Would the benefit of stereo really be that great when it comes to alarm clock, podcasts (typically just talk), and speakerphone conversations (also mostly talk)? Wouldn't it mostly be better for music and perhaps video or at least something with multiple simultaneous sources of audio?
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Why doesn't iPhone have stereo speakers?
- Thread starter dxyovak
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Why do you assume that the differences you are hearing are because something is in stereo?
Sorry about that.
why not?
its called evolution.
for you it may seem radically exotic but in 5 years time anything that sounds like an iphone 5 today will be looked at in disgust.
similarly, 5 years ago people like you might have wondered if a phone even needed a "retina" display. cant you see whats going on in an ipod touch 2G? or a nokia 1100?
Why not put two speakers in an iPhone? Well, you're going to have two camps. One set would want both speakers on the bottom. One would want them on top and bottom for holding in landscape mode. Oh, but then some people would want them on the front of the phone to point directly at them. So that's three camps.
The speakers are still going to be tiny and nowhere near as good as even this $30 2.1 system sitting on my desk. Apple will keep putting a decent-for-that-size speaker on the phone. If people want better sound, the iPhone comes with Ear Pods. There are a bazillion third-party headphones and speaker systems to choose from for even better sound.
Audiophiles aren't going to be pleased with anything you cram in the phone, so the work will be to improve wireless technology to use with external devices.
The speakers are still going to be tiny and nowhere near as good as even this $30 2.1 system sitting on my desk. Apple will keep putting a decent-for-that-size speaker on the phone. If people want better sound, the iPhone comes with Ear Pods. There are a bazillion third-party headphones and speaker systems to choose from for even better sound.
Audiophiles aren't going to be pleased with anything you cram in the phone, so the work will be to improve wireless technology to use with external devices.
1. because it's a phone, not a hifi system
2. stereo speakers about 3 inches or less apart won't give you any appreciable stereo effect
use headphones or external speakers. the audio quality out of a phone or tablet speaker will always be garbage, there's not enough space for quality audio in there. No power to drive an amp, no space for speakers of sufficient size, not space for speaker porting, etc.
Getting decent audio out of a 15" notebook is still too hard, and yes I count the built in speakers in my MBP as pretty crap (and not really good enough to listen to music on). And each speaker assembly on that is about half the size of an iphone.
Better than most notebooks sure, but still pretty awful. Getting decent audio requires power and space, and the iphone has neither. Rather than 2 speakers half the size they no doubt went for one slightly larger speaker to get a better compromise.
edit:
comparing to a walkman is pointless. stuff 3g, wifi, a cpu+gpu and 16+ GB of flash, an all-day battery, a camera and a touchscreen in your walkman and see how much space is left for audio.
As to the HTC - haven't seen one yet so can't comment. But evidently HTC made a different design trade-off and have had an additional year of hardware advancement on their side as well.
2. stereo speakers about 3 inches or less apart won't give you any appreciable stereo effect
use headphones or external speakers. the audio quality out of a phone or tablet speaker will always be garbage, there's not enough space for quality audio in there. No power to drive an amp, no space for speakers of sufficient size, not space for speaker porting, etc.
Getting decent audio out of a 15" notebook is still too hard, and yes I count the built in speakers in my MBP as pretty crap (and not really good enough to listen to music on). And each speaker assembly on that is about half the size of an iphone.
Better than most notebooks sure, but still pretty awful. Getting decent audio requires power and space, and the iphone has neither. Rather than 2 speakers half the size they no doubt went for one slightly larger speaker to get a better compromise.
edit:
comparing to a walkman is pointless. stuff 3g, wifi, a cpu+gpu and 16+ GB of flash, an all-day battery, a camera and a touchscreen in your walkman and see how much space is left for audio.
As to the HTC - haven't seen one yet so can't comment. But evidently HTC made a different design trade-off and have had an additional year of hardware advancement on their side as well.
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That wasn't my experience. I love the implementation of front facing stereo speakers on the HTC One.
I went to have a look & listen to one at a local phone store. I watched a clip of a movie where a helicopter flies left to right across the screen and it was noticeable.
You should head to one of your local stores and have a play.
I think it sounds very impressive (for a phone) and having almost all my music on my 64GB iPhone, would love to see Apple introduce front facing speakers.
im sorry but phones ceased to be just phones when they became smartphones.
they are now business, entertainment and communication electronic mobile devices.
whilst their screen is not a TV replacement, their processing power not a gaming console replacement or their sound a hifi system replacement people expect them to constantly improve in what they deliver in these categories.
if you disagree and want just a phone get a flip flop one.
I'd definitely say calling a smartphone a phone is like calling a car a seat. It is, but there's a wee bit more you come for.
They can't even get good audio out of laptop speakers. It's a phone for God's sake. Not a hi-fi system.
Being able to do email and play angry birds doesn't make them a hi-fi system.
Ok, but let's say your car is only limited to 900 pounds and can only cost 5000 bucks. How much performance are you going to realistically expect from it? It's like buying a Yugo and bitching because it doesn't do 0-60 in 4 seconds.
The HTC One is a much bigger phone volumetrically. Stereo speakers require more space than a single monophonic speaker. Just do the math. The iPhone 5 has 38% less space to put those stereo speakers. It is a design choice Apple has made, i.e. thinner and smaller is better.
