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  • Showing only topics with the tag "hardware". Back to normal view
    1. Just bought Philips SHP9500 headphones and am underwhelmed

      I have a KZ ZSN Pro IEM and it's been going strong for 4+ years. I also have a cheap Bluetooth QCY IEM that I use for podcasts and when I don't want wires tangling me. Whenever I change from the...

      I have a KZ ZSN Pro IEM and it's been going strong for 4+ years.

      I also have a cheap Bluetooth QCY IEM that I use for podcasts and when I don't want wires tangling me.

      Whenever I change from the Bluetooth QCY to the wired KZ I am in awe. The KZ ZSN Pro is a blast to listen to. Specially metal. The definition, the sound of the bass drums, everything is clear and powerful.

      So I decided to try some entry level open back headphones and bought the SHP9500 that was cheap on Aliexpress recently. I thought I would find it even better since a lot of people sang it's praise for the price, but I am underwhelmed.

      I find my KZ to have way more definition and power.

      Also I need to up the volume of my smartphone quite a bit compared to the IEMs. It is near max volume.

      Of course they are different beasts and the IEMs are literally inside my head. I don't really know what I expected.

      I'm sure beyerdinamic or other more expensive brands might be better, but I don't feel like going down that path.

      I'm going to keep the SHP9500 for a week more to see if I like it for different situations, but for now I am not amused.

      7 votes
    2. Privacy woes and autonomy, where do I go now?

      I'm very sorry, but this is going to be rant. One that may seem to come up almost daily, but I still feel the need to vent. Every day I feel like I'm jumping through hoops to keep a little bit of...

      I'm very sorry, but this is going to be rant. One that may seem to come up almost daily, but I still feel the need to vent.

      Every day I feel like I'm jumping through hoops to keep a little bit of privacy and autonomy, without ever winning. DuckDuckGo is my search engine, use a paid mail provider, I try to stay away from anything Google and Meta, use only Signal, ad blocking everywhere, hosting most services locally, etc. It seems, however, to make no difference in the long run. The user-profile-building just seems to enter the home faster than I can mitigate it. Kids install some new app or new hardware ends up listening in, privacy infringement is there.

      The reason I'm starting this post now is because I switched ISP and TV provider recently, but it has been on my mind for a long time. Finding one that isn't owned by one of huge 3 parent companies, is almost impossible here. After a year of deciding, I finally figured it was time to throw in the towel and just pick the least bad option. Yesterday was the day of switching and it has been such a frustrating process.

      The provided router doesn't allow me to turn off its WLAN. I live in a city, so the airwaves are already crowded enough as it is. No need to keep that antenna on, but screw me, that's not possible. Opened up the device to just remove the card, but everything is soldered on the board and disconnecting the antennas didn't do shit.
      It's possible to buy a modem/router myself, but it'll need to follow their requirements and will set me back $200. It would be okay if the rest of the service was great, but here comes the TV part!

      The device they use for TV is apparently Android TV. I assumed it would be IPTV with this subscription, but Android TV isn't that. Booting the device makes it immediately clear they are here to harvest data. It makes me so unhappy that a service I'm paying for, is also making money on the side by collecting data. To get a quick idea of what's being done, I routed the box through wireshark to sniff DNS traffic. It's riddled with domains used for data collection and ads. That combined with the features this box wants me to agree to (location, using the mic, access local network, sign into PlayStore, make a profile including real life information) does not make me trust this device. So I've decided to not play and will be sending it back.

      People around me are pretty conscious about what they do online, but compared to them I'm highly paranoid. Wherever I look, there are privacy issues. It seems impossible to escape from. How are other people dealing with this?

      UPDATE: I don't know if anybody is really interested, but I thought I would update anyway. I decided to listen to my gut and I cancelled the subscription. It feels like the best decision I've made in a long time. It's nice to feel like I'm still a little bit in charge, even though I know that's also just a false sense of autonomy. Suck it, Google! You're not the boss of me :-)

      33 votes
    3. Can old, poorly wired electrical outlets cause a PC to freeze?

      Fellow PC builders, here's a fun one for you. I took some "old" and no-longer-used PC parts and built my sister-in-law a gaming PC for her and her stepdaughter to use. It was a Christmas gift so...

