21 ms·
We need physical audio kill switches
- fallingmeat 6y agoyou could make the same argument about a lot of things on your PC, or elsewhere. simpler is always better, until you need to do a lot of things.
- bzb5 6y agoI’ve got a microphone with a physical kill switch and when turned off it still leaks like a sieve. Be careful with those switches.
- wizzwizz4 6y agoIf you have two kill switches, one on each wire, would it still leak?
- Scoundreller 6y agoOr, instead of single-pole, single-throw switch, have a double-pole switch which pulls it to ground instead of leaving it floating?
- onion-soup 6y agoI always wondered if these physical switches are actually reliable and now reading your comment actually terrifies me. This behavior can cause irreversible social damage in say during high steak business meetings. One could absolutely sue the microphone manufacturer for this.
- formerly_proven 6y ago"It depends". Digital built-in microphones use DMIC, which aiui is a one-wire interface where the microphone just sends a delta-sigma bitstream. If you implement the switch through a multiplexer or logic gate this kills the signal 100 % essentially. Analog electrets can't be just shorted, because that causes a loud BANG when you switch due to the bias voltage, so you use a capacitor in series, which only shorts the AC portion. Because of the impedances involved, this only gives you 40-60 dB of attenuation, which isn't enough for a good ADC. Similar for XLR microphones (hot+cold are shorted, not disconnected, because of phantom power).
- jrockway 6y agoWhy do you need to short it? Just move the wires from "on" to "high impedance" (similar to what a pair of scissors would do when applied to the cable).
- formerly_proven 6y agoThe assumption is you want a click/pop-free mute. If you don't, then just SPDT the signal input to ground, problem solved. But if you do want it to be pop-free, you can't be disturbing the DC bias path (as explained above), so that isn't an option.
- amelius 6y agoCan't you switch the bias voltage off?
- anticensor 6y agoIt would make the microphone half-off, still capturing the upper half of the soundwaves.
- formerly_proven 6y agoNo, the output of electret capsules is generally wired as a common source amplifier at Ugs ~0 V with an N-JFET. Without bias, there will be neglibible output (~essentially only the capacitive coupling from the gate to the output; if you SPDT the bias voltage to ground, you're having a >100 MOhm source impedance (the capsule) fighting a couple kOhms (bias + input resistance) through perhaps 5 pF or so.
- formerly_proven 6y agoYes, but then we're back to loud popping sounds when you turn it back on.
- amelius 6y ago
- YarickR2 6y agoOh I love them high steak business meatings, with rare proposals and well done outcomes. ontopic: all mechanical switches fail, and have multiple ways to fail, from subtle contact jitter to loose/broken springs to whatever else could break
- qchris 6y agoI upvoted your 'steak' puns, but wanted to point out that "the all mechanical switches fail" is not necessarily a useful observation. All things fail, and it's absolutely possible to design a product where either a) the switches are trivially repairable (like switching out RAM on my Lenovo, which requires exactly two Philips screws), or b) designing the switches such that their mean time to failure is far longer than the mean time to failure of any of the other critical components, which is absolutely do-able using the right materials and tolerances. It's not as though audio on a laptop is pumping enormous amounts of current that presents a serious electrical challenge in that respect, and it's unlikely that the mechanism is going to be used 1000 times per day for 10 years. Edited for formatting
- vidanay 6y agoI have accomplished this by using an external audio mixer at my desk. I have physical volume controls for three PC's, two ham radios, and a police scanner. Then there is a master volume control for everything mixed.
- romwell 6y agoSame here. One advantage of a home studio setup is many, many sweet knobs. The musicians have figured it long ago that physical controls and no latency is a must. $50 mixer solves many problems.
- vehementi 6y agoIf I could power on my computer with a giant roller coaster pull lever I would
- brokenmachine 6y agoBe the change you want to see in the world. Then post it on hackaday.
- armada651 6y agoThe real design flaw here is not conveniently being able to set the volume per application. Most systems are able to do this, but don't expose that functionality conveniently. In my opinion the volume keys should only be adjusting the volume for the application/website currently in focus.
- theon144 6y agoNo, the real design flaw is just what he describes. What you're saying, while alleviating some instances of the problem, still fundamentally allows for these kinds of ear-destroying/vicinity-blasting situations. The lack of an unambiguous, direct, easily accessible kill-switch for something such as audio is an oversight no matter the auxiliary convenience.
- wongarsu 6y agoIt's just one click more on windows (instead of left click on speaker icon you have to right click -> open volume mixer). It's incredibly useful, but browsers bring it to its limits: I can only adjust the volume of the entire browser, not individual tabs. And the solutions browsers have come up with are worse (only mute/unmute) and don't scale beyond 20 tabs or so.
- lopmotr 6y agoNo way. You'll never remember which thing you last set to silent or too loud and next time it'll come out surprisingly wrong. You might not know which window is in focus, and it might not be the one playing the sound. If you do accidentally turn up, say your web browser while trying to adjust your media player, you'll never know how much too loud it will be until next time some autoplaying video starts. It would be a frustrating mess. Just change the volume when you turn the knob without any stupid computer logic trying to get in your way.
- toast0 6y ago> In my opinion the volume keys should only be adjusting the volume for the application/website currently in focus. If that extends to the mute button, that's definitely not the right thing for this application. If I can't turn off the fine noise before I find the fine application that's making it, I'm just going to pull the fine power.
