JForce

I would love to see the lab take a look at some analysis around "sound quality" for the leading streaming services, including on different devices and using the most common connection methods. For instance, I'd like to see them test: Spotify Apple Music Tidal YouTube music maybe? All of them using the following: Direct streaming over 4/5G cellular to iPhone, Galaxy & Android phones Playback on the device Playback to wired headphones Playback to BT headphones Playback to car connected via cable Playback to car connected via BT Direct streaming over wifi to iPhone, Galaxy & Android phones Playback on the device Playback to wired headphones Playback to BT headphones There are a lot of variables there, so I can see some of that being dropped, but what I'm essentially looking for is: What is the best listening experience from a streaming music service in the 3 most common scenarios? In the car via headphones via connected speaker/stereo So you're looking at stuff like: Does using a cable connection give a better result than using BT? Does wifi vs cellular make a difference? How much of a difference does Apple Music/Tidals HQ streaming make versus Spotify still only using lame quality streaming? I mean, I use Spotify a lot, especially in the car where I have a pretty sweet stereo, but I use a cable not BT as it's an older car....so I would like to think I'd be getting a better result than if using BT anyway...BUT am I missing a lot of quality by not switching to Apple Music? Anyway I thought this could be a good idea for a video with lots of quality testing opportunities, and for people to really get their audiophile nerd on and be all "oh yes I can definitely tell that this is a compressed stream, the violas are totally flat sounding and the 3rd movement isn't nearly as punchy as it should be"......

I don't think anyone, including the chip and car manufacturers, disagree with you. I think the "timely manner" part is the crux of it.....many of the electronic designs in your car are at least a quarter of a century old, and I think the overall point is that they're now facing the other side of the "long tail of reliability" coin.

Summary Chip manufacturers are pointing out (and working with) to the automotive industry that they need to update the design of the electronics they use in their cars, as setting up to manufacture higher volumes of old designs simply isn't worth it Quotes My thoughts Even as someone who messes around with cars and technology, it's surprising to me how obvious this is now that it's been pointed out. Car manufacturers are the epitome of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" as far as production costs go. Add to that the very high bar they require for resiliency and reliability, and it's understandable that once they've got a working design for a given control component, there's little incentive for them to iterate on it. However there's only so much capacity for manufacturing silicon around the world, and with so much consumer electronic demand, foundries and associated companies wouldn't see much point in investing to build old stuff. We've talked about the silicon shortage and the millions of vehicles sitting around in factories, finished except for control modules waiting on components, but it does seem like we missed (or at least I know I did) the fact that the issue is overall capacity rather than specific capacity. As the article states, Intel/AMD etc will keep pumping out as many "modern" chips as you want, as they go into everything.....but to increase capacity for old stuff makes no sense. <Insert joke about Intel using old huge designs anyway> Sources https://fortune.com/2021/09/17/chip-makers-carmakers-time-get-out-semiconductor-stone-age/

Whilst I use Office 365 and so have my own Exchange server which gives me everything I need and some piece of mind, I've found Outlook.com to be rock solid for secondary email accounts.

Linus

They're pretty different in price though right? I pay what, $3 a month for FP, and YTP is like $50 a month or something?

I've asked this on a bunch of forums, but no one has been able to give me a decent answer beyond "Yay/Boo Apple/Google". When updating the same app on an Android and iOS device, the download size of the updates are different by orders of magnitude. I've had MS Outlook updates for iOS over 1GB, and the same update on Android is less than 100mb. This is consistent across every app I've got on both devices, and I'm just curious. Does an app update on iOS essentially download the entire app and reinstall it? Whereas on Android only the specific "files" that have changed are downloaded? There's obviously pros/cons to both approaches or they'd both be doing the same thing - does Apple do it this way for security reasons? Any insight would be appreciated.

Oooh good call, thanks. Both iPhone and iPad wifi (when connected to home network) are set to use "automatic" for DNS. The LAN connection on my PCs is similarly not configured to specify anything DNS related, i.e. it's set to use standard DNS servers (it lists IPs though?).

I use MS RDP app on my iphone and iPad to connect to both my home server and gaming PC. I've been doing this for a few years, and it's been great. Works well with touch interface, allows me to control my Plex server, backups etc. I only use it on the local network - no external/remote connectivity is set up. Since I started I've just connected using the PC names of the devices, <Xserver> and <XPC>, no problemo. However a few months ago this stopped working, with the RDP app saying it couldn't find the devices - the same error/message I'd get if the PC was turned off. Even when I can verify the PC is switched on, and can be pinged from my devices, no luck. Using the IP address of the device however works fine, and I've defaulted to using that. This is annoying however with IP addresses changing after reboots, but more than that it's annoying me that I don't know why it's doing this. Connecting via RDP from one PC to the other using names still works fine, it's just the mobile devices having this problem. This suggests there's something wrong on the mobile device/app end of course, but I am also wondering if anyone has any tips on what to check on the PC/Networking side. I've made no changes to the machines or networking setup in the last couple of years, so there's nothing I'm aware of that would have had an impact on this function. Any ideas appreciated.

Yep, same issue. Cellular data works fine.

