Uebercomplicated
@Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 9 hours ago:
So, ironically, the expensive $200 cable he compliments to greatly might actually have the worst shielding. This just goes to show that the only way to approach this is scientifically, and that the YouTuber’s very unqualified self shouldn’t be performing these tests with any authority!
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 9 hours ago:
BTW, you also seem to have misunderstood dBU. That is in voltage, which means the signal is amplified before you listen to it. I would highly recommend reading the wiki page on decibels: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel
I think there’s good YouTube videos on how decibels and digital audio work as well.
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 9 hours ago:
What you quote is for conversion with analog levels, which is not what’s happening here. Everything I’m doing is 24 bit digital audio, which has 144 dB of dynamic range. That is a little over-kill, which is why most audio files are distributed as 16 bit, so 96 dB. That means you can hear anything from 0 dBFS to -96 dBFS (with proper dithering). That is why the cutoff point in the graphs I showed you is -100 dBFS, since you realistically won’t be able to hear below that anyway (audiophiles disagree), in the final file.
-40 dBFS only represents how the signal is stored in the digital file. It has nothing to do with the signal’s actual volume. I play those -40 dbFS through my computer, then my DAC, which outputs at about 2 VRMS, into my pre-amp, which increases the voltage again, into my amp (which, again, increases the volume), and finally into my speakers, which output that -40 dBFS, which is now signal at about 70 dB SPL (actual volume).
dBU is for analog line-level, and the conversion you showed is what I would use when routing my console back into my computer. But analog line levels are still very audible at -40 dBU, usually, not that that’s relevant.
You have to understand that this is not real volume. It is just how the volume is stored digitally. If you have a -40 dBFS noise floor in your audio file, and the music has a 12 dB dynamic range peaking at -1 dBFS, you will hear the noise clearly throughout the entire track, because you are amplifying the entire thing greatly, since you are ultimately transforming this into dB SPL.
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 19 hours ago:
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 20 hours ago:
Yeah, you’re right. I should have just stopped when he said his source was a CD player, meaning he had no pure digital copy (i.e., no control) to compare too. Or, at least, he didn’t provide one… I get hung up on things easily. Thanks, though, you’re 100% right
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 20 hours ago:
I’m not sure if you’re reading the graph correctly, this is the delta between two of the digital files from the video’s description. So a signal of -40 dBFS is quite audible, since it’s all relative to 0 dBFS (full scale).
And it isn’t the recording itself, it’s just the difference between two of the recordings provided in the video’s description. This is commonly known as a digital null-test, and let’s you find the amount (and significance) of difference between two digitally encoded recordings, and in particular at which frequencies those differences lie.
You can try doing it yourself by downloading the audio from the YouTube video’s description and then playing two of them at the same time in audacity, but with the phase inverterted for one of them. Just make sure the phase and volume are aligned. Then you can hear the difference between the recordings yourself!
The question is, where does this difference come from.
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 20 hours ago:
I love ASR and am a long time reader of Amir’s reviews and measurements :). I am more curious, in this case, about what, since it’s probably not the cables themselves, is creating that delta in the null test. That’s the part I can’t figure out, though I’ve pretty much resigned myself to just presuming it’s something else in the YouTuber’s signal chain and calling it a day.
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 23 hours ago:
This is it, thank you. I have never even seen a cable that expensive in person, and I’m certainly never going to buy one. I don’t know why this YT video triggered me so much, especially given that there’s no way to verify what that guy is saying he did is actually accurate.
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 23 hours ago:
What you say is very interesting, but I am starting to suspect that it really is just inconsistency with some other component. The delta isn’t consistent like it would be (I think) with ordinary noise or interference. It’s that weird delta between 2k Hz and 15k Hz that I can’t explain. The YouTuber is also a rather odd in that he doesn’t reveal what pre-amp he’s using, which in the case of taking measurements, is all the more suspicious. I don’t know, I think I need to stop thinking about this. Maybe you’re onto something, and some computer part was creating noise at that frequency range right when that cable was being measured.
The problem is, though, that I will never know, because I’m relying on a random YouTuber’s opaque recordings. And I’m not about to buy cables in that price range to test myself. Thank you for your expertise, though! I’ve always wanted to get into radio, but it has seemed awfully complicated and rather expensive
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 23 hours ago:
cables going from analog input devices to DSPs, mixers, etc. need proper shielding and should be as short as possible, with low-resistance connectors.
Are balanced cables applicable here; they would remove any noise, right?
As for everything else, I 100% agree. If I can’t hear the difference, then I don’t care :P honestly, the only cable that I’ve found to be important is for IEMs, since you want to avoid microphonics there. Apart from that, anything that won’t cause a ground-loop is perfectly fine.
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 1 day ago:
I saw this back then as well :P and, you’re right, it holds true here as well. As I say towards the end of my rather lengthy post:
For context, I cannot blind test ABX the Neotech.
