Gadgetory

hello welcome everybody to cnet's open tab this is the show where we have a few drinks and we chat with you the live viewing audience on facebook on youtube wherever you're coming from thanks for joining us my name is Jeff Bakalar on the couch or two very special guests the first one you will know him if you listen to my podcast the 404 show he is the audio feely act man himself mr. Steve Guttenberg my rope off Max's gardenburger left-back the spear spear his nickname is fear everybody do do yourself a favor and admire the man's shirt for a second that's corn on the cob horizontally corn on the cob respect that drink it in for a second yeah to his left is senior editor hi pendlebury how are you sir I am very well sir thanks for being here thank you you guys have your own podcast right yeah yeah in you to show butyral yeah greatness on out I thanks for the cocoa during open tab we are taking your questions and comments live so do yourself a favor and get mentioned on the show type it on that keyboard that you're sitting at or on your phone and while writing this typing's with your thumbs now you were what is both kinds of typing I'll show you what a phone looks like it'll be great all right never smart so do all that and we'll respond to that whatever you guys want to talk about we will talk about but you guys are experts in the field of audio and fidelity I want to ask you guys some questions about the way we listen to music these days and you guys will hopefully be able to help out some of our viewing audience so how do you guys people who take audio to such a level that most people don't who care about that that phonic sort of feel the phonic fear the phonic feel I just need your podcast so simply put how do you guys listen to music like what what is your sort of ritual with that I think we both differ I'm most thing almost completely digital right with a bit of vinyl going in there you consider him like a savage yeah he's a savage Iverson I am from a colonial Country sure you know so when we're sick backwards a little bit yeah so when you say digital-only explain that most of the stuff i will probably buy a couple of second-hand cds but most of the stuff i buy is flac file straight from the net right and flac files reveal don't know that's flac that is the the best encoding or raw it's the raw sword right so it's compressed like a zip file so everything that goes in there comes out again whereas something like an mp3 you pull you pull bits out willy-nilly almost just to get the size down right people don't realize how much audio information is being deleted when you listen to an mp3 Steve's read me the riot act most most streaming is mp3 rightmost streaming is mp3 as well so okay so we have your the digital guy for this conversation and Steve well I can guess what side of the fence yes i'm in the pure and perfect side but no seriously when when you ask that question for me it's like where do I listen Brian listening at home is very different and better in almost every way than listening somewhere else so you're saying you're staying quiet everything people don't take the time to just sit down from the right whatever it is the people will take that side of the iphone in your stereo their gramophone whatever you want to call it right they're not at one with their music the music is they do another thing multitasking whatever so you see you don't think there's enough of just like sitting down and and and appreciating what you're listening to I'm not saying that's the only way right I'm just saying if you love a band sometimes just listen to a tune close your eyes and don't do anything else closing of the eyes I've actually stops you from multitask yeah I've done that I've closed my eyes and I fell asleep so what band was it ah lady was more like a jazzy cameras man no announcement they they would put me to bed maybe one like a child 10 talking about recently okay i can't speak for their current stuff well anyway so yeah some people doesn't make any difference do some ppl they'll hear things they'll feel differently about the song sure how you feel about music is really the whole whole bowl and you just want people to get something from you so so connected to the music I mean the artists they have work weeks months or possibly years right to craft an L of them and if you just have it on as you're doing other stuff you're missing a lot of the one is respectful say it yeah it's just these kids these kids what do they know well they know a lot about streaming music because that's basically how the planet consumes music these days it makes me sad so what what can people do I know you're another in a bit of the minority there but what can people do to get the best sound quality out of streaming services I mean a lot of people use Spotify as far as the best you can click the extreme quality button right that's such a good is a higher bitrate right then what you get from the free version but is there anything people can actually do to improve the quality get get a good pair of headphones yes I was gonna I was going to let everybody in on a secret what's that whether it's a lossy mp3s or flac files the way to make things sound better is to have better headphones or speakers okay that's way more important so you think whatever think that's the number one tool absolutely door speakers better headphones and something that I exit victim is the latest generation of phones you're Samsung's or your your iphones actually