- amiga-workbench 6y agoMy old IBM ThinkPads operate exactly as he described, the embedded controller immediately instructs the hardware amplifier to adjust its volume or power down. My slightly less old Lenovo X201t does everything in software, and while my computer is still groggy after waking from suspend it often takes 10-15 seconds for volume changes to take effect.
- devenblake 6y agoI use a T420 and besides needing to do a bit of configuration in Arch (just needed to check keybindings in i3wm and install PulseAudio) it works exactly how OP would want - though it's in software, not hardware (so if you use console a lot things will get ugly). I press the mute button, it's muted. I plug a headset into the audio jack, it remembers my previous settings. I'll be using this computer until time pries it away from my fingers. Edit: forgot to mention, it has a physical microphone button too. It's just amazing for Discord and Zoom calls.
- _trampeltier 6y agoOld computer had a lot of things we don't have toady anymore.
- reaperducer 6y agoOld computer had a lot of things we don't have toady anymore On Macs, you could highlight a number in any document or screen, option-click, and have your Bluetooth-connected flip phone dial it. This was pre-iPhone. I never understood why that went away.
- kristopolous 6y agoBlackBerrys did that too. It went away because phones moved from productivity to recreation devices. You can be productive with smartphones but they're clearly designed for entertainment
- noxer 6y agoThe mute button work instantly in a X201t. I can be overridden by software that is however wanted and useful especially on the tablet version where you can cover the mute button with the screen unmute must be possible with the pen/finger.
- lopmotr 6y agoThe 2 seconds would be a bug or maybe a design fault in his computer. I use a big USB volume knob [1] which is also a mute button and it always responds instantaneously as far as I can tell. I just bash it when an unexpected video starts playing. It was hard to find but these things do exist and are refreshingly convenient compared to whatever fiddly volume controls laptops always have. [1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32649442146.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32649442146.html Added link to answer reply question
- rsync 6y agoWhat specific volume control knob do you use?
- Tarsul 6y agoI agree with him. Also, why is there no microphone mute button (or shortcut) integrated in windows? Seems like a must-have nowadays.
- theon144 6y agoAbsolutely, especially since software like Zoom allows the call host to unmute the microphone on your (!) end. It's unsurprising and possible with any kind of software mute of course, but still significant enough for me to seek out a solution - I use https://sourceforge.net/projects/micmute/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/micmute/ but it's not without its hitches, unfortunately :/
- wongarsu 6y agoMy headset has a mic kill switch [1]. It's very useful, and I'm honestly surprised that it isn't more common (especially since volume control is a fairly standard feature on headsets) 1: https://steelseries.com/gaming-headsets/arctis-7 https://steelseries.com/gaming-headsets/arctis-7 The red switch on the back; when muted the front of the mic shines red.
- NobodyNada 6y ago> software like Zoom allows the call host to unmute the microphone on your (!) end. Does it really allow that? In my experience it only shows a pop-up saying "The host would like you to unmute your microphone" and requiring me to confirm. Maybe there's some kind of setting for it?
- paxys 6y agoIt does not. The host can only mute you, not unmute.
- Hnrobert42 6y agoThat has been driving me crazy. I did manage to write an applescript toggle that i associated with my F1 key. I never really trust it, though.
- onion-soup 6y agoNothing will ever come close to convenience of analogue volume knobs. They give both immediate action and infinite granular control. Same goes for kitchen stoves. All the modern touch controls with step-based control is the absolute nightmare in terms of UI.
- yitchelle 6y agoTouch screens in cars are really a bad move. Having to navigate it while driving down the freeway, or even your suburban streets is unbelievable risky. Knobs and push buttons with tactile feedback are still the best options.
- bluGill 6y agoI've been surprised for years that the NTSB hasn't forced a recall on those.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoWith one specific exception - stereo volume knobs often - virtually always - suffer from stereo imbalance, where the volume of the left and right channels are slightly different. Some high-end amplifiers offer a relay based volume system where the knob simply switches resistors in and out of the audio path using relays to adjust the volume, and although this does result in "steps" of volume, it does mean the stereo balance is always perfect.
- formerly_proven 6y agoThat's a problem mostly caused by using passive log-taper circuits, instead of alternate active volume control circuits that use linear-taper pots, which have sufficiently good tolerance and ganging in low-cost dual units. But these circuits require 1-2 op amps per channel and those 20 cents are too much in three-figure hardware. Ganged log-taper pots have something like +-3 or +-6 dB ganging mismatch even for relatively high-end (10-15 € ea) units.
- 6y ago
- GistNoesis 6y agoI have encountered the opposite problem. Some speakers turn themselves off automatically when they don't detect any sound on the line for a certain amount of time. So when you want to have your monitoring application ring the alarm on the speaker, you need to be aware of it so you don't miss it. Depending on the speaker you may need to be continuously playing some very low volume audio to prevent them from auto-turning off.
- aarongolliver 6y agoI have this issue with a subwoofer - coupled with a bad amplifier/grounding/(something?) it creates an immense WOOOOF every time it turns on and off. This causes my house to shake 15 minutes after I go to bed, just as I'm about to fall asleep. Have definitely considered auto-starting something that played a continuous low tone to prevent it from happening.
