@saspro, I love them. full of detail but not clinical. Plenty of bass and punch, when it is needed but, never too much bass and they are great with the music I listen to most often, prog and alternative rock, which they really bring to life. Richer Sounds and others, have them discounted to £499 https://www.richersounds.com/focal-elegia.html
And objectively, gaming on your PC is better than gaming on my PS5, because frame rates, detail, resolution, library etc. But all things considered I prefer the PS5 because it's compact, doesn't have maintenance & upkeep, is plug & play for new games etc. But I'm okay with you liking your PC if you're okay with me liking my PS5. So long as we can agree Xboxers are losers.
The trouble with analogies is often the original discussion gets diluted. It's like adding water to cordial.
I consider myself an Xboxer. Just ignore that I own two Sony consoles and zero Microsoft consoles right now.
Speaking of lazy: all-in-one remote controls. Some thoughts and musings after using Control4 for a few weeks having come from Harmony. - AV control in C4 is much quicker and more reliable than Harmony. C4 doesn't use the concept of step-by-step macros, it's told initially how devices are inter-connected and does what it needs to do depending on what you want it to do, with no lag or pauses in between steps because there are no steps. I've probably explained that badly, but where Harmony always felt a bit delicate with its macros, and was a bit of faff when it would with some regularity end up on the wrong input, or not switch on a device properly, C4 does not. - For my TV in particular, IP control was flaky to the point of being unusable in Harmony, to the extent I used IR with the on-remote blaster. This isn't the case in Control4, where IP control has been totally solid. - Configuration is much more straightforward than Harmony... partly because the dealer does initial setup. But it was simple for them as well - they just traced cables between devices and tell C4 what's what... AVP HDMI Zone 1 > TV HDMI 2, AVP HDMI Zone 2 > Other TV HDMI 1, Apple TV > AVP HDMI In 5 etc etc. That's all there is to it, and you just add watch/listen activities to the home screen that you want, and can change without any other configuration. - Tweaking and reconfiguration user friendliness is very different to Harmony - not better, not worse. I found Harmony painful to use in how slow it was to change or update anything, and often it was unintuitive. There are a few very minor tweaks you can make from the C4 app/remotes/screens, but generally changing anything needs to be done in Composer Home, on a windows (only) machine. Composer Home is fairly un-intuitive as well, but mainly for the reason that it's not just about AV, it's about whole home. In Composer Home you can do just about everything other than add new devices or make new connections, a dealer would normally do these things remotely for a (hopefully nominal) fee, depending on your dealer. - Bringing me to the point that C4 isn't designed for DIY. You can do a lot with composer home, there are workarounds to do more, and there are remote programmers that will do stuff for you for next to nothing, but obviously a key difference to Harmony. - There isn't quite a Goldilocks remote in terms of button to screen ratio. The SR260 is too buttony for me, but I think the Neeo could use a few more hardware buttons. The Harmony Elite was a still bit more buttony than I needed, but closer to being right for me. I prefer the Neeo of the two C4 remotes and the lack of buttons isn't too serious a limitation the majority of the time though. It just means there are a couple of things on the screen where I'd rather have a hardware button for. - C4 is obviously way more powerful and extensible, e.g.: > All sorts of other home control is in scope - if someone comes rings the gate when I'm watching something, it can pause, bring up the intercom feed from the gate on the TV, and let me open/ignore it right there with the remote > Control of things that were off the cards with Harmony are not with C4, like controlling an amp and sub with no remote power with a relay, or controlling said old-school amp with an IR bug, or controlling the DAC input if I really wanted to with a little button actuator on the back. (which I have not because it spends most of its time on the same input) > Being a whole home system, you can have multiple rooms and AV systems controlled - the number of devices is limited by how much programming there is, and how powerful your director is. There are 5 models each with differing levels of scalability and price points. - Usability: Not so much with me, but with guests. With Harmony I always had the need for a short introductory briefing of how to watch what. This is not the case with C4, assuming your guests aren't complete idiots, and even then it would be a challenge for them to get lost. - C4 is quite a bit more expensive - sorta. For standalone control of one AV system I'd argue it's not viable at all. As as standalone replacement to Harmony, with the smallest controller, an SR260 remote and a remote dealer to perform initial setup you could probably get under £1000. With the next controller up (needed for IR), a Neeo remote, an on-site install, composer home for tweaking yourself, more like £2000. On the other hand, as part of a larger system, the AV control was effectively no additional cost.
Does anyone have any thoughts on turntables? I don't want one, but I've just picked up a 7" EP because that's literally the only format available with the song recorded in a studio session. That I could find, at least. It'll get plumbed into the PC, one way or another, for "ripping" this EP and then dropped into the basement until I next encounter a vinyl. I don't want something complete ****, but equally I don't need to go throwing money at something I'll use once a decade.
There are a few turntables out there designed specifically for ripping that will give you an easier time of it. I seem to recall that @Gareth Halfacree has jumped through these particular hoops.
I have! Sadly, rather than spend Actual Money on the problem I just bought a cable so I could hook my H2 Handy, originally bought for field interviews, to my ancient and wobbly Aiwa to which I'd fitted a new needle. Which, to be fair, works a treat: Throws out nice 48kHz WAVs I can import into Audacity for clean-up and export to MP3. I could have plumbed the thing directly into my PC instead, but for some reason my desktop's always had a very noticeable hum on the microphone input. Never bothered to figure out why.
If not getting a straight-up USB turntable, make sure to get one with an integrated phono stage - i.e. the outputs on the back should be labelled "line" if in doubt. Then you can just feed it to your PC however suits you.
lot of the cheap "bluetooth" type turntables have USB out, and normally you can use (I think it's audacity on the PC side) - bit of a faff, but can do the job. That'd be my go to for a one-off, but about £80 probably. My Sony can rip 24bit HD audio or so says the bumpf - Never actually used it, but meant to be OK for the job - was over £300 mind. What is the EP ? and if you want to to save a bit, you could send it my way, I'd rip it on the Sony and then send you digital copy and EP back
Sadly I'm no longer in the UK - It'd be almost as much as buying a turn table myself to ship it backwards and forwards! I do appreciate the offer though. It's The Devil's Blood - Graveyard Shuffle. https://www.discogs.com/release/3157647-The-Devils-Blood-The-Graveyard-Shuffle That one, as it happens.
I picked up a Sony PSLX300 Turntable off ebay, new/opened box for £99, line level out and USB, plus it comes with the software to rip to MP3. While it's not exactly sonically amazing, bog standard and mostly plastic. It plays surprisingly, well.... ok.
