[–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

I bought those a few years ago, but I have to say, while I was pleasantly surprised back then, I am no longer happy with them. The quality of the cotton has turned out to be quite low (though at that price, that isn't exactly surprising), and has seriously deteriorated. They are ultimately fast fashion through and through :( But you can at least get a couple good years out of them.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago

    I had to read Herman Hesse, which I loved at the time. Especially Unterm Rad and Siddhartha. Now I hear a lot of people read Tschick, which is quite beloved. I reckon you're generally right, though; the German school system is far from entertaining.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago*

    I can confirm. It's gotten better in the last few decades, but it's still pretty horrific. Much worse than economics. (Obviously it is still a fascinating field and there is a lot of good, interesting, scientific psychology. It just also very much has its problems)

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    Proton, mullvad, air VPN, depending on threat case. NordVPN for torrenting specifically, but not as good for privacy etc.

    The most important thing is to check who owns the VPN (as the previous commentor said, stay away from Kape tech) and where it's based (e.g., 14 eyes), as well as independent security audits and the company's public history with government requests.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago

    Oh my god, my favorite key is absolutely destroyed. It used to be D-Minor, but I've been using Bb-Minor increasingly and really enjoying it. But now I know the truth, it's actually "obscure and terrible"!

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  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Well not everyone, just everyone with bullshit jobs.

    What? A lot of people with real jobs got screwed over as well. E.g., most prominently restaurant workers. I personally know several people who lost their jobs or small businesses due to covid, including a pâtissière, local art gallery curator, club DJ, and bartender. They were all valuable members of the local community who were absolutely shit on by the pandemic.

    Everything was basically fine. The only real problems as far as i could tell were that we all thought we were going to die and were scared to go near our grandparents incase we killed them, and some lines stopped going up.

    Over seven million people died and are still dying, not to mention permanent conditions and long hospitalizations. And now we have an inflated, cancerous anti-vax movement, cost-of-living crisis, and generation of students who got fucked.

    I'm happy it worked out for you, but the COVID-19 pandemic left a monstrous scar on the world. I can only hope our governments and people will be more prepared next time. We should not forget what was lost.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 months ago*

    The goal, really, is to cut the crud out of Windows to create a more Linux-like experience.

    LOL. I'll just keep using Linux, thank you very much. Great article though:

    […] demanding 64GB of RAM in the age of the RAMaggedon seems inexcusable. (Especially because Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI and its overall AI push is a big reason memory prices have skyrocketed.)

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  •  

    cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43120463

    TLDR (I’m very long-winded): this YT video took measurements of three different audio cables, including a 200€ one, and found differences where there should be none. My physics knowledge (and general consensus among the scientific community) says the measurements of the different cables should be identical or near-identical — or I am, at least, under that impression. My own measurements, because the channel does provide the files, confirm that the expensive 200€ cable does measure differently from the others. But surely something else must be causing this? Please help me find out what that is, Lemmy!

    Edit: see this and this other excellent comment.

    Below, I go into a little more detail and context, and I go through what I have tried, etc.; I tried splitting everything up into chunks to make it easier to read, but I was never good at being succinct. Sorry about that 😬 :P

    Context: What Am I Talking About?

    Firstly, I should clarify that this isn’t relevant to most people, only really physics and audio-technology nerds. But I’m desperate. This question has been tormenting me for days...

    I should provide some context. For some reason, YouTube gave me a rather odd video suggestion. I am very interested in audio technology, mixing, and mastering, but I’m not a snake-oil audiophile type. I guess you could call me a lover-of-audio, e.g., audiophile, but I don’t attach myself to that community. So you can imagine my confusion when this video was suggested to me on YouTube.

    For anyone unwilling to click on an ambiguous YT link like that, here is a brief description: audiophile guy (who believes that cables affect sound) compares three cables, two of which are "cheap" (e.g., approx. 50€) and one of which is expensive (like 200€ — for a cable). His conclusion is ultimately (yes, I watched that far) that they don’t really affect sound, because they’re just interconnects (so RCA cables), and not speaker or power cables. But he actually records each cable and provides those music files — which means I can compare them as well...

