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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?

#281

Post by thinkloop »

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…

> I'm wholly convinced that the computing world is, in general, regressing

The last few decades have shown a preference for accessibility over "quality":

- concord high speed luxury air travel >> cheap but slow mass air travel

- pentium >> netbooks >> raspberry pi

- professional international newsrooms >> amateur blogs

- CDs >> MP3s >> streaming

- steel cars >> plastic and aluminum

- handcrafted oak furniture >> ikea

- durable hand-me-downs >> dispensable chinese products

- etc.

The trade-off is generally positive in my opinion.

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

#282

Post by williamscales »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #274
mindslight wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "positives" you've listed were basically the case for the standard 00's setup. You just had to undertake some deliberate action to adopt it as your setup, rather than going along with that period's sharecropper option.

How would you maintain access to your entire library across multiple devices in the 00’s?

I had an iPod with a big hard drive that synced when I plugged it in (Linux). I either ran a streaming server off my home machine or mounted my filesystem via sshfs.

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

#283

Post by [deleted] »

s800 wrote: post #207
twtw wrote: post #157

Can anyone comment on what's going on with the ground channel in the circuit here? Seems like you would want to tie the input ground to the virtual ground between the two 9Vs and then maybe buffer the output ground, but this circuit doesn't do that - it just replicates the L/R chains twice between grounds. Also, what's the point of adding the two 9Vs and then splitting them again with the two 1k resistors? Why not ju…

Doesn't make any sense to me either. He's burning 2ma for no reason.

[deleted]

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

#284

Post by mlindner »

alanpage wrote: post #242
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)

Test your system (and your room) with this audio quality quiz, comparing lossless audio with several compressed bit rate streams [1]. With my 50-year old ears, and an outboard DAC/amp and audiophile magnetic planar headphones, I could only score 50%. That said, switching between Spotify and Tidal on the same track, I hear a pretty big difference. The lossless music has a depth that just isn't there on the compressed…

I think some of it is whether you're used to listening to the type of music. All those samples are types of music I don't normally listen to and thus scored 0%. They're also mostly low-information songs that are vocal-heavy. Vocal-heavy music is very easy to compress compared to say something like electronic or EDM type music which will easily create distortion with lower bitrates.

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

#285

Post by mlindner »

thinkmassive wrote: post #218
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…

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.

You have dust/lint inside the bottom of the port that is preventing your connector from going in all the way. Get a fine tool and reach in and grab out the crud at the bottom. I had the same problem until I did this.

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

#286

Post by ryandrake »

ignoreInstinct wrote: post #8
baxtr wrote: post #2

> Right now I'm absolutely astonished at how difficult it appears to be to just listen to music with a good pair of headphones. Is it not 2018? The media is full of talk about preposterously ambitious ideas such as AI and self-driving cars and yet I can't even listen to a fuck-damn music track? O_o I enjoyed reading this. The whole time I thought however: that’s not an issue on my Apple devices. Then I read: > If any…

Yeah, but what really gets under my skin is that every other company out there is okay with producing garbage. Meanwhile, Apple produces things that work comparatively well, doing what you expect and then, claims that reasonable functionality is premium . And then catches shit for being pretentious. So, let's step through that once more: - garbage is normal - functional and interoperable is premium - premium is prete…

Fewer and fewer people can even recognize quality anymore. People mistake popularity for quality. They blindly trust brands. They accept things not working or falling apart. Companies have picked up on this, and don't have to invest in quality anymore. Prices get lower, then everyone has to not invest in quality. People would rather buy and throw away a $50 pair of shoes every year than buy a $200 pair and have it last 10 years.

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

#287

Post by orangecat »

pdimitar wrote: post #98

I'll allow myself some generalization here. I know several very smart and creative hardware technicians and system administrators. I admire them. I truly do. They are more independently thinking than most other programmers I know, are much more resistant to trends and fashion in technology, and rarely complain about the tech they must use. Throw Python, Perl, PHP, bash and what not at them, they can and will curse bu…

Apple hate without any regard for the advantages it gives you.

Apple's official position is that you should be arrested if you do anything with "your" device that they don't approve of. If somebody is inclined to tinker with everything, I'm not going to blame them if their reaction to that could be described as "hate".

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

#288

Post by flocial »

ummonk wrote: post #206
flocial wrote: post #121

I'm a bit flabbergasted by all the "wow this person just wasted all his free time fixing a nonexistent problem instead of just getting an iPhone" on Hacker News of all places. Yes there's an ideological bent to the whole exercise but that's precisely the kind of passion you need to deep dive into creating your own audio device over a minor annoyance. Yes it's clunky and expensive to maintain but you have to admire th…

If he had just said "I want a phone I can tinker with, so the iPhone doesn't fit the bill", no one would object. The problem is his claim that Apple is a symbol of pretentiousness and ignorance, simply because it provides convenience and out-of-the-box usability without needing to know how it works. Most people don't tinker for a living / hobby, and thus don't have the luxury of spending large amounts of their valuab…

Thank you and others for pointing that out. I can see how a blanket insult that would unintentionally fit many Hacker News users would lead to a pile on. I've been on an iPhone forever but I've stopped considering it and Apple part of my identity. It was such an extreme statement in an otherwise interesting article that I took it as humor to be honest.

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

#289

Post by clarry »

shittyadmin wrote: post #100
dextersgenius wrote: post #35

> _It turns out that all music players on Android actually play music using the Android-media-player-service._ This is inaccurate. Neutron music player bypasses Android's Media Player APIs and talks directly to your DAC and plays music without resampling (if the DAC supports it). Never had any audio popping or explosions using Neutron, and I've tried it on 6 different devices so far without any issues (LG G3, Nexus 6…

I've never had any problems with "explosions" using standard media players, even when plugged into my HD650s - anyone else have that happen? HN is mostly engineering types, the poster clearly has that mindset, we should be filing or looking for a proper bug report for this instead of crafting hacks or talking about alternative products altogether right off the bat.

HD650s aren't particularly sensitive.

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

#290

Post by zaarn »

edoo wrote: post #103

Pro tip: There are enough PCB shops now that small designs like this can just be done in free EDA software in minutes, 10 boards in your hand with a stencil 9 real days later for less than $50 shipped. The stencil lets you paste the board all at once, you place parts and hit it with a heat gun until everything sets. For audio stuff you get the advantage of keeping everything nice and tight with lower noise. I barely…

Sadly, all the european PCB shops seem to have starting prices of 10€ per piece, it's quite annoying to have to wait for chinese vendors but for prototyping 10€ the piece is way to expensive and I can't handle chemicals either.

My latest hope is that Laser4DIY is gonna make progress, being able to laser the PCB entirely would make life so much easier.

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