Thaldor

They look very similar to YubiKeys, that metallic middle part and the hole and that Yubico and Google have been partners for a long time could easily give Google custom keys. But I would also give the 50/50 chance for something malicious.

I can kind of get why they would be more into releasing limited edition pieces that they can sell on higher price in smaller numbers while keeping some kind of shroud of "must to get" device. Getting the real hardware to run the games isn't that hard and probably lands on the same price point so what you're paying for mostly is the brand new skin and illuminated screen (which can be modded to almost any of the supported handhelds). So, they're going to try to sell $100 (+adapters) device to a fraction of a quite small customer base, the retro gamers who are into handhelds and want to be some kind of purists. I put the "purist" term there because at least what I know there really isn't a single handheld (except more modern ones which aren't supported by Analogue) that would have software emulation problems, so, it's not like trying to play Duck hunt on modern TV's which is impossible but more a question about just wanting to do it "the right way". "Some kind of purist" because the target person must not want to run the games on the original hardware for a reason or other but must want to use the original cartridges (or flash cards, pick your poison). There's of course the special cases like musicians wanting to use the sound chips (I don't remember GBs, NGP or Lynx having any super special sound chips that couldn't be software emulated) but for those I believe a better product would be FPGA the needed part and attach the connectors needed by the users. And no, I don't think Analogue Pocket is a product for those who own stuff like Game Boy Printer or camera or other more interesting accessories because they probably already have the original hardware to use with them. TL;DR: They have so small customer base the first real patch of consoles most likely would satisfy all the demand so selling limited editions while holding back the real release brings them nice profits and probably for a longer time.

IMO you are thinking way too much. I don't mean it's a bad thing so don't take it as that. Coming from the music side of things I can tell you there are things that will fry stuff connected to them, like my 60's guitar amp won't give mercy if you connect it to a some poor tape player to record it same as it's 3x12" cab won't give mercy to any amp connected to it because it's wired parallel and 8/16 ohm standard really wasn't a thing in the 60's so it's 2.7ohms pure Yamaha mayhem. But anything half-way modern won't fry things unless you go the extremes like connecting some PA amplifier to some stereo speakers style of madness. You have a mixer going into a soundbar, you already at that point have 4 volume control stages: 1) devices connected to the mixer 2) mixers input 3) mixers output 4) soundbars output. You will set 1st stage to be optimal output for the devices amps, 2nd stage you will use to balance the devices (what you want higher volume, what you want at the same, you get it), 3rd will be set so you don't push the preamp side of the soundbar (so probably pretty low, until the soundbar doesn't clip) and 4th will set your listening level. You most likely cannot control the "gain" of the soundbar (basicly the preamp volume or the input volume), so that will be the mixers output volume controls job or either you get some cheap stereo volume controller to lower that signal even more but as you have a mixer you can lower the signal even by lowering the input volume to the mixer, as in, the mixer doesn't automatically set the amplification level of itself so if you lower the input volume -> you lower the output volume and so lower the signal going to the soundbar, if still too high, you can lower the volume on device and bring that signal even lower. The mixers leds will never sync with the soundbar. At the point where mixers output amp is receiving too high signal and clipping, your soundbars preamp is already gone way past that point.

Most likely all of those are +4dbu, the Yamaha directly says +4dbu, Behringer says max. +22dbu, I would be surprised if the reloop would have -10dbv output (the RCA out is unbalanced but IDK) since that is more consumer spec to use.

With exactly those you are looking at very small pool of mixers. Two things that would make the pool of possibilities a bit bigger would be 2 x 6.3mm mono output and/or USB-powered. 12V power and 2 x 6.3mm output (you can get 2x6.3mm mono to 3.5mm stereo cables from pretty much everywhere with studio equipment) would give you Yamaha AG08, a bit pricey option but runs on 12V power brick. USB power would give you Behringer Xenyx 302USB which has master RCA output. Just going through Thomann, there's Reloop RMX-44BT which would mark all the parts but it's a DJ mixer so has a bit different feature set.

Not really necessary. The paint is conductive which means instead of blocking the signals with some material absorbing the signal and so having a feature of letting some frequencies through, it just turns the box into Faraday cage (actually shield since the paint won't have holes in it) and blocks everything.

