For me, it's actually an upgrade in sound, at least for my setup. I used to have a MBP and the little Bose SoundLink speaker. Now that I have the iMac, the iMac speakers is actually better than that $200 Bose speaker. For my setup, it's perfect. I don't want clutter, just a simple all-in-one iMac.
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2015 iMac Speakers
- Thread starter jcr918
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Student discount, Apple Care given to me for free, $100 discount for shipment being late, $80 discount for not getting a second lightning cable when I was told I would get one, misc discounts on top of this given to me by a rep
The quality is definatly awesome for an all-in-one computer. I'm actually thinking of selling my Bose C5
I had those cube bose speakers. I was reluctant to try it, but I bought a set of Klipsch Promedia 2.1 speakers from Best Buy at about $110 on sale a while ago, and it sounded better than the bose computer speakers. More bass and fuller sound. The subwoofer is much deeper than Bose's. I'm still using that on my gaming PC.
This is the one.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/klipsch...lack/9382232.p?id=1218095770265&skuId=9382232
But for my iMac setup, I'm just going to use the built-in speaker. I get a fuller sound, even tho there's no bass compared to the Soundlink mini.
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I must agree with most of the response here. I have always been pretty impressed with the internal iMac speakers. They get loud and are quite clear at medium high setting. I understand that they don't have the best bass, but you'd need much bigger tweeters for that, more of a physical limitation I think.
At the same time I have never relied on internal speakers in any computer aside from some laptop watching in bed. I cannot speak for the 2012 vs 2014/15 computers though. I suppose it's possible they changed them but I imagine they have stayed the same as the design has been the same.
All to say, yes, your speakers may be defective if they truly seem like that much of a downgrade from your old machine.
At the same time I have never relied on internal speakers in any computer aside from some laptop watching in bed. I cannot speak for the 2012 vs 2014/15 computers though. I suppose it's possible they changed them but I imagine they have stayed the same as the design has been the same.
All to say, yes, your speakers may be defective if they truly seem like that much of a downgrade from your old machine.
Tweeters tweet (above 2 Khz) and woofers woof (below 2 Khz). Low frequency sounds are most easily and efficiently produced by large diameter woofers-- my 5.25 inch speakers are good down to 62 Hz, before falling off. There's a lot of stuff below that, but It's nice to have a speaker that can comfortably reproduce the NPR sound (Bob Edwards, etc) without distortion. Often smaller speakers have a inbuilt hump in the bass to substitute for what they can't reproduce. I find such things unpleasent.
The imac's speakers are much smaller than 5.25 inches.
I had a pair of 15" Audiobahn subs in my car in highscool. Hooked up to a 3000 watt amp and a 4 farrad capacitor, I would sit in there with my buddies and we would wear earplugs and crank it loud enough that the vibrations actually made us throw up. True story.
So the conclusion to my seemingly off topic response it that sometimes too much bass is a bad thing and we should be happy with apples built in speakers lol
So the conclusion to my seemingly off topic response it that sometimes too much bass is a bad thing and we should be happy with apples built in speakers lol
It's a couple of things with physics being the biggest. There is also budget. What most OEMs, including Apple, are doing is trying to build a balanced system when it comes to quality, performance and cost. Apple is simply trying to build an all purpose all-in-one computer for a good price and they did a very good job at that. It also means that you can't have it all (so it's not really an all-in-one
). Audio is also very personal so some will find the iMacs speakers to have quality issues (aka crappy sound) whereas others find them superb as can be seen in this topic. That means that trying to find issues with audio quality can be quite difficult too.@jcr918: how are you going to score the audio and how does Apple want you to do that (or differently put, did they instruct you)?