I've been asked to help a friend fix his system and I'm hitting a wall. I've installed and run everything from your basic Mackie with cheap powered speakers to several full Dante systems with Yamaha QL/CL boards. This sounds worse than anything I've ever heard. Currently, it sounds like a tin can and I'm struggling to figure out the cause. I think this was specced and installed by the building contractors.
It doesn't matter if it's vocals, talking, or a full band. Everything sounds muffled and echo-y all at the same time. The one exception is that I can get decent sound with a stereo in at about 95db. Anything more and it all goes to hell (pun intended).
The basics of the setup: Midas M32 Yamaha sound processor (don't know the model) Crown amps (all at 100%) 4 TCX122 Turbosound Dublin speakers 2 TCX115B Turbosound Dublin subs
The room is a square with the stage in a corner. All 4 speakers are hung separately and the subs are under the stage.
I've cleared the eq on the mains and sound processor. I've gently eq'ed the room but without treating it, the frequency response changes every 5 feet so I don't want to go overboard. Next up is pulling the amps back and adjusting the gain structure. I also have extensive sound treatment planned. Any other recommendations?
Also, does anyone have experience with these speakers? I've never encountered them and I'm less than impressed.

I am preparing setting up tracks for playing small venues and clubs with high quality sound systems.
While I have done small DIY shows in the past with the tracks basically mono or center stereo coming out of a keyboard amp, where I have full control over the mix sound, I am trying to predict a good way to output the audio to the sound guy so they have more control to make it "sound good" while I'm on stage.
MAIN QUESTION: Does it make sense to pan the kick or overall drums to one channel, while panning all of the other tracks to the opposite channel? Would that give the sound person way more control and freedom to engineer the live sound??
FYI: I am also planning to play with a microkorg, a vocal loop station, and an SPD SX drum sampler.

https://www.saucerswap.finance/ [6th AMA of 2024]
Pine_apple
Thank you all for joining our monthly AMA today. Next week is Father's Day here in the United States. So happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. ABFT is co-hosting today and we have two awesome guests in the house, Brady and Gaurang. Both are co-founders of Bonzo Finance, an open source, non custodial lending and borrowing protocol built on the Hedera network. So welcome to our AMA, Brady and Gaurang.
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Hey, thanks so much for having us. Really appreciate it and excited to get the chance to chat with the SaucerSwap community.
Gaurang (Bonzo Finance)
Glad to be here.
ABFTFTW
Hey Brady. Hey Gaurang. Good to have you guys in the Bonzo Finance in the house. Happy to have you with us. I've been outside today and it's in Texas and it's a scorcher. I'm hoping some of that heat kind of passes off into the cryptosphere. I think the HBAR has a bright future. You know that most development going on in all the crypto space and I'm in it for the tech, so let's get this going. Talk to me, Peter.
Peter
Hi everyone. Welcome to our June AMA. And a very warm welcome to Brady and Gaurang from Bonzo, who will be answering some questions about their upcoming lending protocol. So super excited to welcome them up here to talk about that. So in the past, some of you may know, we've welcomed guests from projects like HeadStarter and Citadel wallet, so we are always excited to bring on builders in this space to talk about what they're building on Hedera.
Before we do jump into the questions from this week, we want to take a moment to address just the overall sentiment and roadmap. We wanna give everyone a sense of what's currently being worked on, what's coming next and our overall strategy to grow SaucerSwap.
So first of all, we have made some great progress on governance, which will provide a core utility to the SAUCE token. So for those unaware, governance is the core and sometimes exclusive utility of many DEX tokens. This includes UNI of Uniswap. With the release of governance, everyone will be able to vote with their SAUCE on proposals that align initiatives, create farms and LARI campaigns, decide token classifications, and so on and so forth. We have governance working now on Testnet and have created the UI for it. So we are looking at launching it early summer. So in the next few weeks. It could be towards the end of this month or it could go into next month but it is coming up.
Next we get to work on some features after governance that we know have been highly anticipated, namely Phase 2 and Phase 3 of Single-sided staking. We are super excited to follow through with these developments. We know that they've been a long time coming and they can contribute to some greater utility, both for the xSAUCE token and then also the Planck Epoch Collectible NFTs via kind of their redemption for Sauceling NFTs. So after we roll out governance, we'll be able to lock in the product schema for these features and move forward with their development. So we are really excited about bringing Phase 2 and Phase 3 of Single-sided staking online.
Additionally, with SAUCE having been listed on Bitget last month, we are looking forward to at least one more Centralized Exchange listing this month, with two being more likely. There is additionally a Centralized Exchange listing that is currently scheduled for July, which we are excited about as well.
We also want to just quickly bring to your attention we kicked off a major grant with the HBAR Foundation last week, providing over 20 Million HBAR in incentives for liquidity providers. At the time of receipt, that was over $2,000,000 USD an equivalent value for those tokens and those tokens are being distributed right now to SaucerSwap liquidity providers, in both Version 1 and Version 2, and we'll be live for the next few months. So if you haven't had a chance to check that out, feel free to do so on Saucerswap.finance on the liquidity page. You'll see kind of the effect of those increased rewards.
The salient point we do want to make in this introduction is we understand sentiment is lower today than it was a few months ago. We think this is kind of observed across DeFi on various networks, but you know the nature of these things is cyclical and we want our users to know that we are still developing, we're shipping major features coming up with governance and more on the roadmap that I just mentioned, as well as some other integrations in the coming weeks.
Looking back at the previous month, we think we had some major wins. You know we had this grant announcement with 20 Million HBAR, a major listing on Bitget, a MoonPay integration that's been in the works for a few weeks, not to mention the work that we have accomplished behind the scenes. So there's a lot to be excited about moving forward and we are very appreciative of all of your support as we continue to grow SaucerSwap.
I will just mention as well, you know the project depends on our community as much as it depends on development. So I would like to encourage everyone to stay positive. There's a lot to look forward to. We're working hard and remember that we have a well defined roadmap and we've consistently shipped features on that roadmap since the launch of SaucerSwap Version 1 almost two years ago, and we have a clear plan going forward as well to scale.
As we scale, the ecosystem has some exciting developments as well. So this is kind of the the feature of this AMA. We have Bonzo here, so lending and borrowing going live. It's a DeFi primitive that has an established symbiotic relationship with DEXs on other networks. It's a proven model, so we're excited to see projects like Bonzo and others coming online soon. There's a few lending and borrowing. I think HLiquity, it's already live. They created a pool on SaucerSwap. Bonzo is coming right up as well. And I think Sirio is another one. But anyway, all of these developments can bring a lot more awareness and activity to Hedera DeFi.
So with that preamble out of the way, we can get into the questions for this week.
___
Pine_apple
Thank you so much, Peter. Hedera DeFi, here we come. So the first question is from Rocco. With this environment being highly competitive, any project is required to have excellent marketing in order to succeed, regardless of how its tech is. What is SaucerSwap's long term plan to gain popularity and create brand awareness, especially to people outside of the Hydra ecosystem? As of my observations, current incentives don't reach far out of Hedera or SaucerSwap's community. So, for example, onboarding influential social media figures to talk about SaucerSwap, purchasing ad space or other collaborations in order to reach people that aren't already in the Hedera ecosystem. As of now, the average crypto enthusiast does not know of SaucerSwap's existence. What are your thoughts on that, Peter?
Peter
Yeah, Rocco, thanks for the question. So this kind of goes back to our overall marketing approach. And in general, it's always been to be objective and honest about the development of the platform. Reading brand awareness is a tricky thing and our philosophy is that it's linked to earning brand integrity. In our view, this comes from following through and executing on development.
So in Web3, you see a lot of marketing that focuses on hype and speculation, and in the short term that works. Our approach is different. We think that a long term, more sustainable approach that builds trust is better. It's not to say that we don't want visibility, especially to people outside the Hedera ecosystem. Quite the opposite. That's one of our main goals is to expand the challenge is accessibility. So right now there's one bridge to and from Hedera that not many people outside of Hedera know about. There is limited access to Hedera native USDC on Centralized Exchanges. The Hedera Token Service has not been integrated, full stop, on many Centralized Exchanges. These are substantial barriers to entry that that do make any marketing endeavors to users from other networks not impossible but definitely more challenging.
The silver lining to all of that is that all of these problems are being actively addressed, and when they are addressed, I think it's reasonable to expect the door to Hedera to open and because it will be so much easier to get involved by having easier access to native USDC for example, or being able to use the bridge that users are familiar with and trust, they will have less friction to get involved with Hedera and participate in the various network offerings.
So sum up our point of view, we think our marketing approach to date has been effective with a kind of high of reaching the top 25 DEXs across all networks by TVL, despite the accessibility challenges I mentioned before, and despite the lack of institutional capital on Hedera. So that is a massive achievement and we're not trying to rest on our laurels. I think it's just a good barometer of what we've achieved together. We surpassed Camelot, SpookySwap, QuickSwap, Bancor, Minswap - which is the leading DEX on Cardano - Loopring, and other very prominent DEXs, some of which had TVLs in excess of $1 billion last cycle.
So this growth we observed was not achieved by hiring influencers to create urgency or sense of hype, but just by being consistent and working hard and delivering on our roadmap. That strategy has been successful for the growth of SaucerSwap to date and that is our strategy going forward.
___
ABFTFTW
That was a great question Rocco, and Peter, you nailed it on the head. I couldn't agree more. Next question is for Bonzo Finance. Are there any plans to integrate SaucerSwap's API with Bonzo to enable collateral swaps directly from within the Bonzo Finance interface?
Gaurang (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah. To the question the answer is absolutely yes, but not immediately. We might be doing that in Q3 of this year. So what we are focusing on right now, Bonzo has a public Testnet live right now, which has the basic features like borrowing, lending, repaying, withdrawing and all these things, right. And we also have flash loans working right now on the Testnet. Our current main focus is to launch on the Hedera Mainnet with a basic set of features. These will include flash loans, liquidation bots, all the borrowing lending, you know, basic features of any lending protocol. Immediately after that, we want to launch the collateral swaps because our team has been using lending protocols personally and I think collateral swaps or even DEX swaps is a really nice feature, so if you see the APY for some token is more than the APY for the token that you have supplied, you can immediately switch that token without going through the whole process of withdrawing and supplying again. So yeah, it's definitely on the roadmap and that will be one of the first features that we tackle after launching on the Mainnet.
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah, and just to add to that as well. Bonzo Finances, it's based on the Aave V2 code base and so the functionalities that you're seeing on Aave V2 are all part of the roadmap. And I think we're taking a similar approach to SaucerSwap when it comes to sort of laying a a really solid and robust foundation initially. They had started with Uniswap V2 and then evolved feature sets and product offerings and eventually adopted Uniswap V3, and we're taking a very similar approach and it's sort of phased, but we want to deliver a really solid and usable product right off the bat, utilizing Aave V2 and sort of its core functionalities.
___
Pine_apple
Great. Thank you so much for that Brady and Gaurang. The Bonzo testnet is found on Bonzo.Finance, so for free to check that out guys. So our next question is from an anonymous user. When is SAUCE going to be listed on another Centralized Exchange? To get a ByBit listing, you need to have 40 million marketcap. SAUCE well past 50+ Million marketcap. Why is SAUCE not on ByBit? And another question is, did the team also apply for Binance after the recent announcement? What are your thoughts, Peter?
Peter
Yeah. Thanks for this question. So as I mentioned in the introduction to the AMA, we are planning for at least one Centralized Exchange listing this month, with two potentially being on the horizon. We can't speak on kind of specific exchanges or the exact scheduling right now, but we are satisfied with the progress we have been making and we're looking forward to the coming weeks.
I will just also note that so newer projects like PACK from the HashPack team tend to get listed faster or percede the scheduling in terms of listing of other network tokens. Just being a newer project, this is kind of what Centralized Exchanges want to capitalize on, and it's great for the ecosystem. It's been really good for us and it means that HTS is integrated on exchanges. There's more precedent for it and some more token listings can follow. And we have been working with HashPack to achieve the goal for the, you know, to the benefit of the entire HTS ecosystem to have HTS more widely integrated on Centralized Exchanges. And that of course kind of culminated in the Bitget listing last month with PACK and SAUCE.
___
ABFTFTW
Yeah, sounds good to me. Thanks for that explanation there, Peter. Septia. Hello, Septia. How are you? Septia wants to know what risk controls will Bonzo Finance have in place to minimize liquidity crunches.
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah, it's a great question. Happy to take that one. So there's a few things that we're doing to try and minimize that risk. The first one, which is foundational to Aave, is that when you're participating in lending and borrowing, it is an overcollateralized position that you're providing. So when you supply assets to the protocol, you are only allowed to borrow a percentage of the value that is supplied and the percentage is different per asset. So based on risk parameters and a risk analysis for each asset that's supported, that over collateralization amount is going to change. Essentially the loan to value amount will change. So when users are sort of over collateralizing, there's a buffer that exists for those assets.
And then in addition, dynamic interest rates. So the interest rates for borrowing adjust based on the utilization of that particular asset. So as more of an asset was borrowed, the interest rate for that asset increases and that incentivizes the behavior of repaying and also sort of encouraging liquidity to return to the protocol. Gaurang, anything else there that I may have missed?
Gaurang (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah. So I just want to give an example of the Aave market on the Scroll network. The Scroll is another L2 on Etherium. It actually happened I think on Thursday or Friday this week. So on the Aave protocol, there's a concept called utilization rate. Essentially, it's a rate of borrowed assets against supplied assets. So let's say all the people on the on the network has supplied 10,000 USDC and all the people have borrowed 9,000 USDC. So in that case, the utilization rate is going to be 90%. So as Brady was saying, as the utilization rate goes on increasing, the interest rate goes very high. So on Scroll, what happened this week was that the USDC utilization rate was at 99%, and because of that, the borrow and the supply APY on that particular asset was very high. So it was going towards like 80% or something for the supply. And you know what happens is with the market dynamics whenever the APY goes so high, there are more people in the market for supplying that asset. So it's kind of like an equilibrium and it's a game theoretical problem. So what we have observed in the protocol in the past is that the market dynamics kind of help with this. That's number one.
We are also looking at implementing something called Borrow Caps from Aave V3. We might bring in that functionality in [our] Aave V2 [fork] now. I'm not sure whether we will be doing it, but we are trying to do it before the Mainnet launch. With the Borrow Caps, we can actually cap the utilization of any assets, so we could cap it at let's say 90% or 85% or something. Yeah, these are like a couple of things that we're looking at.
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah. And then to add in addition to that, there is a mechanism within Aave that is also being employed in Bonzo called a safety module. Essentially, a safety module is a reserve of the protocols native asset. Holders of that native asset are incentivized to lock up their tokens into this safety module and receive a interest rate, an APY for doing so. That reserve can be employed in the case of a shortfall event related to liquidity. So if there's moments of extreme volatility for supported assets and liquidations that don't take place in a timely manner or take place improperly, that reserve is also employed to ensure that accreditors are made whole. So anticipation is that we are doing everything to mitigate the chance of that from happening, but it is sort of an insurance in the case of something like that taking place. And then if it is employed, the assets that are utilized from the safety module, it's shared across anybody who is participating in that functionality.
___
Pine_apple
Great. Thank you so much for that, Brady and Gaurang. So moving on to our next question, this is from a anonymous user. SaucerSwap Twitter is not very active recently and the number of followers is stagnating, which seems to indicate a lack of interest. Any plans to boost engagement, engagement and dynamism in the coming weeks?
Peter
Yeah, well, Bonzo's surely getting the fun questions. So SaucerSwap's Twitter account has grown by 3400 followers in the last 30 days, which indicates roughly a 10% increase month over month. That is an excellent growth rate. And over the next few weeks, we have several developments and integrations that we will announce and highlight right on our social media platforms, including Twitter. So in terms of recent growth, we have enjoyed a healthy rate of increase again 10% month over month is very good.
Going back to the answer from before regarding our marketing approach, we use our social media accounts to put out useful information about integrations and protocol developments, so that all the content we put out is not just fluff. We want to put out substance. Additionally, the Spring Incentives Campaign does present a unique opportunity for marketing. Looking into potentially doing a press release for this one to kind of target users from other networks. So highlighting that as an endeavor is something we're currently pursuing.
___
ABFTFTW
Sounds pretty good, Peter. Thank you for that. Next question is again for the Bonzo crew. Are there any integrations that will exist between SaucerSwap DEX and Bonzo Finance lending protocol?
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah, we're definitely looking into integrations between the two. I think the first thing off the bat is there are two core functionalities within the Bonzo Finance ecosystem for liquidation bots and flash loans that Gaurang mentioned earlier. And so for liquidation bots, essentially what that is, is anybody in the ecosystem who is technically savvy can operate a liquidation bot that seeks out opportunities for liquidations. Essentially when liquidation thresholds are met for users. And upon performing the liquidation, they would take the collateral that was supplied by the user and swaps would need to be performed as part of that process. And when we are building out the templates for liquidation bots in that ecosystem, it is going to heavily rely on SaucerSwap and their DEX and the liquidity in SaucerSwap to perform that action.
One thing I'm excited about that in the sense that I think that by adding lending protocols and particularly Bonzo Finance and our liquidation bot ecosystem, it should help further drive volumes that we see on the SaucerSwap DEX, which is a key health metric, and then in addition to that with flash loans.
Flash loans are essentially the ability to borrow assets from the Bonzo Protocol without providing collateral. And the way that works is it's the development of a smart contract that borrows assets or liquidity from the protocol, utilizes that liquidity for certain types of financial transactions, so it could be arbitrage between two Decentralized Exchanges or between a Centralized and a Decentralized Exchange, and then paying back that loan plus interest, all within a single transaction. And if the loan is unable to be repaid back within that single transaction, the process reverses. And so it's as if that process never happens. So flash loans are viewed as a very relatively safe way to be able to utilize larger amounts of liquidity in the protocol and earn a profit for doing so based on the various types of activities that would utilize that liquidity for in the templates that we're building out for our developer ecosystem. That includes SaucerSwap as sort of a key exchange that someone would utilize when participating in a flash loan type activities. Gaurang, anything else there to add in addition with regards to integrations?
Gaurang (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah. So we mentioned the collateral swaps earlier, so that will be another integration. Also, we are heavily relying on the WHBAR, the wrapped HBAR contracts deployed by SaucerSwap. So for us, I think for any blockchain protocol, composability is very important, right? So it's very important to be able to work with essentially all the contracts and all the things that have already been deployed on the network. That's why we are integrating with the WHBAR contract deployed by SaucerSwap. That way, there's very close tie and close relationship between Bonzo and SaucerSwap. Anyone who is kind of building liquidation bots on Bonzo or utilizing the flash loans on Bonzo will be able to use SaucerSwap very seamlessly.
___
Pine_apple
Great. Thank you so much for that, Brady and Gaurang. So this next question is from a user and you guys kind of touched on this a little bit. For liquidation bots on Bonzo Finance, will there be mechanisms in place to utilize SaucerSwap's liquidity to facilitate the liquidation process efficiently?
Gaurang (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah, absolutely. So I would say it's like the keystone for any liquidation bots on Bonzo. So without SaucerSwap's liquidity, the liquidation bots and the flash loans won't really work. So just to kind of explain in short how the liquidations work, let's say I have deposited some token on Bonzo token like KARATE or DOVU or SAUCE token, and I have borrowed USDC against those tokens. Now let's say what happens is, just like what happened yesterday, the supply token value goes down by 20% because of some events in the market that happened yesterday for example. Now what happens is in this case my loan to value ratio, my LTV, could go above the liquidation threshold and in this case, the liquidation bots will kick in. So what the liquidation bots will do is they will repay my USDC loan by taking a flash loan. They will swap my USDC on SaucerSwap back to SAUCE, and then they will essentially pay back the flash loan on Bonzo. So all these actions will happen in the same block, in the same transaction on the blockchain, not the same transaction, but the same block on the blockchain. And that's why without SaucerSwap, liquidation bots might not work unless you have like a big liquidity in your own wallet. Unless you have like 10s of thousands or even millions of dollars in your wallet, it won't work.
___
ABFTFTW
Awesome, Gaurang. Thank you so much for that. Next question goes to Joseph, what cross chain activities will the team be participating in over the next six months to encourage new users to come to SaucerSwap?
Joseph
Hi everyone. Man, I feel like a second class citizen during this far down. Well yeah, to answer the question, there are several interoperability solutions currently integrating with Hedera. So I believe Axelar has been the first to publicly announce this, and once integrated, there will be more avenues to bridge assets to and from Hedera and other chains. So SaucerSwap plans on leveraging this by allocating a portion of the 23 Million+ HBAR in THF grant money towards liquidity incentives in both V1 and V2 pools. And this would be pools containing these newly supported cross-chain assets, with an emphasis on stable coins.
On protocols like Axelar will also enable cross-chain swaps in addition to the standard bridge transactions, and this means you can access say Uniswap liquidity from within the SaucerSwap's web frontend.
Beyond this, we are continuing to assist with the onboarding of new active liquidity management or ALM providers such as Gamma and Steer protocol. These offer an alternative liquidity management strategy to Ichi. So ALMs, of course, are important for the health of SaucerSwap for V2 since concentrated liquidity positions can be a challenge to manage without the auto rebalancing. And lastly, I think it would be great for multi-chain yield aggregators like Beefy to integrate with Hedera. This would enable V1 yield farmers and potentially V2 liquidity providers to automatically compound their earnings without the need to do like a manual harvest.
___
Pine_apple
Great. Thanks so much for that. Joseph, you're A1 in my book friend. So the next question is from anonymous user. Development seems relatively slow recently. Are you facing particular challenges such as technical staffing or other? When can we expect the release of the features in development visible on the roadmap? For example, improved LARI analytics, slippage optimization, Wallet Connect integration, etc.
Joseph
Yeah, good question. So development is fairly cyclical, meaning we generally spend several months with our heads down working on a new product or feature. Then once it's ready to ship, we allocate more resources to marketing and just become more public facing in general. So you may have noticed this pattern with single-sided staking, SaucerSwap Version 2, most recently Autopools, and the product that we're currently working on is on-chain governance.
Also, as our protocol continues to mature, the length of these development cycles tends to increase as considerations like scaling and stability become more pertinent, and this has become especially apparent in recent times, given that we experienced a 10x increase in traffic near the beginning of the year.
There's also external considerations that are outside of our control. So for example, we are unable to release Wallet Connect despite completing our integration. This is due to several outstanding differences between Hedera wallet providers, which are currently being resolved.
So all to say, we unfortunately can't move with the same cadence as we did at the beginning of our projects life cycle. However, we are taking proactive measures, such as hiring more developers and ensuring tech debt is minimized and we have a solid foundation on which to build. I do agree that frequent communication on the status of our development is important and the hyper competitiveness of this space is acknowledged. So we will put out a development update this week, and this should bring the community up to speed on what has been achieved and what can be expected in the near term.
___
ABFTFTW
Thank you, Joseph. Next question is what is the plan to deepen liquidity in Bonzo and also the Hedera DeFi ecosystem as the whole? And then a follow up question is a DEX partnership like Joe, Cake or JUP coming up?
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah, it's a great question and it's something that's really top of mind for us at the end of the day. In order to create an economically sustainable protocol, we need to have TVL on Bonzo and then we need to ensure that folks are utilizing that TVL for borrowing. That's where you know majority of the fees come from for the treasury for Bonzo Finance. There's sort of three key things that that we're looking at off the bat that that seemed critical and it's the incentivization of liquidity providers, offering a wide range of assets that are supported by the protocol, and then leveraging stable coins and in particular USDC.
With the incentivization of liquidity providers, there are two programs that were looking at running. The first one is we are in discussions with HBAR Foundation around liquidity incentives for their DeFi Spring program that SaucerSwap is also partaking in. Those discussions aren't finalized yet, but the hope is to be able to provide HBAR incentives for folks that are both supplying liquidity and borrowing.
And then the second is a points program that's being employed by the protocol. So we're actually going to be using the HCS-20 point standard using the Hedera consensus service for the protocol. I think it's one of the first times that in the Hedera ecosystem, there's been an employment of this HCS-20 standard for like a real world live use case. I think the only other one might be NFTier. That points program - we were inspired by Margin Phi, Kamino, and some of these other lending protocols that you see on networks like Solana and across the Web3 space - and it's going to run in seasons.
So each season is around five to six months, and points that are accumulated throughout those seasons for participating in supplying liquidity and borrowing. Users will receive rewards at the end of each season for the accumulation of those points. So we think between those two incentive models, it's sort of strong case for folks to want to be able to supply liquidity to the protocol.
In addition and sort of tangential to that, there's a lot of liquidity in the ecosystem today that is in the treasuries of these token based projects or in large holders accounts - sometimes employees or investors or folks that have you know are large holders of these token based projects - and there hasn't been a extremely safe place for them to supply that liquidity, which unlocks it for the ecosystem that's more sort of relatively lower risk where they're able to earn rewards on it. And so with Bonzo, because when you support a specific asset, it's a single liquidity pool. It's not like a token pair similar to like a DEX. And in discussions that we've had with token based projects, looking to them as potentially unlocking some of that liquidity that is in their treasuries or by these large holders that for many reasons they're unable to sell their tokens on market, but they do want to utilize them, Bonzo is a very appealing place to be able to supply those assets.
In addition to that, in terms of a wide range of assets, one of the things that I'm most excited about that's sort of in the process of being developed is bridging infrastructure and in particular the engagement with Axelar. I think the one of the few ways that we can really drive overall TVL and the ecosystem is through the use of bridging, and providing incentives for users to drive liquidity from other networks to Hedera. So we are in the process of waiting for Axelar bridging and bridge providers that are utilizing Axelar to come online, but those wrapped assets that can be brought over are going to play a critical role in like the growth and health of Hedera's DeFi ecosystem and in particular protocols like SaucerSwap and Bonzo Finance. We certainly want to run campaigns that target users on other networks and bring them and liquidity over to the Hedera network, but again, just waiting on the development of this bridging infrastructure to take place, but it feels very promising.
Then the third thing is stable coins. There's a huge emphasis on USDC right now in Hedera ecosystem as part of HBAR foundation strategy and I think just overarching strategy. The liquidity of USDC on Hedera is quite low relative to other public networks. So as Gaurang mentioned earlier, USDC and stable coins on lending protocols are one of, if not the most highest utilized asset. We think that's going to hold true for the Hedera ecosystem. So in our discussions with market makers and liquidity providers and other folks that would be supplying that liquidity, USDC is definitely top of mind and we want to be a liquidity powerhouse when it comes to USDC and other stable coin assets.
___
Pine_apple
Thank you so much for that thorough explanation, Brady. So our next question is from Maurice. Is there any consideration to use the Pyth network for better auto pools?
Joseph
Yeah. So our team actually has met with Pyth and we do see value in an integration. In terms of Auto Pools, I know that Ichi uses Chainlinks transaction manager to streamline the rebalance function. So this is done by quickly identifying and confirming transactions during periods of heavy network congestion. I don't think that's particularly relevant to Hedera just due to architectural differences between Hashgraph and Blockchain, but in terms of price oracles, Ichi currently looks at SaucerSwap TWAP oracles and these price assets based on token reserves and liquidity pools. So I'm not sure if they would how they would use third party oracles such as those offered by Pyth, but if you have any ideas, feel free to drop them in our Discord.
___
ABFTFTW
Next question is when is stage 2 and 3 of single-sided staking going to launch and what are the use cases for the PEC NFTs?
Joseph
Yeah. So Peter touched on this, but stages 2 and 3 of single-sided staking will be prioritized following the release of on-chain governance and this is planned for early summer. Our conception of how phases 2 and 3 will work has evolved since it was first announced, and we now have a better sense of how an optimal system could be developed that has product market fit within the Hedera ecosystem. So you can expect marketing and educational material on this extension of single-sided staking to become a focus once token weighted voting and a functioning DAO become live.
In terms of how Planck Epoch Collectible NFTs relate to stage 3 of single-sided staking, the idea is that holders of these NFTs will have the option of redeeming them for Sauceling NFT, and these Sauceling NFTs in turn can be staked to increase one's weight of rewards in a Community Pool.
___
Pine_apple
Thank you for that, Joseph. So this next question is for Brady and Gaurang. Can developers or traders use Bonzo Finance's flash loans to execute complex arbitrage trades or liquidity provision strategies on SaucerSwap?
Brady (Bonzo Finance)
Yeah, absolutely. So as mentioned before, flash loans can be employed to be able to perform these arbitrage activities in the templates that we're creating for users who are creating flash loans, automatically incorporate SaucerSwap's DEX as part of that. The way that that process might look is a trader identifies that there's a price discrepancy between an asset that's on SaucerSwap and maybe another Decentralized Exchange, or Centralized Exchange. They configure a flash loan where the trader is able to borrow the necessary funds to be able to execute this arbitrage trade that they want to perform. All within the same single transaction, the trader would sell the borrowed assets on the exchange with the higher price and then buy them back on SaucerSwap at a lower price as an example. Then finally, the trader repays the flash loan using the profits from the arbitrage trade and then keeping the remaining profits for themselves. This is sort of one example that flash loans can be utilized for.
In terms of liquidity provisioning - you can borrow assets against your collateral on Bonzo and then you really can do anything that you want with those assets that you've borrowed. So one of the things that I could anticipate seeing is there are various APY rates on SaucerSwap for providing liquidity. Based on these different asset types, and let's say you're a large holder of HBAR, you want to be able to get exposure to these other assets to supply them as liquidity and earn interest or earn rewards for doing so, but you don't want to sell your HBAR in order to do that. So you can collateralize your HBAR using Bonzo. You can take out a loan of let's say USDC because USDC interests APY on SaucerSwap is pretty high. There is a small borrow APY that you would pay for borrowing the USDC from Bonzo, but you would supply that to SaucerSwap and you'd be earning an ideally larger APY for supplying it as liquidity to the protocol. That is one strategy where liquidity provisioning can take place where it utilizes Bonzo and it utilizes SaucerSwap. That's going to help deepen the liquidity for assets on SaucerSwap's DEX, but then also create more sort of efficient market. So with greater liquidity in SaucerSwap's DEX, there's a less likely chance of slippage and other benefits that come along with that, as well as efficiencies.
___
ABFTFTW
Awesome, Brady, I appreciate all that information. That's really fascinating stuff. This is where we break away from the traditional AMA and move on to the TMS because this isn't the question, this is tell me something. So Anon wants to tell us. I think it's appropriate to use AI technologies to be more inclusive of non-English speaking communities and not be attacked with so many questions afterwards. Joseph, you want to tell him something back?
Joseph
Sure, take a stab. Yeah. So we actually did leverage AI to translate our gitbook documentation into, I believe, 11 different languages. I do think there's also value in translating the AMA transcripts, so I appreciate this suggestion. Slightly unrelated, but adding localization and multi-currency support to the webapp would also increase SaucerSwap's accessibility to non-English speakers. I'm not sure if automating this with AI is necessarily the right approach, as we'd want to ensure the translations are accurate, but in any case, we definitely plan on looking into this once current roadmap items are completed.
(...)