have a pretty good headphone abdomen not really audiophile quality but they'll drive a good set of header you can spend 600 bucks on a pair of headphones and they'll sync sound great food one of those feels right yeah because I have a decent set of earbuds that I use on my Nexus 6p listen in a flac files and I I'm super happy with that relation if you listen to an mp3 file it's not gonna burn holes in your yeah you're gonna die because you know you won't die you might die a little inside but you're not gonna actually drop your phone in your the follicles right the nerve endings they'll die they'll die the risk Oh it'll be like oh I'm not I'm unimpressed yeah um what about where you listen we talked about this briefly with you minute ago but like where you listen to music has a great deal of an impact of like the actual content that you're consuming right like for me I know if I want to check out the newest you know album from one of my favorite bands I'm probably not going to listen to it while I'm walking through the street just because like you said like I do maybe wanna have a little bit of a quieter thing I'm not gonna sit in the corner of the room with close my eyes and do it but I'm gonna like like in a lotus position exactly it's like meditate I'm not gonna do that necessarily but I'm gonna find the time to do it where I'm not multitask I think better of you know oh my stock has risen a little bit all right fair enough but I think for me like on the subway is basically the only time I can funnily enough get at some alone time sure having a good set of headphones in a decent music player even even if you trade up from a normal phone I've had some pretty you know fun experiences on a train listening to musics right if you get some decent sort of noise blocking ones and you know then you'll be okay yeah well yeah aside from your freaky deaky like listening ritual where else can people listen and get like an okay experience you mean other than home other than home it probably be turnip Ark bench right pose your eyes just got birds tweeting around too huh no life is just a big like fantasy for you big fantasy what do you already thought what are you sound like you're closing your eyes in public places you don't I'm not alway York City close my eyes all it's fair enough does make a big difference oh I so close that's true that's a whole other story that will get to the next time on the show don't forget we're taking your questions and comments anything audio related you got two of the most prolific audio reviewers in the biz right here so knowledgeable too knowledgeable too i think that was implied with largest cell if it meant a lot it did not quality nobody hears stuff the way these guys hear stuff so make sure you get those in right now guys what would you say are your favorite speakers and or headphones wait because less because if you go to get headphones yeah you do headphones Steve what you know the headphone guy what's a good headphone for someone with like 100 our but I am I'm glad you're sitting down because I'm going to say something that you're not going to expect you might think this is april first or something oh my god you're gonna throw this is curveball Guttenberg yeah hold on look at your chicken scratch that just falls off the tongue so it's the bose soundtrue ultra in-ear headphones they're not sound buds that rests on your auditors they actually get jammed into airs right but the 129 bucks they're super super comfortable and it's the first bows in your head phone or your bud that I like now I don't like it I love it Wow games for that kind of money it's hard to beat traditionally you despise everything well I you know impartial journalists of course I treat everybody fairly right I used to should you just they just haven't had a great track record with you yeah everything sucks everything's oh no no we found it alright this is you know what they say a stopped clock is Right twice a day so every now and then they can squeeze out something good you never go back to me your crappy ones alright alright so tell us how you really feel um yeah this is coming in from YouTube commenters as well like what's what about speakers what's a favorite speaker of yours well speakers is a weird one because you can get passive speakers for about a hundred and thirty dollars a pair massively I'm up to an amplifier receiver was right bs22 yes spb as 22lr right so a lot the i guess the future of those selected 720 oh the future those speakers is kind of weird because pioneer sold most of its musical assets to onkyo who now continuing the brand and I guess the Americas the only market the carries Andrew Jones all a lot of Andruw Jones products okay so you know some of these speakers go on sale all the time some of the speakers disappeared like they had a sound base which is completely gone now so if you want to get Andruw Jones speakers now that he's moved on as well to elac and produce it some really great stuff if you want to get Andruw Jones pioneer stuff I'd say don't graduate I mean seriously it's there's nothing comparable for 129 I love seeing audio dudes get excited about I'm excited to get excited about something that real people can bods yeah it's practical and his neck at all i like to get if i can't afford it it's another 20 min dollars where ya Mac McGill I mean there are other cheaper speakers say from dayton audio but i don't think that had the same hole not even close we are you talking about onkyo onkyo