As alluded to in this thread I think any grinding will be a natural occurrence when the difficulty ramps up and you cannot proceed with the current gear or level you have.
I doubt many people will want to stop to grind gear in a difficulty level they don't plan to spend the rest of the game in either. With the AH and RMAH people can, if they want, purchase items to minimise the grinding they'll need to do to jump up a difficulty level as well. I know it was rough for me going from Nightmare to Hell in D2 way back when.
Absolutely no idea. I stay away from Blizzard's fancy marketing strategies. I heard the news either in wow from a guild mate or on msn from a friend of mine.
Needless to say I was extremely happy to hear the news but not overly surprised since they acquired the Diablo3.com domain.
The idea being you regen health with almost every ability, build rage with frenzy and burn it off with whirlwind. Very similar to how my Barbarian in D2 worked. How viable it is will have to wait until I've actually tried it out though.
I have the D3 CE preordered, I've quit wow and even I have contemplated getting the annual pass. It's insanity the amount of pull that game has on someone.
In saying that I also don't like the ease at which people can get gear and items now. I remember back in vanilla getting the epic mount really took time and effort. Now in a lot of cases it's free.
Sure it's good for people who don't have the time or skill but it really took the challenge from the game.
One million annual pass subscribers is an achievement, what I wonder is whether or not they care how many people actually play the game with that time or their attitude now is "oh well we got a year's cash out of them, who cares whether they stay with the game because we're giving them something worth the time now".
Personally I'm beginning to think I'm the focus of a Truman Show and there actually is no beta. You're all just one guy on a computer in their show's studio trolling me for viewer ratings for my ever increasingly depressed state.
I'm not paranoid, but I know you're all watching me...
I don't really see a problem with people airing their personal opinions. This isn't the beta bug report forum where there's a certain etiquette and procedure expected from posters.
There is a set of rules here and a culturally accepted form of behaviour but as long as people fall within that there should be no problem with them saying whatever they want.
Criticism which is not constructive in nature doesn't achieve much besides making one person feel better and another feel worse (generally speaking) but I think it's wrong to stifle peoples' free expression of opinion, regardless of how obtuse and ill-informed it may be, as long as it sits within the rules set out by the forum administration.
There's probably a lot of Australians here. Mostly because we're left out of the opt-ins and want beta keys.
Welcome to the site, I only recently began posting here myself though I was a long time lurker.
You're right about the D3 community generally being nicer however I think in-game, especially in pvp oriented situations there'll be some less than pleasant people. I've always felt that pvp players seems to be more aggressive personalities, more competitive, but that's a generalisation as there are many cool people who are pvpers.
Anyway, it's always nice to have more Australians about.
The more people interested in good audiophile quality soundcards for computers the better in my opinion.
We're in serious danger of having onboard sound completely obliterating the rest. While some motherboards actually put X-Fi processors onboard it's still not great.
While onboard sound has improved a lot there are some features that it lacks which, at least in my case, can't be lived without.
Creative popularised high-ish quality sound cards for gamers and their stuff's getting pretty nice. They have their own 7.1 surround emulation, CMSS 3D which does the same thing as Dolby Headphone, which is better is a personal choice. Some of their cards even have swappable OPAMPs.
At any rate, I would never use onboard sound, any time I've tried it's been a horrible experience. Once you go high quality audio you can't go back.
It's hard to be constructive all the time you're posting isn't it?
It's also hard to resist the temptation to spam the boards when the random nature of the give away would support that (depending on how random it really is).
In any case, the rest of us have no choice but to keep on posting and hoping.
An amplifier drives a headphone with voltage, the current drawn by the headphone is proportional to the headphone's impedance.
Pros and cons of high impedance headphones:
Headphone impedance is usually increased by thinner wire and most importantly more turns of wire in the voice coil. More turns or loops creates a larger field (area of magnetic influence). In layman's terms more magnetic force for the coil to move the diaphragm. Thinner wire usually works out to a lighter, more responsive diaphragm. Depending on the headphone design, this may lead to more accurate response.
The displacement (amount of movement) of the diaphragm (the part that vibrates to produce sound) can be better controlled via a more accurate flux (magnetic field to pull and push the diaphragm).
Difficult to drive for small headphone amps with low output voltage and low gain.
Most high impedance headphones need an amplifier with higher voltage gain and higher output voltage, e.g. the 600 ohm Beyer DT770/880/990 series.
Allow Solid State Op Amps to work more efficiently with less distortion. Have a look at Op Amp data sheets and a graph of distortion vs. output impedance for most audio Op-Amps and you'll get the idea. This is a very complex subject, but most Op Amps are designed to output (typically) up to 10 Volts into 600 ohm loads or higher.