If you repair the hardware and the software says "no", did you actually repair anything because the device is still broken? When it comes to Apple the whole mess is their own doing, that they have pretty much forever refused to sell spare parts and that has created blooming market for stolen Apple products broken down to parts isn't a problem of repairability, that's a problem of company policies and their results. Doesn't really help the company policy problems that official Apple repair has been more scam (as in, the only part swapping and then billing the same for new and refurbished spare parts and outside of Apple gracious warranty, that's fucking expensive for the consumer for basicly no reason other than Apples bottom line) for decades already. If I need to call Apple, wait in the line, go around hoop after loop, plead and pray and all that just so that someone will press a button and things will work only because the Apple's repair policies have been shit for years, yeah, I give them 0 maybe 1 if I didn't need to install plethora of software and buy a Mac so the repair can be finished. I will give the same 0 to 3 for Microsoft or anyone else if their products have same kind of artificial problems to solve the company's shitty policies. If I change the SSD in Surface and the machine goes *poof* and the reason isn't that I used some random SSD in which case the problem can be that the SSD has some non-standard stuff, I would give them 0-3. Definitive 0 if I was to replace the SSD with exact same model and exact same firmware and the Surface refuses to accept it because "it's not the original", that's a 0. I do, however, make the difference if we would be talking about a device that the user must go through multiple hoops and loops to activate some security option that will render the device basicly unrepairable without going way past everything usual, you would need to call the manufacturer, get codes from the customer and whatever rain dances and ancient spells you must do. But that should never be the default, in business products sold strictly to businesses based on contracts is exception, but in normal consumer products, there should never be that kind of "security" activated on default. (And before you say, that is because that kind of security features are way past even the word "excessive", I can understand some CEO or celebrity having burner phone that if stolen deletes everything and cannot be accessed, no matter what, but for general population that is more problems than it is a benefit. In some specific cases maybe but if someone finds themselves in a place where it's beneficial for them to sacrifice all of their data and everything in case their device gets to wrong hands, they can go through the hoops and activate the feature themselves so the non-techsavvy person doesn't need to question why broken screen means they need to loose their vacation photos which doesn't have backups. There's usecases for those kind of security features, but they are more trouble for 90% of the population.)

This so much. Even better would be that reviewers started to be more critical over things and bad things really affecting the score. Like if a product has a critical flaw that should really show in the score, not sugarcoat it with "but it has it's uses". If there's deadly flaw like the product fails at basic electrical safety, that is instant zero, no matter if it's the best product by lightyears, 90% magic and farts unicorns, it fails the basic electrical safety and so poses life threatening danger, that is 0/10, "do not buy, ever." Same thing here, if there's aspects that render the product basicly impossible to self-repair, that is 0/10, no sugarcoating it with "but the parts are easy to change" that doesn't matter if the software locks the product if parts are changed the product is impossible to be repaired. If you cannot get official spare parts, that's instant 1-3/10, "you can repair it but as the company doesn't want you to repair it, that's the score the product gets", there's no point having socketed CPU if you officially cannot get a CPU fitting that socket.

