Visual Hudson

Out of interest, why would you say that it's not a good idea to use 192kHz?

It's funny you mention that. I had a check there earlier today and it was set to "24 bit, 44100Hz (Studio Quality)" so I switched it to the highest possible option of "24 bit, 192000Hz (Studio Quality)" and it does appear to have fixed the issue. I mean, I could still hear local sounds which I couldn't do before but I suppose I'm not going to complain about that. It's weird how the audio only sounded so bad when connected remotely, not when I was physically in front of my home PC. And I'm guessing this must have been set at 24bit 192000Hz previously, maybe Windows Update did bork it, who knows. But hey atleast it appears to work properly again now!

I often connect to my Windows 10 Pro PC at home whilst at work and it used to work entirely fine. I would load up TeamViewer, log in, and then be able to use my PC at home to remotely do pretty much anything I wanted to; I could maintain my Plex server, I could watch videos or listen to music, I could video edit in Premiere Pro, I could even play Civ V and everything worked exactly fine as though I was in front of my computer at home. It all looked and more importantly sounded exactly like it should do if I was at home. It should maybe be noted that when I would connect to my home PC, I would lose the ability to hear sounds from the local machine I was sat in front of, the only sounds I would hear would be of my PC at home. But something has changed for the worse and for the life of me I can not figure out the problem. Visually everything is still fine, but the audio sounds horrendous. I do everything exactly the same, log in to TeamViewer and do all the same tasks but the sound now is... hard to describe. It's kind of muffled, low quality, distorted. It does not sound like it used to or like it should. It's like I've gone from CD quality audio to an old casette tape you find at a thrift store that's clearly seen better days. I can no longer listen to music, watch a video, do any video editting or play a game on my remote PC due to how bad the audio is. Interestingly, I am now able to hear any and all sounds from the local PC even whilst connecting to my home PC whereas before the only way to hear them would have been to disconnect from my Teamviewer session. I don't particularly care for this though, I'd much rather lose that ability and be able to listen to my home PC just as I could before. I've tried all the fixes I can think of and all the fixes I can find searching Google / Reddit / TeamViewer forums but nothing I can do seems to resolve this issue for me. A few of the main examples of things I've tried are: TeamViewer at home is set to automatically keep up to date to the latest version and is on v15.9.4 TeamViewer_Setup.exe that is saved on my local network share at work (in which I have always used the one-time run option) was an earlier v15.x.x but I've deleted it and replaced it with the latest version, but still did not fix the issue. Instead of using Partner ID and Connect, I have tried signing in to my full TeamViewer account. I have checked the "Play computer sounds and music" option under TeamViewer options > Remote Control > Remote Control defaults on both my local and home PCs. I have checked and changed all the Audio Conferencing settings on both the local and home PC, trying all of the options for audio devices used and whether it was doing a phone call or VOIP. For what it's worth, it's currently set to VOIP on both devices. I have used many different PCs at work. I have been through their audio settings. I have tried using headphones or using the speakers in-built into the computer or monitor. I have tried connecting to my home PC using the Teamviewer app on my phone,which again used to work perfectly fine, but now has this horrendous audio problem too. This alone suggests to me that this is a problem with either Teamviewer on my home PC or something else wrong with my home PC but nothing has recently changed, I have checked all of the usual drivers and settings, and I have not noticed any other problems when normally using my home PC. I'm really at a loss what else I can do here. My research does appear to show that I'm not the first person to have audio problems with TeamViewer. But has anybody got any other advice or fixes that I can try to get this all working as it once did?

According to Scan.co.uk they are.... 64GB (4x16GB) Corsair DDR4 Dominator Platinum RGB, PC4-28800 (3600), Non-ECC Unbuff, CAS 18-19-19-39, RGB LED, XMP,1.35V 128GB (4x32GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance RGB PRO Black, PC4-28800 (3600), Non-ECC Unbuff, CAS 18-22-22-42, RGB LED, 1.35V Previous prices were the best I could find and were from Amazon. Scan actually have the Vengeance kit at £624.49 which then makes it an extra £30.50 for twice as much RAM over the Dominator kit and a saving of over £50 for the same Vengeance kit compared to Amazon.