      Fellow PC builders, here's a fun one for you.

      I took some "old" and no-longer-used PC parts and built my sister-in-law a gaming PC for her and her stepdaughter to use. It was a Christmas gift so the stepdaughter could play the Sims.

      She has called me three times to tell me it's completely frozen - like hard locked, dead freeze, screen is displaying the last frame it was on but you can't interact with the PC in any way until you reset it with the power button.

      She let it sit for an hour before she gave up. Two times this happened while stepdaughter was playing the Sims 4 and once it happened while my brother-in-law was watching YouTube videos.

      Obviously, I went through the usual things you'd think in this situation and I had her bring the PC over so I could do some digging. Fully expecting to find a hardware issue, I tried the following:

      1. I ran the Sims while also watching multiple YouTube videos in the background. Couldn't replicate the issue after about two hours.

      2. I obviously checked the temperatures while gaming and YouTubing, checked the usual performance metrics and everything was great.

      3. Ran OTTC stress tests - all of them. Under heavy loads, this thing was doing fine. Even at 100% utilization, the memory, graphics card, and cpu were fine. Did a power test too, fine. Did a "combined" stress test and all was fine.

      4. Ran mem86, no issues with the memory, no bad sectors or errors.

      5. Played Skyrim on ultra for several hours. This was a really fun way to troubleshoot.

      6. Checked the event log from the day she had freezes. I can see where the event happened because leading up to the unexpected "power off" event, there were a ton of events related to various processes timing out. Seems like it was unable to connect with services and run certain background processes while it was frozen? I didn't see anything that really stood out to me as being a possible cause except...

      7. in the event viewer, there were a few events related to Microsoft family safety. I set this up at the request of SIL so stepdaughter wouldn't get into anything she shouldn't. In the Event Viewer, it seems like maybe it wasn't verifying something correctly or didn't have permissions it needed? Upon Googling, I found some other folks with this error but I couldn't find anything about whether it caused freezing or not. Seems like one of the many events that just gives a warning but doesn't have any effect. One guy who had this issue had his computer freeze but disabling the family safety entirely did nothing. People in the comments thought it probably wasn't related. I also found another event that Google wasn't very helpful with. Might have been related to sound card but my sound card drivers are up to date and again, I have not been able to replicate the issue even when gaming and watching videos, so I don't know if it's related.

      8. I ran the Windows System Files Checker and found no issues related to my Windows install.

      I can't figure out why this would be happening only at her house. She says it froze after one hour of use every time. This brings me to the title of this post. My SIL moved into a really old house with sketchy wiring. My FIL told her the wiring is so bad that she needs to get it fixed immediately or risk a fire, so she's working on that. This house has a butler stairway, asbestos, and plaster/lathe walls if that tells you what we're dealing with here. This is the ONLY thing I can think of that would possibly be different between the two setups and maybe explain the freezing, but it just seems so unlikely to me that this is the cause.

      Help?

      21 votes
    4. Confused about headphone impedance

      I have a guitar multi effects that has a headphone out with 47Ω I want a budget somewhat neutral headphone to use with it and I am getting confused with the answers I found so far. The AKG K240...

      I have a guitar multi effects that has a headphone out with 47Ω

      I want a budget somewhat neutral headphone to use with it and I am getting confused with the answers I found so far.

      The AKG K240 mk2 (55Ω) seems to be a popular choice with people who own another multi effects (HX Stomp) with a different impedance (I think it's 12Ω).

      This headphone is within my budget, but it seems too close to the 47 output of my multifx.

      Will I have a problem with this?

      I read somewhere that the headphone impedance should be much bigger than the output impedance, but another text I read somewhere explained that they should match closely.

      I'm really confused about this.

      5 votes
    5. How do you store ”loose” tech hardware?

      Hesitating between posting this as a comment or a topic but here we are. While reading this Tildes post (and the blog post) about tiny undervalued hardware, a curiosity sparked in my head. How do...

      Hesitating between posting this as a comment or a topic but here we are.

      While reading this Tildes post (and the blog post) about tiny undervalued hardware, a curiosity sparked in my head.

