Sound solution for a home 2025?

Lounge
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I also recall issues with Bose headphones from a decade ago, but in the last 5 years, everything has worked perfectly: USB audio is just recognized and switched to, bluetooth pairs smoothly, etc.

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Thanks. Maybe I’ll consider that, then.

Well, you’re a bit optimistic about Bluetooth, haha. My colleagues often have to choose between the mic and sound output and struggle to get both with a suitable quality or whatever. I personally don’t even try and use my headphones’ jack. xD Also because auto-connection features tend to drive me insane as soon as there are more than a single known device in range. You can end up with a speaker yelling at the back of your car (the extra-e typo in that comic’s filename is one of the great regrets of my life…).
Reminds me of: xkcd: Bluetooth

I didn’t even realize ADCs were a thing :rofl: Sounds like something way more niche – perhaps to rip vinyls? :woman_shrugging:

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Bluetooth has a variety of codecs available. The baseline codec for mic+speakers is optimized for telephony, and pretty basic (roughly equivalent to analog telephony, which was quite bad; we are spoiled by modern cell codecs, you’d be surprised how bad things sounded in the beginning).

There are better Bluetooth codecs available, but they’re not widely supported by headsets and hosts, and sometimes come with significant delays. This is mostly why “native” Apple/Samsung/Google headsets often have an advantage on matching phones: they pre-select the better codecs, sone even proprietary.

But if you get, say, AptX, going for playback, Bluetooth audio quality is excellent. And with the more recent variants, even latency is very good. But bandwidth constraints still make low latency, high quality, stereo, and duplex somewhat difficult to achieve with Bluetooth.

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65

Did you see the recent opus demo with 90% packet loss? It’s simply insane how good codecs are getting. Opus 1.5 Released

I have been encoding music in opus 192kbps and it’s really good for the size. Recent opus improvements have been focused at communications and human voice I believe, I need to do some research to see if there is a better low bit rate codec available at the moment. Recommendations are welcome

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66

Ended up grabbing a “Technics SA-C600” amplifier-player thingy and an USB-C-to-USB-B-2.0 cable. Hope that’ll do the trick.
I was kinda ready to give up on CDs altogether but some nostalgic part of me likes the fact that there’s a player in that thing. xD
Nice surprise to see that the front USB port accepts FLAC files. Not sure it will recognize (and be able to power) an SSD, but that’s a bonus I guess.

But gosh, this piled up on top of a new monitor purchase, and the aforementioned SSD (my old drive is choke-full with music and I need an upgrade there as well :sweat_smile:). RIP, my money…

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One of my favorite games of all time, Borderlands, the mercenary who sells you arms says “your money ain’t worth a thing if you don’t spend it” :upside_down_face:

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Thanks again, you all. I freaked out for a moment because the player thingy only appeared as a selectable source for Linux when put on the “PC” source, but it indeed works. Trying it with the FLAC version of the gorgeous Live at St Matthias | iamthemorning which was released yesterday. :ok_hand: I don’t know if it’s a placebo effect or if it’s because it’s a live recording or whatever, but it sounds a lot more detailed now.

… But now that my speakers are very probably the weakest link of the system, I’m considering spending yet more money. :woman_facepalming:

Hidden details because I’m flooding a little bit

My current ones were provided with the 20-year-old micro-Hi-Fi system. Plus, I learned yesterday that when you put speakers too close to a wall it messed up with the air intake needed for the bass and stuff. Kinda silly to call those “bookshelf speakers” in those conditions. :sweat_smile: Long story short: I’m now drooling in front of Triangle Borea BR03: not too expensive, with great reviews, and front-sided air intake bass thingy. :face_with_monocle:

Random question: Wonder how to prevent dust from piling up in an upward-facing vent on a player / amp / whatever without going through the trouble of covering it up with something and removing that “something” every time before use… My house is very dust-prone. :confused:

Well, I must now unpack my PC monitor before my parents trip on the packaging. :sweat_smile: Lots of scary “OMG FRAGILE AF” signs. :fearful: And copy my music collection to the SSD and see if my about-ten-year-old Kodi+Rasberry accept it and the exFAT format.

