Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-06-21, 02:28:

darry wrote on 2024-06-21, 02:13:

I bought a set of OneOdio Pro-10 headphones as a gift for an amateur musician friend and he loves them. […]
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Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-06-21, 02:04:

Guys, These inexpensive headphones sound Amazing.
Paired with the Creative DAC these sound Great.

I bought a set of OneOdio Pro-10 headphones as a gift for an amateur musician friend and he loves them.

Personally, for some reason, I keep coming back to my Panasonic RP-HTX7 that I bought in 2007, before they became a "classic". They were like 30 CAN$ retail at Future Shop (purchased, owned and later closed by Best Buy). They are on their second set of cushions now and have kept up surprisingly well.

DAC-wise, I think it's hard to beat an SMSL DS100 for the price. Unless one has really hard to drive exotic headphones, that should work fine .

For the budget conscious, a sub 20$ Apple A2049 USB dongle (with a USB-C to USB-A adapter, if necessary), might be a very decent option .
Here are the result of some loopback tests into a MOTU M2 (see also this thread for some SMSL DS100 tests : If your card has noisy analogue out, but also has S/PDIF (coaxial or optical) digital out, cheap "OK" DACs exist )
a2049.png

I use to use Panasonic RP7 because they were Cheap. But these Oneodio head phone blow them Away. Also my panasonic headphone ear pads dried up and turned to dust. I have had these Oneodia headphones for 3 years now and they still look and z feel and work like New.
Not bad for $40 headphones. Good Base and Treble. But sound Amazing with the Creative DAC’s.

You can get replacement pads for the Panasonics. My original ones lasted about 15 years before starting to show signs of degradation, so I guess YMMV.

My other headphones are
- AKG K44 Perception
- Audio-Technica ATH-M30x

For pop/rock , I still prefer the Panasonic RP-HTX7 ones . I'll have to try a set of OneOdio at some point .

And before anyone asks, these were all bought new at retail channels from reputable brick and mortar vendors, so counterfeits are very unlikely.

darry wrote on 2024-06-21, 02:13:

I bought a set of OneOdio Pro-10 headphones as a gift for an amateur musician friend and he loves them. […]
Show full quote

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-06-21, 02:04:

Guys, These inexpensive headphones sound Amazing.
Paired with the Creative DAC these sound Great.

I bought a set of OneOdio Pro-10 headphones as a gift for an amateur musician friend and he loves them.

EDIT : I recently purchased and returned a Creative Sound BlasterX G6 that sounded a bit off and measured really weird and also a G3, that I decided to keep for future experiments. It measures and sounds OK to my middle-aged ears, but, IMHO, it has nothing on the much cheaper Apple A2049 dongle (unless one has a use case for the extra bells and whistles) which additionally measures much better.

Personally, for some reason, I keep coming back to my Panasonic RP-HTX7 that I bought in 2007, before they became a "classic". They were like 30 CAN$ retail at Future Shop (purchased, owned and later closed by Best Buy). They are on their second set of cushions now and have kept up surprisingly well.

DAC-wise, I think it's hard to beat an SMSL DS100 for the price. Unless one has really hard to drive exotic headphones, that should work fine .

For the budget conscious, a sub 20$ Apple A2049 USB dongle (with a USB-C to USB-A adapter, if necessary), might be a very decent option .
Here are the result of some loopback tests into a MOTU M2 (see also this thread for some SMSL DS100 tests : If your card has noisy analogue out, but also has S/PDIF (coaxial or optical) digital out, cheap "OK" DACs exist )
a2049.png

On the ultra budget end of the spectrum, I have read a lot of good things about these GraveAudio USB dongles from Aliexpress. I bought a few as backups for the Samsung one I bought a two years ago because those are apparently not being produced anymore (most new ones are fakes). From what I have read, if you don't have super demanding headphones then any of these that use a good quality DAC (like the CX31993) will sound great. They are a great alternative to the Apple dongle if you don't use an iPhone, because the Apple one actually severely limits the power available to the headphones when connected to an Android device... typical Apple shenanigans. The fact that you can almost buy four of them for the price of one Apple dongle helps as well... and they come in a neat carrying tin along with a USB-C to USB-A adapter.