- brokenmachine 6y agoWhat model is it? I have a sub that does a small thump when it turns on/off but nothing like you describe.
- aarongolliver 6y agoKlipsch R-120SW
- woofie11 6y ago> Depending on the speaker you may need to be continuously playing some very low volume audio to prevent them from auto-turning off. Standard is very high frequency -- outside of audible range. It's a good hack. Especially helpful for disabling automatic gain control.
- formerly_proven 6y agoAlso prevents audio drivers putting your hardware into a low-power standby state (especially ridiculous on a desktop), which causes ~1 s of lag when starting to play audio again.
- brandon272 6y agoI let my spouse, who likes the novelty of a touchscreen, talk me into a Whirlpool oven a couple years ago that is controlled by touchscreen. I had no idea it was possible to hate an oven so much. The only saving grace is that the stovetop elements are still controlled by knobs.
- systemvoltage 6y agoI don't understand why people find novelty of touchscreens appealing. We've got to do a better job of educating consumers. The marketing behind touchscreens is so powerful that it is unanimously considered as a feature, something you must have. I get angry just thinking about the amount of marketing bullshit around touchscreens. Just go to Garmin Aviation website and now a lot of operation in airplane cockpits is offloaded to touchscreens. What happened to the scratch pad and press an index key in FMCs? Age old UI and it is so crisp and clear, there is absolutely zero ambguity. Write something in a scratch pad, click the button where you wanna insert the data. This is a cost saving measure disguised as a feature. Public is dumb and does'nt understand UI/UX in the slightest bit. It is just sad. As long as consumers keep buying, nothing will change.
- skohan 6y agoTouch controls are only warranted when you need to support a large number of varied interactions which can't be supported by physical controls, or if you have to support arbitrary gesture-based input (like a drawing tablet for example). If that's not the case, physical controls are always better. If you're operating a vehicle, or can't look at the display for any reason, tactile controls are leagues better.
- systemvoltage 6y agoAgreed and you nailed it - an iPhone with touchscreen makes total sense.
- cgriswald 6y agoI don’t think it’s quite so black-and-white although I agree roughly with where you draw the line. My car has tactile controls but they control a cursor on a non-touch screen. In this case touch screen controls would be superior because it would be faster and there would be less time looking at the display. An argument could be made for more controls to get away from the need for a cursor/menu at all, and while I largely agree, at some point you’re likely to have so many controls you end up looking at the controls anyway, even with tactile hints. Even if not, in this case the major controls are basically shortcuts and they’re the most commonly used and important shortcuts. Adding more buttons and knobs for things used less frequently or of lesser importance would muddy the waters and make these controls more difficult to use. To muddy the waters further, some controls can do double duty with things like cycling through functions, double clicks, contextual presses, etc.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bonestamp2 6y agoI wanted to love the touch bar, but the current implementation is a failure -- it needs to be pressure sensitive. A light brushing of a physical key doesn't register and a good implementation of the touch bar would behave the same way. In the meantime, I would pay extra to the replace the touch bar with the physical buttons we used to have. I've gotten so tired of accidentally hitting the touch bar that I have disabled it as much as possible -- I have it configured so holding the fn button brings it back, making it much more difficult to accidentally trigger something. Of course, as the article mentions, this makes it even more difficult to trigger the sound controls when they're uncomfortably loud, but that's still a trade off I'm willing to make to avoid so many false positive interactions with the touch bar.
- grishka 6y agoAlso the delay the author mentions seems to be related to the touch bar. I have a 2012 macbook with actual physical buttons where the touch bar would be, and hitting F10 mutes the audio immediately. The bigger problem, though, is that modern web browsers put website developers before users. It's a user agent. It should allow the user to control everything. I honestly wish they asked for permission per-domain before a website is allowed to use <video> and <audio> tags.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tyingq 6y agoI have certainly experienced this on Android. Random apps seem to be able to override my "mute the phone" command.
- paxys 6y agoSame with iPhone. It's one of the most frustrating parts of iOS for me. The hardware mute button is pointless since apps can just choose whether to respect it or not.
- floatboth 6y agoWasn't the hardware mute button specifically for ringtones and not media? On OnePlus phones it's a 3-position switch with silent, vibrate and ring as separate physical positions.
- avh02 6y agoI got sick of apps circumventing the various basic android "mute except for x app and phone calls" features that I just turn off wifi and data when I go to sleep. If it's important enough, they will call and my phone will ring. Occasionally SMS will bother me but barely anybody uses SMS.
- noxer 6y agoAuthor should just use a proper browser with ad-block and mute add-on. Regardless of audio levels or hardware switches, a website should never play audio on its own without permission.
- paxys 6y agoFirefox does it out of the box (in fact blocking audio and video autoplay is the default setting).
- noxer 6y agoI know, I use it =)
- SilasX 6y agoI have autoplay turned off, and ublock and I still see sites that can autoplay video (usually news sites). Also, some sites, while muted, still get an audible bleep through when they try to play a sound (dominion.games when the game is over, in particular).
- asdasfasdfasdf 6y agoThe point is a bit deluded when it's made on a blog with underage anime girls.
