Is there a certain brand that you are fiercely loyal to?

[mandyfire98]

[NamerOfStars]

For a certain definition of "fierceness", yes. Koss sterephones makes headsets that are of good quality (at least by my casual non-high-level-audiophile standards), actually fit my head (seriously, I don't know why so many companies apparently think their customer base is mostly chimps), and have the best damn warranty I've ever encountered for ANYTHING- if you bought them after 1989 (which I assume is when it went into effect), and they break, you can mail them in with money for shipping back, and they'll either fix them or send you a replacement pair, free. If you're able to get to their factory in Milwaukee and give them 24 hours notice, they'll have a replacement pair WAITING for you- also free. That's the kind of faith in your product that I like to see, and I've bought several headsets from them over the years (and often fail to shut up about them when other people want me to, but are too polite to say so).

With comparatively less ferocity, Sprecher's makes one of the best root beers I've ever had, and their cream soda is a straight-up religious experience (unless you're one of those weirdos who can't handle sweet things). They're all over the country, too (Koss is less beneficial to me here in Florida than it was in Chicago, but no one really threatens my root beer preferences).

[SnowedIn]

Fiercely? Great way of phrasing it.

Somewhat.

Running shoes: Asics
Tennis racquet: Prince
Computer OS: Windows
Phone: Motorola running Android
Soda (pop): Coke

There's probably more but those ones are a given.

[SnowedIn]

Thanks for mho!

[petitedollbabee]

When it comes to phones, I prefer iPhones. I find them much more aesthetically pleasing to look at compared to android and I haven’t used android in years so I wouldn’t know how to use that sort of phone now. And when it comes to soft toys or plushies, I’m fiercely loyal to JellyCat. Their products are so adorable and the textures are nice, every other brand or type of soft toy gives me sensory issues with their textures.

[Nikki1989]

Not really, but there are many brands I hate, with Apple being at the top of the shit pile.

[mandyfire98]

I'm with you on that. I'm not an Apple fan either.

[The_Shadow_Dweller]

I just cannot get a hang of iPhone. I am using my old Android phone. The iPhone is just for my mom's video and audio recording now.

It does not leave the house as well.

Samsung is the best for me. Now I am sure.

[Sparkie460]

I'm extremely loyal to skechers sneakers. I'm hard on my sneakers and they last the longest. I'm also loyal to certain electrical products like square D electric panels, Arlington device boxes, leviton devices, and sim-pull wire.

Some companies lost my loyalty because after covid their products went down hill. They rushed the merchandise out so they weren't doing proper quality control

[Telekinetic-Potato]

Sony. They have such a great view on how to make great products.

Any kind of expensive TV or camera or stereo. They just have really great, nerdy engineers and you can tell they actually sit there and really figure out every detail of everything they make. Especially the ir professional stuff.

I have always admired Sony for adhering to this mentality that stuff should just fucking work every time and it should be one of the best options you could possibly get.

[DenizLikesTennis]

S. Oliver and puma for shirts

Nike for Shoes and Socks

Dark/Slim Denim for jeans

Puma for Boxers

Vincero and Fossil for watches

[DenizLikesTennis]

Condoms = Durex (super thin)

[FunkyMonkee]

Recording gear, I mostly use Teac or Tascam. Electronic drums, I'll take Simmons or Roland V-Drums, although the Rolands are now far ahead of the Simmons, as far as I know.

[Telekinetic-Potato]

Simmons drum kits are overrated. The new ones aren't as good as their old ones (when they used to be better than Roland)

[FunkyMonkee]

@Telekinetic-Potato I don't know. I only have the SDS 1000 and a TMI which I've never figured out how to use. (I've got loads of MIDI gear and no idea how to use it! I understand what it's SUPPOSED to do but no idea ho to make it do that!) A friend of mine game an older Simmons brain but, as far as I can tell, it doesn't work at all. I've never seen or tried any of the newer Simmons gear so, I have no idea if it's better or worse than Roland. I've seen a couple in pictures but, that's it.
I haven't had much of a chance to experiment with any of my V-Drum brains (5, 7 and 10) but, so far, about the only things I don't like about V-Drums is that I can tighten the drum clamps onto the rack to the snapping point and they STILL won't stay perfectly still on the rack! That and the cymbals don't quite sound like real cymbals. Like, if I repeatedly hit a real cymbal, it just makes a steady Psssssssshhhhhh sound until I stop. If I do that with the V-Drum cymbals, it makes a the PSSH sound every time I hit it! So, it's more like, PSSH, PSSH, PSSH, PSSH, PSSH, instead of, Psssssssshhhhhhhhh.

