For the past few years I haven't had any speakers connected to my PC due to a lack of space in my room and on my desk. For the most part I have been using a pair of headphones which are great, but they aren't the most comfortable thing when I just want to watch YouTube on my second monitor and keep my ears available for my significant other.

So now I am looking for alternatives to desktop speakers. Right now I am either thinking of:

• Bone Conduction Headphones

• Bose Soundwear

I think the bone conduction headphones would give me a ton of options to use while I am biking and sitting at my desk. The Bose on the other hand have excellent sound quality. A small, discrete speaker bar may also fit my needs if there are any good ones that can be recommended. Any thoughts? Have I missed an audio product that may fit my needs that you could recommend?

due to the looming pandemic forcing everyone to stay inside, I've recently decided to get back into video games. I did a fresh install of windows 10 the other day, and tried to play a few games with my controller. I found that whenever I press the right trigger on my controller, my computer's audio cuts out system-wide immediately and does not come back on until I restart.

The controller is a wired Afterglow for Xbox 360 PL-3702.

Windows 10, version 1903.

I see two audio devices under Sound, Video and Game Controllers in Device Manager: a AMD High Definition Audio Device and a Realtek Audio device.

I've tried updating drivers for my controller and audio controllers.

I've reproduced the issue and collected logs of it following the steps here. If you know how to read these I'd be happy to send you the trace.

Now, I've tried to look at the trace of this in both Windows Performance Analyzer and Windows Media eXperience Analyzer to try and get a better sense of what's causing this. I see a pretty clear event where a bunch of stuff shows up in the visualizer, but I don't know what any of the stack traces that show up mean. This did not occur on my previous install of Windows on the same computer so I suspect it's related to something with some new Windows "gaming" feature I didn't have before.

I'm really at a loss as to where to go from here. It's both perfectly clear and completely mystifying. Any ideas?

I just moved into a new apartment, and am using a 32" tv in the living room. The TV is already way too small, but I'd rather prioritize spending on the speakers first.

I thought I could live with the TV speakers, but have quickly realized that they have made watching movies impossible. The dialogue is impossible to hear without cranking up the volume. And then if there is anything other than dialogue, it's way too loud.

The walls in the apartment are fairly thin, so I'm pretty sure a subwoofer is out of the question. So I was looking at soundbars but keep seeing conflicting advice. There are articles like this that make them sound fine, yet when you go to place like /r/hometheater, everyone despises them.

So my next step was to look at powered bookshelf speakers. They seemed like a pretty good option, until I went to best buy to listen to them. I'm not sure if they just weren't set up properly or what, but none of them sounded that great. Especially when compared to the tower speakers they had.

So now I'm at a loss. Should I go with a soundbar, bookshelf, or tower speakers? My budget is under $500.

At the risk of sounding like an audiophile I noticed that on some bluetooth devices audio quality comes out absolutely terrible (Like radio recorded with a phone microphone). I was using a pair of Bose QC 35 headphones and on my phone they sound just fine but on my desktop which has a cheap $2 bluetooth usb the sound quality is terrible. Ok for $2 what can you expect but now I have a distrust for all bluetooth devices. How can I know if my bluetooth usb is killing the quality of audio when thats not even a listed spec on these devices. I looked in to this a little bit ago and there seem to be a few proprietary extensions to bluetooth that allow lossless streaming but they aren't well supported because they are proprietary. I understand that high quality lossy compression is pretty much the same quality as lossless but how do I find a product that uses high quality lossy compression when it seems some of them use absolutely horrible compression?

To summarize, I am annoyed that there are two different standard for 4-pole audio connectors. For those curious I mean this.

You have OMTP and CTIA, the difference is they swap the mic and ground pins. This is irritating because Apple vs Android use them differently. This becomes especially annoying when you want a feature like an inline mic mute switch (one designed for CTIA for example will disconnect the ground pin on OMTP instead of mic)

This has been an ongoing frustration for me for a while. I really enjoy a good pair of headphones because I use Discord and I work from home which necessitates using headphones for extended periods of time to listen to music, take calls, chat on discord.

I just want there to be a device that does OMTP/CTIA swapping AND include the ability to physically mute the mic. Like this but with something that will break the mic pin. Im currently designing something in fritzing that will allow both direction switching as well as selective muting.

/rant

Has anyone else had any similar experience or frustration with this problem?

I recently had the pleasure of spending some time in a Bed and Breakfast that had a full Sonos system throughout the house. Ever since then, I've been a bit underwhelmed with my poor man's equivalent (a Google Home Mini in every room).

Right around the time Sonos announced the Beam soundbar, I came to the realization that the issues I've had with my Vizio soundbar aren't a one-time defect, and are instead a fundamental incompatibility with my TV. (Basically, my soundbar will randomly power off when connected to my TV, even when sound is playing). I'm hoping that the Beam doesn't have the same issue, so I'm considering getting the Beam and two Play:1s to replace my current 5.1 system.

I'm curious: for those of you with Sonos speakers (both in the home theater and outside!), what are your experiences? What are some of the things you love, and what are some of the things you wish Sonos would improve?