So, I didn’t know how to write this in a title, so bear with me, but if velocity is impossible to be measured without a reference point, since it does not have any properties that can be measured individually, is it possible, that everything in the universe is moving in a particular direction at some uncalculable speed which disregards the speed of light?
What I mean by that is, potentially everything in the universe is moving at a rate of X in one direction, and we calculated C because relative to everything in the universe C is the maximum, but if there were some “external force” outside of the system then it would be possible for velocities greater than C to exist?
This is completely arbitrary and useless information if it is true and also there is nothing outside the boundary of the universe, but technically sounds possible if something did exist.
Also, on a separate note, C is also arbitrarily defined already, because there is no way to calculate a 1 way speed of light, so we take the “average” of the two way speed of light, which again, even if it wasn’t true, it wouldn’t make a difference anyway, because it would be impossible to calculate.
Just a thought experiment that I came upon while thinking about the universe.
Also, please don’t act like I’m dumb, I am just asking a question about something I don’t really know how to research exactly because it is not my field, but I am a math PhD student, so assume that if you have sources on anything rigorous, then I would be able to understand with enough time.

I have got 2.1 speaker system (2x10 W) which I with with my macbook using 3.5mm. The sound is normal no hifi. I want to use an amplifier for the system to get better sound which should also have bluetooth so that I can pair with my phone because my sound system has only only 3.5 audio in.
Please suggest me what should I look for or if it is worth getting an amp or a dac?

Hello everyone,
I'm trying to create a setup to produce two concurrent and synchronized 40hz signals using Arduino Nano. I would be very grateful if someone would be able to write me a piece of code to produce these two signals.
I would use these signals to produce a 40hz flashing light using a MOSFET module which controls a LED strip and 40hz clicking sound that is fed into an external amp and from there to headphones. The two signals should be synchronous at the rising edge.
I'm building the setup as a therapy device for my parent suffering from Alzheimer's. According to studies, watching and listening to 40hz light and sound should slow down the progression of the disease.
I'll post an image below of how the signals should look like. This image is taken from the research article done on the benefits of 40hz light and sound:
https://preview.redd.it/cc4mlixukm5d1.png?width=943&format=png&auto=webp&s=573d90432bce5a922bb107b497b658a5428337ee
The MOSFET module I was planning on using to control the LED strip:
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B092D3YZK3/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I also have a 12V LED power supply, that would power the whole setup, including Arduino.

I have an epipone sg 6 sting with some highs output seymour duncan pickups.
Previously, I used Reaper,+Guitar Rig with a 15" PA system and got a pretty decent sound.
I dont have room for that equipment anymore, so I need a small high output mini amp that's able to produce clear distorted tones with lots of sustain and minimal noise at a decent volume where I dont need ear plugs or anything
Ive seen some pedals that are able to drive tube amps at high power without the high volume. Is that something I should be looking for, or is there a solid state amp that can do the same thing.
Im not an audiophie, not looking for some one off special tone that nobody else can replicate or whatever, I just need a decent practice amp (with a cab) because right now Im practicing without it pugged in at all lol. Any advice or product links are appreciated.

Amplifiers are what turn watts into decibels, yet there is so much focus on the wattage and barely any on decibels. Sound volume isn't measured in watts, it's measured in decibels. Often, watts are just a marketing term. Some companies use RMS watts and others peak, thus why 2 amps with the same wattage can vary in volume. Some amps have efficient speakers that don't require as much power, thus why a lower wattage amp can be louder than a higher wattage amp. The instrument and frequencies can make a difference as well, thus why a 100W bass amp can barely keep up with a loud drummer while a 100W guitar amp will deafen the room. Using watts to try to determine volume leads to confusion, thus why there are so many questions around it. The manufacturers want that confusion because it helps their marketing. A truer indication of how loud an amp is by decibels, and very few companies share that info in the guitar world even though they will in the pro audio realm. Obviously, there are other factors involved, but decibels will still tell you more about volume than watts will.
Edit: I'm referring to amplification as a system of amp and speaker

I have the completely stock non fender sound system and I just got done installing a 10 inch sub with a 500w Rockford Fosgate amp. I love the bass but the mid’s and highs are atrocious.
I have a broken Rockville RXA-T1 I can exchange and use. But I’m wondering if they have any plug and play speakers that just give a little more volume.

