MacBook Air Speakers - Any Good?

Hi There,

I currently have a 17" PowerBook G4 which I use to watch a great deal of movies and downloaded T.V shows on. The stereo sound quality isn't out of this world but is of a fairly high standard and is more than good enough for my needs.
Due to the fact the huge hot & heavy PowerBook is so difficult to move around I would like to make the transition to a MacBook Air but have heard bad things about the sound quality and was wondering if anyone could give me some honest feedback on how good or bad it actually is. I have been into an Apple store but it was totally manic with people clambering all over the MBA so it was difficult to tell for myself the standard of the audio quality.

What I basically need is the thumbs up or down on whether i could listen to both movies and music without feeling like it was coming out of a tin can.....

Thanks for your help.

17" PowerBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Feb 24, 2008 10:40 AM

Reply
12 replies

Feb 24, 2008 10:48 AM in response to Chameleoninc@mac.com

The MBA only has one mono speaker. If you want to listen to a movie in stereo, you will need to use earbuds/headphones, or hookup some portable external speakers.

-Bmer
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Feb 24, 2008 2:29 PM in response to Chameleoninc@mac.com

We expected the worst with our MBA's, that the single speaker would be poor and this was another "compromise" for the lighter computer. I have to say that we have been very pleasantly surprised in that the quality and depth of sound that comes out of the single speaker is, to our ears, very good. Naturally stereo is out of the question and I confess that I kind of miss the whoosh of sent email traveling across the computer.

Feb 24, 2008 3:13 PM in response to Chameleoninc@mac.com

If you want to amp up your iTunes (I realize this doesn't totally address the adequacies of the speaker issue, but it makes listening to music or watching video more enjoyable), you might try using SRS Lab's iWOW. I had to uninstall it on my iMac (there was some conflict between iWOW and some other software after I installed Leopard, and couldn't get iWOW to work properly), but I have such faith in their software that I re-purchased it for my MBA, and it dramatically makes the sound more complete and louder - by a lot!

Either that, or keep using your headphones with your MBA.

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MacBook Air Speakers - Any Good?

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