The stream ends. The lights go out.. we say our goodnights and see you tomorrows and everyone leaves.
What to do.
Futz with Chinese music apps because wtv.
Was about to tweet a reminder that Windows 10 no longer offers any kind of support for Quicktime. And searched just to make sure again that iTunes does still have support.
Why?
Well honestly because I have nothing better to do and I'm trying to avoid playing Pokémon Go, which just released tonight. And Destiny. After my PSN expired and until EI or wtv else kicks in.. I'm going to avoid playing games on console.
Not sure how I've managed to make it through the last half week.. but here we are. Monday July 18th. I'm sober. Which reminds me that I have no alcohol in here.
Anyhow.. music. I was about to toss off but without either console hooked up and to at least marginally pretend some competence.. I tried setting my computer up with multichannel audio.. which is still a motherboard free to the air, with video card, cpu, and ram sitting on it.
Since this is a new machine I've had to deal with bullshit from the moment I opened the box. Like trying to write up the process for a blog only to have my phone eat the whole fucking thing.
Since then it has been nothing but hassles BUT it has been rock solid AND supports 4K video which I didn't expect.
Now.. presently dealing with no multichannel audio because I can't get windows to output 5.1 DTS on its own over optical SPDIF.. wasn't unexpected. But off a whim and in order to get Discord working a bit better so I could sit in and listen to her voice.. I just plugged in headphones.
So.
When I plugged in headphones the integrated audio controller on this Asus ROG POS mobo decided that I should get options from stereo to multichannel.
Vexation.
Thing is I hate Windows. I have hated audio in Windows since Microsoft shat the bed and pushed Creative out. Not that Intel you see did much to cover.
Microsoft and Intel effectively ruined integrated audio.
And frankly I'm fine with that because since Creative got flushed all kinds of other companies found an open door to make ad-in boards from great value to professional quality. Along the way Realtek has been the basic standard for integrated audio.
But again Microsoft doesn't seem to give a god damned shit about audio. Such that Windows audio settings do allow DTS and Dolby Digital to function. Trick is getting any applications to actually do anything. I expected browsers would.. but they do not. They are stuck in stereo.
I expected VLC to support multichannel out.. so I could watch that last half of Mr Robot.. but nope. No matter what options I select the audio driver only outputs stereo over optical.
But once I plugged that set of headphones in.. I got the multichannel options I wanted. So I saif fuck this shit and tore out the rats nest of audio leads from my Amp to the back of the now nearly empty tower this shit is all getting stuffed into at some point and wired them up to the Asus.
Multichannel? Yes. Hassle. Yes.
It annoys me because the Asus drivers for this ROG POS motherboard SHOULD have multichannel options because the Asus XONAR that's still kicking around near the tower has a much older driver that DOES have multichannel support for optical.. but it acted like a patch. It would pretend to use all the speaker settings but still use the optical lead to the AMP to run DTS.
Wtv.
I have Discord, Edge and Chrome, VLC running audio to the amp.
So despite a good few hours long stream and that I'm not tired and still have a few episodes of MR Robot I could finish watching.. I figure I could try music.
I could try playing music through Spotify but got annoyed with it because it plays ads after every song. So NO.
I could play music through Pandora.. but that would mean running Hola VPN and still being stuck with stereo.
Since I already have QQ (desktop app) installed I could run that. But I prefer Xiami.
So I try the Xiami website. Somehow discover that there's an app for that music service too which I haven't already downloaded.
Like Baidu.. QQ, and Xiami only have Chinese apps and my Chinese is still 0. Somehow though it is far less aggravating and difficult to figure them out.
Such that I dumped all my music into Xiami's desktop app.. and got instantly bored.
Loaded up QQ on my phone and the desktop app in Windows. So while I like the web experience provided by Xiami more.. the king is QQ.
The phone app controls the desktop app just like Spotify does. But its free.
So I have internet radio running with a handy dandy remote control app. I'm like hmm.. open the Realtek audio controller app and yeah.. there it is.. Speaker Fill. Even if it is a cheap POS this audio controller DOES have much better speaker fill than older ones because there doesn't seem to be as noticeable latency on the other channel, Center, and Rear. It sounds much more full.
Upon further inspection.. QQ has a problem.. The mobile app supports DTS but like i figured when i found that it it doesn't pass DTS to the desktop app. I'm not annoyed by this because the songs are probably too low sample rate for DTS to matter. Both apps say there's support FLAC which might make a difference but I don't have any music on QQ that has FLAC quality recordings.
Then I found Super Sound settings in the desktop app. While audio output is set at 24bit 96kHz it sounds different but not great. Tried 24bit 192kHz and it does sound much better.
I can deal with this then for now.
Next Monday my GTX 1070 should arrive.. and I can start this shit all over again but with video. Repurposing the other monitors that had been dedicated to Xbox and PS4 to be screens 1 and 2 in a display group which will resume being the left and middle panels in my El Cheapo 4K display group. Or close enough to 4K since they are 1920x1200 native panels.
Once they are set up I'll try running Ark. Probably will end up being disgusted and surrender to Pokémon Go.