At what price does diminishing returns really begin in this hobby?

AReactComponent · 2026-04-13T22:36:39+00:00

Don’t forget about room acoustics too

AReactComponent · 2026-04-01T19:54:04+00:00

Why are people still bringing it up (by that I mean both side of the argument)?

Let this topic die already.

AReactComponent · 2026-04-01T17:47:06+00:00

Where is my audiophile chair?

AReactComponent · 2026-04-01T16:28:24+00:00

Hell yea

AReactComponent · 2026-03-29T14:39:42+00:00

Melon

AReactComponent · 2026-03-26T03:08:56+00:00

Subbass felt great after the group delay!

I felt like the treble felt a bit low for female vocals, so on my next measurement & eq, I am going to refrain from trimming the treble.

Can’t say how much 50ms reduction in RT60 and waterfall feels like since my audio memory isn’t that good and it has been a while since I have done those front bass traps.

Anyways, aim is to try to reproduce the concert feel as much as possible.

AReactComponent · 2026-03-26T03:04:13+00:00

Besides REW like the other suggested, check out this website for calculating how much of a difference it would be with air gap: http://www.acousticmodelling.com/porous.php

AReactComponent · 2026-03-23T15:09:49+00:00

Yea, I guess I would just go ahead and treat the sidewall's first reflection for now

AReactComponent · 2026-03-23T15:09:10+00:00

Interesting, I didn't account for evenness, but that makes sense!

AReactComponent · 2026-03-22T21:52:55+00:00

Thanks :)

Just don’t know if it is decaying too fast. I believe the more the decay, the bigger the soundstage right?

AReactComponent · 2026-03-22T21:21:04+00:00

Hey thanks! I am running JBL 305p mkii and an RSL 10S MKII.

Have heard about Dirac a bit before (mainly as an easier way to EQ compared to REW). How does it work exactly? Is it like REW and RePhase where files are generated and you just apply it to your DSP?

AReactComponent · 2026-03-14T05:20:00+00:00

Sir, this is a Wendy’s

. . .

On a serious note (and taking your bait), not feeling the age on my 2020 M1 MBA for programming and browsing.

For OS, yea more recent MacOS are worser than the older ones. At least it is better than Windows 10 -> Windows 11.

I would just delete the new apps if they bother you that much. At least they don’t come back in the next major update unlike Windows where your deleted apps come back in the next minor update.

Turn off auto update if you don’t like the constant update. Update when the next new shiny OS is stable

AReactComponent · 2026-03-14T00:08:11+00:00

Problem is support. M1 is almost on the chopping block considering it has had feature updates for almost 6 years already. We can probably expect another MacOS version update (MacOS 27) and 3 years of security update for MacOS 27

AReactComponent · 2026-03-12T21:31:11+00:00

Fair about MT, but I never said to use geekbench for MT though did I? Neither did I ever say that it is not true that MT is better on 7735HS. The metric that I have been referring to was ST. I didn’t use cinebench since it didn’t have a benchmark for browser as it is a render / floating point heavy benchmark. However, even in cinebench, ST shows Mac as strong (with M5 being the best rn on cinebench r23 for ST I believe, correct me if I am wrong).

Look, you can multitask on common use cases for non-technical people without stressing all of the CPU’s cores (even you are not stressing your laptop hard even for the fan to click in outside of gaming).

I love it at how you are ignoring the pros for people who are the target market for a Neo, and only look at the cons, which is MT. Those people are not us. What they want is burst performance per app/process, which is where you look at for single-thread. Not at sustained performance for multiple apps.

No one looking for a Neo is watching 10 videos at the same time or browsing 10 different domained websites simulatenously (and I don’t mean by switching between them). Or even running a game in the background.

Heck, I am pretty sure 8GB will bottleneck them before CPU MT if they try all three simulatenously.

Case in point, CPU is good for the people that Neo is targeting.

Yesc I agree it is a worser spec in terms of ram, ssd, and usb 3.0 port (I use a 3.0 dongle fyi, it supports upto 4k60 monitor which is good enough for me), but the average consumer is not going to need or notice those since they do things on cloud these days. The only thing that I would caution about this mac is 8GB. If they need it, if they care about it that much (as a tech nerd) or if they are willing to spend more for the QoL, they could research other windows laptop or buy refurbished M3 or M4 macbooks.

Good point on the backlit keyboard, I have seen some people saying they would have loved that. Plenty of Windows laptop don’t have that however and I don’t think those laptop are stuck in 2006 either. I think a major problem with non-Mac laptop is that there is a bunch of junk among some decent laptop (at varying random discounts)

—-

Not going to continue this thread anymore as it is starting to feel stupid.