    By "records each cable," I mean that he used each cable to connect a CD-player to a pre-amp (for some reason) and then an analogue-to-digital convert (ADC) into his computer, where he can record the output; this way he gets just the supposed difference the cables make. I realize that the CD-player might have some inconsistencies, since CDs are a moving medium, but jitter compensation and stuff like that is very advanced these days, so this is getting pretty close to an accurate measurement of the cables, I think (correct me if I’m wrong!).

    In the video, this guys claims that the measurements show a difference between the cables. This debate around cables is something I thought was quite contested, so I naturally decided to download the tracks (which he provides in the description) and compare them myself. Here’s what happened.

    My Own Testing: They Don’t Null

    So I downloaded his recordings, phase-aligned (which they weren’t already) everything and normalized to peak (which, again, was necessary, and creates the lowest delta compared to LUFS, etc.), and then null-tested. That means I inverted the phase of one, played two of the files at the same time, and thus got the delta between them.

    The Mogami and Belden cables (the cheap ones) are nearly identical; there is a slight difference in the null-test, but it is statistically small enough, that I attribute it to measurement inconsistency (e.g., CD-player, DAC, or ADC performance, but also maybe natural conditions, etc.). I especially suspect — given that most differences occur at higher frequencies but aren’t really audible when listening — a jitter related issue, causing the timing to be just a little off, thus creating a delta in the higher frequencies. This could be due to the CD-player, but I have no idea.

    ...the Neotech (the expensive one), however, is significantly different.


    Firstly, he provides the file for the Neotech cable with a significant phase delay compared to the others, of about 50 ms, and it is also about 0.02 db louder than the others. That is rather suspicious on his part. This alone makes it sound better, but when I correct this volume and phase difference — it still sounds better, and the null-test confirms that it is still quite different (we're talking differences up to -40 db here, which should definitely be audible).

    It turns out, the volume difference actually changes throughout the song; meaning that in some places the difference is 0.01 db, and in others 0.03 db. But I can correct for that! I don’t know why it happens (someone smarter than me, please explain), but I can correct for it... And yet, the null test still shows a clear difference (especially when the singer makes s-sounds, i.e., sibilance).

    Please Help Me

    What is going on? My physics knowledge tells me this should be impossible. I can only imagine that for some reason the Neotech is more conductive, or something like that, and therefore recreates the harsh and very fast dynamics of sibilance more accurately. (edit: crossed out because this is a little too ridiculous) But the difference in conductivity should not be enough to cause that... I really am confused. Someone with more expertise please explain this!

    For context, I cannot blind test ABX the Neotech. (edit: meaning, I cannot hear any difference whatsoever.) This is very subtle stuff here. But I can see a difference, the null test shows differences as high as -45 db when the singer does those s-sounds and everything has been normalized. So clearly something is happening (and again, this is phase aligned and normalized and everything). So what could it possibly be?


    Edit: here, for clarity, screenshots of the null test at different moments in the tracks from the youtube vid (here nulling between the magomi and neotech).

    Normal part of song, no sibilance or cymbals, but otherwise singing, piano, bass guitar, drums, etc.: insignificant delta

    When the singer creates sibilance with an s-sound: huge delta

    The null test was performed in the Reaper DAW with Voxengo SPAM and Reaper’s built-in phase align, normalization, and phase inversion.


    Lemmy, please show me what I have missed! Show me the obvious error I or the video creator made. Sorry to make such a long post on c/asklemmy, but I don’t know where else to ask.

     

    cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43120463

    TLDR (I’m very long-winded): this YT video took measurements of three different audio cables, including a 200€ one, and found differences where there should be none. My physics knowledge (and general consensus among the scientific community) says the measurements of the different cables should be identical or near-identical — or I am, at least, under that impression. My own measurements, because the channel does provide the files, confirm that the expensive 200€ cable does measure differently from the others. But surely something else must be causing this? Please help me find out what that is, Lemmy!

    Below, I go into a little more detail and context, and I go through what I have tried, etc.; I tried splitting everything up into chunks to make it easier to read, but I was never good at being succinct. Sorry about that 😬 :P

    Context: What Am I Talking About?

    Firstly, I should clarify that this isn’t relevant to most people, only really physics and audio-technology nerds. But I’m desperate. This question has been tormenting me for days...

    I should provide some context. For some reason, YouTube gave me a rather odd video suggestion. I am very interested in audio technology, mixing, and mastering, but I’m not a snake-oil audiophile type. I guess you could call me a lover-of-audio, e.g., audiophile, but I don’t attach myself to that community. So you can imagine my confusion when this video was suggested to me on YouTube.

