well I guess so.
I didn't call anyone idiots BTW.
But I mentioned Siri, cameras, and LTE.
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iPad Mini Teardown Reveals Samsung Display Driver, A5 Chip, Stereo Speakers
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well I guess so.
I didn't call anyone idiots BTW.
But I mentioned Siri, cameras, and LTE.
Some did, but only in building checklists in the "dial goes to 11" school of creating competing products.
The iPad already had two speakers, but as has been true since forever, "stereo" sound on a small mobile device is basically pointless except for marketing. Apple's two speakers got a little more separation than on previous iPads but although it's technically stereo, there's nothing to gain by marketing as such.
You'd immediately have people calling out Apple for the pointless stereo speakers (often the same people who were complaining that x brand put stereo speakers in their tablet and Apple didn't because they're greedy).
The problem is that people respond to simple sound bites and rarely stop to think about the whole picture. It's basic marketing, whether it's electronics or cars or politics. Amazon just didn't have a checklist way of saying "we think our tablet sounds really good and we have no idea what the iPad sounds like but we're going to tell you it's worse!"
After seeing this teardown i cannot see anything premium but the design and the price. Just look at all that glue put inside the ipad to drive the cost down and those condensers soldered onto the logic board (step13). I bet a 10 yrs old can do a better job soldering those components. But hey, we are blinded by the packing.
I've teared down all my electronics (must be hundreds over the course of 30 years) and i've never seen a worst assembly job that i've seen in this ipad.
I've teared down all my electronics (must be hundreds over the course of 30 years) and i've never seen a worst assembly job that i've seen in this ipad.
While I'm sure that's true, it still doesn't make it useful. The speakers are still far too close together--about 6 inches apart--and although they project backwards, by the time they reflect off the room to come back, there's not much to hear in the channel separation. I've noticed that the speakers have good volume and clear for voice and sound effects, but they're not enjoyable to use for music or movies, so what's the point? The positioning might maximize the limited stereo effect in landscape, but it also poses a problem because they're located exactly where it's most natural for me to rest my fingers on the back of the device. In portrait, they're fine...but point up and down instead of left and right.
The speakers on my Fire HD are fine, don't get me wrong, but I have never once gone, "wow, stereo sound!" when using it. It's just gimmicky on a small device--it'll never make up for the tiny speakers with limited range. You're always better off with headphones or outputting to a set of decent, normal-sized speakers.
I wouldn't be buying any tablet for it's 'stereo speakers' I don't even rely on the built in speakers in my computer, the sound it okay for beeps and short messages but to watch something or listen to music put on the head phones/ear plugs. Spacing is also an issue, I used to have my computer speakers right behind the LCD so relatively close together because of space constraints. Now with my new desk they are over 1 meter apart, much better stereo sound out of them.
As for the Mini it's self I was looking forward to it but 2 things are stopping me from getting one, the higher that expected cost and more important the non retina LCD... you just know in 6-12 months they'll update it with something better.
Right now I'd rather buy the big brother for a little extra money even if it's not so compact as the 8" Mini and lets face it, its NOT 7" it's closer to 8!
As for the Mini it's self I was looking forward to it but 2 things are stopping me from getting one, the higher that expected cost and more important the non retina LCD... you just know in 6-12 months they'll update it with something better.
Right now I'd rather buy the big brother for a little extra money even if it's not so compact as the 8" Mini and lets face it, its NOT 7" it's closer to 8!
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How did you come to the conclusion that only the mini has stereo speakers? Is it just a guess or did Apple or another credible source confirm it?
On Apple's spec page, they label the ipad 2, Retina and the mini as having 1 speaker under 1 grille.
Only after ifixit found the 2 speakers, which in turn caused a customer to pointedly ask Schiiller if it was truly stereo, did we find out the truth.
So, how can we believe that previous ipads are mono?
Did they start misleading us now or for many years?
Or they didn't want to bring attention to it because people would point out what a stupid design it is to put stereo speakers so close together.
The iPad has always been "stereo" in the sense that it has two speakers in it that deliver left and right channel audio. However, they're located in the same housing and I don't know if one speaker is dedicated to the left channel and one to the right, or if both channels are blended in both speakers.
In either case, it's not capable of producing stereo imaging given the spacing of the speakers.
This. Phones and tablets will only ever have usable stereo sound via their audio output ports, not their built-in speakers.
To me, stereo means 2 speakers, each connected to their own channel. The physical separation of those speakers is another issue.
Judging by Phil Schiller's response, "It is stereo" I'm going to believe it is stereo.
Now, can anybody definitively say all previous ipads are, or are not, stereo?
That applies to the iPad mini only, because the speakers are separated (barely). Separation can't be a separate issue because the definition of stereo is "two or more separate channels to produce a realistic effect by capturing spatial dimensions of a performance." You can't reproduce spatial dimensions without space. You can claim that that the little bit of space between the speakers on the iPad mini is enough for at least some stereophonic effect and be technically correct.
But other iPads have two separate speakers inside one grille, immediately adjacent to one another. One would have no way of knowing whether they're discrete channels unless you took apart the iPad and disconnected one of them to see if a channel dropped out. But even assuming they are discrete, they wouldn't be able to produce a stereo effect.
In that case, why not 5.1?
What about 7.1?
...Wish I was more geeked out on those protocols, but while we're on a roll, yeah Apple could do that... though it will involve may involve putting iOS devices (someone else's hopefully) in a pattern around your house strategically.
I wonder now if all future iOS devices will have stereo speakers.
Yep, Stereo speakers that are next to each other - not pointless at all.
I love how its powered by Samsung hardware, and everyone here says they'd never buy anything samsung.
Nope, no evidence of that. There have been two speakers, but they way they're feeding one speaker grille, it's more likely they are fed different frequencies of a mono channel (or even both playing the same mono signal).
Here's a test - Garageband for iOS has panning. Bring in a mono sound for playback and pan it left, center, right. Does left pan sound any different than right pan? There may be a slight difference in volume between center and side panning, but if it's mono there will be no change in position.
Pretty much any stereo mix of an early Beatles song (or song from that era) will do for this test.
Nope, not at all.
You said "The iPad has always been "stereo" in the sense that it has two speakers in it that deliver left and right channel audio."
I said the old ones had two speakers that were fed a summed mono signal, probably split into higher and lower frequencies by a crossover. Or possibly the exact same signal sent to both speakers.
Almost there. Keep reading...
"However, they're located in the same housing and I don't know if one speaker is dedicated to the left channel and one to the right, or if both channels are blended in both speakers."
Which is exactly what's in the bolded sentence that appears just after you evidently stopped reading the post before replying.