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We need physical audio kill switches

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Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#411

Post by jsjohnst »

microcolonel wrote: post #343
jsjohnst wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No producer or technician has any basis to complain about CD audio quality for listening by humans Ok, so since I can still identify sound frequencies >22khz despite being now 40yrs old, I’m not entitled as a human to critique the CD audio format, especially as I can tell you the exact moment when the audio range is being clipped in the songs I enjoy?

Okay, even if you could hear frequencies in that range in an actual released musical recording, and not just at near-pain-threshold levels in isolation, 48kHz has become more popular since it's a more convenient "computery" number. Tell me you can hear frequencies above 23kHz, below the pain threshold, let alone not in isolation.

I think you’ve gotten off track here. I’m not claiming higher bit rates and sampling rates than CD audio are inherently better in every case, just that CD audio is not what I’d call lossless.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#412

Post by jsjohnst »

Bud wrote: post #366
jsjohnst wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> 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?

Do we need to cover the site rules again? Is it assuming best intent to try and straw man my argument to serve what purpose, boost your ego?

1) of course the audio engineers knew what they were doing who created the CD audio standard.

2) of course they also had constraints from picking “best”, cost among them, and designed something that satisfied the demands placed on them as best as they could.

How does any of these tangents y’all have went on disprove the only point I made, that CD audio is not lossless (close, but no cigar) in the audio sound quality sense.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#413

Post by lawry »

Symbiote wrote: post #178
skohan wrote: post #126

I've been thinking the same about power switches lately. If I turn a flashlight, or an old radio on or off, I flip a switch and get the result I want. With my 65 EUR gamepad, or 300 EUR headphones, I hold a button and wait several seconds for the result. Why has UX regressed so much in these areas?

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…

That sounds very frustrating, but I'd like to put my two cents in.

All our lights in our rented apartment are ikea TRÅDFRI smart lights, we have the ikea 5 button remote in a lot of the rooms and google home's spread around.

The whole system works with zigbee -> mqtt and home assistant and it took me a year to iron the bugs out. But generally it seldomly takes over half a second for the lights to respond to a command. If something breaks down it's almost always because I changed a config, not by itself. And it's really fun and nice to be able to make any button do any action by just editing an UI :) Or automate something we feel should happen by itself.

I like to think of it as it being a system that we can fit around our own lives and how we like things, instead of having to accept the situation as is (button is here and controls this light at this brightness). And it's not overly expensive either!

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#414

Post by read_if_gay_ »

Joeri wrote: post #410
read_if_gay_ wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is technically possible to build touch controls offering comparable UX to their analogue counterparts. Smartphones have done it since 2007. Why do stoves still force users to sequentially step through 14 settings using shitty +/- buttons in order to get what they want?

Capacitive touch controls and grease do not interact well, as I am reminded every time my touch only stove hood goes to maximum ventilation until I forcefully clean the touch surface with a paper towel.

If the controls become greasy isn’t that just an issue of placement?

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#415

Post by lawry »

Symbiote wrote: post #178
skohan wrote: post #126

I've been thinking the same about power switches lately. If I turn a flashlight, or an old radio on or off, I flip a switch and get the result I want. With my 65 EUR gamepad, or 300 EUR headphones, I hold a button and wait several seconds for the result. Why has UX regressed so much in these areas?

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…

In terms of fixing the immediate problem you have, I wonder if maybe the frequency being used by the switch would be in the 2.4Ghz range and your WiFi using the same channel.

I don't know if that's possible with remote switches, but with zigbee there's overlap possible. (https://www.metageek.com/training/resources/zigbee-wifi-coex...)

Or maybe the batteries in the remote are running low?

And if you would like to also control that light using an app on your phone or voice commands if you use "Ok google": the Broadlink RM Pro could maybe allow you to control the light using an app.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#416

Post by garaetjjte »

tuatoru wrote: post #344
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?

> where do you draw the line? You draw the line at the limits of human hearing, which turn out to be about 20 bits from softest audible sounds to "hearing damage inside a minute"and a sample rate of around 48 ksa/s. CDs weren't quite there. Modern stuff recorded with 24 bit depth and high bit rates is effectively lossless. One of the goods things about the limitations of the CD format is that we learned a lot about m…

Shaped dither can increase dynamic range, and anyway 120dB range is rather unnecessary for music.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200310174634/https://people.xi...

