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Well I guess this fits in this section... sort of...
Basically, as part of a research project, I've been given the mandate of selecting and purchasing a voice recorder which would be used to record hour-long interviews with fairly good quality (the interviews will have to be transcribed, so it's better if it's not complete garbage). That being said, we're not looking for a $500 studio recorder, we just want the words to be easy to understand. The device would have to be able to transfer the files over USB to PCs and Macs, in formats like mp3 or something very standard like that.
I'm asking because I don't know what's suitable for my needs. The recorder would be placed on a table, possibly at a few feet of distance from the interviewer/interviewees. It's possible that in some cases, the area will not be completely quiet, so it has to fare decently in semi-noisy environments. Any suggestions, warnings? My main concern is that I don't want to get a recorder which is designed for one person to speak into it from a short distance. It has to be able to properly record someone talking from a few feet away.
Cheers!
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Djzapz, I'm sure you guys thought of this already, but would an option be to just use a laptop, and spend the budget on a high quality mic? Maybe you need good portability or somesuch though..
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5396 Posts
On December 19 2014 23:30 Djzapz wrote:It has to be able to properly record someone talking from a few feet away.
We needed the same thing a few months ago, so I bought this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0090XX0MS/
The difference is that we are recording in a quiet room with everyone speaking individually. I don't know how well this would do with a noisy environment... but similar products should get you started. Use the Amazon review search box for "noisy" and "distance" and things like that on products you are considering.
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On December 20 2014 00:28 fruity. wrote:
Djzapz, I'm sure you guys thought of this already, but would an option be to just use a laptop, and spend the budget on a high quality mic? Maybe you need good portability or somesuch though..
From a technical standpoint that would certainly be effective but we'd rather use a small device. This is part of a research project and in order to get the most out of the interview, we want an inconspicuous voice recorder (the person will be told that the interview ill be recorded of course, but we want them to be at ease and to kind of forget about the recorder). If there's a laptop in the middle of the table, that's a little bit odd perhaps? I think a small recorder looks more professional also. Plus it would be perhaps more convenient for transportation and whatnot.
On December 20 2014 03:04 pheer wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2014 23:30 Djzapz wrote:It has to be able to properly record someone talking from a few feet away. We needed the same thing a few months ago, so I bought this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0090XX0MS/The difference is that we are recording in a quiet room with everyone speaking individually. I don't know how well this would do with a noisy environment... but similar products should get you started. Use the Amazon review search box for "noisy" and "distance" and things like that on products you are considering.
Thanks, I'll look into that one. At first glance, it seems to be designed for music but the reviews are good. Can it render the sound in mono? I think the file might be annoying to listen to if the interviewer sounded only on the left and the interviewee only on the right... Anyway I'll check it out.
Still very much open to advice and suggestions, cheers!
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Is there any reason why you can't use your phone? I've done research interviews in the past using a phone and its come out fine for a transcript (which btw will take ten times the duration of the interview to write up!)
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On December 20 2014 08:22 Deleuze wrote:
Is there any reason why you can't use your phone? I've done research interviews in the past using a phone and its come out fine for a transcript (which btw will take ten times the duration of the interview to write up!)
Well that possibility was brought up at the meeting, but since we don't all have a cell phone and we're not individually going to be there for every interview, we have to have a team device which will be used to record every interview in the same format to ensure uniformity. Also I'd expect that a recorder with a dedicated decent mic designed to pick up sound at medium distances might be able to get us a clearer sound. Since transcribing the interviews will take 100-150 hours of man time, investing $100-150 to make it sound a little bit better is worth it. It's grant money anyway so we can get tools for ourselves within reason.
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I used to game on a desktop using an old ps/2 keyboard I had, but I switched over to a laptop and am now looking for a new keyboard. I've looked into buying a mechanical one, but they all seem ridiculously pricey. I just wanted to double check, how much key rollover would be good for sc2? would a 5-key rollover be enough? And will using a usb 2.0 keyboard (a logitech g105) be good enough?
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United Kingdom20323 Posts
dpc latency issues
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/dCmSN.png) This keeps happening with Nvidia driver, Directx thing and sometimes usb1.1/2.0 thing. Sometimes my DPC latency is fine (usually ~25-30) but sometimes, a lot of the time and seemingly at random it starts to spike very frequently to ~1-5k. It doesn't seem related to any power management (i disabled everything in bios, set windows to high performance, nvidia driver to prefer max performance) but might be something with GPU downclocking? Seems unrelated to system uptime too. I can restart again and again and it still does it, sometimes it starts after days of being fine and other times everything works perfectly. When this is happening, none of my video playing software works correctly and OBS audio falls out of sync by like 700 milliseconds often (which is annoying, considering i'm recording a rhythm game with +-10ms of allowed timing error) what should i do for troubleshooting the GPU/dx stuff in particular? There's nothing to update/fix for GPU, i've tried 3-4 different drivers. Maybe a super clean safe mode removal and reinstall? It's super annoying when i just want to watch a video and my system isn't capable of that simple task without freezing SVP every 2-3 seconds and jumping back and forth from 24-144fps coinciding with dpc latency spikes Here is a recording of Latencymon: apologies if i'm missing/repeating stuff!
