[HN Gopher] We need physical audio kill switches
___________________________________________________________________
We need physical audio kill switches
Author : stargrave
Score : 290 points
Date : 2020-09-20 17:19 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rubenerd.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rubenerd.com)
| neya wrote:
| This is one of the reasons why all the amplifiers I build for my
| personal use, be it power audio amps or headphone amps, don't use
| any fancy audio switch ICs. I prefer analog exactly for this
| reason. A simple relay with a push button. Leaves me more room
| for other stuff inside the cabinet, while getting the job done in
| the simplest way possible.
| coretx wrote:
| If you physically cut a audio signal, one end of the cable turns
| into a broadcasting radio antenna. Reality isn't as simple as
| presented.
| sjruckle wrote:
| How do you figure?
| coretx wrote:
| Basic physics.
| jng wrote:
| A low-power 20kHz signal on a PCB track not designed to radiate
| is not going to be a problem at all - plus you can always
| switch to terminating with a resistor in the unlikely case it
| is a problem. Also the author mentions connecting directly to
| the DAC, most DACs, and definitely all DACs I have studied the
| datasheet for have a CE (Chip Enable) signal, or some more
| advanced way to control audio output with a command (using an
| SPI or similar interface), no need to cut the audio
| connections. Reality isn't as simple as applying basic physical
| knowledge without the required context.
| skohan wrote:
| I've been thinking the same about power switches lately. If I
| turn a flashlight, or an old radio on or off, I flip a switch and
| get the result I want. With my 65 EUR gamepad, or 300 EUR
| headphones, I hold a button and wait several seconds for the
| result.
|
| Why has UX regressed so much in these areas?
| Symbiote wrote:
| My rented apartment has switches that presumably use radio to
| turn on and off the lights.
|
| There is no further integration, or smart app etc.
|
| I can't see which light switch is on or off, so even after
| years living here I mix up some of the switches.
|
| Sometimes the radio pulse doesn't register, so I have to go
| back to the switch and press it again.
|
| After pressing the switch, there's a perceivable, variable
| delay for the light to come on.
|
| Guests are confused.
|
| There are only downsides with such a system.
| pbourke wrote:
| These kinds of switches are perfectly analogous to technical
| debt. Doing things the right/straightforward way involves
| costs that we don't want to pay (holes in the wall/labour to
| run a new circuit) so we shoehorn a complex hack using some
| new tech (RF control). The cost savings are moderate and the
| price paid is amortized over every further use of the system.
| yholio wrote:
| A few years down the road, the radio switch transmitter
| breaks down and is no longer manufactured. The receivers,
| wires and the mechanical switches blocked in the ON
| position are hidden somewhere under multiple layers of
| drywall.
|
| But the functionality of the switch can be emulated with
| with a software defined radio attached to a 1GHz Raspberry
| Pi running Linux. It works great, but an out of date kernel
| enables a virus that spreads from light-switch to light
| switch and performs a light show on the evening of 4th of
| July in any calendar year.
| evan_ wrote:
| Wouldn't the switches just be placed in the boxes for the
| old switches? Burying a switch as you describe is against
| code in the US and I assume other countries.
| projektfu wrote:
| You are living in the little hell we created. Sorry.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| The upside to wireless switches are how cheap they to install
| and remove.
|
| I'm in a 40 year old apartment with a lot of switches that
| now affect nothing, because they broke and no one fixed the
| wires ('cause landlords are cheap). I wouldn't want to change
| this for a bunch of wireless switches but it's easy to
| imagine landlords of the future wanting nothing but glue on
| fixtures - routing wires costs significant money.
| ctdeneen wrote:
| Are you saying the switch is broken? Those can be replaced
| in about 15 mins and cost very little. The wires in wall
| rarely break and if do that could be a very dangerous
| situation.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Waiting for "yeah there is a circuit that trips the
| breaker even with nothing plugged in"
| RedShift1 wrote:
| At work we have a few rooms that have 4 buttons organized in
| what normally is one light switch. Each button controls
| different parts of the rooms. I call them Heisenbuttons, you
| never know what they'll do until you've pressed them.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Try operating them with your eyes closed. Real
| Heisenbuttons change their behaviour depending on whether
| or not they're being observed.
| millstone wrote:
| I installed a wireless (RF) switch and I like it. It lights a
| tiny LED when it's on, and it is as reliable as a hardwired
| switch.
|
| The big advantage is that it provides separate fan and light
| controls without needing to run new electrical wires through
| the wall and ceiling.
| m463 wrote:
| I have always wanted a flashlight with a brightness knob, that
| clicks to off.
|
| It is incredibly hard to find this. I have one somewhere, but
| the knob was a little silly:
|
| https://amzn.com/B07BDQS3XX
|
| I think a better design would be a ring around the
| circumference that you twist.
|
| But I agree - when it came to putting a good stereo in my car
| (when you used to be able to do such a thing) I always kept
| looking until I found one with an actual volume knob. In a
| moving car - grabbing a knob and finding the right volume level
| is immediate and doable.
|
| By the way, schiit hel: https://www.schiit.com/products/hel
| aareet wrote:
| Maglite flashlights behave as you describe - you turn the
| head to turn on/off and change intensity or pattern
|
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=maglite
| Poacher5 wrote:
| Unless something's changed since I bought my big maglite,
| the outer ring only controls the beam pattern, and the
| button just gives you on and off. Things might have got
| fancier in the meanwhile, but mine still does what it needs
| to.
| ranger207 wrote:
| You want one of these: http://flashlights.parametrek.com/inde
| x.html?type=flashlight...
| pmalynin wrote:
| Schiit audio is quite good, I have had the Magni 2 and Modi 2
| for about 4 years now and they work really well. And they're
| small enough that I can throw in my backpack when I go
| somewhere for longer (>2 months) period of time.
| MereInterest wrote:
| And even if there is a physical switch, it is not clear what
| that switch is doing. My bluetooth headset has a hardware
| on/off switch. However, when the switch is turned off, it plays
| a sound to say the words "power off". If it were a physical
| switch across the battery, then I would expect the power to be
| immediately cut, and it shouldn't have the power to say that
| the power has been cut.
| moe wrote:
| But then how would you know it's really off!
| pessimizer wrote:
| The way I've been able to learn that devices are off since
| the early 2000s is that the blindingly bright blue LED
| light is replaced by a blindingly bright red LED light.
| kempbellt wrote:
| I sense sarcasm, but I'll answer anyway.
|
| A power indicator light would do the trick...
|
| But in all seriousness, your bluetooth headphones should
| have a sim card built in and be an IoT slave to the cloud.
| So that when you turn them off, they send a message to
| Alexa, Google, and Siri, so that _all_ of your devices can
| tell you "YOUR HEADPHONES ARE NOW OFF" at the same time.
| Like a tiny choir of angels informing you of the new state
| of your device.
|
| But of course, there will be one slow/older device that
| lags 0.3 seconds behind and says "HEADPHONES...OFF",
| completely out of sync with the rest, like a rebel.
|
| _Damnit, toilet! Get with the times..._
| bitwize wrote:
| YOUR JACKET IS NOW DRY
| Shared404 wrote:
| This reminds me of that one dystopian text adventure game
| the verge put out a while ago.
|
| The version on the original site now links to here:
|
| https://adirobertson.itch.io/wake-word
|
| for those who haven't played it yet.
| animationwill wrote:
| More important than speaker kill switches, we need
| physical/hardware microphone switches that disconnect the
| circuit. These are built into Amazon Echo devices, but it's
| unclear if Google Home or other Apple HomePod have this (a quick
| revealed they do not).
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Google Home mini certainly has it, it's the only physical
| switch on the device.
| animationwill wrote:
| A physical switch does not necessarily mean the microphone is
| disconnected at the hardware-level. I checked these and I
| don't think it does
|
| https://support.google.com/googlenest/thread/24537110?hl=en
|
| https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Home+Mini+Teardown/10.
| ..
| DoctorOW wrote:
| IIRC My Mini has corrected me for speaking to it while it was
| muted so I'm not sure it's a hardware kill switch.
| Reason077 wrote:
| On my regular Google Home, pressing the mute switch makes
| it turn orange. It then won't respond to any voice input
| until you unmute it.
| ohyeshedid wrote:
| There's a huge difference in the microphone being
| physically incapable of hearing you vs a toggle switch
| that tells the os not to respond to you.
| fallingmeat wrote:
| you could make the same argument about a lot of things on your
| PC, or elsewhere. simpler is always better, until you need to do
| a lot of things.
| anotheryou wrote:
| After a volume shock it's too late. I think there should be a
| limiter/compressor by default or something, especially sensitive
| to when there is an initial loudness jump.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| >> "mute buttons on keyboards shouldn't need to go to software,
| they should immediately send a signal to the motherboard's DAC"
|
| I don't have a lot of knowledge about this, but audio is often
| streamed via USB or HDMI or Bluetooth or WLAN to another device,
| like headphones, an AV receiver, or wireless speakers and then
| uses the DAC in that device.
|
| So the blog posts wish would result in the mute button not doing
| anything for many users, because it controls only a very specific
| hardware, but the users expect the function to work against all
| sound emitted by the operating system on any connected hardware,
| right? This guy actually wants a switch on his headphones. Or am
| i wrong and all sound goes through the motherboards sound card at
| least once, even if it is sent somewhere else?
| stingraycharles wrote:
| > This guy actually wants a switch on his headphones
|
| He specifically addresses that, and then compares it to
| unplugging a keyboard that gives electric shocks, which is a
| completely different thing. He kind of lost me at that point, i
| just immediately get my headphones off my ears when something
| like this happens. It's a simple and powerful solution and
| doesn't require the complexity for the reasons you just
| mentioned.
| toxicFork wrote:
| I was working as a video/audio engineer for a bit and for
| Bluetooth especially the latency is insane. For some devices it
| was around half a second. I don't think I have seen two seconds
| though. The main thing was that we would need to stream the
| audio first, wait for the latency duration, then start showing
| video frames. If you press pause, the audio would stop after
| that much time. I haven't checked if some devices allowed
| sending of start/stop commands through less latency methods
| though. My job was mainly concerned with playback.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| I have stopped using Bluetooth audio altogether. I feel like
| it's a major step back in audio quality, but maybe you may be
| the best person to ask: for someone who appreciates high
| quality music codecs on eg spotify, what can I do to make
| this work over Bluetooth? I have some Bose QC2 headphones and
| as far as I can tell it's pretty much impossible to get
| anything over 128kbits.
|
| Is there something I'm overlooking here?
| maest wrote:
| > I don't think I have seen two seconds though.
|
| The obscenely priced Bose SoundSport (GBP 180) in-ear
| headphones have around 2 seconds of lag. That is when I press
| stop and when the music stops, it's around 2 seconds. Same
| for start and skip.
|
| Even worse, by default, video and audio do not sync up. If
| you try to watch a youtube video with these headphones
| connected, your sound will lag by about 1 second. Nothing can
| be done about it. "The fix" is to use special apps that apply
| a delay to the video, to obtain a semblance of audio-video
| sync (no solution for PCs).
|
| Again, you have to pay GBP 180 for this experience.
|
| I received these headphones as a gift, so at least I didn't
| spend money directly. I still feel bad for the person who
| gifted me these, complete waste of money.
| bzb5 wrote:
| I've got a microphone with a physical kill switch and when turned
| off it still leaks like a sieve. Be careful with those switches.
| onion-soup wrote:
| I always wondered if these physical switches are actually
| reliable and now reading your comment actually terrifies me.
| This behavior can cause irreversible social damage in say
| during high steak business meetings. One could absolutely sue
| the microphone manufacturer for this.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| "It depends".
|
| Digital built-in microphones use DMIC, which aiui is a one-
| wire interface where the microphone just sends a delta-sigma
| bitstream. If you implement the switch through a multiplexer
| or logic gate this kills the signal 100 % essentially.
|
| Analog electrets can't be just shorted, because that causes a
| loud BANG when you switch due to the bias voltage, so you use
| a capacitor in series, which only shorts the AC portion.
| Because of the impedances involved, this only gives you 40-60
| dB of attenuation, which isn't enough for a good ADC.
|
| Similar for XLR microphones (hot+cold are shorted, not
| disconnected, because of phantom power).
| jrockway wrote:
| Why do you need to short it? Just move the wires from "on"
| to "high impedance" (similar to what a pair of scissors
| would do when applied to the cable).