The higher the impedance, the more power is needed to get a proper output volume from the headphone:
32 or 80 ohms = mobile use with laptop, MP3 Player, portable recorder etc..
250 ohms and higher = for permanent installations, headphone amplifiers etc.
Background:
Impedance ist the AC resistance of the headphones' voice coil, which is connected to the headphone amplifier. A impedance of 0 ohms would be a short-circuit of the headphone amplifier output; the headphone amplifier supplies an extreme current and afters getting very hot, it either turns off automatically or dies. The other side of the story is infinite resistance (broken cable); no current flows, but also no audio signals arrives - so, we have to be in between these two: 0 and infinite.
In generel, headphones with low impedance are designed for use with mobile devices; mobile devices use low power from batteries and therefore also the output power is limited. A low impedance headphone can only play louder at a low power output. But why high impedance headphones??:
The impedance is determined by the voice coil (dynamic headphones), which is a winded copper wire (coated to avoid a short-circuit). This copper wire is available in nearly every length, but not in every gauge (thickness) and a thicker wire has less resistance than a thin wire ("less fits through"). The magnetic field of the voice coil depends on the number of windings of the coil, causing a low impedance system to use a thicker (also heavier) wire and since the membrane foil can't be infinitely light-weight, the moving mass (voice coil and membrane) is relatively high. It's pretty clear that a higher mass can't move as easily (following an audio signal) as a lower mass. This low mass can easily be accomplished with thinner (lower weight) wire, but the thinner wire has a higher impedance. This means that the DT 770 PRO with 250 ohms sound more natural, but plays (depending on the used headphone amplifier) not as loud as the 80 ohms version.
The transducers of the 80 ohms versions are stronger and more powerful, a bit more mid accentuated and therefore this version is ideal for powerful reproducing of low-frequency material f.e. coming from a bass guitar. The 250 ohms version sounds more smooth and voluminous and can be used for mixing situation within the studio to analyse the whole mix.
What I gathered from most of them was that the response of the diaphragm inside the phones determines a lot as well. Quality over power.
I wouldn't go changing the OPAMPs right away since the price you're paying for that sound card is going to be for the OPAMPs they chose to put on it. I wouldn't choose headphones based on their resistance alone either. You will be able to tweak the sound card's graphic equaliser to fine tune sound output as well.
If you're planning to use headphones a lot then the card is good because of Dolby Headphone, it'll simulate 7.1 channels through stereo phones. It tends to add more bass to sounds when you use it too.
But yes, read reviews, heaps of them. There's a whole audiophile world out there to explore. Be careful when purchasing headphones to know what size jack it requires by default. You may need an adaptor and if that's the case it may not fit next to the other outputs on the back of the sound card. My HD515s use a 6.35mm jack and I'm forced to use an adapter so I can plug it into my 3.5mm jack.
The resistance is related to how much power is required to drive the headphones more than the quality of the sound produced. The more resistance the headphones have the more powerful the sound produced can be, especially bass.
OPAMP stands for operational amplifier. They are the parts of the sound card which amplify the analog signal. The quality of the OPAMP is what determines the sound quality you achieve. The brand and type of OPAMP can drastically change the tone of the sound you hear. Some will produce lower, more defined bass, while others produce brighter highs, for example.
The card you chose has removable OPAMPs meaning you can, if you want, go and purchase others that have different characteristics to fine tune the sound you hear (very audiophile and expensive).
From the Auzentech site:
The quality of the Operational Amplifier (OPAMP)
influences analog sound quality, because OPAMPs amplify the analog signal in your soundcard. With a
, the signal is transferred with less loss and distortion.
An OPAMP is a DC-coupled high-gain electronic voltage amplifier. It has "differential Inputs" and usually a single output. In its ordinary usage, the output of the op-amp is controlled by negative feedback. Because of the amplifier’s high gain, the negative feedback primarily determines the output voltage for any given input.
Auzentech actually sell OPAMPs so you can switch out the ones that come on your card if you wish. The prices for some are staggering. $245 for one. You can actually mix and match OPAMPs too, for example leaving the more bassy one in the Center/sub channel and brighter highs ones for the rest.
Oh, when buying headphones look at the frequency it's able to produce. The bigger the range the better though there's only a certain range the human ear can pick up as well. I've always found looking up reviews on specific models I'm interested in is a good step as well as going for a brand I like. In my case I'm very happy with Sennheiser as the quality is great and the comfort is exceptional for long listening sessions.
0
I doubt many people will want to stop to grind gear in a difficulty level they don't plan to spend the rest of the game in either. With the AH and RMAH people can, if they want, purchase items to minimise the grinding they'll need to do to jump up a difficulty level as well. I know it was rough for me going from Nightmare to Hell in D2 way back when.
0
From memory it actually asked me to go and install the 'Flash Player for other browsers' from the Flash Player site.
