan shape, so that
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re sitting directly in front of it, offset by five degrees, 10 degrees, 15 degrees, it still sounds
⏹️ ▶️ John more or less the same. So these were my goals with this system. Oh, and also don’t spend a lot of money, obviously.
⏹️ ▶️ John And don’t be humongous, right? Because I can’t, I can’t, you know, I have no place to put any speakers, let alone big
⏹️ ▶️ John giant speakers. And that’s what was my, you know, my code research project.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I had a tech podcast host twist thrown
⏹️ ▶️ John in here, which I can’t complain about because it is my privilege to be in this position.
⏹️ ▶️ John it was nevertheless a confounding factor in my decision-making process. A nice person who
⏹️ ▶️ John works for a speaker company passed along a friends and family discount to me for
⏹️ ▶️ John a couple of particular brands of speakers. And the discount was substantial.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So now, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like those elf puzzle problems. It’s like you have to find, you know, speakers that aren’t that expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John that fit in your room that have wide dispersion for, you know, the the center channel audio clarity
⏹️ ▶️ John and are better than your existing ones that aren’t that expensive. And oh, by the way, these particular brands are way
⏹️ ▶️ John cheaper than other ones. And it really, it really confounded things because you can’t just
⏹️ ▶️ John shop, I’ll just shop based on price and features. Every time you shop based on price and features like up, but is this
⏹️ ▶️ John one of those ones that cheap now suddenly it raises in esteem is like, or maybe you can you can shop the
⏹️ ▶️ John next level up in that product line. But maybe you should shop down and save some money and spend the money and other things that made everything
⏹️ ▶️ John so much harder for me. I know boohoo me you got a big discount on speakers it’s must
⏹️ ▶️ John so hard to pick right so uh one of the first things i
⏹️ ▶️ John encountered in my research was trying to find people who talk about the issues that i was saying
⏹️ ▶️ John you know the the centerpiece haha of my system was going to
⏹️ ▶️ John be the center channel speaker people don’t think about that in a 5.1 system because they think about like the glory speakers the left
⏹️ ▶️ John and right channel for your stare or whatever but when you’re watching television and movies the center channel is where
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s at yes all dialogue comes through there, lots of other sounds come through there too. It’s the main sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of like central sound of the show. It’s not like listening to stereo music where the left and
⏹️ ▶️ John right channels are the stars. The center channel is the star on television shows and often a lot of movies.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you’re going to spend a lot of money on your 5.1 system, do not skimp on the center channel. That
⏹️ ▶️ John is a very important channel. The thing that I found and was confirmed by a video that I’ll link in the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes is that And most companies that sell speakers also believe that the left
⏹️ ▶️ John and right channel are the glory channels and do not care about the center channel. And they make weird, bad speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John for center channels compared to their stereo channels, right? Because, well, for two reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John One, the center channels are often intended to be laid on their side for obvious packaging
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons. And that messes with speakers, especially if you’re like, oh, we have our special fancy audio
⏹️ ▶️ John engineers and they made this amazing speaker for our stereo speakers, right? If lay that speaker
⏹️ ▶️ John on its side, all of the careful, you know, engineering they did to make the sound dispersion
⏹️ ▶️ John work is now sideways. Like, it was made to be uniform at a certain height for,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, listening for people sitting in front of them with the expectation that the speaker is vertical. But when you put that
⏹️ ▶️ John speaker on its side, now its dispersion pattern is on its side. Unless you’re laying on your side as well, things aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John going to work quite the same way. So that’s one problem. Second problem is, center channel speakers are often smaller.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, for obvious reasons. People need to stick them in their entertainment center they want to put them under their TV you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John make them 20 feet tall unless you’re one of the real home
⏹️ ▶️ John audio people like the home theater people the thing that the fancy home theater people do is they do what they do at
⏹️ ▶️ John movie theaters which is the center channel speakers are behind the screen which is acoustically transparent
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re like the size of refrigerators wait what that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco where the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John in a movie theater like the movie screen and movie theater oh oh right the speakers are behind there, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey That’s why the
⏹️ ▶️ John sound comes out and it’s acoustically transparent like movie projection screen, right? And people who do home
⏹️ ▶️ John theaters in their basements with projection screens, that’s what they do because you can put huge refrigerator sized speakers there, right? Just like
⏹️ ▶️ John a movie theater and spend lots of money. That’s not me. That’s not relevant to me. So center channel speakers are,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, I have to fit this in my, you know, I have to fit this above above my VCR, huh? Whatever. Above whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John you have above my cable box or whatever, or it has to fit underneath my, you know, right by the CV. Oh, kind of like soundbar.
⏹️ ▶️ John So when you make a center channel speaker really small like that, it’s not going to be as good as your
⏹️ ▶️ John left and right speaker because the drivers on it are smaller, you can’t have anything even approaching a woofer because everything
⏹️ ▶️ John is super tiny. It’s kind of a mess. So this YouTube video
⏹️ ▶️ John is The Problem with Most Center Channel Speakers and it’s from one of these obsessive nerdy audio reviewers
⏹️ ▶️ John that I found in my travels. And he has this really weird measuring
⏹️ ▶️ John device where he puts a speaker in the center of the room and sends this robotic armor and if it measures, you know, sound dispersion
⏹️ ▶️ John while playing test tones of various frequencies and stuff like that. And he produces these little polar coordinate graphs
⏹️ ▶️ John of sound dispersion that show like, you know, you see these graphs in the show and I should probably put one of them as a
⏹️ ▶️ John chapter art or link to them. They’re on the web. They’re not, it’s not a spatial
⏹️ ▶️ John diagram. So don’t picture yourself seated at the bottom of this diagram. It’s polar coordinate.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s a circular chart. And as you go from the circle to the edge that’s frequency right so
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the what is the outer edge is the higher frequencies and the middle is like the base yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John so every at every step along that thing it’s saying okay if you’re listening to a 200 Hertz
⏹️ ▶️ John signal and you’re sitting at zero degrees here’s how strong it is and 300 400 and 500 and so on and so
⏹️ ▶️ John forth right but still what you want to see in this diagram is a big fan
⏹️ ▶️ John shaped region that is similarly colored that says if you’re anywhere within this fan
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re gonna hear all the frequencies more or less the same way you would if you were sitting dead in front of the speaker
⏹️ ▶️ John that is a speaker with good dispersion and they sell horizontal and vertical versions of that and
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the ones that was used as the example in the video that was good was called the SVS prime SVS is a speaker
⏹️ ▶️ John brand prime is their product line the SVS prime Center had really good dispersion and he also
⏹️ ▶️ John gave an example if you scroll down in the show and you’ll see this of the Mica MB42XC
⏹️ ▶️ John as an example of a center channel with really bad dispersion and if you compare the two diagrams you can see oh wow
⏹️ ▶️ John big difference right if you are if you are sitting even you know 10 or 20 degrees off axis
⏹️ ▶️ John on this mica speaker many frequencies are just gone for you right like an important