i remember when back in the day I used to check out some onkyo systems and whatnot those they make like the whole all 10 toes companies like a key oh it's like vintages of wine they're good years they're nuts okay so you like times they're good so the 2012 was a nice yeah that there's too much rain in 23rd yeah yeah you can take all the crew could hear you say it was wetter yeah I all I can say in bed onkyo is that my one of my favorite experiences and one of the things that clued me in to the high five hobby was listening to dark side of the moon on an onkyo turn I know you talk 70s onkyo turntable electronics beautiful it's good analog yeah I don't know I feel it say so that didn't happen on a flat file no it did you can still experience that lately you know you can still get good stuff out of flack like yeah I listen to black I feel like I'm getting something you get more are but you're the thing is you literally do not know what you're missing with mp3's right it's like if you only had wood rosin orange juice and you never had an actual fresh-squeezed arms your time fussing I just spine it's great yeah cuz you don't know when an actual orange tastes like okay how about this what is the what is the lowest it's not it's a little unfair all right exaggerated that's like not not the ebon Collins I never called you a snob Steve but you're a bit of a snob no I it's because I care it's because you care and you listen see look I'm cover I could just sit in my house and Sarah I don't care about you guys oh yeah I got what I need say scream I do this because I'm trying to help people spreading the love I am through seven I'm spreading everything oh ok height is possible fair enough oh how do I pivot out of that i'm not sure what about sound bars you go back to my shirt soundbars soundbars get a lot of they catch a lot of heat because some people say they're crap some people swear by them would what's a crazy to swear at them yeah I think there's a number every now and then that I I admire like they've come a really long way you're happy I am especially for movies I'm generally less happy with their sound for music okay for movies is there one you recommend for under a hundred dollars no no okay that's good to know you want a sound bar you got to spend a little more money and spend at least two hundred bucks okay what a name a brand real quick that you've got some really good stuff at the moment pioneer if you can still get pioneer stuff is good yamaha stuff is good that's pretty much i'm learning a lot i actually have to take some notes because people are asking me about sound bars I believe we have questions from the live audience let's check in with Mike hi guys so we have a few comments from our about sound from people Melissa says I do think a bit is lost via phones for sure mostly her own hearing Jackson says she just wishes Apple music and the music app were separated pizzas that he misses the attention given to album packaging some people are still trying he lists to ol Beyonce etc as examples and Paul is the question he says he has so no speakers he's deezer flag high in service he used wondering if you guys think more music services are coming on the horizon probably not I mean the big one or the big rumor this week was that Apple is supposedly in talks to buy a title so i think that that what's going to happen is you're going to see consolidation of your music services because there's a lot particularly in Europe there's people like deezer and wimp became time title and it was its own brand for a while so it's going to get smaller rather than bigger I can see people being really boutique II and collating in and being like that but they're not gonna make much money idle began me you missed your big opportunity what's up just wait right past it what the whole room thing Oh rune other guy loved one works room room is a very TWiki hifi system which integrates meteor on your hard drive with title and make him into one library oh ah ah great service amazing interface plus five hundred dollars but oh so this is this well that's for the lifetime okay I mean yani Bugsy that's actually not good for seven years all right i love the service yeah i'm still trying to convince steve of it okay I like bose headphones and right get anything's possible yeah oh do you guys ever think some like a spotify would switch would turn the flack switch on sure yeah yeah cuz that i feel like i would pay more money you i want oh I makes more I'd pay five dollars usually double I pay five right now what Spotify 10 bucks okay look I pay with your page one i paid fifteen i don't think i'd pay 20 i paid 24 title and i love it yeah Tyler got rid of Spotify this is a regular the stigma associated with title is understandable for sure stench what's that the stench yeah the stench emanating right but at the same time like the service is great the service is really good it's just because the oil rig little molecules around right yeah um yeah I feel like I would definitely pay 15 a month for Spotify titles 20 yeah yeah see that's like me that's kind of like the threshold for me right um I just think like I think streaming flak is like such a bad idea right i was super psychic went idle came along say they were doing that but then all that other stuff happened there i canna left but on your Spotify do you put stuff on your phone do you download to your phone I don't why not should I I do I mean I've never really found myself in a situation where I mean I