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#417

Post by garaetjjte »

jsjohnst wrote: post #329
microcolonel wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only one of these points is a thing. Even if you could find some situation where the dynamic range of a CD was inadequate, shaped dither or even complete garbage uniform dither would render that moot. No producer or technician has any basis to complain about CD audio quality for listening by humans; the deficiencies of their CDs are entirely their fault.

> No producer or technician has any basis to complain about CD audio quality for listening by humans Ok, so since I can still identify sound frequencies >22khz despite being now 40yrs old, I’m not entitled as a human to critique the CD audio format, especially as I can tell you the exact moment when the audio range is being clipped in the songs I enjoy?

It is highly unlikely that you can hear difference with >22kHz when listening to music. It could be just intermodulation distortion introduced by playing near-ultrasonics on normal equipment.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200310174634/https://people.xi...

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#418

Post by DoingIsLearning »

WalterBright wrote: post #386
puranjay wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words are better than icons - as long as you speak the language.

You don't need to speak the language. Learning O-I-L is not any harder than learning that squiggle is an ancient biblical oil lamp. It's easier, in fact, because everyone has an English=>YourLanguage translator in their pocket, and who has an icon decoder? Is it really that hard to figure out what STOP on the international stop sign means? I know from experience traveling in foreign countries. Even in Japan. For anot…

> Learning O-I-L is not any harder than learning that squiggle is an ancient biblical oil lamp

I fully agree with your points on UI icons and flat hamburgers. It repeatedly violates discoverabilty. But to add to your point, most products will already have some form of regionalization. Software will typically have language specific strings, physical products will have instruction manuals and warranties in the local language. In practice the translation effort already happens anyway for non-anglo markets. So even the reservation you mention of learning a foreign language for non-english users is most of the times a non-issue.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#419

Post by pkolaczk »

tuatoru wrote: post #344
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?

> where do you draw the line? You draw the line at the limits of human hearing, which turn out to be about 20 bits from softest audible sounds to "hearing damage inside a minute"and a sample rate of around 48 ksa/s. CDs weren't quite there. Modern stuff recorded with 24 bit depth and high bit rates is effectively lossless. One of the goods things about the limitations of the CD format is that we learned a lot about m…

I've heard studio noise floor is typically about 15-20 dB(A), and typical quiet living room is usually more than 30 dB(A). In my previous appartement in the city I measured something in range of 45-50 dB, which was actually pretty high and surprising to me - and funny, I didn't hear that noise live until recording and hearing back.

Dithering gives about 120 dB of useful dynamic range, so I can't imagine a case where someone wanted more. You can't go much lower than the noise floor of the environment and you don't want to go too far above 100 dB, because this already isn't pleasant (nor good for your ears; 85 dB is considered the upper safe SPL limit for longer exposure). I'd risk stating that even without dithering, the default 96 bit depth is good enough in typical listening conditions.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#420

Post by mindslight »

GoToRO wrote: post #409
mindslight wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, what? What kind of requirement of that? The UI lag on modern cars is a safety hazard.

I’m not sure what lag are you refering, but on physical buttons there is a minimum of 50ms - 100ms required by the customer. I guess is the same as on iPhone where if you hold backspace, it will not zap all the text, but go one by one with a visible delay. These companies simply treat end users as babies.

A good rule of thumb is that anything over 10ms response appears laggy (not instantaneous) to a user. This is especially dangerous on touchscreen inputs, as they lack tactile feedback and therefore require the user to focus on the display until their input has been acknowledged.

I can't tell the specific concept you're talking about though. If it's the auto-repeat rate (your iPhone example), then of course there needs to be a delay before that kicks in, and a steady repeat rate. I'm talking about single button presses.

If you're talking about the requirement to debounce buttons, the proper way to do this is to act on the button press immediately, while setting a timer that disallows further button state changes while waiting for the contacts to settle. This time is a balance between how long it actually takes the contacts to settle, and how rapidly a user could possibly push a button (missing a deliberate button press is also extremely frustrating and dangerously demanding of user attention, even with tactile feedback).

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