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The assumption is you want a click/pop-free mute. If you
| don't, then just SPDT the signal input to ground, problem
| solved. But if you do want it to be pop-free, you can't
| be disturbing the DC bias path (as explained above), so
| that isn't an option.
| amelius wrote:
| Can't you switch the bias voltage off?
| anticensor wrote:
| It would make the microphone half-off, still capturing
| the upper half of the soundwaves.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| No, the output of electret capsules is generally wired as
| a common source amplifier at Ugs ~0 V with an N-JFET.
| Without bias, there will be neglibible output
| (~essentially only the capacitive coupling from the gate
| to the output; if you SPDT the bias voltage to ground,
| you're having a >100 MOhm source impedance (the capsule)
| fighting a couple kOhms (bias + input resistance) through
| perhaps 5 pF or so.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Yes, but then we're back to loud popping sounds when you
| turn it back on.
| amelius wrote:
| You could ramp up/down the voltage gradually.
|
| Anyway the thing is connected to an ADC. The computer can
| sense when the switch is turned on/off, and turn off (or
| flush) the audio pipeline at the appropriate times.
| YarickR2 wrote:
| Oh I love them high steak business meatings, with rare
| proposals and well done outcomes. ontopic: all mechanical
| switches fail, and have multiple ways to fail, from subtle
| contact jitter to loose/broken springs to whatever else could
| break
| qchris wrote:
| I upvoted your 'steak' puns, but wanted to point out that
| "the all mechanical switches fail" is not necessarily a
| useful observation. All things fail, and it's absolutely
| possible to design a product where either
|
| a) the switches are trivially repairable (like switching
| out RAM on my Lenovo, which requires exactly two Philips
| screws), or
|
| b) designing the switches such that their mean time to
| failure is far longer than the mean time to failure of any
| of the other critical components, which is absolutely do-
| able using the right materials and tolerances.
|
| It's not as though audio on a laptop is pumping enormous
| amounts of current that presents a serious electrical
| challenge in that respect, and it's unlikely that the
| mechanism is going to be used 1000 times per day for 10
| years.
|
| Edited for formatting
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If you have two kill switches, one on each wire, would it still
| leak?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Or, instead of single-pole, single-throw switch, have a
| double-pole switch which pulls it to ground instead of
| leaving it floating?
| vidanay wrote:
| I have accomplished this by using an external audio mixer at my
| desk. I have physical volume controls for three PC's, two ham
| radios, and a police scanner. Then there is a master volume
| control for everything mixed.
| romwell wrote:
| Same here. One advantage of a home studio setup is many, many
| sweet knobs.
|
| The musicians have figured it long ago that physical controls
| and no latency is a must. $50 mixer solves many problems.
| vehementi wrote:
| If I could power on my computer with a giant roller coaster
| pull lever I would
| brandon272 wrote:
| I let my spouse, who likes the novelty of a touchscreen, talk me
| into a Whirlpool oven a couple years ago that is controlled by
| touchscreen. I had no idea it was possible to hate an oven so
| much. The only saving grace is that the stovetop elements are
| still controlled by knobs.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I don't understand why people find novelty of touchscreens
| appealing.
|
| We've got to do a better job of educating consumers. The
| marketing behind touchscreens is so powerful that it is
| unanimously considered as a feature, something you must have.
|
| I get angry just thinking about the amount of marketing
| bullshit around touchscreens. Just go to Garmin Aviation
| website and now a lot of operation in _airplane cockpits_ is
| offloaded to touchscreens. What happened to the scratch pad and
| press an index key in FMCs? Age old UI and it is so crisp and
| clear, there is absolutely zero ambguity. Write something in a
| scratch pad, click the button where you wanna insert the data.
|
| This is a cost saving measure disguised as a feature. Public is
| dumb and does'nt understand UI/UX in the slightest bit.
|
| It is just sad. As long as consumers keep buying, nothing will
| change.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| I think people assume it's a step forward without thinking it
| through. It's a classic example of 'just because you can,
| doesn't mean you should'.
| skohan wrote:
| Touch controls are _only_ warranted when you need to support
| a large number of varied interactions which can 't be
| supported by physical controls, or if you have to support
| arbitrary gesture-based input (like a drawing tablet for
| example). If that's not the case, physical controls are
| _always_ better. If you 're operating a vehicle, or can't
| look at the display for any reason, tactile controls are
| _leagues_ better.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Agreed and you nailed it - an iPhone with touchscreen makes
| total sense.
| cgriswald wrote:
| I don't think it's quite so black-and-white although I
| agree roughly with where you draw the line.
|
| My car has tactile controls but they control a cursor on a
| non-touch screen. In this case touch screen controls would
| be superior because it would be faster and there would be
| less time looking at the display.
|
| An argument could be made for more controls to get away
| from the need for a cursor/menu at all, and while I largely
| agree, at some point you're likely to have so many controls
| you end up looking at the controls anyway, even with
| tactile hints.
|
| Even if not, in this case the major controls are basically
| shortcuts and they're the most commonly used and important
| shortcuts. Adding more buttons and knobs for things used
| less frequently or of lesser importance would muddy the
| waters and make these controls more difficult to use.
|
| To muddy the waters further, some controls can do double
| duty with things like cycling through functions, double
| clicks, contextual presses, etc.
| pessimizer wrote:
| General purpose computing requires generic control systems.
| If your device knows its purpose, it shouldn't need a
| touchscreen.
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| Another benefit, for kitchen appliances: a flat screen is
| easier to clean than physical knobs.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Very high-end or professional ovens will not have this. These
| are gimmicks for people with too much money, and too little
| sense.
|
| I don't want my toaster posting on Facebook. I don't want to
| link my refrigerator with my Google account. And no, I do not
| expect my microwave to post pics of my food to Instagram. I
| want a toaster that toasts properly and can be cleaned. I
| want a refrigerator that runs forever, doesn't leak, and
| doesn't build up frost in the freezer. I want a microwave
| that won't burn out after a year and will heat evenly.
|
| I've managed to find all of these things, but it is becoming
| increasingly difficult to find appliances that aren't
| disposable, favoring internet-enablement to high-quality
| construction. I'll pay for the stainless steel... leave the
| wi-fi hardware out, please.
| neilpanchal wrote:
| We have the ability to design things better. SV folks
| should get toghether and start a startup in this space - it
| is ripe with many opportunities. One company comes in uses
| the truthful marketing to change the tune of
| GE/Haier/Samsung and others.
|
| Unfortunately, we're battling vicious hardware market
| forces and whatever you do - it won't beat the cost of
| existing players who cheapout in parts and UI, especially
| when mass produced in China. Hardware requires serious
| funding to get started and ME/EE skills are disappearing
| from the west.
|
| Physical controls are getting more and more expensive due
| to dwindling demand. Many encoders from ALPS have been
| EOL'ed.
|
| I don't think we're gonna get out of this horrible UX/UI
| rut.
| Thlom wrote:
| Looks like some connectivity is creeping into the high-end
| stuff like Gaggenau as well, but at least they still stick
| to TFT screens and not huge LCD touch displays, and it
| looks like the connectivity stuff is actually useful for
| stuff like remote diagnostics.
|
| My Samsung fridge can connect to wifi, but lord knows why.
| I can adjust the temperature, but why I would want to do
| that on my phone and not on the appliance itself I do not
| know.
| nexuist wrote:
| I disagree wholeheartedly that cockpit touchscreens (as a
| concept) are worse than physical knobs and switches. What are
| you doing in an FMC that requires you to split focus between
| operating the plane and operating the FMC? In what scenario
| are you going to need to create a new flight plan while
| pulling stunt maneuvers? When are you going to need to do
| anything involving navigation if you do not first have
| control (i.e. straight and level) of the airplane?
|
| >This is a cost saving measure disguised as a feature.
|
| Cost saving is not bad. Cost saving allows thousands of new
| aviators to enter into a field they otherwise would be price
| locked out of, and enables them to have a safe and enjoyable
| experience. Consider the AV-20 and AV-30 touch screen
| instruments:
|
| https://youtu.be/hhRrNQsBl2w
| https://uavionix.com/product/av-30-exp/
|
| For $1600 they provide in one instrument what you usually
| would need 10-13 instruments for. These instruments are not
| cheap; they all cost multi-hundred dollars to buy on top of
| drilling the holes in the cockpit and the associated
| maintenance to keep them all airworthy. If one component of
| your AV-20 fails? Who cares; throw it away and install a new
| one. It's dead simple.
|
| As for UX, physical interfaces are not immune either. There
| have even been fatal crashes attributed to putting a lever in
| a stupid place, labeling a button incorrectly, not flipping a
| switch on time, etc. Just because you may see some horrible
| touchscreen interfaces out there does not mean that
| touchscreens are horrible.
|
| The difference is that the touchscreen can receive software
| updates. At any point you can completely rearrange menus and
| control to address shortcomings in the interface. Doing this
| is practically free; the only downtime is waiting for the
| firmware update to complete. Addressing shortcomings in
| physical interfaces? You're looking at dozens to hundreds of
| man hours on top of buying the new equipment to replace the
| old.
|
| It costs Tesla $0 per vehicle to add a new button to their
| cars. It costs millions for everyone else. This is not a
| useless capability; it makes a difference every single day.
| serf wrote:
| >It costs Tesla $0 per vehicle to add a new button to their
| cars. It costs millions for everyone else. This is not a
| useless capability; it makes a difference every single day.