I haven't had a chance to put the GraveAudio ones though a lot of rigorous testing yet though honestly. The Samsung one still hasn't broken, despite dangling out of my pocket (attached to the KZ ZSN Pro IEMs which have lasted me four years now!) while I'm working at my spring-through-fall job which is quite physical.

16-cores, 32-thread Xeon CPU for $40
40 PCIe lanes too.

I upgraded the CPU in my HP z440 computer.

Xeon E5-2697A ( 16 cores. 32 threads )
2.6ghz base clock but turbo boost to 3.6ghz.
It performs better than my last Xeon 1660v4 which had 8-cores and 16-thread. Base clock 3.0ghz. and turbo 3.6ghz.

All for just $40 from eBay

Computer is Twice as fast now.
Idles at 1% CPU Utilization.
This computer is a Power house that can Crunch through any task.
At basic everyday computer use ( internet and office programs ) it only uses less than 10% CPU utilization.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-06-27, 05:48:

I upgraded the CPU in my HP z440 computer. […]
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I upgraded the CPU in my HP z440 computer.

Xeon E5-2697A ( 16 cores. 32 threads )
All for just $40 from eBay

Computer is Twice as fast now.
Idles at 1% CPU Utilization.
This computer is a Power house that can Plow through any task.

That's nice! It's it a single or dual socket system? I.e. can you add another cpu?

No it’s a Single CPU computer.
The HP Dual CPU computers are
HP z800
HP z840
HP Z8 G4
HP z8 g5

But the HP z440 is the Best Value Deal
You can buy these used on eBay from $120 ( USD )

I paid a total of about $300 ( USD ) for Mine which includes:
HP z440 computer $120
Xeon 16-core Xeon CPU $40
64gb ECC Memory $60
( two ) Intel 620p 2tb NVME SSD $70 each
LSI controller $50
10gb NIC $30

Extra cost:
AMD 5700xt video card $120
and I added 8 Sata hard drives at additional cost.

100tb of Storage
8 x 12tb = 96tb of Sata Hard drives
2x2tb Nvme SSD = 4tb
Total Storage = 100tb
Total cost of Storage about $800 USD

But this is the Best computer I have ever owned.
It so Stable and Reliable. Never Hangs, or Crashes.
Running Dual boot Win-10 and Win-11
It’s Fully Supported by HP and Microsoft.
Drivers install automatically over the internet.
And it automatically actives itself. No need to purchase a license key.
One CPU is enough for my needs.
But if I was to get a Dual CPU computer it would be the HP z840 with two of these Xeon E5-2697A CPU’s.

I also like off-lease business computers. You get a lot for the money compared to new consumer-grade stuff, and they have the build quality to last a long time.

I finally got that new phone (the Motorola Edge). I haven't used it much yet (just configuration and figuring out the non-obvious way to launch an app in Android 14 - drag up from the bottom of the screen to display the list of installed apps), but so far, it performs well. The camera seems to have a worse macro mode than the Galaxy S7 (testing with the micro-schematic on the bottom of a 1980 clock radio), but I haven't tried the main camera yet. That's something you don't see in reviews because they shrink all of their sample pictures to the size of a postage stamp.