- gooseyard 6y agoive been working remotely for a few years and do a little recording and mixing on the side. I like using plain old analog headsets since they make it easy to have control over the sidetone level from the headset mic, and they're usable in many situations where a usb headset would not be. To simplify using one headset with a few different devices (pc, desk phone, ipod/phone), I wound up buying a little Behringer Xenyx 302USB bus-powered mixer. If you have a bunch of analog devices to mix, you'd want something larger, but for a PC with a headset and one or two other analog sources or outs (like a pair of desk speakers), these things are just about perfect. They use off the shelf TI PCM2902C converters, have excellent audio quality, work driver-free on Linux, OSX, and windows, and seem to last pretty well. The real beauty of these little mixers (or the myriad other comparable ones) is that all the common adjustments I need to make- my own mic monitor level, the other party's output level, and the overall headphone level, each have their own rotary fader on the mixer. There's also some minimal eq available. The mixer is small enough that it doesn't waste much desk space, and in the event of a surprise volume spike, the master volume fader is right by my hand, and I've saved myself from being blasted many times. If you pair something like this together with an effects host (I use pulseeffects on Linux and love it), its easy to apply a compressor or limiter to the stream from the VC app that I use to reduce transients, or to add an expander to help on multi-party calls where one callers mic gain is too low. The 302USBs have gotten a little tricky to find lately since they seem to be popular with new podcasters. Several companies make similar models but nothing has quite the same set of connectors and routing to be as convenient as these, although everyone's needs are different- if you're using a headset with 1/4" connectors, the Yamaha AG03 looks really promising, although its nearly twice the price of the Behringer. There aren't a lot of gizmos that have simplified remote work for me as much as these things; they're probably overkill if you don't work from a fixed location (although they don't require any power connection), but if you have a typical desktop setup, they're great.
- lolc 6y agoOh wow that is a really nice solution! Especially because this model has the right sockets to plug a headset into as you point out. And thanks for the note about pulseeffects.
- animationwill 6y agoMore important than speaker kill switches, we need physical/hardware microphone switches that disconnect the circuit. These are built into Amazon Echo devices, but it's unclear if Google Home or other Apple HomePod have this (a quick revealed they do not).
- ricardobeat 6y agoGoogle Home mini certainly has it, it's the only physical switch on the device.
- DoctorOW 6y agoIIRC My Mini has corrected me for speaking to it while it was muted so I'm not sure it's a hardware kill switch.
- Reason077 6y agoOn my regular Google Home, pressing the mute switch makes it turn orange. It then won't respond to any voice input until you unmute it.
- ohyeshedid 6y agoThere's a huge difference in the microphone being physically incapable of hearing you vs a toggle switch that tells the os not to respond to you.
- animationwill 6y agoA physical switch does not necessarily mean the microphone is disconnected at the hardware-level. I checked these and I don't think it does https://support.google.com/googlenest/thread/24537110?hl=en https://support.google.com/googlenest/thread/24537110?hl=en https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Home+Mini+Teardown/102264 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Google+Home+Mini+Teardown/10...
- Jon_Lowtek 6y ago>> "mute buttons on keyboards shouldn’t need to go to software, they should immediately send a signal to the motherboard’s DAC" I don't have a lot of knowledge about this, but audio is often streamed via USB or HDMI or Bluetooth or WLAN to another device, like headphones, an AV receiver, or wireless speakers and then uses the DAC in that device. So the blog posts wish would result in the mute button not doing anything for many users, because it controls only a very specific hardware, but the users expect the function to work against all sound emitted by the operating system on any connected hardware, right? This guy actually wants a switch on his headphones. Or am i wrong and all sound goes through the motherboards sound card at least once, even if it is sent somewhere else?
- toxicFork 6y agoI was working as a video/audio engineer for a bit and for Bluetooth especially the latency is insane. For some devices it was around half a second. I don't think I have seen two seconds though. The main thing was that we would need to stream the audio first, wait for the latency duration, then start showing video frames. If you press pause, the audio would stop after that much time. I haven't checked if some devices allowed sending of start/stop commands through less latency methods though. My job was mainly concerned with playback.
- stingraycharles 6y agoI have stopped using Bluetooth audio altogether. I feel like it’s a major step back in audio quality, but maybe you may be the best person to ask: for someone who appreciates high quality music codecs on eg spotify, what can I do to make this work over Bluetooth? I have some Bose QC2 headphones and as far as I can tell it’s pretty much impossible to get anything over 128kbits. Is there something I’m overlooking here?
- therealx 6y agoQuality wise, you could not buy Bose. I can tell the difference on my BT Sennheiser headphones depending on the bitrate. However the latency is real.
- dasb 6y agoI use a dynamic range compressor when dealing with unpredictable output (watching Youtube videos, Zoom calls). On Linux, I use this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=typM_AQUzi4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=typM_AQUzi4 On Windows, I tick the "Loudness Equalization" option in the output device's menu. I disable it when I listen to music.
- bashinator 6y agoDo you have a text link for the linux option?
- lioeters 6y agohttps://github.com/gotbletu/shownotes/blob/master/pulseaudio-dynamic-range-compression.md https://github.com/gotbletu/shownotes/blob/master/pulseaudio...
- DanielBMarkham 6y agoAnything that goes into or comes out of the computer needs a physical kill switch. I have no idea why this is even a question. Best I can come up with, the changes were so incremental and advertised as features. There was no natural stopping point, so vendors kept going.