Going through the "fun" thing that is called Unity licensing I just found out something interesting. "Interesting", not surprising since the whole quest started from remembering that Unity has revenue limits on their licenses that were earlier $100,000 for Free/Personal, $200,000 for Plus in the past 12 months, as in, if your game/company makes more than the limit, you HAVE TO buy the next license. Now that the Plus license is gone the Free/Personal license cap has been raised to $200,000... ...Then who does pay the 0.20c/install when it comes into action only after the game has been installed more than 200,000 times AND made more than $200,000 in the past 12 months when if you have revenue over $200,000 in the past 12 months, you need to buy the Pro license which will then move you over to the progressive runtime fee which is completely pennies? The Pro license however moves the goal posts of the runtime fee, now you need to pay the fee only after 1,000,000 installs AND after making $1,000,000, at which point it pretty much comes into question do you wanna pay the $2,040/year/seat for Pro license or send couple emails and negotiate the Enterprise license that halves the runtime fees to pocket money. There's a thing thou in the Unity license system that makes this REAL bad. The thing is that you actually buy the Unity license for continuous support or for the next project. As in, you can make a game that can earn you millions on Unity Free/Personal license and Unity won't come and bang on your door demanding you to buy a license BUT if you continue to use Unity Editor after that THEN you must buy the license. You also don't need to maintain a license once you have stopped working on the game. Unity doing these changes so they work retroactively is the key here, at least after the April TOS change that made it possible for Unity to change their TOS retroactively however they want means that any Unity game released after April is under the runtime fee, depending on the court where Unity would take the older games the chances are that any game ever made with Unity would be under the fee. However now we have the problem under which license a game has been released and what license applies to it. As in, if you release a game under Free license and for the next game you get the Pro license, is the first game still under Free license and so applicable to the higher runtime fees and vice versa, if you released a game under Unity Pro and then dropped your license, is the game still under Pro license or falls under the Free license and higher fees? [TINFOIL HAT] I would believe the real thing behind was more the removal of the Plus license than the runtime fee. Unity never had dreams to hold on to the runtime fee but as people are as stupid as they are, they just jumped to the runtime fee like a pack of starving wolves without noticing the other things Unity is doing. While the developers falling to the canyon of $100,000-$200,000 can now use the Free license because the raised revenue limit. BUT Unity Free/Personal isn't the same thing as Unity "Pro", it lacks features and there we have it, basicly making actual good game release with Unity (trust me, you don't want to release a game under Free Unity, msotly because the splash screen is dead giveaway that you use Unity with Free license) the price was raised, multiplied even. And yet, no one barks on that. Hardly even a whisper because everyone is fighting against the runtime fee that is so outrageous that it's odd they even gambled it. [/TINFOIL HAT]

Not to forget the tiny little part where most of the time you will need a PC to run emulators on consoles. And seriously, without emulators we are talking about a media machine that can run whatever the manufacturer in their high and mighty gracious let's you run on it vs. a thing that just runs anything it can. Modern consoles have ZERO backwards compatibility, that you can download and run digital versions of older generation console games isn't backwards compatibility, that is emulation. As in, we aren't talking about taking PS1 game disc and stuffing it into PS2 and the console doesn't even care and just runs the game, that's backwards compatibility, that you can download old game to your console is emulation and that is exactly what Xbox Series X does with old games (when you insert original Xbox game into it and it prompts to install the game, it really downloads the game and emulator from Microsoft and runs that, the disc is only used to validate you have the game). Strictly with that Xbox Series X has zero backwards compatibility while PC has probably around 20 years of direct backwards compatibility (I would think you can just install Morrowind on Windows 11 and it doesn't even care that the game is now 21 years old). With emulation without any modding included Xbox Series X goes as far as Original Xbox while PC goes all the way to the dawn of computer games. With modding you get the SeriesX to go Retroarch and get the old consoles outside of Microsoft emulated ones but you are still far from running 1971 The Oregon Trail made for HP 2100 on SeriesX but your Ultimate Cyber Dick 5,000,000 with all the bells and whistles and the extremely needed dual RTX 4090's will happily run it, if you can find it, but you can easily run the 1975 Apple II Oregon Trail on your browser (the 1971 is a bit hard to find since it was never really published outside of the source code released in 1978, and if we are nitpicky the 1975 is also just a port on Apple II published in 1978).