(source: http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one-5313.php & http://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_5-4910.php)
I commend Apple on their design choice to make a thinner, smaller phone. However, it does not necessarily preclude having stereo speakers. The HTC One Mini is a good example. Reviews of the Mini report the speakers are of superior quality to other smartphones of similar size.
Actually, yes. I was somewhat amazed at the difference myself after using mono speaker for these tasks most my life. It makes a noticeable, preferable difference.
By this logic, why invest so much resources in a high-quality, high-res display on just a 4" display? It's not a THX display that is people's first choice to watch movies on.
For something that has phone in the name, it seems strange that so much attention is given to visual over audible quality.
The HTC Mini is actually not so mini. It is actually a good amount larger than the iPhone 5. Once again, speakers--good sounding speakers--need space and volume. When Apple finds a way to make better sound without compromising the size of the phone I'm sure they will add stereo speakers. Until then, it really does preclude having them.
That's very true, but the iPhone has cannibalised iPod sales far more than Apple anticipated due to people realising the benefits of a fully converged device.
As such, it should deliver the best possible media experience (without the need for add ons).
There'll be no form factor change for the 5S, but I fully expect the 6 to be 4.7" or so leaving adequate room for this design change.
There are two kinds of loss that can occur when summing a stereo signal to mono; phase cancellation, which occurs when the the same sound arrives at different microphones at different times, and the loss of spatial positioning information that comes when losing the stereo sound field.
An incredibly small percentage of stereo recordings are made with two spaced microphones (which is the technique most likely to produce phase cancellation). Most are either made with far more mics, or a combination of mics and electronic sources. In almost all cases, artificial panning is used to provide positioning in the sound field. Directional mics, close-micing, overdubbing, gobo boards, isolation booths - all are techniques that minimize phase cancellation. Those essentially isolated, independent sources, no matter how they've been panned in the stereo field, can be summed to mono with impunity and still maintain musical integrity - every note and overtone from every instrument will be there. What's lost is spatial positioning.
But what about those "true stereo" recordings? There are two principal approaches to two-mic stereo recording - "spaced pair" and "coincident pair."
Spaced pair (say, two omnidirectional mics ten feet apart) distorts reality in various odd ways - are your ears ten feet apart? Your speakers may be 10 feet apart (in which case, there's not much harm at all), but that won't be the case if you're wearing headphones. But more important, because the mics are separated, the sound from an instrument on the far left arrives at the right-hand mic later than it arrives at the left-hand mic. While the time delay does add a certain spaciousness (similar to reverberation), it also means that, if combined to mono, some frequencies will be out-of-phase and therefore cancel, generally muddying the sound. In that case, indeed, something is lost by summing to mono.
Coincident micing uses two directional mics in the same location (often in a common enclosure), to minimize the time arrival differences that produce phase cancellation, and to provide a more natural-sounding result (at least, more natural-sounding in my opinion). To be perfectly positioned to mimic your ears, they should be several inches apart, but even that results in some cancellation if summed. Dummy head technique, which uses that last approach, avoids cancellation by placing a sound-absorbant baffle between the spaced mics, but is less favored as theory hasn't quite measured up to practice.
Listening outside of the sweet spot in a speaker system simply means you will be receiving an out-of-balance effect. If you sit in front of the left speaker, you'll hear very little from the right speaker. If, say, the clarinets are full right (not that they normally are), you'll hear very little of the clarinets from your position on the left. In fact, you'd hear a lot more of the clarinets if they'd been summed to mono.
The perception of stereo as being "better" in those circumstances comes from the complex sound field in the listening room - reflections off the walls and ceiling, etc. Pipe a mono signal through a pair of spaced speakers in a moderately reflective listening space, and you'll regain the impression of stereo - the same sound will be arriving at your ears at different times, and your brain localizes those differing sources. This is an old, old recording technique - the famous EMT reverb plate had a mono input and two spaced pickups to produce a stereo output. And when digital reverb arrived on the scene? Mono in still produces stereo out.
You can add a bit of spaciousness to the mono output of an iPhone simply by placing it on a hard, reflective surface (you'll also gain a boost in overall volume, as more sound energy is directed your way). If the iPhone had a pair of speakers? You'd be hard-pressed to localize sound sources in the regular stereo field, but you would gain some "air" due to the slight differences in arrival time. A bit of DSP could be applied to broaden the sound field, though.
I'm with most everyone else - adding stereo speakers to an iPhone is not worth the trade-offs (such as a smaller battery, smaller speakers, etc.). On a larger device, like an iPad? That's a horse of a different color.
(And, as to the superior sound of a particular Walkman? Not hard to achieve when there are no other functions in need of space or power, and truly, superior sound is essential to achieve when, in Alton Brown's words, it's a "mono-tasker.")
It's clear you've put a lot of effort into your post, but so much detail on sound quality is only really relevant if we're talking about hifi systems. We're not though, these are phones.
Take your iPhone (like I did) into a store and do a side by side comparison against the HTC One and tell me the sound is not significantly better on the HTC. You won't, because the difference is clear.
As for your worry of a speaker / battery size trade off, well you can't get much smaller than the current iPhone speakers . . . . and Apple wouldn't need to use a smaller battery as I fully expect next year's iPhone 6 to have a bigger screen and a larger body to accommodate it all.
And that difference has little to do with the HTC One having stereo speakers.