As the main developer of VLC, we know about this story since a long time, and this is just Dell putting crap components on their machine and blaming others. Any discussion was impossible with them. So let me explain a bit...
In this case, VLC just uses the Windows APIs (DirectSound), and sends signed integers of 16bits (s16) to the Windows Kernel.
VLC allows amplification of the INPUT above the sound that was decoded. This is just like replay gain, broken codecs, badly recorded files or post-amplification and can lead to saturation.
But this is exactly the same if you put your mp3 file through Audacity and increase it and play with WMP, or if you put a DirectShow filter that amplifies the volume after your codec output.
For example, for a long time, VLC ac3 and mp3 codecs were too low (-6dB) compared to the reference output.
At worse, this will reduce the dynamics and saturate a lot, but this is not going to break your hardware.
VLC does not (and cannot) modify the OUTPUT volume to destroy the speakers. VLC is a Software using the OFFICIAL platforms APIs.
The issue here is that Dell sound cards output power (that can be approached by a factor of the quadratic of the amplitude) that Dell speakers cannot handle. Simply said, the sound card outputs at max 10W, and the speakers only can take 6W in, and neither their BIOS or drivers block this.
And as VLC is present on a lot of machines, it's simple to blame VLC. "Correlation does not mean causation" is something that seems too complex for cheap Dell support...
Maybe Dell should advise against playing Metal music and should only allow Céline Dion music, because Metal saturates more...
Low quality speakers and a poor hardware design. It isn't even a challenge to match amplifier output to speakers in such a way that the amplifier can't break the speaker. There are easily a dozen cheap ways to make this work properly that don't rely upon a probably non-existent WMP based solution.
>VLC does not, and cannot modify the OUTPUT volume to destroy the speakers.
That would be remarkable.
>And as VLC is present on a lot of machines, it's simple to blame VLC. "Correlation does not mean causation" is something that seems too complex for cheap Dell support...
While I don't support Dell's decisions, digital (and analog) clipping can easily damage speakers driven at what is normally their maximum power they can handle, since the resulting clipped waveform carries a lot more energy than an unclipped one.
VLC allows amplification of the INPUT above the sound that was decoded. This is just like replay gain, broken codecs, badly recorded files or post-amplification and can lead to saturation.
I have to say, there may be a UI issue here as well. I blare my speakers with VLC playback something like 5X times more often than QuickTime player or mplayer. I use all 3 with about equal frequency.
> The issue here is that Dell sound cards output power (that can be approached by a factor of the quadratic of the amplitude)
This is correct, and for those who want to know the technical reason, we can look at the Dell speakers (any speakers) as a resistive load (only approximately true). For a resistive load, the power increases as the square of the applied voltage, because the power in a resistor is equal to the voltage times the current, and both the voltage and current are increasing as the audio output level is increased.
Any other manufacturer do that? (someone mentioned HP below)
I am a VLC fan (thanks! I wish I was skilled enough to contribute to the project) and right now using a ASUS laptop, I want to know what manufacturers I should NOT buy from next time (I bought this ASUS because I tried to buy from DELL and their site was buggy and did not closed the transaction... good to me their site was buggy!)
Back when I worked for a company that supplied crapware for preinstallation, I was given the impression that Dell and the other hardware supplies do lots of testing of their hardware/software configuration but in the most dumb-shit kind of way. The whole configuration is more or less treated like bucket chemistry - if you can get the desired combination to work, that's what you specify and exactly why it works or doesn't work won't be investigated.
The thing about this is that such behavior makes sense when the suppliers are integrators of the product of twenty or fifty or however many suppliers spread around the globe all relentless trying to cut costs (including cutting corners in implementing whatever spec their chips are supposed to satisfy). The integration itself naturally involves putting together the cheapest stuff and seeing-if/hoping-that it will work. So when you have such a fragile chain of elements, just blank-refusing to allow substitutes makes sense in this rather twisted view. Maybe Windows Media Player fails to call the parts of the API that are "bad" and not documented as bad.
Obviously, I'm not saying this approach is justified, simply that sometimes the irrationality is "sincere".
How about detecting Dell Speakers and automatically setting the max volume to 100%, with a notification so the user can give an a-ok if they want to go higher. That way, at least users know and can make a decision. Similar to the Android warning if you set your volume too high that it could cause hearing damage.