Well I use my current rig as a Plex server. All going well, that job should be moved over to the new unraid server when my current rig is repurposed. However my thinking is that I built my last rig in 2012 was built with 16GB of RAM (which at the time I thought was overkill and more than I'd ever need for a long time) and then last year finally upgraded to the max of 32GB DDR3 Corsair Dominator RAM that was long overdue and very much needed. I would like to cover myself in the future for that sort of thing too by getting the maximum my motherboard can handle now, rather than struggling to find it later down the line and at inflated eBay prices. I do use my computer for the Adobe Creative Suite apps although I'm hardly Taran haha. I am a ridiculous tab whore in Chrome / Opera. I often use remote desktop. I do play games, as well using Steam Link. I often use Excel, although I am somewhat transitioning into using Google Sheets. I will be using the new computer to quicker rip / re-encode DVDs and Blu Rays using MakeMKV, Handbreake, MKVToolNix to then transfer over to the new unraid server. There's probably a lot more that I will be using the new PC for, but those are just a few examples. Again I know I'm going to get a lot of people say it's a stupid waste of money, it's massively overkill for these needs, etc etc but if I'm happy spending the £600ish on each of these kits then I really don't want to argue about whether I should be getting either of these kits or not.

It's time to build myself a new rig, since my last one from 2012/2013 is starting to show it's age and I'm planning on repurposing it as a unRaid server for Plex / storage. I'm currently eyeing up either of these two RAM options. I know that these are both largely overkill for most tasks these days, but I'm not here to argue about that. I'm not particularly bothered about the RGB, although the Dominator does look better imo. The Dominator kit is currently priced at £594, whereas the Vengeance kit is £677. So it's an extra £83 for twice as much RAM. I know that the Dominator kit has slightly better timings but obviously it's only half as much RAM, whereas the Vengeance kit has slightly worse timings but it's twice as much RAM. I believe I've read that the Dominator kits aren't particularly amazing timings, so maybe it might be possible to tighten them up myself although outside of turning on XMP I have zero experience with overclocking memory. I suppose it really comes down to whether twice as much RAM is worth it for the sacrifice in timings / performance? What are people opinions between the two kits?

I've been using Amazon Music occasionally for a few years, but in the last six months or so I've been using it more since deciding to pay for the monthly subscription. And for my needs, it's perfectly fine. No major problems. Sure the app is a bit glitchy, but it's fine. One major issue I have with it though is that I often will go to Recently Played, press Shuffle and want to let the songs play out on my commute to work / home, however it repeats the same songs over and over and over and over and over again. What makes it more annoying, but also explains why it's doing this, is that if you look down through the list you'll see it look something like this: "Song A" "Song B" "Song C" "Song B" "Song D" "Song B" "Song F" "Song C" "Song D" "Song B" So in my top 10 last played songs I have a grand total of 5 different songs actually being played, made up of 4 plays of Song B, 2 plays of Song C, 2 plays of song D, 1 play of Song A & 1 play of Song F. The lack of variety here is incredibly infuriating and I'm beginning to think it might be a deal-breaker for me. I really hope there has to be a way to stop / change / fix this. A song should only appear once in the list, I don't need 25 replays of Song B in the list. Once it's played, move it from it's old position and now that becomes the most recently played song. Don't leave it at it's old position AND also make it the most recently played song. For example, if I go to Recently Played and Song B is the first one to come on then the list should look more like this: "Song B" "Song A" "Song C" "Song D" "Song F" "Song Q" "Song W" "Song E" "Song R" "Song T" I feel like this is standard behaviour in any other music app I've ever used. I can't see any options in the Android app to change this, but I'm hoping that someone out there understands my frustrations and can help me with this, or am I going to have to either live with it or move to a different platform?