|
| Complaint #1 about Teslas' from owners that I have spoken
| to is that the UI/UX requires total re-learning as opposed
| to other cars, and then when the re-learning phase is
| complete, it's still difficult to operate without full
| attention.
|
| Sure, the argument 'Oh, they shouldn't be dividing their
| attention from driving.' is all well and good; but try
| convincing normal commuters that they should pull over to
| adjust the volume on their stereo. I don't think you'll win
| that one.
|
| Tactile/physical components are just easier to operate
| without know-how, and without focus being pulled to them in
| its' entirety. The linear movement of a volume jogging dial
| is intuitive; there are two diretions on both the knob and
| the mechanism which is being affected -- it's direct, and
| obvious.
|
| Touchscreens, usually, are none of these. Using a touch
| screen telephone is _not_ an eyes off exercises, but
| dialing and talking to someone on any of my old flip phones
| or Nokias _was_. There was a fundamental shift from
| worrying about being able to do one thing very well to
| doing all things OK in the cell phone world, and I think
| that it 's a shame that companies like Tesla think that
| this is a philosophy that should be pursued among auto-
| makers.
|
| Thankfully, many automakers that were dead set on touch
| interfaces have begun to realize that they're not good
| _everywhere_.
|
| Mercedes/BMW/Audi went away from buttons just to find
| themselves crawling back... and i'm okay with that. It
| makes the cars easier to operate, and less focus dividing
| on the road.
| nexuist wrote:
| > but try convincing normal commuters that they should
| pull over to adjust the volume on their stereo.
|
| But they don't have to. On a Tesla you can adjust the
| volume using the physical knob on the steering wheel;
| similarly you can activate or deactivate turn signals
| using the stalks. This is an example of touchscreens and
| physical controls working together, just like it would be
| outlandish to expect pilots to touch-and-drag on a screen
| rather than using a joystick.
|
| > Using a touch screen telephone is not an eyes off
| exercises, but dialing and talking to someone on any of
| my old flip phones or Nokias was
|
| Is it not? Can't you use Siri or Google Assistant to call
| a contact, or in the case of Tesla the on board voice
| control? Of course the voice control may suck; but that
| again can be fixed with software updates just as we've
| seen in the mobile phone space.
|
| > Mercedes/BMW/Audi went away from buttons just to find
| themselves crawling back...
|
| Because their implementations sucked. Try using an iPad
| vs whatever you found in their cars; why is the iPad so
| much better? It doesn't have to be. You could very well
| have had an iPad-like experience with your car's
| touchscreen if the manufacturer actually put in the
| effort to refine it. Instead we got menus in menus in
| menus: a horrible experience.
|
| In the aviation world, one of the most popular apps is
| ForeFlight, which enables you to navigate and perform
| common tasks on an iPad:
|
| https://www.foreflight.com/products/foreflight-mobile/
|
| It is popular precisely because you can interact with
| information on the iPad, rather than having to deal with
| the shitty UX on your on board GPS or weather instrument.
| ForeFlight is an example of touch done right, as opposed
| to doing touch for the sake of touch.
| combatentropy wrote:
| > What happened to the scratch pad and press an index key in
| FMCs? Age old UI and it is so crisp and clear, there is
| absolutely zero ambguity. Write something in a scratch pad,
| click the button where you wanna insert the data.
|
| I am not a pilot but am always interested in seeing examples
| of great user interfaces. Can you post a link or more
| information about what this device is? (Bonus: the version
| you love and the version you now hate)
| systemvoltage wrote:
| They look like this:
| https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RZawxJ6TLuY/maxresdefault.jpg
|
| The amber boxes are required fields and ---- are optional.
| The bottom line is a scratch pad. You first punch in the
| data there and push one of the index switches on the side
| to insert it in place.
|
| Yea its not beautiful to most people (I disagree) but it is
| very clear in the way it works.
|
| Here is the new one: https://www.aviationpros.com/tools-
| equipment/maintenance-it/...
| combatentropy wrote:
| Got it. Thanks!
|
| > its not beautiful to most people
|
| I think the same could be said about audio mixing boards,
| for example. I've found that interfaces for professionals
| often look ugly to the uninitiated.
|
| I've said many times that you should give an interface
| two weeks, not two seconds. Interfaces that you love
| after two seconds, you may come to hate after using it
| every day. Interfaces that are intimidating on the first
| day, you may come to love after a few weeks, and even
| more and more through the years. For me, a great example
| is vi.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > Interfaces that you love after two seconds, you may
| come to hate after using it every day
|
| I wish more people knew this tradeoff.
| gumby wrote:
| > I don't understand why people find novelty of touchscreens
| appealing. We've got to do a better job of educating
| consumers.
|
| You've answered your own question: it's the novelty. Plus
| people _have_ been educated -- by their phones.
|
| Of course HN readers know that other than a few special cases
| (of which the phone is one) the touchscreen interface is
| worse. The problem is that white goods (washers, stoves) are
| cap ex and have a lifetime measured in decades. So there are
| plenty of people who have learned the hard way, but many more
| who have not yet learned the lesson.
|
| As gratuitous touch screen is currently a fashion item
| attempting to differentiate between largely similar items. In
| another decade or so it will be considered an artifact of the
| 2020s, much like avocado-colored appliances and fold out
| stoves (we had one in the 70s) scream "1960s".
|
| But notice I said "2020s" (though touch screens have been
| around for a while), and that we had an item that screamed
| "60s" in a later decade. The latency in this sector is
| enormous.
| bluedino wrote:
| Dials are so much better. Ovens with those membrane buttons
| always crack and wear out too soon.
| wvenable wrote:
| My work coffee maker has a touch screen and the interface is
| _so_ laggy it 's insane. The manufacturer controls every aspect
| of the hardware and software so it makes no sense -- either
| make the hardware more powerful or make the software simpler!
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >The manufacturer controls every aspect of the hardware and
| software so it makes no sense
|
| Makes perfect sense, the only way you'll get a responsive
| touchscreen is if one of the engineers behind it actually
| cares about it being responsive.
|
| Otherwise the job goes down to the designer to try and
| pressure the engineers into making it responsive which there
| is a chance they might not even be skilled enough to
| understand how to make that happen. If they don't want to
| make it happen there is a hundred excuses as to why its not
| actually their fault.
|
| To make an actual good, responsive product you need people at
| every level of the implementation who care deeply about their
| work.
| oriolid wrote:
| Most importantly, you need product manager that cares about
| the UI being responsive. As an engineer it's not produce a
| responsive UI if you have time only for a barely working
| product.
| avip wrote:
| I can reproducibly deadlock my workplace coffee machine.
|
| You press the coffee type and immediately hit the "clean"
| button. Then the machine is dead with no recourse other than
| unplug. Try that trick on a Makineta.
| ericlewis wrote:
| This is where NLP would excel or even some nice regex. It
| doesn't have to be this hard.
| echoteecat wrote:
| "Computer, Coffee. Black."
| tomp wrote:
| Or just a simple "repeat last choice".
| exdsq wrote:
| That'd require typing something in though? I'd like a dial
| for strength and a button per coffee option
| charles_f wrote:
| Oh hell on earth, my work coffee machine takes no less than 6
| consecutive choices including a scroll through options and
| questions, with lag at each step of the process to select
| what you want. To make black coffee. What drink do you want?
| What roast? What size? How much sugar? How much milk? Confirm
| your selection. All that for the option than more than 1/2
| users are selecting.
| rytis wrote:
| Few years ago we were in the market for a new oven. The main
| criteria was the absence of any "smarts". Ended up getting Smeg
| gas oven (SF6341GVX if anyone's interested). So simple, so
| intuitive, and most importantly, so dumb that there's very few
| thing that could go wrong with it.
| vagab0nd wrote:
| Ah yes, the touch screen ovens. I have one. Every time I open
| it, the steam rushes out and registers the touch screen, doing
| something random each time. You never know what it'll do, it's
| exciting.
| ddingus wrote:
| Good grief! I chuckled. We are lucky hand have easily
| maintained appliances from an older era.
|
| So easy.
|
| Not as efficient or cool, but nobody wants the newer stuff.
| radley wrote:
| We have a Samsung oven. Often I'll lean a pot lid against the
| back and a random button event will be triggered (like
| setting the over to Bake). The lib doesn't press any buttons,
| it just triggers something via proximity (and steam, eh?).
|
| Half of those unplanned triggers will cause the system to
| lock up. Samsung Support's solution: unplug the oven.
| yholio wrote:
| I have an all glass Electrolux induction cooktop with touch
| buttons. The idea is not necessarily bad because it allows
| very easy cleaning in an area where gooey spills are
| frequent, very hard to clean complex features like buttons
| and knobs.
|
| However, you know what else reacts to gooey spills? Why,
| touch buttons, of course. You literally cannot boil anything
| with a lid on the front areas, since the lid will condense
| vapor that will drip towards the button area and either
| startup other areas, or turn-off the device. The same if a
| pot without a lid boils too intensely. Dangerously, it has
| other resistive areas that heat up when their respective
| touch buttons are hit with droplets.
|
| It has a lock button, but the lock button itself is placed in
| exactly the same area and has the same problem.
| puranjay wrote:
| My office (well, former office) used to have a touchscreen
| coffee maker.
|
| Why does a coffee maker even need a touchscreen? There are
| literally three options!
| Skunkleton wrote:
| I love my coffee maker so much. It has one chunky physical
| switch and no other controls or moving parts. No wifi, no
| smart bs, no pointless brew size settings, its not spying on
| me, or inflicting me with DRM. I've had it for over 10 years
| now, and have had to perform no maintenance.
| Natales wrote:
| Same. About 10 years ago I bought a Jura-Capresso super
| automatic coffee machine (S7). Very simple. 4 buttons.
| Small matrix text display with a good UX. Really nothing
| fancy. I clean it when it asks me to, and that's all the
| maintenance it needs.
|
| I recently looked at the latest models, and they've
| basically have not changed. Maybe a bit more silent. That's
| it. The rest is all connectivity and LCDs. Solutions
| looking for a problem.
| ClikeX wrote:
| I got a Saeco full-automatic machine. It has no DRM or
| spyware to speak of. All the features work through physical
| buttons.
|
| The smartest thing it does is tell me to replace my water
| filter or that I need to descale. Which is really just a
| matter of counting.
| YarickR2 wrote:
| You'll love this https://www.flairespresso.com/ Besides
| doing damn good espresso , it isn't even connected to the
| grid
| skohan wrote:
| Didn't you hear? These millenials spend all day on their
| phones! They must love touchscreens.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >Why does a coffee maker even need a touchscreen?
|
| It's probably cheaper than physical buttons and can be used
| across multiple SKUs where each one would require it's own
| set of buttons otherwise.
|
| Oh it can show you adverts too.
|
| Objectively worse in every way to the end user than a nice
| set of buttons.