I'd prefer to be warned rather than surprised by this!
> The issue here is that Dell sound cards output power (that can be approached by a factor of the quadratic of the amplitude) that Dell speakers cannot handle. Simply said, the sound card outputs at max 10W, and the speakers only can take 6W in, and neither their BIOS or drivers block this.
In other words, due to increase in amplitude, increasing volume over 100% can break the hardware? I am not trying to blame VLC, just that your statement "At worse, this will reduce the dynamics and saturate a lot, but this is not going to break your hardware" sounds a bit fallacious in the context of your own explanation.
Dell can't agree with this without having to do a hardware recall or refund people. It is much easier to blame your software (and cheaper by a hundred million of dollars in bad press/computer returns/hardware thrown away/call centers dedicated to this issue/etc etc).
Aside from Dell's crappy hardware, wouldn't it be possible to just compress the sound more so quieter passages would become louder but those passages already near the maximum wouldn't get clipped? That should definitely sound better...
Just from this comment, it seems like you guys have a pretty interesting problem domain. I'm going to take a look at the VLC repo and see if there's anything I can contribute, thanks for getting me interested!
> But this is exactly the same if you put your mp3 file through Audacity and increase it and play with WMP, or if you put a DirectShow filter that amplifies the volume after your codec output.
Indeed, and doing that destroys audio equipment just as effectively. It's the reason apps like SoundForge, Audacity and others have clip warnings on their level monitors: so users don't create audio data that destroys listeners' equipment.
The problem is VLC gives consumers (who, like you, don't know better) an exceptionally easy way to create clipped audio. Depending on the characteristics of the source, the degree of clipping VLC can create can destroy even pro equipment. If I were an engineer at Dell, I'd recommend denying warranty claims too.
I bought a Dell M1330 laptop a few years ago and the speakers were crap even by laptop standards. This was fine with me, since I planned to use headphones. Unfortunately, the audio output was just as crappy! It had an insanely high noise-floor! I had to get a USB DAC/head-phone amp to make things acceptable. Lesson learned: Dell sucks at audio.
If the speakers in a consumer device like a laptop can be damaged by maxing the volume then the laptop was not properly designed. This isn't a case of a nutty audiophile mixing and matching unknown preamps, amps, and speakers and managing to blow some cones by cranking it to 11. Dell has complete control over the selection of components in this laptop and, if they cared to, could include circuitry to limit power beneath a point that will damage the speakers. They didn't. Alternatively, they could eschew a limiter and select speaker components beefy enough to handle the maximum voltage that their DAC's can output. They didn't. Bad design.
If Dell did the math and decided the number of users noticing permanent speaker damage would be small enough that the reduced part costs would outweigh the price of the resulting warranty service, that's their decision. However, they should be on the hook to fix damaged caused by their cheap/poor design.
VLC is incapable of increasing the actual power past 100%, all that is being done is the waveform is being modified to be louder within the allowed constraints. If this wrecks the speaker, any other non-VLCed sound could just as easily, and the speakers are therefore underpowered for the laptops internal amplifier. Class action sounds in order.
Also many mastering engineers do the exact same thing to make the music "louder" because the record label/artists demand it. Maybe Dell should start making popular rock/pop music void the warranty as well.
Anytime I call tech support, I'm running Windows 7 or 8.1 (depending on which they support) with antivirus installed, firewall on, and the latest MSIE. Hardware does not include an ssd unless that's the item I'm calling about. I will also pretend trying to restart my system and router. Good to know I should add Windows Media Player to the list.
Don't forget that your laptop hasn't moved from the table where you unpacked it in months, you are located in a hermetically sealed, temperature and humidity controlled room, the laptop has absolutely no software on it other then the software it came with (updated to the latest version, of course), and on normal days you simply turn it on and lightly brush it's casing. Come to think about it, maybe skip the part about turning it on, that could be grounds for voiding the warranty.
I'm surprised that I can't find any mention of the fact that this behavior is simply illegal, beyond the blatant technical stupidity. The Magnuson-Moss warranty act in the US prohibits voiding a warranty simply due to the use of third-party parts, unless those parts can actually be demonstrated to be the cause of the problem. The mere presence of a part is not enough. They'd have to show that your use of VLC actually caused this failure, and since I doubt they're keeping the sort of logs that can show that, they have no case.