- JD557 6y agoSince the user is complaining about the way Mac OS handles the audio buttons, I'm surprised that he doesn't mention the problems with HDMI. I don't understand why the OS disables the audio controls of HDMI outputs. If I press the volume down button, I want the volume to go down. Instead, I get a "I can't let you do that" warning! This is particularly bad if I have my headphones connected to the display (I have both my desktop and laptop connected to the same display, keyboard and mouse, being able to share the same headphones would be pretty convenient).
- mrkwse 6y agomacOS disables the audio control of HDMI outputs because that is what the HDMI specification expects/defines. If you think of all the devices that output via HDMI, Windows PCs are the outlier (afaik, not sure how Linux handles it) in allowing separate volume controls beyond those on the output device. Satellite set top boxes, media streaming devices (e.g. Apple TV - I realise NVidia Shield and some Chromecast apps do have some software volume control), games consoles, and Blu-Ray players will all output a fixed audio signal, expecting the TV/AV amplifier to handle volume.
- stingraycharles 6y agoLinux can control volume on HDMI just fine. I guess it’s my expectation that on a desktop, I can control volume that the desktop emits, whereas with some appliance like an Apple TV or game consoles are solely built for streaming to a TV, and don’t have keyboard input etc, and for which it makes much more sense to just disable that control.
- SSLy 6y agoAnd so does Windows 10, BTW. (let you adjust HDMI vol)
- JD557 6y ago>Set top boxes Maybe that's a regional thing, but I think that all set top boxes (and DTV decoders) that I used had it's own remote with adjustable volume.
- andrewfong 6y agoIt's much more of an issue without headphones. Anyone who ever their laptop start playing audio in a meeting knows.
- joshuaheard 6y agoThe Bose Companion 20 multimedia speaker system for computers has a desktop control pod to plug in your headphones that is for volume control and an on/off button.
- allenu 6y agoI don't know what I'd do if my iPhone didn't have physical volume buttons. When I watch videos on YouTube now, as soon as an ad starts playing, I just mute it by using the volume button and look away for a few seconds as I can't stand ads (sadly there isn't a dedicated mute button).
- frankosaurus 6y agoNice, I need to come up with a solution for this on desktop. My dream is a Chrome extension which recognizes Youtube ads and auto-mutes while they are playing.
- user2834 6y agouBlock Origin + Sponsorblock
- MaxikCZ 6y agoNow we need a blocker of bloat. I mean the kind of bloat where the video lures you on specific thing in thubnail/tittle and then theres minute of talking and into and "lets get started". Sponsorblock is godesnd, but so far only solution for above been to just stop watching certain creators
- lozf 6y agoI open youtube with `mpv` (which uses youtube-dl) ...Ads are automatically skipped, and there's a bunch of keyboard shortcuts for skipping & fine-grained speed control etc. I have a single-button shell alias that calls it with appropriate options, and a slightly longer one that adds a dynamic range compression filter which is sometimes handy.
- frankosaurus 6y agoInteresting... it looks like this can be done with Firefox's Open With extension. Is there a Chrome option?
- 6y ago
- efitz 6y agoWe also need hardware on/off switches for cameras and microphones.
- yawniek 6y agoit basically boils down to either buying a logitech craft or any decent audio interface and move on... while such knob would be nice on a laptop I don't think it's downsides would justify adding one...
- tus88 6y ago> proclaim that people could just unplug their headphones Actually I found plugging in headphones is the easiest and quickest way to mute mobile phones.
- neya 6y agoThis is one of the reasons why all the amplifiers I build for my personal use, be it power audio amps or headphone amps, don't use any fancy audio switch ICs. I prefer analog exactly for this reason. A simple relay with a push button. Leaves me more room for other stuff inside the cabinet, while getting the job done in the simplest way possible.
- skohan 6y agoI've been thinking the same about power switches lately. If I turn a flashlight, or an old radio on or off, I flip a switch and get the result I want. With my 65 EUR gamepad, or 300 EUR headphones, I hold a button and wait several seconds for the result. Why has UX regressed so much in these areas?
- MereInterest 6y agoAnd even if there is a physical switch, it is not clear what that switch is doing. My bluetooth headset has a hardware on/off switch. However, when the switch is turned off, it plays a sound to say the words "power off". If it were a physical switch across the battery, then I would expect the power to be immediately cut, and it shouldn't have the power to say that the power has been cut.
- moe 6y agoBut then how would you know it's really off!
- kempbellt 6y agoI sense sarcasm, but I'll answer anyway. A power indicator light would do the trick... But in all seriousness, your bluetooth headphones should have a sim card built in and be an IoT slave to the cloud. So that when you turn them off, they send a message to Alexa, Google, and Siri, so that all of your devices can tell you "YOUR HEADPHONES ARE NOW OFF" at the same time. Like a tiny choir of angels informing you of the new state of your device. But of course, there will be one slow/older device that lags 0.3 seconds behind and says "HEADPHONES...OFF", completely out of sync with the rest, like a rebel. Damnit, toilet! Get with the times...