Just couple notions: - Unity license is "per seat". As in you pay that $2,040/year/seat so if your studio has 10 developers officially you need to pay $20,400/year for Unity Pro licenses +5% revenue after $200,000 profit on game and then the runtime fee after $200,000 revenue and 200,000 installs. Unofficially you can get by with one paid Unity license and just use one PC to do the builds. - Console development is expensive AF. Not only you need the Unity license but the revenue share is up to 50% if you have physical sales and you have all kind of fees for distributing patches and whatever the console manufacturer finds out to be feeable, like you almost get fee for fee of feeing you. Not only that you pay for the release and the game engine but if you are going with more than indie launch you need to pay for localization and kind of "reparations" for Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo (they want to make sure your game is fitting to the markets and they need a bit guarantees that if your game gets them trouble, they ain't paying that completely from their wallet), this is more AAA stuff but still something to keep in mind. -For anyone running a bit bigger operation all of this is pennies, you pay way more to license Photoshop and stuff like 3Ds Max and the hardware than you pay to license Unity. But Unity has always been more the "small" engine for indies and already only the runtime fee is good scare to not make the next Flappy Bird or anything that may bring you $200,000 in few days as it blows up and the ads roll. The removal of affordable Plus license is really a bad kicker because going from $399 to $2,040 is pretty steep jump and if you have even a little confidence in your product that $0.20 per install after 200,000 installs vs. progressively smaller fee is a bit extortion. -Pretty much any volume sale strategy with Unity is now dead. Making cheaper early access with lower price and hope enough people buy it and give you more budget to develop is dead. -There's that big word called "revenue". Is it more profit or net revenue still remains a bit negotiable thing. - Unsurprisingly Unity has pretty much since Unreal 4 been the more expensive option out of the two. Unlike Unity, Unreal 4 coming with the same 5% revenue split made the big separation from Unity that has been a bit taboo when talking about Unity, Unreal only has two licenses, the "free" one and then the Enterprise one. You didn't need to pay even that $399/year/seat to get the same Unreal 4 as AAA studio gets (minus the enterprise benefits like on-site/personal support, getting rid of the 5% split, negotiable things that just bring more value to the deal). There's no strings attached, no "this feature is only available on Pro version", no bullshit, just "here's the engine, go and do your thing, if you make it extraordinary huge, we will call you". You can have 200 seat studio developing on Unreal without paying a cent to Epic before they find out you have reached the revenue cap and need to pay the 5%.

My last console I really bought was Xbox 360 and that was already pretty much in it's EOL, but I do have quite a few consoles (NES, SNES, both minis, N64, PS2, GC, Xbox 360, Wii with everything from Wii up soft modded) but they are mostly just for collecting and tinkering with. It's just too easy with AndroidTV to use Steam Link and play pretty much anything by streaming from main rig in LAN with either X360 controller with the PC dongle or XOne/Series controller through BT. Pretty much I stopped caring about consoles when they started to be more PCs than old consoles, so that's pretty much when I started to need to wait for the games to install, manage the HDD space and update games. Just too much trouble when you want to play a moment on sofa when you count in that at the same time I bought the X360 I had 9800GTX+ with 10m S-Video-to-SCART cable hooked to CRT TV (I didn't get flat TV before FullHD was more mainstream). Like what's the point when you just as well need to wait the same time and go through the same trouble but you loose "surprise sales", modding and far superior compatibility with retro games? You couldn't even solve the problem of running out of HDD space with just throwing money at the problem and getting another HDD, fucking stupid.

This is actually something really interesting here because the TOS change that makes it possible for Unity to apply the runtime fees retroactively is from April 2023. Could be interesting court cases over the applicability of TOS's if there isn't a loophole how Unity can apply that April change retroactively into all of the old games done under way older terms. At least what I know while in the US TOS is almost next to the declaration of independence in it's holding, in EU it's much more like "well, it's a binding contract BUT that part is against the law and/or that second part is just completely unfair, so, we will put this paper here into this nice little shredder and see what our laws say about this matter". Especially EU side will be coming interesting if there was just individual people without companies taking this to the court because then we would go to more into the consumer vs. corporation side of things which has way stricter margins what companies can demand from consumer. E: And I would like to welcome Apple developers to develop for the Apple Vision Pro with...... Unity! Poor people, it's either to make your own engine or use Unity, Unreal or any other VR ready game engine (at least now) doesn't have Apples blessing to be used for Vision development. Oh and another thing that hasn't been brought up that heats the discussion: Unity has ended Unity Plus licensing and while Plus members can buy Pro license for a year with the price of Plus license, after that the cheapest more serious license for Unity will be the Pro that is $2,040/year while Plus has been $399/year. This far if you have wanted the Unity Pro features like own splash screen, release on consoles, Unity Mars tools (for native AR/MR, these are kind of... well, they work but you can live without them), Havok, crash and error reporting, cloud diagnostics and some lighting and other things and you have been a small developer (<$200,000/year profit) you can have had more affordable license to release more professional looking game, NOT ANYMORE better get used to the kneecapped Free license or get back to MacDonald's to make that $2,040/year or $185/month. And yeah, they are still taking that 5% but you will get a lot cheaper runtime fees.

