Buzz
The annoyingly coordinated setup below not only wrecks MacBooks but can also leave you dizzy if exposed to it for prolonged periods.
Recently, a user pushed their MacBook Air to its limits and completely wrecked it by simultaneously blasting a song and a high-volume audio clip.
He's Hector Martin, an independent security researcher specializing in Apple products. Martin revealed he completely wrecked the Asahi Linux-customized MacBook Air M2 by pushing its speakers to their extreme limits.
In a Twitter post, Martin explained his experiment. He used Dan Worrall's 'I Won The Loudness War' as the song, layered with a 'high-frequency sine wave sound' to challenge the MacBook Air M2's speakers.
'This is considered the loudest song in the world. I've wrecked another speaker with this very song before,' shared Martin with VICE magazine.
As a result, he 'baked' both sets of speakers on the MacBook Air M2 in just 40 seconds. Specifically, the right-side tweeter (specializing in high-frequency sounds) was completely fried, while the left-side counterpart suffered only minor damage. However, Martin mentioned he could smell something burnt emanating from the unfortunate MacBook.
Sharing with VICE, Martin suggested that both tweeter sets on the MacBook Air M2 might have overheated. The culprit? Asahi Linux's operating system, as it has full control over the MacBook's peripheral hardware devices through a driver.
In this scenario, Hector Martin's customized operating system coerced the speakers on the MacBook Air M2 to emit sounds beyond their tolerance, with the tweeter sets bearing the brunt of the impact.
Meanwhile, the woofers on the MacBook Air M2 were almost unaffected by the aforementioned experiment, albeit still slightly impacted. Martin also mentioned he reported this damage to Apple and received a replacement MacBook Air M2 since he had purchased an Apple Care+ extended warranty package beforehand.
