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A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

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Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#41

Post by hbn »

cletus wrote: post #32

As an alternative to a stream deck, I started using a MIDI board last year. I tried a copule and settled on the Behringer X-Touch Mini [1]. It's less than $100. What I primarily use it for is volume control (including muting). Like I have a particular knobs for Chrome, Master Volume and games. This is all pretty easy to set up with something like MIDI Mixer [2]. There are Youtube videos on it. I also use the media co…

> As an aside, volume on Windows is a horrible mess. You can have an external speaker volume, a system Master volume, an app-specific volume (the last 2 through the Windows Volume Mixer) and then volume settings inside a game.

You never have 2 applications outputting audio and you want to balance them? Sometimes I'll be playing a game and listening to a podcast at the same time, and I want the podcast to have the louder audio, so I turn the game down.

On my Mac I use for work, sometimes I'll be in a Teams meeting where I only need to be partially paying attention, and I'd like to be able to turn the Teams volume down and have something else at the forefront, but I can't do it because there's no volume mixer.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#42

Post by awslattery »

My largest gripe with Corsair (Elgato) here is that I can't set padding on a per-tile/button basis, as it seems icon packs, system icons, and native Stream Deck icons come in varying sizes.

Second, the profile switching is hit or miss with Electron (or adjacent) applications, which I don't fault Corsair for. Looking at you, Discord and Slack, which I would love to set a contextual app profile for.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#44

Post by syntheweave »

AgentME wrote: post #29
least wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the duckpad and other firmware alterable keyboards are great, they are still limited to being configured to perform keypresses of a keyboard or a few other functions (like MIDI support in QMK). The "complex software" of the Elgato lets it do more complex things.

Yeah, the Stream Deck's software is great because it doesn't require using up one of the limited keyboard keys (or creating a modifier-based combo that can interrupt your typing) for each function.

This tracks with my experiences. Classical macro shortcut keys are great if you can spare the effort of preparing an ultimate workstation setup for them. But the majority of the workflow you want to have concentrated on a vocabulary of a few keys that you reuse a lot like "copy" or "undo". And that only needs a few keys, and moreover, it's usually pretty contextual to a specific app and not strictly about keys but the whole range of inputs - some apps need you scrubbing through timelines and tracks, others need zoom and rotate. Lots of apps have modal toolbars, but they don't all use the same shortcuts to select the pencil tool or the crop tool, so you have layers of configuration to solve to get to the point where you can even test the setup.

So devices with screen displays for shortcuts like the Stream Deck, the Xencelabs Quick Keys, or the many DIY programmable solutions are pretty indispensable because they let you trial and error ideas, and give you a context hint while also keeping the keys located in the same place - they let you ramp up to a traditional macro experience as you start getting pages of stuff you want to trigger. And this goes even more so if they are able to respond to desktop generated events and present the right context automatically.

A nice cheap alternative to the dedicated hardware is the various tools that are smartphone-based: if you're going to look away from the screen to browse, and you want to trial ideas for shortcuts, then tactility isn't so important and the rest is a matter of getting a good software experience.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#46

Post by cletus »

hbn wrote: post #41
cletus wrote: post #32

As an alternative to a stream deck, I started using a MIDI board last year. I tried a copule and settled on the Behringer X-Touch Mini [1]. It's less than $100. What I primarily use it for is volume control (including muting). Like I have a particular knobs for Chrome, Master Volume and games. This is all pretty easy to set up with something like MIDI Mixer [2]. There are Youtube videos on it. I also use the media co…

> As an aside, volume on Windows is a horrible mess. You can have an external speaker volume, a system Master volume, an app-specific volume (the last 2 through the Windows Volume Mixer) and then volume settings inside a game. You never have 2 applications outputting audio and you want to balance them? Sometimes I'll be playing a game and listening to a podcast at the same time, and I want the podcast to have the lou…

You misunderstand my complaint.

Windows already does this. There's a volume mixer where each app has its own volume. That's still the case AND the game/app has a separate volume.

So the actual volume playing is effectively:

Hardware volume x Windows master volume x Windows app volume x In-app volume

No one wants or needs that level of control. You end up adjusting these separately as you need until you find out one day the hardware volume is on max but the master volume is near zero and you've been compensating for that by maxing out the in-app volume.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#47

Post by bonestamp2 »

adanto6840 wrote: post #17

Shameless self-promotion, but I used a Stream Deck to make "Princess Buttons" for my kids: https://dantonio.info/projects/the-buttons/ Allows me to not be the DJ/arbiter of music for my toddlers, yet still provides them with control over the music (Sonos) and helps them learn to negotiate & take turns between themselves. The Stream Deck has, thus far, held up to quite a lot of abuse. I've added some lighting control…

I love this, thank you for sharing. Also, I'm curious... what does the "Great Wolf Lodge" button do?

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#48

Post by busterarm »

cletus wrote: post #32

As an alternative to a stream deck, I started using a MIDI board last year. I tried a copule and settled on the Behringer X-Touch Mini [1]. It's less than $100. What I primarily use it for is volume control (including muting). Like I have a particular knobs for Chrome, Master Volume and games. This is all pretty easy to set up with something like MIDI Mixer [2]. There are Youtube videos on it. I also use the media co…

I'm doing similar with a Novation Launchpad X that I already had.

I'm primarily using it with OBS but also use it with Zoom and a few other applications.

Re: A year with the Elgato Stream Deck

#49

Post by samatman »

chrischen wrote: post #16

This could have been the touch bar (on macs) if people didn't reflexively poo-poo any change to their computers.

I like my Stream Deck a lot, and I don't care for the Touch Bar at all.

It could have been okay if they went for haptic feedback, but I'm glad they're phasing it out.

I think we will see an Apple laptop with OLED keys someday, maybe just the top row, not soon but perhaps before the decade is out.

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