| appleiigs wrote:
| I love my cuisinart ddc-1200 coffee maker. Has two knobs and
| an old fashion toggle switch. I realize it's not a pure
| mechanical switch but at least they're still using a physical
| switch.
|
| https://www.cuisinart.com/shopping/appliances/coffee_makers/.
| ..
| pwg wrote:
| > Why does a coffee maker even need a touchscreen?
|
| To differentiate it from the previous model so as to sell new
| product when the previous model that has already been
| purchased is continuing to perform its designated task. I.e.,
| to convince some segment of their customer base to throw out
| the working model from last year in exchange for the "new
| fancy" model of this year.
|
| Humans are often fooled way too many times by "oohhh... shiny
| and new and different... gotta have that...".
| vidanay wrote:
| Our old office had a $5k fancy coffee maker with touch
| screen.
|
| Nobody knew what the hell all the icons meant, and nobody
| cleaned the milk siphon so it went moldy and was thrown out
| after two weeks.
|
| I insisted that we keep the old Bunn that had an advanced UI
| with a red illuminated On-Off switch. Six months later, it
| was the only one coffee maker still in use.
| [deleted]
| paulcole wrote:
| > Nobody knew what the hell all the icons meant, and nobody
| cleaned the milk siphon so it went moldy and was thrown out
| after two weeks.
|
| What's the takeaway here?
|
| A group of spoiled adults couldn't be bothered to read an
| instruction manual or clean something?
| toast0 wrote:
| The takeaway is don't buy something that requires
| maintenance without a plan for who is going to do the
| maintenance. Coffee machines that use milk products need
| to have (at least) daily maintenance; for a commons
| coffee machine it's better to get the model without
| automated milk processing, or declare it's not to be
| hooked up or used.
| teknologist wrote:
| Fancy touch screens could potentially tell users how/when
| to clean stuff?
| ionwake wrote:
| That the UI was shit and you're the kind of person who
| endorses it.
| rytis wrote:
| I guess the takeaway is that everyday utility instruments
| should not require time invested in studying manuals to
| operate them. Imagine that every screwdriver you buy
| requires you to read 20 page document that tells you how
| to operate it. As a user all I want is "a cup of coffee".
| Why do I need to read that manual? What if I'm just a
| visitor, and was told that "the coffee machine is over
| there". Do I really want to read the manual to get a cup
| of coffee?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Fortunately, my cheapo coffee machine has only one button
| - a mechanical rocker on switch. Unfortunately, it uses
| icons for which side is "ON", so I rock it until it
| starts getting warmer.
| paulcole wrote:
| Somebody buys you a $5,000 screwdriver. Do you just use
| it wrong, not take care of it, and ruin it to make a
| point about how all you wanted was to turn a screw?
| nicoburns wrote:
| If that screwdriver makes it more difficult to turn a
| screw than a $50 screwdriver (or a $5 screwdriver)
| then... maybe?
| paulcole wrote:
| Another thing being missed here is that the users in the
| original post didn't want just a cup of coffee. If that's
| all they wanted, they wouldn't have used, not cleaned,
| and ruined the milk steaming wand.
| kempbellt wrote:
| You sell it, buy a regular screw driver, and spend the
| rest on cookies
| chronolitus wrote:
| This kind of argument always ticks me off, because it's
| technically correct, assuming your brain can care and
| focus on infinitely many things.
|
| But I know that I can't: I can care very effectively
| about one thing really well (typically oscillating
| between my job and family). Then there's space left in my
| brain to be sort-of effective at caring for three or four
| other things (social life, hobbies, sports, learning,
| personal growth, etc..). There's a little space in the
| end for things which are good, but I can't afford to
| think about more than the minimum amount necessary
| (voting, taxes, coffee machines, subscription services,
| recycling, keeping my plants alive, car/motorcycle
| maintenance, ...).
|
| So the point is, I really really value things which _don
| 't_ require me to care or RTFM, because that frees me up
| to care and focus more on my job, family and friends.
| Maybe that's being spoiled, but it feels more to me like
| a pragmatic approach to mental health and productivity.
| paulcole wrote:
| I think what's striking me as being spoiled is using the
| thing, intentionally not taking care of it, and ruining
| it.
| Reason077 wrote:
| In a communal environment such as an office, complex
| equipment that requires maintenance and reading the
| manual is always going to be problematic without someone
| who's job it is to explicitly maintain it.
|
| That's why $5000 coffee machines normally come with
| either a maintenance contract, where someone comes around
| regularly to restock/clean/maintain it, or you have a
| designated person or department within your company who's
| job it is to take care of them.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > couldn't be bothered to read an instruction manual
|
| The manual for a new car is an inch thick, and flipping
| through it while driving trying to figure out how to turn
| on the defroster is BAD BAD BAD BAD design.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Nobody knew what the hell all the icons meant
|
| Still can't figure out how to turn on the defroster in a
| new car. My old truck was simple - turn the knob to
| "DEFROST". My cat feeder invented all its own icons, trying
| to get it set up is a nightmare. I keep the instruction
| manual next to it.
|
| I hate Steve Jobs for convincing the world that written
| words are bad and random cute pictures are cool. Please,
| bring back "DELETE".
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| Did Steve Jobs really do that? Unless you mean going from
| a text based CLI to a graphic UI but even those had
| plenty of words, especially those well thought out.
|
| When Jobs had to choose a washing machine for his family,
| he chose a Miele with plenty of words on it:
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2011/03/07/how-steve-jobs-picks-a-
| washer...
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Did Steve Jobs really do that?
|
| Famously, using a trash can instead of "DELETE".
|
| A Mac evangelist came to my workplace shortly after the
| Mac was released. His entire presentation was about how
| icons were far better than words. He asserted the
| function of the icons was obvious, and so needed no
| explanation. He passed around a sheet of paper with a
| bunch of icons on it, and said isn't that right?
|
| This all fell apart when nobody could figure out what the
| box of Kleenex icon was. He was visibly flustered by
| this, eventually exclaiming that it meant "PRINT".
|
| This was all made worse by the practice of copyrighting
| icons so every company invented their same-only-different
| icons.
|
| But, the Mac won anyway and PRINT and DEFROST became
| hopelessly uncool, unhip and old-fashioned.
|
| I predict that, like all hieroglyphic writing systems,
| icons will eventually evolve to have associated sounds
| with them, then they'll morph into simple pen strokes,
| then we'll be back to a new phonetic alphabet.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Why does a coffee maker even need a touchscreen? There are
| literally three options!
|
| What's the option besides on and off, keep warm?
| coldtea wrote:
| Depending on the coffee maker there can be a dozen or more
| options. A home espresso maker might adjust how many
| "shots" to drip, different temperatures, adding milk or
| not, etc.
| vidanay wrote:
| Coffee, Cappuccino, Latte, Frappe
|
| All of the above multiplied by small, medium, large.
|
| All of the above multiplied by weak, normal, strong, and
| double shot.
|
| All of the above multiplied by zone defense, man to
| coverage, and missile command.
| [deleted]
| Skunkleton wrote:
| Is it even a coffee maker if it doesn't run DOOM?
| bashinator wrote:
| So, four selector dials?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Or one(1) touchscreen
| maneesh wrote:
| On, Off, Brew. On without (or after) Brew keeps it warm.
| avian wrote:
| Had a similar experience. Also, the guy with the desk closest
| to the machine quickly got fed up of everyone asking "how do
| I just get a normal coffee out of this?"
| rhacker wrote:
| 3 options? I think on all the coffee pots I've owned it's
| just a POWER button. How can a company replace that with a
| screen to be better?
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| "Spouse" - hahaha, right...
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Ovens are OK until you have to clean them after thanksgiving.
| benttoothpaste wrote:
| My mom's oven requires regular power cycle because it's touch
| UI locks up so often.
| Natales wrote:
| I think we can't underestimate that one of the biggest
| problems with all this is the poor quality of the software.
|
| This is particularly shameful in devices that are so simple.
| Basically finite-state machines, something that everyone in
| CS should learn in 101 classes.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Is that easy to do?
|
| My oven is hardwired into the mains supply. To power cycle
| it, I would need to turn off the circuit at the breaker
| panel. I don't think this is at all unusual.
| dasb wrote:
| I use a dynamic range compressor when dealing with unpredictable
| output (watching Youtube videos, Zoom calls).
|
| On Linux, I use this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=typM_AQUzi4
|
| On Windows, I tick the "Loudness Equalization" option in the
| output device's menu.
|
| I disable it when I listen to music.
| bashinator wrote:
| Do you have a text link for the linux option?
| lioeters wrote:
| https://github.com/gotbletu/shownotes/blob/master/pulseaudio.
| ..
| totaldude87 wrote:
| I can continue this rant for making physical buttons mandatory in
| many places, MAINLY because they do only one thing(mostly) but
| they do it pretty damn well AND its reliable as hell!
|
| like a knob to adjust the shower temperature or a knob/button to
| adjust the car volume (in some cases these avoid accidents too)..
| I know where those keys are, eyes closed!!!
|
| Physical buttons are becoming a luxury now a days :( , and don't
| shove in the "hey its software age / touch screen
| age/minimalistic age" here :|
|
| Minimalism doesn't mean , remove ultra necessary stuff..
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Just like your computer doesn't come with a brand name webcam
| out of the box, it doesn't come with a dedicated volume
| controller out of the box. Doesn't mean you can't just add one
| for cheap: they're cheaper than a good webcam and have big-ass
| low-friction volume knobs as well as dedicated instant-mute
| buttons.
|
| If that's what you need in your life, you already have brand-
| name options (like Behringer and Mackie). But most people, of
| course, don't.
|
| (I would venture a guess and say neither you nor I are most
| people, which is why I have an NI Komplete Audio 6 sitting
| under my monitor right now for that purpose)
| [deleted]
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I wanted to love the touch bar, but the current implementation is
| a failure -- it needs to be pressure sensitive. A light brushing
| of a physical key doesn't register and a good implementation of
| the touch bar would behave the same way.
|
| In the meantime, I would pay extra to the replace the touch bar
| with the physical buttons we used to have. I've gotten so tired
| of accidentally hitting the touch bar that I have disabled it as
| much as possible -- I have it configured so holding the fn button
| brings it back, making it much more difficult to accidentally
| trigger something. Of course, as the article mentions, this makes
| it even more difficult to trigger the sound controls when they're
| uncomfortably loud, but that's still a trade off I'm willing to
| make to avoid so many false positive interactions with the touch
| bar.
| grishka wrote:
| Also the delay the author mentions seems to be related to the
| touch bar. I have a 2012 macbook with actual physical buttons
| where the touch bar would be, and hitting F10 mutes the audio
| immediately.
|
| The bigger problem, though, is that modern web browsers put
| website developers before users. It's a _user agent_. It should
| allow the user to control everything. I honestly wish they
| asked for permission per-domain before a website is allowed to
| use <video> and <audio> tags.
| DanielBMarkham wrote:
| Anything that goes into or comes out of the computer needs a
| physical kill switch. I have no idea why this is even a question.