also do have the flag stuff that I bought loaded onto my watch so that's kind of work I i balance it they used to buy and download itunes not often but I do yeah I kind of guilt out of guilt and yeah I you know good self-pity good that kind of thing I prefer the kilt all right Colonel anything gets you to support living bands right make them say hey guys you know it's okay make more record name or somebody well yeah well actually fine it's true and you know to that point someone in the chatroom brought up the idea of like the lost art of you know packaging and and that kind of experience of opening the record opening the Sienna you know I struggle with that because I used to love that growing up by buying the new you know no effects ed like flip it through the thing by whatever like seeing Oh what are they saying in that song what is this Oh what are these awful photos they decided to include in the booklet that's interesting oh that's a weird stamp they have on the CD that's weird um yeah I missed that but just like a book cover I've kind of just learned to let it go you're right now if you love it set it free that's what I say but something is lost it is lost I think you know what I think's lost I think a band or a group or whoever an artist has a tougher time communicating their personality right I think like that's kind of lost in the whole thing music videos I guess are still a thing on YouTube they're nowhere near as prevalent as they were in the 80s and 90s I feel like that communication is kind of lost well oh well uh thank you so much for being here Steve you have to say goodbye to you we're going to take a break when we come back someone different is going to be sitting where you were at all right we're gonna fill my shoes definitely not because you have such huge feet 13 why where can people follow you on twitter sorry Ophelia man at audio feel yak men reach out to Steve on Twitter if you want any more audio questions we're going to take a break let's toss to Mike in the control room alright guys thank you so much for all your questions about audio we just want to give you a couple quick shout outs across both our youtube and facebook chats so hello on youtube to Diana Shawn jo Seph Harry Billy and Randall over on facebook high to Miguel Bob Pete Stuart Robert jaime erik Bernard Dave Paul RJ and dense please keep the chat going we're going to move on to our next segment we're talking about what we like and don't like about iOS 10 the dangers of Pokemon go and I'll just favorite music artists so feel free to keep chatting and we'll keeping you in and ready to go we will throw back to Jeff and continue on yes we will okay now sitting on the couch like he owns the place lazy and welcome back to open tab mr. Joseph Kaminsky it's good to be the king it is good to meet you look well you look well-rested I am thank you yeah back from the Caribbean wasn't it the Bombers tell us what you do there did you gamble Leah did I didn't I don't gamble not with money not on gamble I don't gamble just with life I'm a sure thing all right ah we got Joe back here ties going to stick around it's time to parlay this conversation into what we're kind of experiencing in the iOS 10 beta the public beta is out if you have an Apple device you can get it on your tablet on your phone whatever the hell else they make what uh have you played around with it at all briefly um Jacob hood actually on his iPhone I refuse to put it on mine why is that because we talked about this today on 44 on betas or BS well it's a number of things I'd done the beta on my 6 plus last year and the the the releases for it aren't there's there's no rhyme or reason for the releases and then wait what does that the the update for the beta there's no rhyme or reason because there's certain things that may not work or may work like deauxma players that's a developer thing but and um and then when the full one comes out there sometimes a problem just pushing that through sometimes you just wind up having to write to download enforces like you know what I'll just wait last thing I do is try to make a phone call and have that be the one feature not work yeah I'm pretty sure that's the safe bet that that'll always work it's funny even even like my my my mom who's very disconnected from like the you know keeping track of iOS updates she's always like yeah I'll wait till the point one comes out just because I know I gotta let that dust settle a little bit and she's not wrong but really it really has to have to shake the cobwebs out of that thing before you can get a reliable there's so much pressure to keep putting something out to stay innovative is just to keep ahead that a lot of times we become the beta testers even even totally like don't don't don't be mistaken they are collecting data on on how the beta goes and you know taking that under consideration so you are you familiar with any of the new features or is there anything about ten are sort of psyched about um the text features probably fun back and forth with you know my son so forth the lift when you lift it up in the notification seems pretty cool to sway notification sounds like they're spending a lot more time on the lock screen to read that the lock Trina some cool notifications um what I would love and hopefully they'll do it is maybe under the settings with 3d touch yeah if they'd enable where you can customize it because you don't think I really want to go to another 3d touch really quickly from the