Now I need to get a USB A to C cable so I can use my old charger. I used the cable from the Vantec hard drive enclosure I bought recently for its initial charge. These phones don't come with chargers "to save the environment" (while still including a cable that I can't use because it's C to C), and even if they did, it would be some ridiculous ultra-fast battery-killer charger (seriously, this phone has a 68W charging mode). Since I never touch my phone at home unless I need to make a call or take a picture, my old charger will be good enough (and it's actually recognized as a fast charger, even though it's QC2.0). Of course, since I'm cursed to always get the one cable that's truly bad (not the audiophile bullshit), I'll get one from an electronics distributor.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-06-21, 03:07:

On the ultra budget end of the spectrum, I have read a lot of good things about these GraveAudio USB dongles from Aliexpress. I bought a few as backups for the Samsung one I bought a two years ago because those are apparently not being produced anymore (most new ones are fakes). From what I have read, if you don't have super demanding headphones then any of these that use a good quality DAC (like the CX31993) will sound great. They are a great alternative to the Apple dongle if you don't use an iPhone, because the Apple one actually severely limits the power available to the headphones when connected to an Android device... typical Apple shenanigans. The fact that you can almost buy four of them for the price of one Apple dongle helps as well... and they come in a neat carrying tin along with a USB-C to USB-A adapter.

I haven't had a chance to put the GraveAudio ones though a lot of rigorous testing yet though honestly. The Samsung one still hasn't broken, despite dangling out of my pocket (attached to the KZ ZSN Pro IEMs which have lasted me four years now!) while I'm working at my spring-through-fall job which is quite physical.

I'm going to look at getting one of those dongles so I can listen to music when I'm driving instead of the same 10 songs that every radio station plays. It's really strange that the Apple dongle is one of the cheapest on the market ($10). I guess I'm going to have to make an Aliexpress account because it's exactly the same stuff that Amazon sells, but at a lower price. The other option is to see how the $4 dongle from Parts Express performs, but I don't have the chance to do any more audio projects to make it worth ordering from them.

Looking at Canadian Prime Day, seems a bit meh. A lot of discounts on high end stuff of 20%ish that you know is gonna get cleared at more like 35-60% in a couple of months. Then a lot of discounts of low end accessories originally priced at 15-20 but you could probably find in a dollar store.

Some of the slightly more interesting things, some Audigy PCIe cards reduced, some 8TB Barracudas on for 149, Corsair cases have some discounts, some Ryzen 7 and 9 models at high end dropped, though official AMD MRSP drops might not be far away. Some discounts on middling PSUs.

I notice the shipping times are quite extended, so I guess they pretty much make their money back on high efficiency load scheduling, full trucks to neighbourhoods kinda thing.

Edit: Desks, some 15% off deals ... been looking at a few... I'm fussy tho, want an almost perfect fit to the space I've got...

lti wrote on 2024-06-28, 15:00:

I also like off-lease business computers. You get a lot for the money compared to new consumer-grade stuff, and they have the build quality to last a long time.

Theyre even better when theyre new.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-07-16, 16:13:

some 8TB Barracudas on for 149

I hope that was the 7200RPM version. My 8TB WD Blue was $129. I personally avoid buying anything on Prime Day, especially since I've seen people make it a holiday and force themselves to buy something (anything) on that day.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-07-16, 20:52:

lti wrote on 2024-06-28, 15:00:

I also like off-lease business computers. You get a lot for the money compared to new consumer-grade stuff, and they have the build quality to last a long time.

Theyre even better when theyre new.

Business-class computers tend to cost more when they're new, and I expect that there going to be a lot of people looking for new low-budget computers next year to replace their 7th-gen Intel or first-gen Ryzen that Microsoft deemed unacceptable. I think I would rather have a used business computer than a new Dell Inspiron or HP Pavilion (not even considering the problems that Intel is having right now and the significantly increased power consumption of current hardware in general).

Anyway, the last stuff I bought was almost two weeks ago now. I bought the 1TB Western Digital SN770 SSD I mentioned in another thread (replacing a 500GB Samsung 970 Evo that was giving read errors), a USB C audio dongle (one that I read uses a Cirrus Logic chip), and one of those $30 HDMI capture dongles (using the MS2130 chip).