I can’t hear the difference! But it bothers me so much that I can see the difference on the graph
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 1 day ago:
Thank you! I don’t know the YouTuber’s gear’s noise floor, so I don’t know how much of an influence that should be having, but I would presume quite low. But I’m not entirely sure if I understand what you mean. The null-test I did (I’ll attach a screenshot to this comment) mostly showed a delta in higher frequencies, specifically when the singer makes sibilant sounds. Does the graph look like what you would expect from system noise?
Null test while the singer is making a sibilant sound (via Voxengo SPAN and Reaper): Image
Null test while the singer is not making any sibilant sounds and the cymbals aren’t playing: Image
Thank you for taking me as good faith. I realize now that my post-title sounds a little click-baity, like I’m suggesting that there’s an authentic delta in the null test. I very much don’t think that’s the case; I’m just trying to figure out what a plausible reason might be, for why I’m measuring that delta.
I guess ei incumbit probatio… the burden of proof lies upon the YouTuber here, so I shouldn’t get too worked up about this :)
- Submitted 1 day ago to [deleted] | 26 comments
- Comment on Hard to answer the question when you don't even understand the question 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, I think my highschool kinda fucked me over. It was one of those stupid “international” highschools where we did the IGCSE before the IB — and the IGCSEs suuuuuuck. I literally didn’t study at all and got an A in Math. I think it did jack shit to prepare me. You may be able to tell I still have quite a bit of festered up anger towards the IGCSE… 😬
- Comment on Hard to answer the question when you don't even understand the question 2 weeks ago:
I did what you describe until I had to do the IB in 11th and 12th grade… the IB was crazy. I think my first two years of college were literally easier than IB.
- Comment on Totally normal book on audible 4 weeks ago:
That has to be it somehow! But it happens with all books now… and a different book I tested was 1,200 hours when I started it.
But at least I know aliens aren’t trying to send me messages now :P thanks
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to [deleted] | 11 comments
- Comment on It's called traditional medicine sweety, look it up 1 month ago:
Good for you! And happy new year!!!
- Comment on How do you sleep at night? Please respond with a number 2 months ago:
More blankets don’t help the moment you get out of bed in the morning. The apartment was unheated for much of the winter during my teenage years, so I usually wore two pairs of thick woolen socks and thick woolen PJs (along with a thick duvet and several blankets) so I wouldn’t freeze to death the moment I got out of bed. The period between rushing out of bed and into an 8 ply woolen bathrobe was still painful though.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
I don’t think this is accurate. The majority of IRL gamers I know are casual people with crappy Minecraft-level pre-builts (hugely overpriced usually; I know someone who spent 1.1k on a 3060 Ti pre-built) or 10 year-old computers built by their neighbors. A lot of casual gamers exist and the steam machine will be very appealing to them as an easy upgrade.
In a way, you’re right. A lot of people will be upgrading potatoes. Or replacing thin air next to their TV’s.
Even I, with a custom built with a 7900 XT running openSUSE TW, am considering this for doing stuff in the living room (or similar, I live in a tiny apartment lol) with friends or just casual-TV gaming and media. I don’t have that right now, and even 900€ sounds appealing for doing that with a Linux-based computer (and gamescope!!!, which I can’t get working on my device) I have full control over, but know will work.
I don’t know of something equivalently priced, but it there is something, please tell me. I think they have a market here. I personally, at least, have been waiting years for something like this to recommend to friends and to an extent to myself.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
Research and development is probably very high when you consider Proton, SteamOS, and the semi-custom CPU and GPU. Something between $50 to $100 million would be typical. Silicone is famously expensive in R&D, Proton has continuous costs (and has for quite a while now) that rack up, and SteamOS is literally an operating system. That’s a lot of salaries to pay.
I reckon they’re taking advantage of being private and playing the long game. Very, very long game. They’re not really in danger as long as Steam is successful, but I can’t blame them for wanting a decent gross margin so they can at least cover hardware costs. Especially with memory prices right now, I wouldn’t be surprised at 1000€ here in Germany, though I wouldn’t be happy about it. I would happily buy at 900€ (≈$1040), and be ecstatic at 800€ (≈$920).
- Comment on Dude read the rules of woman only community and decided to post anyway 2 months ago:
I don’t really know if I agree with your comment or the one you’re responding to. But here are my two cents: having good friendships with guys is difficult.
In middle-school (I’m European but using the American terms idk why) I had a number of good male friends but come highschool they all got addicted to drugs or video games and became a drag. I finally found friends in what one might call the “theater kids” group, which was exclusively female (there was a lot of stigma against these folks among guys and I burned a lot of bridges). The only close male friend I had left, I was only friends with through competitive sports and come 10th grade, it turns out he was a total toxic asshole (cheating on gf, racist, violent, etc; all developed over the course of maybe 4 months). So I end up having literally only female friends for the rest of highschool and much of college.