⏹️ ▶️ John frequencies frequencies and the the words of kill bill frequencies that you will miss
⏹️ ▶️ John right like speech frequencies or you know and the speech range right You can look at them and they’re it should be all
⏹️ ▶️ John red and dark red instead It’s like blue which is like the minimum color. There are spots where there are blue green
⏹️ ▶️ John yellow You’re missing lots of frequencies Even if you’re if you’re sitting in the seat
⏹️ ▶️ John next to the quote-unquote good seat in the couch So that’s an example of a center channel is bad dispersion and you’ll not be shocked to
⏹️ ▶️ John learn That most center channels have really bad dispersion and one of the reasons cited in the video
⏹️ ▶️ John is that most center channels since they are laid on their side are done with like a a mid-range,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then a tweeter, and then a mid-range. So it looks like three drivers if you take off the little speaker grill. And
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re only mid-rangers instead of woofers because they’re so skinny, right? So it’s a tweeter right in the middle of two mid-range drivers.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the interference pattern you get from that is not great with the two mid-ranges overlapping with each other and having
⏹️ ▶️ John the typical interference pattern. He does this whole thing with the wave pool, but if you just know how, you know, two sources of waves can
⏹️ ▶️ John interact and leave, like, dead zones, that happens. And also, with just one tweeter, tweeters tend
⏹️ ▶️ John to be pretty directional, with just one tweeter pointed in one direction, you’re missing out on all those frequencies
⏹️ ▶️ John as well. So the SVS Prime Center was said, this is the center channel with good dispersion. But
⏹️ ▶️ John that doesn’t mean the SVS Prime Center is a good speaker, it’s just saying, hey, dispersion-wise it sounds the same in all these locations,
⏹️ ▶️ John but then you get into, okay, but how good a speaker is it? How is its frequency response? How does it sound? You know, blah
⏹️ ▶️ John blah, you know, all the speaker review stuff. So this is the rabbit hole I went down trying to find a center
⏹️ ▶️ John channel speaker that was a good speaker, that fit in my entertainment center, and that had
⏹️ ▶️ John good dispersion. And that really narrowed the field down a lot because
⏹️ ▶️ John I needed to find speakers where I could see a dispersion diagram either from this person or another person. Lots
⏹️ ▶️ John of people do these type of diagrams, right? So I could tell what the dispersion was like. One of the things you can tell
⏹️ ▶️ John is if it’s, you know, he gave all these acronyms like MTM is mid tweeter
⏹️ ▶️ John mid. You can do WMTW, or it’s woofer mid tweeter
⏹️ ▶️ John mid woofer, like all these different arrangements. Most of those arrangements are bad in that you
⏹️ ▶️ John know you’re not gonna get good dispersion. The two arrangements that were good were
⏹️ ▶️ John one that Marco will be familiar with. The Kef brand does a thing where they do, what do they call it, coaxial?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they put the tweeter inside
⏹️ ▶️ John the mid. Exactly. It looks like it’s just one speaker cone
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, but the thing in the middle is the tweeter and the thing on the outside is the mid and that prevents like the waves
⏹️ ▶️ John overlapping in a destructive interference way because they’re literally coming from the same centralized source.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, it sounds so damn good. I don’t know if that’s why these speakers sound so damn good, but these speakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound so damn good.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not necessarily a big thing about audio quality because that’s not what we’re talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John here. We’re talking about dispersion. We’re saying if I sit 10 degrees off, does it sound more or less similar
⏹️ ▶️ John to what I’m sitting dead on. And the coaxial tweeter
⏹️ ▶️ John inside the mid or the woofer makes it sound more the same, the more you
⏹️ ▶️ John get off access. Now, whether it sounds good or not, it’s a question of high quality speaker or whatever. So, Kev speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John tend to have pretty okay dispersion and more importantly, not a lot of dead zones where you get the destructive
⏹️ ▶️ John interference of like the tweeter and the mid or whatever, right? The other arrangement that seems to work well
⏹️ ▶️ John is a mid and then, this is what the SVS is, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John a tweeter, or a woofer, and then a tweeter and a mid on top of each other vertically,
⏹️ ▶️ John because again, stereo speakers very often have, you know, a big driver and a little one, a woofer and a tweeter above
⏹️ ▶️ John each other, like vertically. And lots of speakers are tuned to sound good that way. Stereo
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers, or you know, this was setting aside the Kef ones, are tuned to sound good that way. It is a common arrangement.
⏹️ ▶️ John So when you lay a speaker on its side, If you can get the tweeter and the mid still to be on top of each other,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’d be side by side if it was vertical, but when you lay it on its side, you do that arrangement. That also produces
⏹️ ▶️ John a good dispersion, at least in the SVS Prime. I forget what they call that, I think they’re called like three-way or something,
⏹️ ▶️ John where it’s WT slash MW, because it’s a woofer,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then a tweeter and a mid vertically, and then another woofer. That’s what the SVS Prime is.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then other brands also do make conical ones. And so that really, really narrowed down the field because pretty much
⏹️ ▶️ John every single standard channel speaker is one of those, not one of those good ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s either KEF, which does the conical, SVS Prime, which as it turns out, is not a great speaker,
⏹️ ▶️ John or the one I eventually settled on, which is from a band I never heard of, the Elac UC52. You got an
⏹️ ▶️ John Elac? I’ve never heard of this brand. I guess you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco haven’t ever owned Elac speakers, but they are extremely well regarded.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so this center channel speaker has coaxial mid and
⏹️ ▶️ John tweeter in the center of the center channel speaker. It’s got like two pretty large, I don’t know if you call them woofers,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the center thing of it is one of those coaxial type of things. It has really
⏹️ ▶️ John good distribution according to the diagrams. Not as good as the SGS Prime, but still pretty good. And also,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s also a good speaker. Like, that’s also important. Like, you want it to be a good speaker with good frequency response
⏹️ ▶️ John and clarity and all the other crap you can read about or whatever, right? The downside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that it’s huge. This is gonna be big. Yeah, I was gonna say, I was just looking at it, the woofers in it are five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a quarter inch woofers, so this is a large speaker to have two of those in it and
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, another thing you learned about doing all the speaker research is you see lots of pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John of speakers and they never show anything next to them for size. So you might
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco have in your
⏹️ ▶️ John mind how big they are. Like there’s nothing for comparison. Like they should put a little person
⏹️ ▶️ John or like an Apple or like a quarter or like a MacBook Pro or something that I recognize the
⏹️ ▶️ John size of. How big is it? Because they all look small when you see them on the picture
⏹️ ▶️ John and then you go look at the dimensions and you’re like, wait, what? That’s 24 inches deep, what?
⏹️ ▶️ John The Kev speakers are a great example. Your Kev speakers are so deep. Yes. They’re just so huge.
⏹️ ▶️ John So everything I’m looking at, I was constantly measuring, will this fit? Will this fit in at my entertainment center? The
⏹️ ▶️ John ELAC UC52 fits in my entertainment center Barely. And you know how it fits?
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to eject from the shelf that it is on both the TiVo and the Blu-ray player.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Because there’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John no room for them with that stupid speaker in there. But I said, oh, this is going to be, you know, the centerpiece of my system
⏹️ ▶️ John and is literally my only option. It’s this or the SVS Prime, which isn’t as good a speaker.
