Lauen

I don't have a defined budget but as long as it's not in the hundreds of dollars range we could do it. If there's an option to just BUY a VPN service that lets me configure it to send traffic through the office internet without having to install a Linux server, that'd be great. Otherwise, WireGuard seems to be free aside from the labor of setting it up.

My company is an independent contractor working with the municipalities in our area. There's no "call IT" as we're just 5 dudes who know how to solder and connect wires better than the janitors. I have complete freedom in HOW I set it up, really. There's no IT department over me. The router is a Zyxel 8702 according to the config page. the config page has nothing about VPNs on it. Just a built in firewall in the Zyxel 8702 router and whatever Windows 10 calls a firewall. I'm hoping for something so simple on the client end it'll be like PIA / Nord, just click "on" and it's on. There's no IT department over me. We're independent and have to find solutions on our own. If I have to, I will sit down and set up a Linux based server, I just wanna know if I absolutely have to or not. and if I have to, how do I do it?

Hi guys, I looked through a few pages of threads but couldn't find a fit for my problem. My job requires me to be available to log in to certain sites at almost all times, regardless of where I am. These sites are management sites for alarm systems in municipal buildings. Some of these sites are starting to get serious about security and as such are now whitelisting IPs and trying to keep that list as short as possible. My office is whitelisted, along with my higher ups office and the municipal building for whatever site it is. I now need a way to route internet traffic through the internet at my workplace (VPN?) which only my colleagues and I will have access to so we don't have to drive to the office to do small tasks if we are at another building. It can be a 4 hour drive to get back to the office. At the office we only have a few laptops for work and some real old desktops of questionable performance, and as you might suspect with municipal work, we don't have much of a budget either. I've heard of OpenVPN and WireGuard but those seem to require me to set up a Linux server, and I have minimal experience with that. We've tried just using TeamViewer but with old copper based internet that is too far from the nearest node to get past 20/2 megabit, TeamViewer was very slow and unresponsive, plus I have 3 other colleagues that will need access and TeamViewer's licenses are quite expensive. If I have to use OpenVPN or WireGuard, so be it. But I can't quite make sense of the setup so it would be great if anyone could clarify it for me. TL;DR: I need to reroute traffic from a few laptops through slow office internet, preferrably cheaply and simply.

From personal experience, there is a pretty big difference if you just find the right pair for your ears. Shure SRH440's are 99 bucks and to my ears sound a lot better than HyperX Clouds. the Clouds aren't bad, it's just that the SRH440s are better for merely 10 more bucks, with much clearer overall sound, especially in the bass department, and is a little more balanced. some prefer lots of bass and the SRH440's are not for those kinds of people, but then you can instead grab a pair of Audio Technica ATH-M40X. they sound very similar to M50X but cost less. a good deal of bass, sparkly highs and alright mids. too much bass and highs for me though.

Is this all the time or just in games? It sounds an awful lot like if I don't plug my source cable for my amplifier all the way in, or touch the metal connectors to something else that is metal, like the legs on my desk. make sure the connector is plugged all the way in, and try unplugging and replugging it. if your case has front audio as well as rear audio, try both. I'm thinking grounding issue.

As stated (by rice guru too) the DT990 has more bass and I forgot to mention the highs. going from the typical Sennheiser kind of sound to Beyerdynamics can be a big change. I'm not sure if your amp can push the headphones loud enough but I think they can. If you wanna be safe, you can just stick with the HD598's. I can't guarantee you'll enjoy the bass and brightness of the DT990s.

depends on what kind of sound you want. Sennheiser 598's are sorta neutral, slightly dark sounding headphones. they're very easy to listen to and don't fatigue your ears with lots of bass or sharp highs. M50X (or the old standard M50 and M50S which are VERY close) are the other way around, marketed as a neutral monitoring headphone but are a little on the bass heavy side, and had pretty sharp highs that (to me at least) hurt after a little while. they were also not particularly comfortable (compared to Sennheiser HD 5-whatever series and Shure SRH440/840) due to small earcups that almost made it an on-ear design for me and the earpads turned to stone after 2 months, though some claim this was resolved on the X series. If you enjoyed the Sennheiser type of sound but want closed headphones instead, go for the 598 CS (closed version) or the 569 which will sound almost the same but with some passive noise attenuation. If you want more bass, you're more than welcome to try the M50X but I'd suggest Shure SRH840 (or 440 with 840 pads, cheaper and sounds almost the same), Beyerdynamic DT770, maybe even the Sennheiser HD280 or 380 or the new replacement for both of them, HD 300 Pro. Open headphone again? you already know how the 598 sounds. 599 is supposedly a little better. then there's the 600 and 650 if your budget allows for it. other brands? Philips Fidelio X2 maybe? More bass = Beyerdynamic DT990 or 880. I'm just throwing suggestions at this point and have forgotten about the budget. in the end it's up to you, if you were satisfied with the 598's, just get another pair. they are good.