I’ve (M34) Been married for 5 years to my wife. We have two stunning children and life has actually become quite stable for us financially lately which is not something we’ve always been able to say. My wife is firey. But for a while we’ve been on a good course. We usuallly have one or two very bad fights a year where it goes nuclear.
Two days back she’s laying in watching tv in bed. The kids are getting restless , she gets over stimulated and starts to lay it on me about how I work to much and how she wished our life was like before (when we were broke) I had barely any work , but got to go to the beach all the time. The way she approaches these things is very emotional and it feels like she’s trying to lay a lot of shame at my feet rather than actually work though an issue and make a plan to find a some kind of balanced outcome. I’ve worked really hard to get us a good house and get my son in a good school and generally provide a good foundation for us. I’m trying to explain to her that she should understand I’m Trying my best for us and it’s not going to be this way forever but she’s rebutting almost everything I say and insisting that I’m to be held in a kind of position of blame for this situation. I personally think this is a reaction to her own inner issues and lack of personal Motivations. She’s obviously suffering inside which I feel for. But her reaction is to find an external reason for the pain and the proceed to emotionally ventilate on it( me ). So we start to get a bit tense where I’m feeling a bit put out by her statements and insistence that I’m really failing her and the kids ect. A short while later my son is telling us that one of the older boys in his mma class is a little to to rough with him and he doesn’t like it. We are very attentive when it comes to personal boundaries so we were both invested in his issue. I reminded him that mma is an aggressive sport. My wife who was still fired up from our previous exchange quickly rebutted this and exclaimed “he’s six years old. How dare someone be so rough with him.” I said fair enough, I can speak to his coach but I suggested maybe he use this as an opportunity to work on enforcing his own boundaries, to which she straight up called me a wuss And doubled down by referring to other issues that have arisen in his school where I’ve encouraged him to try to fix the issue himself before I go in an address the problem. She doubles down again calling me a wuss and insisting that my approach is because I’m Being spineless. This REALLY touches a nerve with me. I feel like I’m being so blatantly undermined as a father figure and diminished by the other parent infront of the child in such a toxic way.
I’m frankly furious about what she’s said and I straight up tell her she’s being a dick. She picked up a file of mine with many important documents and flings it across the room. She then claims that I’ve crossed the line by calling her a dick. Honestly in an ideal world. I would remain calm at all times. But sometimes I feel very violated by her energy, I feel like I have to up my aggressiveness because she becomes very domineering in her tones and manorisms. Im telling myself ( maybe wrongly) that it’s understandable that I called her a dick ( because she was totally being one) And it’s not like I was being so personal with my dick comments. It was just a reaction to feeling insulted by her comments. But to her it equals out her calling me a wuss and diminishing me infront of our son. She uses my reaction to her abusive behaviour As a retort for my issues with her Initial statements.
She packed her bags and said she’s going to stay with her folks and her entire frame is that I’ve crossed the line. And I need to do the work to clean this up. I straight up tell her that it’s not going to happen. We’ve been here before. But I’m Not accepting that I’ve done somthing so bad here. On the contrary, she’s crossed the line and needs to make amends.
This whole thing may sound so stupid to some people.(probably because it is) but Its not going away. The vibes are still off and we keep circling around this fight. I want to know, Is calling her a dick as bad as her calling me a wuss and claiming I’m failing my son ( infront of him) ??? I feel like parental issues like this are very sensitive moments which can inform your child’s psychology Greatly, I’m a little bit trad in the sense that I think parents should uphold each others values snd collaborate towards being positive role models and figureheads within the family system. Her statements are to me cannibalistic. They tear apart the fabric of our family unit. But she insists that is just my ego, and I should just accept it, I feel there are fundamental issues entwined between the lines of this Exchange.
Just looking for some outside perspectives . Thanks for taking the time to read

https://preview.redd.it/qg5js1psyk5d1.png?width=1433&format=png&auto=webp&s=6f411dc2da2f18cc2e7795d7943b0804edf66a3c
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/BNpZbL
Please comment.
Things I am uncertain:
Cooler seem to be too good to be true
Memory brand, never hear of that

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front): There’s been drama and the main developer of the HA Unifi Protect integration has been booted out. There’s currently no one stepping up to take over. You need to either stop updating Unifi Protect (so that an update doesn’t break your HA integration), or take measures to switch over to that developers (now unofficial) integration.
EDIT: Maybe we can all convince Ubiquiti to maintain it themselves? Please go comment to see if we can create pressure on them.
Long Version:
(I’m gonna try and save my opinions till the end and avoid editorializing)
If you remember, the (formerly) main developer for the Unifi Protect Integration has strong feelings for Ubiquiti’s decision to require Unifi cloud access to enable local Smart detections. As an attempted protest/raise awareness, he submitted a pull request to the main HA branch that intentionally broke smart detection integration. If accepted, that would have meant all users of HA that use this integration and that feature would have had it stop working. The HA staff did not approve that pull request.
A few months following, he submitted a pull request that simply changed the license to ‘Business Source License” instead of an MIT open-source license. Please read his reasoning at that link.
In response, HA removed his access to the HA official github for the integration and removed his account as the maintainer of it. They forked his library at the point before the license was changed, and no one has really stepped up to take place as the official maintainer, so it’s left in a state of limbo.
I asked for some clarification on what that meant on an issue report, and he replied. The reply was quickly deleted by HA staff, but I have a copy saved. I think it’s worth reading so i will post it at the end.
He has continued to work on new features and bug fixes on his personal git repository. If you want to switch to it, you will have to manually install his version of Unifi Protect integration. This has been no such development on the official version.
My Opinion:
First, let me say I’d tried to capture these events as an outsider to the best of my ability. And I’ve tried to interpret them with my somewhat rookie understanding of the nuances of open-source collaborative development at this scale. So please forgive and feel free to correct anything. I just think this series of events and how it will impact the users of this code need to laid out in one place.
AngellusMortis was dead right about Ubiquiti requiring cloud access for local smart detections to be enabled. That’s a misstep by Ubiquiti’s commitment to staying 100% local (if the user wanted) and they have not addressed that when it’s called out. However, I will admit he can also get short/spicy when answering issues on github with his integration, and his actions with the pull requests and license change were extreme. I wish there were more attempts at working this out with more middle ground before this forking became inevitable, as the only people that suffer when an OSS repo is forked for drama are the end users.
However he seems to be a very good programmer (put the best way possible from an end user), and any programmer that shares code like this must also be credited for being generous. I owe him a beer and a steak dinner if I ever meet him in real life, as a large part of my home automation relies on it. For example:

• Protect Doorbell person detects and doorbell rings trigger custom sounds on all my Alexa speakers just like Ring doorbells do. (One of the earliest things i did with HA years ago)
• All my existing external lights will turn on/off with smart person detections on my external G5 bullet cameras as if they were motion lights (but better, precision control on when lights are triggered thanks to zone masks).
• The mechanical chime on my doorbell automatically gets disabled or re-enabled depending on if the Sonos speaker in my 1yr-old's room is playing lullabies during nap time. AKA, the doorbell goes into “do not disturb” mode so it only buzzes our phones for stupid UPS deliveries instead of waking the baby. This automation alone has made the wife so happy she pretty much has given me a hall pass to buy any more/new ubiquiti/automation products I want.

And that was all possible to AngellusMortis work.
His reply to me that was deleted:

I would find it surprising if the core integration is ever updated again. And if it is, it will only ever be for the most basic of support. I really doubt there will ever be impactful new features added as I have been doing. Things like the Media Source, sensodoor lock support (RIP), exposing the event thumbnails for notifications, and many others. There is a sub-50 line PR that adds a feature I kept overlooking by accident that has been sitting for literally over a month. HA does not give a shit about this integration enough to approve the CI run so it can be merged. It is because the members of the org do not give a shit about security cameras inside of HA since it does not fit into their view of what Home Assistant should be used for. It is also why the video player for HA is fundamentally broken for security cameras and has been for literally years.
They are choosing to segment the integration and force someone to pick it up, which is unlikely to every happen. The license specifically allows usage in HA. It just has to be my code, as it was written. With no fork. This is a growing problem with the open-source world. More and more companies and groups, in this case Naba Casa, want to reap all of the benefits from open-source projects without any rules or restrictions. Open-source absolutism is what I call it. OSI and anyone that always calls for open-source absolutism just conveniently ignore the time and effort people put into open source. Usually for their own benefit and profit. Look at the story of Elasticsearch and AWS.
It is still open source. You can still do whatever you want with it, you just cannot intentionally cut me out of a project that I have contributed 95% of the code to and I want to retain the right to be able to restrict its usage for projects that cause me stress or too much additional work. HA is perfectly okay with rejecting contributions anytime they do not want to take on the additional burden of work a feature would cause them. But since it is the "the largest open-source project in the world" they can just go "lol, then fork us" and say fuck you to anything else who wants the same rights.
In this case, Nabu Casa employees want to come into my code and dictate terms to how I write and manage it all because they refuse to come up with alternative solutions. The only solutions proposed are almost always "contribute something better". Of course, they will just deny anything that does not fit into their limited view of what "home users" want, even if actual users show them that they are wrong (5th highest feature request of all time).
Okay, you do not like something my library is doing, that I have intentionally added to handle support issues for Home Assistant because Home Assistant Github and support fucking sucks. Guess what? It is on you to make a better working solution. Not me. Of course, when I make these complaints, I am ignored or gaslit about it. When the burden of dealing with literally hundreds of people making the same fucking support issue over and over again makes me a bit hostile, no wants even think to offer to help. Or make support suck ass for suck a large project. Or let me link to my own documentation and support. When I change the license because of it, HA decides to keep ignoring the situation and pretend like nothing is wrong. Of course, there is the double-standard when Nabu Casa employees want to do the same thing, and for the same reason. They do not want to deal with the support that will be generated by the project being used in the manner that it is.
I have always been very open about how shitty HA treats their contributors. Not everyone works full time on open-source or are employed by Nabu Casa so they can continue to do so. There is a reason why once an integration "loses" a codeowner it stops getting features and just breaks. And new people will choose to make a HACS integration instead of trying to update or maintain the core one. Because of the rules, micromanaging and bullshit. Code reviews for style issues, or performance issues are great. But if you want to decide to use a part of Home Assistant in a way that they do not like, you will just be alienated, ignored or kicked out. If you do not fucking like people accessing hass.datadirectly, then make a real API and stop putting burden of your mine trap of rules on contributors. Contributors that write software because they find it fun and want to make something cool. Not be your fucking code monkeys or support bitches. Of course, once again, HA will also choose to block custom integrations that do things they do not like or cause additional support burden on them, but you are never allowed to try to make things easier for you as a contributor.

​

Hello fellow NV fans!
I come to you in an effort to (possibly) fix the near constant crashing of my NV.
It crashes around 30-40 minutes playing OR in specific areas wich I cannot go through, i.e. McCarran interior around Col. Hsu, The Mojave Outpost interior around Maj. Knight and Ranger Jackson.
I am aware that certain mods should be a no-go together like New California and TTW, for instance. My intention with adding specifically New California was cause I wanted a few specific armors and such.
Looking for any specific help or general directions and knowledge in this area.
PS: have lots of crash logs.
Thanks in advance.
Unmanaged: NewCalifornia DLC Control
Unmanaged: NewCalifornia Courier Stash Control
Unmanaged: NewCalifornia
Unmanaged: CM_Lighting_FNV
Unmanaged: CM Lighting DLC Support
Unmanaged: XP_Slower_300
Unmanaged: YUPTTW
JIP LN NVSE Plugin
AnhNVSE
UIO - User Interface Organizer
lStewieAl's Engine Optimizations
ShowOff xNVSE Plugin
JohnnyGuitar NVSE
M.U.X. Series - Weapon Icons
kNVSE Animation Plugin
JAM - Just Assorted Mods
M.U.X. Series - Interface Overhaul
MAPMO - Main and Pause Menus Overhaul
Enhanced Movement
New Vegas - Enhanced Camera
Diagonal movement
Blended Locomotion
M.U.X. Series - OX Toolkit
The Mod Configuration Menu
Depth of Field Fix - NVSE
FOV Slider
Vanilla UI Plus (New Vegas)
lStewieAl's Tweaks and Engine Fixes
Vanilla_UI_Extension
B42 Quickthrow - an alternative grenade hotkey mod
B42 Inspect - aka Animated Ammo and Weapon Condition Checking
WAP - F4NV .44 Magnum
B42 Melee Bash
B42 Descriptions aka Pip-Info
ISControl Enabler and Ironsights adjuster (now ESPless)
Improved Console (NVSE)
B42 Optics - ESPless
B42 Inject - Animated Item Use - ESPless
B42 Dropmag and One in the chamber
Vanilla Animations Weapon Scale Fix
KEYWORDS
B42 Loot - Animated Physical Item Pickup - ESPless
B42 Interact - Animated Items and Interactions Framework - ESPless
Hit - B42 Inject - Water Animations
Hit - B42 Interact Animation Pack
B42 FireMode - Selective Fire and First Shot Precision - ESPless
Hit - B42 Inject - Sunset Sarsaparilla Animations
Hit - B42 Inject Animation Pack - Season 1
Hit - B42 Inject - Assorted Items 1
WAP Hunting Rifle
BLEED TTW
WAP .45 Auto Pistol Series Replacer
Basic Console Autocomplete
Slower Backpedaling (NVSE)
Console Paste Support
Weapon Based Hands Clip Distance
Another Millenia
Another Millenia Gun Add-on
HIPControl - Weapon Idle Position Adjuster - ESPless
Deus Ex Weapon Spread
Hit - Millenia Animations - Part 2
FPS Weapon Lowering
IMPACT
TTW Another Interior Mod
Point Lookout Reborn TTW
TTW Reputations
More Perks
Project Reality Footsteps
Enemy AI - Tactics - NPC Healing
Weightless Ammo In Hardcore Mode
A Familiar Friend - Pip-Boy 2500 - Handheld Pipboy
Faster Sleep-Wait
Faster Main Menu
External Emittance Fix - NVSE
Fallout Alpha Rendering Tweaks - NVSE
Atmospheric Lighting Tweaks (Interior Lighting for FNV and TTW)
Viewmodel Shake Fix - NVSE
Iron Sights Aligned
Smooth True Iron Sights Camera
Unbreakable Armor and Weapons
Steady Hands Perk (Zero Spread and No Weapon Sway)
All Weapon Sound Overhaul Modern Edition Redone - AWSOMER
Lockable Locks
Aid Quick Menu
Tactical Gameplay Modifications
Realistic Weapons Damages - New Vegas
Immersive Hit Reactions - Makes Combat Responsive
Big Town Extensions
Realistic Headshot Damage
Root 'n Loot TTW
The Living Desert - Travelers Patrols Consequences Increased Population and more
Light Up and Smoke Those Cigarettes (and Cigars and Cigarillos)
Fallout NV Cheat Terminal Redux
FNV Mod Limit Fix
Delay DLC Redux
Ragdolls
Permanent Weapon Shells
Uncut Wasteland
KDS Portable Camp Stuff - NVSE
Micro Clutter
Rayek's Mini Hideout - TTW Conversion
Functional Post Game Ending
Realtime Weapon Modding System
Radiant Infinium - Endless Questing Framework
Real Recoil
Imps TimeScale Adjuster
Manual Reload and Ammo Memory
Weapon Mesh Improvement Mod
MoonlightNVSE
Detailed New Vegas - Westside
Detailed New Vegas - North Vegas Square
Combat Leather Jacket
Wasteland Looter Armour
Wasteland Combat Armor
Mercenary Armor
Alternate combat armor with sleeves
Sweet Consumables
Aid Addon - Medkits - Blood Draw - Bandages - Afterburner Gum - More
No Food or Chem weight
Inventory Saviour - Weightless Junk
Weightless New Vegas
Infinite Ammo (with reloading)
SUP NVSE
The N.V. Interiors Project
Dusty Distance Redone
Faster walk
NCR Trooper Overhaul_beta
Powder Ganger Rep Fix - Ghost Town Gunfight
Water Bottling Lite
Powder Ganger Overhaul
Tammer's NIF-Bashed Weapons Mega-Pack v6.0
Tammer's NIF-Bashed Armor Mega-Pack v5.0
Arsenal Weapon Overhaul - AR15 Family
WAP Sniper Rifle
WAP Single Shotgun
WAP Bozar and LMG
WAP 10MM SMG
WAP 9mm Pistol Remaster
WAP Automatic Rifle and .45 SMG
New Vegas Animation Overhaul Guns
TTW DC Flora Overhaul
Wasteland Flora and Terrain Overhaul
Meshes and Collision - Totally Enhanced Nifs (MAC-TEN)
Items Transformed - Enhanced Meshes (ITEM)
Improved AI (Navmesh Overhaul Mod)
Wasteland Flora and Terrain Overhaul (Patched)
Clarity - An Orange Tint Remover
Combat Lag Fix (NVSE)
Caravan Rifle
Waster Carbine
Light Battle Rifle
Laser Musket
AR-10 Battle Rifle
Heaven's Battle Rifle and This Machine Retextured
Tailor Maid - NV
Weapons In Casinos
TTW - Killable Children
Leather Armor MkI MkII
NMCs_Texture_Pack_For_New_Vegas
EXE - Effect teXtures Enhanced
Bullet Trails
bsp_textures
UHNV
FlashlightNVSE
yUI - User Ynterface
ySI - Sorting Ycons
ySI - Pick Up Prompts
Mauser M18
ySI - Assorted Fixes
Tactical Vests - with ammo pouches
Lore-Friendly Joshua Graham Armor Replacer
Combat Vests - Joshua Graham Armor Variants
Drags New Armor Pack
Modern Gunslinger Armor
NVRA - M1 Carbine
NS Weapons All in One
Checkpoint Carbine
Alternate Start -TTW
Character Kit Remake TTW Facegen
WAR MiX
Perk Every Level
TTW Caravan Guard
Caravan Guard - Remastered
Casino Crowds
Atomic Wrangler Enhanced
Westside Reputation
Primm Reputation Restored
TTW Casino Areas (Wasteland Gambling)
TTW The Regulators
TTW - More Map Markers
TTW New Vegas Speech Checks
KNVSE Animation Mega Patch for Tammer's Weapons
Sound Extender
JSRS Sound Mod 2.0
JSRS 2.0 - Tammer's Nif-Bashed Weapons Patch
Beyond Boulder Dome
Medic Companion
Casino Blackjack Tables
Higher Casino Bets - Jackpot Limit and Chips Exchange
Lime's Old Mormon Fort Overhaul
TTW - Bypass Tranquility Lane RE-UPLOAD
Windows of the Mojave
JIP Companions Command and Control
JIP CCC HD icons
Overwrite

