Github repo https://github.com/chadmed/triforce

blog post with the background story why this was created: https://asahilinux.org/2025/03/progress-report-6-14/#is-this...

It would be great if this was implemented in a way that also other manufacturers can easily start building mic arrays such that it would make them immediately useful.

ok noob here - what can i use this thing for? a better desktop-only voice app?

is there a reason apple hasn't exposed a higher level api for this given the hardware (mic array) looks like it's already sufficient in macs?

Apple did it as a software function so it's not in hardware, hence this implementation for people wanting to run (presumably) Asahi Linux.

Looks like the ability to use MacBook mic when not using Macos

I can't speak for this implementation, but on MacOS, the beamforming is amazing. When used in a noise office or cafe environment it eliminates background noise to an extent I can always tell if a colleague is using it or their worse headphone mic.

For the software to perform beamforming it must be provided the discrete microphone inputs, as opposed to being provided some sort of pre-mixed feed. As such, why is Apple "trying way too hard to be fancy here" if you can just use one of those mics? Or is the alternative that they do the "beamforming" in hardware regardless of the OS?

> if you can just use one of those mics?

They're extremely omnidirectional and very sensitive. With a single mic with no beamforming you get basically all of the sounds from every part of the room, including and especially horribly loud sounds from (eg.) the keyboard and mouse.

Apple selected their microphones based on the constraints their system had (beam formed array) rather than the "usual" laptop microphone which is physically not very sensitive and highly directional towards the front of the laptop, and in turn, those microphones are not particularly useful without beam forming.

Avoiding extra coprocessor and/or avoiding patent dispute like they did with speakers (which differ from a H-K patent by not having a discrete chip implementing it)

> Much like with the speakers, Apple are trying way too hard to be fancy here, and implement an adaptive beamformer in userspace to try and isolate the desired signal from background noise.

Might be fancy, but it does make for surpisingly good audio from a laptops.

Honestly, with speakers it was mainly a patent avoidance thing (patent on essentially the same thing but done with dedicated hardware, doing it with software on "application processor" bypassed the patent claims)

A lot of similar stuff is done in firmware on x86 laptops, to the point that both AMD and Intel now share considerable portion of the stack, with both using Xtensa cores for DSP, with Sound Open Firmware as SDK. When I use built-in microphone array on my laptop, it's parsed through the DSPs "transparently" to end user.

But technically you can load your own firmware there.

lol