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Lucifer666

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 20, 2014
1,064
416
I'm wondering what are the opinions on this. Has anyone compared the base 13" and the TB 13"?

And the 15"?

The speakers design is very different with the 13" TB and nTB. It's clear a lot of thought has gone into these, and the 15".

I know that they all sound good. Just think it would be interesting to compare.
 
I switched from a touch bar 13 to a non touch bar last night, and when I listened to some stuff I noticed that the speakers did not seem to sound as good as the touch bar version. Still very clear and crisp but didnt seem to be as much bass presence.

I sort of just chalked it up to my brain playing tricks on me. I don't actually know if there are differences at all. But to me, it seemed like there is. From your post it seems like youre saying there is definitely a design difference?
 
From your post it seems like youre saying there is definitely a design difference?

They all are really good. I've had all three actually. I have a 13 TB and a 15 TB, and I had a nTB for a while but traded up (or sideways :D )

The design is different on all three. The two TB models (13&15 inch) are more similar. The real difference between the 15 and 13 TB models is the tweeter. The 15" has a typical round tweeter, as it has the room. The 13 TB has very small oval tweeters. Both these (13&15) TB models have a bass driver that uses the side vents. The nTB 13 doesn't have side vents, so it has four of the small oval tweeters (two per side), and some strange kind of cavity porting (good luck figuring that out). I also noticed, (all this is from the ifixit teardowns) that the 15" bass driver looks larger, so it should probably get rather loud (don't know).

Like I said they all sound great, but it would be fun to do a comparison.
 
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They all are really good. I've had all three actually. I have a 13 TB and a 15 TB, and I had a nTB for a while but traded up (or sideways :D )

The design is different on all three. The two TB models (13&15 inch) are more similar. The real difference between the 15 and 13 TB models is the tweeter. The 15" has a typical round tweeter, as it has the room. The 13 TB has very small oval tweeters. Both these (13&15) TB models have a bass driver that uses the side vents. The nTB 13 doesn't have side vents, so it has four of the small oval tweeters (two per side), and some strange kind of cavity porting (good luck figuring that out). I also noticed (all this is from the ifixit teardowns) that the 15" bass driver looks larger, so it should probably get rather loud (don't know).

Like I said they all sound great, but it would be fun though to do a comparison.

Oh damn I did not even realize the lack of the vents on the side of the non touch bar version.

I guess I am not surprised that it sounds different then. Glad to know my brain isnt just making it up.
 
I really like the speakers of my 13" ntb overall. But for some songs they are not really crisp, clear and kind of vibrating. For example in the first 35 seconds of this title:

https://soundcloud.com/eeph/fin

How does this sound on your model?
 
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