I had dreamed of physical "analog" controls as a standard feature on keyboards and input devices for various applications -- would be great productivity booster for power users.
I made a SpaceMouse the other day, it was really easy, mostly just the print. It took around an hour to assemble everything, I think? It also worked very well.
For those considering buying speakers: (1) do it, (2) get passive ones and a separate amp. Honestly it’s such a mature market that buying these active speakers just creates e-waste. Keep the e-waste to the amp. You can get really solid speakers for $300 and a cheap amp with BT for $50-100, replacing them basically independently depending on your needs.
Quality of active speakers are really good these days, they have matched amps and speakers from neumann, genelec etc also has active crossover which is superior than any passive setup.
Mature market sure, but even companies like KEF who didn't offered or focussed much on active systems, have growing range of options now.
Quality active speakers very rarely break, but one should buy them from studio gear (e)shops instead of the nearest mall. I totally agree on other gimmicks that would add single points of failure and should be kept out.
The most expensive boxes you can afford from Canton. Or buy second hand - they will sound like new.
But speakers are something very subjective, and while I’m still delighted with the Canton I got for a discount, your ear might prefer something different. This is something where comparing in a physical store with a passionate salesperson can be worth it.
I would recommend some older B&W (Bowers & Wilkins) from 6xx or DM6xx series. You can find them cheap on eBay etc, I use those since 15 years and cannot complain.
Active crossovers usually sound better than passive ones, and with active speakers the amp is generally better matched to the drivers. In addition, speaker design keeps evolving, as does people’s budgets, so it’s likely you’ll want something else in 10-20 years.
I also never had an amp fail other than by cranking it up too high with the wrong speakers.
Or, imo even better, get a lasting amp as well and make the changing part (receiver) external. I have a pair of timeless speakers and amp with optical input, and AirPort Express 2 to provide Airplay capability.
Seems like the author moved from a “speakers + networked amp” setup, to a one where with active speakers where everything is built-in.
When I was buying speakers for my apartment some time ago, I was similarly considering going for the all-in-one options like this, but I’m glad I didn’t. I prefer the “dumb passive speaker + networked amp”, as it allows you to pick / replace / upgrade the separate components.
Went for the KEF LS50, and for the amp Lyngdorf TDAI-1120. And that’s despite KEF having the all-in-one active version of those speakers. Very happy with my choices!
I have the “wireless” powered kef ls50 and the regular ones.
The wireless model has significantly better bass response and sounds much better to my ear.
I actually had a fault with them recently and they stopped working, I’d bought the speakers used on ebay and even had I had a warranty they were past 5 years old by the point the fault developed. Regardless, kef repaired them entirely for free. 10/10 would buy again.
Nice! I don't have any Schiit gear, but few months ago I started reading the founders book 'Schiit Happened'. I got halfway through (and then got distracted by other books, need to pick it back up), but can definitely recommend it for anyone interested in audio, and especially if you already have some Schiit!
> Those methods either give me a tiny slider that I can only use 10% of or about 15 steps where the jump from step 3 to step 4 takes the speakers from “a bit too quiet” to “definitely bothering the neighbors” levels.
Volume controls need to be logarithmic, not linear.
To a first degree approximation, everybody gets this wrong.
Volume controls also shouldn't just be a flat wideband gain - they should respect how we actually perceive sound so the timbre doesn't change as the level changes (when you turn the volume down, you are typically left with just the stuff in the vocal frequency range, and lose all the bass etc).
Doing this stuff well is pretty hard (e.g. designing filters that can do that kind of volume adjustment is hard because you want to be constantly adjusting them, which means you need to be super careful with your filter state) but I have heard what it sounds like, and once you hear it you get angry at all other volume controls.
> Volume controls also shouldn't just be a flat wideband gain - they should respect how we actually perceive sound so the timbre doesn't change as the level changes (when you turn the volume down, you are typically left with just the stuff in the vocal frequency range, and lose all the bass etc).
The amp I'm upgrading from was interesting in this regard. In addition to the main volume knob, it had a loudness knob. The manual actually recommended keeping the volume knob fixed most of the time and using the loudness knob to set the listening level throughout the day.
From the manual:
> 1. Set the LOUDNESS control to the FLAT position.
> 2. Rotate the VOLUME control on the front panel (or press VOLUME +/– on the remote control) to set the sound output level to the loudest listening level that you would listen to.