[Telekinetic-Potato]

Yea, from what I've seen, you're not gonna get a vdrum kit for less than $900 (on some kind of sale) which handles cymbals and hihats realistically. But it can be done.

I think that's why some of them are literally 3k because it's a mizlx between the quality of the brain, the quality of the actual rig and the quality of the pads in terms of sensitivity and feel.

Midi is a total pain in the ass. I would look into hooking it into a laptop or something and seeing if you can use what you have with some kind of plug in. I know a lot of metal guys use drums now and you'd almost never be able to tell if you weren't paying attention.

[FunkyMonkee]

@Telekinetic-Potato Mine's a 13-piece set, I doubt I paid more than a couple hundred for it because I just bought the various parts used on eBay. I doubt I paid more than $30 per pad and I think the brains came with a couple smaller collections so, again, I probably never paid more than $100 per brain, if that, and the rack was probably about $20 or $30.
I don't have a problem with the trap cymbals and the cool thing is, if you set up the open sound with the pedal closed, they work backwards! In other words, you get a tight closed sound without even touching the pedal and to get the sloppy sound, you press down on the pedal. Pretty cool for playing double bass drums AND the traps closed at the same time!
I'm told that I can sample whatever I want and replace it with the sounds they already have programmed into the brain but, again, I haven't had much of a chance to try any of that. Otherwise, I'd sample my real crash and see if that makes any difference.
I've been hearing about plug-ins for 20 years, now and still have no idea what they are! I was in a sound recording class in college in `03 where they JUST built a brand new all Pro-Tools studio and a number of people in the class mentioned plug-ins but nobody would tell me what the hell that is! It was like pulling teeth just to get the damn snobby, uppity teacher to the me what the hell MOTU was!! The class only lasted half a semester. Each of us was supposed to write, perform, record and edit/mix our own recording in the class and at the end, we were all SUPPOSED to get a CD with all of the recordings made in that semesters class but, just after the class ended, the huge computer they had to run everything crashed and we never DID get a recording of our stuff!! Good thing I recorded mine at home on my own computer or I'd have nothing to show for it!

[Telekinetic-Potato]

Uggh, that's a story I've heard too many times. At least nowadays the gatekeeping has reduced dramatically.

Plugins are software that's written to have tight integration with a "main" piece of software. Not dissimilar to how an someone might add a special effects pedal to a guitar rack.

In your case a plug in works with a daw like pro tools or maybe Logic and it could have the function of anything from a compressor to a drum sound effects library that works with a brain. They're called Plugins because once you install them (plug it in) it's a whole extra module added to the main software. And there's literally thousands of Plugins ranging from free to more than you or I are likely to ever spend.

[FunkyMonkee]

@Telekinetic-Potato What story?
What do they look like, some kind of SD card sort of thing? An external hard drive that you have to plug in? Maybe something about the size of a matchbox that shove into a slot somewhere? I've never seen one and have no idea what they look like.
What's a daw?

[Telekinetic-Potato]

The story about someone trying to learn something (in your case audio engineering) and some insecure jerk gatekeeping the information.

Plugins are software, it would be special if one came as a physical thing you plug in. Back in the day, you had to know where to put all the files which is where the reference to "plug (it) in" comes from.

DAW stands for DigitalAudioWorkstation

Like protocols, fruity loops, logic, ableton etc.

[Telekinetic-Potato]

There's all different types of Plugins, you can get virtual instrument Plugins like keyscape which does pianos or Dune which is a synth. There's sausage fattener for adding harmonic distortion, autotune for fixing singers with no talant amung other things, and of course there are a few drum ones.

