Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[RudeCurve]

Special editions would just have a speaker instead,, they are special afterall
Rhis is just added costs, which is kind of weird considering everything else.

Maybe they planned something special with this that will show up later, we will see..
Customized sounds would be cool, still one of the best things about my star wars 360.

Yeah I'm thinking they'll make use of it later.

 

[Scott_Arm]

It's meant to be a Bluray CE component thing, not a console. In that sense it makes perfect sense. Of course STB boxes that look like that is very rare, most modern hifi components are not that size anymore etc etc. Another example of what I consider old thinking along with TV centric ideas.

That being said, it's perfect for me since I am the old school type with big hifi components..

It's not anywhere as big as a hi-fi component.

It's obvious looking at the internals that it was designed to be cheap to assemble, cheap to debug. All of the components are on the top side of the PCB, so you could essentially do any probing with a mostly assembled console with cooling still assembled. The PCB is undoubtedly close to one of the standard sizes, so they took advantage of the space for their layout. Assembly looks like a breeze, and disassembly obviously the same. The whole design means they can get away with a simple and non-exotic cooling solution. I imagine their thinking is that the box is within the reasonable limit people will accept for that kind of device.

 

[MrFox]

This is a 50 cents system speaker, why are we even talking about it?

 

[pjbliverpool]

It doesn't seem to boot up that quickly. 57 seconds from cold and 12 seconds from standby.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/microsoft-xbox-one-console-review,review-32831-2.html

 

[RudeCurve]

I guess that means it's better to keep it in standby all the time.

This is a 50 cents system speaker, why are we even talking about it?

Probably the same reason why people talked about having a speaker in a controller...

Anyway I could see some nice uses for the speaker..when the TV is off but the console is in low power you could set it up to send out "notifications" for various functions such as "you have mail"...etc.

 

[Grall]

Point is it will be able to playback sampled speech and sound effects clearly

Clearly? No. Without a chamber, sound volume will be very low for any mid or low range frequencies. Sampled speech would sound muffled and as if coming from a telephone speaker held at arm's distance for chrissakes.

which makes sense if you plan on offering special editions with sampled audio clips in the future.

What are you talking about? What special editions...?

The speaker looks quite large too

It's roughly the size of what you find in earphones. It's very small. 30-40mm diameter max.

If it's ony good enough for beeps why not use a buzzer instead?

Who the hell can say why? It would just be speculation. What's to say it's even connected to a DAC anyway?

Your logic makes no sense.

MY logic doesn't make sense...? Okay. Look, if you stick your xbone in an entertainment center rack with a closed door, you won't even be able to hear the speaker when it's playing sampled speech and sound effects and whatnot. So yeah, my logic clearly sucks.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Finally we see the heatsink correctly.

It's certainly a brute force design like a PC heatsink, reminiscent of the Scythe Shuriken. There's a high chance that the airflow will be biased towards the the edge, and the center with be inefficient because it has more air restriction. I think it's a complete waste of available space, but so much better than the original xbox.

The good thing is that with such a slim heatsink the 112mm fan won't have trouble with it's low static pressure. There's very little depth to go through and the fins are widely spaced. My wild guess would be less than 1000 RPM during media playback, and 1500 RPM while gaming. I hope someone will measure it.

It seems like the primary heat source is offset from the central spindle. Has is been mentioned in the reviews what direction the airflow is? That looks like it is actually sucking from the inside and blowing out the top.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I guess that means it's better to keep it in standby all the time.

Even standby's not crazy fast though, My PC loads from standby in about 9-10 seconds for example. The power draw in this mode is pretty high too, no doubt because the mic needs to be constantly listening for the on command.

 

[fellix]

It seems like the primary heat source is offset from the central spindle. Has is been mentioned in the reviews what direction the airflow is? That looks like it is actually sucking from the inside and blowing out the top.

Yea, don't dare to cover than spacious top exhaust.

 

[Grall]

That looks like it is actually sucking from the inside and blowing out the top.

It's a sucker that fan, alright! Inspired by the 360 slim design, no doubt. ...Which worked well enough. Low-speed axial fans are usually quieter than radial fans also, has anyone done a sound level side-by-side with a PS4 yet?