    For anyone unwilling to click on an ambiguous YT link like that, here is a brief description: audiophile guy (who believes that cables affect sound) compares three cables, two of which are "cheap" (e.g., approx. 50€) and one of which is expensive (like 200€ — for a cable). His conclusion is ultimately (yes, I watched that far) that they don’t really affect sound, because they’re just interconnects (so RCA cables), and not speaker or power cables. But he actually records each cable and provides those music files — which means I can compare them as well...

    By "records each cable," I mean that he used each cable to connect a CD-player to a pre-amp (for some reason) and then an analogue-to-digital convert (ADC) into his computer, where he can record the output; this way he gets just the supposed difference the cables make. I realize that the CD-player might have some inconsistencies, since CDs are a moving medium, but jitter compensation and stuff like that is very advanced these days, so this is getting pretty close to an accurate measurement of the cables, I think (correct me if I’m wrong!).

    In the video, this guys claims that the measurements show a difference between the cables. This debate around cables is something I thought was quite contested, so I naturally decided to download the tracks (which he provides in the description) and compare them myself. Here’s what happened.

    My Own Testing: They Don’t Null

    So I downloaded his recordings, phase-aligned (which they weren’t already) everything and normalized to peak (which, again, was necessary, and creates the lowest delta compared to LUFS, etc.), and then null-tested. That means I inverted the phase of one, played two of the files at the same time, and thus got the delta between them.

    The Mogami and Belden cables (the cheap ones) are nearly identical; there is a slight difference in the null-test, but it is statistically small enough, that I attribute it to measurement inconsistency (e.g., CD-player, DAC, or ADC performance, but also maybe natural conditions, etc.). I especially suspect — given that most differences occur at higher frequencies but aren’t really audible when listening — a jitter related issue, causing the timing to be just a little off, thus creating a delta in the higher frequencies. This could be due to the CD-player, but I have no idea.

    ...the Neotech (the expensive one), however, is significantly different.


    Firstly, he provides the file for the Neotech cable with a significant phase delay compared to the others, of about 50 ms, and it is also about 0.02 db louder than the others. This alone makes it sound better, but when I correct this volume and phase difference — it still sounds better, and the null-test confirms that it is still quite different (we're talking differences up to -40 db here, which should definitely be audible).

    It turns out, the volume difference actually changes throughout the song; meaning that in some places the difference is 0.01 db, and in others 0.03 db. But I can correct for that! I don’t know why it happens (someone smarter than me, please explain), but I can correct for it... And yet, the null test still shows a clear difference (especially when the singer makes s-sounds, i.e., sibilance).

    Please Help Me

    What is going on? My physics knowledge tells me this should be impossible. I can only imagine that for some reason the Neotech is more conductive, or something like that, and therefore recreates the harsh and very fast dynamics of sibilance more accurately. But the difference in conductivity should not be enough to cause that... I really am confused. Someone with more expertise please explain this!

    For context, I cannot blind test ABX the Neotech. This is very subtle stuff here. But the null test shows differences as high as -45 db when the singer does those s-sounds and everything has been normalized. So clearly something is happening (and again, this is phase aligned and normalized and everything). So what could it possibly be?


    Lemmy, please show me what I have missed! Show me the obvious error I or the video creator made. Sorry to make such a long post on c/asklemmy, but I don’t know where else to ask.

     

    TLDR (I’m very long-winded): this YT video took measurements of three different audio cables, including a 200€ one, and found differences where there should be none. My physics knowledge (and general consensus among the scientific community) says the measurements of the different cables should be identical or near-identical — or I am, at least, under that impression. My own measurements, because the channel does provide the files, confirm that the expensive 200€ cable does measure differently from the others. But surely something else must be causing this? Please help me find out what that is, Lemmy!

    Edit: see this and this other excellent comment.

    Below, I go into a little more detail and context, and I go through what I have tried, etc.; I tried splitting everything up into chunks to make it easier to read, but I was never good at being succinct. Sorry about that 😬 :P

    Context: What Am I Talking About?

    Firstly, I should clarify that this isn’t relevant to most people, only really physics and audio-technology nerds. But I’m desperate. This question has been tormenting me for days...