I took the plunge and pre-ordered the Ace, and I’ve been putting it through its paces for the last couple of days. I’m pretty deep in the Sonos ecosystem, and I’m a big headphone collector, so I’m tossing in my thoughts here for those thinking about taking the plunge on these $450 cans.
TL:DR - the Aces come in at a high price point in the market at $450. At that price, these may be a tough sell for many. The overall sound is very good - but not definitively better than the category leaders in the market, many of which cost substantially less. Early/Gen1 bugs will leave some thinking that the product is half baked or leaves them out entirely, especially Android users. All that said, this is still a Sonos product, so there are enough things done well about the Ace that it could be a decent proposition - especially if you catch a sale and/or after upcoming software updates. Hard to hate, hard to love.
Now to give some context and get into the deeper review. As mentioned, I am pretty deep in the Sonos ecosystem because I’ve steadily added to my setups over the years. I started with a 5.1 system, Playbar + Sub + two Play 1s about 10 years ago (now in my kid’s playroom) and now I have Sonos in my whole home - another Arc-based 5.1 setup (media room), a Playbase 5.1 setup (living room), a Beam (bedroom), Move (outdoor patio) and a Roam (travel).
I am also a headphone collector and have 22 pairs, ranging from “consumer” stuff like the Ace, AirPods Pro/Max - and all the way up to high-end reference gear from the likes of Audeze, Sennheiser, Meze, Focal, etc. I listen to many types of music, from hip-hop to classical, and I also do quite a bit of gaming. I have a young kiddo so have the need to use headphones for TV viewing pretty often.
Starting with the overall design, comfort, control and included accessories - Sonos does a mostly solid job. The design isn’t overly striking in any way, but it is a well-refined “standard headphone” type of design with clean lines. The Aces are light while still feeling solidly built, have a smooth but appropriately firm sliding hinge for headband fit, have easily removable pads, and while they don’t completely collapse, they get compact enough to fit in the included zip-up hard shell carrying case.
The respectable carrying case isn’t the only included accessory. A USB-C cable is included for both charging and USB-C audio (no included wall charger), and a USB-C to 3.5mm cable is included as well for plugging into analog sources. The inclusion of these cables and capabilities gives the Aces a lot of general versatility and are good things at this price point.
The design lends itself to an overall very comfortable headphone. The band has a very soft cushion and connects to the cups in a way that distributes the weight very well. The cushions of the cups are a well-padded and very comfortable faux leather situation with a firm but not too imposing pressure on the head. These are easy to wear for hours without discomfort for me. I will note that while everything is fine for me, the cups are not particularly large, and the pads are angled, so people with large ears may find their ears touching the cups a bit.
The controls are also well designed. Sonos chose to avoid any type of touch controls with the Aces and has just three buttons - one for power and Bluetooth pairing, one for ANC/transparency/on-device voice assistant, and one for volume and track/audio source/phone call control. It reads more complicated than it is for the controls to become second nature. It is a very good overall control scheme. It’s not quite as good as the Digital Crown design of the AirPods Max, but I’d give it a strong second to that.
When it comes to hardware design and general ease of use, Sonos has always done well across its product range, and that continues here. Grade: A
Sound is one of the most subjective/difficult things to review, and I’m going to try and be as neutral as possible and use some good points of comparison. Overall, the Aces perform fairly well for the product category, and while they bring their own approach to the table, it is very much debatable whether what they bring in terms of sound is worth the fairly high $450 entry point versus $450 for the AirPods Max, $299 for the Sennheiser Momentum 4, $328 for the Sony WH-1000XM5 or $379 for the Bose Quiet Comfort Ultra - all very mature and respectable market leaders with similar product features in this category. There are wireless headphones out there that are priced higher like the Focal Bathys ($799) or the Bowers and Wilkins Px8 ($529), though one could argue that those are catering to the luxury and/or audiophile market (all Amazon US prices as of this writing), where the sound expectations have a higher hurdle to overcome.
Let’s first talk about tonal balance. The general tuning of the Aces is very similar to all of the other products I mentioned above, which is a version of a “V-Shaped” tune; bass is boosted, and treble is boosted, creating what has become commonly known as a “fun” type of tuning that I call warm and sparkly. While all of the products I mentioned do this in some way, each does it slightly differently, resulting in a slightly different overall sound presentation, the Aces are no exception. Let’s dive in.
The bass on the Aces is very noticeably boosted throughout the entire band, and the biggest boost is in the sub-bass region. This means the Aces bring slam, boom and rumble to the listen. It could be argued that these get into bass head territory, and I believe those that like bass would be happy with the Aces in that department. While the bass is certainly very prominent, it is not overly loose and still maintains a decent level of control. It is a thick but fairly clean bass. It hits thicker than the AirPods Max but less so than the Momentums and XM5s. If you like to feel those big explosions and soundtrack moments in your TV viewing and gaming, the Aces will fit the bill, as the depth the bass can reach is impressive. The downside to the bass tuning is that since the entire bass band is boosted, if you are listening to a track that has a lot of action in the bass region, it can be overwhelming and lack detail. It can also lead to some bleed into the lower midrange on certain tracks.
It is the midrange on the Aces that surprised me the most, though when I think about how Sonos likely dedicated as much thought to how these sound for TV as to how they sound for music, it makes sense. In a usual “V-shaped” tuning, it is the midrange that is the least present or gets a bit left out of the mix. This often results in vocals and many common core instruments and pieces of the mix somewhat veiled, and is the reason many audiophiles don’t like the V-shaped tuning. The Aces mostly avoid this. The midrange balance is pretty on-target with the exception of a bit of a dip in the upper mids. This means that you get a very full-bodied core sound when listening to the Aces, and that’s a very good thing. Male vocals are very often put on full display because of the added warmth of the bass boost. Female vocals can sometimes take a bit of a back seat, along with instruments like guitar, as a result of the dip in the upper mids, but to notice either of these, you’d really have to be a focused listener (more on why later). The story of the midrange is that it’s better executed than many in the category. This translates well to TV/gaming as well, as dialogue is typically easy to make out, even when there’s lots of other action going on.
The treble on the Ace, as mentioned, is definitely boosted, but in a targeted way that overall, works. I mentioned that the upper midrange where female vocals and some higher instruments live is a bit de-emphasized. Well, the treble is boosted in the “sparkle” region, where sounds like symbols reside - as well as the “s” and “t” sounds in vocals. This boost makes details shine a bit more, and it also hides the under-emphasis of the upper midrange a bit because it still pulls forward the sparkle of all vocals. This upper midrange and treble boost combination is also seen in some well-regarded higher end headphones from the likes of Sennheiser and Meze Audio, just to name a few, so kudos to Sonos for pretty solid execution on the treble. The downside to boosting this region is that some people’s ears are sensitive to this frequency range, and can find sounds like snare drums, loud symbols and the like in this region to be grating to listen to for long periods of time. I don’t find the boost to be extreme, but it is there, so those that are treble-sensitive, just something to note.
This is a good point to make note that this has all been related to the default tonal balance of the Aces right out of the box. Connecting to the Sonos app does allow you to adjust the frequency response - though it is a very basic EQ just like other Sonos products - a simple treble/bass slider. Most of the options at this price point offer greater level of control with a at least a 3-5 band EQ, but it’s better than nothing.
Last in the sound department is a bit about the staging and technical performance. Again, the Aces do what they do fairly well for the category, but whether what they do is definitively better than their peers is debatable. The sound that comes from the Aces is crisp and clear, and one of the most immediately noticeable aspects of the presentation is the good horizontal spread of the pieces of the mix - everything is placed very well with pretty good separation. The sound stage isn’t overly wide by any means, and we aren’t talking about a 3D/holographic sound stage (unless you’re using Dolby Atmos, which I’ll come back to), but the sound does indeed go ear-to-ear horizontally. Even so, the focus of the Aces is always front and center. The stage is very center-focused and intimate, with the edges of the left and right channel wrapping around to the ears. It is a pretty in your face presentation that works well. The center position also has a small but distinct depth and separation from the mix, which is impressive for a wireless headphone (I had to wonder if the fact that the inside of the pads of the Aces are angled contributes to this). The fact that the stage is so center-focused also keeps the vocals and heart of the mix emphasized, and this pairs well with its midrange tuning. This presentation also is another testament to being well-designed for both music and TV listening.
I am not always a fan of Dolby Atmos for headphones, as what the technology can do is often overhyped, but the Aces do handle Atmos mixed sources (or multichannel sources when using TV Swap) very well. It essentially makes the sound stage a bit bigger, along with more precise positioning of the pieces of the mix. I find it best for video content and hit or miss for music.
The overall sound package that the Aces deliver is solid, well-executed, V-shaped listen. The sound is warm, crisp, clean, dynamic/lively and is presented very well, in a way that will work for many genres of music, TV and gaming. The aces definitely deserve to be in the conversation among the market leaders, but each of these market leaders also have strong overall presentations that are arguably just as good, if not better - and allow for a bit more control with more EQ personalization options. The Ace’s premium price relative to this competition has to be taken into consideration as a point of comparison in evaluating overall sound. Grade: B+ / A-
I realize that when evaluating a pair of wireless headphones nowadays, the technology feature set is a big factor as well, and that’s where things get even more interesting for the Aces. This is because depending on your particular Sonos setup, mobile device setup, and general home listening setup, the technological features of the Aces are various levels of either lacking or unfinished.
Let’s start with the good. Regardless of the device you’re using to connect, you get to experience the active noise cancellation and transparency modes of the Aces, and both are very good. The noice cancelling mode isn’t quite as good as Bose, and the transparency mode isn’t quite as good as Apple, but both are respectable compared to anything else, a good showing. You can also enable head tracking in the Sonos app when connected to any device audio via Bluetooth, which for Android users may be an added convenience, depending on your device (for Apple users, this is a feature built in option at the system level between any iOS device and AirPods). You also get a fairly good mix of codec support, including some lossless options if your device supports it.
Now, the not so good. When Sonos announced the Aces, the company very accurately talked about how headphones were one of the most requested products of the community, and everyone in this sub can probably attest to that. But what has been released, at this point in time especially, IMO misses the mark by not doing the thing we want the headphones to do most - connect seamlessly to our larger Sonos systems. On top of this, it highlights the challenge of forced obsolescence when dealing with home theater speakers and advanced technology in the same package.
The best way to illustrate this is to state plainly that the Aces are first and foremost Bluetooth headphones. They connect to your Sonos system indirectly via the app on your Bluetooth device, not directly to the system itself via WiFi (mostly). This means a few things. If you’re envisioning using the Sonos app as a main hub for navigating your music library across sources and handing it off between your Sonos speakers and headphones, that’s not in the cards with the Ace (ha). As a matter of fact, you can only use the Sonos app to play and pause media playing on the Ace, not select and navigate.
If your goal is using the Aces to listen to your TV, it can be done via a feature called TV Swap, but the situation isn’t exactly pretty for a lot of people. You can press a button on the Aces or within the Sonos app to trigger a direct WiFi connection between a TV-connected Sonos speaker, but at launch and of this writing, it only works on the top-of-the-line Sonos Arc soundbar. This support is coming via software update to the Beam and Ray at an unannounced date. This means that for folks like me that have been building a Sonos ecosystem for years, arguably the most loyal and valuable customers of Sonos (and the ones requesting this product for years), the usefulness of the Aces may be substantially reduced. Out of the four rooms that have Sonos sound bars in my home, again, all purchased within the last ten years or less, only two will ever work with the Aces. My Playbase and Playbar are forever excluded, and if you’re using something like the Sonos Amp to connect a turntable or other device to your Sonos system, you’re also out of luck. If you are an Android user, the picture is even uglier, as the TV Swap feature doesn’t work AT ALL, meaning that until an update arrives, also at an as yet unannounced date, the Aces are essentially a regular pair of Bluetooth headphones for Android users.
For me, this is the most disappointing thing about the Aces. Unless you are a fairly recent inductee to the Sonos ecosystem, the Aces probably are really more general Bluetooth headphones that can connect to a Sonos speakeTV than Sonos headphones that also connect to Bluetooth devices. This is in a world where there are certainly other options for connecting headphones to your TV’s audio. Many smart TV’s and set top boxes now offer a direct Bluetooth connection, and if you have an Apple TV, using AirPods via AirPlay is a much more seamless experience. All of these things, combined with the recent revamp of the Sonos app that took away features and left many unhappy in the name of updating the app for future products (including the Ace), should make you think twice about if the Aces are the best way to get TV audio via headphones for you and your setup - and about the longevity of your particular Sonos setup in general. I realize there are technical challenges that make better Sonos system integration a challenge, and that for some, the issue about older products isn’t an issue at all, but it is worth bringing to light for those making a long-term purchase decision.
The second most disappointing thing about the launch of the Aces is the continued trend of companies releasing products at full price that are essentially unfinished. I already discussed that for Android users at launch, there is no TV Swap at all, so these are effectively just regular Bluetooth headphones with no Sonos system integration at all. I also touched on the fact that TV swap support for the Beam and Ray is missing for all platforms. There is also a very cool-sounding form of TruePlay that Sonos is calling TrueTune. This will calibrate the room, so that when using TV Swap to listen to audio, you’ll get an even more “immersive” listening experience that takes Spatial Audio and head tracking to the next level by trying to actually mirror the acoustics of the room as if you had no headphones on at all. I can’t report on that because, you guessed it…the feature is coming at a yet unannounced date. On top of this, there are bugs out of the gate. Sometimes my Aces don’t show up in the Sonos app, and TV Swap sometimes doesn’t trigger or glitches out.
All of this makes judging the technological features of the Aces difficult. On the side of being Bluetooth headphones - the ANC, connection possibilities/versatility, multi-device connection, head tracking/spatial audio support, and battery life, the Aces are a strong showing. On the Sonos side, your experience will be highly dependent on your current Sonos setup, source setup, how you like to navigate your music library, your level of patience to receive updates, and your trust/level of care for when/if Sonos will release an update that breaks something between your Aces and your existing setup or releases a new speaker that doesn’t work with the Aces. These are all considerations that again make the $450 asking price seem steep when there are other options in the market with equal or greater capabilities for a substantially lesser price. Grade: C-
Overall, I view the Aces as a solid pair of Bluetooth headphones, and as Bluetooth headphones for day-to-day needs, they are worth considering, though arguably not the best value in terms of overall sound quality and features. The AirPods Max, Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless, Sony WH-1000XM5 and Bose Quiet Comfort Ultra all bring comparatively good sound and feature sets at the same or a substantially lower price. Whether that premium is worth it because of the Sonos interplay, well, your mileage may vary, depending on your setup. They have the potential to be pretty great for some, while at the same time being annoying for some - hard to hate, hard to love. I hope this review was helpful for those taking a look at these or building a Sonos ecosystem in general. Happy listening!

This is a crossover fanfiction between original fiction titles: Nature of Predators by SpacePaladin15 and The Last Angel by Proximal Flame respectively. All credit and rights reserved goes to them for making such amazing science fiction settings that I wanted to put this together.
You can read The Last Angel here: Be warned, it's decently long, and at its third installment so far. I highly suggest reading it before reading this, or this story will not make sense.