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On December 21 2014 00:16 Cyro wrote:dpc latency issues + Show Spoiler +This keeps happening with Nvidia driver, Directx thing and sometimes usb1.1/2.0 thing. Sometimes my DPC latency is fine (usually ~25-30) but sometimes, a lot of the time and seemingly at random it starts to spike very frequently to ~1-5k. It doesn't seem related to any power management (i disabled everything in bios, set windows to high performance, nvidia driver to prefer max performance) but might be something with GPU downclocking? Seems unrelated to system uptime too. I can restart again and again and it still does it, sometimes it starts after days of being fine and other times everything works perfectly. When this is happening, none of my video playing software works correctly and OBS audio falls out of sync by like 700 milliseconds often (which is annoying, considering i'm recording a rhythm game with +-10ms of allowed timing error) what should i do for troubleshooting the GPU/dx stuff in particular? There's nothing to update/fix for GPU, i've tried 3-4 different drivers. Maybe a super clean safe mode removal and reinstall? It's super annoying when i just want to watch a video and my system isn't capable of that simple task without freezing SVP every 2-3 seconds and jumping back and forth from 24-144fps coinciding with dpc latency spikes Here is a recording of Latencymon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F37Ef_QV6Fcapologies if i'm missing/repeating stuff!
so should I try to find a mech keyboard which uses usb 3.0?
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United Kingdom20323 Posts
On December 21 2014 01:09 XXhkXX wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2014 00:16 Cyro wrote:dpc latency issues + Show Spoiler +This keeps happening with Nvidia driver, Directx thing and sometimes usb1.1/2.0 thing. Sometimes my DPC latency is fine (usually ~25-30) but sometimes, a lot of the time and seemingly at random it starts to spike very frequently to ~1-5k. It doesn't seem related to any power management (i disabled everything in bios, set windows to high performance, nvidia driver to prefer max performance) but might be something with GPU downclocking? Seems unrelated to system uptime too. I can restart again and again and it still does it, sometimes it starts after days of being fine and other times everything works perfectly. When this is happening, none of my video playing software works correctly and OBS audio falls out of sync by like 700 milliseconds often (which is annoying, considering i'm recording a rhythm game with +-10ms of allowed timing error) what should i do for troubleshooting the GPU/dx stuff in particular? There's nothing to update/fix for GPU, i've tried 3-4 different drivers. Maybe a super clean safe mode removal and reinstall? It's super annoying when i just want to watch a video and my system isn't capable of that simple task without freezing SVP every 2-3 seconds and jumping back and forth from 24-144fps coinciding with dpc latency spikes Here is a recording of Latencymon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F37Ef_QV6Fcapologies if i'm missing/repeating stuff! so should I try to find a mech keyboard which uses usb 3.0?
I dunno really  avoid 2-3kro. Aside from that i think it's different keyboard to keyboard. I use a mech with full ps/2 support and unlimited simultaneous keys
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On December 20 2014 12:53 XXhkXX wrote:
I used to game on a desktop using an old ps/2 keyboard I had, but I switched over to a laptop and am now looking for a new keyboard. I've looked into buying a mechanical one, but they all seem ridiculously pricey. I just wanted to double check, how much key rollover would be good for sc2? would a 5-key rollover be enough? And will using a usb 2.0 keyboard (a logitech g105) be good enough?
They can be pricey but you can get some nice deals here and there, I think it's fair to say that for the vast majority of gamers prefer mechanical, maybe this is debatable and pure assumption on my part, but the rubber dome type wear out faster, and the key feel will change, to type on they are far nicer too (mechs).
Couldn't comment on how much NKRO might or might not be needed. Full NKRO might be desireable though, there's ways to rapid inject as zerg in under a second or so across about 16 hatcheries (legally), but doing so requires a true full NKRO keyboard.
As for prices, that logitech 105 is listed as £55, you can for example get a steelseries 6gv2 for £64 here. Worth the little extra!!
That keyboard is listed as having "anti ghosting" which isn't the same as NKRO. Also some keyboards only provide NKRO over PS/2, some are listed as being able to do this over USB.
Personally I'd hold off buying a rubber-dome type board and save a little more, top end mechanicals are pricey, but you can get some good deals on mechanicals here and there. January sales round the corner too!
A personal thing I don't like about that logitech is the G-Key placement, being on the left edge like that I found it awkward to rest my hand whilst playing SC2 (many moons ago I had a similar logitech). However you might want them for FPS or wish easy macro access etc.
Save up! Even if you have to go into the 70's or 80's to get a backlit one it's worth it. Info on switch types here. Red and brown switches seem popular.