I have soldered on a new cable once or twice, the hard part is figuring out which cable does what. there's a ground, left and right channel (in the main cable before the splitter thing) and if there's a mic, a cable for that too. the individual cables are usually really really thin and covered with some stuff I think is for insulation maybe. as long as you're not swapping to a new cable, you can essentially just strip back some of the rubber around the cable to expose the wires inside, if they are covered with color coded insulating stuff you can burn it off with a lighter, but be gentle. then just match the cables by color, solder them together, use heatshrink or electrical tape and to cover the wires individually and then as a complete package, and then you should be good. did this to swap a cable to a new one once, and another time I had a phone without a headphone jack (good old HTC Touch Cruise with Windows Mobile 6.0 and just a USB Mini B port). came with a set of awful earbuds, I cut off the cable right after the microphone and soldered on cables for a Koss Porta Pro and used that for half a year until I could afford a better phone. do this at your own risk however, I do not guarantee it'll work, especially if you do not have any experience soldering.

I unfortunately don't have personal experience with the shotgun mics but I HAVE experience first hand the difference bringing the mic real close does. you can get really bad dynamic mics that plug right into your 3.5mm mic input that sound like a wet fart in a too small bong for very cheap. I've heard tons of screaming / growling tutorials on youtube that use this kind of mic and it sounds exactly like the russians I meet in northeast EU matchmaking in CS:GO. truly incredible microphones that somehow literally only sound like breaking glass on top of an empty steel container before you even start speaking edit: my post turned out to not make any sense at all after I posted it but eh, I'm leaving it as is

theoretically a mono RCA to 3.5mm jack should work, but I can't find any info from Logitech on which input on the sub is for center + sub. you could get one of those cables, plug from sub preamp output and then just try all 3 inputs on the sub one after another until you get something. I can't guarantee you WILL get something because prepackaged cheap surround systems don't always work well in a DIY setting. you can probably get one of those cables I linked for like 5 bucks so it won't be a too expensive way to test it out. personally I'd get a standalone sub, for example this bestseller on amazon (maybe not a great one but certainly pretty nice value) or from a decent brand with a very simple setup with just power, volume, and a single mono RCA connector.

I remember a guy on some forum (it's been 5 years since I read the thread and I can't find it again) who had a 5.1 surround setup and used a shotgun mic aimed directly at his face from on top of his monitor and claimed his friends could not hear him play BF3 or 4 or which ever was the one he played. but that's expensive, while that neweer arm is not.

why are looks even something you consider? won't you just be sitting in your room playing video games anyway? you won't be looking in a mirror all day.

A guy I work with also has Beyer DT770's and bought the SteelSeries Arctis Pro because he also wanted something wireless. He claims he can't hear the difference between the two. but this is also the man who has not once complained about the sound quality in the work car, which is pretty trash. I'd also suggest the Sennheisers, heard a lot of good about all the new Sennheiser gaming stuff.

do the videos and music get loud enough for you? if yes, there's no real problem here. if no: is the volume slider on youtube maxed? also you lowered the potential quality of your listening experience by setting it to 16 bit 32 khz. I'm running 24 bit 48 khz and it's fine to me. and just because I was curious, I put on a song in my media player and on youtube music to compare levels and my downloaded file (bought off amazon) was much louder and 100%'d my volume "green bar" while the Youtube version only went to 50-60%. I think it's just YouTube my man.

bringing the blue snowball closer to your face and further from your keyboard will help a lot. I got a 12 dollar neweer stand for my snowball and although you CAN hear my keyboard it really isn't all that bad unless you slam your keys with the force of 1000 suns. I don't however have one of those clicky switches like MX Blue or anything of that sort, I have linear switches. For a different kind of fix that requires more money, a directional mic or at least dynamic mic will help. best case scenario will be a shotgun mic, some of the better examples like RØDE NTG series can be 200 dollars pretty quickly and then you'll also need an interface for it, which will probably start at like 50 bucks. ModMic is another option, getting the mic real close and you can turn down the gain so it'll pick up less keyboard in relation to mouth noises. 50 bucks starting price and you just plug it in and glue a little magnet to your headphones. pretty easy.