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Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

naughtycomputer.uk

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Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#251

Post by PascLeRasc »

xylon wrote: post #140
Sidnicious wrote: post #13

I'm super curious… a. What in these files triggers the explosion of noise (and whether other people have run into this or the author would mind sharing a representative problem file). b. Whether an output attenuator (or "resistor") would work to quiet the noise (edit: the hiss, not the explosion) without a powered circuit.

Hi, author here, I can't send you a sample because of copyright but get "scare force one" by Lordi on CD and rip it into any format.

Hi, this isn't related to the parent comment, but I'm wondering why you went through all this effort, which you don't seem to have enjoyed, just to be able to listen to music at home but not at your desk. Isn't all the stuff you have pretty bulky to be carrying around? Not to mention the portable CD player probably skips if you're walking around with it somehow in a pocket.

It seems like all of this could be solved with some bookshelf speakers. You can hook up your portable CD player or browse Craigslist/Goodwill for an older HDCD player that'll run higher sampling rates and queue up multiple CDs, have music for cooking/cleaning/exercising. Maybe even get a Chromecast Audio and have effortless streaming.

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#252

Post by rvense »

vardump wrote: post #65
sasaf5 wrote: post #45

Are Bluetooth headsets still much behind wired ones in terms of sound quality?

As an owner of Bose QC35... yes. The headphones themselves sound pretty good. But when playing over bluetooth sometimes compression artefacts are audible. The artefacts are caused by the bluetooth protocol for stereo audio itself, so you're going to hear them even if you play FLAC files. Also latency is pretty horrible. 200 ms+, enough to be obvious.

I think those are what I have at work. I'm quite sure they do a bunch of stuff of DSP/EQing to make them sound better than they are. When you turn the power off and use them as normal headphones they're mediocre at best.

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#253

Post by joecool1029 »

sneak wrote: post #239
wilsonnb3 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you’re leaving out all the positives and only focusing on the negatives. Sure, Google can revoke my access to a movie at any time but I can watch on any of my devices and I dont have to worry about finding it in stock at the local store. I can carry literally thousands of books with me in a device smaller than a paperback. I can’t stream lossless music from Spotify but I can stream high enough quality that mos…

Not “most people” - pros on high end equipment cannot pass an ABX on 256kbps MP3. Spotify’s “extreme” quality setting is 320kbps. This isn’t some “normies”/“audiophiles” thing. 256kbps mp3 is acoustically transparent to human beings in ideal listening situations. The bad rap mp3 got was from 128kbps that was more common pre-broadband. Also, using lossy compressed sources (even 256-320kbps) in derivative works (eg dj…

Spotify also uses Vorbis, not MP3. Sound quality should be better for a given bitrate since vorbis is a more modern codec.

(They possibly use MP3 in their webplayer according to some sources)

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#254

Post by anotheryou »

woah wrote: post #216
anotheryou wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you do a blind test on spotify's high quality vs lossless? At least with 320mp3s I could only get it right with certain songs and not too consistently. I'd say my room treatment has a far bigger impact. (but regarding hardware I'm totally with you and haven't found the source of my rather high noise floor either)

It all really depends on the gold plating of your cables

not sure if sarcasm or not...

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#255

Post by Spooky23 »

jjeaff wrote: post #234
thinkmassive wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any advice on a quality Lightning to 3.5mm adapter? The official Apple one is so flimsy that one or both channels cut out anytime I move the phone. My workaround is to heatshrink the cable and both ends, so it’s rigid enough not to cut out. But it’s ugly and probably won’t last more than a few months.

Sounds like a defective connector. Mine doesn't cut out at all that I have noticed.

If you use it a lot, it gets flaky after a few months because of the poor quality of the wiring and wire boot.

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#256

Post by fb03 »

013a wrote: post #156

I have a pair of powered studio monitors (Mackie MR5), and I completely relate to this problem. Many PCs and phones will emit an audible hissing noise while plugged in. I've tested on a dozen different devices, with integrated and external DACs, five hundred dollar sound cards, massively shielded cables, practically every modern OS you can name, tweaking every audio setting exposed to me. The only devices that work p…

The only way I found to minimize/eliminate HISS while using high quality monitors/pro speakers is to pair them with a proper external USB Audio Card.

Those External Audio Cards receive the signal in digital form, thus free of any noise they could pick up in the process. These are decoded inside the external DAC which then feeds audio to the speakers. since this part of the signal path is analog, any interference picked up by these cables is gonna appear on the speakers, which is why the good gear usually supports BALANCED SIGNALS so that the speaker can reference the signal and weed out noises added while in-transit.

My gear is a pair of YAMAHA HS8 speakers and a YAMAHA AG06 external audio card. Both support Balanced audio so that's what I'm using regarding cables between the audio card and the speakers.

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#257

Post by gcb0 »

icebraining wrote: post #165
gcb0 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is open source and open source thru google's gates. on the later you submit patches, they will be included in the next 2 to 3 versions of public release (if they dont't add any feature that impacts google's ad bottom line, for example, adding any sort of referrer control to chrome), then you have to hope that in those 2-3 version cycle your device is still supported, now you just have to wait for the convenient…

That's not Google's gates, that's the OEM's and the ISP's. Google can only control that for their own devices, and the Nexuses have always been some of the most modded ones.

Google own the merge rigths, and what goes into each version. and their process timings ensure that by the time you patch is out, your device is not getting updates anymore (update timeframe that they set both in contract with oem or via "example" via their nexus series)

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#258

Post by Spooky23 »

bitwize wrote: post #192
chaosite wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You never owned the copyright on the content, but you did own the thing. Not a "single-use license". Owning a CD is exactly like owning a book, in that way.

Grandparent was correct. Copyright law only allowed for private home exhibition of the music/movie. VHS tapes even came with a warning from the FBI. As in, the people who might show up at your house if you copied the movie or showed it to a large group of people.

Yes and no, you need a different type of license for a public exhibition independent of the underlying media license.

Think of it as an underlying Windows OEM license that allows you to run Windows. If you want to hook computers together with an AD, you need client access licenses.

(Bear with me, This is the first time I’ve used Microsoft as an example to clarify a license issue.)

Point is, there’s a distinction between a public and private performance. I believe that different stakeholders get paid for each.

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#259

Post by Latteland »

jjeaff wrote: post #233
woah wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all really depends on the gold plating of your cables

Gold plating? Ridiculous. All my cables are mineral water shielded.

Ha, loser! My cables were made in the same places that they make the best cuban cigars, naked beautiful people of the appropriate genders make the best cigars and the best cables. My ethernet cable is sex on wheels.

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#260

Post by jstanley »

jjeaff wrote: post #248
jstanley wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your application is an intrinsic part of pretty much every GNU/Linux system, then yeah, pretty much. It's not GNU/Linux that's not free, but it makes it hard to use a GNU/Linux system that is free.

Play store is not a requirement. You can use f-droid or something similar and it has most everything you might need.

I know, and I do. In fact I don't have play services installed at all.

Unfortunately most people consider the play store to be a necessity, so its non-free nature is a problem.

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