Companies like to talk about "voiding the warranty" for all kinds of stupid stuff, and consumers don't know their rights so they often get away with it, but what the law allows is considerably more constrained.
That kind of amplitude abuse is the equivalent of pounding very hard on the keyboard for long periods of time - it will break sooner than it would normally have, and can rightfully be considered abuse. However, voiding the warranty simply because of VLC installed is, again, the equivalent of voiding the keyboard warranty simply because you are a bodybuilder.
If I am understanding this correctly, a specially crafted mp3 file, played in Windows Media Player or similar, could cause the same symptoms that Dell is indicating VLC could create. Surely that would be considered a totally normal operating condition that the speakers should be tolerant against. It may be heavy use, but does that mean it is abuse?
Not so fast, I see no car metaphor yet. And there is no comparison of Dell's practices to those of Hitler or the Nazis, either. We are far from 'enough' metaphors, my friend.
The fact that it's being driven internally is a major difference.
Imagine if this was some crazy keyboard which could actually press keys automatically using a motor. Then imagine if the drivers and hardware allowed you to destroy the keyboard by pushing the motor too hard. This would be obviously crazy and the ability to write userland software that destroys built-in hardware should not result in a denied warranty.
When the Samsung ARM Chromebook came out, people quickly found that careless tinkering with alsamixer caused the speakers to overheat and melt the case as a result of being driven with a high DC current. A driver update blocked the control causing the damaging signal routing.
They didn't bother to put $0.001 DC blocking capacitors on the DAC outputs? This isn't a "bug in the kernel" or any software, it's a clear hardware flaw.
In professional audio (and even amateur radio) one always puts speakers rated for 1.5x the nominal output of the amp. At least. This makes sure that whatever the input in the amp, the speakers are safe.
If Dell doesn't build audio properly, how can they blame the users? They really have some gut...
I was always taught the opposite rule for PA amps - they should be rated higher than the speakers, as per http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dWILAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA118&dq=..., http://www.sweetwater.com/insync/power-amp-buying-guide/#mat... or similar. The reasoning being that a lower power amp would have to run flat out, and clip, which pushes a lot of energy into the HF drivers. Safer for the tweeters to have a more powerful amp which is not run into clipping, even if some peaks exceed the cabinet's rated power.
The VLC volume control has always terrified me, I wish it would have AGC or at least a soft limiter when pushed above 100%. I've seen people watch films with it cranked up to 200% and the system volume turned down to compensate :(
Dell support and policies are utterly broken. I had a Dell Vostro which worked fine except at one time it started emitting fumes when running a CPU intensive task. I was denied warranty because I was running Linux!
All products eventually approach "if you use this product for anything at all, it voids the warranty". How fast they get there is an indication of the integrety (and managerial health) of the company behind them.
In my country (Norway) we are already protected better by law than the warranty in most cases, so what producers say will void it is often meaningless.
If Dell said VLC was installed so warranty is void, I'd say I want the computer fixed as a "reklamasjon"-case, and so they can't hide between stupid rules like this. This also means that we are allowed to swap RAM, CPU's etc. in our computers without fear of not getting the computer fixed if it later breaks down for unrelated reasons.
It would probably either cost more or the speakers would have a lower peak volume.
I don't think it is a wild compromise to make some assumptions about the sounds people will play through the speakers (and it's not like a spec relating the max energy/time is going to help most shoppers).
Seems pretty bogus, sure you can damage a speaker hooked directly up to some audio source, but there so many components between the DirectSound API and the speaker that making a system that can be damaged using the OS API's seems quite lame.
So basically, Dell's crappy speaker/amp design can't handle square waves at full volume. I suppose you shouldn't listen to loud chip-tunes either, then.
This is particularly amusing to me, as someone who regularly enjoys more... extreme genres of music that features lots of distortion and hard clipping. My no-name cheap Chinese speakers and headphones haven't died because of it, in fact my ears probably have less tolerance than the hardware.
I used to work for Dell tech support, and I used to install VLC on customer's machines all the time..woops. At that time there was no rule against it and we generally assumed that software couldn't damage hardware. When I worked there, Dell seemed to have one of the more lenient warranty policies of any company.