- bitwize 6y ago𝕐𝕆𝕌ℝ 𝕁𝔸ℂ𝕂𝔼𝕋 𝕀𝕊 ℕ𝕆𝕎 𝔻ℝ𝕐
- 6y ago
- chronolitus 6y agoA master and a student are sitting in a forest, reflecting. Two men walk by, vehemently discussing whether a household item's design is acceptable. After they pass, the student tells the master: "The opinionated user-experience enthusiast is right. Every wrong decision is not just a single day ruined, time wasted, or train of thought lost, but thousands. However, the pragmatician is also right: it is not reasonable to expect every object we use to attain UX perfection. They are built by flawed people with real constraints. Tell me master, which one of those men is closer to the Way?" The master thinks for a while, then gives an answer. But the student does not hear it, because he forgot to turn off his Bose™ noise-cancelling headphones.
- WalterBright 6y agoAlso need physical write-enable switches for ROMs, and physical mike and camera enabling switches.
- westoque 6y agomore importantly. we need physical video kill switches as well! i have dealt with so many apps just opening the camera out of nowhere and it’s also mostly unexpected.
- TheRealPomax 6y agoI'm not sure I get this article - if you want a physical kill switch for audio, get a volume controller and set that directly under your monitor? Now you have a physical kill switch in the form of a GIANT near-zero-friction volume knob as well as dedicated hardware true-instant-mute button. No reason computers should come with that out of the box, in the same way there's no reason they should come with a DVD drive or a vertical mouse or brand-name webcam, but if that's what you need in your life, any of these are <$100 peripherals. Because you don't need a $2000 audio interface with twenty XLR inputs with individually controlled phantom power and built in EQ, or even a $299 one that podcasters and youtubers like to keep recommending: if you just want control over your audio, get something like a Behringer MONITOR1 for $60 [1], or a slightly nicer Mackie "Big Knob" passive 2x2 for $70 [2] and go "ahh, exactly what I needed". [1] https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=P0C9G https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=P0C9G [2] https://mackie.com/products/big-knob-series-monitor-controllers-interfaces https://mackie.com/products/big-knob-series-monitor-controll...
- avree 6y agoHe covers your argument in paragraph 5, under the "just ackchyually" crowd section. To summarize, you shouldn't have to use peripheral equipment to achieve what he believes should be standard functionality in hardware that emits audio signals.
- TheRealPomax 6y agoWhich is kind of a nonsense argument for laptops, and already true for desktops (even cheap PC speakers come with a nice big volume knob and on/off switch). So I read that paragraph, and see "why should I have to do what everyone else who cares about this already does?". If you care about a mute button, get a mute button. Just like if you care about having a good mouse, get a good mouse. And if you care about having good video quality, get a real webcam. Welcome to owning a computer: it's not done, because you're an outlier with your own needs, just like everyone else. You get the "meets most people's needs" hardware, and you get to add all the peripherals you need on top of that yourself. And as a bonus, you buy them once, then if you get a new computer, you don't need to buy new ones: they still work, and no one had to waste time and money on adding those things just for you to throw them away a few years later when it's time to get a new computer. Everyone wins.
- coretx 6y agoIf you physically cut a audio signal, one end of the cable turns into a broadcasting radio antenna. Reality isn't as simple as presented.
- sjruckle 6y agoHow do you figure?
- coretx 6y agoBasic physics.
- sjruckle 6y agoI'll concede that yes, technically, the disconnected wires become an antenna. The audio signal will radiate away from the section of wire between the amplifier and the switch. But the reality is that the signal is unmodulated, and the 'antenna' is a random-length pcb trace located near the ground plane. It's a terrible radiator. So if the question is "Is this an antenna that will radiate problematic amounts of rf when the switch is opened?" the answer is "No."
- jng 6y agoA low-power 20kHz signal on a PCB track not designed to radiate is not going to be a problem at all - plus you can always switch to terminating with a resistor in the unlikely case it is a problem. Also the author mentions connecting directly to the DAC, most DACs, and definitely all DACs I have studied the datasheet for have a CE (Chip Enable) signal, or some more advanced way to control audio output with a command (using an SPI or similar interface), no need to cut the audio connections. Reality isn't as simple as applying basic physical knowledge without the required context.
- totaldude87 6y agoI can continue this rant for making physical buttons mandatory in many places, MAINLY because they do only one thing(mostly) but they do it pretty damn well AND its reliable as hell! like a knob to adjust the shower temperature or a knob/button to adjust the car volume (in some cases these avoid accidents too).. I know where those keys are, eyes closed!!! Physical buttons are becoming a luxury now a days :( , and don't shove in the "hey its software age / touch screen age/minimalistic age" here :| Minimalism doesn't mean , remove ultra necessary stuff..