I've got an old iPhone6 I use as a camera in my track car, but it's stopped connecting to wifi. I initially get the message "incorrect wifi password" when attempting to connect....even though I know the password is 100% correct. Then I get an "unable to connect to wifi network" message. I've: - Reset the router multiple times - Tried connecting to other wifi networks, with the same results - Reset the network settings - Factory reset the phone entirely None of which worked. Is there a diagnostic mode on the iPhone that would allow me to confirm if it's a hardware issue? Seems like a strange one to me, if it was an issue with the wifi hw I'd expect it to not be able to even find a wifi network, or to connect but have no throughput or something like that. Not being able to connect/handshake just seems to me to be sw related but I've got nothing. Any ideas?

Thanks @Applefreak and @LIGISTX, you've kinda confirmed my thoughts, which are to look at going to an NVME boot drive and a Windows reinstall, once I figure out the process for backing up my Plex config (doable, just need to look it up). I made sure I was running dual channel and I double-checked the slots too when I did the build to make sure I was using both the right ones, so I don't think there's a RAM issue, and there's no RAID running anywhere. As you've suggested, I figure an SSD and a fresh Windows is the best bet - thanks for your help

Yeah should have said network activity is never maxed out either, I have gigabit network, and whether RDP onto it from iPad over wifi or via desktop no difference - in fact if I plug in a monitor and KB and use it all directly, i.e. not remotely, it's the same thing.

I recently changed out the core components of my "server", which is primarily used for Plex, to fix some issues and improve performance. I went to the following components: i3 8100 @3.6Ghz 8GB DDR4 @1200Mhz MSI B360M Gaming 6 x HDDs Win10 64 Pro OS and the few apps installed (Plex/Tautulli/Sonarr) are on the C drive. Media files spread throughout the other drives. The issue I have is that when I remote onto the server for maintenance, moving files around etc, everything runs very slow. There's often a delay when clicking a button before the action is taken, whether it's opening a program (Chrome etc) or just navigating between tabs/functions. Having just put in a much newer CPU/MB/RAM combo than what I had before (old core duo) I was thinking that the HDD was the bottleneck, but all the monitoring I've done and tracking via task manager disproves this - unless I'm specifically copying a large file across drives, none of them max out. Similarly, the CPU, RAM or onboard GFX never get above about 50% utilisation, even when transcoding (I don't have any other users except myself, so it's single streams). So I am stumped. I don't get why it would be running so slowly. All drivers and sw is up to date, as is maintenance such as malware/av, defrags etc. The thing is rock solid, running for weeks at a time between reboots without any issues. What's next? Can anyone suggest any monitoring sw/methods I could try to see if we can track down why it's running like a dog?

This to me isn't getting as much coverage as it should - obviously modern cars collect more data than ever before, but the breadth of it is surprising, and the complete lack of privacy controls or standards makes the big tech companies look like model corporate citizens... Jalopnik Summary Original Washington Post Investigation .....a Washington Post investigation that hacked into a 2017 Chevy Volt to see what data the car hoovers up. The answer is: yikes.

I have a very old gaming rig, and whilst I can't afford an upgrade at the moment, I might be forced to as it's intermittently shitting itself/making me want to cry. Figuring out the upgraded components seems pretty straight forward at present (yay for competition), but I would rather not upgrade my case, as it's a solid, roomy old Antec, and I'd rather not spend the money if I don't have to. One question however relates to USB 3/type C - obviously my case's front USB ports are old spec, and so even plugging into USB3 I don't think they'd provide USB3 connectivity (does the end connection matter or is it just pass through/physical?), and there's no type-C. Beyond swapping out the case, is there anything available to make typeC/USB3 more available than just on the rear i/o of any new mb? Some kind of expansion/extension card I could hot-glue to the front or something? Anyone else had any experience here and come up with a good workaround?

For a few months now my PC (which is old as hell) has been restarting suddenly, with no immediate suspect for cause. There's no bluescreen, no errors, it simply freezes for just a second and then restarts....posts fine and back to Windows. I am wondering if there's a monitoring or diagnostic app I can run that would detect or at least point me in the right direction of a cause. I am leaning towards hardware simply because it's so sudden and there's no obvious bluescreen type error, but that's a guess rather than being based on anything specific. Any suggestions appreciated.

I am only going from the title, but maybe ask someone else to do it for you?

I have an ancient system I built many years ago, but has been a solid performer for me throughout. It's an i5 2600K on an Asus P5Q Deluxe MB, and it currently has a GTX 970 in it. I have 3 x SSD and a single HDD. Over time the USB ports have started behaving badly - the front ones rarely work, and it kind of depends on what else is plugged into USB. If I unplug something then the new thing probably will work. Added to that is that I have 2 x DP cables plugged in for dual monitors, but when I start the PC it runs for a brief second...fans, lights on etc, before turning off. If I unplug one of the DP cables it starts fine. I then wait until after it POSTs and plug the cable back in, and all is right with the world. Now, I know I need a new PC. That's obvious, and has been for some time, however I have been distracted wasting money on a racing car, which is an even more efficient method of reaching poorness than PC building. My plan is to build a new rig, and shift this rig downstream to replace my even older rig with is operating as my media server. It's quite happy, but of course more power is always good in these cases. IF the MB is what's rooted then I won't do that of course - the media server has 6+ HDDs and so if the MB is janky I wouldn't want to risk it. If it's just the PSU then I'd be happy to use the MB etc. with the PSU from the server. I don't recall what PSU is in it, but it's at least a 650w one, as I recall buying a new one when I went to the GTX970. Thoughts? This isn't an issue I've come across before. It's also not the end of the world as I tend to leave the machine on 24/7, but it would be good to know if I can re-use any of it down the line.

