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    1. Product recommendation request: low latency wireless earbuds

      Alright, so I fell down a rabbit hole of trying to understand a whole bunch of techy things that I don't fully understand and could use some help: What I'm looking for: a pair of Bluetooth...

      Alright, so I fell down a rabbit hole of trying to understand a whole bunch of techy things that I don't fully understand and could use some help:


      What I'm looking for: a pair of Bluetooth wireless earbuds that I can pair with my computer, with low enough latency that it won't impair my enjoyment in casual gaming/video watching


      What I understand so far: Almost nothing. 😔 I get that Bluetooth will always have some level of latency, but, beyond that, I've got nothing. I'm so confused.

      There are lots of different versions of Bluetooth, and then there are different Bluetooth protocols within that, and then different audio codecs, and each piece of hardware seems to support completely different combinations of those, and I'm not sure if the devices have to match configurations or even how to figure out what my computer supports? It seems Bluetooth will gracefully fall back to worse codecs/protocols if better ones are incompatible, but I don't really want to buy something that's just going to fall back to its worst usecase.

      I also don't know what's an "acceptable" level of latency. What's reasonable versus what's intolerable?

      It also seems like the information I read online is subject to rapid decay. I read a bunch of stuff only a few years old saying I should look for aptX Low Latency capability, but then I read very recent posts saying that's dead and to go with aptX Adaptive instead. Meanwhile there are a handful of gaming-focused headsets that say they're low latency but don't really say how (e.g. Razer's Hammerhead). And some, like Samsung's buds, having a "gaming mode" but it only works on special hardware.

      Also, how do I know what my computer itself will support? Is there anything I can do from the computer side to reduce latency, or is that strictly a function of what my hardware supports and which earbuds I buy?


      My usecase:

      My computer is a System 76 Oryx Pro (5) running Pop!_OS 21.10. I think its Bluetooth adapter is version 5.1 (though I'm not confident on that). I do not know which protocols/codecs it supports, nor how to find that out.

      Audio quality isn't too important. These will be for everyday video-watching and gaming, which is what's prompting the latency requirement. I'd rather them be responsive than rich.

      Active noise cancelling would be nice to have (especially if it has a toggleable transparency mode), but I don't know if ANC adds latency and is therefore incompatible with what I'm wanting.

      I don't have a specific budget for it, and that's honestly the least important requirement. If the solution exists I'm fine paying for it (within reason, of course). These will end up getting used for thousands of hours, so even a big price difference upfront will even out over time.

      I'd appreciate any help anyone can offer in pointing me in the right direction on this!

      12 votes
    2. Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of February 7

      This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the...

      This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

      10 votes
    3. What creative projects have you been working on?

      This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on. Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just...

      This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

      Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

      If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

      9 votes
    4. Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) recommendations and advice

      Hello everyone, I usually do my own research, and then I try to find multiple matching results and afterwards, read specifically in detail about each recommendation, but, I have to be honest that...

      Hello everyone,

      I usually do my own research, and then I try to find multiple matching results and afterwards, read specifically in detail about each recommendation, but, I have to be honest that for UPS recommendations that I’ve seen, it seems to be a very personal recommendation depending on the wattage and connected devices.

      First of all, most people recommend CyberPower or APC, but I’ve also seen some recommendations for Eaton. Is there any other brand that I should be looking into?

      The devices I would like to connect to a UPS would be: desktop, TV, Apple TV, NAS, router and probably my Nintendo Switch.

      There are some general things I've found out while searching that I think I would like some confirmation:

      • I actually think I should buy two UPS's, or? I think just one for the desktop and another one just for the remaining devices, since the desktop uses a lot more wattage.
      • Pure Sine Wave: It does not matter for smaller stuff (routers, etc) but it seems that anything above 70 W, it should use a UPS with this. So, that would mean I need pure sine wave, since my desktop and TV definitely use more than 70 W of power.
      • Some people said to search for a UPS with line conditioning so that you always get a perfect sine wave. Would you agree?
      • USB connection (not a faux USB!) so that the NAS detects the power failure and shuts down gracefully.
      • It is important that the UPS has removable battery for better longevity.

      How would I choose a UPS? Do I need to see the total wattage of all my devices and then pick the UPS accordingly? Anything I'm missing?

      My budget would be up to €100 or €150 in case it is really worth it.

      Thank you in advance for all replies.

      13 votes
    5. What have you been listening to this week?

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as...

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

      Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

      You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

      http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

      Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

      11 votes
    6. Is there a way of highlighting comment edits?

      Title. I often think of things to add to my comment after they’ve (presumably) been seen by the OP. Sometimes I end up making a separate comment because I want to ensure visibility. Any way to...

      Title. I often think of things to add to my comment after they’ve (presumably) been seen by the OP. Sometimes I end up making a separate comment because I want to ensure visibility. Any way to give edited comments a similar visibility to new comments?

      10 votes
    7. What have you been listening to this week?

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as...

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

      Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

      You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

      http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

      Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

      2 votes
    8. What did you do this week?

      As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do...

      As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

      4 votes
    9. IWTL financial literacy

      It's a very hard topic to research lately because of the crypto-bros lately and it's very hard to trust a stranger on youtube spouting financial advice. Can tildes suggest any must-read books...

      It's a very hard topic to research lately because of the crypto-bros lately and it's very hard to trust a stranger on youtube spouting financial advice.

      Can tildes suggest any must-read books and/or resources to become more financially literate?

      Background: I'm a software engineer from Germany, I'm making decent salary, but I've always been incredibly bad with money. I just spend what I need and almost never look after my financial state. The result, as you can imagine, is a very low rate of savings and a lot of unrealized gains.

      Honestly, it's kind of embarrassing to ask, I lucked into a great industry, but has been so irresponsible with my money, I guess the first step is acceptance.

      8 votes
    10. RSS feed improvements

      hey tilders, so I mostly read tildes.net content through my RSS reader, and it's 98% great. the remaining 2% is due to two things: HTML entities (fancy quotes, etc) don't degrade nicely; I get a...

      hey tilders,

      so I mostly read tildes.net content through my RSS reader, and it's 98% great. the remaining 2% is due to two things:

      • HTML entities (fancy quotes, etc) don't degrade nicely; I get a lot of &#xxx; in my feed reader - Edited topics (I think) get posted twice to the RSS feed, giving me duplicate items.

      I don't know how hard it might be to fix these issues, but is there anything I can do to help?

      7 votes
    11. How do you manage your music collection?

      Hey everyone! This year I've started getting into music collecting, and I'm wondering what everyone around here uses/recommends to manage a music collection. Basically what I'm after is software...

      Hey everyone!

      This year I've started getting into music collecting, and I'm wondering what everyone around here uses/recommends to manage a music collection. Basically what I'm after is software where:

      1. I can pick the albums that I own.
      2. I can pick albums that I want to own.
      3. I get notifications when one of tmy tracked artists releases a new album.
      4. Should not be a mobile exclusive app.

      I've looked at Discogs but this one goes a level of complexity beyond what I need (It tracks all the different releases of a same album) and MusicBrainz which seems more what I'm after but not sure if it does #3; though I could supplement that with a different service. Looking for suggestions on software available online or self-hosted.

      9 votes
    12. Fitness Weekly Discussion

      What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started...

      What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

      8 votes