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  1. Buy air purifier, it’ll remove dust from the air and reduce accumulation.
  2. Buy an air filter like those PC’s have on the front grills, it should be enough to block most dust and allow air through
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Thanks; I never really investigated such things. Have been using laptops for ages so filters and stuff are not something I’m very familiar with. :smiley:

Grr had to switch the SSD from exFAT to FAT32 for it to be recognized by the player, but well, I suppose risks of corruption are fairly low when you’re just playing stuff from it. And I compute MD5 checksums for all my music files. :nerd_face:

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Told ya this thread was cursed. :fearful: Three (hardware-level?) laptop freezes (with continuously blinking Caps Lock and nothing special in syslog after reboot – Edit: Apparently, this could also be a kernel panic) while copying my 400-something GB of music from a 2yo HDD to the new SSD. What the hell. :sweat_smile: I’m glad I have my MD5 sums.

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I found an OK set of PC speakers in my attic, and I also have a Raspberry Pi I am not using. Is there a turnkey Linux distro that would allow me to set up the Pi as a bluetooth connection DAC for my speakers?

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Maybe moode? I use it mainly to play its local library via the web interface, but Bluetooth seems to work fine also.

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I’ve used HiFiBerry in the past

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That ProtoDAC looks cool, thanks for sharing. A few months ago I built a CMOY amp for the heck of it, and a DIY DAC seems like a nice project as well. I am sure a good dongle will sound better, but there is some charm in having worked on most of your signal chain :smiley:

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I just noticed that pre-mounted cables tend to be 2×–4× the price of non-mounted cables. :hushed: For example Triangle Opera OS5C vs. OS25A:

Does this fall into “snake oil” territory, or are banana plugs significantly better than the “just pinching a stupid wire into the screws” strategy in any way? :thinking:

Gemini’s opinion: “The real benefits are in convenience and a very minor improvement in the security of the connection.” It even says that many people find that the signal is more pure without bananas. :laughing:

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No, this is pure snake oil. Even the unmounted versions. I bought a 25 meter spool from amazon a few years ago for less than 10 euro, and banana jacks you can buy from aliexpress or similar for pennies. Then you just need to cut the cable, strip the ends and screw it in the jacks.

Unlike low power cabling, like RCA, instrument or microphone cable, speaker cables do not require shielding or a balanced connection due to how powerful the signal is, so the cables can be dirt cheap copper pairs. Just make sure to buy the right thickness for the power and length you will use, there are some calculators online.

Edit: 2 wires | HiFi Sono DIY | Audiophonics - Audiophonics

Not as cheap, but pretty cheap too

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Thanks; that’ll probably save me a bit of money.
I stumbled on a calculator written by a guy who also warns that more and more cables nowadays just have a copper coating, with some other material hidden inside to cut on costs… :unamused:
Amazon dot fr offers me a filter per “Model Year” but nothing for the gauge… What the hell. :rofl: (I think the safest bet would be 2.5 mm².)
Some are so cheap that they give me twice the length I need for <10 € :exploding_head: and yet peerless reviews.

Edit: Gosh, those from that link are indeed “Copper Clad Aluminium”. :mask: I should probably go for something like those instead.

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Go to a brick & mortar electric supply store and get regular copper cables, eg H05VV-F 2x1.5mm2, or larger depending on your needs. Usually they come in white, occasionally black, but some manufacturers do all sorts of colors.

These are the cheapest (around 0.50 €/m, cut) , and if these were altered in any way the sellers would go to prison in most developed countries, no one will do that.

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Please, no.

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“No” for the whole LLM mention (sorry; I try to use that tool as some kind of proofreading filter to avoid saying overly nonsensical stuff here :sweat_smile:), or for the fight of “with or without bananas”? :laughing:
Seriously, though, I fail to see the point of bananas, especially when you have to put them on yourself.

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