You could say Asahi Linux was very conservative about this because they disabled speakers altogether until now.
It’s ok to be quite loud for any one peak for a short amount of time (let’s say 50dB for 10ms) but for indefinite time periods much less is ok (let’s say 30dB but these are totally made up numbers). There are also limits to how much energy you can put into the speaker before it overheats. There also may be some frequencies with different limits (this is total speculation on my part). So the DSP models the behavior of the speakers and tweaks the input to prevent them from overheating (in my understanding). Normally you won’t notice this unless you are trying to play a single tone at max volume. Without this advanced DSP, you would have to just limit the output to 30dB which in practice means high volume parts of your audio are clipped or you limit to a very low volume to have enough headroom to play the louder components of your audio. Considering how loud and good modern macbooks, smartphones and smart speakers sound compared to similar sized speakers from even 10 years ago I think the effect is pretty great.
It’s ok to be quite loud for any one peak for a short amount of time (let’s say 50dB for 10ms) but for indefinite time periods much less is ok (let’s say 30dB but these are totally made up numbers). There are also limits to how much energy you can put into the speaker before it overheats. There also may be some frequencies with different limits (this is total speculation on my part). So the DSP models the behavior of the speakers and tweaks the input to prevent them from overheating (in my understanding). Normally you won’t notice this unless you are trying to play a single tone at max volume. Without this advanced DSP, you would have to just limit the output to 30dB which in practice means high volume parts of your audio are clipped or you limit to a very low volume to have enough headroom to play the louder components of your audio. Considering how loud and good modern macbooks, smartphones and smart speakers sound compared to similar sized speakers from even 10 years ago I think the effect is pretty great.