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So yeah, got some laptops to 'fix' and there's this one which was infected as hell. Cleaned as much as possible, but the screen is...well, see for yourself.
Now the question is: is this broken GPU (Intel integrated) or maybe the screen matrix? So far I can't tell for sure, but looks like it can be kinda both. Colors are weird everywhere - on Win, on BIOS, on hiren's boot, there are also some green lines visible when nothing is showing on the screen sometimes.
Any ideas on what exactly is broken/how to check it?
edit
ok, nvm, managed to get some additional screen and plugged it in - 100% clean image. So it's rather undoubtedly a monitor problem. Will dig into that, maybe some "cable" is off, but I doubt I can do much else.
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On December 23 2014 08:56 OsaX Nymloth wrote:So yeah, got some laptops to 'fix' and there's this one which was infected as hell. Cleaned as much as possible, but the screen is...well, see for yourself. Now the question is: is this broken GPU (Intel integrated) or maybe the screen matrix? So far I can't tell for sure, but looks like it can be kinda both. Colors are weird everywhere - on Win, on BIOS, on hiren's boot, there are also some green lines visible when nothing is showing on the screen sometimes. Any ideas on what exactly is broken/how to check it? edit ok, nvm, managed to get some additional screen and plugged it in - 100% clean image. So it's rather undoubtedly a monitor problem. Will dig into that, maybe some "cable" is off, but I doubt I can do much else.
It's possible you could get a replacement LCD panel but I don't know if that would be worth the trouble.
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Yeah, I doubt it pretty much. Well, the client will decide anyway.
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Hey guys what temperature should I try to keep my gtx 760 (blower cooler) below in order to get the best performance out of it? Currently for example I have it go to 80% fan speed when it hits 77 degrees celcius
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United Kingdom20323 Posts
below 78c at all times, but below 68 helps a tiny bit
i was benching my windforce 770 this morning and i could keep it comfortably below 60c if i let the noise levels go up, but blower coolers suck
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On December 25 2014 06:10 Cyro wrote:
below 78c at all times, but below 68 helps a tiny bit
i was benching my windforce 770 this morning and i could keep it comfortably below 60c if i let the noise levels go up, but blower coolers suck
Blower coolers suck as in they don't do a good job cooling or are loud? Noise doesn't matter to me I just want efficiency to stop my GPU from dying if I crank up the fan %
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United Kingdom20323 Posts
A general cheap reference-style cooler is just not nearly as effective as the open-air designs done by gigabyte etc for keeping GPU cool. I think they're worse at both absolute performance and performance at a given noise level, they can be good coolers but they rarely are, the only good ones i know are on the nvidia reference 780/780ti but those are 300 watt cards at OC which is kinda too high - the good blower coolers are not available on stuff like 760's/770's (or even 980's!! they had to remove the vapor chamber and cheap-out on those ones..)
as long as you stay comfortably below 80 it will still use the GPU boost frequencies as far as i know (so like never hitting 78c, the throttle is quite sensitive) - if you hit that throttle point, it meant dropping hundreds of mhz on both of my gpu boost 2.0 cards
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On December 25 2014 06:56 Cyro wrote:
A general cheap reference-style cooler is just not nearly as effective as the open-air designs done by gigabyte etc for keeping GPU cool. I think they're worse at both absolute performance and performance at a given noise level, they can be good coolers but they rarely are, the only good ones i know are on the nvidia reference 780/780ti but those are 300 watt cards at OC which is kinda too high - the good blower coolers are not available on stuff like 760's/770's (or even 980's!! they had to remove the vapor chamber and cheap-out on those ones..)
as long as you stay comfortably below 80 it will still use the GPU boost frequencies as far as i know (so like never hitting 78c, the throttle is quite sensitive) - if you hit that throttle point, it meant dropping hundreds of mhz on both of my gpu boost 2.0 cards
hmm damn I guess I didn't do my research enough when I built this comp like 6-8 months ago. This is the 760 I purchased (I think haven't looked for sure):
http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=02G-P4-2762-KR
I am going to go ahead and instead of 77 degrees with 80% fan I'll make it 74 degrees with 80%
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United Kingdom20323 Posts
They're fine, just harder to keep at 70c :D
There's a reason the msi gaming, gigabyte g1, galax etc 970 are hanging around £290, while those blower coolers are ~£240~
they're good if you want to run 3-4 GPU's too, especially if you have the good 780-style ones - but 290x-reference-style blower coolers were never known for their effectiveness :D
they are very often used in systems with like one case fan, where dropping 150-200w into them would just heat the whole case to like 40c and then suck - the open air coolers are great but they require a bit more thought to keeping their intake air supply good, they need more room and airflow to work decently while the blower ones just exhaust out of the back (case doesn't get very hot) and suck air with a huge amount of force, even with high restriction around them
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EPT