As a guy, that was kinda a bummer. It’s good to have some friends or really anyone close to you of the same gender, and I was a nerdy guy growing up with a single mother and no male friends or role models whatsoever. Luckily that turned me into a radical progressive and feminist, mostly due to my mother’s politics and hopefully common sense, and not a incel or neon-nazi.
This is just all to say that having a male support group is easier said then done. I don’t know if it’s because they really are losers—all the guys around me certainly felt like that—or because of social stigma against it. But teenage me definitely needed something like that when there wasn’t anything to be found.
Ultimately I turned out fine though, hopefully. I wonder, though, if some of the guys I knew in highschool would have been less icky if there had been less social pressure to basically be a toxic ass. I don’t know how to go about changing at least a century or social norms, but I think the people who got the worst of it were the guys I was friends with in middle-school, guys who were as smart and mature as my theater-group friends, but somehow pushed into toxic masculinity.
Ok, that’s a bit much for two cents. Hopefully I didn’t go on for two long… pretty bad pun, but I couldn’t help myself :P
- Comment on Dude read the rules of woman only community and decided to post anyway 2 months ago:
Absolutely. In fact, I would extend that past the user, to the community as well. This is a gate-kept (correct spelling?) community; that’s fine and I don’t think the rest of lemmy should care, but I somehow regularly come across discussions about the community or related, with many people in the comments frustrated. That frustration is natural and isn’t going to go away anytime soon. I don’t care about said community, but it’s annoying to keep coming across posts like this.
These posts are clearly just causing argument over a fairly small, specific community that most people aren’t, I presume, involved in. I wish we could just leave it alone; it’s gate-kept, let’s honor that and also not talk about the community outside of said community (exception: meta-communities dedicated to stuff like that).
I’d be annoyed if people couldn’t stop talking about e.g. the Linux community outside of the Linux community as well, with tuns of the comments angry about the Linux community because they don’t use Linux and are offended that the community doesn’t welcome them talking about windows or complaining about Linux. Obviously the community is intended for Linux users and while it’s not actively gate-kept, windows users (not looking to transition) aren’t exactly welcome. Funny parallel there.
If I weren’t a Linux user, and had blocked that community, I would be very annoyed at regularly seeing meta-commentary about the community I don’t care about and can’t contribute too. This isn’t a perfect analogy, but you get the gist of it.
It just seems to draw purposeless attention and outrage to something people could otherwise probably ignore. That being said, this is all pretty minor; I would have ignored this post as well, if it weren’t for the below. Clearly a number of people didn’t ignore it though.
I don’t know, I’m just lying on my sofa with a cold, and yelling at the sky…
- Comment on Happy Christmas 2 months ago:
Proof: I am currently writing this from my Art 050: Shakespeare’s Santa-Themed Boob Physics intro course. I’m zoned out while prof explains why Shakespeare was concerned with boob physics.
- Comment on On new installations, Android rebinds the power button to open up Google Assistant 3 months ago:
It just asked me what it should do when I press the power button. Pretty painless, 🤷. End of the day it’s just another win for GrapheneOS though.
- Comment on Interesting observation 3 months ago:
The text by itself, sure. Combined with the image and the community, no. Take into account that girl A claims that she is straight but also clearly seems interested in girl B and that this is a shitpost.
- Comment on Don't fix the problem just change the parameters 3 months ago:
The problem you describe is very real, and not just in the US or the UK, but in most of Europe as well. A big part of writing is how to actually write, not just the letters et al.
I mean the literal way you move you arm, the angle you write at, how you hold you pen, etc.
I didn’t learn any of that, and as an intensely dyslexic and left-handed individual, writing was extremely painful to me. That is, until 10th grade where I taught myself calligraphy.
It turns out that, when learning calligraphy, you do learn how to write properly.
After that, my handwriting in school (and for the rest of my life) became much better: I didn’t have hand-pain anymore, I didn’t smudge the ink, and, of course, my handwriting was very orderly and neat. Teachers even started commenting on it!
Most notably for me though: writing became fun. For me, as a dyslexic, this literally felt revolutionary.
Anyway, that is what I think they should teach in schools.
- Comment on FUCK 3 months ago:
I learned as a kid to deal with nightmares. I would be scared, and then wonder if this was a dream, and poof. I was free.
Can’t do it anymore though :(. I think, as a kid, it just kinda started happening. It wasn’t intentional at all; a natural solution to recurring nightmares I guess. Made for some cool times.
- Comment on Metal on the inside, business on the outside 3 months ago:
I feel seen lol
- Comment on And they mocked me for my WoW subscription 😗 3 months ago:
This is 100% true, and the reason I left Spotify. Back to buying records and CDs online and in niche record stores (I live in a metropolis, so that works even for obscure music). I also got a tidal subscription, and I like the recommendations from there much more. Bandcamp & SoundCloud newsletters are also great for suggestions.
But now, since collecting records and CDs, I find myself spending much more time with individual albums and critical listening, and relying less on playlists and suggestions. Anyway, Spotify is just garbage now…