⏹️ ▶️ John The other thing I was worried about that I talked about in Masterzone is like people tend to
⏹️ ▶️ John advise against mix and matching different speakers on a home theater system because you have to match the timbre
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s not going to sound right and this and the other thing and it’s like okay I did a lot of suggesting to
⏹️ ▶️ John people like is that always terrible can you make that work how bad is it and I
⏹️ ▶️ John got varying opinions some people like oh it’s not that bad you’re not going to notice a difference other people like never do it you should never mix
⏹️ ▶️ John but if you don’t mix you are you’re stuck with like every every one of these manufacturers has
⏹️ ▶️ John a product line like buy all our speakers from us here it is here’s our 5.1 system and
⏹️ ▶️ John people tend to review individual speakers not entire systems this speaker is good this speaker is
⏹️ ▶️ John bad on the you know this left and right channel are good these surround speakers suck this center channel sucks
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s usually the thing in the 5.1 systems here’s this 5.1 system the center channel sucks here’s the 5.1 system
⏹️ ▶️ John the center channel sucks I found the elac one the center channel didn’t suck I could have bought elac left and rights and elac surrounds
⏹️ ▶️ John but guess what they’re huge And also very, very expensive. And by the way, Elac is not one of the
⏹️ ▶️ John brands that I discount. So I’m paying full price, baby, for the Elac UC52.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did try to buy one on eBay because I’m trying to bring the price down. Someone was selling the Elac 52 for way
⏹️ ▶️ John too little money. And I lowballed them because it was like, you know, our best offer. I lowballed them
⏹️ ▶️ John by 50 bucks and they never responded. And I just, I felt a little bit scared even buying it on eBay
⏹️ ▶️ John because I’m like, what condition will this be in? And speakers are delicate. My wife kind of scared me off a little by saying
⏹️ ▶️ John who knows what you’re gonna get in the mail That picture is really grainy. I’m like, you know what that picture is grainy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, so like, you know worst case if you really hated it You can’t easily return it to just an individual on eBay,
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah like what if I get this and it’s like not worth the money or I thought it would fit but it really doesn’t because remember
⏹️ ▶️ John The another thing I have to do with the center is tilt it up a little bit because I’m putting it like it’s right under My TV it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John as close as it can get to be under my TV But my under my team, you know under my TV is not where my TV is So
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to tilt it up slightly so it aims at our faces when we’re sitting on the couch So it
⏹️ ▶️ John just barely fell my word. So that was the big the big expense no discount You
⏹️ ▶️ John like you see 52 basically my only choice I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to buy other relaxed speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John because they’re just too expensive and also too big to fill the other Roles, so I got that
⏹️ ▶️ John But then after that painful experience, I’m like, you know what I can need to use the discount for the rest of these speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John because I just can’t I can’t continue at this pace. It’s not super how much is the like it’s like 400
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey change something yeah yeah it’s not that bad
⏹️ ▶️ John like in terms of like volume or weight you feel like you’re getting your work so big I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know what’s in there but whatever it is it’s heavy and expensive this is 400 bucks worth of wood that’s for sure yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John so for the for the rest of the speakers I said okay well if I can’t match you know I
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t buy a fully like system, why don’t I just at least buy matching front, left,
⏹️ ▶️ John right, and back surrounds from the same manufacturer so at least those will all match
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’ll buy one that I have a discount on. And so that’s what I did. For my front right and left and my back right
⏹️ ▶️ John and left I bought Polk speakers because I had a discount. That is literally why, right? And they’re well reviewed
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re good and I was able to shop. What I ended up doing in Marco fashion was rather
⏹️ ▶️ John than saving money and getting the cheap speakers with a big discount, I just
⏹️ ▶️ John went out the line until the speakers that I bought with a discount were as much as I was willing to spend for the full price cheap ones. You know what
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean? Yep. I’d basically, yeah. So I bought the Polk R100s for my front
⏹️ ▶️ John right and left, not just because of the discount, but also because they’re bookshelf speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John and they are among the smallest bookshelf speakers in their sort of price category. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John unlike the Kef ones there not 19 inches deep for some reason right and that was important to
⏹️ ▶️ John me getting them in the room because I have very little place for these to go and they’re like near walls and everything like
⏹️ ▶️ John so I bought those and I had to buy stands to put them on because they’re bookshelf speakers and
⏹️ ▶️ John I wanted them to be at the right level and the stands were also expensive and I didn’t get a discount on them.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m like maybe I’m Casey I need to get
⏹️ ▶️ John a discount on everything. If I get a discount on it I’ll buy it. For the back surrounds I bought
⏹️ ▶️ John the very poorly reviewed Polk XT-15 back surround speakers, but honestly, I don’t care because they’re back surround
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers Yeah, who cares? They are bigger. They’re they’re undoubtedly better than my past
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers for sure They are bigger than my past speakers, but so far
⏹️ ▶️ John they have passed the spousal approval I mean not approval She said disapproving things about them when I was
⏹️ ▶️ John setting them up But didn’t demand didn’t didn’t demand that I take them down immediately and I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John like you’ll get used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to them That’s it, yeah. If they aren’t immediately rejected, you’re in a good place.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they are bigger than they were, but they’re as small as I could get. I wanted them to be better
⏹️ ▶️ John than my other ones. My other ones were so tiny, and these are OK. So there I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John got my five speakers here, my expensive center and my Polk right and left and back,
⏹️ ▶️ John right and left. And I need subwoofer. And here is where it’s like I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John got Casey on one shoulder saying, buy a Polk subwoofer. You’ve got a discount.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And I’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco saying don’t buy just because you have a discount. Get a good subwoofer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, that’s not. I you haven’t asked me this question yet. I love having subwoofers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The difference between a great subwoofer and a cheap subwoofer is not as big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the other speakers involved. It is a much smaller difference and you get severely diminishing
⏹️ ▶️ John The audio reviewing world disagrees with you strongly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s different look. There’s different characteristics. One thing I love is a force-canceling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subwoofer. I’ve mentioned before, the Sonos Sub is one of those. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never admitted this before in public. I think only Ben Thompson knows this until this moment. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have a small Kev subwoofer under my desk for my computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subwoofer, and it was absurdly expensive. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you got. I got the smallest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John one. Because I looked at all the
⏹️ ▶️ John reviews for it, and yes, it was a sub, but it’s made of aluminum, and it’s really heavy. It’s actually pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. And it’s force-canceling. And before, because before this, I had some inexpensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one from Amazon. You know, one of those brands that had some kind of hipster name that like, seemed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it would be fancy, and you get it, and it’s just like particle board, and it’s just crap.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you remember which one it was? Because now I know every subwoofer in the world.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d have to look it up. But I ended up, I sent it back to Westchester, and it’s waiting in a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco closet to be used for something. But that one, it was just too like, boomy. Find out which one that is,
⏹️ ▶️ John may want to buy it from you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s probably, it wasn’t, I wouldn’t recommend it.
⏹️ ▶️ John know, I’ll get to that in a second.
⏹️ ▶️ John so the one you were describing, you said it’s force canceling. I believe they mostly describe it kind of Subaru fashion. Canto.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah, okay, I know Canto. And I know those subs. It’s not that bad, but the Kef
⏹️ ▶️ John one is way better. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yes. It’s a good
⏹️ ▶️ John sub. But I believe the Kef one, they describe it in Subaru fashion as essentially horizontally
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And not necessarily, not, because
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what it is. If you look inside, it’s horizontally opposed drivers, but not necessarily force cancelling in the same way
⏹️ ▶️ John as the Sonos one is. It’s still a very good sub.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it is. It’s the way, they don’t use that term,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s the same design. It’s the same thing. And there’s a couple others on the market that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are force cancelling, but it’s very, very few.
⏹️ ▶️ John The other thing about the Kef one that definitely recommends it is it’s good sub and also very small for
⏹️ ▶️ John how good it is. That is the key, very, very small. That’s why I was looking at that one until I saw the price then right away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it also it has a bunch of adjustments on the back. So, you know, not only I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every decent subwoofer will have like the crossover and level adjustments in the back. But you know, because that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tells you know how much what frequency is to play through the subwoofer and how loudly that’s those are very important.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the calf also has all all different adjustments for things like you know, like different like little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco EQ profiles to know like, you know, how how much bass do you want? How
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boomy Do you want it to be? strong do you want it to like you know puncture whatever and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I found that the like it was weird like when I when I was using the cheaper subwoofer you know it’s under
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my my computer desk you know this is where I listen to music mostly so it’s not my desk and when I was sitting in my chair
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it like the volume it would take to sound good at my chair level above the desk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and therefore the desk is between the subwoofer and me at that same volume level with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cheap subwoofer somebody’s sitting on the chair like the kind of like lounge chair behind me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they had a kind of a more direct earshot to it because the desk wasn’t blocking it as much,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it sounded way too boomy if you were like not sitting in the desk. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for whatever reason, whatever the design was, that’s how the cheap ones sounded. And then when I upgraded to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Kef, that problem went away, and I was able to get a pleasing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subwoofer strength at desk level that didn’t also sound super boomy to the rest of the room.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that there’s lots of advantage to this people in apartments like them because you can make them like less less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boomy down low and make it transmit less to your neighbors. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love this ridiculous subwoofer, but it is so expensive. I didn’t even pay full price.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was on sale one day and I picked it up, but it was still like I can’t believe I spent as much on a subwoofer. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is a difference in those ways. That being said, this was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I paid almost twice as much as whatever I paid for the Sonos sub a million years ago, and the Sonos sub has many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those same benefits. It many of much of the same quality. The only downside of that is the Sonos sub
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has no line in. You can only use it with a small number of Sonos products. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I did I did look at the Sonos sub until I realized, hey, what am I doing? I can’t use this.