Short review since I've had those three items for a week:
The SSD seems fine, even though it doesn't have DRAM cache. The audio donger works (it doesn't sound totally broken like the Conexant/Synaptics audio in my laptop). The capture device has some severe sharpening (edge enhancement) applied, but I think it will be fine for what I'm doing.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-06-27, 05:48:

16-cores, 32-thread Xeon CPU for $40 40 PCIe lanes too. […]
Show full quote

16-cores, 32-thread Xeon CPU for $40
40 PCIe lanes too.

I upgraded the CPU in my HP z440 computer.

Xeon E5-2697A ( 16 cores. 32 threads )
2.6ghz base clock but turbo boost to 3.6ghz.
It performs better than my last Xeon 1660v4 which had 8-cores and 16-thread. Base clock 3.0ghz. and turbo 3.6ghz.

All for just $40 from eBay

Computer is Twice as fast now.
Idles at 1% CPU Utilization.
This computer is a Power house that can Plow through any task.
At basic everyday computer use ( internet and office programs ) it only uses less than 10% CPU utilization.

I'm using the same CPU, bought from AE a few months ago on a sale, I'm also very happy with it and my motherboard is also from AE, with 64gb RAM it fulfills everything I do very well.

lti wrote on 2024-07-21, 16:23:

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-07-16, 16:13:

some 8TB Barracudas on for 149

I hope that was the 7200RPM version. My 8TB WD Blue was $129. I personally avoid buying anything on Prime Day, especially since I've seen people make it a holiday and force themselves to buy something (anything) on that day.

Canadian pricing, so while they wanted 149 of the wipe clean plastic dollars, they would only grudgingly take 108 of the absorbent, bodily fluid impregnated ones.

I didn't notice that you're in Canada.

I plugged the USB audio dongle into my laptop out of curiosity, and the USB VID comes up with Walmart as the manufacturer. WTF? It's apparently 16-bit 48kHz only, but it sounds good to me. It was one of the few that's cheaper than the Apple dongle (the "Jsaux" non-brand).

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-06-12, 12:47:

I've been looking for a decent MP3 player for a while, but they became rare and overpriced these parts of the world. Cellphones and streaming nearly drove them out of the market. Even this cost me $60. I could have bought a low-end 4" phone for this money and still have a good $20 left over for a headset. Something I almost did to use it purely as an MP3 player. I don't like having my phone on/near me when I train.

The attachment IMG_20230612_131152.jpg is no longer available

I just picked up it's sibling from a "yard sale" paid like 33cents because I had three things and they said "just gimme a buck"... okay then. Obviously a used one, the Sandisk Clip Jam model 8GB version. I think it's about 2/3 the size of yours. Mine feels like it has glass over screen rather than plastic no scratches on it, despite seeing a couple of dings around bezel. Got a charge in it, and I think I like it better than that RCA I mentioned in prior posts, but have only been messing around with it an hour or two. Anyway, this one is great for being really low profile and I can clip it on my hat out of the way. The other one just about stayed on a shirt neck but could be knocked off, this one will be well attached there.

I was reading about the folder, sorting and scanning problems elsewhere too, it seems a bit random the problems they have model to model, some do one thing some do another. I came across one review that was kinda funny, because dude said he'd killed them in -50C and +50C temperatures, ran the batteries too flat to charge and sweated them to death, but that he'd bought 5 now and was getting them 2 at a time from now on.... 🤣 and he only gave it 3 stars, you gotta wonder why he liked it. Anyway, some ppl out there seem to really like them because used prices on eBay seem kinda high, though there is one or two NIB at around what you paid for yours.

So yah, gonna use it for similar purposes, lightweight doesn't get in the way player for when you're being active. Hope I get my 33 cents worth before I lose it 🤣 it's kinda small. Hope I don't get too attached to it, I would have been happy with it for paying $20 or $30 new, but I don't think I want to have to pay much to replace it. Anyway, it's got it's uses, like an oldschool walkman clone that only had 3 buttons and volume, not the top of the line but works.

