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Nothing will ever come close to convenience of analogue volume knobs. They give both immediate action and infinite granular control. Same goes for kitchen stove
by onion-soup 6y ago
Nothing 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.
- qppo 6y agoI've seen/heard this in $100 units from Schiit. Not to mention the poor hand soldering job that cost more money because a human did it in America.
- SSLy 6y agoYou get what it says on the packaging
- cthalupa 6y agoSend 'em an email. Their $100 units are some of the best testing amps/dacs in the price range, so even from a purely subjectivist standpoint they make stuff that generally works pretty well. If you're encountering issues, then they will usually make good on it. The stereo imbalance is just something you're gonna see at basically every amp at that price point.
- aleph_naught 6y agoI got the Modi2/Magni2 set for my HD650s when they originally came out. Total disappointment: pots had static when inc/dec vol, and had balancing issues. The headphone amp on my macbook didn’t suffer from any of that, was indistinguishable in sound quality with a blind test, and was way less hassle. Only difference was that it didn’t get as loud, but since I don’t listen past the macbooks max, I put them in the closet and never looked back.
- cthalupa 6y agoThat's unfortunate. I use planar headphones, so a dedicated amp is pretty much a requirement due to the power draw vs. regular dyamics. I opted for a Schiit Bifrost/Asgard stack (they didn't have the magni/modi combo at the time) and had great experiences with them. I opted to perform one of the upgrades for the Bifrost myself, and after that had some issues with the DAC resetting and audio cutting out - emailed Schiit, told them what I had done to troubleshoot, and they shipped me a replacement upgrade part the next day.
- 6y ago
- liability 6y agoThings like this make me glad I'm not an audiophile. What you describe seems very annoying, but thankfully I've never noticed anything like it.
- Judgmentality 6y agoI don't think there's much benefit to being an audiophile, unless you're so rich you can actually enjoy your insanely expensive setup in your sound-proofed room with your specially-purchased lossless audio sources. Luckily, very few people who claim to be audiophiles can actually hear the difference in a blind test. https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/...
- Natales 6y agoDon't judge all of us audiophiles with a blanket statement. Yes, measured hearing capacity is definitely a key metric to know (why invest in super tweeters when you can't hear past 18KHz for example), but room acoustics is probably the very next thing I'd look at. I've seen so much "expensive" gear in rooms that are absolutely horrid in terms of sound reflections. Just a carpet, curtains or a couple of cheap sound panels can make wonders in improving sound if you know just a bit of the physics of sound. You don't have to invest in super expensive equipment to do that. Furthermore, there is a healthy DIY community these days, where you can build your own speakers, cables, amplifiers, etc, with very little effort, and get a lot of enjoyment in the process and with the product. I built a set of LX521.4 and LX Mini speakers from Siegfried Linkwitz [0] and it changed completely the way I listen to audio now for an order of magnitude less money that what I'd had to pay otherwise... [0] http://linkwitzlab.com/ http://linkwitzlab.com/
- pbronez 6y agoCan you provide some more detail about your experiences with these speakers? I’ve seen the designs before, but they’re so exotic they seem like a gimmick. I want to make two sets of speakers. First, a two channel set up for my home office, to play high-quality music while I work and handle conference call audio. Second, a monitor for my synthesizers. They produce a crazy range of detailed sound, and I want something that reproduces all that detail across a full range, even at lower volumes, and ideally without strict placement/listening position constraints. I dream of building a battery powered custom speaker bank for synth busking / disturbing the peace.
- playpause 6y agoI don’t mind if it uses volume steps under the hood, as long as it uses ~100 steps, not 10.
- atoav 6y agoThere are even more solutions to this problem: One is to convert the L/R Stereo image to Mid/Side do the volume control and then convert it back to L/R. This way any mismatch of the potentiometer would translate into a change in stereo width instead of shifting the image around. Another solution would be to use one pot as a voltage divider, buffer that voltage and use the resulting current to drive two Blackmer VCA ICs (e.g. THAT2181).
- tuatoru 6y agoAdding to formerly_proven's reply, back in the analog era we usually had balance and tone controls to compensate for the deficiences in both the recordings and our listening environments and equipment. Balance and tone controls are still useful. You can treat your listening environments to be neutral (bass traps, absorbers and diffusers, etc); but when you have a few friends over to listen you need to compensate for the sound absorption by their bodies. Or if it's a nice day and you open the window. Or you have a recording made by a friend on their phone. All sorts of reasons.
- amiga-workbench 6y agoMy Topping DAC/Amp has an optical rotary encoder for volume control and it is awful, it will randomly jump 10x the amount of steps you have rotated it, sometimes even in the opposite direction. There's something to be said for a good old fashioned potentiometer.
