[Mac Hammer Fan]

I bought a Quad 2,66 Nehalem and I am happy with the speed.
But there are two flaws:
1) the sound of the built-in speaker is bad: no bass. It's inferior to all my other Macs. Is it so with the other Mac Pro's too?
2) there is a constant hum. The Mac Pro isn't silent. I don't know whether it is the fan from the video card (Geforce) or because I installed 3 hard disks. The Mac Pro is noisier than my old G5 Dual 1,8.
Is this normal?

[cgc]

The built-in speaker never sounds good...just adequate for simple sounds, alerts, etc. My MacPro (1st Gen w/ nVidia 8800 and one internal HDD) is nearly silent. I'd guess yours is louder from the additional HDDs and video card. Run a program to show the speed of the fans and the internal temperature and you'll probably have a better picture of the cause. iStat is a good (free) program. I personally use the iStat Menus version...

If you find your temps aren't too high yet the fans are spinning too fast, try SMCFanControl to lower the fan speed a bit, but I'd caution against doing much with that.

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by Mac Hammer Fan 

I bought a Quad 2,66 Nehalem and I am happy with the speed.
But there are two flaws:
1) the sound of the built-in speaker is bad: no bass. It's inferior to all my other Macs. Is it so with the other Mac Pro's too?

There's these things called external speakers... they work great.

[tooki]

There are two kinds of Mac Pro users: the ones who care about sound (everyone but graphic designers), and the ones who don't (graphic designers).

The latter don't really need speakers except for beeps, which the built in speaker is fine for.

For everyone else, that's why there's analog and digital output, since you want the speakers on your desk, not on the floor.

[bearcatrp]

Pick up a pair of bose speakers. They sound awesome. Like tooki said, some folks don't need good sound, some do. If you need good sound, time to buy some.

[Big Mac]

Tower Macs have very weak speakers. That's a known. The G5s speakers were really weak. You need externals.

[angelmb]

Sure, but even so my MDD internal speaker is heaps better than my Mac Pro's. Even for Text to Speech alone, such an expensive computer deserves a better internal speaker.

[Mac Hammer Fan]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Tower Macs have very weak speakers. That's a known. The G5s speakers were really weak. You need externals.

The internal speaker of my G5 Dual 1.8 is definitely much better!

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by Mac Hammer Fan 

...there is a constant hum. The Mac Pro isn't silent. I don't know whether it is the fan from the video card (Geforce) or because I installed 3 hard disks. The Mac Pro is noisier than my old G5 Dual 1,8.
Is this normal?

NO! Mac Pros are relatively very silent towers. If the noise is not one of the hard drives you installed return the MP immediately for repair. If it is a hard drive, replace it. It is true that we graphics users often do not care much about built-in speaker quality, but we often hate noise...

Towers and their built-in speakers usually are placed in acoustically inappropriate locations anyway, buy external speakers.

-Allen Wicks

[rozwado1]

Originally Posted by bearcatrp 

Pick up a pair of bose speakers. They sound awesome. Like tooki said, some folks don't need good sound, some do. If you need good sound, time to buy some.

Bad plan. Don't waste your $ on BOSE. Paradigm?

[cgc]

Originally Posted by angelmb 

Sure, but even so my MDD internal speaker is heaps better than my Mac Pro's. Even for Text to Speech alone, such an expensive computer deserves a better internal speaker.

Really? I can see putting a better speaker in a consumer Mac but not in the MacPro.

[sadpandas]

The only time i ever hear the internal tower speaker is the initial power up sound then my audio interface takes over as the cpu boots up.... I understand what you are saying but then again i have never heard of anyone that would buy a top of the line tower and not use externals. Even my G5 has monitors (studio speakers).

Even our graphic designers use external speakers as we usually are working with audio as well as video.

Umm, i don't really ever see the reason to not have either monitors or just externals with a tower... Don't you like to hear sweet musics while you design or do whatever it is you do? iTunes... i love you.

Ok, recap... there is no reason for my post to really exist other than to basically say, "When spending thousands on a tower its always nice to have a pair of really nice speakers or monitors so you can hear the really bad you tube audio . Sarcasm abounds.

p

[angelmb]

I understand. You don't buy such an expensive computer to then rely on the tiny internal speaker.

Actually, my Mac Pro speaker sound level is set to mute most of the time, but when I download a movie trailer from Apple's website, it does sound terrible, needless to say I am not going to buy some expensive speakers just for that and headphones has always been uncomfortable for me.

I had bought the first harman/kardon SoundSticks back in the day and ended selling them to a friend cause I didn't really use them. Maybe my Mac Pro's internal speaker is the lowest on the totem pole, cause any gameboy iteration I have had, did sound leaps better.

[sadpandas]

You just got that Arabian style Tetris song in my head!!!! . I miss my gameboy, i have a psp that i never use and only got it to test UMD design out... I can't believe some studios are still putting those out. oh well any kind of design work is good design work... These days that is .

P

[drissa]

Originally Posted by angelmb 

Sure, but even so my MDD internal speaker is heaps better than my Mac Pro's. Even for Text to Speech alone, such an expensive computer deserves a better internal speaker.

The thin sound is down to the case design - largely 'open' at the front and rear. The older tower designs allowed the case to act as a crude speaker enclosure.

[angelmb]

Thanks for pointing that out.