I had once faced the exact same issue once in Mar 2009, so all I did was called them again after some time from a different number and using a different name and told them that No, VLC was not installed. And I got my warranty upheld and speaker replaced.
This is insane. It's like saying LibreOffice can ruin your HDD, keyboard or some other BS that they can come up with. I have a Dell XPS M1530, it is five and a half years old and I remember the speakers blowing out in 2009. I got them covered under the warranty no problem. I know I am in the minority when saying that I like Dell and their support, I have had other problems and they have had no problem fixing them. This my start to change my mind...
What is the current status of the vulnerability in VLC Media Player reported by Secunia? I see that there has been some online discussion of this in places outside Hacker News (which I searched the other day for more information about Secunia's vulnerability report).
I have tried to update VLC Media Player on one machine on my home network, and the update fails, suggesting that the VLC Media Player installation on that computer may already be compromised by malware (which has previously been detected on that machine). What is the recommendation for current VLC Media Player users to make sure that they have a recently updated, reasonably safe installation of VLC Media Player that doesn't open up their computer to other vulnerabilities?
If DELL is right that would mean even if I craft a sound file with a very high amplitude, play it with another software, it should not damage the speakers.
I would have thought windows could limitate the amplitude of the sound sent to the hardware, maybe VLC is somehow bypassing this.
I once acquired an audio geologic recording of the tragic Christmas Eve tsunami in Indonesia. It was an interesting listen, with a lot of bass/sub-base frequencies. Played at what seemed a reasonable listening volume, it managed to destroy my iPod headphones. Seems some sounds can be inherently damaging to less robust equipment when seemingly operated well within sensible limits.
(The replacement of said headphones cemented my appreciation of Apple: at a time Apple wasn't selling headphones alone, upon my consternation of not being able to buy a set, a clerk ripped open a random box and handed me new headphones gratis.)
This is why I use VLC. On the white polycarb apple macbooks the audio is really quiet. VLC made it useful by allowing me to turn the audio up louder (up to 200%). No damage to speakers here.
Speakers are built to be able to withstand short peaks with high power to reflect the dynamic in the music or your movie. This is what is abused to be able to play loud sounds continuously. You could take the possibility to do that away, but then you would of course also remove some of the dynamics out of the music.
But of course, the people that burn their speakers this way don't care about dynamics or evidently about sound quality if they press their computer speakers like this. Can't sound not even a little good.
Whether it can damage the speakers depends on whether your sound system is defective. Dell deliberately ships defective speakers and doesn't cover the defects in its warranty. But it's not like the speakers will notify VLC of this fact, though.
jbk|12 years ago
In this case, VLC just uses the Windows APIs (DirectSound), and sends signed integers of 16bits (s16) to the Windows Kernel.
VLC allows amplification of the INPUT above the sound that was decoded. This is just like replay gain, broken codecs, badly recorded files or post-amplification and can lead to saturation.
But this is exactly the same if you put your mp3 file through Audacity and increase it and play with WMP, or if you put a DirectShow filter that amplifies the volume after your codec output. For example, for a long time, VLC ac3 and mp3 codecs were too low (-6dB) compared to the reference output.
At worse, this will reduce the dynamics and saturate a lot, but this is not going to break your hardware.
VLC does not (and cannot) modify the OUTPUT volume to destroy the speakers. VLC is a Software using the OFFICIAL platforms APIs.
The issue here is that Dell sound cards output power (that can be approached by a factor of the quadratic of the amplitude) that Dell speakers cannot handle. Simply said, the sound card outputs at max 10W, and the speakers only can take 6W in, and neither their BIOS or drivers block this.
And as VLC is present on a lot of machines, it's simple to blame VLC. "Correlation does not mean causation" is something that seems too complex for cheap Dell support...
Maybe Dell should advise against playing Metal music and should only allow Céline Dion music, because Metal saturates more...
EDIT: more details...
PS: they even provide a BIOS update for the fix... So, of course, VLC was the issue... http://www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/04/KCS/Kcs...
fnordfnordfnord|12 years ago
>VLC does not, and cannot modify the OUTPUT volume to destroy the speakers.
That would be remarkable.
>And as VLC is present on a lot of machines, it's simple to blame VLC. "Correlation does not mean causation" is something that seems too complex for cheap Dell support...