settings would be to turn my hot spot on and off or I think that would be really cool i mean i'm not sure if they did anything with that um what else did they do with that thing well well tie your you're an Android guy right like myself you've seen an iphone have you touched one i had i think the last iOS i had a virus 55 okay i had a this mixing oh he's touching it i had these the 4s or the fall right so and then i went to android what so you've been there for a while um me personally I am indifferent like I am an Android guy because I happen to like that OS better right um I don't I think if something came along attractive enough from an iphone I would switch I've just never been presented with an opportunity to be like oh this is the time to switch over is there something that would would convince you to consider making the switch I don't know if the design was good enough yeah I think that that particularly the iphone is sort of being in a kind of holding pattern design wise right i think the four was probably the nicest and there was a throwback was it the 6s had the glass back again no the davening well before before us that was the last of the glass okay last I like that designer for is that phone yeah i think you know you get a lot more variety obviously with android you got hundreds of different models you can choose from that's a mixed blessing right that's all right that you deal with fragmentation and issues like that right and the fact that each manufacturer has to modify the OS to fit my phone why get it by six months or that's why you go nexus and that's that's a nexus have had some really nice phones definitely uh Mike in the control room tells me there is a question from the chat room yeah guys so Nicholas says if there's one thing he doesn't like about iOS 10 it's clicking the home button to unlock the phone so because there was a big change with the notification screen and the unlock screen right and on YouTube we had someone who asks i'm not sure if we know that's definitively yet though did Apple fix the battery problems with iOS 10 on the iphone 6s I don't know about that but the battery stuff it might be too early to tell yeah I mean when you're in bed you can never rely on battery yeah i mean i would assume it burns your battery quicker yeah um I think one thing that's also overlooked when it comes to the whole iOS Android thing is money invested um I had the first iphone and didn't get another iphone again until the 4s but i did get an ipod touch in between that and i purchased a number of songs speaking of which everybody was strolling about purchases and at that time Apple had you locked because they were you know the music was encrypted yeah so you know between music purchased movie purchases apps purchase sometimes you're kind of just locked there because you spent more money on your library than you actually did on the device and I do and I have like from the first generation ipod touch have been purchasing stuff through it so I mean I'm well invested in that maybe if there was an incentive program where let's say you wanted to buy an android device and developer said hey you want Angry Birds for such-and-such if you're switching from iOS will give you a discount or something like that they may they may inspire a jump between but that's probably another reason why a lot of people's probably stay with where they are they just defend it to Lynn because the one wants to be on the sinking ship so to speak all right you have your marching orders mr. cook get to it let's move along amazon prime day is july 12 if you recall amazon prime day it is the one day of the year that amazon sort of came up with a self-declared holiday or you will offering thousands and thousands of sales on their site exclusive to Prime members prime day take two is happening July twelfth we know little bit about it we know that they are focusing on TVs and toys toys is super vague I don't know what the hell that means some deals are rolling out ahead of the sale itself they're calling them like countdown prime deals what do you guys think about prime day are you psyched are you tempted what's the deal hacia was kind of disappointed it was really bad they had this big build-up it's gonna be bigger than Black Friday yeah and it kind of fell over in heat no that was I don't know I didn't take advantage of any of the sale I get a nod to find bottom i bought a dust buster and then i thought i saved like 78 cents right and i was like what the hell i didn't really need to do that i guess because with black friday you have people like us who can count down the deals and the clay ting it'll sure and all the news outlets are primed a is kind of its own thing and it's harder to catalog and point to where good stuff is yeah it's it's uh for me it's just like I get it I know y prime day exists and like you know for what it's worth it did real well last year they amazon killed it on prime day even though there was like this inexplicable sort of understanding of what was on sale and what wasn't right um it makes sense that they would do this again I don't know did you buy anything less your job buddy there yeah if I don't know it has to be really good to force we deferred to something like when I'm not planning on purchasing it right but I'm I didn't see anything there was nothing that really impressed me I mean the last thing I think I bought like pre-ordered was the echo okay so what do you think about like on the fire TV stick when