      How do you organize and store your cables, tiny hardware, and other stuff? Mine are like a bunch of rat tails tangled up inside a plastic box.

      I live in a small apartment (for now) and would like to hear your thoughts. And recommendations.

      We don’t have to limit ourselves to just wires and cables. For example, I also have old phones, external CD players, etc.

      Bonus points if it’s portable and you could travel with your “tiny hardware”.

      22 votes
    6. Is a NAS for me?

      Hi, I keep reading about this thing called a "NAS" and I don't have in my social network a bunch of reasonable geeks to figure out if this is something for me or if it is overkill and I can get by...

      Hi, I keep reading about this thing called a "NAS" and I don't have in my social network a bunch of reasonable geeks to figure out if this is something for me or if it is overkill and I can get by with less -- trying to be frugal and all.

      The Situation

      At the moment, I have a Raspberry Pi 3 (that a colleague gifted me) which runs Jellyfin, mostly for music. I'd use it for watching series and movies, but given how slow it is at transferring files and the fact that it has a 1GB (maybe 2GB) RAM... I was afraid to break it. On top of that, its storage is a years-old external hard drive.

      I use Jellyfin mostly to have music on my iPhone. I can access it when I'm out and about on Tailscale. I hope to find a solution for my photos as well.

      I'd also occasionally use the pi to experiment with some self-hosted open-source apps.

      I constantly find myself wanting to upgrade because I want to also backup my important photos (with face recognition if possible) and documents "offline" (i.e. in my local network) to something more stable than an aging hard drive. They're all in the cloud, but a second backup option could be great.

      What I understand from reading about NAS's is that I basically have one, it's just not... reliable?

      The Question

      I understand there is definitely a buy-in cost for buying an actual NAS, I'd like to know how much... so that I can make an informed decision on if and when I would buy it. What is an entry-level NAS and how much will it cost? What could it NOT do that an RPi could, and vice-versa? Am I missing an in-between or even an alternative solution for my use case? Is it overkill and should I just upgrade the pi? What are my options?

      Thanks in advance for reading my post!

      20 votes
    7. Recommendations for wireless earbuds for extended PC use?

      I've always been a speakers kind of guy because I'm not a fan of how bulky headsets are, but because of the fun of Zoom meetings and things, I've kind of gotten over my hatred of headphones. That...

      I've always been a speakers kind of guy because I'm not a fan of how bulky headsets are, but because of the fun of Zoom meetings and things, I've kind of gotten over my hatred of headphones. That said, I'd still prefer to commit to earbuds rather than big, bulky GamerTM headphones long-term. Instead, I'd like to pivot to earbuds.

      So my first problem is: I've always been under the assumption that 2.4Ghz dongle is superior to Bluetooth, but apparently modern Bluetooth is almost/practically as good. If that's the case, I wouldn't care about getting a Bluetooth-only set, but that does mean dropping more money on a dongle for my PC.

      My other caveat is that I hate having to pause what I'm doing to charge something. The only wireless thing I own is a headset I use for Zoom meetings and things, and it's a Arctis Wireless that can easily do 20+ hours without a charge. I would be using these for my weekly RPG that I run online, which is almost always 8+ hours long, not counting me watching videos/listening to music in the leadup to to the game.

      So yeah, with that in mind-- low latency and battery life are my big things, and I don't care about a microphone at all, but I'd like it to be fairly budget-friendly. Again, it just seems like... since I last used headphones 15+ years ago, things have changed a lot and even just googling and reading opinions on reddit-- all the opinions are varying and often opposing on what I should be shooting for.

      I don't care all that much about brand loyalty, or what color it is, or anything like that, either. So, what all would anyone here recommend?

      15 votes
    8. Can anyone recommend a printer/scanner combo that works with Linux with no additional drivers?

      I'm looking for a black & white laser printer with a scanner for home office use. The only fancy thing about it is that I'm running Linux and I don't want to install any driver packages from the...

      I'm looking for a black & white laser printer with a scanner for home office use. The only fancy thing about it is that I'm running Linux and I don't want to install any driver packages from the manufacturer. I want to plug it into any laptop running any Linux distro and start printing and scanning with no fuss.