⏹️ ▶️ John a stereo component.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Sonos sub is it is great and it’s great for its price.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, you can only use it with, you know, a Sonos amp or a couple of Sonos soundbars.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, if this is the correct subwoofer, the KC62, which looks to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco be… That’s the one. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can tell you that it is very neat that on the back, the EQ slider is for room,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wall, corner, cabinet, or apartment, which I really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John enjoy. Yes! It’s so good!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really dig that. But also, I can tell you why Marco Armand bought this subwoofer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it is because there are four dip switches on the back. Why are they there? Who knows?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey huge Marco energy to be able to fiddle with dip switches in the back of his subwoofer. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s the high-pass filter. That’s why it says HPF above it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t even notice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that. Yes. Yes. Fair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough That is very funny so that
⏹️ ▶️ John Kef subwoofer falls into the category of subs that are kind of made for They say it like for
⏹️ ▶️ John for stereo use and what they mean is if you’re hooking this up to For example, you have bookshelf
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers and you’re connecting your phonograph Casey to it or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or your Mac. That’s what mine is. I have two bookshelf speakers and a subwoofer as a footrest and a base.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re in a scenario where you have stereo sound and you want to augment the stereo sound with the
⏹️ ▶️ John subwoofer because your speakers don’t have giant woofers on them, like that’s what this is for. And lots of some a breed
⏹️ ▶️ John of subwoofers have features that are like, hey, we’ll sound good in that scenario because we have all
⏹️ ▶️ John sorts of stuff in the back of the sub lets you tweak the way it’s blended with the other speakers. our home
⏹️ ▶️ John theater applications, the receiver does all that, right? And so you don’t need those features
⏹️ ▶️ John in the back. In fact, when you’re in a home theater scenario, what they tell you to do for your subwoofer is the crossover, just set
⏹️ ▶️ John it to maximum because you’re not the, basically you’re selling the sub, just play what you get. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John actual crossover is done in your receiver and it figures out the correct cost crossover with your speakers through sound calibration,
⏹️ ▶️ John all that crap, right? That like that, um, you, it basically, the receiver has the smarts, so
⏹️ ▶️ John it just needs to some to essentially sub to essentially be dumb speaker. So it was good that I could shop in the category
⏹️ ▶️ John of subs that are less expensive because they don’t have like fancy iOS app
⏹️ ▶️ John control DSPs to adjust. Like that’s all in my receiver. I already paid for that, right? That’s all in my Dirac, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the smarts are there, this just needs to be done. The thing with subwoofers though, as I was talking about Marco’s small
⏹️ ▶️ John one and the reason I was looking at that one, I don’t have a lot of room for a subwoofer. Because I don’t have a lot of room for anything
⏹️ ▶️ John in this room. I don’t have a lot of room physically. I don’t have a lot of room mentally.
⏹️ ▶️ John family wise because I mean, one of the good things about the Sonosub is it’s relatively small like you can you can hide
⏹️ ▶️ John it somewhere you can tuck it behind something quote unquote good subs tend to be
⏹️ ▶️ John large larger than you think larger than anybody wants in their house unless you have like a dedicated
⏹️ ▶️ John theater room where you can hide it with a plant or something and I couldn’t do that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right actually they make good plant stands like my Sonosub upstairs here um I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believe it has two plants on top of it uh and because it’s just a big rectangle and actually the the little kef one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The top is a little too rounded. You can’t really put stuff on top of it, but I mean, it’s fine. It’s a foot rest. Yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of marshmallow. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. But the Sonos sub is great. Nice flat top.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t put anything on top of a sub unless it is force canceling slash
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco horizontally
⏹️ ▶️ John opposed because otherwise it will shake off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s yes, exactly. Put your crystal
⏹️ ▶️ John collection up there. Yeah. So my previous sub, because it was part of the world’s tiniest five point one
⏹️ ▶️ John system was, I mean, not tiny, but I came to think of like, oh, this is how big subwoofers are. So I’ll just find
⏹️ ▶️ John one at the same size. the answer is no you won’t. Like the KEF is actually smaller, but every
⏹️ ▶️ John other subwoofer, almost every other subwoofer is bigger. And that led me down the very quickly diverging fork
⏹️ ▶️ John in the road of subwoofers, which is sealed versus ported. Sealed subwoofer
⏹️ ▶️ John is a subwoofer that has a big giant speaker cone in it and it looks like a giant speaker with a big giant speaker cone, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Ported, it looks like a big giant speaker cone, but there’s a hole in the speaker. Lots of speakers are ported. If you see
⏹️ ▶️ John a stereo speaker and there’s a hole in the front or the back of it that is a port. It allows air to flow in and out.
⏹️ ▶️ John In subwoofers the ports are tuned to be resonant at a particular frequency. It makes the subwoofer
⏹️ ▶️ John more powerful at lower frequencies. Ported subwoofers tend to
⏹️ ▶️ John go louder lower. Some people might say they tend to be boomier. It depends on how you adjust
⏹️ ▶️ John them. But most importantly ported subwoofers are bigger because ports take up space because the ports
⏹️ ▶️ John in a subwoofer are not just like the little tiny slots like they are sometimes in a speaker or one little tiny quarter-sized hole like they are in
⏹️ ▶️ John a bookshelf speaker or something, the ports are big. They take up room. There’s a plastic tube in there
⏹️ ▶️ John for air to go down that is a particular length and shape for tuned for its use.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so ported subwoofers are the size of mini fridges. They’re just, they’re just massive
⏹️ ▶️ John and I could not fit one in my room. Despite the fact that my cheapo sub
⏹️ ▶️ John from my existing 5.1 was a ported sub, but it was a ported sub with an 8-inch driver
⏹️ ▶️ John in it. And you know, 8- 8-inch driver is not big for a subwoofer, right? You can find,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would call that mid-sized for us. I mean, you can get the bigger, but like, I mean, look, my little Kef one’s only 6.5, I
⏹️ ▶️ John think. I know, well, that’s part of why the Kef one is so expensive and amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think the Sonos is also 6 1⁄2-ing, something like that. But I mean, typically, I mean, that’s fairly small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a subwoofer driver.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s why the Sonos and the Kef get such good reviews. They’re like, can you believe this thing has this much bass and it has a
⏹️ ▶️ John 6-inch driver? That’s why, that’s maybe why it costs so much money, but it’s also why they get such good reviews. like wow
⏹️ ▶️ John they managed to get good bass good clean bass out of it so we say clean we mean that if you look at the frequency response
⏹️ ▶️ John diagram it’s not just like a giant peak around the resonant frequency of the port and then you know really low everywhere else.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sealed subwoofers on the other hand are much easier to make behave like a regular speaker some people call them
⏹️ ▶️ John more musical quote-unquote although you’ll find many debunking videos in this is saying like it look it’s just a big speaker and it can
⏹️ ▶️ John have a frequency response that is flat within the range that it is used or flat-ish within the range that it’s used. So if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John using it to augment, if you’re listening to music and using a subwoofer to augment the low frequencies because
⏹️ ▶️ John your bookshelf speakers have smaller drivers, get a sealed sub because you won’t have any boominess
⏹️ ▶️ John and it will blend in nicely with your speakers. But for my purposes the important thing is that
⏹️ ▶️ John sealed subwoofers are way way way way smaller. So I had a choice. Can
⏹️ ▶️ John I find a ported subwoofer that has good reviews and has good sound that I can fit in this spot?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or can I find a sealed one that I can put there that takes about the same amount of room?