Otherwise, enjoy the story! Thanks again to u/jesterra54 and u/skais01 for beta and checking of work!
First Prev Next (soon)
Memory transcription subject: Adjek, Venlil Space Corps Engineer
Date [standardized human time]: October 24, 2136
I had departed with a collection of other engineers who had assisted on the tethering of Nemesis several days ago back to her massive ship. There were twenty-five of us, although none I knew directly from my work.
As our cargo shuttle entered the direct monitoring range of the beast once more, I felt a bad feeling throughout my fur. I didn't know what, exactly, but it was like we had just stepped into the eyes of a predator lurking in the undergrowth, watching us intently. As if to capitalize on that unease, our pilot Mimek bleated something in a panic that made said fur stand straight.
"T-th-th-there's an Arxur vessel trailing us!"
I whirled onto the oncoming feed near the front of the shuttle. Behind us, was a Arxur Ambusher-class dropship that had taken a path directly behind us. It followed the exact same trajectory as our own, and showed no signs of diverting. I bleated out a panicked command of my own.
"K-kick it! W-we need to get distance from them!"
While I had no authority to tell the pilot what to do in this situation, he must've nevertheless agreed, and as such Mimek kicked the boosters into overdrive to escape their proximity. I kept an eye on the rear display, watching as in response, the Arxur craft opened up its own engines, as if to accept the chase, and closed in.
Mimek spoke again. "Why are they chasing us?! D-didn't the humans forbid them from attacking us in-system?!" I had a horrible thought as to why...
"They've fallen to their p-predator bloodlust! They won't be stopped so long as we're in vulnerable space! Close to Nemesis, fast!" I pointed at the guidance lights to the hangar on Nemesis' keel opening. While the Arxur could likely outrun us in an extended burn, we had the advantage in a sprint over a shorter distance. Nemesis was in that shorter distance range, and so we needed to reach it fast to be in its haven.
Mimek, already piloting at full afterburn, corrected the shop in a sharp turn from the plotted approach vector cleared with the Lunar Shipyards. As this occurred, a reminder from the very same monitors came through on comms.
"Venlil ship, this is LSC Tower 3, you have left the agreed final approach vector, adjust your course to match the planned path immediately, do not continue on your current heading."
The humans did not realize the threat we were currently in, and thus the pilot ignored the warning. The Arxur seemingly took our course change as a challenge, and followed suit.
"I repeat, readjust your course heading immediately or fighters will be scrambled. This is your only warning." Even were that the case, we were far too close for them to plot an intercept vector. The shipyard monitors would need at least [one minute] to reach us, and Nemesis was merely [20 seconds] at full-burn-then-brake approach. We would not let the ship closing in behind us catch us, disciplinary action be damned. The damned Arxur succumbed to their predator madness!
A lazy-curve speed burnoff pattern was adopted, and we rocketed at ever-decreasing, but still frightening pace towards Nemesis in an attempt to shake the Ambusher behind us. The hangar was merely moments away, don't fail us now!
The Arxur vessel broke off the chase near the massive docked ship, seemingly slowing for no apparent reason. Perhaps it realized it couldn't slow down as fast as we could, and as such had to? But, that came with another stomach-hurdling problem: us slowing down. If we didn't, we'd crash and turn into nothing but paste on the walls of the gargantuan ship's hangar.
Thankfully, Mimek pulled through, and we zoomed into the hangar space, hitting the emergency external inertial dampener breaking as we attempted landing. The ship skidded across the floor, as it skipped nearly a [fourty meters] to a stop, crashing through something on the way through, but we were moving at such a pace that I had no clue exactly what.
As the ship came to a complete stop, rocking back onto its belly with a final thump, there was the sound of heavy stomping outside, before something rammed into the back of the ship, nearly rocking it off-balance again. "What...what was that?!" We both exclaimed.
We stepped away from the back exit ramp of the vehicle, all twenty five of us, as it began to groan under immense stress. The door dented in, and a few of us instantly cried out in surprise and fear.
And then again. And again. Another rocking of the ship as a dent formed. Another.
And finally, with an unsettling sound of metal being torn through, a crack in the plating of the door turned into a gap that widened into a shaking hole, until the door literally flew off its hydraulic support. The strain spat out fluids and electrical sparking, and several bleated in fear of the sudden disassembly of the door between us and the hangar. Had the Arxur caught up to us? Were we doomed?
But as the burst of electrical smoke cleared, and the light was filtered through our adjusting eyes, what was on the other side shocked me.
A mechanical monstrosity, far bulkier and massive than the one that had confronted my group and I aboard Nemesis stood on the other side. It towered above us, with a intimidatingly large cannon built into one of its arms, aimed dead center into our room, looking more akin to a vehicle's gun than a handheld one. One could see behind it many more of a similar looking model closing in. It spoke in a wrathful tone...Her wrathful tone.
"What the hell are you doing CRASHING INTO ME? There better be a-"
But I felt a chill as it suddenly cut off, and the featureless head of the bipedal robot swiveled to look directly at me instead. Though I could see no clear indicator of eyes like the nightmarish drone I had talked with in the past, I could feel it gaze directly at me, ignoring the others. It suddenly spoke again, a single word conveying contempt dripping in it. The blood in my veins turned cold as the Twilight.
"YOU..."
+CONFED IO.5+
+READING MAIN SEQ.MEM+
+ADDENDUM: ADJUSTED DATE 24.10.2136+
Something's wrong, I can feel it.
The bearing of the approaching ships has left the supposed approach vector, and directly accelerated towards my open hangar bay. While the ships pose no threat to me directly, I am uncertain if they are capable of stopping quickly enough to not risk the human crew that had just landed. I considered my options...
+grab beam non-responsive, schedule systems evaluation immediately+
I had no capability to tractor the ships from their path, and they showed no sign of slowing. I could fire a particle beam in the path of both ships, but there was no ability to tune down the power enough to not destroy the ships, and it would not reduce their velocity. I plotted the relative course of the Venlil shuttle to be coming at this angle, which thankfully was towards the opposite side of the hangar as the Human delegation. That did not remove the possibility of shrapnel from a crash, however.
I interspersed my Praetorians in front of them, seeking to act as a shield in the case of any flying debris. I warned them in the same instant.
"Take cover behind these drones, there is a problem with the landing Venlil ship on route."
"W..What's going on, Red?" Hailey asked, confused. Never had I been this direct with her physically, actively interspersing my drones in front of her and the rest of the scientific delegation.
"They are likely to crash. Predicted acceleration curves of the shuttle do not meet the prerequisite delta-V to stop safely at this current distance and velocity. Duck and cover."
The shuttlecraft streaked into my hangar bay at speeds that would make a 21st century jet blush. It slowed anomalously upon entering, but did not slow at enough rate to prevent the crash. The Praetorians situated on that side of my hangar were incapable of moving fast enough to dodge out of the way, and I was forced to watch as the shuttle crashed through thirty-two of them in a 45-meter break distance, before slamming into a hangar wall. They were built to withstand incredible munition strength, but not twenty-some odd tons of shuttle at near mach speeds. The impact brutally cast them across the deck, smashing some, tearing apart others.
Debris flew from the front of the shuttle outward, but none reached near the humans. Those moronic aliens were about to answer painfully for their incompetence on my deck.
"Dear god!" One of the humans swore at the sound of the shuttle crashing. Another screamed and ducked down further behind my Praetorian. The drone curled down to better envelop her in protection. Hailey was speechless.
A squadron of Praetorians had been closing in from a safe distance throughout the entirety of the crash. They were a mere hundred meters away, only 4.9 seconds to reach the doors. I collided with the shuttlecraft's exit ramp, and slammed repeatedly into the back of it, aiming to create a gap by which to pry the thing off. Eventually, a gap was made, and the Praetorian body wrenched a manipulator into it.
Then, after tearing off the ramp door to the ship, and beginning to interrogate the idiotic fucks at gunpoint, I find no less that a familiar face has come with them. A familiar face I would have rather not seen again in the slightest.
+identity confirmation, Adjek, Venlil engineer+
"YOU...What, are you doing here, again?"
I stepped forward, into the cargo shuttle, the Praetorian I controlled looming over them, over him, by nearly one and a half meters. I made certain to emphasize that size difference. One does not just crash in me like this without a good reason, or I'd be testing how long a Venlil survives vacuum.
Adjek decided to speak up, fear laden in his voice. "I-I-I...W-we were being chased by an Arxur vessel on the course here! T-They ignored the human's truce and decided to p-pursue us directly!"
I faltered a bit at that. Chased? The Arxur supposedly promised that they wouldn't attack the Venlil in-system, but given how much the bad blood between the Arxur and herbivore races was hyped up, I couldn't toss out the possibility.
"Is he telling the truth?" I swung the Praetorian's fake head about the room, scanning over each Venlil in the audience. It wasn't necessary, I had a panoramic view just from the chest optics alone, but the psychological effect and bait of having a head was palpable. They all parroted something similar to what Adjek and the pilot said, so I had no clear contradiction to go off of yet.
But I wasn't done with intimidation, I warmed the cannon muzzle to be visible within the deep red visual spectrum, and aimed it at him.
"Tell me everything, now."
He began to describe his intent and clearance for coming here...but reality decided to be a pain at that exact moment, as the likely culprit entered the hangar. Thankfully, I wasn't hampered by multitasking. A section of me split attention equally to the Arxur ship landing in my bay.
This ship, supposedly the Ambusher-class Goring Claw going off the IFF, was an armed dropship of some sort capable of intro-extra-atmospheric operation, given the rotary variable mode engines. They had been given landing clearance, but not by me, no, instead by the shipyard.
I would need to ask the UN to bring down that blackout protocol soon. This is immensely inconvenient to not have access to monitoring and communication outside myself, except through Hailey. Nevertheless, I positioned my remaining Praetorians around the likely exit of the dropship, awaiting it to open and...greet...these likely troublemakers. I had one Praetorian stand directly front-and-center to the back end, and aim weapons, but not arm them at the dropship hangar doors.
With a hiss, and a burst of slightly depressurized gas, the door opened, and out marched a line of two pairs of two Arxur guards. Their gear looked highly ceremonial, given its lack of tactical or efficient features, and the choice of weapon being a spear of some sort with a sidearm still holstered. Behind them, walked an even more gaudy individual than the guards, an Arxur with a prominent scar across their face covered in flamboyant ceremonial uniform. I was almost certain this was Chief Hunter Isif, Lithke's commanding officer, given Hailey's description of the visitors earlier. Behind him marched a set of less extravagantly dressed figures, likely advisors of some sort. And, of course, Lithke.
I wouldn't just let them off the hook so easily though, despite their far better entrance.
"Chief Hunter Isif. Lithke. You had best have a good reason for making a Venlil ship crash into my hangar."
Memory transcription subject: Chief Hunter Isif, Arxur Dominion Sector Fleet
Date [standardized human time]: October 24, 2136
Those idiots seriously did not-
...No, calm yourself, a Chief Hunter must always look composed, even in the face of absurdity.
The pilot in control of this Ambusher had heard my order to follow the Venlil in, got target fixation, and decided to escalate it to a chase. I would have him lashed for the offense later, but for now, I needed to quickly rekindle what little good will the Arxur had in Red One's eyes.
Losing it now could mean turning up hungry forever.
"I apologize for my pilot's unprofessional actions. He will be punished severely later for the transgression of letting his instincts override both human and my orders. Is there anything I can do further to fix your appetite, Red One?"
The robot frontmost of our shuttle stepped forward, it's bulk and size intimidating even by Arxur standards. It towered tall enough to nearly be at my head height despite the fact I was standing on the dropship ramp. Red One's response was curt, and [quick to the kill]. "You can start by convincing the odd twenty-five or so Venlil engineers your pilot chased into crashing on my hangar deck that you aren't here to eat them all, or whatever sickening actions you Arxur do. When that's done, then you may converse with Hailey Whitmer."
At least it wasn't "you've done enough, stop". I'd seen plenty disappear after that particular response in the Dominion.
"Fine. Blades!" I shouted to the ceremony guard I was issued. "Two of you will hold the pilot at the ship for punishment. He is to not eat, nor rest, nor do anything until I return. The rest will assist Lithke in assuaging the prey that they are safe...for now. I must speak with Red One while you do."
They saluted, and went about their way.
Good, everyone bought it. In a sense, this was funnily enough just the distraction I needed. Perhaps I'll reduce the pilot's lashing count quietly for that.
Now...for the harder part. I had no idea if Red would sense my intentions, and so-
The combat drone spoke once again. "Lithke's sung your praises, Chief Hunter Isif. An icon of 'applied cruelty' in his words. I'm curious as to why that should be praised, out of all things in a leader."
We're still too close to the ship, even if none are around to hear it, audio logs might pick up any dissenting thoughts. I should bring this conversation elsewhere.
"I see Lithke wasn't convincing on his own, it seems. Here, walk with me, I still have yet to meet your Special Envoy Hailey personally." I began to walk towards the group of humans near the other end of the hangar.
"So, you have met her?" Red One instantly picked up on the message, noticing the phrasing. So, she's capable of understanding subtlety...
"Yes, but not directly. She gave a presentation at the UN's discussion on you, which I attended."
"And what, pray tell, did you learn about there?" Red One seemed to press me slightly on the session, clearly looking for something. I'd play along, get in their favor.
"Plenty. You're by far the most powerful ship in the galaxy, as far as I can tell. The Humans and Venlil alike are afraid of you, but the former less-so, seeing a more mixed reaction to your presence."
"And what do you think of me?" Red questioned.
I began with a political mealy-mouth phrase.
"The Dominion is not-"
But she interrupted my train of thought. "No. I didn't ask what the Arxur thought. I was asking what you thought, specifically."
What?!
I scanned quickly, my head paced from side to side as I looked for any potential monitoring agent or tools nearby that could potentially pick up on my dialogue.
"You're...an interesting shake-up to the galaxy. Possibly even a means to an end I've been looking into."
There was a curiosity laden in that tone. "Is that so? What, pray tell, would an Arxur fleet leader need with me?"
Again, I checked about, to make certain none were close. "I...am trying to solve a personal problem. Your emergence is convenient to it..."
"Ah...so I was correct..." Red One's drone stopped in front of me for a moment, before turning directly to address me. "...The constant checking about other Arxur assets, the send-off of your personal guard, the overcompensation on the facial details and micromovements, the ordering of Lithke to 'convince' me of Dominion ideals. How much of it is an act, Chief Hunter Isif?"
She already found me out!?
The mask dropped in a panic, knowing none were close enough to pick up on it. "Quiet! How did you pick up on that?" I hissed under my breath to them.
She neglected to answer that statement directly, instead asking another question. "That's not important. The better thing to ask, is what exactly do you want with me?"
Well, since the meat has been spoiled...
I decided to be blunt, and honest. "I need either a line to directly converse with you on a sensitive matter later, or a method to do it now. There is a deep sickness within the Arxur, and you are a possible lynchpin to excise it. But it is traitorous in nature to Betterment, and they have agents everywhere. I would need it to be done away from their ears."
"I am currently operating in blackout conditions. I cannot send or receive signals from the outside without going through a UN transponder, so the first option is out currently. You need a distraction then, while you're here." Red's drone turned back around and continued walking, not giving away anything to the outside of her sudden skinning of my fake personality. "That can be arranged. But not this instant, we are already too close to outside ears for an extended conversation."
"A codeword, then? Some indicator that I may step away and talk securely with you?"
"A codeword is a start, but I'm more concerned about your personal guard. Are they loyal to you enough to ignore such a conversation?"
"Absolutely not. Effectively none of the group that has come along with me is loyal enough to hear this."
Red One didn't speak immediately, but the pause was small. "A full separation might be possible. I have an idea during the tour. If I say the phrase, 'Feel free to peruse' to you specifically, it will mean I have sufficiently separated attention enough that you may speak to me securely. Do you understand?"
She already has a plan? Her speed on that matter is dizzying.
I would have to trust her method. "I understand."
"Good, mask up again, we are within the distance of maximum human audible range given this volume."
Her matter of figuring out my intentions and act that quickly was unnerving, but it made some sense for a sentient computer. She likely thought far faster than the average Arxur, or even Human. But I could consider that later, I needed to get back in character. While my physical demeanor hadn't wavered any, I needed to give off the mental face of a Chief Hunter once again to allay suspicions. Especially since my personal guard were likely to return soon.
Hailey Whitmer noticed us soon after, and disengaged herself from talking with the other Humans. She began her way over here, leaving them to huddle around their ship, still unloading a collection of scientific equipment and personal belongings. "Chief Hunter Isif! Welcome to the UECNS Nemesis. What happened exactly that caused the Venlil to crash in like that, however? I heard a concerning bit that they were chased?"
I lashed my tail in frustration at that. "Our pilot idiotically got fixated on the Venlil ship. He will be punished later. For now I apologize on their behalf. I will try and...convince the Venlil's not to fear soon, but I honestly don't expect them to listen. They are prey, after all, sniveling in fear at the slightest provocation."
Hailey looked annoyed at that statement, but I could at least take personal solace in knowing it was mere persona. She would simply have to deal with it. "That's rather rude to our allies, Isif."
I corrected her: "Your allies, Human. The prey do not interest me. No, what interests me and my cohort is this ship." I pointed a claw at the robotic soldier behind me.. "I have already met Red One herself, and as you are the UN's Envoy here, I must meet you as well. Lithke has spoken much about both of you."
Hailey's expression changed from veiled frustration to surprise at that. "He has? Hah! I did charm-...oh, excuse my manners. When your entourage arrives over here, we can begin a proper tour with the both of us at the helm. Red?"
A voice emanated from the walls. "Yes, Hailey?"
"Do you have a path listed for a proper tour throughout your facilities?"
She responded immediately. "Yes. The UEC military has conducted tours before of my hull to other officials. I can follow said pathing, ignoring areas currently exposed to vacuum or damaged heavily. It will cover roughly 45% of the ship, and with transportation aid, take roughly 4 and a half hours."
Hailey clapped her hands together. "Perfect! When the three groups are gathered properly here, we can begin."
Given I could see my guard returning, thankfully not laden with prey blood or wounds, that would be soon.
+CONFED IO.5+
+READING MAIN SEQ.MEM+
+ADDENDUM: ADJUSTED DATE 24.10.2136+
I have had tours done of my shipself before. When my form was still under construction, Commander Theodore William Billingsly had given a walk-around to Yasmine, in preparation to turn over the role of Captain to her. The visit had gone rather easily, and familiarized her with my layout quickly in a professional manner. I had given numerous miniature tours of my layout to new crew members, with assistance from more established crew. I figured tours were nothing too special to my sensibilities and experience.
But I had never quite had the experience of juggling a tour where each distinct species of the tour was at odds with the other two. Listening to them was taxing.
"What are you looking at, leaflicker?"
"H-Help! I-It wants to e-e-eat me!!!"
"Could y'all just get along for a single moment? We're coming up on the barracks, supposedly, and yet you're at each other's throats!"
"Of course we're at their throats, those are rather delicious to tear out."
"You predators would focus on our vulnerable spots, w-wouldn't you!"
"Fuck's sake, you can't behave, can y'all?"
"Jealous of our vicious nature?"
"No we're not! What you do to the other races in this galaxy is abhorrent!"
"Yeah, you Arxur monsters have nothing to be proud of! I've lost family to your kind!"
Very taxing.
The human team and Hailey were trying to somewhat wrangle the mood down, but the Arxur and Venlil despised one another, and it showed. There was no quieting-down of their feud for more than a few minutes, before it started up again for the smallest altercations. I was glad I had brought a host of Praetorians to keep them physically separate somewhat, as I'd hate to have seen any humans hurt in the way.
Instead, I tried to focus on just providing an air of authority, as Hailey led them throughout my assorted systems and layout, only providing input where she did not know about. There were at least some receptive comments of myself during the tour that didn't result in lambasting the other two parties.
"The internal layout of this ship is rather unique. It doesn't look like anything in the Federation proper." A Venlil engineer by the name of Joluk mentioned.
"Yeah, I know!" Said a human scientist by the name of George Oscoda. "It's very...Death Star meets Nostromo, made a bit wider, then painted gunmetal black with red detailing."
Joluk turned back to him. "I have no idea what those are, but I don't like the sound of a Death Star." Their tail went ramrod straight, hanging down at the comment. Perhaps a body language fear response?
I decided to clarify from a drone nearby. "The internal design pattern of the UEC favors a highly geometric, hexagonal or octagonal hall layout, for maximum support with little freestanding support. A three-to-two width to height ratio also helps alleviate claustrophobic concerns, and detriments mental health minimally for extended stays."
George spoke up again. "I guess that's fair, but nothing will change how depressingly dark and scarred-up some of these corridors and bulkheads are currently. I get that it's battle damage, but..."
Lithke piped in from the front. "Nemesis wears her scars proudly. She is a predator forged in war, none escape without scars." I couldn't find a reason to directly deny said statement. I did sometimes prefer the reminder of how many Compact Janissaries had died within myself. How I shivered in delight at knowing they met their ends aboard my hull.
I decided to just remain silent on that. Hailey also responded to that soon after. "Well, honor besides, a lot of that damage will have to be repaired eventually. No amount of self-righteousness excuses holes to vacuum in some spots." She was also right. There were various spots throughout me that were not even enterable, let alone habitable as I was. Numerous collapsed-in sections, holes in my hull all-throughout. There wasn't even a main engines section anymore, with the aft exposed to space after redlining to Earth to save them from the Federation fleet. No amount of scars would justify not repairing battle damage.
I was at least partially glad they could not read Compact Standard. The various little easter eggs of alien languages scattered on my walls were filled with warnings and resignations of regret for boarding me. I left them there, to add to the ambient horror of unwelcome borders, but currently it just felt...out of place. I did not want to scare the people on board.
Thankfully there were few along this path, and none noticed it as the language it was offhand, so I avoided those questions. As we walked to the entrance doors to the barracks, there was a hallway we would have to cross first. One I had kept tenderly over the centuries.
I decided to speak ahead of time on it. "We are coming up on a particular area of mine en route to the general barracks. It was not something made in my time with humanity, but more...a personal project. Reminders and trophies of what and who I fought for both myself, and any others who might unfortunately find themselves this far into my halls." Some of the Arxur looked intrigued by that statement.
Hailey looked a little nervous at the way I introduced it. "I-I wouldn't really call it something particularly-"
I kept going over her response. It wasn't particularly polite, but if I was to make a maximal psychological distraction for Isif to say his piece, it would need to be done...
As a drone already within put the finishing touches on the arrangement, and skittered away into the dark lofts above, the doors opened to my favorite rooms, and I introduced the hallway ahead.
"Welcome...to my Collection."
First Prev Next (soon)