|
| Best I can come up with, the changes were so incremental and
| advertised as features. There was no natural stopping point, so
| vendors kept going.
| armada651 wrote:
| The real design flaw here is not conveniently being able to set
| the volume per application. Most systems are able to do this, but
| don't expose that functionality conveniently.
|
| In my opinion the volume keys should only be adjusting the volume
| for the application/website currently in focus.
| toast0 wrote:
| > In my opinion the volume keys should only be adjusting the
| volume for the application/website currently in focus.
|
| If that extends to the mute button, that's definitely not the
| right thing for this application. If I can't turn off the
| _fine_ noise before I find the _fine_ application that 's
| making it, I'm just going to pull the _fine_ power.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| You can do this conveniently in windows using the standard
| mixer and in Linux using pavucontrol (that is a UI utility).
| heavyset_go wrote:
| You can do this by default with Plasma Desktop on Linux.
| theon144 wrote:
| No, the real design flaw is just what he describes. What you're
| saying, while alleviating some instances of the problem, still
| fundamentally allows for these kinds of ear-
| destroying/vicinity-blasting situations. The lack of an
| unambiguous, direct, easily accessible kill-switch for
| something such as audio is an oversight no matter the auxiliary
| convenience.
| wongarsu wrote:
| It's just one click more on windows (instead of left click on
| speaker icon you have to right click -> open volume mixer).
| It's incredibly useful, but browsers bring it to its limits: I
| can only adjust the volume of the entire browser, not
| individual tabs. And the solutions browsers have come up with
| are worse (only mute/unmute) and don't scale beyond 20 tabs or
| so.
| lopmotr wrote:
| No way. You'll never remember which thing you last set to
| silent or too loud and next time it'll come out surprisingly
| wrong. You might not know which window is in focus, and it
| might not be the one playing the sound. If you do accidentally
| turn up, say your web browser while trying to adjust your media
| player, you'll never know how much too loud it will be until
| next time some autoplaying video starts. It would be a
| frustrating mess. Just change the volume when you turn the knob
| without any stupid computer logic trying to get in your way.
| JD557 wrote:
| Since the user is complaining about the way Mac OS handles the
| audio buttons, I'm surprised that he doesn't mention the problems
| with HDMI.
|
| I don't understand why the OS disables the audio controls of HDMI
| outputs. If I press the volume down button, I want the volume to
| go down. Instead, I get a "I can't let you do that" warning!
|
| This is particularly bad if I have my headphones connected to the
| display (I have both my desktop and laptop connected to the same
| display, keyboard and mouse, being able to share the same
| headphones would be pretty convenient).
| mrkwse wrote:
| macOS disables the audio control of HDMI outputs because that
| is what the HDMI specification expects/defines.
|
| If you think of all the devices that output via HDMI, Windows
| PCs are the outlier (afaik, not sure how Linux handles it) in
| allowing separate volume controls beyond those on the output
| device.
|
| Satellite set top boxes, media streaming devices (e.g. Apple TV
| - I realise NVidia Shield and some Chromecast apps do have some
| software volume control), games consoles, and Blu-Ray players
| will all output a fixed audio signal, expecting the TV/AV
| amplifier to handle volume.
| MereInterest wrote:
| It's still a really poor decision, because it doesn't extend
| well to having multiple sources. For example, my tv is
| connected both to my media computer, and to a Nintendo
| Switch. If the computer is active, then the volume should be
| around 50 on a 0-100 scale. If the Switch is active, then the
| volume should be around 10 to get the same level of output. I
| would love to have a way to tell the Switch that it should
| adjust the volume being sent, such that both it and the
| computer default to about the same volume.
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| Then those devices are to blame. Disabling the volume
| control is common for all digital outputs, not just HDMI.
| There's an absolute scale for volume in the digital domain,
| so there should be no vast disparity from different devices
| unless they're doing something dumb.
|
| Analog sources could vary in volume because they provided
| voltage across an analog input. When CD players came out,
| they had notoriously "hot" outputs, meaning physically
| higher voltage. Not so with digital connections.
| closeparen wrote:
| The average TV owner doesn't know the phrase "gain
| structure" - they are going to set the cable box at 5 and
| the TV at 100, and then call customer service for the TV
| because it sounds terrible and won't get loud enough.
| nebulous1 wrote:
| > Satellite set top boxes, media streaming devices (e.g.
| Apple TV - I realise NVidia Shield and some Chromecast apps
| do have some software volume control), games consoles, and
| Blu-Ray players will all output a fixed audio signal,
|
| I genuinely think that statement might be false in more cases
| than it's true. Certainly in devices I've used personally,
| the majority have allowed you to control the output volume
| directly.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Linux can control volume on HDMI just fine. I guess it's my
| expectation that on a desktop, I can control volume that the
| desktop emits, whereas with some appliance like an Apple TV
| or game consoles are _solely_ built for streaming to a TV,
| and don't have keyboard input etc, and for which it makes
| much more sense to just disable that control.
| SSLy wrote:
| And so does Windows 10, BTW. (let you adjust HDMI vol)
| adrianmonk wrote:
| This is what HDMI CEC[1] is for, right?
|
| The devices are supposed to coordinate on which device will
| output audio (TV, sound system, etc.), and they are supposed
| to send control signals (volume up, volume down, and mute
| button presses) in a channel over the HDMI connection so that
| whatever device is playing audio can adjust its volume.
|
| Of course this assumes all devices involved implement CEC
| (which is optional) and that the implementations aren't full
| of bugs. But the point is HDMI does have a solution for this
| in theory.
|
| CEC is how I can punch the volume control on my Samsung TV
| remote and the volume on my Denon AV receiver changes. (And
| it's not the TV remote transmitting IR to the receiver.
| Within the first 5-10 seconds of powering on, pushing volume
| up on the TV remote makes the TV try to adjust its own volume
| even though it's not playing audio. Then it comes to its
| senses and realizes it should be forwarding that via CEC.)
|
| ---
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control
| JD557 wrote:
| >Set top boxes
|
| Maybe that's a regional thing, but I think that all set top
| boxes (and DTV decoders) that I used had it's own remote with
| adjustable volume.
| closeparen wrote:
| My Fire TV and my old cable box remotes both had volume
| controls on them, but they were programmed to emit IR
| signals directly to the TV.
| mdoms wrote:
| Ok? The Windows way is better. It just is.
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| My old IBM ThinkPads operate exactly as he described, the
| embedded controller immediately instructs the hardware amplifier
| to adjust its volume or power down.
|
| My slightly less old Lenovo X201t does everything in software,
| and while my computer is still groggy after waking from suspend
| it often takes 10-15 seconds for volume changes to take effect.
| noxer wrote:
| The mute button work instantly in a X201t. I can be overridden
| by software that is however wanted and useful especially on the
| tablet version where you can cover the mute button with the
| screen unmute must be possible with the pen/finger.
| devenblake wrote:
| I use a T420 and besides needing to do a bit of configuration
| in Arch (just needed to check keybindings in i3wm and install
| PulseAudio) it works exactly how OP would want - though it's in
| software, not hardware (so if you use console a lot things will
| get ugly). I press the mute button, it's muted. I plug a
| headset into the audio jack, it remembers my previous settings.
| I'll be using this computer until time pries it away from my
| fingers.
|
| Edit: forgot to mention, it has a __physical microphone button
| __too. It 's just amazing for Discord and Zoom calls.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Old computer had a lot of things we don't have toady anymore.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Old computer had a lot of things we don 't have toady
| anymore_
|
| On Macs, you could highlight a number in any document or
| screen, option-click, and have your Bluetooth-connected flip
| phone dial it. This was pre-iPhone.
|
| I never understood why that went away.
| kristopolous wrote:
| BlackBerrys did that too.
|
| It went away because phones moved from productivity to
| recreation devices.
|
| You can be productive with smartphones but they're clearly
| designed for entertainment
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Physical audio kill switches are a nice idea, but if you didn't
| wire them yourself, how do you know they aren't merely claimed to
| be physical but are actually just setting a flag in the operating
| system to ignore the physical input from the speaker?
| andrewfong wrote:
| It's much more of an issue without headphones. Anyone who ever
| their laptop start playing audio in a meeting knows.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >I hit the mute button on my MacBook Pro Touchbar, and it took a
| solid two seconds for it to register. My ears were ringing
| throughout the whole call. This is unacceptable.
|
| The USB-C era MacBook Pros had some serious degradation in the
| audio department. The previous much loved generation, you plug
| headphones in the audio system switches to them so fast it's
| perceivable as instant, the USB-C era there is at best a 0.5
| delay and at worst a 2 second delay.
|
| During this delay anything you change volume wise will actually
| apply to the previous setting not the new setting, so the usual
| scenario where you're in the office you have the speakers on
| mute, plug in headphones then you don't hear anything because of
| the delay so you hit volume up will actually set your speakers
| off mute. Later on you unplug your headphones and your laptops
| speakers are then blaring out whatever you were playing instead
| of remaining on mute.
|
| This situation would never happen in the pre-USB-C MBP because
| the headphone switch was instant, it felt like a hardwired
| connection. Like a lot of things on the USB-C MacBooks
| interactions like sound and power feel more like interfacing with
| a what people may call a "device" rather than a computer, there
| are tangible layers that have to handshake between your real
| world action and the hardware catching up sometimes seconds
| later.
|
| (This is all the non-touchbar model, so it's not just that)
| harha wrote:
| The delay might be there to slowly get us used to the no-port
| era of phones to come and the speed of switching headphones
| from one device to another using bluetooth.
| [deleted]
| joshuaheard wrote:
| The Bose Companion 20 multimedia speaker system for computers has
| a desktop control pod to plug in your headphones that is for
| volume control and an on/off button.
| chronolitus wrote:
| A master and a student are sitting in a forest, reflecting. Two
| men walk by, vehemently discussing whether a household item's
| design is acceptable.
|
| After they pass, the student tells the master: "The opinionated
| user-experience enthusiast is right. Every wrong decision is not
| just a single day ruined, time wasted, or train of thought lost,
| but thousands. However, the pragmatician is also right: it is not
| reasonable to expect every object we use to attain UX perfection.
| They are built by flawed people with real constraints. Tell me
| master, which one of those men is closer to the Way?"
|
| The master thinks for a while, then gives an answer. But the
| student does not hear it, because he forgot to turn off his
| Bose(tm) noise-cancelling headphones.
| lopmotr wrote:
| The 2 seconds would be a bug or maybe a design fault in his
| computer. I use a big USB volume knob [1] which is also a mute
| button and it always responds instantaneously as far as I can
| tell. I just bash it when an unexpected video starts playing. It
| was hard to find but these things do exist and are refreshingly
| convenient compared to whatever fiddly volume controls laptops
| always have.
|
| [1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32649442146.html Added link
| to answer reply question
| rsync wrote:
| What specific volume control knob do you use?
| Tarsul wrote:
| I agree with him. Also, why is there no microphone mute button
| (or shortcut) integrated in windows? Seems like a must-have
| nowadays.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| That has been driving me crazy. I did manage to write an
| applescript toggle that i associated with my F1 key. I never
| really trust it, though.
| theon144 wrote:
| Absolutely, especially since software like Zoom allows the call
| host to unmute the microphone on your (!) end.
|
| It's unsurprising and possible with any kind of software mute
| of course, but still significant enough for me to seek out a
| solution - I use https://sourceforge.net/projects/micmute/ but
| it's not without its hitches, unfortunately :/
| wongarsu wrote:
| My headset has a mic kill switch [1]. It's very useful, and
| I'm honestly surprised that it isn't more common (especially
| since volume control is a fairly standard feature on
| headsets)
|
| 1: https://steelseries.com/gaming-headsets/arctis-7 The red
| switch on the back; when muted the front of the mic shines
| red.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| > software like Zoom allows the call host to unmute the
| microphone on your (!) end.
|
| Does it really allow that? In my experience it only shows a
| pop-up saying "The host would like you to unmute your
| microphone" and requiring me to confirm. Maybe there's some
| kind of setting for it?
| paxys wrote:
| It does not. The host can only mute you, not unmute.