[FunkyMonkee]

@Telekinetic-Potato Oh, that! Well, to look at the guy, you'd think he was an old hippy. Not that I have anything against my own kind but, he's actually only interested in classical music! Again, I have no problem with classical. I listen to some myself, every so often but, it's more like how he seemed to treat me as opposed to those others, much younger than me, and much more experienced with up to date tech, in the class; I was 46, they were in their early 20's. My ex-fiance was from India and one word she taught me was, "motu". It mean big, or fat. Ricardo mentioned a piece of gear in the class as, Motu! I asked what it meant or what it it was. After several minutes, he finally turned to me and said, "Mark of the unicorn" and immediately continued talking with the rest of the class. I'd recently take classes with two of his friends at other colleges and they both treated me like we were pals!! Ricardo seem to look down his nose at me like I wasn't good enough for him! I've been a drummer all my life and only started getting into electronics (synths) in the mid to late `80's, except for the electronic music class I had in high school so, SOME of the tech is new to me. Most of what I know about computers, I taught myself. I'm no idiot but, I also don't have a lot of experience with SOME of this stuff whereas, most of those kids sounded like they've lived and breathed it from the womb! On the other hand, there's tech things I know that they had no clue about!
I see.
Oh! That's logical!
I think I've heard of Logic but never heard of the others.

[FunkyMonkee]

@Telekinetic-Potato I've heard a lot about Autotune and, sounds to me like those "singers" that actually need it shouldn't be singers at all!! The thing I DON'T like about it is that, if it's used on people that CAN sing, even if they're just one or two frequencies off (y'know, something nobody but a machine will be able to detect), it kinda takes the life out of their tracks! It's okay to fix a mistake with it after the fact but, to use it constantly makes it all plastic. I just fixed a mistake last week that I've been wanting to fix ever since we recorded it back in the early `90's. It just took a tiny bit of editing that I never knew I had the option of doing until last week. WHY they couldn't just let me punch it in at the damn studio that day or at the next session, I don't know!! They let the album go out with that mistake in it when it would've only taken another couple minutes to fix it!! All they had to do was run the tape back to the part that needed fixed, let me punch in that one snare hit and it's DONE!!

[Telekinetic-Potato]

Yea, I can see how it could be confusing especially knowing how physical the equipment used to be. Plus all the terminology now is callbacks to the old days. Like if you get a nice delay plug in, it will have a springboard setting, tape-delay and most modern "reverb" plug-ins use a convolver which I think those are relatively new.

But I love talking to people from back in the day because there is a lot of stuff I've learned from the old heads that most younger people simply can't talk about intelligently.

[FunkyMonkee]

@Telekinetic-Potato I've never heard of a convolver.
Yeah, I kinda like the old techniques better, it's more hands-on and teaches you more about it than just pushing buttons to get what you want. If you just push a button, you have no idea what you just did to get what you wanted whereas, doing it the old way, you LEARN HOW to get what you want and, usually, in the process, you might stumble upon a new technique that never existed before!! Or, you can get one idea from something you've done and try to do the same thing on something else and come up with something else new! Dig! In this one studio, we were using Buchla synths and open reel tapes and it was a quad studio! We had to use a lot of tape manipulation to get the sounds we wanted. Well, at that time, the emulator was hot shit but, we didn't have one so, I got the idea to "create" an emulator style recording using only tape recordings that I'd cut up into pieces as long as I needed for each sound and then splice them back together in the order I wanted. The only sounds I used was my voice singing the four notes of an E chord. What I ended up with sounds like a madman playing a synth!! In quad!! It was only :48 long but it took me one 13-hour session to put it all together! It was a fun little experiment and, if listened to in quad, it's a lot of fun to listen to because each note was assigned to a separate speaker so, it bounces all over the room! Everyone in the class loved it! Again, I was at least 10 years older than everyone else.
And, some of the lingo, today, is kinda confusing.
Now, if you wanna get into some serious tape manipulation, you gotta check out this woman! She was doing this stuff back in the early `60's!! She'd take just any ordinary sound and do things to it to make it sound like it was played on a synth but, she never used a synth because she thought it was cheating!! https://youtu.be/nXnmSgaeGAI

[DevikaButts95]

I fiercely hate apple. So kinda like that but in the opposite direction. Lmao.

[Still-alive]

Lol i guess nintendo. now loyal doesn't mean i won't have criticisms of course. they got issues for sure like any other major company. but i have been with them since i was a child and ill likely never stop being a nintendo fan. ill be on my deathbed still playing some nintendo thing lol

[Kabluie]

Vans. I love getting a new pair of fun shoes often. Their clothes can be cool too especially when they collab.

