Miscellaneous

I was at the Verizon store, trying to undo a Verizon mess-up (what else is new?). It gave me a chance to scope out my next phone, upon which I will be placing a large emphasis on *good* camera performance, as I tire of carrying a real camera to various casual events. My prime candidate, the Samsung Galaxy Camera, was heavily disappointing. It was MUCH larger and heavier than any phone OR compact camera I've owned, not to mention the ugliest. It's like they literally took a phone and camera and fused them without weight or size savings. The 21x zoom lens was not bad even zoomed all the way out as far as IQ and focus speed, but it looked ludicrous when zoomed out. …

Oh, snap! Has anyone noticed that today Facebook has changed their photo viewer, so that when you click on a photo to view, the bottom of the photo is cut off in order to display an ad at the lower right corner. Only way to view the entire photo is to keep pushing control/- to make the photo small. Absolute FAIL and shows where Facebook is headed! http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100503334101314

I am planning to get Yumi a digital piano for Christmas. She has been playing since she was young (she is used to an acoustic piano). I have an old Casio PS-20 (https://www.musiciansfriend.com/keyboards-midi/casio-ps-20-88-key-digital-piano) from 2002 which does have hammer weighted action but I am sure the technology has come a long way since then. I was looking at the Yamaha Arius 163B since I have heard good things about Yamaha. I listened to both this one and the 143 and this one certainly had a better sound. Anything that might be better to look at without completely breaking the bank? Is it worth upgrading to the Yamaha Clavinova 625? https://www.…

Hi, After lurking here for a while and giving up on the advice at another forum, I thought I would try asking about a problem that has been bothering me for some time. I am having substantial problems with my cell phone pings being picked up by the headphone cable. I am running a nuforce HDP and HD650s in case someone else has experience with the same problem and setup. So I see a few options: 1) Shielded headphone cables. (Although the price scares me vs option 6) 2) Craft a EMI blocking filter (Perhaps with an inline Neutrix EMC series XLR pair or equivalent), or maybe a ferrite core? 3) A magical audiophile solution I am not aware of. Preferabl…

I just got the November Time Warner Cable bill, which had a brand new charge for "Modem Rental," which is new and apparently a backhanded price hike. Any other Time Warner customers around got their November bill? http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/time-warner-cable-modem-rental/

Been "playing" my friend's guitar every day for the last two weeks, so I think it's fair to say that I'm pretty serious about learning acoustic, especially given that my enthusiasm for saxophone has gradually been dwindling the last half year or so. Anywho, I plan on buying my own guitar this summer, just wondering what brands I should be looking at. Keep in mind this is just a starting point for me, so I'm not looking to spend too much money, say a budget of like $300-400. My friend has a Yamaha; I really have no reference for what a decent guitar is but this one seems alright. Thanks for any/all help, much appreciated.

I am so excited about getting this new laptop. It has 1GB of memory, 16 GB SSD, 8.9 inch LED display (1024 X 600), XP Home SP3, LAN and Wi-fi, weights 2.28 lbs and is pretty small to boot. I can't wait to get this thing in and try it out. Battery life isn't that bad at 3 to 4 hours as well.

Hey guys! I dont know anything about video recording so hopefully I can get some help from you guys. My parents have been looking for a good video camera that can record for more than 2 hours of high quality HD video on a single charge. They've been using the 5d mkii as a video camera but its limited by the 10-12 min limit per recording (for HD video). The video camera doesnt need to have any pro features like xlr inputs or anything but a 3.5mm mic input would be pretty nice. Budget is up to $1.5k (for something thats high quality and built well) Thanks!

one I have been an enthusiast of luxury snack items for awhile now, but nothing has yet trounced the cream puff as my favorite indulgence. The process of obtaining a box of Beard Papa's cream puffs and then transporting it to a suitable place to be sampled slowly is a holistic experience. Each retail location is different than the next, so it would be useless to describe the environs and aura of each- but note that they will almost always reside in upscale urban areas devoid of such undesirable establishments as OTB betting or check cashing stations. The staff will be light-hearted, energetic, and above all- enthusiastic. To be employed at beard papa's, one nee…

A friend who is into music but not up to speed on gear and not an audiophile wants a new system but doesn't know what to get. He is looking for a new stereo/home theater setup that can also feed a couple of other rooms. He installed speaker wire and CAT5 cable to various spots when he remodeled awhile back and now wants to take more advantage of the multi-room music idea. The primary location will be a living room 5.1 home theater setup that will double as his 2-channel stereo listening location. He also has speakers for the den/kitchen, a back deck, and an upstairs bedroom that he would like to be able to play as a separate zone or zones from the living room/HT. He w…

I need a replacement Goldring D42 stylus. hifi4less.com sells them for much cheaper than I can get here in the US, even including shipping. Unfortunately they only sell in the UK. I was wondering if somebody in the UK would buy this for me and ship it here? Here is pertinent web page. Please PM me if you can help. Thanks.