> 3. Rotate the LOUDNESS control counterclockwise until the desired volume is obtained.
My cheap Behringer NU1000DSP that I use as a subwoofer amp can do that to some extent with its dynamic EQ, and you can set it up via USB with a PC app which is a huge step up from some crummy little LCD and buttons.
Even friggen Apple, who seem to have a rep for caring about such things. I'd say I'd need at least 5 more levels between off and the lowest volume on my iPhone. It's way too loud to use in a quiet room. I have to try to cover the speaker.
Yep. I was always using only the low end of the volume slider and having the same problem as OP that the steps were too coarse. So for Musium, I added a logarithmic volume control with a step size of 1 dB. That difference is on the border of being perceivable in the range I usually listen at, which is fine enough in practice.
Pro-tip for embedding JS in an HTML string in a Typescript file: you can get full typecheck etc for your embedded JS snippet if you write it as a top-level function in your file, and then interpolate the function into your template.
This works because function.toString() in modern runtimes gives you back fully parse-able input source.
You need to make sure you don’t reference anything outside the function, but it’s generally nicer overall than JS-in-string.
Then you treat it as an IIFE. Example:
function globalJS() { document.write('hi') }
const html = `<script>(${globalJS})()</script>`
I use this technique for calling AppleScript-flavored-JS from NodeJS too.
Funnily, I had a backend function that used `window`, which was then sent to frontend in this way. I think the project's tsconfig `lib` included `dom` for it to work.
I know it is tangential, but this about his old system caught my attention:
With that system, I could set the amplifier’s analog volume knob such that the max volume out of the streamer corresponded to my actual maximum preferred listening volume, giving me access to the full range of Spotify or AirPlay’s volume controls.
Assuming an analog input, this might result in a noticable quality reduction at low volumes.
Tangential fun fact: amps have a fixed gain, because it's hard to make a variable gain without distortion [1]. The volume knob doesn't control amplification, in fact it controls an attenuation stage, because it's easier to make variable attenuation with low distortion.
[1] that's why there were so many different "classes" of amps, they're all making different tradeoffs about how they're doing the amplification.
According to Claude, the attenuation stage is before the power amp stage. Does that mean worse SNR whether the volume is controlled using the volume control or via the input?
(Ignoring the additional quantization issue with a scaled digital input.)
Reducing excessively before the DAC and high gain after the DAC is far more likely to result in quality reduction, due to quantization error. Having reasonable levels before the DAC and just the right amount of gain after the DAC (e.g., via an amplifier's attenuator setting) is the best possible scenario. So TFA's prior setup may have been superior in this regard, depending on how the digital volume control on the new speakers is implemented (i.e., before the DAC, or as a VCA after the DAC).
Where this breaks down is if the analog signal path (after the DAC) consists of something noisy after the attenuator. Passive attenuation (like built into an amp, or the master fader of a mixer, etc.) won't add noise, but something active like an outboard EQ would. The attenuation to set desired max level must be completely last (before power amp) to avoid noise.
We really don't want to be touching the digital signal. The state of the art is to change the DAC reference level, putting the DAC output at the sweet spot for the analog stage for any given ultimate output level.
In this case, I was using the optical out from a WiiM mini into a Yamaha amp. I don't know much about digital audio, but I know that I was able to control the volume of the WiiM's digital output with that setup.
On the other hand, I use a Schiit Asgard at my desk, where I have it connected to my Mac via USB-C. In that setup, I have no control over the volume level going in to the Asgard. MacOS just disables the software volume control when I'm using that audio output.
I think for a WiiM mini to control the volume on the digital output, it would need to scale down every sample. This is probably fine over some range (it has a 24 bit output, so putting the volume at two thirds, would still result in 16 bits, the same as CD). But I'm curious what would happen at very low volumes, e.g. if you're down to only 4 bits.
While I’m all for physical controls, especially ones that self-adjust to reflect the state of the remote device at all times, I wonder if the author just doesn’t know you can finely adjust volume in iOS control center by force/long pressing and then dragging.
This is a great point! When I'm using AirPlay, that feature is really useful. I'm more often using Spotify Connect though, where I'm limited to either using the physical volume buttons on my phone, the small slider in the desktop app, or the slider that's many clicks in to the Spotify mobile app.