MAIORES. IV, CAL. IUNI. FORTUNA PRIMIGENIA.

This subject follows along from the general conclusion of infantilism, i.e. if we agree that infantilism exists in a culture that therefore all aspects of (such a culture) must be examined as to how they are impacted ‘by’ that infantilism, as: infantilism constitutes an undeveloped form of a thing; here (without covering absolutely every single aspect of it, as this could be a book in and of itself) we explore ‘sexual immaturity’ and its promulgation and consequences (of which we could easily make the case of the consequences as to be the cause of ‘all social ill’).
In an anthropological view; as if like we are looking at a chimpanzee colony, both procreation and familial-tribal child-raising takes place in our contemporary Western societies in a very clumsy sort of way; with the latter (i.e. the actual raising of children) not occurring at all, with the consequence of ‘arrested development’ – usually we would recognize and name it as that, if we ever thought very deeply about it:
However, the notion that all of this could be reduced to and fathomed as ‘sexual immaturity’ is an interesting (and unexplored) avenue to approach these matters from; certainly the act of actual procreation is deliberately accidental (I mean here in the contemporary West) in that a Woman does “not seek a mate” and then become pregnant, i.e. she does not even consider the sexual act to be procreative, rather: she accidentally becomes pregnant (“it was a miracle”), having beforehand and all throughout the duration and beyond it a culture which is far detached from the physical reality of things and thus a new human is created with no forethought for its care or provision and no security net in place to provide for it and ensure its prosperity and intelligent up-bringing, and increasingly there are fewer and fewer intelligent older persons around who are capable of providing the education and care for that child as would naturally exist in the large familial-tribal unit of an extended family where, historically, we all came from and of which is still the norm across much of the world (i.e. village elders who would otherwise raise the children up to be intelligent even if the Mother herself is too young to be a real parent - if we imagine as the species norm would be that most Women historically had their first child at around the age of fourteen or fifteen). Without, then, that familial-tribal unit to instruct and care for the child’s intellectual development and without either land to make a living from to provide for it's economic development then we find a cursed life, that is: a life far more difficult than it otherwise ought be had it been born in a more wisely chosen environment.
My point here is that ‘procreation’ is considered almost never at all by our society as being the most basic step in the creation and promulgation ‘of’ a tribal unit; with procreation itself being left down to blind chance and more often either legitimately accidentally or feigned accidently so as to attempt to cement a relationship (see: divorce and break-up rates in the West), either way this is the material circumstance into which children are born.
To say, then, that not grasping this reality ‘is’ itself a product of sexual immaturity; i.e. a Woman who does not understand what a new human is, seems to me to be far more of an accurate view of the thing than to declare it as ‘sexual immorality’ as it is usually insisted by the Abramic types, as: rather obviously it is ‘Sexual Immaturity’ rather than ‘Sexual Immorality’ that is the really cause of (the above scenario), that is: it is not Men and Women knowing too much about sex but of Men and Women knowing virtually nothing at all and therefore absent of a practice and familiarity necessary for Sexual Maturity, with Sexual Maturity itself being the very thing declared to be Immorality - an irreconcilable paradox.
It seems to me, then, that the habits we observe of ‘accidental pregnancy’ are the natural occurrence in such an unnatural society; that is: a consequence of misplaced moralism over the vital mechanical sexual functions of the human body (a thing which may well dominate and drive our unconsciousness entirely) have been rendered so alien to our expression and consideration but of which are so incessant and irrepressible; that sexual release is habitually denied, I mean here societally (i.e. “it is not polite”), and only finds ‘permission’ to appear in extreme drunkenness in fits of frenzy, and so on, so that when procreation actually occurs it is sporadic and neither at that moment nor before it was the adult rational mind involved – again, this is plainly a consequence of ‘sexual immaturity’ ‘before’ it could ever be said to be a consequence of ‘sexual immorality’.
It’s worth considering, of our own society in contemporary times, how far removed we are from most of the world which practices arrange marriages in one form or another (i.e. whether we are speaking of large tribal units or smaller family units) and what the consequence of this is on our own communities being absent of that; that is: the most fertile years of our lives are not spent having gotten procreation out of the way by having five or six children by the age of twenty or nineteen (so that when the child is fifteen you might be thirty, which seems to be the age where the sexual drive begins to dissipate or has anyway lost its novelty), and instead (i.e. without of being match-made far earlier in life) procreation instead occurs – if it does at all – accidentally and well-past the most fertile and healthy years, with such children being often quite sickly and the strain on the body being significantly more risky to the Mother (haphazardly enabled only then by massive external resources which would not have been required at all beforehand). I do not mean to seem as if I am advocating “having five or six children by the age of twenty or nineteen” only that in our natural environment this has always been the way of the thing due to natural sexual exploration when we are at that age.
At the same time, at the beginning and at the end of this “waste of time” (as I would say) of those most fertile years in which our sexuality is forbidden to us; that culture which we examine here as being simply Sexual Immaturity, it has been the case that that “Immaturity” persists well into later life by those afflicted adults who were forbidden to practise their natural sexuality when they were at the age where they wanted to, that is that the culture and mentality of such persons subjected to such restrictions quite demonstrably can be shown to have regressed them to the point that, as then as adults, they dress as children, speak and think as children, shun adult responsibility and seem altogether to have matured intellectually no further than the age of twelve or thirteen years, despite physiologically and neurologically having surpassed far beyond that early almost larval-like stage of our development where the body and mind are both only partially formed.
Instead it has been the “dragging-out” of that childlike insensibility, again: to no useful outcome, which has by that point in time essentially mitigated most of their procreative potentiality in that 1) physically having children is then far more difficult for them, and 2) they are now twenty-five years behind where their familial-tribal unit might otherwise have been, i.e. they do not have five or six twenty year old children bringing in incomes to the Household (to purchase a Household in the first place if they did not possess one before) or working the land (or likewise to purchase land) so that their prosperity will not have developed beyond mere subsistence off of the external labour market so as to escape the poverty and dependency traps inherent in the cities – which nominally constitutes their entire existence ‘to’ escape such miseries. All in all it is a lot of hard work by that point and I could not help but notice, of my own generation and those slightly older, how this outcome would have been entirely altered and set on a more prosperous trajectory if, say, at the age of sixteen a couple had been put together and had a few children, as: by the age of twenty the best seeds would have been sewn and they would not have to even think about “having children” ever again which is itself a thing, I observe anyway, that is so daunting and bothersome later in life that it really is something better gotten out of the way as early as possible in the manner that we would have done quite naturally otherwise.
If the idea here is to build up that familial-tribal unit then this methodology serves the purpose in the most optimal manner; the adults are freed up and enjoy their liberties, the younger adults (i.e. the teenagers) are preoccupied quite happily fulfilling their single greatest biological urges to have sex as much as they like, and the population figures begin to climb up at a rate of replacement which is far superior, e.g. a thirty year old parent of a fifteen year old only has five years before that fifteen year becomes a physically matured adult ready to contribute to the unit, whereas by contrast a thirty year old parent of a five year old has a great longer time to wait for physical maturity so that the distance between the two age groups becomes fragile and thin the further it is stretched with a concurrent loss of replacement manpower by a space of ten additional years.
There is something to be said for the older more experienced Father, of course, I remember quite well that the children I grew up with whose Fathers were in their forties and fifties and whose Mothers were in their twenties or very early thirties were quite better-off in their disposition and intelligence (whilst those with older Mothers tended to be sickly in one way or another); simply put though I think it is more to do with the experience of age as the influencing factor than anything else and a functional familial-tribal unit would have this influence in far greater capacity.
If we add to this factor the notion of polygamy (something shunned as ‘pagan’ by the Abramic religions yet advocated for in their own holy books, indeed: it was the universal norm) then we find the whole circle being completed in that young teenagers do as they please with each other, becoming familiar with relationship and their sexuality, and then when they reach a more mature age they might marry each other or other people properly so as to begin families of their own; but that by that age they may well have produced several children already via multiple partners so that the actual ‘legitimate children’ (in the sense of inheriting land and titles) of a more formal marriage is superfluous to population replacement insofar as the tribe is concerned, as: they have already increased the headcount quite massively by comparison. It is worth mentioning here the legal problems of land inheritance and the seeming inability for people to ever work this all out amongst themselves as being one of the most desirable points of the introduction of some of the Abramic religions, when they first appeared, as rules were laid out of who could inherit (some rules more effective than others, some quite ruinous in fact) which provided a framework in perpetuity (but on the other hand, with all children being considered legitimate in some instances, i.e. the children of concubines, this produced the problem of “all children” being in competition for the single title or, in turn, a vast spread of land, i.e. a Kingdom, being broken apart “to make it all fair”: this did not differ in form from, say, Imperial China to the late Ottoman court whilst the European Monarchies to their credit, somewhat, temporarily solved the matter by the allocation of specific titles to be given to the first born, second born, third born, etc., and then bouncing back to the Monarch upon the death of that Duke to be allocated again – although some would say this is a feeble manner by which to govern large polities it differs not very much from the essential ‘oversight’ duties over local governments as practiced in the Roman Principate rather than direct-governorship over those provinces themselves).
The tribal influence in real terms upon children cannot be understated in its superior effects upon the character and long-term capacity of the children themselves (when compared to others); I have some experience in my own up-bringing with this and really the outcome (again: compared to the infantilism, i.e. arrested development, you will almost always find in the nuclear family type, which we might easily compare to factory farmed within four walls and a hen-pecking parental authority vs. free range) is a quite more matured and capable disposition (call it “street smarts” if you like; they follow what actually works rather than what is ‘pretended to them’ to work, which is typically nothing more than the parents own whimsical desires of the moment) amongst all the children when they are simply freed up from the poor influence of an unfit parent even without the good influence of a more fit parent of which, then, the fit parent itself could be determined to be largely superfluous, as: of their own accord they learn amongst themselves and become naturally fortified against being instructed into error by a witless or ill-inclined adult, whereas a child stuck under the thumb of a witless ‘parent’ has no means to disobey that witless parent without facing severe punishments and so there the child is sculpted into a helpless fool, later embittered in life and at the tender mercy of their peers, as: even as they might innately know-better (than to do the foolish thing their parent demands they do) they are forced nevertheless, either physically punished or emotionally coerced, into adopting the ‘silly walk’ and ‘dress’ of the witless parent, which is to say: they are forced into conforming toward the cultural idealism determined by the parent with no thought whatsoever for the practicalities of life, e.g. the matter of “how will my child earn a living” is addressed neither by parenting nor by schools thus begrudgingly selling themselves auction block of the labour market turns out to be the only method, whether they were deluded into thinking that their aspirations to be a professional athlete or an astronaut were entertained and encouraged for them at the expense of informing them about any other means of paying the rent or not.
I should say here that when I say “familial-tribal unit” I am broadly referring to any number of groupings, in whatsoever local forms they may take shape, but that the decisive factor, most chiefly, will be a large extended family network of which, if it ever needed to pool its resource together, would constitute a decent size force in land, resource production and manpower – but chiefly it is the possession of land which enables everything else:
More ideally, to my mind, it would resemble (or be very close in composition to) that Roman ‘Familia’ (the origin of the word ‘Family’ in our English) where a fairly large blood family of at least five generations inhabited in and around the same House or group of Houses (see: Palace, Villa and Manor Economy), with servants and adoptees and associates (business partners) likewise being considered as extended kin; altogether forming, as it were, a little nationality. In the sense of ‘Nationality’ it is, it ought be said, more a return to how we actually were prior to the ‘naming conventions’ of the 1700’s or so where the stupid surnames made up on the spot of many Europeans were forced into Law over what would have originally been clan and tribal identities and from which there came that fake sense of disparate ‘Nationality’ (i.e. cut off from tribe and forced into atomization; identity through a very small family unit alone) from which the misnomer of ‘Race’ would be made-up to lend credibility to. In many ways a great deal of the urbane ‘neurosis’, let’s call it, stems really from this absence of ‘true tribe’ with it having been eradicated either by the fecklessness of urban societies; societies of strangers and thieves, and also more directly via those religions which pretend to fill the void of ‘true tribe’ with their witless rituals and effete pretences – things which are a wet-blanket over true fellowship wrought in such a manner as comes in all reality perfectly naturally the moment the screws holding foolishness in place are undone and cast away – and really here, when we stack these observations together one upon the other, we are really speaking of a sound and strong society certainly immune to the shallow perversity created by denialism toward the basic mechanics of the human body – in addition to any other considerations which follow from that.