⏹️ ▶️ John Polk and the other brands I discounted on did have subwoofers that were, I
⏹️ ▶️ John think they had both ported and sealed? No, I think mostly just ported. And they were all bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John and they weren’t particularly well reviewed. And I said, you know what? I want to get a good
⏹️ ▶️ John subwoofer and I want it to be small. And one of the most popular subwoofer brands is the aforementioned SVS.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they make a 12 inch sealed subwoofer that has good reviews, has good frequency response, doesn’t have any
⏹️ ▶️ John features that I don’t need, because they make a pro version that has a bunch of features that I don’t care about that cost like $100 more.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like great, I can save money. I don’t need the iOS app and all the DSP stuff. I got my receiver.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let me get the cheap one. I didn’t know if I would like or not like a sealed subwoofer. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I can’t argue with the sizing. And it’s a well regarded brand. it’s good branding,
⏹️ ▶️ John good reviews, I’m like okay that’s what I’m gonna do. So I got the SVS SB-1000 which I don’t even think they
⏹️ ▶️ John make anymore, I think they just make the Pro, but the Pro is just basically this with like an iOS app and some more fancy
⏹️ ▶️ John like buttons on the back, it’s basically the same physically,
⏹️ ▶️ John it fits where my old sub went. And I have to say that I can definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John tell the difference between a sealed versus ported sub, because unlike when you’re listening to music, where
⏹️ ▶️ John the sealed sub is great, when you’re watching movies, that boominess that people
⏹️ ▶️ John complain about, sometimes in a movie, you kinda want that. If you’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco in a movie theater,
⏹️ ▶️ John seeing an action movie, you’re hearing some boominess. Is that perfect and ideal? And if you measure it
⏹️ ▶️ John in a microphone, you’re like, oh, it’s too boomy. The bottom line is, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco what movie theaters sound
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco are resonances.
⏹️ ▶️ John The room amplifies certain frequencies. You find boominess, and part of the experience
⏹️ ▶️ John of movies is very often that big low rumble and a single 12
⏹️ ▶️ John inch sub just does not have the rumble that a 8 inch ported
⏹️ ▶️ John sub did and I could tell that it’s cleaner I can tell that it’s better
⏹️ ▶️ John music sounds way better and in fact most of the audio sounds better and I can and the 12
⏹️ ▶️ John inch sub does go down to the same frequencies as you know these a ported sub it just
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have as much oomph down there and there’s no like resonance at the port level, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So, and the SBS, by the way, wasn’t cheap. It was, I think it was more expensive than my center channel ELAC thing. Oh, wow. Although,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, I bought it from their outlet store, you know, Casey Power. That’s right, that’s right. Find
⏹️ ▶️ John a bar, because I was like, I’m gonna shop in the outlet store, find the ones. SBS is so cruel though. They sell all
⏹️ ▶️ John their speakers in like, kind of like a faux wood finish and also
⏹️ ▶️ John a like glossy piano black or piano white. and they charge $100 more
⏹️ ▶️ John for the glossy finish. Oh, such an Apple move, such like a, oh no, maybe a Porsche move. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John a hundred, really? Different finish on the speaker is plus $100 on a $400 product? That’s amazing. I’m sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I could not, obviously I could, I bought the cheap, I bought the cheap wood grain black
⏹️ ▶️ John one from the outlet store. It’s, you know, factory refurbished, you know, five-year warranty, like it
⏹️ ▶️ John is from the brand. So anyway, that’s what I got. Um, the good thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is my fancy receiver, like most decent receivers can support more than
⏹️ ▶️ John one subwoofer. That’s why I was asking Marco about his. Now I have, I still have
⏹️ ▶️ John and mother month subwoofer is often recommended because you get all sorts of dead spots in the room. Like that’s when you were forgetting, like when I
⏹️ ▶️ John sit in this chair with the subwoofer, it’s too loud. Subwoofers definitely. So if you just have one subwoofer in
⏹️ ▶️ John a room, there are going to be spots in that room that are way louder or way less loud than other spots. It’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s inevitable, right? having multiple subwoofers is a way to kind of fill that in to
⏹️ ▶️ John try to make it more even, right? So you can have two subwoofers at less volume than you have the one and
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll have a more even distribution of, you know, where the subwoofer goes. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I did try hooking up my old eight inch ported sub in addition
⏹️ ▶️ John to the sealed one that definitely brings back the boom. Let me tell you. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and so you kind of get the best of both
⏹️ ▶️ John worlds. Uh, I was using Top Gun Maverick as my test thing or whatever. And that was a great demonstration that
⏹️ ▶️ John I spent a bunch of money on my speakers and they sound better. Like for movies, for you know, Top Gun Maverick, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, jet planes flying overhead, missiles are going off, there’s music, right? And I also played a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of, I played a bunch of music on, from album music, I played the, uh, a couple of the newly released singles from bands
⏹️ ▶️ John that I like that were in like Dolby Atmos multichannel. And that sounded surprisingly good in a way,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I hate spatial audio listening through AirPods, but the, like the, the tracks that are mastered for multichannel audio
⏹️ ▶️ John playing on my multichannel system sounded really good. And then I played some stereo tracks too, to hear like
⏹️ ▶️ John the front and left to right and getting filled in by the sub. So overall I’m pretty happy with the sound, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like there’s more I need to do with the bass. So, you know, I do, I did find
⏹️ ▶️ John cleverly, secretly, don’t tell my wife, oh no, she’s listening to this now she’s going to know, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I have to say
⏹️ ▶️ John she didn’t find the subwoofer that hid in the room, the second subwoofer that I hid in the room. So I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like if you didn’t find it, once you find it, can you really complain that you don’t want it there? Because you didn’t even
⏹️ ▶️ John find it. Anyway, I do have a place for the second subwoofer, but
⏹️ ▶️ John my second subwoofer is, you know what, 10, 15 years old, very cheap, and it makes a
⏹️ ▶️ John very low humming noise when it’s plugged in.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh no. That’s no good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always made that noise. Is it like a 60 Hertz ground loop kind of hum, or is it just like, you know, just
⏹️ ▶️ John I know what you’re talking about. I don’t know enough to know if I could say, I don’t have perfect pitch when it comes to the ground loop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can’t mistake it when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you hear that sound. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think that’s what it is. I can record it and see for sure, but I think that’s what it is. And it has always
⏹️ ▶️ John made that sound. And the volume is really low. And because it is on the floor behind stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John you tend not to hear it. And I’ve never mentioned it to anyone, but it does make that
⏹️ ▶️ John sound. And I was happy to get my fancy new sub, which does not make any noise when it’s plugged in. Good audio components
⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t, as you would imagine. And I was like, wow, it would be great to have that hum gone. And also, by the way, my
⏹️ ▶️ John wife did notice this. When you adjust the volume on the receiver, occasionally the old sub would make
⏹️ ▶️ John a little boop, boop, every time you went the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco volume go up
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco down, right? It’s like from interference
⏹️ ▶️ John or? Who the hell knows? It’s really old, it’s really cheap. Like, is this not super high quality
⏹️ ▶️ John component? You know, like, it has had years of good service, right? But she did
⏹️ ▶️ John notice recently that it’s been doing that. It’s probably been getting worse over time. So I don’t want to have my old sub hooked up to
⏹️ ▶️ John my fancy new system. So I thought maybe I could just like, flick it on when we watch movies and then turn it off.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it makes the hum whenever it’s plugged in, even when it’s turned off, which
⏹️ ▶️ John lends credence to the theory that it’s, you know, ground loop 60 Hertz hum type stuff. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I am looking for a cheap, small ported sub that fits
⏹️ ▶️ John where this one is currently hidden to augment my good fancy 12 inch sealed
⏹️ ▶️ John sub. So the project is ongoing. And by the way, calibration wise, I did a very rough calibration and then got COVID
⏹️ ▶️ John again I had to, or had a COVID resurge in my body and had to retreat back
⏹️ ▶️ John to my room. So I haven’t even fully calibrated this and I’ve learned a lot more about calibration. Most of it just confusing
⏹️ ▶️ John and sad, but anyway. So that’s the story of my setup here. If you take anything from this,
⏹️ ▶️ John please look in the show notes to links to these various audio forums and review things. I’ve seen in particular,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Problem with Center Channel Speakers video is worth watching because this
