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We need physical audio kill switches

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Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#261

Post by yholio »

vagab0nd wrote: post #151
brandon272 wrote: post #29

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.

Ah yes, the touch screen ovens. I have one. Every time I open it, the steam rushes out and registers the touch screen, doing something random each time. You never know what it'll do, it's exciting.

I have an all glass Electrolux induction cooktop with touch buttons. The idea is not necessarily bad because it allows very easy cleaning in an area where gooey spills are frequent, very hard to clean complex features like buttons and knobs.

However, you know what else reacts to gooey spills? Why, touch buttons, of course. You literally cannot boil anything with a lid on the front areas, since the lid will condense vapor that will drip towards the button area and either startup other areas, or turn-off the device. The same if a pot without a lid boils too intensely. Dangerously, it has other resistive areas that heat up when their respective touch buttons are hit with droplets.

It has a lock button, but the lock button itself is placed in exactly the same area and has the same problem.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#262

Post by Reason077 »

paulcole wrote: post #134
chronolitus wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of argument always ticks me off, because it's technically correct, assuming your brain can care and focus on infinitely many things. But I know that I can't: I can care very effectively about one thing really well (typically oscillating between my job and family). Then there's space left in my brain to be sort-of effective at caring for three or four other things (social life, hobbies, sports, learning, per…

I think what’s striking me as being spoiled is using the thing, intentionally not taking care of it, and ruining it.

In a communal environment such as an office, complex equipment that requires maintenance and reading the manual is always going to be problematic without someone who's job it is to explicitly maintain it.

That's why $5000 coffee machines normally come with either a maintenance contract, where someone comes around regularly to restock/clean/maintain it, or you have a designated person or department within your company who's job it is to take care of them.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#263

Post by ctdeneen »

joe_the_user wrote: post #226
Symbiote wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My rented apartment has switches that presumably use radio to turn on and off the lights. There is no further integration, or smart app etc. I can't see which light switch is on or off, so even after years living here I mix up some of the switches. Sometimes the radio pulse doesn't register, so I have to go back to the switch and press it again. After pressing the switch, there's a perceivable, variable delay for the…

The upside to wireless switches are how cheap they to install and remove. I'm in a 40 year old apartment with a lot of switches that now affect nothing, because they broke and no one fixed the wires ('cause landlords are cheap). I wouldn't want to change this for a bunch of wireless switches but it's easy to imagine landlords of the future wanting nothing but glue on fixtures - routing wires costs significant money.

Are you saying the switch is broken? Those can be replaced in about 15 mins and cost very little. The wires in wall rarely break and if do that could be a very dangerous situation.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#264

Post by sjy »

est31 wrote: post #204

The real problem he has is different levels of audio and missing normalization of audio levels. You shouldn't get into the situation of wanting to quickly adjust audio levels in the first place (although I agree that any latency in adjusting the volume is inacceptable). Normalization (especially the real-time case) is an interesting topic. I've experimented with crude algorithms in the past to take all audio samples…

I’ve found ffmpeg’s dynaudnorm filter pretty good for this. https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#dynaudnorm

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#265

Post by Thlom »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #244
systemvoltage wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people find novelty of touchscreens appealing. We've got to do a better job of educating consumers. The marketing behind touchscreens is so powerful that it is unanimously considered as a feature, something you must have. I get angry just thinking about the amount of marketing bullshit around touchscreens. Just go to Garmin Aviation website and now a lot of operation in airplane cockpits is off…

Very high-end or professional ovens will not have this. These are gimmicks for people with too much money, and too little sense. I don't want my toaster posting on Facebook. I don't want to link my refrigerator with my Google account. And no, I do not expect my microwave to post pics of my food to Instagram. I want a toaster that toasts properly and can be cleaned. I want a refrigerator that runs forever, doesn't lea…

Looks like some connectivity is creeping into the high-end stuff like Gaggenau as well, but at least they still stick to TFT screens and not huge LCD touch displays, and it looks like the connectivity stuff is actually useful for stuff like remote diagnostics.

My Samsung fridge can connect to wifi, but lord knows why. I can adjust the temperature, but why I would want to do that on my phone and not on the appliance itself I do not know.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#266

Post by jope12 »

liability wrote: post #58
LeoPanthera wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Things like this make me glad I'm not an audiophile. What you describe seems very annoying, but thankfully I've never noticed anything like it.

I noticed it in my first Sony walkmen 30 years ago and it really pissed me off.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#267

Post by Shared404 »

bitwize wrote: post #253
kempbellt wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sense sarcasm, but I'll answer anyway. A power indicator light would do the trick... But in all seriousness, your bluetooth headphones should have a sim card built in and be an IoT slave to the cloud. So that when you turn them off, they send a message to Alexa, Google, and Siri, so that all of your devices can tell you "YOUR HEADPHONES ARE NOW OFF" at the same time. Like a tiny choir of angels informing you of the…

𝕐𝕆𝕌ℝ 𝕁𝔸ℂ𝕂𝔼𝕋 𝕀𝕊 ℕ𝕆𝕎 𝔻ℝ𝕐

This reminds me of that one dystopian text adventure game the verge put out a while ago.

The version on the original site now links to here:

https://adirobertson.itch.io/wake-word

for those who haven't played it yet.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#268

Post by lioeters »

bashinator wrote: post #155
dasb wrote: post #83

I use a dynamic range compressor when dealing with unpredictable output (watching Youtube videos, Zoom calls). On Linux, I use this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=typM_AQUzi4 On Windows, I tick the "Loudness Equalization" option in the output device's menu. I disable it when I listen to music.

Do you have a text link for the linux option?

https://github.com/gotbletu/shownotes/blob/master/pulseaudio...

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#269

Post by jope12 »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #24
onion-soup wrote: post #11

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.

My Topping DAC/Amp has an optical rotary encoder for volume control and it is awful, it will randomly jump 10x the amount of steps you have rotated it, sometimes even in the opposite direction. There's something to be said for a good old fashioned potentiometer.

An "optical rotary encoder"? I doubt it. I bet it's a mechanical rotary encoder. And that it randomly jumps means their code for reading the encoder sucks. Something like that should not happen if properly implemented. I will take a rotary encoder over a potentiometer every time.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#270

Post by animationwill »

ricardobeat wrote: post #112
animationwill wrote: post #68

More important than speaker kill switches, we need physical/hardware microphone switches that disconnect the circuit. These are built into Amazon Echo devices, but it's unclear if Google Home or other Apple HomePod have this (a quick revealed they do not).

Google Home mini certainly has it, it's the only physical switch on the device.

A physical switch does not necessarily mean the microphone is disconnected at the hardware-level. I checked these and I don't think it does

https://support.google.com/googlenest/thread/24537110?hl=en

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Home+Mini+Teardown/10...

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