I am pretty much a novice to Premiere Pro but I have been working on some two different holiday videos this week, and with both of them Premiere Pro crashes pretty much every single time I try to export my project. I have been able to successfully export only once for each project; for the first video I think it was set to Export Settings > Format "H.264" > Preset "Match source - High bitrate" and for the second project it was definitely set to "Match sequence settings" which produced a video with format "MPEG Preview" (they are mostly videos taken from my Canon 750D DSLR). One project is about 15 minutes long, the other is about 28 minutes long. My computer is running a 3770K with 16GB of RAM, plenty of HDD & SSD space, and a GTX 680. It's not the newest computer, sure, but it should be perfectly capable of rendering some videos surely! Ideally, I was trying to export to H.264 and the "YouTube 1080p Full HD" preset. The thing is that PP crashes at completely different points every single time. It's not like it always crashes at a certain particular point in a project, sometimes it might be 8% in, sometimes, it might be 22% in, sometimes it might be 50% in, etc. When it crashes I am usually given the option to send an error report and then PP automatically closes down. Once or twice it has blue screened my computer. Other than this I don't have any stability issues on my computer, I've had it since the 3770K was brand new and now mainly use it as a Plex server. Anyway I have tried everything I can think of, and everything I can find on the internet. For instance, I have: Changed to the Format to HEVC (H.265) Changed the Source Range from Sequence In / Out to Entire Sequence, as well as Custom and trying to split the videos into smaller chunks Cleared the Media Cache both inside of PP and manually through deleting the folders within AppData Closed all other programs and attempted to export then Made sure PP is the only major program running after a reboot and attempted to export then Changed the Renderer to Mercury Playback Engine Software Only instead of GPU Acceleration (CUDA) and vice versa Decreased the "RAM reserved for other applications" to as low as it will go (3GB) Uninstalled and reinstalled Premiere Pro from the Creative Cloud suite Updated my nVidia graphics drivers Created a brand new project, as in this problem wasn't just happening with my first project, I made a second project and was still having the crashes Pre-rendered the entire sequence before attempting to export The first project did have some clips with Warp Stabilizer but they were Nested, whereas the second project had no such clips whatsoever (I've heard Warp Stabilizer can sometimes cause crashes) There may have been other things I've tried to but this has been causing me so much stress this week that I can't think of anything else, and it makes me not want to continue to produce any more projects in Premiere Pro if I'm just going to have all of these issues. So if someone can please shed some light on what I could do, that would be hugely appreciated!!

I know I'm limited by my budget, but I still want to try to get the best that I can especially considering I do plan on using the laptop for some photo and video editing, hence why things like brightness and colour reproduction are something I'm concerned about. However I'm not a professional editor, and with my budget, I'm not expecting the absolute best. Just not the absolute worst! I think I've covered my priorities pretty well in my original post, but what is my top priority? I really don't know. It is a bit of a coin toss between GPU performance and the screen, but also cooling as I get so frustrated by burning my hand on laptops that can't cool very well. But then cooling leads to noise, and noise is a pain, but I can deal with that. I definitely did like the idea of a touchscreen, whilst I'd probably be disappointed if I didn't get one, it wouldn't be the end of the world. There's just so many factors, I just don't know... And yes I'm fully aware that the Thinkpads have "outdated" hardware but honestly I'm not too bothered if it's a generation or two behind. My desktop rig is running with a 3770K and a GTX 680, I've been running that since they came out like 5 or 6 years ago, and I'm not planning on upgrading just yet. If I did any upgrade on my PC, it would be my graphics card but only because I want a HTC Vive, but a lot of people I've read have said that a GTX 680 can run a Vive no problem so if that's the case then I wouldn't be bothered about upgrading. Anyway, my ooint being, I wasn't bothered about it being older. If anything I thought that was a good thing!! As it allowed me to get a better quality laptop at a much lower price than it would cost for me to purchase brand new. A Thinkpad X1 you're looking well over £1000 but here I can get a used one for £650? I mean, that seems like a steal to me? Seeing as you mention it, why do you think that the MSI and Asus FX504 are terrible? Someone on reddit has actually just recommended the FX504 funnily enough! Haha

