The "Things that annoy me" thread

As long as we're car shopping, car ads in general that obviously have all of 30 seconds invested in them. What is "low mileage." Why would you describe a small dent and brush it off without a picture? Did you really not notice you listed the car for $10?

Any ad in general that the person put no effort into. You say it's mint, don't include a picture, I don't believe it's mint. You describe a small scuff, don't include a picture, I have to conclude it has serious damage. (because everyone on the internet is a con artist, obviously) Worse, though, is "pictures available on request." Why? Whyyyyy? If you actually bothered to take pictures, why not actually show them, you'll sell your thing much faster that way.
 
What annoys me are external soundcards. You know I bought this piece of kit, right? Well, as it turns out, firewire has the same problems as usb: latency. The system can't guarantee a perfect data stream to the external card at all times, so when the system is busy with doing something else, the card just cuts out. Only way to restart: pull out the firewire cable and put it in again.

I had to do that pretty much all the time at first, but managed to cut it down to like once every half hour with turning off some computer functions (which I'd like to keep!) and fiddling with settings and drivers. Nevertheless, this still is pretty much unacceptable. Therefore, I will send this back and get me a proper pci card.
 
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External accessories in general are kind of pointless on a desktop machine. Convenience at the cost of performance. Same is true for external hard drives and wifi cards... if you're never going to use them except on a single desktop machine, you're much better off with internal.
 
What annoys me are external soundcards. You know I bought this piece of kit, right? Well, as it turns out, firewire has the same problems as usb: latency. The system can't guarantee a perfect data stream to the external card at all times, so when the system does something else, the card just cuts out. Only way to restart: pull out the firewire cable and put it in again.

I had to do that pretty much all the time at first, but managed to cut it down to like once every half hour with turning off some computer functions (which I'd like to keep!) and fiddling with settings and drivers. Nevertheless, this still is pretty much unacceptable. Therefore, I will send this back and get me a proper pci card.

Yes, it seems your best bet would be to use an internal sound card with an external analog mixer running into the line in on the sound card. This is the setup I have for home recording and it works quite well. No latency at all.

I just use a fairly cheap mixer such as:
http://www.zzounds.com/item--BEHUBB1002

But there are even cheaper options available.
 
Actually, I don't even need a mixer, I basically just want a high quality stereo soundcard. I went for the firewire model because it sounds good (when it works), and the fact that it is external theoretically gives you an advantage in signal quality due to the card not being exposed "nakedly" to the electromagnetic fields in the computer case.
 
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Ahhh, I see. I thought maybe you might be doing some band recording or something since the external had XLR inputs.
 
What annoys me are external soundcards. You know I bought this piece of kit, right? Well, as it turns out, firewire has the same problems as usb: latency. The system can't guarantee a perfect data stream to the external card at all times, so when the system is busy with doing something else, the card just cuts out. Only way to restart: pull out the firewire cable and put it in again.

I had to do that pretty much all the time at first, but managed to cut it down to like once every half hour with turning off some computer functions (which I'd like to keep!) and fiddling with settings and drivers. Nevertheless, this still is pretty much unacceptable. Therefore, I will send this back and get me a proper pci card.

My cousin uses a USB sound card (M-Audio Fast Track Ultra I believe) and after some fiddling about with the settings he gets some very good results. He tells me there is pretty much no latency at all (and from what I can hear, there isn't). He used it at a concert the other night, plugged to his electronic battery and at no point did the sound cut off or slow down. And the card was plugged to a pretty shitty laptop running XP :-D
 
People who always feel the need to address the person they're talking to by name annoy me.

Example, let's take two random names, Steve and Todd:
"Hey Todd"
"Hey Steve"
"Do you know any good places to eat around here?"
"Oh I don't know, Steve, I don't come around here very often"
"Ah, that's alright"
"Steve, do you want to hear a funny joke?"
"No"
"I'll tell you anyways, Steve"
et cetera

There's only two of you, why the dick do you need to constantly say the other person's name? GRAHL! Even with more than one other person, I almost never say someone's name when talking to them unless it's to get their attention or whatever, and then I say it one time.
 
I'm reading this thread, and reading all these weird idiosyncrasies people can't stand. I realized, I'm annoyed by people who are easily annoyed.
 
People who always feel the need to address the person they're talking to by name annoy me.

Example, let's take two random names, Steve and Todd:
"Hey Todd"
"Hey Steve"
"Do you know any good places to eat around here?"
"Oh I don't know, Steve, I don't come around here very often"
"Ah, that's alright"
"Steve, do you want to hear a funny joke?"
"No"
"I'll tell you anyways, Steve"
et cetera

There's only two of you, why the dick do you need to constantly say the other person's name? GRAHL! Even with more than one other person, I almost never say someone's name when talking to them unless it's to get their attention or whatever, and then I say it one time.

I can almost guarantee you that Todd in that situation has been to some dumb memory course. Using a person's name over and over in conversation is supposed to help you remember it. Politicians are big fans of this method. It annoys me too.
 
^Haha, this reminds me of the VP of my department. We had a tour a few weeks ago and this guy, who normally never talks to me, turns to me and says, "Hi there, Liz" as I'm walking down the hall. Showing off for the tour, I guess, as in "look how friendly I am with the peons, I even call them by name".

Problem is, Liz is not my name. I didn't correct him.
 