Well I made the deal that got me the 1st gen Ryzen 1500X, it was too good to pass, even if it sits here "a spell" waiting for the right deal on a motherboard, because I have DDR4 sitting and can repurpose everything else. The "oven ready" FX8350 is fairly stout in the meantime for a general duties box, especially since I can use all those RAM sticks in a M5A99X Evo r2, and have 24GB.... I hope, gotta check on that HyperX, in case it's a 8G in 2 4s part number, half a pair. Zotac GT 730 is welcome, it's the okayest of all the GT 730s I think, all the cores, all the RAM, hangs with GTX 650. I know I just got a 650, but somehow don't have enough "middle" to spread around still. This needs no extra power and is "single" slot if you are careful what goes next to it, and can be taken down to low profile. I think that makes it the fastest single/lopro/lowpower card I have. Think it might get in a box for the wifey though. Got the coolers too, yay, but need some cleanup. As does the other throw ins, prolly gonna go talk about them on retro thread.

Flipping back and forth a tad on the potential FX 8350 M5A99X build, do I make it a tame beast or a wild beast.... wild beast I might have to balance up the RAM more careful possibly use a different set of 16Mb only, 2x8 or 4x4 to get better RAM speeds, then it would get a 750W supply and an R9-390, maybe an AIO on the CPU if I can figure out how to refill one that sounds a bit sloshy. Would need one of the more "major" cases here, corsair or antec. Tame beast would be more like heatpipe cooler, smallest full ATX case, 550W PSU, 650Ti or 7770.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-07-27, 23:21:

Well I made the deal that got me the 1st gen Ryzen 1500X, it was too good to pass, even if it sits here "a spell" waiting for the right deal on a motherboard, because I have DDR4 sitting and can repurpose everything else. The "oven ready" FX8350 is fairly stout in the meantime for a general duties box, especially since I can use all those RAM sticks in a M5A99X Evo r2, and have 24GB.... I hope, gotta check on that HyperX, in case it's a 8G in 2 4s part number, half a pair. Zotac GT 730 is welcome, it's the okayest of all the GT 730s I think, all the cores, all the RAM, hangs with GTX 650. I know I just got a 650, but somehow don't have enough "middle" to spread around still. This needs no extra power and is "single" slot if you are careful what goes next to it, and can be taken down to low profile. I think that makes it the fastest single/lopro/lowpower card I have. Think it might get in a box for the wifey though. Got the coolers too, yay, but need some cleanup. As does the other throw ins, prolly gonna go talk about them on retro thread.

Flipping back and forth a tad on the potential FX 8350 M5A99X build, do I make it a tame beast or a wild beast.... wild beast I might have to balance up the RAM more careful possibly use a different set of 16Mb only, 2x8 or 4x4 to get better RAM speeds, then it would get a 750W supply and an R9-390, maybe an AIO on the CPU if I can figure out how to refill one that sounds a bit sloshy. Would need one of the more "major" cases here, corsair or antec. Tame beast would be more like heatpipe cooler, smallest full ATX case, 550W PSU, 650Ti or 7770.

I have a very hard time placing the FX 83x0 range performance wise since I never owned or used one myself, but when I look at reviews and benchmarks of old games and newer (~2020) games, it performs about on the level of an i3-2100 to i5-2400 in most situations. There are some outliers where it does a bit better, and some where it is outperformed even by a Phenom II X4 (basically late Core 2 Quad performance). I know AMD was still struggling a bit at that time, but looking back through Ryzen-tinted glasses it is hard to imagine how far behind the FX series really was when people were still buying them in ~2016, simply because AMD hadn't put anything better out yet. It was a bit less apparent with older GPUs since they made the CPU bottleneck less obvious than modern ones would, but even high end contemporary cards (GTX 680 for example) would have shown quite a difference in CPU limited situations.

.........

