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Nothing will ever come close to convenience of analogue volume knobs. They give both immediate action and infinite granular control. Same goes for kitchen stoves. All the modern touch controls with step-based control is the absolute nightmare in terms of UI.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Old computer had a lot of things we don't have toady anymore.
Old computer had a lot of things we don't have toady anymore On Macs, you could highlight a number in any document or screen, option-click, and have your Bluetooth-connected flip phone dial it. This was pre-iPhone. I never understood why that went away.
It went away because phones moved from productivity to recreation devices.
You can be productive with smartphones but they're clearly designed for entertainment
I let my spouse, who likes the novelty of a touchscreen, talk me into a Whirlpool oven a couple years ago that is controlled by touchscreen. I had no idea it was possible to hate an oven so much. The only saving grace is that the stovetop elements are still controlled by knobs.
My office (well, former office) used to have a touchscreen coffee maker. Why does a coffee maker even need a touchscreen? There are literally three options!
Nobody knew what the hell all the icons meant, and nobody cleaned the milk siphon so it went moldy and was thrown out after two weeks.
I insisted that we keep the old Bunn that had an advanced UI with a red illuminated On-Off switch. Six months later, it was the only one coffee maker still in use.
Nothing will ever come close to convenience of analogue volume knobs. They give both immediate action and infinite granular control. Same goes for kitchen stoves. All the modern touch controls with step-based control is the absolute nightmare in terms of UI.
Cooking on gas is much more pleasurable than most electric stoves. There's much more "feel" to control the heat
Gas stoves are the next most responsive because the fire doesn't "store" heat; only the grill does.
Finally electric stoves are the slowest-responding because the coil stores quite a bit of heat even after power is cut, and that heat continues to transfer into the pot. Conversely, when starting them up, it takes quite a while to heat up the element hot enough to only then transfer some of that heat into the pot.
You do want a quality induction stove with an analog knob for the best experience, though. The low-end induction stoves typically have touch-step controls and pulsating simmer, which IMO is still way better than an electric stove if you're on a budget, and still responds faster than gas stoves but lacks the fine-grained simmer controls that some of the higher-end models do, if that is important to you.
I let my spouse, who likes the novelty of a touchscreen, talk me into a Whirlpool oven a couple years ago that is controlled by touchscreen. I had no idea it was possible to hate an oven so much. The only saving grace is that the stovetop elements are still controlled by knobs.
My office (well, former office) used to have a touchscreen coffee maker. Why does a coffee maker even need a touchscreen? There are literally three options!
What’s the option besides on and off, keep warm?
Nothing will ever come close to convenience of analogue volume knobs. They give both immediate action and infinite granular control. Same goes for kitchen stoves. All the modern touch controls with step-based control is the absolute nightmare in terms of UI.
With one specific exception - stereo volume knobs often - virtually always - suffer from stereo imbalance, where the volume of the left and right channels are slightly different. Some high-end amplifiers offer a relay based volume system where the knob simply switches resistors in and out of the audio path using relays to adjust the volume, and although this does result in "steps" of volume, it does mean the stereo b…
I let my spouse, who likes the novelty of a touchscreen, talk me into a Whirlpool oven a couple years ago that is controlled by touchscreen. I had no idea it was possible to hate an oven so much. The only saving grace is that the stovetop elements are still controlled by knobs.
My office (well, former office) used to have a touchscreen coffee maker. Why does a coffee maker even need a touchscreen? There are literally three options!
To simplify using one headset with a few different devices (pc, desk phone, ipod/phone), I wound up buying a little Behringer Xenyx 302USB bus-powered mixer. If you have a bunch of analog devices to mix, you'd want something larger, but for a PC with a headset and one or two other analog sources or outs (like a pair of desk speakers), these things are just about perfect. They use off the shelf TI PCM2902C converters, have excellent audio quality, work driver-free on Linux, OSX, and windows, and seem to last pretty well.
The real beauty of these little mixers (or the myriad other comparable ones) is that all the common adjustments I need to make- my own mic monitor level, the other party's output level, and the overall headphone level, each have their own rotary fader on the mixer. There's also some minimal eq available. The mixer is small enough that it doesn't waste much desk space, and in the event of a surprise volume spike, the master volume fader is right by my hand, and I've saved myself from being blasted many times.
If you pair something like this together with an effects host (I use pulseeffects on Linux and love it), its easy to apply a compressor or limiter to the stream from the VC app that I use to reduce transients, or to add an expander to help on multi-party calls where one callers mic gain is too low.
The 302USBs have gotten a little tricky to find lately since they seem to be popular with new podcasters. Several companies make similar models but nothing has quite the same set of connectors and routing to be as convenient as these, although everyone's needs are different- if you're using a headset with 1/4" connectors, the Yamaha AG03 looks really promising, although its nearly twice the price of the Behringer.
There aren't a lot of gizmos that have simplified remote work for me as much as these things; they're probably overkill if you don't work from a fixed location (although they don't require any power connection), but if you have a typical desktop setup, they're great.