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  • infinitevalence@discuss.online
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    7 months ago

    Sometimes there are vendors or distribution rules that require that they don’t post discounts publicly so people can’t price match or other retailers can’t demand a discount to match.

    • Suzune@ani.social
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      7 months ago

      That’s a weird logic. If I cannot find it on price comparison sites, the offer doesn’t exist.

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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        7 months ago

        It’s not too uncommon for PC equipment. Back when Newegg was a good company, before they were bought out over a decade ago, there would be quite a few items on there that were like this.

    • sim642@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      That’s an odd definition of non-public if the information is available to everyone. More like annoyingly public.

    • thesmokingman@programming.dev
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      7 months ago

      This is super common with niche hobby products I buy. Doesn’t make any fucking sense. Vendors will send out an email saying “hey we have a sale but we can’t tell you the dollar amount just the percentage until you put it into your cart.” I think it’s also common with some lines of luxury goods. You’ll find a few different reasons online if you Google “luxury brands hide price.”

  • curiousPJ@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Don’t get that card. I used to have it but it would randomly output max volume static… Not a fun experience.

    • lea@feddit.de
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      7 months ago

      Had the same thing with a Xonar DX, probably got some permanent hearing damage from that.

    • Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk
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      7 months ago

      I had a Xonar about 15 years ago. Can’t remember the model. Its surround sound has a delay on the rear speakers, made playing games in 5.1 impossible, horrible reverb effect. The official drivers didn’t fix it, I had to get a non-official driver pack to fix the issue.

  • RealFknNito@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    On the right it has a rough shipping location (LA with zipcode), are you sure that’s not the change?

  • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    That is just to condition you to get accustomed to eventually having to buy it first before they let you know the price.

    Which again is just to condition you to accept the fact that next they will be able to increase the price on your existing completed purchase each month for rest of your life.

    It’s only in the best interest of the consumer, it’s not an evil tactic.

    /s

    • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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      7 months ago

      I’ve noticed convenience stores in my area just stopped putting out price tags.

      • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        Oh, that’s illegal here. Nowadays they mostly transitioned to those wireless e-ink tags anyway.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        7 months ago

        I’m pretty sure that’s illegal in a lot of places. I know some stores have the “if you have to ask you can’t afford it, boutique” vibe going on, but they do actually have to put the prices somewhere.

  • Rickety Thudds@lemmy.ca
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    7 months ago

    I would straight up rather not have most things than give money to Amazon at this point. They’re only going to get worse.

    • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Im proud I still never bought anything from Amazon (except indirectly their stock … which just as bad, but super hard/expensive to avoid - at last until they dont give it a dogshit ESG score).

      • Rickety Thudds@lemmy.ca
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        7 months ago

        Don’t feel bad about owning their stock, as you say they’re basically in every big ETF, and the price discovery mechanisms for ETFs are lousy anyway so you never affected their shareholder value in any case.

        • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          Yeah, its weird, I was kinda tech oriented anyway, but now just by market weight a few stocks with pretty stellar few years of growth hold kinda a lot of concentration risk. Especially funny, bcs eg nVidia isn’t as widely known relatively to how big it has gotten (market cap).

    • johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Yeah, like, decades. It basically means whatever agreement they have with the supplier says that they can’t advertise for under MSRP. This is not a thing that’s unique to Amazon.

    • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
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      7 months ago

      That’s because of restrictions/contracts with the manufacturer. Sometimes there is a clause about the minimum advertised price. If it’s being sold below that price, that’s what you’ll see.

      However, that clearly isn’t what’s happening- or if it is, then Amazon is violating those terms. They are showing the price in some circumstances, but not others. That leads me to think it’s a smokescreen, using the above as an excuse.

      • Marcbmann@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        More likely, the price changed between screenshots.

        We don’t know what the price is on the left.

        • brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Yup. Or minimum advertised price is location bound. So the one on the right which has a location set can show it but the one on the left can’t.