 

[AlphaWolf]

It's meant to be a Bluray CE component thing, not a console. In that sense it makes perfect sense. Of course STB boxes that look like that is very rare, most modern hifi components are not that size anymore etc etc. Another example of what I consider old thinking along with TV centric ideas.

That being said, it's perfect for me since I am the old school type with big hifi components..

My STB/DVR isn't significantly smaller. (its 385mmWX225mmDx80mmH) And my receiver is much larger.

 

[RudeCurve]

Clearly? No. Without a chamber, sound volume will be very low for any mid or low range frequencies. Sampled speech would sound muffled and as if coming from a telephone speaker held at arm's distance for chrissakes.

I've serviced many laptops with speakers much smaller than the one in the X1. You don't need much of a chamber to get "clear" speech and sound.

What are you talking about? What special editions...?

Special Editions like the X360 Star Wars one which included sampled sound effects when you press power, eject etc.

MY logic doesn't make sense...? Okay. Look, if you stick your xbone in an entertainment center rack with a closed door, you won't even be able to hear the speaker when it's playing sampled speech and sound effects and whatnot. So yeah, my logic clearly sucks.

Of course if that's how yours is setup. Not everyone have enclosed entertainment centers. Personally I never liked A/V racks with glass doors since hot air just gets trapped. I imagine most people would have this out in the open like a typical Blu-ray player.

 

[Scott_Arm]

...
Special Editions like the X360 Star Wars one which included sampled sound effects when you press power, eject etc.

...

I forgot about that. It was nerdy, but pretty awesome. If I didn't have the 360 already, I would have got one.

 

[Bagel seed]

Maybe the speaker was a hold over from pre DRM cancellation days? For people that insisted on playing offline, the speaker would beep the number of hours you had left before lockdown.

But really, it's probably for service technicians to more easily diagnose bricked units.

 

[Grall]

You don't need much of a chamber to get "clear" speech and sound.

I don't see any chamber at all for the xbone speaker, the black plastic thing it sits in just looks like a holder. For reference, look at the speakers of the phat vita, and they too have barely any chambers at all and sound terrible. Same with wiiu gamepad, bad bad speakers. Whereas iphones for example have speakers that don't exactly sound hifi, at least they can create some volume due to a proportionally designed chamber. Btw, apple got sued some while back by THX over this, seems they've got a patent...

Special Editions like the X360 Star Wars one which included sampled sound effects when you press power, eject etc.

Ah I see, but the 360 doesn't have an integrated speaker at all, so how can it play sounds when you eject discs...? (Answer, they added one just for the starwars version, which means it wouldn't be an issue for hypothetical xbone starwars edition either.)

 

[function]

My bog standard 360S has a speaker in it for the power on / off and eject "pings". It's definitely not just a buzzer.

The Star Wars 360's will just play different samples.

 

[MrFox]

Something like this?
http://www.cui.com/product/resource/digikeypdf/cls0271m-l152.pdf

Voice will be difficult, but fun samples for notification are certainly doable.

 

[-tkf-]

My STB/DVR isn't significantly smaller. (its 385mmWX225mmDx80mmH) And my receiver is much larger.

I saw it some months ago and it's pretty big compared to the usual non hifi components like slim receivers, dvd players etc.
It's bigger than my small amp, cd and dvd player, but just as wide (standard size I am sure) . But as I said it will fit perfectly in such a stack.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I saw it some months ago and it's pretty big compared to the usual non hifi components like slim receivers, dvd players etc.
It's bigger than my small amp, cd and dvd player, but just as wide (standard size I am sure) . But as I said it will fit perfectly in such a stack.

Looks smaller than my slimline Marantz receiver, which is supposed to be small for a home theater receiver. Its definitely smaller than the integrated amp I had before. I've seen some small integrated amps. There are some really small pure digital amplifiers. Those are pretty exotic.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

It's a sucker that fan, alright! Inspired by the 360 slim design, no doubt. ...Which worked well enough. Low-speed axial fans are usually quieter than radial fans also, has anyone done a sound level side-by-side with a PS4 yet?

Digital Foundry did, but it's rather meaningless as their noise floor was basically 40 DB. The equivalent of a relatively noisy room for me (for reference my media room is under 30 db).

Regards,
SB