Oh man, I just remembered I have an FX setup out in the garage! A couple years back a local guy gave me his old custom built PCs and some graphics cards (including not one but two 7800GS AGP cards that had never seen the bottom of a scrap bin... seriously...). They were very interesting setups with interesting parts (and cheap plastic gamery cases, complete with time-bomb "Ultra" power supplies), and I remember noticing that one actually had a fairly high-end looking Asus 990FX Sabertooth board of some sort. From AM2+ to AM4 I have kind of a dead spot in my AMD knowledge, so I can't remember much about it. It has been waiting patiently on my "rack of PCs" all this time. I really should pull the board out of that thing and get it tested. Hopefully it has at least an FX 8350 in it so I can finally tinker with one.

Heavily multithreaded stuff is their forte, that's when the i7s get worried. However they can be best of both worlds, as the only thing keeping them from clocking is heat/power, so you can nerf it down to 4 cores then clock to the moon and there's your single core numbers for games that are very singlethreaded.

I'm trying to "guess my luck" right now off the silicon lottery ticket numbers. Now, interweb legend has it, that 3 months after the 2012 launch, AMD started cherrypicking out the 5Ghz capable cores, saving I guess for the FX9590 launch. So that would seem to say that 2013 onward production of 8350 just had the leftovers... However, 220W is a lot of heat to run those things, and the boards for them weren't cheap either... after the initial novelty wore off, maybe they were not selling too well, because quite a large price drop happened in Q3 2014.... so I'm looking at the marking on mine of week 52 of 2014, and thinking "And then what?" .... crossing my fingers they just skimmed "enough" cores to fill lowish orders for the spendy faster ones that maybe weren't selling that great and leaving some ringers in the 8350s.... hopefully.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-07-28, 02:52:

Heavily multithreaded stuff is their forte, that's when the i7s get worried. However they can be best of both worlds, as the only thing keeping them from clocking is heat/power, so you can nerf it down to 4 cores then clock to the moon and there's your single core numbers for games that are very singlethreaded.

I'm trying to "guess my luck" right now off the silicon lottery ticket numbers. Now, interweb legend has it, that 3 months after the 2012 launch, AMD started cherrypicking out the 5Ghz capable cores, saving I guess for the FX9590 launch. So that would seem to say that 2013 onward production of 8350 just had the leftovers... However, 220W is a lot of heat to run those things, and the boards for them weren't cheap either... after the initial novelty wore off, maybe they were not selling too well, because quite a large price drop happened in Q3 2014.... so I'm looking at the marking on mine of week 52 of 2014, and thinking "And then what?" .... crossing my fingers they just skimmed "enough" cores to fill lowish orders for the spendy faster ones that maybe weren't selling that great and leaving some ringers in the 8350s.... hopefully.

I've had a Phenom II X6 1100T on a M5A99X R1 with 16GB RAM, an HD6970 and an Asetek 550LC AIO for quite a few years now, after more than ten years, I've only had to refill the AIO once.
I recently modified the BIOS to support NVME booting and Windows 7 is a different experience on an NVME.
Refilling AIOs is not difficult, it just requires a little patience.
I don't know about the R2, but on my motherboard the VRMs get pretty hot with the overclock, so I've always had a fan on top of it.

Modern or retro?

Bought a GTX980Ti for my daily driver (i7 9700) to replace my GTX770. Reason? Getting 100,000 out of 3DMark2001. I was told that it IS highly cpu bound, but seriously?

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-08-07, 22:15:

Modern or retro?

Bought a GTX980Ti for my daily driver (i7 9700) to replace my GTX770. Reason? Getting 100,000 out of 3DMark2001. I was told that it IS highly cpu bound, but seriously?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPwrodxghrw

pete8475 wrote on 2024-08-07, 22:29:

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-08-07, 22:15:

Modern or retro?

Bought a GTX980Ti for my daily driver (i7 9700) to replace my GTX770. Reason? Getting 100,000 out of 3DMark2001. I was told that it IS highly cpu bound, but seriously?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPwrodxghrw

🤣