I just love how in panic mode Unity is currently. Out of their 12 FAQ questions 7 has been already updated with the biggest change going for WebGL games which earlier were counted in (as in every initialization) and now the answer is just "No". The "trust me, bro" side of logging installs is also nice to see after being more or less under the hood of Unity and especially the more experimental builds for over a decade. It's a fucking hackjob of game engine at the best, things "just work" and other things change so fast you're fixing your earlier doings more than developing new because someone at Unity decided to do things differently, again. Like seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if their new install detection system is just one check byte in Windows registry and you can just go and flip it like 5 year old ADHD kid does light switch and Unity counts every time as a new install. Then you have the REALLY dangerous parts of this fuckery. The different kind of game passes. Unity says that they won't bill the developer for those installs but the platform, wanna know how happy Microsoft, Sony, Apple, HTC (Viveport Infinity), Nintendo and whoelse would be about this? So, happy that they either drop every. single. Unity game from the programs or they just pass the bill to the devs or consumers (either dig deeper into dev pockets with poorer contracts and golden handshakes or rise the prices for consumers). The game passes are surprisingly good things for many developers because they offer good visibility with at least some income, not as good as legit sales but better than just getting the game pirated and you cannot really argue against that consumers doesn't like it with Xbox Game Pass having 25 million paying users. What I believe this is some financial dying breaths of Unity, the last tries to hold on to the income and the past profitability of the company. 2023 hasn't been a good year for Unity, over 600 employees fired and plans to cut 28 offices (from 58 to 30), the engine being challenged by others while falling badly behind it's main competition without much teeth to bite back (Godot and O3DE have come a long way while Unreal 5 is far ahead). Tells a lot when the Unity execs have sold their stocks in pretty huge numbers along the year, CEO 50,610 shares during the year with 2,000 shares just before this release, President 37,500 shares September 1st, Board Director 68,454 shares in August 30th... While not big things, still shows that the value keeps dropping and the leadership is jumping the ship. This is actually kind of interesting point when it comes to Unity. They are also dropping the Plus license and moving those users to the more expensive Pro license which is kind of asshole move as it's own. But the thing is quite many devs who have made Unity games in the past and moved on to Unreal or other engines probably don't have active Pro/Enterprise licenses since generally those just give you benefits during development and after launch and "death of the project" you can drop on to the free license and pay the 5% to Unity. Few years back it was even adviced step in releasing Unity game on budget to pay the Pro license for the launch month to get the few extra features and rid of the watermark and Unity was completely fine with it. There's also publisher(s) who will make some "acquisitions" if you manage to sell them Unity game because for them it's a lot cheaper to have their own Enterprise license and suck in the games and release them under it than get a new license for the studio.

Because putting it in would have costed surprisingly much compared to the possible usage most of the users will get out of it. Putting it in even today is kind of "why?"-thing because what are you going to do with it? Unless you are jumping into server and business stuff with the price showing it, you don't do anything with 2.5Gbit LAN-port unless you're going to configure and use it directly from PC to PC. This is because even finding a consumer router with over 1Gbit ports (often even more than one 1Gbit port) is a job since consumers don't have internet connections to even surpass that for another decade easily. Also just the ANSI standard for the Star Spangled Ding Dongs was ratified in 2016... For the rest of the world that would be IEEE 802.3an standard from the 2006 defining 10GBASE-T connection with the difference that the people over the big water thought that their consumers might be confused by 10 folding the standard speed all at once. This is also pretty much why the 2.5Gbit and 5Gbit connections will probably be just a shortlived gimmick, no one is really working on trying to make anything with them since it has been and still is more profitable to work with 10Gbit where the companies are moving currently than make the 2.5/5 things for the consumers who will eitherway in few years start to move into the 10Gbit when the development costs have been paid off and the prices start to fall. We will probably see couple overpriced ASUS routers with 2.5Gbit or 5Gbit ports (which actually will be 10Gbit ports because no one seems to be currently developing anything else than 10Gbit devices) but the next and probably the last copper-cable routers will be with 10Gbit ports.