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      I’ve never seen it either. Might be a regional thing, as in better/worse consumer protection…? I’m from the EU.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      7 months ago

      I can’t actually visualize what Amazon looks like at the moment I don’t currently have a way to check, but I’m positive if it shows me prices.

      I know it does because I use it to filter out the cheap crap that infests Amazon. If something is too cheap it’s not worth buying. So I always order cheapest to most expensive and then scroll down a little bit but I definitely can see the actual prices.

      I wonder if the a/b testing this if they are then anybody who doesn’t see prices should point blank refuse to actually buy anything. We don’t want this becoming common

  • turkishdelight@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    Amazon’s customer experience has been on a very steep decline in the last 5 years or so. I find myself shopping more and more on Temu and AliExpress.

  • Treczoks@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    I had it worse. I needed to book a hotel for a business trip, and they offered me two prices: Either take them cheaper, but you cannot cancel or get a refund, or you can spend a bit more, and cancel it up to one day before arrival for a “cancellation fee”, which amount was not disclosed at that moment.

    I booked the latter one, and in the booking confirmation it said that the cancellation fee is exactly the same as the cost for the room!

    • General_Shenanigans@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      That’s dumb. I used to work in hotels. We hated online bookings because of how terrible those sites handle expectations. A tip for the future is: If you find yourself wanting to take that latter option, odds are it’s the same as booking directly, price-wise. If you book directly, you’re more guaranteed and only have to deal with their own policy. Usually it’s no fee if cancelled the day before arrival. If cancelled same day, a one-night fee applies for holding the room. If you cancelled the day before, could’ve saved.

      • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        As a hobbyist musician, the more you externalise these sorts of things, the more latency you create. A discreet, internal, soundcard is probably going to trump external DACs for a long time to come.
        External DACs totally have their place, music playback, movies/shows. But for doing audio work, internal is the way to go.

        • hips_and_nips@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          As a professional musician and someone who works for a prominent Japanese electronic musical instrument company, I’m going to have to disagree.

          Thunderbolt provides all the low latency of a PCIe interface with none of the drawbacks. I use an Antelope Zen Tour in my home studio and it is just amazing.

          The systems I designed for work though use RME PCIe cards, but those systems aren’t in the hobbyist space.

        • christophski@feddit.uk
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          7 months ago

          What card are you using? Does it have an external breakout box?

          Last one I used was the delta 10/10 which I loved

          • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            It’s an older Creative card, still has plenty of oomph. It had a breakout box. Lord knows where it is.

        • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          👌👍 latency 🤣

          You people just make shit up. The human eye can’t see above 60fps!

          Imagine believing you are going to notice .001 poling rate. Maybe we can get a dac that fully saturates a pciex16 lane

          • Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldM
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            7 months ago

            I absolutely notice when a game defaults to a resolution with 60hz refresh rate. It’s not even so much a stutter or stall as it just feels “off” and then feels “normal” if I adjust the settings to 144hz.

            Though I don’t notice this when playing a game that has fps capped to 60, as long as the monitor is refreshing at 144hz still.

            I’ve also had a few ms of latency adjustment make the difference between frequently missing notes and being able to sustain long combos in guitar hero or similar rhythm games.

            It’s subtle to the point where it’s difficult to measure objectively (if it’s even possible to measure something where subjectivity is built in like sensory processing), but based on those I think our temporal resolution is higher than 60 fps in certain cases.

            Edit: Though I’m not sure I agree that the latency difference between an internal and external sound card will be very noticeable. I used a USB dual pre for gaming for years and never noticed anything off with it. I might try breaking it out again to see if it makes a difference in rhythm games.

          • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 months ago

            The human eye can’t see above 60fps!

            That’s true until you get into VR. Then 90fps seems to be the threshold.

            I’ll leave the rest to the audiophiles.

      • space@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        An external audio interface or DAC will be 100x better. That audio card won’t be any better than the on-board audio.

      • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org
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        7 months ago

        Some of them have poor stability. I gave up on a Sound Blaster Audigy RX after it caused random crashes on two different Socket AM4 mainboards. I just got a 10 metre optical cable and a cheap DAC next to my reciever.