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| > _I hit the mute button on my MacBook Pro Touchbar, and it took
| a solid two seconds for it to register. My ears were ringing
| throughout the whole call. This is unacceptable. Well-engineered
| mute buttons on keyboards shouldn't need to go to software, they
| should immediately send a signal to the motherboard's DAC--
| ideally on a separate wire or connection--to say terminate this
| signal. Then it's less of a concern if it takes the OS a few
| seconds to react to the change, because our ears have been
| spared._
|
| "Should not need to go to software?" I'm not sure.
|
| I have a Yamaha AV receiver on my desk. The huge volume knob has
| the best user experience than any software-based solution, unlike
| menus or hotkeys, it's always in my reach and instantaneously
| responses to my inputs. It has smooth mechanical damping, giving
| a satisfying touch and feel. I can immediately turn the volume
| down in a second if there's misbehaving, non-normalized loud
| audio. I did it from time to time.
|
| On the other hand, I clearly know it's software-driven. The knob
| is nothing but an user interface. It's an optical rotary encoder,
| not a real potentiometer. When the knob is turned, it chops a
| beam of light, and an optical sensor converts the optical pulse
| to a digital signal, which is then sent to a GPIO pin on the
| application processor in the AV receiver. The firmware on the
| application processor receives an IRQ, then commands the DAC via
| the system bus (could be I2C) to increase or decrease the volume
| in a 0.5 dB step. It's 100% software driven, not hardware driven.
| The software can fail, yet the software never let me down.
|
| We can get another conclusion from this: Special-purpose
| computing is more reliable than general-purpose computing. The
| operating system handles everything, and has numerous failure
| modes due to its unpredictability. Furthermore, it's in a
| constant state of change to bring the "Next Great Things", who
| cares if the audio mixer or the TouchBar becomes a bit slow? An
| AV receiver only needs to do one thing, so it can do this well.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Also need physical write-enable switches for ROMs, and physical
| mike and camera enabling switches.
| onion-soup wrote:
| Nothing will ever come close to convenience of analogue volume
| knobs. They give both immediate action and infinite granular
| control. Same goes for kitchen stoves. All the modern touch
| controls with step-based control is the absolute nightmare in
| terms of UI.
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| My Topping DAC/Amp has an optical rotary encoder for volume
| control and it is awful, it will randomly jump 10x the amount
| of steps you have rotated it, sometimes even in the opposite
| direction. There's something to be said for a good old
| fashioned potentiometer.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| It's kinda ridiculous that seemingly three quarters of the
| people who write graycode decoder firmware get it wrong,
| despite the correct methods being publicly available with
| sample code since 15-20 years at least.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Sounds like clicky 3-pin A/B bi-phase type though. I've
| done stupid things and tried to read that and two buttons
| with single ADC. That jumped around when Vref fluctuates.
| jope12 wrote:
| An "optical rotary encoder"? I doubt it. I bet it's a
| mechanical rotary encoder. And that it randomly jumps means
| their code for reading the encoder sucks. Something like that
| should not happen if properly implemented. I will take a
| rotary encoder over a potentiometer every time.
| YarickR2 wrote:
| until it wears off or catches something between the slider
| and the base
| lopmotr wrote:
| Potentiometers have that problem too when they get worn,
| which they always do if they also double as on/off switch
| like on most cheap radios.
| dheera wrote:
| They could use something like an AS5048A for 14-bit
| (effectively analog to humans) magnetic position sensing
| instead of a potentiometer or variable inductor.
|
| Considering they already need digital control circuitry to
| interface to a touch screen it shouldn't be significantly
| cost-prohibitive to use that to make knobs that are immune
| to oxidization.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Kinda costly? I wonder if a dead simple 10kO B-curve
| potentiometer would do, though they drift a lot
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| Yes, I keep a can of contact cleaner around to get rid of
| the oxidisation.
| crispyporkbites wrote:
| For hobs/stove tops, touch controls are way easier to clean. I
| spend more time cleaning than adjusting the controls so to me
| it's a better trade off
| dheera wrote:
| For most analog knobs you can pull the knobs off and throw
| them in the dishwasher.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Every microwave I have ever owned have been under $30, purely
| because I didn't want to go digital. Analogue egg-timer knob -
| good enough accuracy, and instantly pliable
| combatentropy wrote:
| I went the opposite way and bought a $240 Panasonic
| commercial microwave, because I also wanted it to last. It's
| just a little big.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| I have never seen or even heard of a microwave breaking.
| auxym wrote:
| Consumer level microwaves in shared areas, like in
| workplaces or schools, tend to break real fast. I've seen
| some not last a year.
| _jal wrote:
| I have a cheapo digital that suits my needs well enough. It
| is ancient and keeps working, which is all I ask of it.
|
| But the UI is utterly absurd. The default presentation is to
| select timer or cook. Who uses a timer anywhere nearly as
| much as the cook function? It is like a car always first
| asking if you'd rather drive or pop the hood.
|
| One more button press has never been enough to annoy me
| anywhere nearly enough to replace it. But I wonder how many
| times I've pressed it.
| liability wrote:
| At least microwaves with digital controls actually have full
| numpads. Every digital-control oven I've ever had the
| misfortune of using only has increment/decrement buttons.
| Want to set the oven to 450F? Have fun pressing the increment
| button _twenty times_ for five degree increments starting at
| 350F. It 's an abomination.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| The best microwave I've ever used didn't have any numpad at
| all. Instead, it has a horizontal sliding touch pad. It
| sounds stupid, but it works SO WELL. Move your finger
| slowly and it increments one second at a time, move it
| quickly and it jumps faster. On the front there are only
| two buttons (stop/clear and start/+30sec) and the touch
| slider and screen.
|
| If you open the door there are a few more buttons for
| setting power levels and a timer, and the only useful
| preset button (popcorn), but none of the useless ones.
|
| This LG NeoChef model: https://www.lg.com/ca_en/microwave-
| ovens/lg-LMC1575BD
| icelancer wrote:
| This is such a weird thing that we accept as normal.
| Completely agree it's absurd that on the microwave we have
| a numpad and on an oven we have up/down arrows with an
| arbitrary starting point (mine is 350 degF).
| netsharc wrote:
| 350 degF might not be so arbritarily chosen, it's
| probably a good starting point, then the user would only
| have to press down or up a few times to reach the cooking
| temperature they want for their food.
| auxym wrote:
| Oh yeah and the button will probably give out after 3
| years, at which point you have to replace the entire
| "timer" (control panel PCB), which is about half the price
| of the oven.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| I have a EUR400 microwave and it's great. It has one big
| rotary button that will set the time, press start and it
| goes. You don't need any of the other buttons to simply
| microwave stuff. What those buttons do give me is an oven and
| steamer. It's not my main oven but having an extra oven can
| be convenient and the steamer function is great. Zero effort
| perfect rice every time. Toss some veggies and spices on a
| tray, steam for a couple of minutes and you have an easy,
| healthy and tasty side dish.
|
| Another great feature is that it doesn't have a rotating
| platform, I have square plates so that's also super
| convenient.
|
| I get buying a simple microwave if that's all you need it to
| do, but don't dismiss the models with more bells and
| whistles, they have their place as well.
| MawKKe wrote:
| Yeah. It's one thing that does not need improving.
|
| My parents bought a new microwave with all kinds of fancy
| digital features that nobody uses 99% of the time. In
| addition to being really difficult to use, it also makes a
| very loud BEEEP on every button press. Insanity.
| somehnguy wrote:
| Beeping appliances is one thing I can't stand. They're
| always too loud and rarely offer any adjustment or mute
| functionality.
|
| I got a new microwave recently. It beeped on every button
| press, 5 beeps after a cook cycle, no way to mute (yeah, I
| checked). Within a day of owning it I took it apart and
| ripped the beeper off the board. Problem solved.
| voltagex_ wrote:
| Weren't you worried about damaging the microwave
| shielding?
| genewitch wrote:
| I recently went on a crusade to pull the piezo buzzers
| out of all my UPS... because, when the power's out, i
| don't need a sound to tell me, do i?
| scotty79 wrote:
| I kinda like step-based control of my stove. It makes things
| predictable. Although I'd probably prefer knob with numeric
| indicator to exactly what value it is set.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I kinda like step-based control of my stove_
|
| I hate it on my oven. It defaults to 200 degrees, and to
| change it to 450 takes almost a full minute as it plods along
| in five-degree increments.
| pengaru wrote:
| Did you RTFM?