THE OVERALL INFLUENCE (OR LACK THEREOF) OF A TRIBAL-FAMILIAL UNIT

It must be considered quite seriously by the reader as to the overall influence, or lack thereof, of a tribal-familial unit as to what fills its place in the education of people otherwise and, as I began this text by considering for myself, how much of the ‘dysfunctionality’ can be attributed to the “lack thereof”.
Along with the cultural instance on sexual immaturity as to produce the consequence of delaying and drawing out for decades a fetish of normal sexuality which ought naturally be done with by a person after reaching the age, say, of maybe seventeen, there is the greater point which I am trying to relay here in this text of how many other aspects of ‘bad culture’ are singularly anchored to and thusly totally dependent upon that sexual immaturity – that is: we would be hard-pressed to imagine how really many of the pernicious scenarios in our contemporary society would even arise if that foundation stone of ‘sexual immaturity’ were removed from the equation:
For instance, how much of a ‘relationship’ is spent and sculpted (either by the Man or the Woman or both) on jealously and worry of the other ending the relationship for having found another person or another means to fulfil their sexual gratification? If a ‘relationship’ is based upon, let’s call this, “mutual masturbation” then at the heart of that is sexual immaturity of the mental age of maybe fourteen years whereupon a person has been sort of coaxed into dependency for orgasm on a third party; they are fraught and fearful that this should be taken away from them – it being so vital as like a mechanical necessity for either sex – that the entire content of their ‘relationship’ revolves around it; seeking it, coaxing it, demanding it, guarding it from be lost, and so on, of which I think it is not exaggeration to say that such concerns constitute 100% of the verbal interaction in such a ‘couple’; either outright or in the back of the mind so as to reinterpret all scenarios and verbal expressions as being related to that end-goal of maintaining the “mutual masturbation”.
Simply put this ‘relationship’, then, revolves around twenty minutes of sexual activity in a day – if that much (or even if every day), yet dominates the entirety of the mind; that is: the entirety of the ‘relationship’, when this action itself is something that a servant or a slave or a prostitute would be used for in many societies, with the ‘content’ of the marriage, say, being concerned more with running the business of a Household or concerned with procreation to produce legitimate children to inherit the business, the title, the land, whatever. My point here is that neither Man nor Woman are elevated or their dignity improved, somehow, by this absence of sexual maturity but rather that both are reduced; i.e. greatly lowered, to the cognitive and social standing of the “servant, slave, prostitute,” in that as far as they think of and conceptualize themselves as part of a Household at all it is singularly the concern with simple sexual acts which dominate their interpersonal interactions and their ideas about their own self; it is their ‘social currency’.
If this seems alien – I mean my observation on this – consider how much neurosis goes on in the daily grooming rituals of Women or those sad excuses for Men who “lift weights but cannot fight” (not to mention the ease at which a thin muscular physique bleeds out at the slightest of puncture wounds, see: Roman Gladiator training), i.e. whose only concern is that of admiring their own bodies in a mirror, this being intellectually identical to young Women. Is this not the mentally of a slave? If so, even if we shy away from saying it plainly, then we must ask “what forms the mentality of a slave (i.e. where does it come from)” – in the above equation a slave in a Household is more like an object fulfilling a function than He or She is a person with any autonomy (well, obviously there is no autonomy for a slave) so it is almost to be expected that in such an environment that the intellectual trajectory of an object-person goes away from externalities and becomes entirely absorbed with self-presentation and equates their social status from that, and if groups of such persons will set this to be the common culture; deriving status in that manner among themselves – although still these are slaves possessing no ‘status’ to speak of, as being object-people. This is evidenced also in victims of sexual abuse or those, in general, suffering at the hands of third parties whose autonomy is in some way or another restricted; that their singular focus becomes that of sexuality as like depression is “rage turned inward”, thus too it seems for sexual infantilism.
I cannot pass up this subject without mentioning a series of interviews describing, a thing quite novel to me, the notion of American Christian ‘Purity Culture’ from the point of view of those heavily indoctrinated into that; instilled with Catholic levels of guilt over the normal function of the body, who have then left their small churches or megachurches, or whatever, and spoken plainly about the mentality of those inside of it as relating to sexuality. It is a thing I think long suspected but seldom expressed that, as it was described, the mentality of such persons is that they are “horny all the time” due to the relentless guilt inculcated into them; that due to denialism of sexuality their ordinary sexual impulses are magnified to an incredible degree and that, consequentially, their entire being is animated by repressed sexuality so that their thoughts are ‘impure’ all the time whilst verbally they express strong denialism and shame over the thing. I think this is no real difference to any such religious malinstruction; be it Muslim, Jewish or Christian, in that the perpetual infantilism of their surrounding society stems first of all from their own bedrock religious culture (i.e. whatever religion which is at odds with the human body, etc.) were due to such ‘culture’ they never really get over, say, an early adolescent view of sexuality where they are driven entirely by it and never learn to overcome it, no pun intended, but utterly unrealized – which would take them leaving their religion – is that this process demonstrably brings out the absolute worst in their character and disposition with the process itself being the promulgation ‘of’ those very “Viceful thoughts ” that they claim to be “at War with in the world”, in other words: it is just they themselves who, for example, look at a young teenage girl (or god help us, a small boy) and thinks all manner of sexual rapacity – and that this animates them politically to campaign for restrictive legislation to be put into Law to police “all society” as if “all society” existed at their low level is an incredible thing to consider. But I do not think their broader societies are any exception to this, rather point here is that their broader societies are comprised of persons exactly like them; that the Christian or the Jew driven by a lifetimes shaming over their normal sexuality adopt, in turn, the most depraved expressions ‘of’ sexuality as a self-affirmation; that is: the extreme self-identification with a simple sexual action, for example, came to literally define a persons personality in such places to the point that (Americans anyway) seriously put out the notion during the late 1990’s and 2000’s that a fleeting sexual act 1) defines a persons entire character, and 2) it is also inborn, e.g. as like to say that whether you prefer this or that on the menu at a restaurant is something determined genetically; this is utterly stupid and utterly, in my opinion, a consequence of society which has not wanted to evolve beyond the ‘sexual immaturity’ of which physiologically seems to occupy a very small window of the middle to late teens and of which repression during those ages quite demonstrably creates madness and retardation – I mean that if their culture did not peripherally do this to them then the manner by which swathes of their cultural-historical institutions do this to them ‘outright’ by inculcation into this process in particular certainly does it to them, and merely it is the unwillingness to fully condemn these Religions and relegate these influences to the dustbin which keeps the entire thing ticking along with “just enough” of the population bent out of shape by it to present those same persons, seemingly confused as to where they came from, lumbering through the broader society and serving as examples of lunacy and degeneracy.
In short - and I may as well add this here also, the aim to abstain for a while from sexuality was a custom introduced by the Ancient Romans and was designed to heighten sexual pleasure; in effect, then, foreign barbarians coming to this culture much later on with nobody to really explain it to them ended up unwittingly engaging in what they would probably have recognized as ‘sex magic’ whereupon the denial of their own mechanical sexual function was ‘abstained’ by them; i.e. they saw the value in holding off on doing drugs or having sex for a while, – but they did not understand what the effect or the outcome of that was ‘intended’ to be in that one would abstain specifically ‘to’ heighten the senses toward that pleasure; and this is evidenced chiefly in the Lunar Orgies and the Fast/s of Ceres. Interestingly, Jesus himself in (i think the Gospel of Thomas?) mentions to his followers that “they will hate him for what he says now,” and that he says that “fasting brings out all the worst in them” – in other words, engaging in periodic abstinence will turn them all horny. Knowing this from a relatively early age it was no surprise to me at all why celibate priests ended up diddling children or member of their own congregation or why the most outwardly pious zealots proved to be the most morally weak people to be found as even with the most ‘clean’ example, let’s say, of a person who has never drank wine, for example, they have not ‘overcome’ that thing but have rather avoided ever experiencing that thing so that it will always be a novel temptation to them of which they will have no understanding of and which they can be leveraged by in various ways primarily due to their ignorance of which ‘experience itself’ would otherwise render them far more fortified against:
A good example here is the ‘pot scare’ of the early 1930’s in America when it was seriously believed by a wholly ignorant chunk of the urbane voting public that smoking cannabis (and drinking alcohol, for that matter) would turn a person into a serial killer, this is totally bizarre to us now, but notice that this was the same society whose moral standard was that “a table leg” should not be uncovered because it reminded them of a Womans bare leg – although here we might better understand why they were so preoccupied by thoughts like that (I think very seriously in their heightened state of perpetual arousal any little thing would send them to buggery of a farmyard creature)! Hilarious. But – notice also that this was the same society which was engaging in some of the most casually egregious inhumane criminality that history had ever seen, as if they ‘were’ high on narcotics and their rational senses dulled; I do not mean here to bring American notions of ‘Race’ into this as to be seen to ‘condemn Black Slavery’ in the fashion of my own day (although we mentioned family-tribe as a better form of so-called nationality earlier) but the ghastly images of actual Country Fairs where smiling families with children by their knees would pose for crude photographs with the charcoaled or bloated rotting carcass of a burned or lynched Man is beyond my ability to play-down or normalize. I mean here to say, that: far from the pretense of ‘clean mindedness’ of such persons about themselves that we find these same persons are the filthiest and most depraved characters around, being those few persons who walk amongst us who are actually capable of doing those inhumane things (again, see: Banality of Evil) as would be unthinkable to a person of normal rational healthy conscience. We might connect this, also, to the historical BDSM extravaganzas which took place in the Christian monasteries and public squares for many centuries where young Women were sexually tortured by celibate clergymen as to recognize how deep and quick a plunge it is from a person or their culture going from the denial of normal healthy sexuality into the kettled and sadistic gore fetish of outright murder.
It is always worth reminding the reader who wishes to minimize these more egregious aspects of the subject (as rape is still rampant among the clergy); which are consequential of sexual immaturity, that it was not ‘reason and rationality’ per se that stamped this out from European society but soldiers kicking in the doors of such Churches, Town Halls and Houses with muskets, rifles, long knives and grape-shot and physically eradicating the perpetrators and their willing congregations from America and France for the practice itself of sexually torturing a Woman and then burning the evidence on the fake pretexts of obviously made-up accusations of “she turned me into a frog” to actually be ended. That is to say that the ‘mentality’ and ‘culture’ which provided the framework for such inhumane activities was never formally realized or educated-out of a people, so to find it lingers along into contemporary times; animating the otherwise dormant farmyard animal-like character of such persons “like powers of evil”, is not surprising to me in the least. What was more surprising to me is that as so much of these religions are so obviously outright ‘evil’ that more persons do not speak of the intricacies of the things in such necessary detail these more ‘egregious’ cases would qualify, and then to spool back to discover the cause of every evil action in the mentality of every perpetrator – generally speaking, for instance, it will be a character with a disposition of infantilism and perhaps this is more easy to understand without needing to connect it to sexual immaturity though, to my mind, these are not distinct enough to warrant any separation; as: infantilism is always going to be immaturity and immaturity is always going to run concurrent with a lack of adult intellectual development where a mature and experienced view of a thing, sexuality in this case, has likely been within the powers of a person to have gleaned naturally through experiences – in which case there would be no argument with anything I say here, or of which such experiences have been prevented by external powers from being gleaned by the person in question; in which case they remain ‘as if’ they were fourteen years old with the allure of mysterious unknown sex acts utterly dominating their consciousness at all times and yet physically being thirty, forty, fifty years old – well past the age (certainly physiologically) where they should have gotten it all out of their system but of which they have not, chiefly because their experiences have been rather dull and monotone and so much social currency has been valued by it ‘being’ dull and monotone, e.g. monogamy, legal repercussions binding two people in place, the atomized kettling nature of the disconnected nuclear family unit, living amongst strangers in large cities where it not so simple as just going topless to change the local culture, control through the selective denial of the sex act itself (as William Reich and Esther Vilar both write on), the sexualisation of young people by adults, the accidental ‘perversity’ (in the real meaning of the word) of unfulfilled (or poorly fulfilled, or repressed altogether) sexuality and its effects on the brain and society, and so on and so on.
I am always inclined to think when considering this subject, and I may as well end this text in conclusion with this recurrent thought of mine, that ‘sexual perversion’ really begins in the mind of ourselves as young teenagers when the normal human body is leeringly presented to us as being something ‘illicit’, e.g. the breasts of Women are concealed in our society and so due to ‘hiding them away’ they become objects of mystery and fetish which they otherwise are not. I do not think this is deliberate reverse psychology (as god help us few enough people even understand the concept to understand what they do inadvertently) but it produces the same consequence of reverse psychology, whereupon quite arbitrarily a certain piece of the body, say, an ankle, is all of a sudden declared by a mad Adult to be “evil, sinful, lustful, of the devil,” when no such notion existed in the minds of people otherwise, as then: their natural curiosity is piqued by this imposition and so they develop a perversion dervied in chief part – as a sense of lewd pleasure – from bucking the arbitrary nonsensical imposition forced upon them by that dictate of which such a scenario never would have had cause to occur if not for that imposition having created it. I feel that this ‘perversion’ (again, in the real meaning of that word) stands in the way of a fully realized and fully pursued sense of actual sexuality and, from it, of a more resonant concordance between Men and Women whose interactions are otherwise thrown off balance by such impositions as they are dragged back down to sexual immaturity all the time; or into fear and jealously etc., as like a dozen avenues are presented in any conversation and virtually of them are strewn with piss, vomit and polyfoam which had no reason to be put there in the first place, or more accurately: it was put there through the carelessness of an atomized and witless peoples who knew no better than to do this to themselves but of which a familial-tribal unit would have drummed out of them quick sharp if for the actuality of nothing else than “we are all in this together” being something that is tangibly true and not merely shallow political rhetoric when it is said of a tribe vs. when it is said of a state polity comprised of countless strangers.

MAIORES. IV, CAL. IUNI. FORTUNA PRIMIGENIA.

Hey all. I’m looking for a cheap $50 amp I can hook up to my old Logitech speakesub. Please and thank you
Edit: I have the Logitech z523 sound system