      Brother printers are very popular, but if I search for any Brother printer and "linux", all I can find is stuff about the drivers and how to fix the various issues that come with those.

      If I understand correctly, modern printers should just work via something called IPP/AirPrint and they should also work over USB. Is that correct?

      What about the scanner? Does that also just work over IPP?

      29 votes
    9. Tips on building keyboard-centric workflow

      I do not like using mouse. I feel it disturbs the flow of things I am doing. Moreover, I like quickly pressing through a bunch of keystrokes that results in what I want. There is a sense of...

      I do not like using mouse. I feel it disturbs the flow of things I am doing. Moreover, I like quickly pressing through a bunch of keystrokes that results in what I want. There is a sense of satisfaction in that.

      For starters, I use Vim and love it. I liked it so much that all my browsers have Vim-like keybindings (through Vimium or Tridactyl). But that is as far as I have gone in making my life easier (apart from switching windows via Command+Tab, but for all else I need to use mouse).

      I recently bought a MacBook and it is kind of disappointing that the keybindings are not so intuitive or don't exist natively as they do in Windows. For example, resizing the window was easier on Windows with Win+arrow. There are many such things I find lacking on Mac. Broadly, I am asking for what other improvements can I bring into better my keyboard-centric workflow.

      19 votes
    10. Need help finding a monitor

      Sometime this year, probably around the middle of the year or later depending on my welfare, I want to replace my two monitors with an ultra wide. I do have some preferences, such as: OLED...

      Sometime this year, probably around the middle of the year or later depending on my welfare, I want to replace my two monitors with an ultra wide.

      I do have some preferences, such as:

      • OLED Preferably
      • Built in KVM
      • 120hz or above refresh
      • Has the ability to show two separate computers screens at once. Just in case I'm not being clear, two separate computers are plugged in as inputs and it can output the display for both on the same screen by dividing the screen in half. I've only seen this feature on one monitor, an ultrawide ASUS one but that was roughly $2000. This is probably the most 'nice to have' feature.

      Would appreciate any suggestions or recommendations. Thanks.

      Also, I have two monitors I would like to sell when I replace them, these being an ASUS VG27AQ, and a Dell S2721QS. Both of them are in perfect condition, other than being slightly dusty. What would be a fair price to list them for when selling?

      15 votes
    11. G-Sync/Freesync - What's your opinion?

      This was tempting to post in ~games but think it suits ~tech better. What are your thoughts on these monitor frame sync technologies? Have they made a big difference to your gaming experiences?...

      This was tempting to post in ~games but think it suits ~tech better.

      What are your thoughts on these monitor frame sync technologies?
      Have they made a big difference to your gaming experiences?
      Could you do with out it?
      What about G-Sync vs Freesync?

      20 votes
    12. Realized my screen is 144, not 60 hz

      Yes, yes, I know, the classic blunder 😅 I just have to say though, the difference is insane, I mean what the actual fuaæosiuhrfjk!? I have been on 60 hz screens my entire life, only upgrading to...

      Yes, yes, I know, the classic blunder 😅

      I just have to say though, the difference is insane, I mean what the actual fuaæosiuhrfjk!?

      I have been on 60 hz screens my entire life, only upgrading to 1080p in 2015 or so, and I bought my current screen from a friend a year or two ago -- I guess that's why I never realized it was 144 hz, not 60 hz!? But playing WoW with another friend yesterday, we started talking about specs and refresh rates came up, so she even offered that I could borrow her second screen because she felt so sorry about my only having 60 hz. So for fun and just to be sure, I went to check my settings and yup, it said 144 hz in there! "Surely not", I thought... so I clicked it and absolutely surely fucking yes, it instantly looked a million times better??? I laughed so hard because it is both amazing and I am an idiot because I have seen this exact meme dozens of times and I cannot believe that I am a victim too 😂

      The colors are so much richer, the movement of everything was so much smoother. I mean seriously, my mind is still completely blown now a day later. This is a great christmas present for myself, and it was free!

      I don't think any other computer upgrade has ever had this big an impact. Blew my mind!

      37 votes