⏹️ ▶️ John is something I had never heard people talk about before. and the reasoning and science
⏹️ ▶️ John behind it and the pervasive acceptance of it within audiophile circles led me to believe that it’s not just
⏹️ ▶️ John one person’s vendetta, but it is just a problem with the industry, which is nobody cares about center
⏹️ ▶️ John channels. The autophiles don’t care about it. It’s just the home theater people, and home theater people are pissed that they can’t find good center channels
⏹️ ▶️ John because, right? Although, it’s not that you can’t find good, like there are ones with good spread.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are more of them if you’re willing to buy something the size of like a small child. Like they get so
⏹️ ▶️ John big. And I always thought to myself, where are people putting these? And then I watched all the YouTube videos of these
⏹️ ▶️ John audiophiles doing it. They put them on like, not on milk crates, but basically on milk crates in front of their giant
⏹️ ▶️ John screens. Like it’s like a small child sat on top of its own private piece of furniture, tilted
⏹️ ▶️ John up, and they’re so huge. You can’t put them in any kind of cabinet. They’re just, they’re like, they’re like bigger than
⏹️ ▶️ John my XDR, like in terms of width,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and then they’re really
⏹️ ▶️ John deep, and they’re just so, I mean, if you think about it, when you go to the movie theater, you ever look on the wall and look at those speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John and think about how big they are? That’s what people are putting in their homes, right? And just picture one of those on its side. Even
⏹️ ▶️ John Monoprice makes this like massive center channel that if you look at it, you’re like, oh, that looks slim, you could use that.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it literally does not fit in any of my furniture. It’s just, they’re just huge. So you can get good
⏹️ ▶️ John center channels, but not if you’re like a reasonable person who wants to not have
⏹️ ▶️ John a little altar for your speaker in front of your television. Again, my room is not a home theater
⏹️ ▶️ John room. It is just like the main living room of my house. So I can’t do that. So anyway, check out the center channel
⏹️ ▶️ John speaker, check out the different measurements that they do on it and understand what they’re talking about. And it is like kind of a
⏹️ ▶️ John bad spot in the market. And once you go through and down that rabbit hole, it is fun to look at like, you know, whatever speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a bookshelf speakers or like computer speakers or whatever, to see what the options are.
⏹️ ▶️ John Cause there are a lot of surprisingly good options for not that much money that are gonna be a million times better
⏹️ ▶️ John than whatever you’re using now. And then if you wanna go whole hog, you could get something like Marco did with that fancy little tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John sub. Like it’s good that stuff like that exists because there are people trying to fill this
⏹️ ▶️ John market of like, so you want good sounding speakers for your computer and you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want them to be like you’re having too many fridges on your desk?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You know, but
⏹️ ▶️ John people are willing to find them. Even like, what do you, do you have Kev speakers on your computer?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I have the Q150s here and at my TV, I have the Q350s. Now in their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco defense, they are not made to be used this way, like at
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not, like Marco is doing a little bit overkill, But even the 150s, I feel like that is not that big.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you can fit them on a desk and not feel ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the depth is what really, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John depth is. Right, but a desk has depth, right? Yes, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco funny, like when you actually look at speaker audition
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rooms and high-end stereo stores and everything, they’re placed way out from the wall. Most speakers are designed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be at least a foot away from the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John wall. Well, it
⏹️ ▶️ John depends if they’re ported and it depends
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they’re rear ported or front ported. true, but like most, yeah, most good speakers are designed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be, to have a decent amount of space between them and the wall behind them. And in reality, nobody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has the room for that in their rooms. And so nobody ever sets them up that way.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the home theater people do, because you see where they put them. They’re like, that’s like three feet from the back wall. It’s like, yeah, this whole room
⏹️ ▶️ John is just for theater.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, what everybody always tells me, please, before you write in, I know on my desk I’m supposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be using studio monitors. I know that. I don’t care. I love the way with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Q150 sound, and I know it’s not correct, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I like, so you’re gonna have to deal with it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Kepo is one of the brands that they said that you can basically back all the way up against the wall, the non-ported Kep speakers, that
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it’s because the cases are so big that no matter how far you push up against the wall, they’re not really that close to the wall,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that was one of the selling points, yeah. Oh, and I did, the
⏹️ ▶️ John other thing I did is I did actually overbuy some stuff I didn’t know if I was going to like the Elac
⏹️ ▶️ John or whether it would fit, so I also bought a Polk center channel, which as it turns out, I think I’m not going to use because I think
⏹️ ▶️ John I do like the Elac one. So I will probably be returning and or reselling that one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I’m glad. I’m glad you’re happy. I’m glad you’ve gone down this road. My goodness, what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a journey though, as it always is. And we didn’t even, we didn’t even prepare the way
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I’m still, I have, I won’t talk about this now, but I’ll save her for your episode. The project is not done.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have the speakers on stands. I have the speakers on stands, but they’re not supposed to be on the stands. It’s supposed to be a piece of furniture
⏹️ ▶️ John that one of them is supposed to go on that’s gonna hold my Blu-ray player, which can no longer fit them. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a whole tile puzzle thing going on there. But the piece of furniture is the wrong height, so
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to cut it down. So I have to go to Home Depot to buy some threaded rod and cut it with a hacksaw. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John all in the future. I’m still working. And then calibration. Oh, calibration. Plus with the multi-subs.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’ll make more updates in the future. But anyway, I just wanted to fill everyone in. I did get new speakers. They do sound better. My
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am very happy for you. Thanks to our sponsors this week, Trade Coffee and Collide.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join at atp.fm slash join. We will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ John at atp.fm And if you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco T. Marco Harmon, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to Accidental, accidental, tech
After-show
⏹️ ▶️ John I forgot to thank the person who gave me the discount. I did thank them over email and everything, but thank you again. It did, despite
⏹️ ▶️ John my complaining about, oh, I have all these discounts, I don’t know what to do. And despite the fact that it basically led me to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John all Polk speakers, in the end, they’re good speakers. Like they were discounts on good, reputable brands.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m very happy with the speakers I got. And I don’t know what it would have done with the discount. I would probably still be fretting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If we know any Keff sales reps, let me know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, right. Once I had the discount, I was like, hey, does anyone have an SVS discount? Because those subs are expensive. I was like, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John just getting mad with discount power. There are, like to Marco’s point, you bought yours on sale, a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John times speakers do go on like very deep sale. Or in the case of SPS, you can shop in their
⏹️ ▶️ John outlet store and it’s like hundreds of dollars off stuff for like open box or like factory
⏹️ ▶️ John refurbished or whatever. If it’s from the manufacturer and they guarantee it, like as just same
⏹️ ▶️ John as a new product, there’s not a lot of risk in buying it and you save a lot of money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, even just like on Amazon sometimes, like the Kev speakers, you’ll occasionally catch them on sale
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Amazon for like 40 or 50% off. Like, I don’t know why, and they’re legitimate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because they have huge
⏹️ ▶️ John margins, that’s why.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, I guess that’s why.
