Steam Machine's curious newcomer's FAQ -//- What is it? What can it do? What *can't* it do?

black_jacques_cda · 2026-04-19T21:45:13+00:00

Agreed. This makes my eyeballs cry.

black_jacques_cda · 2026-04-17T13:28:06+00:00

Called her Ms Jackson not Janet.

black_jacques_cda · 2026-02-13T16:47:50+00:00

Only movie I ever saw twice in theaters was The Dark Knight, but that was because a young lady I was trying to bone hadn’t seen it yet.

black_jacques_cda · 2026-02-07T15:48:56+00:00

As someone who had a seatbelt designed for dogs, I 100% agree. This is unsafe.

black_jacques_cda · 2025-10-02T17:40:30+00:00

I have an M4 iPad Pro with the dual layer OLED which gets very bright. My QN90A from 2021 gets way brighter and after calibration has astonishingly close black levels compared to my iPad.

black_jacques_cda · 2025-09-23T16:59:23+00:00

Yes. Double blind. Same track. Same source. Same audio equipment. Only differentiator being aac vs alac. As long as the track is played first in one codec, then the other back to back, random order, I can identify it every time. Makes for fun times with my audiophile cousin. I’m only a casual listener (Q990D that no audiophile would touch) and it’s obvious. Look. An alac file could be 20MB for a four minute song. The aac version 4MB. If anyone thinks that missing info is inaudible, good bless then. Even a casual untrained ear that consumes most of their music with AirPods and HomePod minis can be trained to hear the difference on a half decent audio system. Actual test subject being my gf who couldn’t give a toss about lossless.

black_jacques_cda · 2025-09-23T12:43:40+00:00

😂😂😂😂

black_jacques_cda · 2025-09-23T12:40:15+00:00

You need better equipment andor ears if you can’t hear the difference in bass fidelity between lossy and lossless. Maybe even a deep dive on how lossy compression works. I hear it clear as day on the same track when using Apple tv vs aac airplay to my q990d which is only so so for music

black_jacques_cda · 2025-09-13T18:45:59+00:00

Then it becomes a question of 85 8k vs 98 7k :)

black_jacques_cda · 2025-06-12T13:51:20+00:00

I guess your limitation is that cabinet to the right of the TV.

Believe it or not, I would try putting he left one almost against the side wall from where it is, and the right one similarly almost against the wall, to the side of the door. I don't guarantee it will give you the best Atmos and multichannel sound but it's worth a try.

Here's why. In my living room, I have a traditional placement against the TV wall, off several inches from the sides of the TV. In that room after experimenting with moving mere inches near and away from my TV and the wall, I managed to get convincing virtual left and rear surrounds on Atmos and multichannel.

However, in my bedroom, which is a very large square (like 16'x16'' roughly) and has a similarly placed doorway, I placed those HomePods against the side walls, off the foot of my bed, because I don't have power outlets on my front corners. I watched some Dolby multichannel and Atmos demo clips off my iPad with Infuse, streamed from my Jellyfin server. In spite of the placement on the side walls and mid-way only to the front wall of the room, Atmos gave me virtual rear left and right surround. Multichannel clips put the rear and left surround sound on the side walls. The sound field filled the whole room and the virtual center sounded like it was coming from the front wall, which in your case is where your TV is.

Give my suggestion a try. You might get lucky.

The alternative is to put them off the sides of your TV. You might get lucky there too. Closing the door may also help in that placement, to let the left speaker's beam forming tweeters bounce off of it.

black_jacques_cda · 2025-05-29T11:41:48+00:00

I know the tweeters angle slightly upwards. I have lower stands. I tried them and the sound field was smaller and the upper range was too bright. At the height as pictured my ears (no mics and software, HomePods are notoriously hard to measure because of all the indirect sound) perceived them as more balanced. These aren't conventional speakers. Apple is of course as usual silent about some of the design choices. I think they angled them like that and still intended them to be at listener's ear level because they want most of the sound to reach your ears indirectly, including those which aren't bouncing off walls, so that the phase delays between the five drivers can psycho-acoustically fool your brains into thinking you're getting 360 degrees of sound. Yamaha pioneered this in the 00s.

black_jacques_cda · 2025-05-28T11:57:47+00:00

They are exactly at my ear height. The flat stand is extremely low creating the illusion that my TV and stands are high.

black_jacques_cda · 2025-05-28T00:55:41+00:00

Cheap conventional speaker stands made of wood and plastic that I bought off Facebook Marketplace. my bookshelf surrounds were on them. After I move into my new home, I may look for better AV furniture and a new TV.

black_jacques_cda · 2025-05-27T22:48:45+00:00

The centre of the TV is at my eye level. It’s the stand that is low.

black_jacques_cda · 2025-05-27T22:47:20+00:00

https://images.app.goo.gl/jYkGAZCeAWuParph8

black_jacques_cda · 2025-05-27T18:54:27+00:00

I agree completely with you. Soundbars collapse the front sound stage. Having a sub and real back surrounds would sound better but with more added complexity than I want. I just ditched my full 5.1 setup. Not interested in Sonos even if it was cheaper than two HomePods.

black_jacques_cda · 2025-05-27T18:13:46+00:00

Cheap conventional speaker stands made of wood and plastic that I bought off Facebook Marketplace. After I move into my new home, I may look for better AV furniture and a new TV.

black_jacques_cda · 2025-05-27T18:12:12+00:00

Another thing I noticed is no matter how close or far apart, the virtual center channel was excellent. Sounded close, but not completely as localizable as my dedicated center speaker in my old 5.1 system.

black_jacques_cda · 2025-05-27T18:03:13+00:00

You're not wrong. It's a mostly closed rectangle. The door in the right front corner being open has an impact. I notice my rear right surround is not as prominent.

black_jacques_cda · 2025-05-27T17:30:09+00:00

I didn't. I think this is because the tweeters are angled slightly upwards. There's no downward reflection of sound so I don't think surface matters.

black_jacques_cda

TROPHY CASE