- formerly_proven 6y agoIt's kinda ridiculous that seemingly three quarters of the people who write graycode decoder firmware get it wrong, despite the correct methods being publicly available with sample code since 15-20 years at least.
- toomanybeersies 6y agoIt's also an assignment that close to every electrical/computer engineer would have had to do as part of their degree. I guess you only need to understand ~50% of the course material to get your degree though.
- numpad0 6y agoSounds like clicky 3-pin A/B bi-phase type though. I’ve done stupid things and tried to read that and two buttons with single ADC. That jumped around when Vref fluctuates.
- YarickR2 6y agountil it wears off or catches something between the slider and the base
- lopmotr 6y agoPotentiometers have that problem too when they get worn, which they always do if they also double as on/off switch like on most cheap radios.
- amiga-workbench 6y agoYes, I keep a can of contact cleaner around to get rid of the oxidisation.
- tetris11 6y agoEvery microwave I have ever owned have been under $30, purely because I didn't want to go digital. Analogue egg-timer knob - good enough accuracy, and instantly pliable
- MawKKe 6y agoYeah. It's one thing that does not need improving. My parents bought a new microwave with all kinds of fancy digital features that nobody uses 99% of the time. In addition to being really difficult to use, it also makes a very loud BEEEP on every button press. Insanity.
- somehnguy 6y agoBeeping appliances is one thing I can't stand. They're always too loud and rarely offer any adjustment or mute functionality. I got a new microwave recently. It beeped on every button press, 5 beeps after a cook cycle, no way to mute (yeah, I checked). Within a day of owning it I took it apart and ripped the beeper off the board. Problem solved.
- genewitch 6y agoI recently went on a crusade to pull the piezo buzzers out of all my UPS... because, when the power's out, i don't need a sound to tell me, do i?
- voltagex_ 6y agoWeren't you worried about damaging the microwave shielding?
- somehnguy 6y agoNot at all.
- aendruk 6y agoSome day we’ll collectively learn to replace all the crude beeping with less abrasive, natural sounds like the gentle and informative clicking of the iPod’s touch wheel. Think the crunch of a fallen leaf, the satisfying zip of a sweater, the subtle scrape of a ceramic mug being hastily lifted—distinct and deliberately applied to build conventions like we have with e.g. red/green colors. Shrill beeps will be the tell that dates an antique.
- scotty79 6y agoI kinda like step-based control of my stove. It makes things predictable. Although I'd probably prefer knob with numeric indicator to exactly what value it is set.
- reaperducer 6y agoI kinda like step-based control of my stove I hate it on my oven. It defaults to 200 degrees, and to change it to 450 takes almost a full minute as it plods along in five-degree increments.
- pengaru 6y agoDid you RTFM?
- CyberDildonics 6y agoEvery oven for the last 65 years has been easy to figure out by reading the labels on the controls. It wasn't until the javascript generation started designing them that you needed to read a manual to preheat it to a temperature and set a timer.
- thiht 6y agoWhat does it have to do with Javascript?
- lopmotr 6y agoThat's a different problem from the typical rotary encoder used on most modern knobs that can respond instantly but still has discrete steps.
- thotsBgone 6y agoI'm a young person: I used an analogue washer/dryer for the first time after moving out of my parents' house, and I was impressed by how well designed they were compared to the digital piece of shit my parents had. Plus the digital washer had several software bugs which made it sometimes stop washing mid-cycle, but the analogue ones have never failed.
- lopmotr 6y agoI was careful to buy a benchtop oven and microwave with mechanical knobs. They just work instantly and intuitively as well as being cheaper than all the stupid electronic button and display nonsense. I can even use the oven's timer to time other cooking things because it's clockwork and works without the oven being turned on.
- mhh__ 6y agoCooking on gas is much more pleasurable than most electric stoves. There's much more "feel" to control the heat
- dheera 6y agoI use an induction stove and it is even more pleasurable than gas in terms of the speed of response of the pot. Response is literally instant because the pot is the source of heat, and not something external. They are also by far the safest since the hottest thing in the entire system is the bottom of the pot, which is usually at about 100-200 C depending on what you're cooking, which is usually not hot enough to start a fire. Compare to a electric stove whose element reaches upwards of 800 C or a gas stove which has an actual open flame which can easily catch nearby flammable vapors, hair, or clothing on fire if not careful. Gas stoves are the next most responsive because the fire doesn't "store" heat; only the grill does. Finally electric stoves are the slowest-responding because the coil stores quite a bit of heat even after power is cut, and that heat continues to transfer into the pot. Conversely, when starting them up, it takes quite a while to heat up the element hot enough to only then transfer some of that heat into the pot. You do want a quality induction stove with an analog knob for the best experience, though. The low-end induction stoves typically have touch-step controls and pulsating simmer, which IMO is still way better than an electric stove if you're on a budget, and still responds faster than gas stoves but lacks the fine-grained simmer controls that some of the higher-end models do, if that is important to you.