Actually, I don't even need a mixer, I basically just want a high quality stereo soundcard. I went for the firewire model because it sounds good (when it works), and the fact that it is external theoretically gives you an advantage in signal quality due to the card not being exposed "nakedly" to the electromagnetic fields in the computer case.

Eh. The electromagnetic fields inside a PC case are actually a hell of a lot less mean than people would think. The power supply's case contains all the real nastiness, all that's left is some low voltage DC wiring and a few small motors, neither of which produce enough of a field to matter. It is odd that you're having issues with a firewire unit - the entire advantage of firewire over USB is that firewire can directly access system memory without consulting the CPU about it - the CPU just needs to put it in memory and the firewire device can go get it through DMA all by itself - the same way a quality internal chip works. It sounds to me like your manufacturer frakked up and talks to the CPU, or your system has much, much deeper problems (in that it can't keep an audio stream to/from RAM up in realtime)

As an aside, because of Firewire having DMA (that is, any device plugged into your firewire port has access to everything in your system memory), there are some really neato-burrito local security flaws. Copying passwords out of RAM, bypassing the windows logon screen by patching the executable in RAM, etc. etc.
 
I'm reading this thread, and reading all these weird idiosyncrasies people can't stand. I realized, I'm annoyed by people who are easily annoyed.


It isn't that we are easily annoyed that bothers you. We are being vocal about (sometimes) petty things. But you could always stop reading this thread to stop your minor iritation.

Now my annoyance:

Twerp's complaining about us griping is rather annoying.:p
 
Sort of my latest post from the Music Thread.

Zakk Wylde playing Ozzy Osbourne songs that Randy Rhoads originally did.

He adds in too many little things of his own, and ffs the pinch harmonics are irritating as all hell. He really should leave it alone and play it normally.

Fair enough if the originals had pinch harmonics, but no, there are more pinch harmonics than even a fucking Killswitch Engage or In Flames song.


That really grinds my gears.
 
My cousin uses a USB sound card (M-Audio Fast Track Ultra I believe) and after some fiddling about with the settings he gets some very good results. He tells me there is pretty much no latency at all (and from what I can hear, there isn't). He used it at a concert the other night, plugged to his electronic battery and at no point did the sound cut off or slow down. And the card was plugged to a pretty shitty laptop running XP :-D
Latency is less a problem of the audio part laggring, rather than the data stream to the soundcard being cut-off. Problem is: once it's cut off, you need to re-register the device.

Eh. The electromagnetic fields inside a PC case are actually a hell of a lot less mean than people would think. The power supply's case contains all the real nastiness, all that's left is some low voltage DC wiring and a few small motors, neither of which produce enough of a field to matter.
Don't underestimate that. The CPU and the graphics card alone can consume a few hundred watts, which equals several amperes at the few volts the power supply spits out, all being pulsed in the MHz and GHz range. Expose the fragile audio signal on a soundcard to that, and you easily catch nasty noises.

It is odd that you're having issues with a firewire unit - the entire advantage of firewire over USB is that firewire can directly access system memory without consulting the CPU about it - the CPU just needs to put it in memory and the firewire device can go get it through DMA all by itself - the same way a quality internal chip works. It sounds to me like your manufacturer frakked up and talks to the CPU, or your system has much, much deeper problems (in that it can't keep an audio stream to/from RAM up in realtime)
Well, the main problem is that Windows simply is not a realtime operating system. Thus, you need to be lucky enough to have a computer that isn't occupied with other things all the time. I found a nice little tool to measure system latency here. It tells me that the latency of my system is average to poor. Problem is: I didn't find any way to improve it, and I tried everything. Okay, I was able to slightly shorten the latency by turning off my background harddisk defragmentation (which I'd like to keep). Still, the system produces unacceptable latency when doing even minor things. In the end, I guess it's a matter of luck: you either have a system where everything is fine, or you have a system where some small part of the hardware or software messes with the timing, in which case you're pretty much screwed.

And there are some minor, yet annoying problems. I like to listen to several high-sampling audio pieces. The card is capable of working with 192 kHz audio through the analogue connections and 96 kHz through the digital connections. But for some reason, the internal headphone amplifier also doesn't play 192 kHz audio. While the standard output works fine (when it works), the headphone out simply remains silent. Then, none of the three ASIO drivers I tried works properly, they all have different problems with this card (and the one that came with it has the biggest issues!). Kernel streaming doesn't work at all, if I try to use that, the system doesn't even play any songs anymore. And I lost the possibility to alter the volume of video files when using KM player, the volume setting is just being ignored.
 
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People being off topic and not caring and THEY SHOULD TAKE THIS DISCUSSION TO THE TECHNOLOGY FORUM OMFG really annoy me.
 
It isn't that we are easily annoyed that bothers you. We are being vocal about (sometimes) petty things. But you could always stop reading this thread to stop your minor iritation.

Now my annoyance:

Twerp's complaining about us griping is rather annoying.:p

But I can't stop reading it! :shock:
 
I just remembered one. People who pirate things, get busted by anti-piracy measures and then bitch and moan about being discriminated against. WTF? Yeah, I haven't bought everything that I have on my harddrive, but I'm not going to cry foul if something doesn't work because I was too cheap to buy it. Bawwww, you can't play a game online because you're being discriminated against for stealing the game, your logic is flawless.
 
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