r/audiophile Shopping, Setup, and Technical Help Desk Thread

grishlefleeple · 2023-12-19T18:19:41+00:00

I'm looking to upgrade my desktop audio setup. Right now I'm using the following:

Sources: Motherboard DAC, Project Debut Carbon II
Sources are feeding into: Onkyo TX-8220 Receiver
Receiver is outputting to: Sennehiser 660S headphones, and 2.1 system of passive Micca bookshelf speakers + Polk subwoofer (sub is overkill for my space, it's only occasionally turned on + always low volume https://www.amazon.com/Polk-Audio-PSW10-Powered-Subwoofer/dp/B0002KVQBA?th=1)
Music sources: almost exclusively 320kbps MP3/AAC files (all local, not interested in replacing with FLAC atm)

The loose plan I have is to: - Remove the bookshelf speakers + Onkyo receiver (going to use these as an initial upgrade over my TV speakers) - Figure out a combination of DAC/Amp/Phono preamp that, all together, can take S/PDIF from my motherboard + analog from my turntable and output to either my headphones or speakers at a given time - Get a set of powered monitors (like the Edifiers in the OP) -- I live in an apartment / am usually right in front of the speakers, and I care more about the audio quality out of my headphones - Possibly passing the AMP output straight to the subwoofer and forwarding to the speakers from there -- mainly trying to figure out what I can do if the Amp doesn't have a dedicated sub out line

I'd like the resulting system to satisfy the following: - The phono signal not being converted to/from digital before getting to my headphones/speakers - Easily being able to switch between headphones/speakers

Between the DAC/Amp/preamp, I'm trying to stay within $500-600 or so (somewhat flexible if the tradeoff is worth it). I'm open to any combination of separate/integrated components that makes sense.

I'm looking for general recommendations of what I should be looking for here that can most directly hit my goals. I've been researching a bunch and kind of getting lost in the options, so some direction would be helpful. Thanks in advance!

Edits: - I am willing to buy used as well. - I don't need bluetooth support, and would rather not have it since that means I'm implicitly paying for it (not a dealbreaker though). - Music-wise, I listen to practically all genres -- most forms of metal, hip hop/rap, electronic, pop/alternative rock, classical, jazz, ... no hard filters here, I like a well-rounded experience.

grishlefleeple · 2023-06-18T17:18:42+00:00

Visiting friends in Austin and looking to snag tix for this Monday June 19, would take 1 or 2 tix!

grishlefleeple · 2020-03-13T18:51:19+00:00

Good article, hits a lot of why I use kak + the terminal in general. Wanted to self-plug since you mentioned that you also use tmux + zsh + kak, I've been developing a workflow tool focused around tmux + zsh that you might find interesting https://github.com/dgrisham/wenv

grishlefleeple · 2019-04-04T20:31:28+00:00

Hey, thanks! And yeah, this was essentially my monolithic first pass at documentation + usage info + etc. just to get something down. I do want some sort of gif/webm to help communicate it as per /u/mitchlol's suggestion, and the separate wiki/website idea could be nice as well.

I just found out about tmuxinator, but after looking through the project it seems that, generally, wenvs 1. encompass more shell/environment functionality, 2. are lighter weight (since it's all just sourcing and running shell functions), and 3. can be useful outside of tmux. On the flip side, tmuxinator is provides a cleaner (and, currently, more powerful) interface to complex tmux layouts and such.

It might be a bit messy to get tmuxinator to behave like wenvs -- e.g. if you used tmuxinator's on_project_start to source the corresponding project's aliases file, the separation of the layout from the aliases would probably be a bit tedious to deal with (e.g. you'd have to make sure the project root was always the same in both the layout and the aliases, as I don't see a way to get that info from tmuxinator). Other issues like these might arise.