I was 21 foot I'm you got imagine like all their first party stuff is gonna be on sale I wouldn't Kindles go on sale everything goes on sale for me it's just like the navigation was kind of twisted up I felt like I had a really tough time understanding what was the what was the deal they were having these flash sales I'm just like this I need to like research I have to like draw the right I don't want you to do yeah because they got the monopoly on debt are inside so they can control what is you know highlight it oh for sure it seemed a little counterintuitive but hey i'm going to amazon all right to check that but they're gonna be good you know hopefully I mean all right the nice thing for like people now is that they have to pay for the full year they can do the monthly subscription if they kind of want to slip in and just check out the sale and be out you're not you're not committed for you really so yeah I mean well that's that's cool because if you come in on in that month of disappointing you're not stuck paying that all hungry for the whole year don't forget it's only good for Prime members that's July twelfth and well I guess we'll have like under Prime members is the monthly in the annual yeah we'll have a post-mortem on prime day next week okay what do you guys know about pokemon go I know you know way more than your right eye and I'm old air I I'm not a Pokemon fans oh you're dragging about that I'm a dragon ball guy yes I couldn't you tell everybody that's right just by looking at him like mike cronin oh so poster do you know anything about pokemon girl all I know is there was a story earlier this week it was actually the first thing I heard about Pokemon go was that the Darwin police department in Darwin Australia Northern Territory where have been too because everyone has tried has been everyone Australian but they said no but they said that they issued a warning to people saying you weren't allowed to go into the Darwin Police Department or the police station to to get your Pokemon go characters so if they appeared that you weren't allowed in surely they'd say you know don't go into strangers houses or you know don't go off cliffs is no don't go into the police station yeah okay Australia doesn't really have a lot of problems I guess that's something that you know sir surface to the top so here's what pokemon go is it's a mobile game that uses a are so amazing augmented reality which means you're holding up your phone's camera in the world around you and they're sort of like putting their placing pokemon around areas in the real world and you have to like flick out the ball the Pokemon balls am I saying that wrestle I don't know anything about okay I know my son would go crazy if they had a yokai yeah up whatever that is a joke I ok you need a yokai watch this yoga right i forgot to get 10 so that's so that's a thing a lot of people are complaining that it doesn't work though everyone's calling it pokey bad stop oh really yeah because like the servers are having issues connecting we were talking about today my buddy russ was only able to hook into it like twice not unlike set up a username and that was it not enough money to keep the server's going I don't know if that's what it is but set a Pikachu broke you know this is not a great launch for that brand and I feel like it's been a rough rough couple of years not just well pokemons been arrived but like the nintendo sort of brand is taking a bit of him the way you was supposed to sell a hundred million well that's just what when I was 12 and it sold 12 million oh you know just 12 millions a lot oh that's a lot it's the fur that I guess uh anyway let us know what you buy on from Iowa you froze on sale or the amazon prime two hundred bucks i buy four nice so that would be the gourmet fur you're at that amazon we go Bezos we have anybody got advice for mr. cook and mr. basics take note all right and i definitely want to bring up the band Steve brought up because right now I want to know what everyone's favorite band is right now like what are you listening to maybe this played in a little better with the conversation before but who are you listening to Steve said mystery what do you say mystery mystery lights from Brooklyn so check those guys out any new and a new band there is a pokemon connection with the band that I lost stop it how is that even a thing I do major rozum you which is a Pokemon character you knew any w okay there's you claim anything oh that's there's a band who really like new except their death metal okay now they're called astronaut now you're talking about language that's a it's really sort of space puppy death metal record and i really love it air mu me alright what about you know astronaut musa been there like actually i'm calling the time warp i listen to mostly like whole stuff like old freestyle Park big right and some I mean a couple new song that trick her out maybe but any old freestyle that's about it I'm pretty boring you said it not me I'm listening to a band called thrice right now they have a new record that is actually surprisingly good you've heard of Thrace only three times I guess we're gonna have to end things on that day thank you for joining us for another edition of open tab you can catch us eat catch us each and every week right here on Facebook or YouTube wherever you want to consume us keep the conversation going in the comments section below we will see you next time thank you so much for tuning in until then