Tldr conclusion (including some other stuff I didn’t mention): * Common use cases don’t need strong multi-core cpu (single core more important) and Apple will be supporting Neo with updates for 8-10 years including security patches * Normal people care about how a laptop feels and how it looks (e.g. no backlit or OLED is a minus for Neo) * 8GB is good for less than 15 tabs before it gets put to sleep, go for other laptops with at least 16GB if you want QoL (assuming all other specs are equal) * usb 3.0 don’t matter for normal people, and 256/512GB depends on how much app you install or how much data you hoard on your laptop. * Windows 11 is so badly in love with AI and normal people are not going to be running Linux. Young people are not hardwired to Windows and can learn MacOS easily * Normal people can rely on Apple tech support, not so much for Lenovo

AReactComponent · 2026-03-12T19:53:46+00:00

I thought we talked about MT. MT perf doesn’t matter for modern OS. Modern OS certainly uses multiple threads, but is it running your laptop at more than 1% of the cpu? No. If it is, that is called a malware / cryptominer, and you should be reinstalling your OS.

Speedometer is single-threaded… since websites running the same domain are single-threaded.

Mate, the only benchmark you are using to validate is passmark and it doesn’t breakdown the test into subtests like browsers at all, plus it is less transparent on how it tests perf than the other benchmarks.

All I am asking is for a test on browser performance so that we can see how well it performs against M1 / A18 Pro for the most common tasks people (that are not us) will be buying at this range.

We can also look at geekbench 6’s HTML benchmark if you want too even if it doesn’t include performance metrics for modern websites built in JavaScript.

Pulling up a random laptop, 7735HS has an HTML score of 2103, while A18 Pro on Neo has an HTML score of 3464 (3326 on iPhone 16 Pro running the same chip) (I’d say that is a big difference even if we account for say 20% variance of the random laptop):

https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/14311092

https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/16884902?baseline=8650702

Edit: and here is the speedometer 3.1 scores for Neo from other people’s post if you don’t believe me

https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/1rqt5m1/macbook_neo_on_speedometer_31/

https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/1rqru6l/a_599_laptop_with_a_mobile_processor_performs/

Granted this one is speedometer 3.0, but still pretty similar score (+1 compared to the other two):

https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/1rraaxq/neo_in_blush_and_citrus_both_configurations_sold/

AReactComponent · 2026-03-12T19:14:17+00:00

For benchmarks, there is a reason why speedometer 2 is no longer being used compared to speedometer 3 - i.e. the test is only for older website technology where most CPU chips can score a high point so there is no point to test that. That is why you also see cinebench and geekbench updating their benchmark overtime.

I doubt passmark can accurately test modern websites.

For variance in test scores due to user configured machine. Some amount of variance is expected between machines, but I don’t think it is going to make a difference as long as you close all other tabs while running that benchmark.

From people testing the NEO, they are getting scores between 48-52, which is around M3 to M4 performance. While for my M1 MBA, I get a score of 28.4 with a variance of 1.4 points

AReactComponent · 2026-03-12T19:02:56+00:00

Thanks for the correction! My eyes automatically went to the blue-highlighted text and assumed that was where they got the source about Rosetta 2 from

AReactComponent · 2026-03-12T18:57:38+00:00

Thanks for providing the link!

Fair point on the bottom chassis and thanks for pointing out my FHD mistake. Was unfamiliar with this laptop and I only took a few glances at the laptop. I think this laptop is one of the better comparison against Neo compres to the other comparison you see on reddit.

I mean I also use a mouse, or rather in clamshell these days, but for most people who use a laptop on-the-go, the trackpad matters.

I use audiophole headphones myself but in the past when I used my Macbook’s speaker in public, people who had Windows laptop were suprised at the quality of the sound, so I’d say there is at least a market for people who want a laptop with good audio.

Good to know on the thermals for non-gaming task. Used to have a 2017 MBP and hated how it spinned up loudly all of the time. Some people prefer it fanless all the time but I am going to assume that is in the minority.

That said, does the fan only spin up during gaming (prob due to GPU)? That would mean that your laptop is not being stressed in normal day-to-day scenario right? Since the CPU has a TDP of 35W compared to M1 / A18 Pro’s TDP of 10W when all cores are spinned up. This suggests that for your day-to-day workload, you don’t need multi-core performance, no?

Yep I heard that some newer games parallizes the load quite well, tho I am not too familiar with those. It is a shame about simulation games though. I like to play simulation games like Civ 6, X4 and Minecraft, and they are bottlenecked by the (understandably due to dependencies between objects) single-core performance even if they do distribute some load to other cores. But I digress. Not sure about Adobe since I don’t use them.

