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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • I see a lot of people ragging on the switch and comparing it to the Steam Deck. I own both but

    I’m gonna say this: they’re not even direct competitors. They don’t offer the same experiences at all.

    The beauty of the Switch is the ease of use, modularity of control, and communal nature of it. Even if switch online sucks, playing with other switches or 8 people in the same room with certain games is unbelievably easy. The plug and play usability and every single game you can buy from the internal store just works.

    Not to mention the dock is flawless and literally easy to use. For all its problems, the switch is a surprisingly well executed idea. There’s a reason they sold hundreds of millions of them.

    Steam is catching up, but there’s still a ways to go between proton compatible games, connecting controllers, plugging into a dock without having to bend down and plug a cable etc. The Switch is simply put: easy.

    That said, Nintendo is stupid for pricing the Switch 2 out of the “no brainer” casual gamer territory.











  • I have Sonos and it is meh. They just issued an apology in the app for how bad their app got, so I can’t really recommend it.

    I keep seeing good reviews about Audio Pro. I don’t know too much about them, but they seem to have the same idea of multi-room audio.

    Self hosting is the big caveat. There’s a lot of great software options, but the hardware can get to be a bit limiting if you don’t wanna play with common protocols like AirPlay or Chromecast.

    Additionally, you could do a Denon or Marantz receiver or Soundbar with multi zone and cover at least 2 spaces wired and add wireless zones via their Heos protocol.

    There’s also HomePod, Alexa, or even Bluetooth speakers like the UE Boom or JBL series that you can daisy chain Bluetooth speakers together. No real soundbar solution with this option. Ironically JBL Soundbars don’t communicate with their Bluetoo speakers.

    Audio Engine makes some fine speakers that support WiFi or Bluetooth and all they need is power.

    Kef has the incredible but pricey LS series of bookshelf and tower speakers. They are independently powered and support all kinds of wireless protocols including AirPlay.

    There are a ton of audio solutions nowadays but a lot of them will still require either a wire somewhere or playing with standardized protocols.

    I too wish there were a more “self hosted” options. It seems like sooner or later some more viable options will come to light though.






  • I’m enjoying Lemmy as a content feed. As an interactive board though not as much. Finding things and rembering where content is can be confusing. Its definitely not as easy or user friendly as other sites/apps. Getting IRL friends to join feels like an impossible task unless they’re pretty interested in tech.

    That said you get what you give and if we want to see more content, we should all interact more.