- TheRealPomax 6y agoJust like your computer doesn't come with a brand name webcam out of the box, it doesn't come with a dedicated volume controller out of the box. Doesn't mean you can't just add one for cheap: they're cheaper than a good webcam and have big-ass low-friction volume knobs as well as dedicated instant-mute buttons. If that's what you need in your life, you already have brand-name options (like Behringer and Mackie). But most people, of course, don't. (I would venture a guess and say neither you nor I are most people, which is why I have an NI Komplete Audio 6 sitting under my monitor right now for that purpose)
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago>I hit the mute button on my MacBook Pro Touchbar, and it took a solid two seconds for it to register. My ears were ringing throughout the whole call. This is unacceptable. The USB-C era MacBook Pros had some serious degradation in the audio department. The previous much loved generation, you plug headphones in the audio system switches to them so fast it's perceivable as instant, the USB-C era there is at best a 0.5 delay and at worst a 2 second delay. During this delay anything you change volume wise will actually apply to the previous setting not the new setting, so the usual scenario where you're in the office you have the speakers on mute, plug in headphones then you don't hear anything because of the delay so you hit volume up will actually set your speakers off mute. Later on you unplug your headphones and your laptops speakers are then blaring out whatever you were playing instead of remaining on mute. This situation would never happen in the pre-USB-C MBP because the headphone switch was instant, it felt like a hardwired connection. Like a lot of things on the USB-C MacBooks interactions like sound and power feel more like interfacing with a what people may call a "device" rather than a computer, there are tangible layers that have to handshake between your real world action and the hardware catching up sometimes seconds later. (This is all the non-touchbar model, so it's not just that)
- harha 6y agoThe delay might be there to slowly get us used to the no-port era of phones to come and the speed of switching headphones from one device to another using bluetooth.
- perryizgr8 6y agoI have an old Macbook air, and it has weird behavior with the headphone jack, too. Suppose I am playing a youtube video on the laptop speakers. I pause it, grab my headphones, plug them in and resume playback. For a split second, the sound will play from the speakers, and then switch to the headphones. Even though the headphones were plugged in ~10 seconds ago. My new HP laptop is even worse. If you plug in a headphone while audio is playing, it will just crash the app that is playing. Youtube tab will crash, vlc will crash, Zoom will crash, Skype will crash. It's something I never thought remotely possible.
- est31 6y agoThe real problem he has is different levels of audio and missing normalization of audio levels. You shouldn't get into the situation of wanting to quickly adjust audio levels in the first place (although I agree that any latency in adjusting the volume is inacceptable). Normalization (especially the real-time case) is an interesting topic. I've experimented with crude algorithms in the past to take all audio samples in a fixed window and then normalize them all to the same level [0]. But it's harder than you'd think. First there is a difference for humans in how loud they perceive the same sound to be at different frequencies. So any measurement function needs to take that into account. ReplayGain does this btw [1]. Then, there is the problem that if you make this window too short, you turn the audio into a garbled mess. If you make the window too long, you increase latency. This is a big deal for streaming settings. And last, you have the problem that silent periods aren't silent. E.g. if the person takes a breath, the level is increased to amplify the muffled sounds of the road nearby to levels to make you think they stand in the middle of a highway :). It's an interesting problem and while I doubt that it'll be solvable by simple hardcoded algorithms, ML might solve it. Then we can finally enjoy audio without having to manually press +++ and --- all the time :). But you know maybe we'll have different problems similar to the inability of phones to photograph the orange sky over SF. [0]: https://github.com/est31/js-audio-normalizer https://github.com/est31/js-audio-normalizer [1]: http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=ReplayGain_specification#Loudness_filter http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=ReplayGain_specif...
- PostThisTooFast 6y agoNot to mention that the biggest problem, at least in music, isn't the absolute peak (or normalization), but rather dynamic compression. Everything mastered (or "remastered") since the late '90s has been destroyed with dynamic compression to make it "louder." It's the biggest crime against art in our times, but is poorly understood even by musicians who complain about it. Interestingly it's the older ones, like Neil Young and Bob Dylan who have been the most vocal about it, but incorrectly attribute it to data compression or sampling rates.
- sjy 6y agoI’ve found ffmpeg’s dynaudnorm filter pretty good for this. https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#dynaudnorm https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#dynaudnorm
- anotheryou 6y agoAfter a volume shock it's too late. I think there should be a limiter/compressor by default or something, especially sensitive to when there is an initial loudness jump.
- shadowgovt 6y agoPhysical audio kill switches are a nice idea, but if you didn't wire them yourself, how do you know they aren't merely claimed to be physical but are actually just setting a flag in the operating system to ignore the physical input from the speaker?
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago> I hit the mute button on my MacBook Pro Touchbar, and it took a solid two seconds for it to register. My ears were ringing throughout the whole call. This is unacceptable. Well-engineered mute buttons on keyboards shouldn’t need to go to software, they should immediately send a signal to the motherboard’s DAC—ideally on a separate wire or connection—to say terminate this signal. Then it’s less of a concern if it takes the OS a few seconds to react to the change, because our ears have been spared. "Should not need to go to software?" I'm not sure. I have a Yamaha AV receiver on my desk. The huge volume knob has the best user experience than any software-based solution, unlike menus or hotkeys, it's always in my reach and instantaneously responses to my inputs. It has smooth mechanical damping, giving a satisfying touch and feel. I can immediately turn the volume down in a second if there's misbehaving, non-normalized loud audio. I did it from time to time. On the other hand, I clearly know it's software-driven. The knob is nothing but an user interface. It's an optical rotary encoder, not a real potentiometer. When the knob is turned, it chops a beam of light, and an optical sensor converts the optical pulse to a digital signal, which is then sent to a GPIO pin on the application processor in the AV receiver. The firmware on the application processor receives an IRQ, then commands the DAC via the system bus (could be I2C) to increase or decrease the volume in a 0.5 dB step. It's 100% software driven, not hardware driven. The software can fail, yet the software never let me down. We can get another conclusion from this: Special-purpose computing is more reliable than general-purpose computing. The operating system handles everything, and has numerous failure modes due to its unpredictability. Furthermore, it's in a constant state of change to bring the "Next Great Things", who cares if the audio mixer or the TouchBar becomes a bit slow? An AV receiver only needs to do one thing, so it can do this well.