So it´s been a while since I built a new PC.. Really long and even longer since I used all AMD. I´m not into OC in regards that I now chase numbers even if I at one point did. Now i just wanna make the most of what i have. I have been changing stuff around slowly but since it´s an AMD and im not that up to date I was woundering if i missed something that could be better in terms of settings? Im not sure about the FCLK and feel i can push it more but havent had the time mto test it. I went from 23.8k in Timespy to a bit above 27k. AIDA seems to be as bad at benching as several years ago but its showing latency at 66.6ns wich feels really bad? Linpack at standard 3gig and 4 runs shows 393.046 in average. Not that great it feels like?
I do run all test with torrent, some chrome windows and wallpaper-engine running. Specs are: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D ASUS TUF GAMING RX 7900 XT OC ASUS ROG STRIX B650E-F GAMING WIFI DDR5-6000 KINGSTON CAS 30 (Hynix) 2x16 running at 6200.
And here is a wall of text...
Ai Overclock Tuner [DOCP II]
DOCP [DDR5-6000 30-36-36-76-2N-1.40V-1.40V]
BCLK Frequency [100.0000]
Memory Frequency [DDR5-6200MHz]
FCLK Frequency [2067 MHz]
ASUS Performance Enhancement [Disabled]
Core Performance Boost [Auto]
Tcl [30]
Trcd [36]
Trp [36]
Tras [28]
Trc [58]
Twr [48]
Refresh Interval [65535]
Trfc1 [466]
Trfc2 [480]
Trfcsb [390]
Trtp [12]
TrrdL [8]
TrrdS [4]
Tfaw [20]
TwtrL [16]
TwtrS [4]
TrdrdScl [Auto]
TrdrdSc [Auto]
TrdrdSd [Auto]
Trdrddd [4]
TwrwrScl [4]
TwrwrSc [Auto]
TwrwrSd [Auto]
TwrwrDd [Auto]
Twrrd [4]
Trdwr [16]
IBUF_LPWR_MODE [Auto]
ADDR_CMD_MODE [Auto]
M_ORDERING [Auto]
S_COL_WIDTH [Auto]
MC_SVA_TRIM0 [Auto]
MC_SVA_TRIM1 [Auto]
MC_SVA_TRIM2 [Auto]
MMCM_MULT_F [Auto]
Proc CA Drive Strength [Auto]
Proc Data Drive Strength [Auto]
CPU On-Die Termination [Auto]
DRAM Data Drive Strength [Auto]
Rtt Nom Wr [Auto]
Rtt Nom Rd [Auto]
Rtt Wr [Auto]
Rtt Park [Auto]
Rtt Park Dqs [Auto]
Power Down Enable [Disabled]
Memory Context Restore [Disabled]
UCLK DIV1 MODE [UCLK=MEMCLK]
CA Tx Phase Shift Clk [Auto]
CS Tx Phase Shift Clk [Auto]
CK Tx Phase Shift Clk [Auto]
CA Rx Phase Shift Clk [Auto]
CS Rx Phase Shift Clk [Auto]
CK Rx Phase Shift Clk [Auto]
FIFO Wr En Fine Delay [Auto]
POC Sample PD [Auto]
Bank Swap Mode [Auto]
Mem Over Clock Fail Count [Auto]
Medium Load Boostit [Auto]
Precision Boost Overdrive [Enabled]
Precision Boost Overdrive Scalar [Auto]
CPU Boost Clock Override [Auto]
Per-Core Boost Clock Limit [Auto]
Platform Thermal Throttle Limit [Manual]
Platform Thermal Throttle Limit [89]
Curve Optimizer [Per Core]
Core 0 Curve Optimizer Sign [Negative]
Core 0 Curve Optimizer Magnitude [25]
Core 1 Curve Optimizer Sign [Negative]
Core 1 Curve Optimizer Magnitude [25]
Core 2 Curve Optimizer Sign [Negative]
Core 2 Curve Optimizer Magnitude [30]
Core 3 Curve Optimizer Sign [Negative]
Core 3 Curve Optimizer Magnitude [30]
Core 4 Curve Optimizer Sign [Negative]
Core 4 Curve Optimizer Magnitude [30]
Core 5 Curve Optimizer Sign [Negative]
Core 5 Curve Optimizer Magnitude [30]
Core 6 Curve Optimizer Sign [Negative]
Core 6 Curve Optimizer Magnitude [30]
Core 7 Curve Optimizer Sign [Negative]
Core 7 Curve Optimizer Magnitude [30]
CPU Load-line Calibration [Level 3]
CPU Current Capability [120%]
CPU VRM Switching Frequency [Auto]
CPU Power Duty Control [Extreme]
CPU Power Phase Control [Extreme]
VDDSOC Current Capability [120%]
VDDSOC Switching Frequency [Auto]
Performance Bias [Auto]
Clock Spread Spectrum [Auto]
1.8V PLL Voltage [Auto]
1.8V Standby Voltage [Auto]
Misc_ALW [Auto]
Chipset 1.05V [Auto]
CPU SOC Voltage [Auto]
CPU VDDIO / MC Voltage [Auto]
VDDP Voltage [Auto]
High DRAM Voltage Mode [Auto]
DRAM VDD Voltage [1.40000]
DRAM VDDQ Voltage [1.40000]
PMIC Force Continuous Current Mode [Auto]
PMIC Voltages [Sync All PMICs]
SPD HUB VLDO (1.8V) [Auto]
SPD HUB VDDIO (1.0V) [Auto]
Memory VDD Voltage [1.40000]
Memory VDDQ Voltage [1.40000]
Memory VPP Voltage [1.80000]
Memory Voltage Switching Frequency [Auto]
Memory Current Capability [Auto]
Security Device Support [Disable]
Firmware TPM switch [Enable Firmware TPM]
Erase fTPM NV for factory reset [Enabled]
Password protection of Runtime Variables [Enable]
PSS Support [Disabled]
NX Mode [Enabled]
SVM Mode [Disabled]
Above 4G Decoding [Enabled]
Resize BAR Support [Enabled]
SR-IOV Support [Disabled]
Legacy USB Support [Enabled]
XHCI Hand-off [Enabled]
USB Mass Storage Driver Support [Enabled]
U32G2_C3 [Enabled]
U32G2_2 [Enabled]
U32G1_E1 [Enabled]
U32G1_E2 [Enabled]
U32G1_E3 [Enabled]
U32G1_E4 [Enabled]
USB5 [Enabled]
U32G2X2_C1 [Enabled]
U32G2_C10 [Enabled]
U32G1_8 [Enabled]
U32G1_9 [Enabled]
U32G2_11 [Enabled]
USB_15 [Enabled]
USB_16 [Enabled]
USB_17 [Enabled]
Network Stack [Disabled]
Device [SanDisk SDSSDXPS480G]
SATA Controller(s) [Enabled]
SATA Mode [AHCI]
NVMe RAID mode [Disabled]
SMART Self Test [Enabled]
SATA6G_1 [Enabled]
SATA6G_1 Hot Plug [Disabled]
SATA6G_2 [Enabled]
SATA6G_2 Hot Plug [Disabled]
SATA6G_3 [Enabled]
SATA6G_3 Hot Plug [Disabled]
SATA6G_4 [Enabled]
SATA6G_4 Hot Plug [Disabled]
Restore AC Power Loss [Power Off]
ErP Ready [Disabled]
Max Power Saving [Disabled]
Power On By PCI-E [Disabled]
Power On By RTC [Disabled]
Native ASPM [Auto]
CPU PCIE ASPM Mode Control [Auto]
PCIEX16_1 Bandwidth Bifurcation Configuration [Auto Mode]
USB Audio Controller [Enabled]
M.2_3 PCIEX16_2 Switch [Auto]
Wi-Fi Controller [Enabled]
Bluetooth Controller [Enabled]
When system is in working state [Aura Only]
When system is in sleep, hibernate or soft off states [Stealth Mode]
Intel LAN Controller [Enabled]
USB power delivery in Soft Off state (S5) [Enabled]
PCIEX16_1 Link Mode [Auto]
M.2_1 Link Mode [Auto]
Chipset Link Mode [Auto]
M.2_2 Link Mode [Auto]
PCIEX16_2/M.2_3 Link Mode [Auto]
PCIEX1_1 Link Mode [Auto]
PCIEX1_2 Link Mode [Auto]
Primary Video Device [PCIE Video]
Integrated Graphics [Disabled]
Global C-state Control [Auto]
IOMMU [Auto]
ECC [Auto]
SMT Control [Auto]
Core Performance Boost [Auto]
L1 Stream HW Prefetcher [Auto]
L2 Stream HW Prefetcher [Auto]
L1 Stride Prefetcher [Auto]
L1 Region Prefetcher [Auto]
L1 Burst Prefetch Mode [Auto]
L2 Up/Down Prefetcher [Auto]
Core Watchdog Timer Enable [Auto]
RedirectForReturnDis [Auto]
Power Supply Idle Control [Auto]
Opcache Control [Auto]
Streaming Stores Control [Auto]
Local APIC Mode [Auto]
ACPI _CST C1 Declaration [Auto]
Platform First Error Handling [Auto]
MCA error thresh enable [Auto]
MCA FruText [True]
SMU and PSP Debug Mode [Auto]
PPIN Opt-in [Auto]
REP-MOV/STOS Streaming [Enabled]
Enhanced REP MOVSB/STOSB [Enabled]
Fast Short REP MOVSB (FSRM) [Auto]
SNP Memory (RMP Table) Coverage [Auto]
SMEE [Auto]
Action on BIST Failure [Auto]
Log Transparent Errors [Auto]
AVX512 [Auto]
MONITOR and MWAIT disable [Auto]
Corrector Branch Predictor [Auto]
PAUSE Delay [Auto]
CPU Speculative Store Modes [Auto]
SVM Lock [Auto]
SVM Enable [Auto]
Memory interleaving [Auto]
Memory interleaving size [Auto]
DRAM map inversion [Auto]
Location of private memory regions [Auto]
ACPI SRAT L3 Cache As NUMA Domain [Auto]
Disable DF to external downstream IP Sync Flood Propagation [Auto]
Disable DF sync flood propagation [Auto]
Freeze DF module queues on error [Auto]
DF Cstates [Auto]
PSP error injection support [False]
Active Memory Timing Settings [Auto]
Processor CK drive strengths [Auto]
Processor CA drive strengths [Auto]
Processor CS drive strengths [Auto]
CA ODT GroupA [Auto]
CK ODT GroupA [Auto]
CS ODT GroupA [Auto]
CA ODT GroupB [Auto]
CK ODT GroupB [Auto]
CS ODT GroupB [Auto]
Processor ODT Impedance Pull Up P0 [Auto]
Processor ODT Impedance Pull Down P0 [Auto]
Processor DQ drive strengths Pull Up P0 [Auto]
Processor DQ drive strengths Pull Down P0 [Auto]
Dram ODT Impedance RTT_NOM_WR P0 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_NOM_RD P0 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_WR P0 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_PARK P0 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance DQS_RTT_PARK P0 [Auto]
Dram DQ drive strengths Pull Up P0 [Auto]
Dram DQ drive strengths Pull Down P0 [Auto]
Processor ODT Impedance Pull Up P1 [Auto]
Processor ODT Impedance Pull Down P1 [Auto]
Processor DQ drive strengths Pull Up P1 [Auto]
Processor DQ drive strengths Pull Down P1 [Auto]
Dram ODT Impedance RTT_NOM_WR P1 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_NOM_RD P1 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_WR P1 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_PARK P1 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance DQS_RTT_PARK P1 [Auto]
Dram DQ drive strengths Pull Up P1 [Auto]
Dram DQ drive strengths Pull Down P1 [Auto]
Processor ODT Impedance Pull Up P2 [Auto]
Processor ODT Impedance Pull Down P2 [Auto]
Processor DQ drive strengths Pull Up P2 [Auto]
Processor DQ drive strengths Pull Down P2 [Auto]
Dram ODT Impedance RTT_NOM_WR P2 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_NOM_RD P2 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_WR P2 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_PARK P2 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance DQS_RTT_PARK P2 [Auto]
Dram DQ drive strengths Pull Up P2 [Auto]
Dram DQ drive strengths Pull Down P2 [Auto]
Processor ODT Impedance Pull Up P3 [Auto]
Processor ODT Impedance Pull Down P3 [Auto]
Processor DQ drive strengths Pull Up P3 [Auto]
Processor DQ drive strengths Pull Down P3 [Auto]
Dram ODT Impedance RTT_NOM_WR P3 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_NOM_RD P3 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_WR P3 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_PARK P3 [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance DQS_RTT_PARK P3 [Auto]
Dram DQ drive strengths Pull Up P3 [Auto]
Dram DQ drive strengths Pull Down P3 [Auto]
Power Down Enable [Auto]
Disable Memory Error Injection [Auto]
TSME [Auto]
Data Scramble [Auto]
Chipselect Interleaving [Auto]
Address Hash Bank [Auto]
Address Hash CS [Auto]
Address Hash Subchannel [Auto]
BankSwapMode [Auto]
DFE Read Training [Auto]
DRAM PDA Enumerate ID Programming Mode [Auto]
TX DFE Taps [Auto]
PPT Control [Auto]
DDR Training Runtime Reduction [Auto]
Rx Burst Length [Auto]
Tx Burst Length [Auto]
RX2D_TrainOpt [Auto]
TX2D_TrainOpt [Auto]
RX DFE Taps [Auto]
MBIST Enable [Auto]
Memory Context Restore [Auto]
Read Drift Adjustment [Auto]
Write Drift Adjustment [Auto]
PCIe ARI Support [Auto]
PCIe All Port ECRC [Auto]
Advanced Error Reporting (AER) [Auto]
PCIe ARI Enumeration [Auto]
PSPP Policy [Auto]
UMA Version [Auto]
GPU Host Translation Cache [Auto]
NB Azalia [Auto]
Audio IOs [Auto]
PCIe loopback Mode [Auto]
Persistence mode for legacy endpoints [Auto]
EQ Bypass To Highest Rate [Auto]
Retimer margining support [Auto]
CPPC Dynamic Preferred Cores [Auto]
TDP Control [Auto]
ECO Mode [Disable]
PPT Control [Auto]
Thermal Control [Auto]
TDC Control [Auto]
EDC Control [Auto]
Fan Control [Auto]
VDDP Voltage Control [Auto]
Infinity Fabric Frequency and Dividers [Auto]
SyncFifo Mode Override [Auto]
Sustained PowerLimit [0]
Fast PPT Limit [0]
Slow PPT Limit [0]
Slow PPT Time Constant [0]
GFXOFF [Auto]
CPU Temperature [Monitor]
CPU Package Temperature [Monitor]
MotherBoard Temperature [Monitor]
VRM Temperature [Monitor]
Chipset Temperature [Monitor]
T_Sensor Temperature [Monitor]
DIMM A1 Temperature [Monitor]
DIMM A2 Temperature [Monitor]
DIMM B1 Temperature [Monitor]
DIMM B2 Temperature [Monitor]
CPU Fan Speed [Monitor]
CPU Optional Fan Speed [Monitor]
Chassis Fan 1 Speed [Monitor]
Chassis Fan 2 Speed [Monitor]
Chassis Fan 3 Speed [Monitor]
Chassis Fan 4 Speed [Monitor]
AIO Pump Speed [Monitor]
CPU Core Voltage [Monitor]
12V Voltage [Monitor]
5V Voltage [Monitor]
3.3V Voltage [Monitor]
CPU VDDIO / MC Voltage [Monitor]
CPU Fan Q-Fan Control [PWM Mode]
CPU Fan Profile [Manual]
CPU Fan Q-Fan Source [CPU]
CPU Fan Step Up [Level 0]
CPU Fan Step Down [Level 0]
CPU Fan Speed Low Limit [200 RPM]
CPU Fan Point4 Temperature [91]
CPU Fan Point4 Duty Cycle (%) [82]
CPU Fan Point3 Temperature [80]
CPU Fan Point3 Duty Cycle (%) [66]
CPU Fan Point2 Temperature [74]
CPU Fan Point2 Duty Cycle (%) [55]
CPU Fan Point1 Temperature [27]
CPU Fan Point1 Duty Cycle (%) [46]
Chassis Fan 1 Q-Fan Control [Auto Detect]
Chassis Fan 1 Profile [Standard]
Chassis Fan 1 Q-Fan Source [CPU]
Chassis Fan 1 Step Up [Level 0]
Chassis Fan 1 Step Down [Level 0]
Chassis Fan 1 Speed Low Limit [200 RPM]
Chassis Fan 2 Q-Fan Control [Auto Detect]
Chassis Fan 2 Profile [Standard]
Chassis Fan 2 Q-Fan Source [CPU]
Chassis Fan 2 Step Up [Level 0]
Chassis Fan 2 Step Down [Level 0]
Chassis Fan 2 Speed Low Limit [200 RPM]
Chassis Fan 3 Q-Fan Control [Auto Detect]
Chassis Fan 3 Profile [Standard]
Chassis Fan 3 Q-Fan Source [CPU]
Chassis Fan 3 Step Up [Level 0]
Chassis Fan 3 Step Down [Level 0]
Chassis Fan 3 Speed Low Limit [200 RPM]
Chassis Fan 4 Q-Fan Control [Auto Detect]
Chassis Fan 4 Profile [Standard]
Chassis Fan 4 Q-Fan Source [CPU]
Chassis Fan 4 Step Up [Level 0]
Chassis Fan 4 Step Down [Level 0]
Chassis Fan 4 Speed Low Limit [200 RPM]
AIO Pump Q-Fan Control [PWM Mode]
AIO Pump Profile [Manual]
AIO Pump Q-Fan Source [CPU]
AIO Pump Step Up [Level 0]
AIO Pump Step Down [Level 0]
AIO Pump Speed Low Limit [Ignore]
AIO Pump Point4 Temperature [87]
AIO Pump Point4 Duty Cycle (%) [94]
AIO Pump Point3 Temperature [82]
AIO Pump Point3 Duty Cycle (%) [60]
AIO Pump Point2 Temperature [72]
AIO Pump Point2 Duty Cycle (%) [57]
AIO Pump Point1 Temperature [49]
AIO Pump Point1 Duty Cycle (%) [50]
Chassis Intrusion Detection Support [Disabled]
Launch CSM [Disabled]
OS Type [Other OS]
Secure Boot Mode [Custom]
Fast Boot [Disabled]
Boot Logo Display [Auto]
POST Delay Time [3 sec]
Bootup NumLock State [On]
Wait For 'F1' If Error [Enabled]
Option ROM Messages [Force BIOS]
Interrupt 19 Capture [Disabled]
AMI Native NVMe Driver Support [Enabled]
Setup Mode [Advanced Mode]
BIOS Image Rollback Support [Enabled]
Publish HII Resources [Disabled]
Load from Profile [1]
Profile Name [test1 ny bios]
Save to Profile [1]
DIMM Slot Number [DIMM_A2]
Download & Install ARMOURY CRATE app [Disabled]
Download & Install MyASUS service & app [Disabled]
Special Display Features [Disabled]
D3Cold Support [Disabled]
Discrete GPU _DSM Function A [Disabled]
Discrete GPU _DSM Function B [Disabled]
NVIDIA DGPU Power Enable [Disabled]
Non-Eval Discrete GPU Support [Enabled]
Discrete GPU HPD Circuitry [OR Circuitry]
Discrete GPU's USB Port [Keep Default Setting]
Discrete GPU's SSID/SVID [Keep Default Setting]
Discrete GPU BOMACO Support [Disabled]
Thunderbolt / USB4 Support [Disabled]
AMD Variable Protection [Enabled]
Processor Aggregator Device [Enabled]
Core Count Control [Enabled]
HDMI 3.0G Tx SLEW [Disabled]
SMT Control [Auto]
Active Memory Timing Settings [Auto]
Processor CS drive strengths [Auto]
Processor CK drive strengths [Auto]
Processor CA drive strengths [Auto]
Processor DQ drive strengths [Auto]
Processor ODT impedance [Auto]
Dram DQ drive strengths [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_NOM_WR [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_NOM_RD [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_WR [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance RTT_PARK [Auto]
Dram ODT impedance DQS_RTT_PARK [Auto]
Power Down Enable [Auto]
RX2D_TrainOpt [Auto]
TX2D_TrainOpt [Auto]
RX DFE Taps [Auto]
TX DFE Taps [Auto]
DDR5 Nitro Mode [Auto]
Infinity Fabric Frequency and Dividers [Auto]
UCLK DIV1 MODE [Auto]
Precision Boost Overdrive [Auto]
VDDG Voltage Control [Auto]
VDDP Voltage Control [Auto]
SoC/Uncore OC Mode [Enabled]
SoC Voltage [0]
VDD Misc Control [Auto]
LCLK Frequency Control [Auto]
VDDIO Ctrl [Auto]
Enable Platform PMIC Control [Auto]
VPP Ctrl [Auto]
Wow... Thanks for reading and any suggestions!

I'm trying to run 5.1 surround with 4 butt kickers but I don't want the butt kickers "on" when watching a video. here is what I have attempted so far.
1st set up
"Y" plugs on my sound card's front L/R and rear L/R 3.5mm ports. front and rear L/R are connected to two amps that run the butt kickers. The other 3.5mm are running to my 5.1 system. This works fine but the butt kickers are working all the time. Yes I could just turn the amps off, but that is a bit of a pain and it doesn't solve the issue if say I wanted to watch an F1 race while I'm in the sim.
2nd set up
3.5mm cables running my butt kickers and optical off my motherboard to the surround system. Default sound device set to the optical and the sim set to the 3.5mm sound card. Worked great but I couldn't hear people chatting during a race. My thought is that chat audio is going through the sound card (3.5mm) and not the optical for some reason.
3rd set up (trying this today on advice from butt kicker support)
3.5mm cables running off of an external USB sound card to the butt kickers and surround system running from the 3.5mm on the sound card. I'm guessing I need to set my system default to the sound card but I am unsure what setting I select within iRacing.
What am I missing here? Is there anyone out there that is running a similar setup that can help me with this?

I'm trying to run 5.1 surround with 4 butt kickers but I don't want the butt kickers "on" when watching a video. here is what I have attempted so far.
1st set up
"Y" plugs on my sound card's front L/R and rear L/R 3.5mm ports. front and rear L/R are connected to two amps that run the butt kickers. The other 3.5mm are running to my 5.1 system. This works fine but the butt kickers are working all the time. Yes I could just turn the amps off, but that is a bit of a pain and it doesn't solve the issue if say I wanted to watch an F1 race while I'm in the sim.
2nd set up
3.5mm cables running my butt kickers and optical off my motherboard to the surround system. Default sound device set to the optical and the sim set to the 3.5mm sound card. Worked great but I couldn't hear people chatting during a race. My thought is that chat audio is going through the sound card (3.5mm) and not the optical for some reason.
3rd set up (trying this today on advice from butt kicker support)
3.5mm cables running off of an external USB sound card to the butt kickers and surround system running from the 3.5mm on the sound card. I'm guessing I need to set my system default to the sound card but I am unsure what setting I select within iRacing.
What am I missing here? Is there anyone out there that is running a similar setup that can help me with this?