I understand that display variance happens across most if not all the laptops, however I had read that it was particularly a bad issue on that laptop exacerbated by the fact that the screen wasn't much good anyway. I've been looking up this Acer laptop you suggested but it's also appears as though most people are saying that the screen is not very good in that it's not very bright or it's colour reproduction isn't great for people who want to do photo or video editing. now I'm certainly no professional editor, however it is something that I am concerned about as I do use Photoshop and Premiere Pro. But that being said it isn't of the utmost importance, like it isn't the very top of my list of needs in this laptop. ( before you ask me what actually is top of my list of priorities, I'm not too sure to be honest) Is it possible that you, or someone else, could look through the laptops that I have linked and give me your thoughts on them? Edit: Also, wouldn't the AMD Ryzen 5 with the APU perform better than the MX 150 which is basically just a rebadged GTX 1030?

I linked to a number of stores, well infact a number of laptops directly in my original post?

I thought that I'd covered budget and requirements in the post, quite extensively really. Screen size doesn't really bother me. I guess I'd prefer larger over smaller, but I get that smaller is more portable. Battery life, again, longer would obviously be better especially when I'm taking it travelling, but realistically we're talking about a difference of what a couple hours at best? Ultimately they all need to be plugged in for any real use. Budget wise... obviously cheaper is better but value for money or bang for your buck is most important. Hence I was looking at refurbished models of previously higher end devices which appeared to bring me around about the £600 to £700 mark. However some of the models I listed were both way below and also slightly above that figure. As I say, if you read through my original post, I think I cover all of this pretty extensively.

