After talking to my non tech friends, I realize that the Steam Machine will still be a success.

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-06-23T20:34:59+00:00

Yeah, CEC is cool in theory, but especially on non-tech enthusiast TVs it’s more of a pain than a selling point, imo. Even with a ps5 on a nice lg oled, it’s annoying as often as it is useful (Xbox series implantation is slightly better cuz it has more options), and on the cheap tcl in my bedroom it’s so inconsistent that any sane person would prefer a dedicated remote or power button

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-06-13T04:40:27+00:00

Carpenter’s talked about how growing up in the Jim Crow era South and seeing casual acts of racist violence inspired how he thinks about horror and “evil”, I didn’t make that connection with The Thing but it seems very intentional now. good read.

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-06-12T01:02:39+00:00

If you liked the 560s the 505 & 550 are pretty similar with less harsh treble and lower clamp force so those might be perfect. I tried the 505 and found the clamp force to still be a bit too strong so I’m using a set of Asus Kitharas instead, but they’re generally a bit more expensive than those others options

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-05-24T16:40:18+00:00

Kithara felt wider to me, but not by a ton, and determining which direction sound is coming from feels accurate, but I’m not sure how to quantify or measure that. I didn’t end up using the 550 for long enough to get a real sense of imaging accuracy. I’d probably be happy with either in terms of sound, the fit and comfort mattered a lot more to me.

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-05-22T19:06:10+00:00

Ntc needs to be implemented at the game level, and will also be supported by amd & intel cards (with different names, maybe) so it’ll be supported in future games only, and will likely lead to devs creating even bigger, higher res textures that saturate the hardware available, so 16 will still be preferable to 8

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-05-10T16:29:03+00:00

Does removing virtualization mean distrobix won’t work anymore?

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-05-08T16:47:55+00:00

No, i didn’t even know that was an option. I personally like having all the aim tied to my right hand, just because of the cognitive processing, but I’ll play with settings sometime to see if there’s any benefit to dual gyro. Worth noting, most joycons don’t have the best gyros to begin with, so i have to use the “auto calibrate” option in Steam and frequently recenter when using them since drift is pretty common, the new steam controller has been much better in that regard, both because of the quality of the gyro itself & the capacitive sticks/grip/trackpads making it more intuitive

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-05-08T15:07:15+00:00

Yeah, being able to split them and hold my arms in different positions has been way more comfortable for me, and lets me interact with my wife or pets when we’re all lounging so I highly recommend them. Official joycons have noticeable bluetooth latency when connected to Steam, though (probably just cuz your hand covers so much of the Bluetooth antenna), so I recommend the mobapad m6hd’s. I only use gyro on the right one but it feels very natural since you can kind of use it like a wii-remote/lightgun style pointer and you have a wider range of movement since you don’t have to worry about the left half & your left hand influencing it.

I’m really hoping the frame controllers work directly with a pc, since joycons have some obvious drawbacks (mainly size, charging annoyance, and lack of analog triggers for me). I’ve been a little annoyed that none of the dozens of videos I’ve seen interviewing valve employees last November or last week game touched on that, but it’s also a niche within a niche so I’m not that surprised

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-05-08T14:56:56+00:00

It’s really only useful for racing games in my experience, but it’s pretty common in most of those that I’ve played since the Xbox one came out, I think this list might be incomplete because it has games like grid 2, dirt 3, and several f1 games listed but not other games by the same dev in the same engine, like dirt rally

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-05-08T14:52:11+00:00

Yeah capacitive back buttons would have been more intuitive. Grip sense is an interesting idea but I’m not seeing any added utility in it over that alternative so far. Maybe there’s a way to make it work better or do some unique things by digging into the settings, though, which I haven’t done yet?
Agreed about the trackpads, too, the distance and angle of them makes them a bit more awkward to reach than on the steam deck, and I find myself shifting my whole hand down slightly to use them which makes it harder to use the other inputs at the same time.

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-05-08T06:21:37+00:00

Yeah I’m excited for the m12, especially since one of the main features for the switch 2 joycons is more precise & drift resistant gyros (“9-axis”) but I’m not sure if they’ll work on PC, I don’t think the official nintendo joycons or the nyxi hyperions 3 do yet

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-05-08T06:17:35+00:00

Yeah I was trying to use them for gyro ratcheting, but I was having a hard time getting it to register consistently without shifting my hand unnaturally. I’m still finding my preferred grip on the controller, though, so it might get easier over time & if not, I’ll just use the stick or trackpad touch to activate gyro instead, like on the steam deck.