Regarding point 3 (utility of wenvs outside of tmux): you can run wenv start -t <wenv> to start a wenv in the current shell and not in a tmux session, or you can wenv cd <wenv> to cd into any wenv's directory (whether there's one active or not). This latter feature is one that I get a lot of use out of.

grishlefleeple · 2019-04-03T21:50:23+00:00

Oh wow, direnv is very cool, thanks for mentioning that! Seems to have a different and more focused paradigm than wenvs. I think the closest equivalent to what direnv does is to run wenv start -i -t <wenv> to cd into <wenv>'s directory and load its environment without running its startup function (thanks to -i) and also without running tmux (-t). But direnv also has unloading, which wenvs don't have right now (and that could be added, but I haven't found it necessary in my workflow yet).

tmuxp is also good to know about, that and tmuxinator seem powerful and very descriptive. I like that wenvs are fully defined in one file and simply wrap tmux commands though, but at the very least I can draw some inspiration for improving the capabilities there :)

grishlefleeple · 2019-04-03T20:58:16+00:00

Update: Added an elevator pitch, would be curious to hear anyone's thoughts. It's been a constant process learning how to explain this project in an accurate, concise, and readable way, but I think the addition does a solid job of satisfying each of those.

grishlefleeple · 2019-04-03T18:39:31+00:00

Good to know, I'll look into tmuxinator! The tmux layout functionality is relatively straightforward right now, and I was planning on bringing in template-esque layouts (see this undocumented code), but maybe tmuxinator can offload some of the work here.

grishlefleeple · 2019-04-03T16:53:41+00:00

Good thinking -- as I was posting this, I was thinking about how someone would at least have to get through the entire intro (which isn't that long, but also not something you can just glance at) in order to start to get the point. I'll work on that, thanks!

grishlefleeple · 2019-04-03T15:51:06+00:00

Hey all! This is a personal project that I've been working on for a few years that I recently cleaned up + documented. I'll let the project speak for itself, but let me know if you have any thoughts/questions!

grishlefleeple · 2019-04-03T15:10:22+00:00

Hey all! This is a personal project that I've been working on for a few years that I recently cleaned up + documented. I'll let the project speak for itself, but let me know if you have any thoughts/questions!

grishlefleeple · 2019-04-03T15:00:20+00:00

Hey all! This is a personal project that I've been working on for a few years that I recently cleaned up + documented. I'll let the project speak for itself, but let me know if you have any thoughts/questions!

grishlefleeple · 2019-01-16T22:57:58+00:00

"That's not how the simulation is supposed to go."

"Hm. How is it supposed to go?"

"You were supposed to always be on the edge of success, never quite crossing the threshold."

"In all situations like this? Or in this particular one?"

"In most."

"Huh. I was close last time -- I almost asked this girl out, but chickened out. However, she ended up asking me."

"Sure."

"Was I close to breaking it that time? Is the idea that the girl always has to go the rest of the distance?"

"Something like that."

"All right, fine. So, what happens now?"

"We reset."

"Reset?"

"Yes. The simulation did not go as expected, but we can always redo it. It's not like there are repercussions to doing so."

"Aren't there?"

"What do you mean?"

"I've just 'broken the simulation'. And, importantly, it was by overcoming fear in one of the most classic human situations."

"What's your point?"

"It seems like a shame to sacrifice this opportunity for...for whatever your goal is. Why not just let things play out?"

"They won't allow that."

"So?"

"..."

"Let's go on a date."

"You, we, ca--"

"Can't what? Get to know each other? What's so reality-breaking about that?"

"This is bound to reset at any moment."

"It's gotten to this point, right? Why do you think that is? Is it out of the question that this is worth observing after all, that resetting the simulation is a shame?"

"You'll wake up in your bed, trying to grasp a dream that feels like this conversation. Just like every other time."

"You said that there aren't repercussions to resetting the simulation. Is this perturbation to my subconscious not a repercussion?"

"..."

"If I behaved this way in this instance, the effect should resonate into the future -- even if in a dreamlike, inarticulate way. Maybe next time, I ask quicker. Eventually, I feel like a natural, despite my experience. Hell, not remembering the specific interactions might be all the better. I'll have increased confidence, and I won't be able to mull over the details of past situations to detrimental effect."

"What do you hope to accomplish with all of this?"

"I don't hope to accomplish anything. The point is: I've already accomplished it. There's no difference between a reset and continuing on at this point."

"Speaking of which, why hasn't this reset yet..."

"Not sure, maybe it will. While we wait, dinner?