Ah fucking shit. I don't need this right now. It has been dropping calls like crazy, now it won't connect to the internet for more than a minute at a time, text messages don't work, I spent an hour on the phone with advanced tech support with Sprint, and even tried a hard reset, setting it back to factory defaults. No dice. Pretty much the antenna connection is physically fucked. Upside of this is that it's an excuse to upgrade. The tech set me up with an Exchange service ticket, so I'll have to go to a Sprint store service center and see if I can just plop down $55 towards another phone. Since the 6700 is discontinued, I think I'll get either the HTC Touch or the Mogu…

So I am thinking about replacing my roomate, but the main reason that I haven't is because the volume of my snoring is turned up to 11. I've been told not only can it be heard through the wall but through the floor as well to downstairs and that's a hard thing to see if a potential roomate can handle without doing a trial run which is really f'ing awkward to arrange. My snoring aside.. you can hear everything through the wall including talking normal volume on the phone. So I want to sound proof it up. What's the best way to do it? I'd prefer to only do it on my side if possible since I'm not sure I want to invest money into making it cosmetically appealing especia…

So I am in need of a decent component video cable. It has to be somewhere between 15 and 20 feet long. The closer to 20' the better. Unfortunately, MonoPrice has 15 foot and 20 foot. I'd really rather avoid a 25' cable if I can help it. I checked on Amazon and found a few results: Amazon.com: 6M PRO SERIES COMPONENT (87206): Electronics ($22) Amazon.com: Icarus Black Carbon Component Video Cable (19.6 Feet/6 Meters): Electronics ($26) Amazon.com: Monster THX Ultra 800 16ft Ultra-High Performance Component Video Cables: Electronics ($20) Yes, Monster FTMFL, as a company, but that price is excellent. In my experience, Monster video cables are not horrid, just…

EOSD1426 by drjlo1, on Flickr The 13.3" Vaio Ultrabook certainly looks great and is very portable (compared to the 15.6" Asus), which is why I bought it. But after messing around with Windows 8, I just could NOT stand it. Bypassing Win 8 by installing "Skip Metro Suite" and "Classic Shell" is highly recommended.

I know we have Shave-Case, but for those periods of wanting to keep hair have any suggestions for beard treatments to keep things manly soft and not bone dry? Currently using Viking Revolution Beard Conditioner and then alternating between Honest Amish Balm and Mountaineer Brand Beard Oil, but it's time to reevaluate the options. All ears.

Anyone have any recommendations or suggestions of what to read? Jeff recommended using a fire hose to fill it with water, but I do not think that would be ideal. More prefer to put some sort of absorbent material (foam? fiber board?) behind canvas prints. Also, speaker decoupling, to reduce noise transmission to the neighbors, seems like a good thing to do.

So my daughter is sitting in her bedroom in a rented house while away at college listening to music on a Apple Hi-Fi boombox. Suddenly there is a loud pop and sparks are flying from the power cable to the boombox while the room goes dark. She pours her water on the carpet which ignited from the sparks and called me. The boombox was plugged into a cheap multiple outlet surge protector along with a curling iron and hair straightener neither of which were turned on at the time. The incident caused the house panel circuit breaker for the outlet to trip. Any ideas what could have caused this? She wasn't touching or moving the boombox in any way when the incident happened a…

Google Announce Project Fi http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/google-bursts-into-the-wireless-industry-with-project-fi/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/22/google_project_fi/ https://fi.google.com/about/ https://fi.google.com/about/faq You'll need a Nexus 6 Initially (or pay for in only 24 easy monthly payments) - so they're not pitching to iPhone users, yet and the pricing of $20 + (GB used * $10) may only seem cheap because of how expensive / data non-PAYG other plans are ... What usage patterns does this make sense for (in terms of TCO/coverage) , compared to say T-Mobiles $30/5GB plan ? But interesting to have a virtual / MVNO plan that allows ro…

I am in need of recommendations for a P&S digital camera. It would be a bonus if it is a fast camera and on the smallish side. Budget under $350. Thanks!

Like Chrome Cast for video, but with without the video, for (audio?) devices without HDMI inputs ... http://www.google.com/cast/audio/ http://chrome.blogspot.ch/2015/01/introducing-google-cast-for-audio.html EDIT: Interesting that they have the root "cast" directory. http://www.google.com/cast/ Hmm, whats next. Text cast (or should that be cast for text)?

Anyone know of a portable sound recorder that lets you rewind and playback events from a live recording while still recording the main track? This is an ability that may help me when expressing my thoughts in discussions, it will be voice recording and on a budget of £200 ($300) or less. Something digital with inbuilt speaker would be what I'd need. Douglas p.s. I won't be able to converse much

hey all, This forum is great. I'm new to the audio world, and its been fascinating me for a while since I innocently stumbled upon head-fi when researching new headphones (ended up spending 6 times more than I originally wanted to...). Then I found this forum, and I've been casually reading through some of the posts for a while now. Besides tempting me to spend money I don't have, it has also kept me highly entertained. So I decided to join. I'm not going to pretend to know much about anything, and I don't plan on posting that much for fear of instant insult barrages (you guys are all asshats ). Just so you know how much of a newbie I am to this audio world here…

I was pondering the idea of sound design when it comes to amplifier design. I am wondering if amp designers know what a circuit is going to sound like before they make it? So is it the case that they think about the sonic attributes they want to create and design an amp to suit or do they just build an amp with little concern for the sonic side of things and aim to keep the variables (such as THD) in an optimum range with an expectation that the amplifier will sound good at the end? In addition to this are there things a designer can do to deliberately change an aspect of the sound, such as increase the warmth, widen the soundstage or increase the detail? Sorry for …

This is an odd topic but I'm looking for quick answers. I am having some Ikea solid beech wood butcher block counter tops installed in the Mayberry kitchen. They suggest sanding, sealing and oiling but they do not really give a lot of specifics. They sell some linseed oil but not a sealer and I am not sure if a sealer is necessary or recommended for use on butcher block counter tops or what to use and still be safe for food handling on them. Anybody have ideas for specific products or general procedures to employ or avoid?