[iron_ninjs]

I wouldn't say fiercely loyal, but I usually buy Converse sneakers and shoes, HP laptop, and Heinz ketchup. I think that's about it.

[bananathunder]

not that I can think of. Almost everything I own, I have another version of in at least one other brand... shoes, hats, watches, TVs, cars, appliances, food... I even have Alexa and Google home products scattered throughout my house (a few rooms with both for some reason lol)

I do have brands that I stay away from though lol. I will never buy another Apple product (besides Beats Headphones)

[KingslayerC]

No. All big companies are inherently heartless. Their entire existence is to generate profit, not produce a good product or make our lives better. So whoever has the best product for me, is getting my business until they piss me off.

[Mansearching]

No not really. If it works I'll use it. I will not use any LG products at all. If they're the only ones that have it, I'll go without.

[Coden7]

Sony, Corsair, DC, Beans & Brew, TaylorMade, Ping, Aéropostale, and Trojan.

[reds-noro]

Probably Motorola phones. Their UI is just SO much better than most (if not all) other phones.

[exitseven]

Carhartt

this is not me.

[Sparkie460]

Carhartt has great jackets

[Whatthefluff]

Honda

Proton (drive, mail, calendar)

Duckduckgo

Kaytee for small animal products

Otterbox for phone cases

[AaronH03]

Does anything from Target count?

[mandyfire98]

Absolutely. I love target

[AaronH03]

Best. Store. Ever.

[CuriousMufuxka]

I got a lot of Sony, but the last I bought anything from them was almost 10 years ago.. Perhaps that's a testament to longevity and quality.

[AviatorTom]

I like Samsung electronics: phones, TVs, computers.

[HippieVeganJewslim]

Ecosia. org It’s a search engine that plants trees whenever it’s used.

[DJB72]

Harley Davidson baby... A big V-Twin with a lot of torque

[jamesgoldman]

Motorola for phones

Vistaprint for my business cards

[Grond21]

Loyal? I would say Tesla and SpaceX. But nothing I am fiercely loyal too

[Blueeyes81]

Dewalt tools. Everything else I flip around and have no loyalty to.

[LiamJHayden]

I prefer Brooks running shoes, but other than that I cannot think of any.

[strlb]

Nope. I like certain companies but definitely not fiercely loyal to any

[Agape93]

Fiercely? No. But I enjoy mossberg

[OnlyMeee]

Nah not really, not in the current financial climate. Think we all shop around for a bargain

[TallAnon]

No, I use certain brands often though, like coca cola, android and google.

[muscles_glasses]

Sierra Designs, BC Clothing, Mountain Hardwear, Addidas etc.

[Paulychicagoluv]

Samsung I suppose

[Alex8736]

Wounded warriors project which is a charity

[BCA6010]

No.

Such blind loyalty is foolish.

[hahahmm]

The tradwife factory. Ancient but good.

[DryGermanGuy]

There was. Commodore Amiga. 🙃

[Simslover92]

Toyota. Samsung.

[alearningboy]

No I can almost have every brand but no apple.

[The_Shadow_Dweller]

Samsung?

[Fireguy17]

Coke vs Pepsi
No coke I will have water.

[LavLavLuv]

Zara...

[Staximus]

Old Chevrolets

[Unknown29]

Ford motor co. I’ve always liked Ford.

[collie22]

No not really

[DrewJohnson]

Oakley

[Typhon_]

no and never will

[Carson_3]

Probably my iPhone but that’s about it

[EaterPeter]

Many.

[EaterPeter]

Thanks for like!

[SpaceGalaxy]

Gucci

[CubaPirate]

Volkswagon

[HippieVeganJewslim]

Volkswagen*

[CubaPirate]

@HippieVeganJewslim thanks 😊

[HippieVeganJewslim]

Gern geschehen, matey!

[NoNa69]

apple

[J2ohhhhh]

Durex

[Andres77]

Beef.

[Friendlybro79]

Charmins

[Christoff92]

Google

[htmndg183]

Samsung

[Luckycharms12]

Nope

[BLP11520]

Glock, Nissan

[krin_m]

Not really.

[Bigjake1995]

Apple