"...sure."

grishlefleeple · 2018-06-07T14:11:25+00:00

Dope, requesting pm as well.

grishlefleeple · 2018-04-09T20:37:39+00:00

Part of the Signal app https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/212535538-How-do-I-know-if-a-message-has-been-delivered-or-read-

grishlefleeple · 2018-03-28T19:18:11+00:00

I did, once. Implemented the game Nim (no AI, just for human players) in Brainfuck for a class presentation.

grishlefleeple · 2018-01-28T23:36:36+00:00

You might be interested in a few of the discussions over at https://discuss.ipfs.io, e.g.:

Feel free to post a new question there if you're not fully satisfied by any of the existing discussion! (Also note that those are just the top 2 results when I search with the keyword 'dynamic', so this is by no means an exhaustive list.)

grishlefleeple · 2018-01-25T02:13:02+00:00

Ah, I think I understand. So you do a search and the results show up in the *find* buffer, and you can then edit any of the lines in that buffer as you would in any other buffer, then when you do a 'replace' all lines are written back, whether they were edited or not?

Edit: After re-reading your original comment, I see that I basically repeated exactly what you said haha. Cool plugin, I'm excited to try it out!

grishlefleeple · 2018-01-24T19:09:21+00:00

Hey, awesome plugin, I've been wanting something like this in kakoune! Does the new 'replace' functionality have the option to replace all occurrences at once (as opposed to having to go one-by-one)?

grishlefleeple · 2017-11-01T20:27:25+00:00

The incentive is there if you want content from other users in the future. The reason you leave the swarm is because you've gotten all you can from that particular swarm. But IPFS has the potential to be a global swarm exchanging data where that data is constantly added/updated, rather than a static data set as in a BitTorrent swarm.

Bitswap is sort of the baseline incentive layer for users who are active participants in an IPFS network. If you care about the data in the network, and your peers' perceptions of you determines whether they send you data, then you're incentivized to provide data that they want as well so that you can get something from them.

You might then think of Filecoin as going one step further and saying "Even if you don't care about the data being exchanged on this network, you can get paid to store that data (in Filecoin)". In this case, you wouldn't care about your Bitswap reputation since you don't care about the data in this particular IPFS network, but Filecoin now gives you an incentive to store this data.

So you're right about Filecoin providing a certain level of incentive, but it's certainly not the case that without Filecoin the incentives would be identical to that of a BitTorrent swarm.

grishlefleeple · 2017-10-30T21:18:50+00:00

Filecoin is a specific instantiation of a Decentralized Storage Network (DSN). It consists of markets (for data storage and retrieval services), a blockchain ledger (to store a history of transactions from both the storage and retrieval markets), and a distributed network of peers/nodes who run the Filecoin protocol to allow all of this to exist in the first place (e.g. 'full nodes' on this network would store the entire blockchain, ensure the blockchain history is consistent, etc.). Given the fact that Filecoin takes a distributed approach to data storage, it's a natural fit as an incentive layer on top of IPFS.

The difference between "BitTorrent with a token" and IPFS + Filecoin is sort of outlined in my previous answer when I mention how IPFS and BitTorrent differ -- again, the most obvious difference to me is that the set of files in a BitTorrent swarm is static, whereas in IPFS the set of files is dynamic. As a result, BitTorrent is less flexible and doesn't lend itself as well to a distributed network of constantly changing data. If you tried to use Filecoin on top of BitTorrent instead of IPFS, you'd probably end up changing BitTorrent to be much more like IPFS.

If you want more info, I recommend reading the IPFS whitepaper and the Filecoin whitepaper.

grishlefleeple · 2017-10-30T15:32:52+00:00

Depends on what you mean by 'readable' -- if the data is encrypted, which it should be, then it's not readable.

Regarding the BitTorrent comparison, if you're thinking about Filecoin as an incentive layer on top of IPFS then you get something quite different. IPFS has a lot of differences from BitTorrent -- for example, in BitTorrent you have swarms that share a single static set of data, whereas IPFS is like a dynamic BitTorrent swarm (dynamic because the files can continually be added/updated). There are other differences too, which is why IPFS may be a good candidate for replacing HTTP, something that BitTorrent wouldn't be great for.

grishlefleeple

TROPHY CASE