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Every oven for the last 65 years has been easy to figure
| out by reading the labels on the controls. It wasn't
| until the javascript generation started designing them
| that you needed to read a manual to preheat it to a
| temperature and set a timer.
| lopmotr wrote:
| That's a different problem from the typical rotary encoder
| used on most modern knobs that can respond instantly but
| still has discrete steps.
| rv-de wrote:
| Talking about knobs on stoves and UX - I never understood why
| American stoves have the knobs on a panel at the back of the
| stove instead of at the front. Isn't it inconvenient having to
| reach over hot, frying, steaming pots and pans?
| ddingus wrote:
| Yes. It is stupid but cheap, IMHO.
|
| Still, those are better than buttons.
| swimfar wrote:
| Most likely for safety reasons. They are less likely for
| children to play with them or people to bump into them.
|
| But ovens with controls in the front are definitely available
| in the US. So you can have whatever style you want.
| vaccinator wrote:
| digital is not all bad... if I could type 3 numbers to get a
| temperature on my stove, I would be happy... but they went a
| different route where you need to push a button 20 times to get
| the temperature that you want or you need to hold it for x
| seconds...
| adrianmonk wrote:
| To add insult to injury, my oven has membrane buttons, and of
| course the temperature/time up button has gotten the most
| wear, so it doesn't work quite right.
|
| If I want to set a timer for an hour, theoretically I hold it
| and it repeats and jumps in increments of 5, but it's too
| flaky sometimes. So I alternate between trying to get that to
| work and just pressing the button a zillion times.
| ngold wrote:
| I have a big round audio knob that is insanely handy. I can
| move it around wherever I'm at. A mouse and audio knob makes
| watching or listening to something very nice.
| thotsBgone wrote:
| I'm a young person: I used an analogue washer/dryer for the
| first time after moving out of my parents' house, and I was
| impressed by how well designed they were compared to the
| digital piece of shit my parents had. Plus the digital washer
| had several software bugs which made it sometimes stop washing
| mid-cycle, but the analogue ones have never failed.
| lopmotr wrote:
| I was careful to buy a benchtop oven and microwave with
| mechanical knobs. They just work instantly and intuitively as
| well as being cheaper than all the stupid electronic button and
| display nonsense. I can even use the oven's timer to time other
| cooking things because it's clockwork and works without the
| oven being turned on.
| nerplederple wrote:
| I used to be able to control every element of the audio and
| HVAC in my old pickup truck by feel without ever taking my eyes
| off the road. Now, half the vehicles I sit in require taking
| eyes off the road to even find the control let alone locate the
| visual-only position of that control's feedback.
| ummonk wrote:
| The one thing I like about the Touch Bar is sliding rather than
| step based controls for volume and brightness. Still woefully
| inferior to tactile knobs / wheels though.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Cooking on gas is much more pleasurable than most electric
| stoves. There's much more "feel" to control the heat
| dheera wrote:
| I use an induction stove and it is even more pleasurable than
| gas in terms of the speed of response of the pot. Response is
| literally instant because the _pot_ is the source of heat,
| and not something external. They are also by far the safest
| since the hottest thing in the _entire system_ is the bottom
| of the pot, which is usually at about 100-200 C depending on
| what you 're cooking, which is usually not hot enough to
| start a fire. Compare to a electric stove whose element
| reaches upwards of 800 C or a gas stove which has an actual
| open flame which can easily catch nearby flammable vapors,
| hair, or clothing on fire if not careful.
|
| Gas stoves are the next most responsive because the fire
| doesn't "store" heat; only the grill does.
|
| Finally electric stoves are the slowest-responding because
| the coil stores quite a bit of heat even after power is cut,
| and that heat continues to transfer into the pot. Conversely,
| when starting them up, it takes quite a while to heat up the
| element hot enough to only then transfer some of that heat
| into the pot.
|
| You do want a quality induction stove with an analog knob for
| the best experience, though. The low-end induction stoves
| typically have touch-step controls and pulsating simmer,
| which IMO is still way better than an electric stove if
| you're on a budget, and still responds faster than gas stoves
| but lacks the fine-grained simmer controls that some of the
| higher-end models do, if that is important to you.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I don't mind cooking on induction but I like to manage the
| heat by moving the actual pan i.e. if I am cooking bacon I
| will hold the pan edge up to catch the oil and concentrate
| the heat up
| Zitrax wrote:
| There exists modular cooktops where you can mix and match
| and thus get both gas and induction.
| sib wrote:
| I hate induction stoves (cooktops) because they seem to hit
| intermediate temperatures by cycling the power on and off
| rather than having a continuous intermediate setting.
|
| (It's possible I've only ever encountered crappy induction
| cooktops...)
| downut wrote:
| I cook on a 30 yo gas range with all high capacity burners
| and regular knobs. The response is nonlinear: there's a big
| jump in flame intensity as you pass through nominal "low"
| to "medium". In practice I don't look at the knobs at all,
| I can fine tune the heat by looking directly at the size of
| the flame. My visual judgement is instantaneous. The
| results are stellar throughout the range.
|
| When I travel, for instance to cook for the inlaws on
| holidays, I have to spend time physically correlating how
| hot each of the burners is for its particular settings. It
| seems to vary between each individual burner, which are
| different sizes. The way I correlate is to use my bare
| fingers to quickly touch the bottom of the pan. Or I lift
| the pan up and touch the bottom there. This seems
| suboptimal. When I travel to AirBnBs, induction ranges are
| all the rage. Same process. I suppose if you're boiling a
| pot of water, the induction speed is great. If you're
| making something sensitive like a hollaindaise, lordy what
| a PITA, in my experience.
|
| I make delicate sauces like hollaindaise reliably and
| speedily on my nominal 15,000 BTU gas range. I have had the
| family twiddling fingers more than once waiting on me to
| get results from an induction burner. Same burner is an
| outstanding large volume frier.
|
| Now I get that the induction technology is safer, but then
| I use a big chainsaw with a real chain to cut down trees on
| my property. Chainsaws are highly dangerous and
| exceptionally useful. Similarly I raised up a child that
| learned to cook quite sophisticated things on that big gas
| range. She was also using very sharp 12" knives from an
| early age. There can be a deep pleasure in "be here now",
| paying attention to your tools, using them competently and
| safely.
| yitchelle wrote:
| Touch screens in cars are really a bad move. Having to navigate
| it while driving down the freeway, or even your suburban
| streets is unbelievable risky. Knobs and push buttons with
| tactile feedback are still the best options.
| threatofrain wrote:
| I don't trust anyone except Apple to do touch screen
| experiences well.
| appleiigs wrote:
| Go buy a fancy Apple Watch and jump in a pool. You won't be
| able to start or stop the timer with wet fingers.
| neilalexander wrote:
| A limitation of capacitive touchscreens in general. A
| resistive display would be worse in just about every other
| application though.
|
| Incidentally, you can press both the crown and the side
| button at the same time to pause and resume a workout even
| when the display is water-locked.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Now imagine that another company designs that experience.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Ny Pebble is fully operational when wet, or even
| underwater. Oh wait, that's because it has _physical
| buttons_.
|
| (Never got the point of a touchscreen on a smartwatch.
| The surface is too small to be useful.)
| mindslight wrote:
| The biggest problem with "modern" digital controls, the lag, is
| completely avoidable. One can easily design a system using a
| microcontroller that responds within 10ms, which gives the
| appearance of being instantaneous. It's all just shoddy
| software engineering using bloated frameworks and poor
| languages, and consumers that don't know any better. Somehow
| we've had this problem going on a decade, and nobody has seen
| fit to shape up their development process.
| closeparen wrote:
| What languages and frameworks are people using in consumer
| electronics?
| mindslight wrote:
| I have no idea these days, but it's clearly something that
| takes 100ms+ to process an input event (java? html? flash?
| all of the above?). Responsive encoders/buttons/displays
| were doable 15 years ago with 5 MIPS microcontrollers in C.
| Driving an HD44780 character LCD is easier than a full
| raster display, which explains the appeal of the bloat, but
| quick sprites etc should be completely doable after two
| decades of progress.
| GoToRO wrote:
| Autosar for automotive. The delay is a requirement and not
| really due to the framework.
| mindslight wrote:
| Um, what? What kind of requirement of that? The UI lag on
| modern cars is a safety hazard.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| With one specific exception - stereo volume knobs often -
| virtually always - suffer from stereo imbalance, where the
| volume of the left and right channels are slightly different.
|
| Some high-end amplifiers offer a relay based volume system
| where the knob simply switches resistors in and out of the
| audio path using relays to adjust the volume, and although this
| does result in "steps" of volume, it does mean the stereo
| balance is always perfect.
| playpause wrote:
| I don't mind if it uses volume steps under the hood, as long
| as it uses ~100 steps, not 10.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| That's a problem mostly caused by using passive log-taper
| circuits, instead of alternate active volume control circuits
| that use linear-taper pots, which have sufficiently good
| tolerance and ganging in low-cost dual units. But these
| circuits require 1-2 op amps per channel and those 20 cents
| are too much in three-figure hardware.
|
| Ganged log-taper pots have something like +-3 or +-6 dB
| ganging mismatch even for relatively high-end (10-15 EUR ea)
| units.
| qppo wrote:
| I've seen/heard this in $100 units from Schiit. Not to
| mention the poor hand soldering job that cost more money
| because a human did it in America.
| SSLy wrote:
| You get what it says on the packaging
| atoav wrote:
| There are even more solutions to this problem:
|
| One is to convert the L/R Stereo image to Mid/Side do the
| volume control and then convert it back to L/R. This way any
| mismatch of the potentiometer would translate into a change
| in stereo width instead of shifting the image around.
|
| Another solution would be to use one pot as a voltage
| divider, buffer that voltage and use the resulting current to
| drive two Blackmer VCA ICs (e.g. THAT2181).
| liability wrote:
| Things like this make me glad I'm not an audiophile. What you
| describe seems very annoying, but thankfully I've never
| noticed anything like it.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| I don't think there's much benefit to being an audiophile,
| unless you're so rich you can actually enjoy your insanely
| expensive setup in your sound-proofed room with your
| specially-purchased lossless audio sources. Luckily, very
| few people who claim to be audiophiles can actually hear
| the difference in a blind test.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508
| /...
| auxym wrote:
| Heh, back in the day we purchased those "CD" things and
| they were lossless. Actually, they didn't employ any
| compression at all!
| Natales wrote:
| Don't judge all of us audiophiles with a blanket
| statement. Yes, measured hearing capacity is definitely a
| key metric to know (why invest in super tweeters when you
| can't hear past 18KHz for example), but room acoustics is
| probably the very next thing I'd look at.
|
| I've seen so much "expensive" gear in rooms that are
| absolutely horrid in terms of sound reflections. Just a
| carpet, curtains or a couple of cheap sound panels can
| make wonders in improving sound if you know just a bit of
| the physics of sound. You don't have to invest in super
| expensive equipment to do that.
|
| Furthermore, there is a healthy DIY community these days,
| where you can build your own speakers, cables,
| amplifiers, etc, with very little effort, and get a lot
| of enjoyment in the process and with the product. I built
| a set of LX521.4 and LX Mini speakers from Siegfried
| Linkwitz [0] and it changed completely the way I listen
| to audio now for an order of magnitude less money that
| what I'd had to pay otherwise...
|
| [0] http://linkwitzlab.com/
| jope12 wrote:
| I noticed it in my first Sony walkmen 30 years ago and it
| really pissed me off.
| allenu wrote:
| I don't know what I'd do if my iPhone didn't have physical volume
| buttons. When I watch videos on YouTube now, as soon as an ad
| starts playing, I just mute it by using the volume button and
| look away for a few seconds as I can't stand ads (sadly there
| isn't a dedicated mute button).
| frankosaurus wrote:
| Nice, I need to come up with a solution for this on desktop.
|
| My dream is a Chrome extension which recognizes Youtube ads and
| auto-mutes while they are playing.
| maest wrote:
| You can just use Firefox + ublock.
| lozf wrote:
| I open youtube with `mpv` (which uses youtube-dl) ...Ads are
| automatically skipped, and there's a bunch of keyboard
| shortcuts for skipping & fine-grained speed control etc.