        I suspect the industry is in a tailspin; the last players standing really don’t have to give a **** because the alternatives are onboard sudio or $$$$ pro cards.

        • Kairos@lemmy.todayOP
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          7 months ago

          I have a DAC in my microphone that I can use if I need to watch movies (HDR to SDR causes popping for some reason. Bad capacitors? Bad GPU?)

    • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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      7 months ago

      Might be an audiophile thing? I’ve been debating getting one myself simply because the onboard one is really limited in its abilities

      • masinko@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I would not buy PCI audio stuff. Lots of power goes through the motherboard, which makes these prone to RF interference, especially if you have a rig that has high power draw.

        Best to buy a external USB dac/amp. Either make sure that your mobo has a separate USB hub from the main ones (which some mobos might label them DAC), or a USB cable that isn’t rated for high voltage.

        • Kyouki@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          this, as someone who had suffered and tried everything to fix it: nothing helps.

          Go external.

          • towerful@programming.dev
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            7 months ago

            I have a Fiio DAC and i have no complaints.
            But i dont have golden ears that can hear the difference between good dacs, excellent dacs etc.
            Above a certain level, its good enough for me

              • towerful@programming.dev
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                7 months ago

                I have a K7.
                My only con with it is that the headphone jack doesnt cut the line outputs. So, i had to make an inline switch to mute my speakers for headphones only.
                I am now wishing it also had XLR outputs, but Im sure i can pick up a nice transformer balancing box from somewhere.

            • masinko@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              I have a FiiO Q3, I recommend it too.

              I’ve heard good things about the EK10/Olympus2, but haven’t tried it myself.

            • Kairos@lemmy.todayOP
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              7 months ago

              That looks like a phone from 2004 and I need like, a headphone jack.

        • al177@lemmy.sdf.org
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          7 months ago

          USB 5V power can be equally noisy, even from a powered hub, so that argument doesn’t make any sense. PCIe has a high current 12V rail available that has much more margin than USB for filtering with an LDO and run your signal chain well above the noise floor of the components.

          Besides, Asus Xonar as in the picture can take 12V from a drive connector to bypass the motherboard PCIe 12V “just in case”.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      7 months ago

      A sound card is a device you add to your motherboard if for some strange reason your motherboard doesn’t have the ability to play sound already. I have literally never heard of anyone needing one since about 1995.

      Maybe it’s for a retro system? It’s not exactly expensive.

      • Daxtron2@startrek.website
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        7 months ago

        A lot of motherboards cheap out on their audio. I had one that had a lot of EMI in the line in and swapped it out for a 30$ card like this and it cleared it up so people would stop telling me my mic sounded like shit lol.

      • RealFknNito@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Apparently having a dedicated sound card and high end audio equipment can improve the quality of the sound. You can chalk it up to audiophile stuff.

      • DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        I actually had to add a dedicated sound card to my PC because the onboard one shat itself and died somehow, and it was way cheaper than a new motherboard.

      • nocturne@sopuli.xyz
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        7 months ago

        I had a board that the onboard audio was causing crashes. I disabled it and installed a PCI sound card and everything was fine.

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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        7 months ago

        I literally have a modern system that does not have any audio onboard.

        I put in a USB connected mixer that also functions as an audio interface for my PC… But I could have easily gone this way too.

    • tws@lemmynsfw.com
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      7 months ago

      Back in the day, they were the only way to get sound out of machine, except the internal speaker but that only said beep

  • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    I’m so glad amazon is useless in my country due to high delivery times and fees. Local stores never vanished and their online stores are so much better.

  • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Sometimes there is a minimum advertised price that manufacturers will allow vendors to sell at publicly, and the price in cart is a way that vendors get around it. If that’s what’s happening here, OP might be getting a really good price. I don’t think this is a sinister plot by AMZN.

    • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
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      7 months ago

      If you assume everything’s a sinister plot by Amazon, you’ll be right most of the time.