⏹️ ▶️ John And CAF speakers are expensive, but yeah, that’s why you’ll find, you will actually find them discounted, especially if you buy
⏹️ ▶️ John like last year’s model, like the new one comes out and it’s got a different piano black finish or whatever. Get the last
⏹️ ▶️ John year’s one, they’re still good speakers. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, similarly for me, and I think I kind of made the passing mention of this on the show when I was talking about my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sonos setup, But I was able to get a steep discount on my Sono stuff. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s why I was able to go hog freaking wild. Like there was no way that I was going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spend the kind of money I spent, which, I mean, I think the full retail price for my setup was something like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three ish thousand dollars and I spent way less than that way, way, way less than that. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, I was very lucky and I am very appreciative to the person that, that was able to score that for me. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can totally sympathize with people. You know, if you’re paying full price for all this stuff, which I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do for almost everything I buy, it’s happened to get lucky on the Sonos stuff. It gets expensive fast,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like home home theater stuff. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, John, but home theater stuff gets pricey real
⏹️ ▶️ John But other things like you can’t like it’s it’s best to just wait like not don’t wait for like Black Friday or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. Like wait for the that particular brand of speaker to go on sale because it just it’s not like even the friends
⏹️ ▶️ John and family discount that I described when you get an Apple friends and family discount. It’s like, you know, 5% off $50 back on your
⏹️ ▶️ John phones. Like it’s like, you know, not that it’s not, not, it’s not nothing, but it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John significant. Whereas the disc, the friends and family discounts on these speakers, or even just the sale price
⏹️ ▶️ John on Amazon when they want a clear inventory, it’s so much less than the regular price. It feels like
⏹️ ▶️ John no one should ever pay full price for speakers, but just, just wait for them to go on sale because the discounts
⏹️ ▶️ John are so big and their discounts don’t make any sense because like the new model, the speaker comes out,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not twice as good. like pay half the price when they go on, you know, 50% off sale when the new speaker comes
⏹️ ▶️ John out. After reading reviews, obviously, and blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say, though, one nitpick I have, or one nit I have to pick with you, John, on this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco topic is people, and maybe, I think it’s mostly your fault
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by constantly telling me how good a center channel is, but people keep telling me, from you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to our friend Ben Thompson, to many others, oh, just try a center channel. You gotta try
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Because I have the Sonos amp setup and the Sonos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sub, what it would take for me to try a center channel. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Sonos amp powering two Q350s and a Sonos sub.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is no way to use the Sonos sub with any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco left and right channel speaker setup as far as I can tell. can tell. Because the only things that can power it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are the Sonos amp, which only supports left and right channels and no center, or a Sonos soundbar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as far as I know, you can’t connect separate left and right speakers to a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sonos soundbar. You can’t even use Sonos’s own wireless speakers, you can use them as rears.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like if you have a Sonos soundbar, you can get two other Sonos speakers and use them as rears, but you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use them as front, left, and rights. It’s the most frustrating limitation!
⏹️ ▶️ John I think your Kef does this. One of the features that a lot of subs have is they say basically, hey, just send
⏹️ ▶️ John me the sub, your left and right channels, as well as the sub, and then you connect your left and right speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John to the sub. Yeah. Sonos could have done that if it, like lots of subs do that, but it’s like we know you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have a way to connect all this stuff up, so just send all the music to the sub, and the sub with its fancy
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff will figure out how to distribute the audio, and then your left and right will be connected to the sub. But yeah, Sonos, there was the
⏹️ ▶️ John interview with like the CEO of Sonos talking about their new speakers that actually have line in on them, because
⏹️ ▶️ John what they basically said is, hey, people are buying record players like dummies, and they wanna connect their
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco record players.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Which you stop. And they wanna connect their
⏹️ ▶️ John record players to, they wanna connect their record players to their speakers. And the record players, like you can buy like
⏹️ ▶️ John a Bluetooth dongle and stuff like that, but people say, hey, I have this phono output, can I just plug this into your speaker?
⏹️ ▶️ John And so the latest Sonos speakers actually do have a line in on them. Still, they’re not like stereo
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Well, they probably don’t have phono preamps though.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah. Well, I think they do. I think they said specifically that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco whether it figures
⏹️ ▶️ John out or there’s a switch, you know, yeah. What we’re talking about is the record players, because their record players are super old,
⏹️ ▶️ John put out output at a different level than you get from other sources. So your thing that is getting the input
⏹️ ▶️ John needs to know, hey, this is phono input. This is from a phonograph. This is from the 1900s, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, because what most people don’t know is that record players did not output regular line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco level audio the way we know it in more modern terms. They have, like, records were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mastered with a special EQ that basically reduced the, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the version of the sound that’s encoded on the record has way less bass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because large bass frequencies encoded there would actually make the needle jump out of the track.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so they called it the RAA curve, and they had this whole custom EQ curve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that records were pressed in, and then the record player,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the amp you were running it through would run it through a circuit that would undo that curve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and make it regular.
⏹️ ▶️ John think it would try to fix it, because if you listen to the audio as it comes out of the record player, it would sound even worse than it actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, if you put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your ear up to the needle as it’s moving, you can hear this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey little tiny,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it sounds horrendous if you actually amplify that. And so, if you just take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the raw output from a record player and plug it into a regular amp, it won’t sound right. you need a special
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phono preamp that does that conversion. And so I’ll look it up. I wonder if, do the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new Sonos era speakers actually have that built
⏹️ ▶️ John in? I mean, he specifically said it, he said it was for that. It could be that he’s assuming people, modern record players
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco one of them loud on them. I think that’s correct. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the thing, so yeah, most, like if you go out today and buy like a modern hipster record player, they all, not only, I mean, first of all, they all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have Bluetooth in them. But second of all, they also all have built-in phono preamps. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not a thing you have to worry about with quote, new record players. But if you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like your parent’s old record player from 1960s and 70s, you will have to deal with this. Yeah, on the flip side of that,
⏹️ ▶️ John fancy receivers still have phono input that understands like actual phono input.
⏹️ ▶️ John That has not gone away, that is still a component of all like top of Navy gear. But Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ John you and I are in opposite situations. I couldn’t look at the Sonos sub even though it is small and is a good sub and it would fit, because
⏹️ ▶️ John how the hell am I gonna hook that up? And you can’t look at center channels, because how the hell are you gonna hook that up? almost as a separate world.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like for me to try a central channel, I would have to buy a receiver,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like and redo that whole setup.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Because like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John couldn’t use. Or a different sound bar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I couldn’t, no I couldn’t use the Sonos amp or the Sonos sub anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d have to get rid of both of those components, which I love, and then replace them with a receiver, which would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be this giant thing that would take up more space, would have its own remote, would have its own controls. I don’t, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s why, like I love my setup. It’s super simple. Like that’s the Sonos amp does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not have a remote control. It just takes volume from the TV through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco HDMI, EARC or whatever. And so it like volumes controlled by the TV. It automatically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco switches inputs. Like it’s wonderful. I just, it’s like having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. It’s like the small box allows me to plug in passive bookshelf speakers and a wireless sub into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost directly into my TV. Like it’s, it’s wonderful. And so yeah, to try a central channel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be somewhat involved.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, you could get a Sonos soundbar and then you would, I know you wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be able to use your left and right channels, your right, nevermind.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now you know how much Marko loves soundbars. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that’s the other thing people complain
⏹️ ▶️ John In general, soundbars demand to be your left and right. They’re like, no, I’m a soundbar, I will not be your center channel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Well, because then otherwise, you know, that ruins the illusion that they’re anything but a trumped up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco center channel. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, the soundbar and center channels have some of the same problems, and the soundbars
⏹️ ▶️ John have to be slim to fit where they fit, and that means the drivers in them need to be small, and that means they need to be augmented
⏹️ ▶️ John by a subwoofer, and it’s just, it’s difficult. At least subwoofers, not, soundbars at least,
⏹️ ▶️ John are engineered to try to sound good, because it’s not like they’re an afterthought, that’s the whole product. The soundbar is
⏹️ ▶️ John the product, so they try to make them sound good, whereas center channels in 5.1 or 7.1 or whatever systems, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John always just like an afterthought speaker. It’s almost like kind of like the Mac Pro where they didn’t want to spend the engineering resources.
⏹️ ▶️ John All the resources go to the left and right, you know, things, the big tower speakers, like to get them to sound good, to get
⏹️ ▶️ John them to have a good dispersion pattern with no dead zones and carefully tuned or whatever. And then they say, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John we need a speaker for the center. Eh, slap something in there. And before you ask, one of the things people think is like, well, what if you just
⏹️ ▶️ John take a left or a right speaker, like one of the good ones of the engineer and lay it on its side? That tends not to work well,
⏹️ ▶️ John because again, the dispersion pattern is made for it to be vertical. Once you lay it on its side, it makes everything all cattywampus.