So first of all, I hate hate hate laptops. Compared to a desktop, they're more expensive, lower power, less reliable, and... I could go on. However I tend to go travelling or on trips away between half a dozen to a dozen times a year, and I've been toying with the idea of getting a laptop to have guaranteed access to a computer on my travels. I do already have an iPad 4 which I've been using for years which serves most purposes, however there's functions it doesn't have which I would like to have whilst we're away. For example: Unloading pictures and videos from my DSLR (& other cameras / drones / etc) SD cards to a HDD Potentially being able to edit them whilst I'm away instead of having to wait to get home and use my more desktop PC. So being able to run Photoshop & Premiere Pro would be something I'd want to do. Ability to potentially play some games on the go, however it wouldn't need to be anything super excessive. One of my favourite games is Civ V. Whilst any laptop will do it, the ability to more easily remote desktop into my computer would be handy. Splashtop works perfectly fine on my iPad & OnePlus 3T, but being able to do it through a computer would definitely be easier. I do like the idea of the 360 degree folding laptops, as it allows them to be used similar to a tablet, but I suppose it isn't something that is absolutely necessary. I would also like it to be touchscreen, but again it isn't something that is absolutely necessary. I'd prefer 16GB of RAM, but given the price point I'm looking at I'd settle for 8GB. The potential to upgrade in the future would be nice. With my general disdain for laptops, I don't want to purchase a cheapo laptop, get disappointed and frustrated with it's crappy performance because then I'll just never use it. However, I also can't afford do spend thousands, nor would I want to on a laptop. So I have been thinking about buying a refurbished laptop with the idea being that I'd be able to get a slightly used or somewhat older model that is higher spec without having to pay full price for it, similar to buying a used car instead of a new car. Which has seemingly lead me to the following laptops: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 3rd Gen - £629 (with Windows 10 Pro) (for a modern, X1 Carbon you're looking well over £1000): https://www.tier1online.com/728-20bts0mx00/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon-3rd-gen-8gb-240gb-ssd-i7-5600u-full-hd-grade-a HP ENVY x360 AMD Ryzen 5 - £679.97 (brand new on HP's website they're £850, so it's nearly a £200 saving): https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/refurbished-hp-envy-x360-amd-ryzen-5-2500u-8gb-1tb-128gb-ssd-amd-radeon-v-a1-2ph22ea/version.asp HP Envy x360 again but £0.02 more expensive, but otherwise looks to be the same: https://www.laptopoutlet.co.uk/hp-envy-x360-15-bq150na-15-6-full-hd-touchscreen-2-in-1-laptop-amd-ryzen-5-2500u-2-0-ghz-3-6-ghz-turbo-quad-core-processor-8gb-ram-1tb-128gb-sshd-windows-10-home-64-bit-2ph22ea-abu.html?___SID=U Tier 1 Online also has some slightly even older, bit more damaged X1's that are a couple hundred pounds cheaper but ARE touchscreens: https://www.tier1online.com/refurbished-lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon/?sort=bestselling I was pretty settled on the X1 Carbon 3rd Gen but realistically, whilst Thinkpads are legendarily reliable, it probably doesn't actually best suit what I want. Although I wasn't sure I'd find a better deal. Then I came across these HP Envy x360's with the AMP APU which seems like it would actually be better suited in many ways, however the more I research into it, I've found lots of people complaining about issues with the laptop freezing, the screen being too dim and poor representation of the sRGB palette, not to mention the displays coming from a bunch of different manufacturers which is causing quite the variance in quality. Whereas I'm aware that the particular Thinkpad I've found isn't the Yoga version, isn't touchscreen, and won't be any good for games, but being a Thinkpad I presume / except it to be much more reliable especially given the fact I'm looking at purchasing a used / refurbished model. Further helping it, the Thinkpad does come with a one year warranty, whereas the Envy x360 comes with only three months. There is currently an X1 3rd Gen on eBay at about £250 but with a day or so to go, it's likely to go up in price and doesn't look like it would come with any form of warranty from the seller: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-14-Third-gen-excellent-condition/142833567220?epid=141019033&hash=item21418b45f4:g:i7EAAOSw0J9bIn9G One person mentioned that the Envy x360 came with a privacy screen function, where you press a button and the makes it impossible for the people next to you to see your screen, which I thought sounded like a fancy, but good feature. However I can't find any mention of this anywhere else, other than for the more expensive Spectre models. So... basically, can anyone help me pick a laptop? Well I'm either buying a laptop or a HTC Vive, but whilst my heart says go for the Vive, my brain says that the laptop is the better purchase as it will serve more use in the long run. What do people think of these laptops / deals? Should I be looking elsewhere, or for any other laptops? Any advice at all, really? Edit: I've also found some other slightly more expensive laptops, but not really had chance or now got time to really look into them or see how they compare. Ideally these are more expensive than I'd like to pay, but if anyone can advise me on these as well that would be great! Oh and as far as I'm aware, these are all brand new, unless I'm mistaken. So I suppose that is something to bear in mind with the price. MSI GL62 15.6" Intel Core i7-7700HQ GeForce GTX 1050Ti 8GB RAM - £749.97 (appears like other websites list this as the GL62M, although not sure why?): https://www.tesco.com/direct/msi-gl62-156-intel-core-i7-geforce-gtx-1050ti-8gb-ram-1000gb-256gb-ssd-windows-10-gaming-laptop-black/369-9390.prd?skuId=369-9390 Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 260 - i5-6200U, 8GB RAM, smaller screen but is touchscreen and folds over 360 degrees - £786.93: https://www.ebuyer.com/821231-lenovo-thinkpad-yoga-260-2-in-1-laptop-20fes4st00 FX504GD NVIDIA GTX 1050 2GB, 15.6" FHD, I5-8300H, 8GB DDR4 - £679.99: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus-fx504gd-nvidia-gtx-1050-2gb-15.6-fhd-i5-8300h-8gb-ddr4-gaming-laptop-lt-25b-as.html FX504GD NVIDIA GTX 1050 4GB, 15.6" FHD, I5-8300H, 8GB DDR4 - £769.99: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus-fx504gd-nvidia-gtx-1050-4gb-gddr5-15.6-fhd-i5-8300h-8gb-ddr4-gaming-laptop-lt-250-as.html

Am I correct in thinking that the card you linked before wouldn't do RAID if I later wanted it too? If I want to do RAID later on, do I need to buy a RAID card? If I did buy a RAID card, can I choose to not use RAID until I later wanted to and just use it in the mean time as a PCIe SATA card?

Awesome, thanks for all your help! I knew this would be the place to come for this kind of help