In reality though, this project is more about the fun of it than about it being a really pressing need.
It also works when using Spotify Connect on your iOS device. If you can use your volume buttons to control it you can also adjust it with the slider in the control centre.
spotify has so many user hostile practices that I am completely mystified why the majority of the population seems to prefer them in a world where youtube music exists.
Readit News
https://github.com/scottbez1/smartknob
Video demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip641WmY4pA&t=1s
Technically yes, but that is a serious project.
I dont have time/tools etc to do this.
I had dreamed of physical "analog" controls as a standard feature on keyboards and input devices for various applications -- would be great productivity booster for power users.
I wish this catches on and gets mass adoption.
https://universaldatasystems.org/shop/wp-content/uploads/201...
Also, online services built into these will die before the speakers do.
But speakers are something very subjective, and while I’m still delighted with the Canton I got for a discount, your ear might prefer something different. This is something where comparing in a physical store with a passionate salesperson can be worth it.
I also never had an amp fail other than by cranking it up too high with the wrong speakers.
When I was buying speakers for my apartment some time ago, I was similarly considering going for the all-in-one options like this, but I’m glad I didn’t. I prefer the “dumb passive speaker + networked amp”, as it allows you to pick / replace / upgrade the separate components. Went for the KEF LS50, and for the amp Lyngdorf TDAI-1120. And that’s despite KEF having the all-in-one active version of those speakers. Very happy with my choices!
The wireless model has significantly better bass response and sounds much better to my ear.
I actually had a fault with them recently and they stopped working, I’d bought the speakers used on ebay and even had I had a warranty they were past 5 years old by the point the fault developed. Regardless, kef repaired them entirely for free. 10/10 would buy again.
The other part is that they hugely overbuild the amplifier sections (at least by rating -- 280W for the mid-woofer and 100W for the tweeter.
Close! I moved from a "speakers + non-networked amp + streamer" setup.
I'm still running separate components for nearer-field listening at my desk, where I've got KEF Q150s powered by a small Schiit pre-amp and amp.
Volume controls need to be logarithmic, not linear.
To a first degree approximation, everybody gets this wrong.
Doing this stuff well is pretty hard (e.g. designing filters that can do that kind of volume adjustment is hard because you want to be constantly adjusting them, which means you need to be super careful with your filter state) but I have heard what it sounds like, and once you hear it you get angry at all other volume controls.
The amp I'm upgrading from was interesting in this regard. In addition to the main volume knob, it had a loudness knob. The manual actually recommended keeping the volume knob fixed most of the time and using the loudness knob to set the listening level throughout the day.
From the manual:
> 1. Set the LOUDNESS control to the FLAT position.
> 2. Rotate the VOLUME control on the front panel (or press VOLUME +/– on the remote control) to set the sound output level to the loudest listening level that you would listen to.
> 3. Rotate the LOUDNESS control counterclockwise until the desired volume is obtained.
They let me set the maximum volume (about 50% of actual max). The increments in iOS then get smaller.
https://docs.ruuda.nl/musium/loudness/
Deleted Comment
This works because function.toString() in modern runtimes gives you back fully parse-able input source.
You need to make sure you don’t reference anything outside the function, but it’s generally nicer overall than JS-in-string.
Then you treat it as an IIFE. Example:
I use this technique for calling AppleScript-flavored-JS from NodeJS too.Overall a nice technique!
TIL - that is good to know. I'll probably leave the post as-is but I will use that in the future.
[1] that's why there were so many different "classes" of amps, they're all making different tradeoffs about how they're doing the amplification.
(Ignoring the additional quantization issue with a scaled digital input.)
Where this breaks down is if the analog signal path (after the DAC) consists of something noisy after the attenuator. Passive attenuation (like built into an amp, or the master fader of a mixer, etc.) won't add noise, but something active like an outboard EQ would. The attenuation to set desired max level must be completely last (before power amp) to avoid noise.
On the other hand, I use a Schiit Asgard at my desk, where I have it connected to my Mac via USB-C. In that setup, I have no control over the volume level going in to the Asgard. MacOS just disables the software volume control when I'm using that audio output.
In reality though, this project is more about the fun of it than about it being a really pressing need.
A rotary knob with an integrated esp32.
https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stack-dial-esp32-s3-smar...