philip-b (u/philip-b)

philip-b commented on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025) · Posted by u/david927

ArneVogel · 2 months ago

Hej, I made FisherLoop[1] to learn Swedish. FisherLoop are interactive audiobooks where I use TTS with word level timestamps to highlight the words as they are spoken. This helps me pick up on pronounciation and grammar in a, for me, natural way. Additionally, I added flashcards from the books + word lookup. I am adding new books right now. If you have any requests: public domain books, which are around one hour reading time let me know :)

I am using cerebras for book translations and verb extraction and all LLM related tasks. For TTS I am using cartesia. I have played around with Elevenlabs and they have slightly natural sounding TTS but their pricing is too steep for this project. Books would cost a couple of hundred euros to process.

[1] https://www.fisherloop.com/en/

philip-b · 2 months ago

Is there such a thing for Spanish?

philip-b commented on Show HN: Let’s Bend – Open-Source Harmonica Bending Trainer letsbend.de... · Posted by u/egdels

SOLAR_FIELDS · 3 months ago

Bending takes a bit of practice but it’s not terribly hard. Here are some general tips for absolute beginners that are based simply on my anecdotal experience as an amateur player:

1. Don’t start with a wooden harp like marine band. The metal and plastic ones are typically a bit easier to bend.

2. One hole at a time. Ensure you can exclusively blow in a single hole to practice

3. Lower notes are generally easier to bend than higher notes

4. Make an O with your mouth and have the tongue float in the middle. Start by pulling, not pushing, in my experience bending on intake is slightly easier than bending on blowing out.

5. Tighten the lips and decrease the size of the O to increase pull force on the reed to create a bending effect, and also tighten the airflow chamber above your tongue by pulling your tongue back and up, then loosen it by moving your tongue forward and down

This tool looks great for helping improve once you’ve been able to perform the initial bend. Excited to try it out!

philip-b · 3 months ago

I disagree with (1) and (3). I think for a novice bending low notes is more difficult. For me the easiest note to bend was hole 6 on a C harmonica. Also, I don't think wood vs plastic matters for how easy bending is.

philip-b commented on Show HN: Let’s Bend – Open-Source Harmonica Bending Trainer letsbend.de... · Posted by u/egdels

philip-b · 3 months ago

When I was learning bending, I like the app "Bending Trainer" available for both Android and iOS, with a blue on black icon

philip-b commented on My stupid noise journey (2023) dynomight.net/noise/... · Posted by u/ustad

philip-b · 6 months ago

>the model that everyone says are the best

Is that airpods, or Bose something, or Sony something?

philip-b commented on Calm tech certification "rewards" less distracting tech spectrum.ieee.org/calm-te... · Posted by u/headalgorithm

philip-b · 7 months ago

My list of calm (+), somewhat calm (o), and non-calm (-) pieces of technology that I have owned:

+ kindle from 2010 - laptop - phone - Ipad (but it's still much calmer than my computer or my phone) + Harmonica (musical instrument) o Amplifier (I use it with my harmonica through a mic) - Linnstrument (musical instrument that requires computer or ipad connection) + Pencil and paper + Paper books o Handwritten notes on Ipad - Notes in obsidian o Nintendo Switch + Paper dictionary (for language learning) - Dictionary + Claude AI on my phone

philip-b commented on Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video] youtube.com/watch?v=itpcs... · Posted by u/HelloUsername

freetime2 · 7 months ago

I've had a lot of frustration with Switch joy-cons. Not only drift, which has claimed a number of them, but also issues with the console not recognizing when they are attached, and one pair that for some reason the switch won't recognize when trying to use in the horizontal orientation. No doubt my kids have subjected it to hard use and probably a drop or two, but still frustrating.

It looks like they've added some reinforcement to the joysticks, and changed the connection with the main body to be magnetic instead of sliding in and out (which causes wear and tear on the connectors over time). I hope the Switch 2 is more robust than the original Switch.

Some extra horsepower would also be appreciated. Recently we were trying to play Switch Sports with 4 players, and even my kids who are generally oblivious to graphical fidelity and framerate were complaining that it was basically unplayable in 4-player split screen.

philip-b · 7 months ago

I've owned a switch for 5 years and never had any problems with joycons

philip-b commented on How to measure frequency response of a speaker at home crabman.me/does-soundcore... · Posted by u/philip-b

mandmandam · 9 months ago

> I eyeballed the two (red) plots and I think they look more or less identical.

I overlaid those two images [0], and they seem significantly (though not hugely) different to me.

Wouldn't speculate as to why that is though, without checking the consistency of passes with the same setup.

0 - https://imgur.com/a/7GUSmPW (with hue shift for comparison)

philip-b · 9 months ago

This is useful, thanks. I should've done it on my own. And checking the consistency of passes would be a good idea too. If you don't mind, I'll update my blog post to include your overlaid image.

philip-b commented on How to measure frequency response of a speaker at home crabman.me/does-soundcore... · Posted by u/philip-b

zkd43 · 9 months ago

I just want to point out that it's a pretty big leap to go from "I observed the same frequency response curve with two different inputs" to "there is no audible difference between the two inputs". There are many other measurements you would need to take to prove or disprove the hypothesis, such as signal to noise ratio and dynamic range. And even then you couldn't really prove it definitively due to the complexity of how humans interpret the sound.

When you use Bluetooth, your speaker is functioning as the DAC (digital to analog converter), but when you use the aux, your computer is functioning as the DAC and also amplifying the signal, so it's reasonable to expect them to sound different.

philip-b · 9 months ago

Do different DACs frequently sound different? I would expect that it's audiophile's fairy tales.

philip-b commented on How to measure frequency response of a speaker at home crabman.me/does-soundcore... · Posted by u/philip-b

mattclarkdotnet · 9 months ago

iPhone mics are consistent enough to be used for most purposes. Apple provides the correction curves and they are used by apps like Audiotools

philip-b · 9 months ago

Do you know if the same is true of iPads and if there is a program like Spectroid for iOS?