Skyrocketing price of mechanical hard drives

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  1. whs
    Posts : 26,210
    Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
       #200

    Just saw this WD bare bone for $50. It is not the world, but a start into the right direction. And all the better deals seem to be recertified these days.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 5,941
    Linux CENTOS 7 / various Windows OS'es and servers
       #201

    Hi there
    Like all things "Horses for Courses" and while you might (and probably are) careful in your volume when using phones that don't contain the sound most people usually don't bother -- and it's usually the people with the lowest quality music (here I mean compression quality rather than what they are actually playing) that are the worst offenders in broadcasting their music to the public at large.

    There may well be "Passive" phones that could be cheaper and sound good -- but for planes, trains, buses etc there's nothing like a set of expensive Bose noise cancelling phones to shield you from all that extraneous rubbish.

    The 300 EUR or so I paid for the Quiet comfort 3 noise cancelling phones have been IMO one of the best investments I've made -- especially as I travel a lot particularly between Belgium, France, UK, Iceland and USA.

    It's almost unbelievable the amount of pointless Mobile phone calls "wage slaves" etc seem to make when at airports or in trains so it's great to be able to shut them out totally. Most people on the phone also seem to forget that the rest of the carriage etc isn't deaf either !!!!. There must be something in the nature of making a phone call that causes people to SCREAM at the top of their voices !!!

    These things are often subjective -- but BETTER quality equipment will fnd ANY imperfections in the original source -- it's quite possible that if you have a fairly rubbishy low compression mp3 signal (128 kbs and lower - even 192 kbs leaves something to be desired ) this stuff will probably sound BETTER on cheap equipment and probably sound like Road drills on High end "Studio monitor speakers and reference amps".

    If you MUST use compression don't even consider less than 256 kbs -- better is 320 kbs. However with large HDD's why not use uncompressed sound (WAV) or LOssless compressed such as FLAC.

    Cheers
    jimbo
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 7,878
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
    Thread Starter
       #202

    jimbo45 said:
    There may well be "Passive" phones that could be cheaper and sound good -- but for planes, trains, buses etc there's nothing like a set of expensive Bose noise cancelling phones to shield you from all that extraneous rubbish.
    It all comes down to your own personal needs. I live in the US and in an area where buses are not commonplace at all, trains..(haven't been on one in 30 years), subways (don't exist here), and planes (only rarely). When I am on a plane, I tend to use in ear noise suppression style plugs as I want to just keep them in my pocket and travel as small as possible.

    jimbo45 said:
    The 300 EUR or so I paid for the Quiet comfort 3 noise cancelling phones have been IMO one of the best investments I've made -- especially as I travel a lot particularly between Belgium, France, UK, Iceland and USA.
    Sounds like you get your monies worth out of them, and that is great. The QC15's are a very solid pair of headphones and I don't argue that....but I'd never suggest that BOSE makes great products all around.

    jimbo45 said:
    If you MUST use compression don't even consider less than 256 kbs -- better is 320 kbs. However with large HDD's why not use uncompressed sound (WAV) or LOssless compressed such as FLAC.

    Cheers
    jimbo
    I usually rip my own CD's with Exact Audio Copy and I set it at VBR 2. Most of my stuff comes out between ~190-235kbit/s. I've listened extensively at my own stuff ripped with various tools/compression levels, etc. My personal opinion is that my settings above get me 95% of the quality of FLAC without the large file sizes. The reason that I stick with compressed files is the majority of my music playback devices (phone, tablet, Sony MP3 player), either have very limited storage or simply don't handle WAV or FLAC files. Overall, many times my music is simply background noise and it doesn't need to be absolutely pristine...thus I simply cannot justify the space usage for Lossless formats.
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  4. Posts : 740
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
       #203

    I cant justify spending 300EUR on ear/head phones, I have had so many pairs of headphones (of reasonable quality in the 40-80Eur range) and they never last long before I get a break in the cable and loose signal to one or both ears. If I thought the cable was infallible on an expensive pair then I would consider it. I have even had cordless headphones but then I end up falling asleep with them on or running up and down stairs and they get broken one way or another.
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 7,878
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
    Thread Starter
       #204

    ^ Sounds like a bunch of bad luck . I cannot remember the last pair of headphones that I had which broke. But yeah, if you rip through this many pairs of headphones, I'd say it's better to just stay with commodity cheap models.
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 1,846
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64, & Mac OS X 10.9.2
       #205

    ive just ordered another SSD.. thought id go fully SSD and say screw you floods!!

    Mac osx is lightning fast as it is... soo hoping it will read my mind and doo stuff before i have chance to click it with an SSD up its arse
      My Computer


  7. Posts : 6,668
    Windows 7 x64
       #206

    I can not understate the amount of difference a good ssd will make on even a older system.

    They are probably one of the single most noticeable updates you can make to a system.
    I boot so quickly now I had to disable the gui boot because it was slowing it down.
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 1,846
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64, & Mac OS X 10.9.2
       #207

    Yeah I was amased when I bought one for my gaming rig.. Just wish I could afford to replace the 6 drives in my server lol
      My Computer


  9. Posts : 6,668
    Windows 7 x64
       #208

    badger906 said:
    Yeah I was amased when I bought one for my gaming rig.. Just wish I could afford to replace the 6 drives in my server lol
    it looks like the flavor of hdd this month is something you already own.
    Otherwise it's a good time to justify that first ssd purchase.

    Given the price of mechanical drives right now 64 and 128 gig solid states seem a little less unreasonable, and that should be plenty for a solid boot drive and base apps.
    Also the ssd's don't get slower like hdd's do when they start to get full.
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 1,846
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64, & Mac OS X 10.9.2
       #209

    unfortunately for me i think the HDD in my sky box is about to take a dump and die as when i do live pause and un pause it the play back is all choppy and laggy..

    Could i/should i be the first person to pimp out a sky box (a bit like satellite tevo for across the pond people) with an SSD? its a serious contemplation if it does die lol, then it wont wake me up in the middle of the night when its doing its daily maintenance and what not to the drive
      My Computer


 
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