- mhh__ 6y agoI don't mind cooking on induction but I like to manage the heat by moving the actual pan i.e. if I am cooking bacon I will hold the pan edge up to catch the oil and concentrate the heat up
- Zitrax 6y agoThere exists modular cooktops where you can mix and match and thus get both gas and induction.
- 6y ago
- threatofrain 6y agoI don’t trust anyone except Apple to do touch screen experiences well.
- appleiigs 6y agoGo buy a fancy Apple Watch and jump in a pool. You won't be able to start or stop the timer with wet fingers.
- threatofrain 6y agoNow imagine that another company designs that experience.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoNy Pebble is fully operational when wet, or even underwater. Oh wait, that's because it has physical buttons. (Never got the point of a touchscreen on a smartwatch. The surface is too small to be useful.)
- neilalexander 6y agoA limitation of capacitive touchscreens in general. A resistive display would be worse in just about every other application though. Incidentally, you can press both the crown and the side button at the same time to pause and resume a workout even when the display is water-locked.
- crispyporkbites 6y agoFor hobs/stove tops, touch controls are way easier to clean. I spend more time cleaning than adjusting the controls so to me it’s a better trade off
- dheera 6y agoFor most analog knobs you can pull the knobs off and throw them in the dishwasher.
- vaccinator 6y agodigital is not all bad... if I could type 3 numbers to get a temperature on my stove, I would be happy... but they went a different route where you need to push a button 20 times to get the temperature that you want or you need to hold it for x seconds...
- adrianmonk 6y agoTo add insult to injury, my oven has membrane buttons, and of course the temperature/time up button has gotten the most wear, so it doesn't work quite right. If I want to set a timer for an hour, theoretically I hold it and it repeats and jumps in increments of 5, but it's too flaky sometimes. So I alternate between trying to get that to work and just pressing the button a zillion times.
- mindslight 6y agoThe biggest problem with "modern" digital controls, the lag, is completely avoidable. One can easily design a system using a microcontroller that responds within 10ms, which gives the appearance of being instantaneous. It's all just shoddy software engineering using bloated frameworks and poor languages, and consumers that don't know any better. Somehow we've had this problem going on a decade, and nobody has seen fit to shape up their development process.
- closeparen 6y agoWhat languages and frameworks are people using in consumer electronics?
- mindslight 6y agoI have no idea these days, but it's clearly something that takes 100ms+ to process an input event (java? html? flash? all of the above?). Responsive encoders/buttons/displays were doable 15 years ago with 5 MIPS microcontrollers in C. Driving an HD44780 character LCD is easier than a full raster display, which explains the appeal of the bloat, but quick sprites etc should be completely doable after two decades of progress.
- Gibbon1 6y agoI have two thoughts. One is an overloaded CAN Bus. Some process is polling the switch every 100ms. The second is the process itself isn't allowed to run very often because it's sharing CPU time with a bunch of critical stuff.
- hvidgaard 6y agoEither way, a car ought to have two separate systems. One for critical functionality, and one for controlling the radio, climate controls, windows and the like.
- mindslight 6y agoNo switches should be getting polled over a CAN bus. If there's enough of a processor to be a CAN node, there's enough processor to debounce a button and transmit state change events. Sure the situation might exist, but it's exactly the kind of bad engineering I'm calling out.
- ngold 6y agoI have a big round audio knob that is insanely handy. I can move it around wherever I'm at. A mouse and audio knob makes watching or listening to something very nice.
- rv-de 6y agoTalking about knobs on stoves and UX - I never understood why American stoves have the knobs on a panel at the back of the stove instead of at the front. Isn't it inconvenient having to reach over hot, frying, steaming pots and pans?
- ddingus 6y agoYes. It is stupid but cheap, IMHO. Still, those are better than buttons.
- swimfar 6y agoMost likely for safety reasons. They are less likely for children to play with them or people to bump into them. But ovens with controls in the front are definitely available in the US. So you can have whatever style you want.
- pimlottc 6y agoThat's a very broad generalization, I have used dozens of stoves in my American life and the knobs are often at the front. I agree, though, it is stupid when they are in the back. Presumedly this is just to save money by putting all the controls and displays in one place.
- ummonk 6y agoThe one thing I like about the Touch Bar is sliding rather than step based controls for volume and brightness. Still woefully inferior to tactile knobs / wheels though.
- nerplederple 6y agoI used to be able to control every element of the audio and HVAC in my old pickup truck by feel without ever taking my eyes off the road. Now, half the vehicles I sit in require taking eyes off the road to even find the control let alone locate the visual-only position of that control's feedback.