Hi all, I have a Windows 10 machine which operates as a server for Plex and backups etc. It has multiple drives in it, although not in RAID (they're backed up again to a NAS so isn't strictly necessary). It's an old Core Duo running on an Asus P5Q MB, and has been running fine for many years. Major storm the other night when I wasn't home the power went out. Now when it boots the CPU fan goes to high speed. I hooked a monitor up, and can get to the BIOS, although it's clock has reset (it thinks it's 2002). It can see all the drives (well, it sees 5 drives but they're all the same so I can't tell if one is the boot drive or not). In the boot priority I can see a single drive, and can select it as boot priority 1, but when exit/restart it just goes to a black screen with a cursor flashing. I'm not sure of my next step. Thoughts on next trouble-shooting steps?

For non-gaming purposes, what do people recommend? I need to make some "showcase" and "training video" type videos for work, and am wondering what screen recording software people recommend.

Thanks everyone, great comments/suggestions. I would probably stick with the 970 for now, and move to a 1080ti in a few months, whereas the MB/CPU I need sooner - so I wouldn't want to go with something that was then going to hold me back from 4K and higher refresh rates when I make that move. I'd go with an i7 over an i5 as I have started doing a bit of video encoding - not a huge amount, but enough that a bit of an increase in that space would be nice. My reasons for avoiding Ryzen aren't necessarily a brand loyalty thing, as much as a stability/no surprises kind of thing. Whilst I game a lot, I also use my PC for a lot of productivity stuff, and I am wary of Ryzen's stability and compatibility going forward. Software has always been a challenge for AMD - I have had several ATi/AMD GPUs over the years, as well as AMD CPUs going back to Athlon 64s, and the software/drivers have always been an issue - and I'm getting old and just don't want to deal with it I am pretty stoked though that there's some competition back in the space - look at how many of you are advocating/rocking Ryzen - if that doesn't force Intel to sort their shit out nothing will, which is good for all of us.

Greetings wise ones. My gaming rig is reaching the end of its life, mainly as the MB is starting to go (USB ports failing mainly). Thus I of course play the "hmm I could just upgrade the MB/CPU/RAM" vs "well if I'm going to bother why not get new everything" game. My case is definitely reusable, as a full sized Antech something or other, and both my PSU (Corsair 750) and GPU (GTX970) can also go to a new build. To be honest my main concern with a new OR upgraded rig is what the hell do I get, platform wise? and I'm not talking AMD vs Intel. I've made the decision to stick with Intel, for a few reasons not worth going into - they are what they are. The whole X299 thing makes me worry about whether there's anything except an X299 MB that's worth getting. I don't do any real overclocking beyond what standard software offers, so having an K/X CPU isn't that important. Should I just then go with a Kaby Lake i7 and corresponding MB? If I then went to a 1080ti I'm still going to get to 4K without any bottlenecks, so there shouldn't be any issues right? Bear in mind beyond SSDs and a single HDD I don't plan on any M2 or other PCIe type additions. To be honest I don't fully understand the entire range at present, when it comes to MB vs Sockets vs Chipsets, so trying to pair this stuff up is a bit of a nightmare. If anyone could point me to any decent videos outlining the current landscape in clear language and with small words and colourful images I'd appreciate it.

AFAIK that hasn't been a thing for a long time, the current generations of batteries don't have a "memory" like older technology used to, so I don't think it matters.

Hi all, new poster here as I've been thinking about this for at least a year, but haven't been able to nail down the idea - so figured I'd ask here as there's plenty of knowledgeable people Whilst I've built my own PCs before and am pretty comfortable, I've spent the last year getting into amateur motorsport, which has gotten me into basic fabrication and engineering stuff. This has reinforced my desire to make a custom case for my next PC. What I mean is that I don't want to mod an existing case, I want to make one from scratch. I also want to make it look like "something". I've been thinking about an F1 engine, but think that could be too big and ungainly. I also like the idea of something iconic from a sci-fi movie or tv show - I've thought about Orac (points if you get that reference), and there's plenty of HALs and the like - but I can't nail down an interesting looking, iconic "thing" that could be a funky case. Autobox Matrix of Leadership is an idea I've toyed with, but it's a pretty weird shape (not that that's a problem), but it still hasn't "clicked" for me. I am a child of the 80s/90s, so classic tv shows/films are the kind of things I have swirling in my head. The BTTF Delorean, KITT, these are the kind of crazy tech that inspires me because, well, I'm still a small child in my mind. So anyone got any interesting ideas, things that could be a funky case design?