    I should provide some context. For some reason, YouTube gave me a rather odd video suggestion. I am very interested in audio technology, mixing, and mastering, but I’m not a snake-oil audiophile type. I guess you could call me a lover-of-audio, e.g., audiophile, but I don’t attach myself to that community. So you can imagine my confusion when this video was suggested to me on YouTube.

    For anyone unwilling to click on an ambiguous YT link like that, here is a brief description: audiophile guy (who believes that cables affect sound) compares three cables, two of which are "cheap" (e.g., approx. 50€) and one of which is expensive (like 200€ — for a cable). His conclusion is ultimately (yes, I watched that far) that they don’t really affect sound, because they’re just interconnects (so RCA cables), and not speaker or power cables. But he actually records each cable and provides those music files — which means I can compare them as well...

    By "records each cable," I mean that he used each cable to connect a CD-player to a pre-amp (for some reason) and then an analogue-to-digital convert (ADC) into his computer, where he can record the output; this way he gets just the supposed difference the cables make. I realize that the CD-player might have some inconsistencies, since CDs are a moving medium, but jitter compensation and stuff like that is very advanced these days, so this is getting pretty close to an accurate measurement of the cables, I think (correct me if I’m wrong!).

    In the video, this guys claims that the measurements show a difference between the cables. This debate around cables is something I thought was quite contested, so I naturally decided to download the tracks (which he provides in the description) and compare them myself. Here’s what happened.

    My Own Testing: They Don’t Null

    So I downloaded his recordings, phase-aligned (which they weren’t already) everything and normalized to peak (which, again, was necessary, and creates the lowest delta compared to LUFS, etc.), and then null-tested. That means I inverted the phase of one, played two of the files at the same time, and thus got the delta between them.

    The Mogami and Belden cables (the cheap ones) are nearly identical; there is a slight difference in the null-test, but it is statistically small enough, that I attribute it to measurement inconsistency (e.g., CD-player, DAC, or ADC performance, but also maybe natural conditions, etc.). I especially suspect — given that most differences occur at higher frequencies but aren’t really audible when listening — a jitter related issue, causing the timing to be just a little off, thus creating a delta in the higher frequencies. This could be due to the CD-player, but I have no idea.

    ...the Neotech (the expensive one), however, is significantly different.


    Firstly, he provides the file for the Neotech cable with a significant phase delay compared to the others, of about 50 ms, and it is also about 0.02 db louder than the others. That is rather suspicious on his part. This alone makes it sound better, but when I correct this volume and phase difference — it still sounds better, and the null-test confirms that it is still quite different (we're talking differences up to -40 db here, which should definitely be audible).

    It turns out, the volume difference actually changes throughout the song; meaning that in some places the difference is 0.01 db, and in others 0.03 db. But I can correct for that! I don’t know why it happens (someone smarter than me, please explain), but I can correct for it... And yet, the null test still shows a clear difference (especially when the singer makes s-sounds, i.e., sibilance).

    Please Help Me

    What is going on? My physics knowledge tells me this should be impossible. I can only imagine that for some reason the Neotech is more conductive, or something like that, and therefore recreates the harsh and very fast dynamics of sibilance more accurately. (edit: crossed out because this is a little too ridiculous) But the difference in conductivity should not be enough to cause that... I really am confused. Someone with more expertise please explain this!

    For context, I cannot blind test ABX the Neotech. I cannot hear any difference whatsoever. This is very subtle stuff here. But I can see a difference, the null test shows differences as high as -45 db when the singer does those s-sounds and everything has been normalized. So clearly something is happening (and again, this is phase aligned and normalized and everything). So what could it possibly be?


    Edit: here, for clarity, screenshots of the null test at different moments in the tracks from the youtube vid (here nulling between the magomi and neotech).

    Normal part of song, no sibilance or cymbals, but otherwise singing, piano, bass guitar, drums, etc.: insignificant delta

    When the singer creates sibilance with an s-sound: huge delta

    The null test was performed in the Reaper DAW with Voxengo SPAM and Reaper’s built-in phase align, normalization, and phase inversion.


    Lemmy, please show me what I have missed! Show me the obvious error I or the video creator made. Sorry to make such a long post on c/asklemmy, but I don’t know where else to ask.

    view more: next ›