TotalSonic

24bit 96kHz FLAC (purchased from Bandcamp & HDTracks) -> JRiver Media Center software player -> Merging Anubis Pro DAC -> Coleman Audio M3PHmk2 passive monitor controller -> Pass Labs X250 class A solid state power amp -> B&W Nautilus 802 3-way floor standing speakers

Or if from vinyl KAB modded Technics SL1200mk2 -> Shure V-15MR cartridge -> Simaudio Moon LP5.3 balanced preamp ->

(in 20' x 14' x 9' room with bass traps, absorbers and diffusors by GIK, ATS, and Auralex)

As far as tablet usage goes - with Ubuntu 23.10 running the latest "Surface Linux" kernel on my Surface Go gen 1, Wayland is finally buttery smooth. Screen rotation with Wayland is near instant, where as on xorg takes a couple seconds.

I can't say the same for my dual boot desktop that has an Nvidia 1050ti in it going to a 55" tv monitor via HDMI though - had to hook up a second monitor from dvi just to be able to login - which was not the case on Xorg.

Oh well, baby steps, but Wayland is definitely growing up fast and getting closer to being daily dtiver ready for nearly all use cases.

There are "vanilla" versions (which is what I use) that are basically de-googled AOSP which work well with apps from F-droid, Izzy-on-droid, and free apps from Aurora stores, which you can also install MicroG on if you wanted to - and there are "Gapps" versions which have Google Play Services, the Google Play Store and some of the basic Google apps pre-loaded.

Herman Miller Aeron. Tested reliable and proven.

Whoops, yes you are correct, you would need to go to Asus for front facing speakers. Maybe the Asus Rog 2, which can run degoogled Bliss ROM

Yeah, which is why I use de-googled "vanilla" Bliss ROM 17.2 (Android 14 with latest security patch) on my Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro instead of going the Graphene or Calyx + Pixel route. This way I have the hardware features I wanted (headphone jack, micro SD card slot, 5000mAh battery, 108mp camera, stereo speakers, 120mHz refresh rate) all for cheaper than a Pixel, and the Bliss ROM community is pretty friendly and dedicated in my interactions with it.

In USA I've found it's pretty easy to live without banking on your phone, although you can't say the same for some other countries. Granted I have a job where I am working with my own desktop computers most of the day, so I can pay bills and transfer funds on them during those times - and lots of people might not have the same luxury. But I've yet to feel a need for any of them while out and about beyond a few occasions of Venmo'ing funds on the go - and at least Venmo still allows you to use their site via browser.

Sony Xperia 10 iii has all those things, and you can run Sailfish OS on it, including VoLTE and Android app support with it.

Obviously floating point is of huge benefit for many audio dsp calculations, from my observations (non-programmer, just long time DAW user, from back in the day when fixed point with relatively low accumulators was often what we had to work with, versus now when 64bit floating point for processing happens more as the rule) - e.g. fixed point equalizers can potentially lead to dc offset in the results. I don't think peeps would be getting as close to modeling non-linear behavior of analog processors with just fixed point math either.

Yes, while you can still do 3g/2g phone calling in most of Europe, the only hold out in the US for this is that T-mobile still has 2g calling in some areas, but they have announced that this will be shut down sometime in the soonish future (it was scheduled to be all shutdown of April this year, but they announced this was delayed to a time tbd, likely in order to continue to serve all the ATM's and iot devices that are still running "legacy" systems being used beyond supposed eol). Which is why I reverted to using de-googled AOSP for my daily driver - I like to be able to use my phone as a phone after all.

Dalton is an amazing and very cool guy, and when he left it was indeed a big hit to dev speed at first, but recently a few super smart and dedicated guys have been able to do a big jump in updating the base from 16.04 to 20.04 (which involved moving from upstart to systemd) and they are getting close to rebasing to 24.04 (target for this is this June in fact). Plus Waydroid support has gotten really good in the time since Dalton moved on, and snap support is getting worked on now as well.

I am talking about VoLTE (Voice over LTE) which is the protocol just for making phone calls over 4g networks - NOT 4g/LTE mobile data! Ubuntu Touch has worked well with 4g/LTE mobile data for 10 years now.