Just add in that and those are only randomly tested unless there's a lot of consumer complaints, serious allegations or some extra check-up event week/month. It's far from systematic and only concerns products imported to Finland for resale (as in the Finnish Customs won't stop your Aliexpress package only to send it to TUKES for checking that your ordered product passes the tests and has the right markings). Also it seems to only concern products strictly sold in Finland, so shit dropship stores even with some warehouse in Finland (e(i-saatana)-Ville) are kind of safe from getting raided by TUKES and having their couple-€ China crap tested, marked as dangerous and pulled from Finnish markets. So, there's stores like FlyingTiger and partially Rusta and Biltema (sometimes good, often bad, only good thing that has lasted longer than half of the intended use I have ever bought from Biltema has been clone-Dremel that smells like burning crap) which sell pretty bad China shit.

It's either iPad or controller. Remember you cannot use the touch screen while Switch is in the dock. And this is actually why WiiU is harder to emulate than Switch because every Switch game must be playable with only the controllers which aren't that developed, the motion detection on them is pretty much never used outside couple more tech demo -like games and what is left is just basicly (IMO) bad PS/Xbox controller. With WiiU at least you needed to emulate the tablet controller to some level because games actually required it (like the original BotW with the one or maybe two shrines using the motion sensors), this meant either going the hard way and getting PS4 controller and setting that up to act as the tablet with its motion sensors and touchpad or just simply forget the motion sensors and slap the tablet screen on separated window. In general I cannot even fathom why Nintendo would include Denuvo, like that is the worst shotgun to the own kneecap I have seen in a long time. Of course there's the emulation part but that doesn't do much unless Nintendo is going to do some outrageous firmware updating on Switch that would change the whole platform even on the earliest consoles because otherwise, what would the Denuvo do? Look at your HW info and decide whether or not you are running authentic Switch? Call home in airplane mode? Piracy fighting is a reason but damn Nintendo is late. Like did they need to find a time machine and go ask the founder if he would like them to fight piracy? Or did they first need to pass couple laws in Japan to notice that they also can fight piracy with copyprotections? Eitherway the big shot to the kneecap will be the Switch. It's far from powerful machine and Denuvo has performance costs which will be out of the processing power of the console and Switch has very little to spare. And pretty much unless Nintendo is going to make friends with Apple, they will continue to be the only ARM-based console manufacturer and third party developers already are pissing the ports completely because "it's not worth it", add in the performance hit from Denuvo and the MGS collection will soon seem like well made port.

It seems to run on every RTX card but the question will be can you run it without slapping artificial frames into the mix at which point the GPU question will be "Is DLSS 3.5 that MUCH better than DLSS 2.0 that you should invest into RTX40 card?".

The problem is Nvidia. They push out new generation of highest-end GPU every year and to compete there you need to have new cooler design especially now when the GPU is eating the same as the whole system 2 years ago. It would be probably sustainable for board partners if they got the prototype and example boards few months before Nvidia even schedules the reveal event but, according to Steves EVGA videos IRC, Nvidia doesn't do that but board partners get their examples around the same time Nvidia launches Founders Editions and unless you are willing to pull all-nighters with R&D, basicly buy your own machining shop that can make you everything you need and a bit more and manage to lockdown the board within days from release, you will be coming late to the party and no matter how good your cooling solution is, the ones who have sunken absurd amount of cash into the quick development have already sold the new GPU to many. Not to forget that every board partner is already month or few behind the competition because Nvidia is already selling the cards. Other one is the absurd prices. Like yeah, who cares if your GPU costs $3,000 instead of the FE $2,000 but you need to keep in mind that Nvidia will release the xx80Ti/xx90/whatever revision around 6 months later you get your GPU variation out so, not only do you need to compete in price against everyone, you also have very limited timeframe to compete before the "ultimate" GPU is old and loses its shine and you are forced to lower the price.

I just love how again the comparison is DLSS OFF vs. the newest DLSS on. Like what are you hiding? Why cannot you give us clear DLSS X vs DLSS X+1? Do you fear no one would give two cents about the next overpriced GPUs if they really saw how little they get with double the price?