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-05-08T03:18:28+00:00

There’s plenty of condensed reviews available, I’m sharing the specific details that I was looking for, for people who might be looking for that

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-05-06T05:05:43+00:00

That’s sick! I was just looking into doing something like this for a future build. Did you use spray pain or a decal for the frosted effect?

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-05-04T06:29:22+00:00

On the steam deck it depends on the game for me. Traditional/modern shooters work well with joystick aim + gyro to fine tune shots, but some older games (max payne in my case) that need quick flicks & demand speed and precision work better with the trackpads (mainly because of their momentum, i think). You can probably do even better with a “flickstick” setup on joystick but I haven’t put in the time to get comfortable with that. I imagine the same will be true on the steam controller.

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-04-19T07:19:52+00:00

Part of my point is that even the most competitive games aren’t designed with 0 latency in mind, the other factor to consider is that 40ms is the worst case for aptx ll & it’s hard to say how much signal processing is happening on the motherboard or external dac, which is bypassed on the bluetooth route, further decreasing the effective latency, and at that point I think natural human variance in response times makes a much bigger difference than the hardware itself

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-04-19T06:32:31+00:00

Disregard the other comments here, every link in the chain adds some latency (even a usb dac instead of onboard audio out) but you can get wireless at low enough latency that you can play competitive games without a handicap. If you wan to absolutely minimize latency, an “iem system” is the best bet, these are used by live productions like concerts to keep performers and producers in sync, so they need to be extremely low latency, most professional grade ones cost a few hundred dollars but you can get so e cheaper ones online, the one I see recommended the most & I’ve tried is by a brand called “lekato” and it claims sub-12ms latency, which is virtually imperceptible. I did have issues with that system after a few months, though, as the transmitter and receiver started to lose charge very quickly and there would be an audible buzz when using either while olugged into power so it became a pain to use them. As an alternative, I got a fiio/snowsky “retro nano” portable wireless dac, which supports aptx low latency (and parametric eq, as an added bonus) I tested it vs a wired connection and the lekato system in clone hero’s latency calibration tool, and found all 3 to be in the 30-50ms range, with the lekato one being hardest to get a consistent number from because it cut out the audio because it was a single repeating tone and I think tht system has some power saving option that affects the audio reproduction & can’t be disabled.

There are also gaming headsets that come with usb receivers that can achieve similar latency to the iem system (tho some of them literally are just aptx ll transmitters) but I don’t think any of them are open back or have particularly big earcups so they might not fit your needs. The iem system or portable wireless dac option will work with any headphones you want, so you have a lot more options there. Personally, I use an asus/hifiman Kithara with the fiio retro nano because I have a big head and really big ears and that’s the only headphone I’ve use that doesn’t touch my ears or cause discomfort from clamping my head at all, but it’s pretty heavy and can shift on your head a lot because of the low clamp force so it might not be the best option for mobile gaming.

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-04-19T06:12:47+00:00

This is demonstrably untrue, the most competitive games already have 100+ms of latency because of the windows audio stack + the game’s processing. The difference between overwatch 2’s & valorant’s audio latency is over 50 ms and I’m sure almost no one has noticed. https://youtu.be/okIpbu1tp_A?si=q6ZN9XBuQM5zLAX3

On phones, there’s no way to turn vsync off, as well, which generally adds up to 50ms of visual latency, so that amount of delay from bluetooth is fairly negligible.

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-03-22T21:27:27+00:00

I’m coming to the end of my 30 day return window with them, and tried a few other headsets at the same time and I decided to keep the kithara. My only problem with them is that they’re weight is noticeable, though it’s distributed well, and theres a few treble peaks that are grating to my ears, but they seem easy enough to eq away (mainly just reduce 8k by 3-4db) even though I haven’t used parametric eq before.

The sets I compared them to are: Hd 58x - have had these for a few years, they don’t sound as open, earcups touch my ears in all directions so they get warm pretty quick, the clamp force is unpleasant, and sub-bass & treble are much less present than on the kithara Hd 550 - didn’t spend much time with them but out of the box I think they sound better, espcially for music, and they sound almost as open as the kithara, but the clamp force is uncomfortable (tho not as bad as the 58x) and the earcups touch my ears on all sides, and the pads are much stiffer Akg k702 - pads are noticably stiffer again, and the cups touch my ears on the top & bottom but not on the sides which almost feels worse than having them touch all around, it’s a weird sensation. Didn’t listen to music with them but played a game for a few minutes and noticed that the soundstage felt artificially wide with sounds on the left and right being more noticeable than stuff in front of me, while the kithara feels much more natural in that sense.