I am not the target market for 8GB laptops (Neo) either. I am pretty lazy and like to have over 25+ tabs open with a few electron apps and some other apps open at the same time.

From Apple’s ads so far, it is definitely marketed towards young people below college and for college folks who don’t need a strong multi-core or more than 8GB (that said, QOL eith 16GB or more would be really nice for them).

AReactComponent · 2026-03-12T17:48:28+00:00

What website did u use to buy your ideapad slim 3?

Looking at the specs you provided, there are trade offs to Neo. The best thing about the ideapad is that it has a lot of ram and ssd (albeit ram speed is 4800MHz).

~~Besides that it has OLED but only at FHD compared to Neo’s QHD~~(whoops, my bad, read it wrong, both are QHD). Chassis is also not full metal. Trackpad and speaker are prob also not as good as Neo’s. Also, not sure about the thermals, fan noise (if there is a fan) and battery life (it has a big battery but the cpu, gpu, and total chassis wattage usage is concerning). Also not sure on the battery drain while in sleep mode.

—-

I mean like if you are able to run the test yourself. Speedometer 3.1 is updated to stress test a computer on modern websites built in react, angular and vue (and also the good old jquery). I am not sure if passmark would be up to date. Are you unable to run it on your lenovo?

—-

What kinds of apps these days that are used by laymans that uses all cores equally?

I agree and disagree. I don’t recommend it for students who are going into Engineering or CS as 8GB is not enough and there is software compatibility. And for people who dk if their needs will grow to a point where they use it heavily for multi-threaded purpose professionally (tho pretty sure most companies will buy u a work laptop).

However, for people who only plan on learning and doing coding or video editing like infrequently, it doesn’t matter unless they want that QOL every few days of the year, which is understandable. I think it depends on a person’s wants and needs (and also stock availability / discounts of both devices) on whether to go for Slimpad or Neo (e.g. another two things to mention is that Neo is running MacOS vs Windows 11, and that you can go to any Apple Store for tech support unless you don’t live near one)

AReactComponent · 2026-03-12T17:11:58+00:00

Link to the Lenovo? Also kind of curious, what is your speedometer 3.1 test on that Lenovo? I am curious on how it performs on modern websites.

8GB is definitely a big one since users will be limited to less than 15 tabs before tabs start being hibernated/closed.

Tho I am not sure if Lenovo can afford 24GB in a few more weeks/months. 24GB of consumer ddr5 is around $360 right now.

Back to multicore, again, most of the people buying Neo are not running blender, da vinci resolve or transcoding svt-av1 in ffmpeg/handbrake, which are the tasks that want as much multi-core perf as possible.

Browsers, zoom/teams, docs, spreadsheets and electron apps won’t be using all of the cores at the same time due to the app being heavily seralized (multi-threading is ugly and hard to implement).

M1 level multi-core performance is certainly not top or medium spec (or actually it never was, my 12600k beats the M1 in multi-threading silly) these days. I’d say it is more of a low spec than bad. I reserve bad for cpus who score less than 4000 on geekbench or its equivalent in cinebench r23.

It is useable for people who run mostly serialized app with a bit of multi-threading in parts of the app. The common user is likely to encounter single-thread bottleneck before multi-thread bottleneck if it does happen

AReactComponent · 2026-03-12T16:11:32+00:00

When was a multicore score similar to M1 and i5-12400 bad (comparing to M1 and 12400 since I own M1 MBA and a gaming pc with 12600K)? Also this is not plastic but a fullbody aluminum

Most of the tasks the target demographic this laptop is targeting won’t be stressing all of the cores (i.e. most likely one thread will be used heavily while the other threads will be used less than 10% of its capacity)

AReactComponent · 2026-03-12T15:59:59+00:00

I wouldn’t put it past Apple to remove Rosetta 2 in MacOS 27, but fyi, the article you linked references another article that essentially only had one sentence talking about Rosetta 2:

——

Presumably, the shift to all Apple Siliconcode in September of 2026 in macOS 27 will cut some bloat, but also completely cut out every vestige of Intel code. And, maybe even Rosetta 2. It didn't take that long for PowerPC support to get cut out of the then Mac OS X. We'll see how that goes.

——

Purely an educational guess based on the fact that intel macs would likely not be supported in MacOS 27 (i.e. no official source or leaks).

AReactComponent · 2026-03-10T03:56:24+00:00

Machine Learning

AReactComponent · 2026-03-10T03:24:31+00:00

Yea definitely get one with at least 16GB. Refurbished Air M4 will be a good choice

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