Pretty much. It needs a DAC to work, just like anything that handles digital and analog signals needs some kind of converter to work, and it also has some kind of amplification since it can run speakers and headphones directly (as in, it doesn't output line level signal). Their quality is generally better than normal consumer quality but they don't include certain audiophile features so they aren't also that "good". Like you will likely find oscillator from there to sync the sample rate but it won't have glass crystal hotglued to it. Biggest differences are those that if your mic doesn't use phantom power and you give it phantom power, it will likely fry, the headphone jack won't be running +300 ohm headphones at all and that it may show up in the computer as multiple audio I/O devices that are just separate channels (mic and instrument inputs may be either just one or separate input channels and the L/R output may be separated).

Does this mean I need to make custom filter to uBlock to remove Elon Musk's Tweets from showing to me since my blocking doesn't work anymore? Oh no, well any way good that I only look for *wink wink* and *cough cough* stuff from X-Twitter so I saw Don Musk's ego boosts only if I accidentally got lost to the frontpage. I will still make that filter just because I can and I believe that would piss off someone that not only I blocked their not-important messages but also that they cannot do anything about it.

Most of the time when you use stubby, you're already so tight place that it would be better to get "Skewdriver", basicly offset adapter that gives you bit over 90-degree corner to your screwdriver/power drill with 1/4" heads. I have old passes down set but it seems that SpecTools are still a company so https://spectools.com/product/skewdriver-high-capacity-model-p9801hc/ there you go. Have been saving me quite many times when even stubby drives are way too huge or I just couldn't get enough power to the stubby thing.

Don't forget there's more "industry standard" way to show the pickup pattern called... *drum roll*... Polar graph! Of course it doesn't give you frequency response around the mic as LTT showed, because that is kind of a silly thing to be worried about and test because optimally you use the mic as it is meant to be used and the point of pickup pattern is to limit the amount of surrounding noises the mic captures so you want to test how well the mic dampens the noise coming from unwanted directions. But I guess it's more important to show how your voice sounds around the mic than how the mic blocks unwanted noise. And the video just proved my age old reason why I loose my interest when I see clickbait. "wHy EVeRyOnE is ByUiNG ThIS miC?" "Because it has unicorn vomit amount of RGB, comes with the most questionable accessories to make it look like Rode mics (which also aren't that good, at least the cheap ones everyone use) and it's dirt cheap", watched the video and didn't get disappointed anymore.

Your main problem is talking audiophile terms while talking about music production device. M-Audio 194 is full audio interface, as such it includes ADC and DAC (quality of both really doesn't matter because "it just works", in music production no one gives two cents about the quality of ADC or DAC, if it works, it works). Because it has Phantom Power and balanced output it also has pre-amp (for the microphone) and some amp for the output (again, no one cares about the quality, if it works, it works). The headphone monitoring is basicly just mixing between the pre-amp output (direct) and the amp input (USB), as in, what the interface is sending to the PC and what PC sends to the interface. "Hardware monitoring" is just that direct monitoring which is sending the signal going to the PC through a DAC to the headphone mixer (there's probably 2 DACs in that system so it can route the direct monitoring to the headphones without disturbing the output signal). Hardware side it does what you want it to do. Music production just doesn't talk about DACs and all that audiophile stuff because it's pretty much unnecessary and we talk about outputs and inputs, also many other different terms (like line-out can be labeled as "reamp"). For your use, yeah the M-Audio AIR 192|4 will do, it has instrument input and MIC input with phantom power, balanced output (the two 6.3mm mono-ports in the back) and headphone monitoring. You will more likely get problems with softwares as it isn't audiophile device and such may work a bit differently (mainly you might see 2 outputs which aren't directly separate but Left (and often "Mono") and Right and this can be problematic on the PC side without extra software to take care of it internally, as in Voicemeeter to work as output "separator" since very few non-music production software can handle that dual output). Quality wise, well if twice burned Marshall guitar amp is "the best sound in the world" and getting reproduction of it and changing at least 60 years old vacuum tubes to the reproduction will be "the best you can get unless getting the real deal" you probably see that no one really cares about if there's a little "hiss" in the interface and half of it is magic anyway (like seriously, while audiophiles spend enough to buy a house to get the cleanest possible sound, music production, especially guitarist, spend house worth to get correctly dirty sound and for both actual A-B comparison is blasphemy, especially if it includes recording something and not sticking something into your rear).