⏹️ ▶️ John but I did look into it. The other problem is that even bookshelf speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John are pretty darn big. And so at least center channels tried to be slimmish. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John a bookshelf speaker that had the drivers at the size of my center channel does, laid
⏹️ ▶️ John on its side wouldn’t fit because they would arrange them differently there. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a tough situation. Real time follow up to go back to the Sonos line in discussion.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was thinking about it and I was like, I mean, I feel like I had to cross this Rubicon at some point, so I’m looking at my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sonos port, which is not the same as the speakers, but presumably would work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. And when I was setting up the turntable coming into the port because the port has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in and out, and so the port is what’s also driving my port speakers, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the port drives the amp, which drives the outdoor speakers. So anyways, in the port settings, there’s line
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in, which you can set what the name is and whatnot. And you can also set the source level,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which runs from low or excuse me, level one, which is labeled as low. Two is considered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a V component, four is labeled as Airplay, or excuse me, six is labeled as Mac computer, there’s all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one through 10. Eight is labeled as portable player or PC and 10 is high and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can set the source level based on that. So I think it will, it basically can be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey either phono in or regular.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re talking about levels versus the actual EQ change. Like that’s, if it does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not say it has a phono preamp, it doesn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh no, that’s a fair point. That’s a fair point. Yeah, I’m honestly not sure. I’m trying to look at the documentation. I’m really honestly not
⏹️ ▶️ John sure. Yeah, I mean, like the Sonos stuff is not AV equipment. Every AV receiver has a phono input, which is hilarious
⏹️ ▶️ John when you see all this stuff that’s in the back, but they all have it because it’s just like, that’s, same reason they have giant knobs in the
⏹️ ▶️ John front. It’s like, it’s just what you do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and that’s the whole world that I don’t want to be in if I don’t need to be.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the world of receiver is, it’s better than it was. I mean, the receiver I got wasn’t that, that expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John It has like every feature under the sun. I could have gotten a worse receiver and still been fine I just wanted to have a little overhead
⏹️ ▶️ John Setting aside the inability to buy receivers at all because apparently they couldn’t manufacture them and there’s a lot of consolidation in the
⏹️ ▶️ John industry But and there’s definitely room for improvement there but they’re way better than they were when I bought my last receiver when
⏹️ ▶️ John it was still like the Stone Age where like the On-screen displays look like VCRs from like, you know, the 1980s.
⏹️ ▶️ John They are better than that But mine isn’t much better than that Some of them are like Sony actually finally made a new receiver
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you thought there was you thought Sony was out of the Blu-ray player business and the receiver business, but suddenly after I think
⏹️ ▶️ John might be 10 year gap some insane year gap they made a new receiver and it’s good
⏹️ ▶️ John surprise modern technology. You can make a better receiver than you made 10 years ago. Congratulations, Sony. Who’d have thunk
⏹️ ▶️ John it? The other thing I didn’t mention is I put banana clips and everything. Nice big upgrade. Oh, how did that go?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s pretty pretty well. Like I also bought new speaker wire. I didn’t want to rewire
⏹️ ▶️ John everything because I don’t know, I just went crawling around or whatever. And basically, I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Did you get the never contacted oxygen mind from the depths of the sun?
⏹️ ▶️ John So when I bought the new ones, I’m like, look, I want better speaker wire, mostly because I was talking about how
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d made the runs too tight, and there wasn’t a lot of slack, and I wanted to fix that problem. And I was like, well, while I’m there,
⏹️ ▶️ John I should get better wire. Because I had like, I forget what I had. I think I had like, maybe I had 18 gauge. Maybe it was 16. I
⏹️ ▶️ John forget. it was cheap speaker wire. But I decided to rewire, but I didn’t rewire
⏹️ ▶️ John everything. So I didn’t rewire the back surrounds, because again, who cares? They’re small speakers and I didn’t want, those are the wires that
⏹️ ▶️ John run the longest and I have to move the most furniture. So I didn’t rewire those, but I rewired my front left and
⏹️ ▶️ John right and my center. And my sub already had a big, thick, you know, sub
⏹️ ▶️ John speaker going to it, so that was fine. And I bought wire with like a,
⏹️ ▶️ John one of those, like a sheath on it for in-wall use, even though mine aren’t in the walls,
⏹️ ▶️ John just because the sheath was white and it would blend with my baseboard that’s also white, instead of being like, you know, speaker wire
⏹️ ▶️ John color, speaker wire brown, it could be the same color as your own house for all we know. Right, speaker wire
⏹️ ▶️ John brown does not blend with my baseboard. It does blend with my hardwood floors, but anyway. So I bought
⏹️ ▶️ John white sheathed 14 gauge wire, which is probably overkill for speakers that are like three feet from my TV, but
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. And then I rewired everything and the wire is thicker, obviously it’s 14 gauge, as
⏹️ ▶️ John the gauge number goes down, the wire gets thicker. And it’s got the sheath on it, but it
⏹️ ▶️ John let me sort of get clean connections to the new banana clips. And that all worked out pretty well.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m happy that I did the banana clips because now I can easily connect and disconnect the speakers and I don’t have to worry
⏹️ ▶️ John about like metal fatigue slowly making them come undone because they’re screwed into
⏹️ ▶️ John these little posts or whatever. And I put banana clips on the back surrounds as well. So that was a
⏹️ ▶️ John Highly endorse banana clips.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My recommendation for people with speaker wire needs is the first time you need to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your own speaker wire lengths for whatever reason, just go buy a spool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John of- Yeah, I thought I bought a spool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, buy a spool of inexpensive, cheaper speaker wire, Amazon, Monoprise, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You will never need more than that. Like, that will last the rest of your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John life. Unless
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re me, because that’s part of the reason my runs were too short. I measured for
⏹️ ▶️ John my 5.1 system when I first installed it, I measured like, I measured 15 times. I’m like, this will
⏹️ ▶️ John be enough wire. But it’s kind of like, you know, the, you know, the shore of England
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, shore of Scotland, it’s got lots of little kinks in it. And so you’re measuring all this stuff and you think you measured it all, but did you account
⏹️ ▶️ John for the vertical runs? Did you account for how far it has to go into your entertainment center? And I
⏹️ ▶️ John bought like, I think a hundred foot spool and I ended up using pretty much all of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John and I made a couple of the runs too short. So when I bought another spool, I bought a hundred
⏹️ ▶️ John feet of it, but I didn’t do the back surrounds with it. So I had plenty left over. And now I think I may have gotten too far in the other direction where I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John got some like coils as slack where I’m like, I’ve got all this extra wire. What am I gonna do with it?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I may cut them down farther, but that’s the beauty of having the banana clips, the banana plugs and a
⏹️ ▶️ John spool of wire. You can just cut, splice, you know, you make it any length you want. If you make a mistake, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John always make it shorter. You can’t make it longer, but you can always make it shorter. And I do have plenty left on the spool. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty happy with how that went in my two days between COVID.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You did a lot in those two days.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like basically on the first day, I spent the whole day just crawling around on the floor and removed everything in the entertainment center.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, just crawling around back there, pulling out all the old wires, putting everything in. It was refreshing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just, you can imagine the back of an AV receiver with, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John five, six, six pairs of wire. I mean, I do the math wrong all the time. It was 5.1, right? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s five speakers plus you got the subwoofer. But anyway, each one of those is like this little speaker wire and it’s split
⏹️ ▶️ John and then like the little stranded wire that’s twisted and shoved into a little hole and screwed
⏹️ ▶️ John down in it. And they’re all so close to each other. It’s just such a mess to just rip all that
⏹️ ▶️ John out and to have plugs, plug, plug, plug, plug, plug, plug. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco so much nicer. I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel so much better. It’s just like a dream. I should have done this ages ago.