It sounds like a #BOFH excuse.
dzhiurgis|12 years ago
ferongr|12 years ago
stcredzero|12 years ago
I have to say, there may be a UI issue here as well. I blare my speakers with VLC playback something like 5X times more often than QuickTime player or mplayer. I use all 3 with about equal frequency.
lutusp|12 years ago
This is correct, and for those who want to know the technical reason, we can look at the Dell speakers (any speakers) as a resistive load (only approximately true). For a resistive load, the power increases as the square of the applied voltage, because the power in a resistor is equal to the voltage times the current, and both the voltage and current are increasing as the audio output level is increased.
In terms of Ohm's Law: P = E^2/R.
speeder|12 years ago
I am a VLC fan (thanks! I wish I was skilled enough to contribute to the project) and right now using a ASUS laptop, I want to know what manufacturers I should NOT buy from next time (I bought this ASUS because I tried to buy from DELL and their site was buggy and did not closed the transaction... good to me their site was buggy!)
joe_the_user|12 years ago
The thing about this is that such behavior makes sense when the suppliers are integrators of the product of twenty or fifty or however many suppliers spread around the globe all relentless trying to cut costs (including cutting corners in implementing whatever spec their chips are supposed to satisfy). The integration itself naturally involves putting together the cheapest stuff and seeing-if/hoping-that it will work. So when you have such a fragile chain of elements, just blank-refusing to allow substitutes makes sense in this rather twisted view. Maybe Windows Media Player fails to call the parts of the API that are "bad" and not documented as bad.
Obviously, I'm not saying this approach is justified, simply that sometimes the irrationality is "sincere".
brador|12 years ago
I'd prefer to be warned rather than surprised by this!
chengiz|12 years ago
In other words, due to increase in amplitude, increasing volume over 100% can break the hardware? I am not trying to blame VLC, just that your statement "At worse, this will reduce the dynamics and saturate a lot, but this is not going to break your hardware" sounds a bit fallacious in the context of your own explanation.
fxsoap|12 years ago
Sad to see behavior like this
mkesper|12 years ago
idProQuo|12 years ago
thewarrior|12 years ago
And here in India I hear people say that you shouldn't install VLC on laptops .. (even if its not a Dell laptop) !!
ksec|12 years ago
But does anyone have list of Manufacture that does provide speaker with BIOS Protection?. Does Apple do?
jokoon|12 years ago
well I guess their support people are not engineers, only technicians, hope this blows back into DELL PR instead...
orig|12 years ago
dpe82|12 years ago
Indeed, and doing that destroys audio equipment just as effectively. It's the reason apps like SoundForge, Audacity and others have clip warnings on their level monitors: so users don't create audio data that destroys listeners' equipment.
The problem is VLC gives consumers (who, like you, don't know better) an exceptionally easy way to create clipped audio. Depending on the characteristics of the source, the degree of clipping VLC can create can destroy even pro equipment. If I were an engineer at Dell, I'd recommend denying warranty claims too.
beloch|12 years ago
If the speakers in a consumer device like a laptop can be damaged by maxing the volume then the laptop was not properly designed. This isn't a case of a nutty audiophile mixing and matching unknown preamps, amps, and speakers and managing to blow some cones by cranking it to 11. Dell has complete control over the selection of components in this laptop and, if they cared to, could include circuitry to limit power beneath a point that will damage the speakers. They didn't. Alternatively, they could eschew a limiter and select speaker components beefy enough to handle the maximum voltage that their DAC's can output. They didn't. Bad design.
If Dell did the math and decided the number of users noticing permanent speaker damage would be small enough that the reduced part costs would outweigh the price of the resulting warranty service, that's their decision. However, they should be on the hook to fix damaged caused by their cheap/poor design.
donatj|12 years ago
anaphor|12 years ago
GeneralMayhem|12 years ago
lucb1e|12 years ago
x0054|12 years ago
mikeash|12 years ago
Companies like to talk about "voiding the warranty" for all kinds of stupid stuff, and consumers don't know their rights so they often get away with it, but what the law allows is considerably more constrained.
Jare|12 years ago
Ok enough metaphors.
shawnz|12 years ago
tunap|12 years ago
Not so fast, I see no car metaphor yet. And there is no comparison of Dell's practices to those of Hitler or the Nazis, either. We are far from 'enough' metaphors, my friend.
