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OLED, Not for Me

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201–210 of 221 posts

Re: OLED, Not for Me

#201
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've learned to come to terms with this mentality, mainly due to time constraints. Before, I would always do an insane amount of research and benchmarking to find the absolute best in its category, even for mundane things like a coffee grinder. I would aggregate thousands of reviews and turn them into sentiment analysis, cross-referencing reviews, and so on. Now, I take a more 80/20 approach: I clearly define my need…

I think it's still worth going down the rabbit hole but only when 1) You know you're gonna use the thing a lot and for a long time and 2) You have some real, objective ways (i.e. beyond the very influenceable MOS) of measuring a real, humanly perceivable difference. This is how I became quite learned in sound reproduction (incl. acoustics and psychoacoustics) then bought Genelec loudspeakers, for example. But I don't…

Genelecs are a no brainer if you have the money (the small ones are not too expensive but if you want power, wallet will get hurt a lot).

It's crazy how good those speakers sound for how small they are. And extremely well built of course, the aluminium casting was a very good decision, albeit an expensive one of course.

Re: OLED, Not for Me

#202
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're keen on a weekend project, consider converting a 5k iMac to work as an external display. Glossy display, and bang for buck!

I actually had a 5K iMac that I sold when I got the Mac mini. As I was deciding on the display I looked at doing that, but I wasn't super keen on the unfinished look. And IIRC it was going to cost about $250 in parts at the time. I was able to get the ASUS for about $700 and sell the iMac for ~$300. So it was really only about $150 more to not DIY it and have a more finished final package. It is a really neat looking…

It has gotten a bit cheaper, a lot easier and somewhat better lately. But I agree that it does not make that much sense because you end up with a product that has many flaws and is a bit annoying to use.

The main factor is being able to sell the iMac for that relatively high price. I can't figure out why they are still so expensive because most of the early 5K models are kind of useless nowadays (on low end version, the compute just cannot cope with modern media/files at such a resolution). But maybe it's people converting them to display driving the market...

Re: OLED, Not for Me

#203

I love how he blames OLED for this, but doesn't care to learn the actual cause: that isn't an RGB subpixel orientation. There are many OLEDs with correct subpixel orientation. He bought a factory defective monitor. LCDs like this exist, Samsung sold them as AMOLEDS called Pentile. They are hideous. Until subpixel is eradicated from existence, we shall continue to suffer this. The problem is such: 1) Windows exists. 2…

Do tell, how does one avoid this problem on macOS when needing to use colored fonts and lines? (That is, flipping to greyscale isn't an option.)

The reason fringing exists is because they're rendered as multi-colored fonts. As in, instead of 1 pixel for each pixel, its rendered in a 3x1 (or 1x3 for vert) 'greyscale', and then just striped across the subpixels, using the subpixels for their spacial locations.

With DirectWrite and Freetype, subpixel rendering isn't done for colored rendering. On OSX, due to lack of subpixel with Core Text, it also isn't done.

I suspect what you're really asking is "why does high color contrast look weird at the edges?" Because some monitors are "exceptionally clear and sharp", and people have been selecting monitors for this trait for over a decade.

On LCDs, "good" polarizers make it hard to make out individual subpixels (which also makes subpixel rendering kinda moot on them; you'll see the fringing but the text won't look any sharper than greyscale, and noticeably less sharper than aliased); instead of "clear and sharp" they're more "natural".

OLEDs and MicroLEDs do not have polarizers, and they're the sharpest monitors I've ever seen. However, good news (at least for me): I can see subpixels on a 1080p 24" during high color contrast (ie, fringing fonts), I _cannot_ see them on a 4k 24".

Even if I integer-scaled 1080p to 4k, I would be using an array that looks like...

