I agree with you, it would have been nice if their speakers had dedicated hardware to drive them instead of the magical dolby software.

All laptop speakers sound like shit on Linux. I'm sure people will reply with their anecdotal evidence, or pretend that it's not that bad once you have a good EQ. But we'll have to agree to disagree on that. I've spent hours trying to get multiple laptop speakers at least half as good as they sound on Windows. No success. And I'm talking thinkpads, dell xps, the usual linux go-tos, not some exotic stuff.

Maybe you have very niche needs, but for most of us speakers on laptops are never great and they're not really there for that. Reminds me of people shopping for high performance scooters. I mean, you're riding a scooter... it's not meant for that.