EpicEng|12 years ago
mikeash|12 years ago
Imagine if this was some crazy keyboard which could actually press keys automatically using a motor. Then imagine if the drivers and hardware allowed you to destroy the keyboard by pushing the motor too hard. This would be obviously crazy and the ability to write userland software that destroys built-in hardware should not result in a denied warranty.
mansr|12 years ago
userbinator|12 years ago
orik|12 years ago
tmzt|12 years ago
sklivvz1971|12 years ago
If Dell doesn't build audio properly, how can they blame the users? They really have some gut...
lcrs|12 years ago
The VLC volume control has always terrified me, I wish it would have AGC or at least a soft limiter when pushed above 100%. I've seen people watch films with it cranked up to 200% and the system volume turned down to compensate :(
pera|12 years ago
hrjet|12 years ago
Since then I have vowed never to buy Dell.
noonespecial|12 years ago
maaaats|12 years ago
If Dell said VLC was installed so warranty is void, I'd say I want the computer fixed as a "reklamasjon"-case, and so they can't hide between stupid rules like this. This also means that we are allowed to swap RAM, CPU's etc. in our computers without fear of not getting the computer fixed if it later breaks down for unrelated reasons.
serf|12 years ago
Aardwolf|12 years ago
maxerickson|12 years ago
I don't think it is a wild compromise to make some assumptions about the sounds people will play through the speakers (and it's not like a spec relating the max energy/time is going to help most shoppers).
ChuckMcM|12 years ago
__david__|12 years ago
userbinator|12 years ago
aceofspades19|12 years ago
gautamsomani|12 years ago
bmoresbest55|12 years ago
tokenadult|12 years ago
http://secunia.com/advisories/52956/
http://secunia.com/blog/shooting-the-messenger-372
http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/07/10/1520245/vlc-and-secuni...
I have tried to update VLC Media Player on one machine on my home network, and the update fails, suggesting that the VLC Media Player installation on that computer may already be compromised by malware (which has previously been detected on that machine). What is the recommendation for current VLC Media Player users to make sure that they have a recently updated, reasonably safe installation of VLC Media Player that doesn't open up their computer to other vulnerabilities?
jbk|12 years ago
We did a lot of fuzzing with 2.1.x though and we've fixed all the security issues that were reported.
unknown|12 years ago
[deleted]
dave809|12 years ago
jokoon|12 years ago
I would have thought windows could limitate the amplitude of the sound sent to the hardware, maybe VLC is somehow bypassing this.
Seems like an odd issue though.
AndyKelley|12 years ago
https://github.com/andrewrk/libgroove/issues/45
ctdonath|12 years ago
I once acquired an audio geologic recording of the tragic Christmas Eve tsunami in Indonesia. It was an interesting listen, with a lot of bass/sub-base frequencies. Played at what seemed a reasonable listening volume, it managed to destroy my iPod headphones. Seems some sounds can be inherently damaging to less robust equipment when seemingly operated well within sensible limits.
(The replacement of said headphones cemented my appreciation of Apple: at a time Apple wasn't selling headphones alone, upon my consternation of not being able to buy a set, a clerk ripped open a random box and handed me new headphones gratis.)
g123g|12 years ago
jijji|12 years ago
omerh|12 years ago
altero|12 years ago
xerophtye|12 years ago
(Yes i suppose that is morally wrong, but so is blaming VLC for your own bad designs)
acomjean|12 years ago
lucaspottersky|12 years ago
razzmataz|12 years ago
pistle|12 years ago
Glyptodon|12 years ago
retrogradeorbit|12 years ago
JetSpiegel|12 years ago
zephjc|12 years ago
collyw|12 years ago
intinno|12 years ago
guard-of-terra|12 years ago
If we had a normal society anywhere on earth they would be sued to the ground there.
Ma8ee|12 years ago
But of course, the people that burn their speakers this way don't care about dynamics or evidently about sound quality if they press their computer speakers like this. Can't sound not even a little good.
robinhoodexe|12 years ago
zimbatm|12 years ago
naner|12 years ago
That and hard clipping is obvious and sounds awful, so it should be apparent you're doing something wrong.
chc|12 years ago
jbk|12 years ago
unknown|12 years ago
[deleted]