- scottmcf 6y agoThis is something I'll rant about whenever given the opportunity. Car UI is completely awful.
- m-p-3 6y agoAnd it's in my opinion doubly-important in a car, where you must put all your attention on your surroundings. The tactile feedback of buttons and knobs is paramount, and touch screens are awful to operate while driving.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoI've got an "older" (~12 years?) car atm, a Ford, and it's got pretty beefy controls for the radio as an extra lever on the steering wheel; it's got buttons for volume control but I can operate it without thinking or taking my eyes off the wheel at least.
- robotnikman 6y agoI have a newer Ford and they still provide physically controls for the radio by the touchscreen as well as on the steering wheel. When it comes to cars a touchscreen definitely isn't the best way to control things
- jimador 6y agoI loathe touch controls. We had them on our last stove and our cats would repeatedly walk across them. They had a lock button, but every now and then one of their paws would stand long enough on the lock/unlock touch control to activate the entire panel. We resorted to flipping the breaker any time we left the house. Guess none of those engineers had a cat.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoI've actually had the same happen to my gas stove, but then, it doesn't seem to have a temperature lock-out like better designed ones do. Came home one day and the house smelled of gas. It was on low but still, it could've ended very badly. Not sure if I accidentally did it or the cat managed to.
- sizzle 6y agoSame goes for car audio and climate control
- toomanybeersies 6y agoOne of my favourite features (if you could call it a feature) of gas stoves is that you can immediately tell if it's on or not. It's a lot easier to accidentally melt a plastic chopping board onto an electric stove than a gas one, and much harder to clean off when you do.
- atorodius 6y agoI don’t get why stoves don’t have some more obvious visual indicator for this. Could imagine a circle of red LEDs around each stove.
- lazyasciiart 6y agoThey do https://www.subzero-wolf.com/assistance/answers/induction-cooktop-hot-surface-indicator https://www.subzero-wolf.com/assistance/answers/induction-co...
- jwr 6y ago> much harder to clean off when you do That's only true for the type of electric stove that is still (bizarrely) popular in the US, with exposed spiral heaters. At least in the EU electric stoves are all glass. And many of them are induction heaters, which means your plastic chopping board wouldn't even notice being on the heater.
- xxs 6y agoInduction hobs tend use 3 phase lanes 230v/400v, around 7kW. The US suffers from low voltage mains. It'd take around 60A to get 7kV. OTOH, leaving a plastic (PP or some other thermoplastic) board on non-induction glass heater top would smear in a horrific way, close to impossible to clear it. The heaters do have LED illumination, though.
- Reelin 6y agoResidential power in the US is universally (to the best of my knowledge) three pole single phase 60 Hz 240V. The (common) wall outlets are certainly 120V, but large appliances are 240V. (A typical electric dryer is ~5kW at just over 20A.) As long as I'm ackchyuallying, I'll also point out that radiant cooktops don't have LEDs in them (at least I've never come across one like that). The red light (which I assume you're referring to) is just what happens when the element in an infrared heater (space heater, toaster, etc) gets hot.
- beenBoutIT 6y agoThe advent of touchscreen technology and its subsequent ubiquitous adoption replacing physical controls of all kinds across devices of all kinds is easily the single most ruinous thing to happen to UI in the modern history of design.
- hvidgaard 6y agoFor many people, the convenience of touch controls outweigh the negatives. They're easier to clean and they can look nicer. Not that it's always a good idea to use them though.
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoIt is technically possible to build touch controls offering comparable UX to their analogue counterparts. Smartphones have done it since 2007. Why do stoves still force users to sequentially step through 14 settings using shitty +/- buttons in order to get what they want?
- Joeri 6y agoCapacitive touch controls and grease do not interact well, as I am reminded every time my touch only stove hood goes to maximum ventilation until I forcefully clean the touch surface with a paper towel.
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoIf the controls become greasy isn’t that just an issue of placement?
- hvidgaard 6y agoWhen I adjust the temperature in the car, change the volume on the stereo or change the heat output of a gas burner - they can all be done by touch controls, but the closest to something that might provide as good a UX I have ever experienced is the touch pad on newer macbooks.
- 6y ago
- antfarm 6y agoMaybe a fader.
- jononor 6y agoProducts are unfortunately designed to sell, not to be used.
- codethief 6y agoThis. I recently had to buy a small 15€ USB sound card because, as it turns out, my new Dell laptop's built-in audio card doesn't work properly on Linux(×). Not only is the sound orders of magnitude better, it also comes with a handy volume knob! It's so much fun to use! (×) I can't believe it's 2020 and I'm writing this. I haven't had any significant hardware issues on Linux in almost a decade. What's even worse is that Dell specifically claims that the laptop is fully compatible with Ubuntu.