R G B R G B

R G B R G B

.. to represent pixels. I can't see subpixels during situations like this. So, the only way to avoid the problem is just use HiDPI monitors. 32" 4k seems to be a very common size for Mac users; it causes it to do Retina scaling correctly, while also being about 150% the DPI of a 24" 1080p, or about 125% of the DPI of a 27" 1440p (the two most common sizes).

My recommendation also is: never use below 4k on OSX. OSX's handling of sub-4k monitors is broken, and usually leads to in-compositor scaling instead of letting apps natively render at LoDPI.

Re: OLED, Not for Me

#204
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's still worth going down the rabbit hole but only when 1) You know you're gonna use the thing a lot and for a long time and 2) You have some real, objective ways (i.e. beyond the very influenceable MOS) of measuring a real, humanly perceivable difference. This is how I became quite learned in sound reproduction (incl. acoustics and psychoacoustics) then bought Genelec loudspeakers, for example. But I don't…

Genelecs are a no brainer if you have the money (the small ones are not too expensive but if you want power, wallet will get hurt a lot). It's crazy how good those speakers sound for how small they are. And extremely well built of course, the aluminium casting was a very good decision, albeit an expensive one of course.

For nearfield, I think so; the 8341A is basically unbeatable there. But it still suffers from three problems (even more in midfield): the ridiculous price of their subwoofers, the way too primitive handling of multi-sub by GLM and the eye-watering price of the W371A compared to other fully cardioid solutions (D&D 8C, AsciLab BX8C); I'm also skeptical of the (unpublished) directivity matching of the combination.

Still, Genelec's legendary reliability and GLM are worth it.

Re: OLED, Not for Me

#205

I can't bring myself to get an OLED when I know it will get the taskbar and window decorations burned into it after a few years. One day if they invent one with truly zero burn-in I'll consider it.

While it may be a concert, you might play in full screen for example or have other stuff full screen. It will take so long for burn in that you probably want to buy something new anyway. My LG OLED 4k tv is by far the best picture I ever had. My Samsung 4k 27" gaming OLED is beautiful when gaming too

Nah, my 2 year old phone is OLED and has the top of my browser burnt into the screen. And I'm someone who has their screen turn off quickly to save battery.

I can't imagine how annoying it would be to watch a movie or play a game and see something burnt into the white parts of what I'm supposed to be looking at.

I don't want to be purchasing a new gaming monitor every two years.

Re: OLED, Not for Me

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do tell, how does one avoid this problem on macOS when needing to use colored fonts and lines? (That is, flipping to greyscale isn't an option.)

The reason fringing exists is because they're rendered as multi-colored fonts. As in, instead of 1 pixel for each pixel, its rendered in a 3x1 (or 1x3 for vert) 'greyscale', and then just striped across the subpixels, using the subpixels for their spacial locations. With DirectWrite and Freetype, subpixel rendering isn't done for colored rendering. On OSX, due to lack of subpixel with Core Text, it also isn't done. I…

...yet at 4K native on macOS (OS X) I could see fringing. And it was worse than using a slightly lower resolution, scaled up by the OS.

And it's particularly bad on solid color lines and high contrast borders (not fonts). So... that doesn't work for me. Which was the point of the post; I don't like how this particular subpixel pattern OLED monitor looks and it's not for me.

Re: OLED, Not for Me

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason fringing exists is because they're rendered as multi-colored fonts. As in, instead of 1 pixel for each pixel, its rendered in a 3x1 (or 1x3 for vert) 'greyscale', and then just striped across the subpixels, using the subpixels for their spacial locations. With DirectWrite and Freetype, subpixel rendering isn't done for colored rendering. On OSX, due to lack of subpixel with Core Text, it also isn't done. I…

...yet at 4K native on macOS (OS X) I could see fringing. And it was worse than using a slightly lower resolution, scaled up by the OS. And it's particularly bad on solid color lines and high contrast borders (not fonts). So... that doesn't work for me. Which was the point of the post; I don't like how this particular subpixel pattern OLED monitor looks and it's not for me.