Hope you've sorted out your problems. I personally prefer Opera but my university sites don't work properly on it =(
0
Needless to say I was extremely happy to hear the news but not overly surprised since they acquired the Diablo3.com domain.
0
HP Regen Barbarian.
Softcore/Hardcore.
The idea being you regen health with almost every ability, build rage with frenzy and burn it off with whirlwind. Very similar to how my Barbarian in D2 worked. How viable it is will have to wait until I've actually tried it out though.
0
In saying that I also don't like the ease at which people can get gear and items now. I remember back in vanilla getting the epic mount really took time and effort. Now in a lot of cases it's free.
Sure it's good for people who don't have the time or skill but it really took the challenge from the game.
One million annual pass subscribers is an achievement, what I wonder is whether or not they care how many people actually play the game with that time or their attitude now is "oh well we got a year's cash out of them, who cares whether they stay with the game because we're giving them something worth the time now".
0
Congrats on the key, I have total friend-envy now.
I have a theory I'll hit 500 posts long before I hit a beta key, ah luck... where art thou?
0
Personally I'm beginning to think I'm the focus of a Truman Show and there actually is no beta. You're all just one guy on a computer in their show's studio trolling me for viewer ratings for my ever increasingly depressed state.
I'm not paranoid, but I know you're all watching me...
0
There is a set of rules here and a culturally accepted form of behaviour but as long as people fall within that there should be no problem with them saying whatever they want.
Criticism which is not constructive in nature doesn't achieve much besides making one person feel better and another feel worse (generally speaking) but I think it's wrong to stifle peoples' free expression of opinion, regardless of how obtuse and ill-informed it may be, as long as it sits within the rules set out by the forum administration.
0
Welcome to the site, I only recently began posting here myself though I was a long time lurker.
You're right about the D3 community generally being nicer however I think in-game, especially in pvp oriented situations there'll be some less than pleasant people. I've always felt that pvp players seems to be more aggressive personalities, more competitive, but that's a generalisation as there are many cool people who are pvpers.
Anyway, it's always nice to have more Australians about.
0
We're in serious danger of having onboard sound completely obliterating the rest. While some motherboards actually put X-Fi processors onboard it's still not great.
While onboard sound has improved a lot there are some features that it lacks which, at least in my case, can't be lived without.
Creative popularised high-ish quality sound cards for gamers and their stuff's getting pretty nice. They have their own 7.1 surround emulation, CMSS 3D which does the same thing as Dolby Headphone, which is better is a personal choice. Some of their cards even have swappable OPAMPs.
At any rate, I would never use onboard sound, any time I've tried it's been a horrible experience. Once you go high quality audio you can't go back.
0
It's hard to be constructive all the time you're posting isn't it?
It's also hard to resist the temptation to spam the boards when the random nature of the give away would support that (depending on how random it really is).
In any case, the rest of us have no choice but to keep on posting and hoping.
0
What I gathered from most of them was that the response of the diaphragm inside the phones determines a lot as well. Quality over power.
0
If you're planning to use headphones a lot then the card is good because of Dolby Headphone, it'll simulate 7.1 channels through stereo phones. It tends to add more bass to sounds when you use it too.
But yes, read reviews, heaps of them. There's a whole audiophile world out there to explore. Be careful when purchasing headphones to know what size jack it requires by default. You may need an adaptor and if that's the case it may not fit next to the other outputs on the back of the sound card. My HD515s use a 6.35mm jack and I'm forced to use an adapter so I can plug it into my 3.5mm jack.
0
In any free time I do have I come here and make constructive posts in an increasingly hopeless attempt to hit the jackpot.
If I have any other time left I play Anno 2070 or Skyrim.
0
OPAMP stands for operational amplifier. They are the parts of the sound card which amplify the analog signal. The quality of the OPAMP is what determines the sound quality you achieve. The brand and type of OPAMP can drastically change the tone of the sound you hear. Some will produce lower, more defined bass, while others produce brighter highs, for example.
The card you chose has removable OPAMPs meaning you can, if you want, go and purchase others that have different characteristics to fine tune the sound you hear (very audiophile and expensive).
From the Auzentech site:
Auzentech actually sell OPAMPs so you can switch out the ones that come on your card if you wish. The prices for some are staggering. $245 for one. You can actually mix and match OPAMPs too, for example leaving the more bassy one in the Center/sub channel and brighter highs ones for the rest.
Oh, when buying headphones look at the frequency it's able to produce. The bigger the range the better though there's only a certain range the human ear can pick up as well. I've always found looking up reviews on specific models I'm interested in is a good step as well as going for a brand I like. In my case I'm very happy with Sennheiser as the quality is great and the comfort is exceptional for long listening sessions.