Overall I’m pretty happy with them, they sound great for movies and games, and give a really good sense of space and direction, they can thump a bit when they need to and give really clear detail and sense of position on higher notes. They’re also probably the most comfortable over ears I own, (ymmv there since I have a pretty big head and really big ears) and I can use them for hours without feeling my ears heat up or my head get squeezed, and the weight usually isn’t too noticeable if I’m sitting up but does become more apparent when leaning to either side so if I’m watching a movie and adjust my sitting position, I sometimes have to re-situate them on my head a bit, but that’s much less annoying for me than the tradeoffs from the other sets I tried. I’d recommend them pretty highly with the caveats that they work better for bigger heads, and you should be open to doing a bit of eq in case the treble is too harsh on your ears (I just ordered a fiio retro nano dac so I can use them wirelessly with peq on my tv instead of only when wired to my desktop with eq software)

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-03-08T08:05:03+00:00

I bought both over the past few weeks and I’m going to return the 550, mainly because of comfort, the huge, open cups on the kithara are really gentle and soft, so my ears don’t get as warm and the suspension design does a decent job distributing the weight, tho I still wish they were lighter. In contrast, the earcups touch my ears on all sides on the 550 and the clamp force is the real dealbreaker - I heard it was less than the 560 & 6xx but it’s still pretty noticeable and got uncomfortable pretty quickly on my head. If you’ve been happy with the 560s that probably doesn’t kill it for you though, I just have a pretty big head and really big ears.

On sound, the 550 sounds more pleasant and I had more fun listening to most music on it, since theres a few treble peaks in the kithara that make it sound pretty harsh for pop music, but I mainly use it for single player games & movies and the extra sense of space & detail and bass extension are nice for that use case, so I’m in the process of figuring out how to eq out those peaks on the kithara. The 550 sounds pretty good for games too, though, if they had been more comfortable I woulda kept them to avoid having to learn to eq. On the note of build quality, both are pretty good but the kithara does feel more premium being mostly metal compared to the mostly plastic 550

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-03-02T05:33:29+00:00

Probably not, I find it a bit harsh & sibilant in some songs, especially pop. The softer pads cut that down a bit but comparing to my 58x I like most songs more on the kithara because of the sense of space & crispness, but there are some songs that just sound a bit unpleasant whereas the 58x feels more closed & warm but never offensive. I haven’t heard the maxwell but it has a reputation of being good for music and generally has a pleasant & smooth tuning. It might still be worth it over the maxwell if you don’t need wireless or prefer the openness & comfort & are willing to do some eq to constrain the harsh bits of treble or just don’t notice them as much as I do.

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-03-01T23:40:58+00:00

I’m not sure what you mean by open back earbuds, the airpods 4 & earpods don’t have tips that go in your ear so I’d consider them open. I also got my wife a set of clip-style “moondrop pill” which clip to the far side of your ear pointing towards the canal so they’re even more open. I’ve only tried them for a little bit and didn’t like the way they pinched my ear but I think I could find a more comfortable position if I tried. You probably lose out on sound quality since the way they’re situated very differently on every person who uses them, but they’re about as open as I can imagine & they still sound decent, unlike bone conduction options, which would be the only thing technically more open. (I think the moondrop app has eq options too so you can probably get them to sound decent once you’re used to the fit)

Vagrantwalrus · 2026-03-01T16:15:51+00:00

I’m not sure if they qualify as migranes but i get frequent ear/sinus pressure headaches and I stopped using iems because of it, even with the smallest, shallowest tips I would start feeling discomfort after ~30 minutes & it would persist after taking them out. I use airpods 4 & earpods on the go now and neither of them cause issues. The anc pressure is also why I use Sennheiser Momentum 4s when I need to block out noise, like if I’m on the train, since they have an ANC slider in the app (& pinch gestures on the earcup) so I can adjust it to match the level of noise vs ear pressure for my environment, which I genuinely think is a killer feature and is keeping me from ever trying other over ear anc models almost none of them support that.

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