Which applications? Are they ones using non-native text rendering?

Chrome, for example, do not use Core Text. Chrome (and all Electron apps) are habitual offenders for bad text rendering on all OSes, not just OSX.

Re: OLED, Not for Me

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...yet at 4K native on macOS (OS X) I could see fringing. And it was worse than using a slightly lower resolution, scaled up by the OS. And it's particularly bad on solid color lines and high contrast borders (not fonts). So... that doesn't work for me. Which was the point of the post; I don't like how this particular subpixel pattern OLED monitor looks and it's not for me.

Which applications? Are they ones using non-native text rendering? Chrome, for example, do not use Core Text. Chrome (and all Electron apps) are habitual offenders for bad text rendering on all OSes, not just OSX.

Numbers.app, Autodesk Fusion, Adobe Illustrator, and Terminal.app were the first places I noticed it. And in Fusion and Illustrator it's not text that's the issue but lines/graphics.

And high contrast edges in photos in Apple Photos looked wonky.

Re: OLED, Not for Me

#209
post #46

This guy is complaining about fringing...on 9- and 10-pixel high fonts. That works out to 1.6mm or 1.8mm high characters on a 140 dpi screen, or about 1/16 of an inch. He's also got Cleartype on and set to RGB stripe even though the OLED is not RGB stripe (though to be fair, Windows doesn't really make it clear what each page of the ClearType tuner does). But yeah, if you use a _tiny_ font and sit _really_ close to t…

My Friend on a 30Hz Phone Screen because of battery saving mode said the difference between 30Hz and 60Hz is so minor, that in "In practice, it's been unnoticeable." At one point in time 95%+ of HN comments were cheering on about Atom the text editor and later VSCode as being fast enough or unnoticeable. When Sublime user are baffled as to why. And Sublime isn't the fastest text editor either before Zed came out. Yes…

30hz is so painfully slow, I can always tell when I'm in power saving mode on the iPhone by that alone. On desktop I can't even do 60hz anymore after switching to a 144hz monitor.

Re: OLED, Not for Me

#210
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genelecs are a no brainer if you have the money (the small ones are not too expensive but if you want power, wallet will get hurt a lot). It's crazy how good those speakers sound for how small they are. And extremely well built of course, the aluminium casting was a very good decision, albeit an expensive one of course.

For nearfield, I think so; the 8341A is basically unbeatable there. But it still suffers from three problems (even more in midfield): the ridiculous price of their subwoofers, the way too primitive handling of multi-sub by GLM and the eye-watering price of the W371A compared to other fully cardioid solutions (D&D 8C, AsciLab BX8C); I'm also skeptical of the (unpublished) directivity matching of the combination. Still…

Yeah I think the 40s series is the sweet spot for nearfield, definitely.

I am not a subwoofer guy, in fact I am pretty much against subs. In my experience, the result never really match the theory. Bass frequency are not directional but if the speaker producing them isn't setup physically at the same location as the other speakers you get phase coherence and power mismatch problems. On top of that most peoples do not have access to speakers that can produce such low frequencies, so it is not really worthwhile to use them to produce. You end up with results that don't sound that well in most systems because they lack a part of the work. Sub frequencies are also felt physically and quite tiring for long term listening. It always feels nice at first, because it's suprising and powefull but really it is not where the focus in music production should be.