|
| I have a single-button shell alias that calls it with
| appropriate options, and a slightly longer one that adds a
| dynamic range compression filter which is sometimes handy.
| user2834 wrote:
| uBlock Origin + Sponsorblock
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| Now we need a blocker of bloat. I mean the kind of bloat
| where the video lures you on specific thing in
| thubnail/tittle and then theres minute of talking and into
| and "lets get started".
|
| Sponsorblock is godesnd, but so far only solution for above
| been to just stop watching certain creators
| pcdoodle wrote:
| I do the same thing, You're not going to blast your crafted
| photons onto my retinas however hard you try!
| tyingq wrote:
| I have certainly experienced this on Android. Random apps seem to
| be able to override my "mute the phone" command.
| paxys wrote:
| Same with iPhone. It's one of the most frustrating parts of iOS
| for me. The hardware mute button is pointless since apps can
| just choose whether to respect it or not.
| floatboth wrote:
| Wasn't the hardware mute button specifically for ringtones
| and not media?
|
| On OnePlus phones it's a 3-position switch with silent,
| vibrate and ring as separate physical positions.
| avh02 wrote:
| I got sick of apps circumventing the various basic android
| "mute except for x app and phone calls" features that I just
| turn off wifi and data when I go to sleep. If it's important
| enough, they will call and my phone will ring. Occasionally SMS
| will bother me but barely anybody uses SMS.
| noxer wrote:
| Author should just use a proper browser with ad-block and mute
| add-on. Regardless of audio levels or hardware switches, a
| website should never play audio on its own without permission.
| paxys wrote:
| Firefox does it out of the box (in fact blocking audio and
| video autoplay is the default setting).
| SilasX wrote:
| I have autoplay turned off, and ublock and I still see sites
| that can autoplay video (usually news sites).
|
| Also, some sites, while muted, still get an audible _bleep_
| through when they try to play a sound (dominion.games when
| the game is over, in particular).
| noxer wrote:
| I know, I use it =)
| efitz wrote:
| We also need hardware on/off switches for cameras and
| microphones.
| est31 wrote:
| The real problem he has is different levels of audio and missing
| normalization of audio levels. You shouldn't get into the
| situation of wanting to quickly adjust audio levels in the first
| place (although I agree that any latency in adjusting the volume
| is inacceptable).
|
| Normalization (especially the real-time case) is an interesting
| topic. I've experimented with crude algorithms in the past to
| take all audio samples in a fixed window and then normalize them
| all to the same level [0]. But it's harder than you'd think.
| First there is a difference for humans in how loud they perceive
| the same sound to be at different frequencies. So any measurement
| function needs to take that into account. ReplayGain does this
| btw [1]. Then, there is the problem that if you make this window
| too short, you turn the audio into a garbled mess. If you make
| the window too long, you increase latency. This is a big deal for
| streaming settings. And last, you have the problem that silent
| periods aren't silent. E.g. if the person takes a breath, the
| level is increased to amplify the muffled sounds of the road
| nearby to levels to make you think they stand in the middle of a
| highway :). It's an interesting problem and while I doubt that
| it'll be solvable by simple hardcoded algorithms, ML might solve
| it. Then we can finally enjoy audio without having to manually
| press +++ and --- all the time :). But you know maybe we'll have
| different problems similar to the inability of phones to
| photograph the orange sky over SF.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/est31/js-audio-normalizer
|
| [1]:
| http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=ReplayGain_specif...
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| Not to mention that the biggest problem, at least in music,
| isn't the absolute peak (or normalization), but rather dynamic
| compression.
|
| Everything mastered (or "remastered") since the late '90s has
| been destroyed with dynamic compression to make it "louder."
| It's the biggest crime against art in our times, but is poorly
| understood even by musicians who complain about it.
| Interestingly it's the older ones, like Neil Young and Bob
| Dylan who have been the most vocal about it, but incorrectly
| attribute it to data compression or sampling rates.
| sjy wrote:
| I've found ffmpeg's dynaudnorm filter pretty good for this.
| https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#dynaudnorm
| GistNoesis wrote:
| I have encountered the opposite problem.
|
| Some speakers turn themselves off automatically when they don't
| detect any sound on the line for a certain amount of time.
|
| So when you want to have your monitoring application ring the
| alarm on the speaker, you need to be aware of it so you don't
| miss it.
|
| Depending on the speaker you may need to be continuously playing
| some very low volume audio to prevent them from auto-turning off.
| woofie11 wrote:
| > Depending on the speaker you may need to be continuously
| playing some very low volume audio to prevent them from auto-
| turning off.
|
| Standard is very high frequency -- outside of audible range.
| It's a good hack. Especially helpful for disabling automatic
| gain control.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Also prevents audio drivers putting your hardware into a low-
| power standby state (especially ridiculous on a desktop),
| which causes ~1 s of lag when starting to play audio again.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| This is often caused by digital audio.
|
| It takes most digital decoders a little while to start
| streaming again when a new digital signal comes in. I've
| noticed it in every setup using digital audio output from a PC
| I've ever used.
|
| To fix it I believe it's possible to send encoded complete
| silence, and that still works to stop the decoder from
| stopping.
|
| I don't know why there would be a delay, but my guess is that
| it's something like waiting for the next "block" of audio to
| start to start.
|
| I've noticed when bitstreaming compressed audio formats that
| the delay is longer, but also a bit arbitrary which I suspect
| is because the next block start position depends on where
| exactly you paused the video.
| secondcoming wrote:
| I seem to recall that during events where there is the 'one
| minute silence' beforehand, the TV commentator would have to
| interrupt the silence so that something doesn't get turned off
| automatically. I can't remember the exact details.
| aarongolliver wrote:
| I have this issue with a subwoofer - coupled with a bad
| amplifier/grounding/(something?) it creates an immense WOOOOF
| every time it turns on and off. This causes my house to shake
| 15 minutes after I go to bed, just as I'm about to fall asleep.
| Have definitely considered auto-starting something that played
| a continuous low tone to prevent it from happening.
| asdasfasdfasdf wrote:
| The point is a bit deluded when it's made on a blog with underage
| anime girls.
| westoque wrote:
| more importantly. we need physical video kill switches as well! i
| have dealt with so many apps just opening the camera out of
| nowhere and it's also mostly unexpected.
| yawniek wrote:
| it basically boils down to either buying a logitech craft or any
| decent audio interface and move on...
|
| while such knob would be nice on a laptop I don't think it's
| downsides would justify adding one...
| radarnc wrote:
| That why whatever conferencing software your using should have
| audio processing to control level of different audio.
| tus88 wrote:
| > proclaim that people could just unplug their headphones
|
| Actually I found plugging _in_ headphones is the easiest and
| quickest way to mute mobile phones.
| gooseyard wrote:
| ive been working remotely for a few years and do a little
| recording and mixing on the side. I like using plain old analog
| headsets since they make it easy to have control over the
| sidetone level from the headset mic, and they're usable in many
| situations where a usb headset would not be.
|
| To simplify using one headset with a few different devices (pc,
| desk phone, ipod/phone), I wound up buying a little Behringer
| Xenyx 302USB bus-powered mixer. If you have a bunch of analog
| devices to mix, you'd want something larger, but for a PC with a
| headset and one or two other analog sources or outs (like a pair
| of desk speakers), these things are just about perfect. They use
| off the shelf TI PCM2902C converters, have excellent audio
| quality, work driver-free on Linux, OSX, and windows, and seem to
| last pretty well.
|
| The real beauty of these little mixers (or the myriad other
| comparable ones) is that all the common adjustments I need to
| make- my own mic monitor level, the other party's output level,
| and the overall headphone level, each have their own rotary fader
| on the mixer. There's also some minimal eq available. The mixer
| is small enough that it doesn't waste much desk space, and in the
| event of a surprise volume spike, the master volume fader is
| right by my hand, and I've saved myself from being blasted many
| times.
|
| If you pair something like this together with an effects host (I
| use pulseeffects on Linux and love it), its easy to apply a
| compressor or limiter to the stream from the VC app that I use to
| reduce transients, or to add an expander to help on multi-party
| calls where one callers mic gain is too low.
|
| The 302USBs have gotten a little tricky to find lately since they
| seem to be popular with new podcasters. Several companies make
| similar models but nothing has quite the same set of connectors
| and routing to be as convenient as these, although everyone's
| needs are different- if you're using a headset with 1/4"
| connectors, the Yamaha AG03 looks really promising, although its
| nearly twice the price of the Behringer.
|
| There aren't a lot of gizmos that have simplified remote work for
| me as much as these things; they're probably overkill if you
| don't work from a fixed location (although they don't require any
| power connection), but if you have a typical desktop setup,
| they're great.
| lolc wrote:
| Oh wow that is a really nice solution! Especially because this
| model has the right sockets to plug a headset into as you point
| out. And thanks for the note about pulseeffects.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| I'm not sure I get this article - if you want a physical kill
| switch for audio, get a volume controller and set that directly
| under your monitor? Now you have a physical kill switch in the
| form of a GIANT near-zero-friction volume knob as well as
| dedicated hardware true-instant-mute button.
|
| No reason computers should come with that out of the box, in the
| same way there's no reason they should come with a DVD drive or a
| vertical mouse or brand-name webcam, but if that's what you need
| in your life, any of these are <$100 peripherals.
|
| Because you don't need a $2000 audio interface with twenty XLR
| inputs with individually controlled phantom power and built in
| EQ, or even a $299 one that podcasters and youtubers like to keep
| recommending: if you _just_ want control over your audio, get
| something like a Behringer MONITOR1 for $60 [1], or a slightly
| nicer Mackie "Big Knob" passive 2x2 for $70 [2] and go "ahh,
| exactly what I needed".
|
| [1] https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=P0C9G
|
| [2] https://mackie.com/products/big-knob-series-monitor-
| controll...
| avree wrote:
| He covers your argument in paragraph 5, under the "just
| ackchyually" crowd section.
|
| To summarize, you shouldn't have to use peripheral equipment to
| achieve what he believes should be standard functionality in
| hardware that emits audio signals.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Which is kind of a nonsense argument for laptops, and already
| true for desktops (even cheap PC speakers come with a nice
| big volume knob and on/off switch). So I read that paragraph,
| and see "why should I have to do what everyone else who cares
| about this already does?". If you care about a mute button,
| get a mute button. Just like if you care about having a good
| mouse, get a good mouse. And if you care about having good
| video quality, get a real webcam.
|
| Welcome to owning a computer: it's not done, because you're
| an outlier with your own needs, just like everyone else. You
| get the "meets most people's needs" hardware, and you get to
| add all the peripherals you need on top of that yourself. And
| as a bonus, you buy them once, then if you get a new
| computer, you don't need to buy new ones: they still work,
| and no one had to waste time and money on adding those things
| just for you to throw them away a few years later when it's
| time to get a new computer.
|
| Everyone wins.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-09-20 23:00 UTC)