this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Mechanical Keyboards

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Are you addicted to the clicking sounds of your beautiful and impressive mechanical keyboard?
If so, this community is for you!

Here you can discuss everything about mechanical keyboards (and only mechanical keyboards).

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Dang that's beautiful. I really want to try a split alice but I can't bring myself to spend the money right now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Thank you! And that's fair. Keyboards spensive.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mokulua kit from mechwild probably your cheapest option. It's a solder kit and all through hole, I built one myself and had fun. It's fr4 sandwich so on the cheaper end, though depends on what you're used to. Soldering is fun!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That looks pretty cool. Thanks for sharing the Mokulua with me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Keychron Q10 owner here, with glorious pandas resprung to 60g and lubed. And Dusk MT3 keycaps too. My endgame board, it's a joy to type on.

And I just got the new Keychron Q0 plus, which is great too.

I'd tried a bunch of different split layout keyboards but the Alice layout works best for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think Alice is the best middle ground between normal staggered and split ergo. I tired an ergodox but didn't like it. I'm not an ortho guy. They look cool but I can't get used to it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You’re not alone. I built my own Ergo Dox way back & while it was better than cheap keyboards, it never felt as good as others. I’ve been on the same rubber dome electrocapacitive switch NiZ plum keyboard for several years now. I’d love to try some of these newer, cheaper options of the past few years – especially for the ergonomics – but I­­ really don’t want that downgrade feeling of going back to mechanical.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I also have a Shanling DAP (many files in FLAC, Opus, Ogg, AAC, not just MP3s). Just 9 more comments to a dozen.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nice. I almost got a Shanling a while ago, but went with the Fiio M5 instead (the tiny one that they stopped making). The one in the photo is a Hidizs AP80.

Do you like Shanling's interface? I find it's kind of hard to get to a specific album on the Hidizs. All it gives you is one long, scrolling list.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The UI gets finicky at the edges of the screen where I think they want gestures. Trips makes scrolling a bit of a pain since you may accidentally switch views. I’ve gotten used to it. The price to performance/features is nice tho.

If I could change two things it would be: a) properly release their source modifications to the Linux kernel for GPL compliance, b) support some of the native Linux kernel file systems like ext4, f2fs as they would allow better performance & I wouldn’t need to install exFAT drivers.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The UI gets finicky at the edges of the screen where I think they want gestures.

Ah, dang. I found the same thing with the Fiio and Hidizs.

Apparently some of Hiby's devices have a search feature. That might be useful -- I'm hoping the Hiby R3 comes back in stock at some point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Finicky isn’t the right word in hindsight. If you tap the edge it takes you immediately to the current player which is a fast shortcut one would like to have, but given the size of the small screen, it’s very easy to accidentally touch while scrolling, which if you have a large library can be very cumbersome to recover.

Other issues: certain files don’t seem to index correctly, but can be played via the file explorer instead of the main music part. Some of my Opus files don’t want to play despite the devices saying it has compatibility (tho I don’t know if my encoding was wrong or what).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

A soundtrack that will be stuck in people's heads forever, haha.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Short question about the Q8, if you don’t mind: Is it possible to map the two halves of the space bar to different functions/key presses (using VIA)? I’d like to use one half for space and the other as a return key, if possible. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I would assume so. They can be mapped to separate functions in the QMK configurator (https://config.qmk.fm/#/keychron/q8/ansi_encoder/LAYOUT_ansi_69), so I'm guessing VIA allows the same.

I haven't tried VIA before. Looks like it allows you to do macros, which the QMK configurator can't. I'll check it out tomorrow and find out for sure if it works.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Might as well go with an actual ergo board but if this gorgeous setup works for you, it works for you

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have the Feker Alice 80, and am pondering a second split keyboard. The double B key annoys me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Not having the double b annoys me. Lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Never tried one but would love to at some point