I have had access to some recording studios (even built a small one with friends in association) and my experience is they don't really use subs. If they need more power they just get bigger speakers that will reproduce the relevant frequencies coherently. There is basically no instrument that goes below 20Hz, even a pipe organ which is a massive object basically requiring a church, does not get there. The energy requirement to produce sub 20Hz sound just doens't make sense and it doesn't add much to the music, you just feel a rumble, most people cannot even hear that low. In fact even between 20 and 30Hz is not that important. It still requires a lot of power and either you get something that is dominated by the rest of you put the power and it covers everything else. I played french horn in various harmonies and the tubas were right behind me. It's one of the few instrument that can technically hit sub 30Hz while still being of manageable size. Whenever they had a low part, their sound was much more quiet, the wind volume requirement to sustain those notes is tremendous and I can tell you there was not many compositions that would go that low, because composers know that. Even if you want to focus solely on modern music, sub notes are just a gimmick, because like I said, they become tiring and overpowering really fast. I had a friend who was listening to dub constantly and over time it was boring, monotonous and tiring because of the omnipresent bass part. This genre is linked to the creation of massive sound system that tries to produce bass as low a possible for the physical factor but past the wow factor, it's not really pleasant and very likely to damage your ears if they play them over the 90db level.

So yeah Genelec sub are overpriced but this is not really a problem confined to Genelec. Every sub is overpriced for the benefits they have. It is mostly about dick measuring contest or being able to say we have the best and can produce frequencies most people don't care about.

Unless you trully have an end game monitor what you really want is just a better monitor that can produce the really usefull frequency range with more power without distorting while keeping everything in phase. The biggest main monitor from Genelec (1236A), technically goes as low as 17,5Hz and this is what you really want, but in practice it's no even really needed.

There is a recording studio in my town, that got built by some friends and they produce music for Netflix. It's not a small studio size wize, the main room is big enough to handle a mid-sized orchestra (it was a disaffected cinema, they built around this to be able to work with projected movies), it's 1200m2 main room with 50m2 control room. But they don't have subs. They have multiple mains, some are Neuman, some are older Genelec models and some are Adams for 5.1 handling (I think they technically have Atmos capacity since they have overhead speakers but they don't use it, it was too much trouble for little commercial benefits). You can check it out there: https://www.instagram.com/studiospalace/

If you think you need a sub but don't have the biggest speakers your room can handle, you are misallocating money. They are just the cherry on top when everything else is near perfect. Like the cherry, they can add a subtle touch but not really necessary for good music production or even good listening. The quantity of music that will make use of them meaningfully is so vanishingly small it's not very relevant. It's like looking at cars and choosing solely on the top end speed, you are unlikely to need it and even if you want to use the capacity, the risks are not worth the reward.

This is why GLM doesn't handle multi-sub well, it's just not a feature that would get used a lot by their high-end customers, they can already pay for the high end monitors. And generally GLM isn't really the best for room correction but it is just a convenient solution that will work well with no hassle if you only buy hardware from Genelec. I see Genelec as the Apple of monitors. If you have the money, it is hard to find a setup that will get results as good without spending a lot of time building a custom solution that can use speakers from mismatched brands. Just like you can buy hardware cheaper than Apple but it will require a lot of work to end up with a solution that is transparently integrated as well.

What is legendary about Genelec is not just their reliability (most monitors are perfectly reliable if you treat them well, unless you go for bottom of the barel made in China) but the quality of their frequency reproduction (especially if you consider size for the nearfields). There are a few competitors that make comparable speakers (like Neumann, ATC or JBL pro line) but they are not necesseraly cheaper and don't really have a integrated solution like GLM. In the nearfield range, Neumann does quite well but they are not as good as coax Genelecs, but they are cheaper.

I don't want to brag too much, but when I was in music theory while young, I always got very close to perfect score in music dictation. I have listenned to quite a lot of monitors from the most reputable brands (Genelec, Neumann, Dynaudio, Focal, JBL, Adams, KRK) or even less reputable brands (Presonus, Yamaha, Tannoy, Monkey Banana, Mackie, Behringer, Prodipe, etc) and my experience is that Genelec is up there in the quality of reproduction which is why they can commend such a high price.

I actually wish someone could come up with monitors that would match Genelecs but at a much lower price. So far, every niche maker that I have heard about only came close and weren't any cheaper (often more expensive actually). In that sense, it's a lot like Apple laptops, the brands who come close to the quality are not doing it for much cheaper if at all...

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