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by Ma8ee 455 days ago
In my case, my stereo is connected to an inexpensive Airplay adapter.

So I do get all the advantages of a connected device, but if the adapter is bricked, I can easily replace just that small device. And more likely, when there’s a new standard, most of my equipment is unaffected.
1 comments
godelski 455 days ago
s/soundbar/airplay adapter/g

I believe you're missing the forest for the trees. My argument is invariant to the specific device we're talking about.

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Ma8ee 455 days ago
No, you are missing my point. In the same way as we do (or at least should do) when we develop software, we isolate the volatile parts from the stable ones. The loudspeakers have looked the same for decades. No revolutionary changes in amplifiers in a long time. The same with DACs. That means that when a software update bricks my adapter, or a new much better standard comes along, or I decide to leave the Apple ecosystem, I only need to replace one small part of my stereo system, not all of it.
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godelski 454 days ago
This should be done internally to the device. I do agree that nothing you do should affect how speaker sure input is processed. But if you want those other features it's much more convenient to integrate them on device or rather place them within the housing as there's lots of empty space.

With electronics you can still isolate functionality like in software how we wrap things into functions. But like software sometimes we need to break that for optimization. Think like Apple M chips. They do it in the most annoying way, but integration is helpful. Ideally in a speaker though you should be able to fuck everything up and still allow for raw input.

As for the Apple thing, well that's a bigger issue because we really should be using open protocols and fuck walled gardens. Walled gardens are part of the problem we're talking about

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