Technology Upgrade General

What technology upgrades have you done lately, g? And how did your life improve?

I upgraded from the 2002 technology Pioneer VSX 1011 surround receiver to the current year ONKYO TX-NR676E yesterday. So what's changed between then and now? 1) The connector. I used SPDIF carrying lossy compressed 5.1 AC3 surround (with pulseaudio's AC3 plugin) on the 2002 Pioneer and I'm using HDMI carrying lossless 5.1 audio (since I don't bother with a 7.1 speaker setup, but I could with HDMI; couldn't with SPDIF) on the fancy new receiver. 2) The new one has built-in Bluetooth which means I no longer need to use my external Bluetooth receiver connected over RCA. That's it, that's all folks. This technology upgrade from 2002 to 2018 has changed close to nothing and not improved my life.

Now share your stories on technology upgrades. You must do this immediately or eventually or I will post another harddrive domino general thread.

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Why did you upgrade if it changes nothing for you? Isn’t the HDMI worth the upgrade so that you can connect the receiver to a modern TV?

Why would I connect the receiver to a TV? HTPC connects to a display and a server with pulseaudio connects to the surround receiver. Why would something generating audio connect to a TV? That makes no sense. I don't have a TV, btw. Don't see the point.

I use 20 year old speakers with a 30 year old amp.

Audio hasnt moved on at all. Beyond home theatre surround shit (not worth it at all without a dedicated room for it) there really isn't a lot of benefit.

Even Bluetooth streaming can be achieved with a £10 device

I recently moved to a Galaxy S9 from an S7. The S9 is stupid-fast and smooth in comparison. It's like that feeling when you get new eyeglasses. I use my phone a lot and since this does everything faster, I think it has made my life better.

I'm using a Sony 60 CD stereo hooked up to my PC via line out, it still sounds fine to me, so I don't know if it's worth an upgrade.

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Got some speakers off the side of the road and nigger rigged em into my current setup. Pretty great upgrade considering I went from a single speaker to my right to actual stereo speakers in front of me. Also upgrading from an acoustic guitar modified (nigger rigged heavily again) into an acoustic bass to an actual electric bass this week and I'm so fucking keen.

I swear I'm not black.

Upgraded from an aiwa speaker thing I was using to a technics amp and b&w speakers.

Definitely worth the upgrade

Other than that, I bought an MX master mouse recently, and that's fucking awesome too. Got it half price, most comfortable mouse I've ever used and the battery lasts me about a month and a half before I need to charge it back to full, taking an hour (can use it while its charging also)

I need to change the speakers for my Onkyo receiver, why are they so fucking expensive? I could almost buy another full receiver with speakers for that money...

I had an old 5.0 a long time ago, let me tell you how it worked.

first, this was all composite video, as that was the best anyone had at the time and the thing was low end enough to not have any of the better connectors, because lets be honest, you aren't connecting this garbage to anything that may have had s video or an rgb.

you had 7 sources on the back, all fed with data over coaxial, sl lets go my setup.

cable in, snes in, dvd in, gamecube in, ps2 in xbox in, and tv out.

the video was passed through and switched to make it less of a pain in the ass to set up, not sure about you but especially older shit was a fucking nightmare to set up without doing it this way, due to nearly all inputs being on the back of the tvs

then with newer shit, you plug the hdmi from device into receiver because most tvs's won't have an hdmi out and whatever they will use will be compressed. so
hdmi > receiver > and if there is a video aspect tv

meh, where I live people know jack shit about audio, so you can routinely find 1000$ speakers on the curb that need a simple fix to get working.

speakers are one of the few things that if you see them on the curb its worth picking them up.

My speakers are.. ancient. As for surround, I'm used to having it and it's very nice when you're watching movies and some TV shows too. And I'm aware of Bluetooth receivers, that's what I used with my old one.

Nice.

>technics amp and b&w speakers.
Nice. Very nice. Though technics? They used to make great stuff but I can't say I've seen anything from them this decade. Didn't even know they are still around.

Consider used speakers? Seems to me there's plenty acceptable ones for sale on used sites.

>MX master mouse
Perhaps I should consider testing one again. I used wireless mouse and keyboard for a few years until I got tired of it dying at the worst times. Now I use cabled, it just works and keeps on working.

yeah, I get why you'd want and need HDMI if you have a ton of toys like snes and playstation and xbox and a TV making you stupid. I've only had a HTPC and a simple montior (no TV) for ages and I prefer to not have gaming toys or a TV. But each to their own. I do respect that many like their gaming toys. I'm probably more allergic than most to those things because I have a worthless NEET brother who invites himself too frequently and lies on my couch playing xbox forever until I finally get him to drive back to my mom's. I feel sorry for her but having him in my mom's basement is preferable to having him here.

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Upgraded from a Yamaha rs-201 (that i got for like $16 since shipping damage) to an Emotiva umc-200 and an Adom GFA-555. bit upset with the Emotiva since it can't passthrough 4k and I can't find rack ears for it. Probably going to gat an Ultimax 12 soon, and might get this BGW 600 and a MiniDSP HD for it. Finally getting a surround setup is pretty far off, though.

That makes no sense to me. A galaxy s7 has a fucking snapdragon 820 in it and tons of ram, it's a monster phone. My budget $250 phone with a snapdragon 6 series already does everything literally instantly. How could the s9 possibly be noticeably faster

Lately I finally stopped trying to connect via WiFi across the damn house in a saturated area and strung a fuckton of cat6 across instead. Pretty much max out my connection most of the time now.

The technics is early 90s/late 80s.

Wireless has definitely improved a lot. Don't think I would use anything else at this point just for the cable drag

>Emotiva umc-200 and an Adom GFA-555
dude, what are you building there? A cinema? Concert hall? I wouldn't even dare connect any of the speaker I have to a Adom GFA-555. That's some seriously (over)powered stuff you've got.

Wish I could build a cinema in my 12'x13' room. I don't even really have enough room for a proper 7.1.

Pretty much. The ones I got are a very limited run, made by a shop in a nearby city, and worth probably about $500. I had to do a hefty chunk of googling random numbers on the thing to even find that out.

Literally the only thing wrong with them was that the crossover in the right speaker had a fucking solder joint come loose, and judging by the dent on the bottom of the same speaker, someone dropped it. Spent 3 minutes fixing that, and they sound absolutely terrific, even with my horrible yet unique setup made out of parts from other sound systems.

No fucking way, I'm pretty sure my old singular speaker was one of those, or a similar model. It looks way similar.

lol, I was a kid at the time I had this receiver, my parents just gave up because of how much of a pain in the ass it was to run tv though it along with the speakers being a bit on the bassy side and my mom hating any form of bass.

still, even as a computer hooked up to it, you would likely still want to feed it audio with an hdmi opposed to anything else due to lossless and it being the best connector for the purpose.

on our end, we found a very weird speaker that had I think a limited run, not because they were bad, but because they were not as bassy as people would like when they get speakers for movies/home theater.

so they were likely left sitting somewhere till the rubber for the speakers bass decomposed.

fixing that was around 20-40$ worth of material, and they worked perfectly afterwords.

unless a speaker is blown the fuck out, and you know what houses blow their speakers out if you live within 500 yards of them, speaker fixes are relatively easy.

Hope you keep ahold of that tape machine.
Would love to own it myself.

Not that it matters, there is this difference:
>HDMI allows s32le 6ch 48000Hz
>SPDIF AC3 is limited to s16le 6ch 48000Hz
honestly, though, can't say I hear any difference.