- radarnc 6y agoThat why whatever conferencing software your using should have audio processing to control level of different audio.
- beloch 6y ago"I was in a conference call last Friday where I’d adjusted the volume up to compensate for the client’s quiet microphone, only to be audibly shot in the ears by an auto-playing video on a website. There is a lot of problematic stuff to unpack there, much of which is not the fault of the audio hardware or OS." If you're suddenly reaching for the mute button because you're being blasted then there has already been a significant failure. It just happens to be something everybody is failing at and nobody can be bothered to fix. We suck at quantifying (simply) the loudness of audio content. If you set volume according to average SPL, high transients (e.g. Cannon fire in a too-faithful recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture) can still be shattering. If you set it according to the maximum SPL, an action movie with lots of explosions might have a lot of dialogue that's inaudible. Audio that has been highly compressed to the point of distortion may seem uncomfortably loud even at moderate SPL's. The thing is, we probably shouldn't even try to use simple rules for setting volume. We need to build systems that observe when people adjust the volume and learn from that. No OS should be dumb enough to suddenly let rip with a new audio stream whose first second is, on average, 30 dB higher than what was previously playing. Yet, they practically all do. A hardware volume knob is an important thing for any audio device to have but, if the device has the capacity to run programs and it's users are still reaching for that knob in startlement, there has been a failure.
- gexla 6y agoWhen working with audio for production (work) stuff which you need to separate from non-work, maybe use something like Voicemeeter Banana and route your audio signals separately (and adjust loudness separately.) That way you can keep things separate so that nobody is picking up things you don't want them to pick up (and the same for your end.) There's also apps like Krisp which filter background noise from incoming calls. I don't know if it sets loudness, but something like that would probably be good for saving your ears.
- askvictor 6y agoI've been thinking about the "you're muted" problem in video calls, and imagining a big physical button to mute/unmute without having to stuff around with the particular UI for this particular video product you are using right now. One solution is to mute/unmute at the hardware or system level (some computers already have this, or sometime close), but this then requires you to be unmuted in the software (Zoom), which isn't always under your control. So unless the system-level mute can send a signal to Zoom, or Meet, or Teams, or X, then it defeats the purpose. What would be nice would be an agreed-upon standard API for muting/unmuting within an application, but that both seems unlikely (as that's not how companies like to do things anymore), and would add to the complexity of things to a point where 'ordinary users' would get confused or stuff things up. I'm at the point where I think a dedicated device for video calls is necessary.
- PascLeRasc 6y agoI've been thinking it'd be great to have some kind of USB footswitch to un-mute Teams to talk. My work computer is incredibly locked down, but I imagine this could be done with QMK and a keyboard shortcut. It'd be better though as a global command instead of requiring your computer's active window to be Teams. I'm also so surprised that there haven't been any developments in Teams audio level mixing - sometimes I need to turn my volume down because one person is shouting into their mic and everyone else is talking normally.
- vonseel 6y agoDid he forget about pulling the cord out? Lol
- dreamcompiler 6y agoAbsolutely. We're rapidly headed toward a world in which not only is volume controlled by software, but where apps and even websites will be able to tell whether your audio is muted. Imagine what Youtube would be like if not only are videos delayed by ads, but the ads themselves refuse to play if they're muted. Madness.
- giardini 6y agoHow about a kill switch in the gym? Every time I walk into a business I'm assaulted with their choice of music. No music is as bad as gym music: unrecognizable songs by unrecognizable artists chosen by God-knows-who (all no doubt via the lowest bid). Where is "The Sound of Silence"? It's cheaper (free even) and better.
- dandare 6y agoAfter glancing over the title I first thought the topic is physical microphone kill switches. That being said We need physical microphone kill switches. Even if you are super careful about getting your laptop infected or hacked, you have probably tons of legit software installed on your laptop that can be hacked, or spy on you for purpose, there are OS and vendor backdoors, zero days, and many of us use laptops managed by our corporate overlords. I wish that microphones (and cameras) in your private space that are connected to a network and a battery would be taken more seriously.
- goihoiholi 6y agoTraditionally, "spying" meant to record video or audio. I think voice recordings aren't the most precious thing on my laptop. It's my passwords, cookies, e-mails, and pictures. We need to integrate fine-grained permission APIs into our Desktop OS, those we know from iOS or Android. Hardware switches create the notion that even with malware on-board, no harm to the real-world can be done.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jxramos 6y agoGood point, I know the librem 5 has cut off switches for the inputs--camera, mic, cellular. I'm not sure anyone ever thought of the output side. Kill Switches 3 – WiFi, Cellular, Microphone/Cameras (all 3 will turn off GPS) https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
- fuzzfactor 6y agoWhat we really need is for engineers who never wanted to remove them to begin with to be in charge. Starting long enough ago to make the difference.
- djmips 6y agoThis sounds like an XY problem. What you want is for your ears to not be hurt by loud sounds. Physical audio kill switches is one solution but I can think of many others that I personally would prefer. One thing that comes to mind is a system that monitors the audio output and keeps that from exceeding some predefined maximum.