BlueTardis

GoG is generally the better alternative to steam than epic.

Steam isn’t perfect but it works and has a decent consumer oriented service. GoG is doing great with conservation and drm free options but their launcher isn’t amazing. Pair either with Heroic games launcher or similar for a great experience on almost any OS

Yes

A couple of things to think about as there are a few factors to consider as to what makes a good pair. It’s quite individual and subjective as it’s not only headphone frequency response but also how comfortable they are for long periods on your head. Considering “sound staging” which is quite affected by your DAC (Digital Audio Converter) and Amplifier (these can be the same thing or not) and a microphone and it gets complex.

The best option is always to have a seperate headphone dac/amp and this gives a lot of flexibility and longevity. Even the cheapest dac and or amp will be better than the 0.5c part in the headphone cable for a converter.

Yes you can also get fancy gaming headphones that try and provide surround sound. These work to some degree but it will depend on your head shape, OS & Drivers and whether the game is able to provide suitable audio output tuned for them.

AKG/Sennheiser/Beyerdynamics are all good headphone options.

TLDR: Ideally go and listen to a few and figure out what you like and what’s comfortable. Depending on your budget you can add more stuff or maybe this is your entry in. For mic testing, they should be able to plug into your phone, try them with a test call in teams/zoom/discord and hear what your voice sounds like.

Thanks so much.

Can I try spacehulk please?

Gratitude and helping others

Sounds like the gain is way different on your input.

Too high will cause increased levels of distortion

This is how you get 40k Orks

I prefer GoG and will generally purchase from there as no drm and you end up owning your game.

However their client is a bit shit and has been for a long time (GoG galaxy). You really only need it for updates though.

Steam excels for games with lots of mods/workshop. It just works.

Use Pi-hole (pointing to non google dns or unbound) and a vpn

The computer reboots 16 times when you plug it in.

We still have one and it works really well. I suspect they were over filling the water reservoir

In the beginning PayPal was needed due to credit cards not working for international payments. Now not so much. They are giving you a reason to leave.

Alas I have but one upvote to give.

Well… It’s not a commute that I need to do every day. Also I can (to some extent) work on that commute as the majority of it is on an inter-urban train. Timeboxing tasks to 30 mins or an hour can be quite productive. That said, having decent music and or noise blocking configured for your environment helps a lot. I highly recommend these guys - I have their full app and being able to dial just the right frequencies to deal with whatever is bugging you is amazing…

https://mynoise.net

That said, without my device and quality headphones/iem I wouldn’t be able to tolerate it.

The buds don’t need a jack. Just the lead that connects to the phone or whatever. That takes no real space.

So… I was more referring to a 3.5mm jack on the phone.

Commute time is a little over 2hours each way. Office use is 6-8 hours. Listening + calls and needing a microphone.

Would rather not to have to do the dance for multiple devices and chargers vs just one and a single usb input.

Some of the bushes busses and trains have a usb but you have to get lucky and then decide what needs charging more…the phone or the buds.

Give me a wired option any day. Also used less battery power and sounds better.

edit… typo

Wired 3.5mm jack.

Hear me out. I don’t use Bluetooth headphones. They don’t last the commute and work day.

With a jack you can listen and charge you phone at the same time and never worry about charging your headphones/iem.

If I need to use Bluetooth for connection I still can but overall better battery life

Thirded. It just works. Even deployed to elderly relatives with wifi printers with no issues.

Definitely needs some more testing as those numbers in the table look low to me. Archiving vs listening is a key point and storage is relatively cheap.

Listening on cheap Bluetooth headphones then you can get away with a low bitrate. If you are using better gear and/or music that has a lot of dynamic range and comes from strings (piano/classical/etc) then I would recommend 320 but your mileage may vary.

Listen, compare and decide. I have a library of about 110k tracks (musicbrainz-Picard is amazing) and I wish I had:

1. Focussed more on encoding albums rather than just songs and
2. Had 320 or flac