We need physical audio kill switches • Hacker News Board

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#361

Post by toomanybeersies » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 5:02 AM UTC

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.

One of my favourite features (if you could call it a feature) of gas stoves is that you can immediately tell if it's on or not.

It's a lot easier to accidentally melt a plastic chopping board onto an electric stove than a gas one, and much harder to clean off when you do.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#362

Post by toomanybeersies » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 5:07 AM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #26

amiga-workbench wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's kinda ridiculous that seemingly three quarters of the people who write graycode decoder firmware get it wrong, despite the correct methods being publicly available with sample code since 15-20 years at least.

It's also an assignment that close to every electrical/computer engineer would have had to do as part of their degree.

I guess you only need to understand ~50% of the course material to get your degree though.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#363

Post by Gibbon1 » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 5:15 AM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #218

closeparen wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What languages and frameworks are people using in consumer electronics?

I have no idea these days, but it's clearly something that takes 100ms+ to process an input event (java? html? flash? all of the above?). Responsive encoders/buttons/displays were doable 15 years ago with 5 MIPS microcontrollers in C. Driving an HD44780 character LCD is easier than a full raster display, which explains the appeal of the bloat, but quick sprites etc should be completely doable after two decades of pro…

I have two thoughts. One is an overloaded CAN Bus. Some process is polling the switch every 100ms. The second is the process itself isn't allowed to run very often because it's sharing CPU time with a bunch of critical stuff.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#364

Post by dreamcompiler » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 5:19 AM UTC

Absolutely.

We're rapidly headed toward a world in which not only is volume controlled by software, but where apps and even websites will be able to tell whether your audio is muted. Imagine what Youtube would be like if not only are videos delayed by ads, but the ads themselves refuse to play if they're muted.

Madness.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#365

Post by giardini » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 5:21 AM UTC

How about a kill switch in the gym?

Every time I walk into a business I'm assaulted with their choice of music. No music is as bad as gym music: unrecognizable songs by unrecognizable artists chosen by God-knows-who (all no doubt via the lowest bid).

Where is "The Sound of Silence"? It's cheaper (free even) and better.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#366

Post by Bud » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

jsjohnst wrote: post #319

auxym wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you're referring to bit depth and sampling. In that case, any digitization is lossy, because where do you draw the line?

> In that case, any digitization is lossy Yep, that’s part of my point, but CD audio in particular isn’t that great of bit depth or sampling rate, even by standards of the time for uncompressed digital audio. There’s also the point that the “audio wars” era covered the era of CD audio and that’s certainly another major audio quality factor.

Do we need to cover the Nyquist frequency again? Do you think that all of the audio engineers that designed the CD audio standards were tyros who were just making shit up and guessing?

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#367

Post by masklinn » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

vidanay wrote: post #67

masklinn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does a coffee maker even need a touchscreen? There are literally three options! What’s the option besides on and off, keep warm?

Coffee, Cappuccino, Latte, Frappe All of the above multiplied by small, medium, large. All of the above multiplied by weak, normal, strong, and double shot. All of the above multiplied by zone defense, man to coverage, and missile command.

That’s not 3 options. I was replying to a message which spoke of 3 options not 12000

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#368

Post by masklinn » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #66

masklinn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does a coffee maker even need a touchscreen? There are literally three options! What’s the option besides on and off, keep warm?

Depending on the coffee maker there can be a dozen or more options. A home espresso maker might adjust how many "shots" to drip, different temperatures, adding milk or not, etc.

> Depending on the coffee maker there can be a dozen or more options.

Yes but that’s not relevant, I’m asking specifically what the third option would be in a or with 3 options.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#369

Post by masklinn » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 5:33 AM UTC

maneesh wrote: post #82

masklinn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does a coffee maker even need a touchscreen? There are literally three options! What’s the option besides on and off, keep warm?

On, Off, Brew. On without (or after) Brew keeps it warm.

Interesting. All the pots in these styles I’ve seen “on” is “brew”, the pot just automatically switches to warm after brewing.

If you shut down the device it tries to brew again, though I expect that it’ll quickly switch to keep warm when there’s no water to boil (I never actually tried).

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#370

Post by seventhtiger » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 5:34 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #273

moe wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then how would you know it's really off!

The way I've been able to learn that devices are off since the early 2000s is that the blindingly bright blue LED light is replaced by a blindingly bright red LED light.

I really hate those. When your house is dark and it's calm and all you see are little eyes of Sauron floating in the darkness. I've gone around my house with masking tape and covered every unnecessary visible light.

Google Wifi is one of the worst offenders. They might as well market it as a wifi-repeating lamp.