Image credit @zhugunic https://drop.com/talk/67372/gl-2-k Do I need an amp? What are these acronyms like DAC, DSP, or DSD? What even are all the components that make up an audio chain? Let’s take a beginner’s look at the core, essential building blocks of a digital audio chain, and lay it plain what each piece does. We can cover the major pieces separately, but I’ll still include a few tips to optimize playback here. Please hit the little bookmark button and feel free to check and share this guide whenever you need a reference! For people who need a visual and audible explanation, or are worried it would take too long to get a working knowledge of the audio chain, here is my YouTube video on this subject that is just 7 minutes long!  I like writing though, so let’s get started with an overview, then break it down into what each piece does and how an upgrade would benefit the final sound quality. Signal Path Image credit @SpeleoFool https://drop...

As we publish more articles in the "Mech Keys How-To" series currently ongoing, navigating the various topics and finding previous articles will only become more difficult. This thread will serve as a table of contents to help add some structure to the whole project. Feel free to also suggest future topics in this thread, as it will surely be easier to identify gaps and opportunities for further exploration when viewing everything as a whole. Mechanical Keyboards Introductory Topics Mechanical vs Membrane Sizes and Layouts of Mechanical Keyboards Short Intro Into Split Keyboards (dovenyi) Staggered and Ortholinear Layouts Low-Profile vs High-Profile Keyboard Designs Build Materials and Other Case Design Considerations Selecting Your First Mechanical Keyboard (The_Manic_Geek) Keyboard Layouts Support for Alternate Layouts (dvorcol) What is SpaceFN and why you should give it a try (dovenyi) Keymap Layout Analysis (Keymap wizardry: Typing out the Harry Potter saga)...

I’d like to think that I could’ve been friends with the late Hideo Matsushita, founder of Japanese Hi-Fi powerhouse Audio-Technica. If I could, I’d travel back in time to 1960’s Tokyo, where a young Matsushita curated “vinyl listening sessions” at the Bridgestone Museum of Arts, exposing visitors to the sounds and possibilities of high end audio and the warmth of vinyl records. I imagine sitting with him in a mod coffee shop, listening to the stories of what he witnessed in those sessions, the conversations he had with visitors, and what ultimately motivated him to head back to his small apartment above a ramen restaurant and start an audio company of his own. In the histories I’ve read regarding AT’s humble beginnings, Matsushita’s motives seem clear. Produce high end audio at affordable prices, bringing audio excellence into spaces and to customers that simply didn’t have access to it before. His first two products, the AT-1 and AT-3 phono cartridges did exactly that, and...

If you watched Star Wars for the first time, without seeing images of the Empire’s perfectly spaced thousands of goose-stepping minions in spotless white-lacquered armor. If you didn’t see the fleets of black and grey tie-fighters, the immaculately designed star cruisers, the evil moon-shaped flagship… you wouldn’t know that the rebels were rebels. After all, rebels don’t look like rebels if they don’t have something to contrast them against. They just look like normal people. That’s probably why when you see Luke Skywalker, Han Solo or Finn (all rebels) dressed in stormtrooper garb, they somehow seem even more rebellious then they were before. It’s not what they’re wearing, it’s how they wear it. Dirty, scuffed, broken. Helmet missing or askew. An out of place, beat up weapon slung diagonally across their body. It’s the simple act of defacing the uniform that identifies them in our mind as counter-cultural. Funnily enough, it works in reverse. To the dismay of...

Alright, I’ll finally own up to it – there’s a lot of “copying” that happens in the mechanical keyboard switch world. While I don’t think that “everything is just a recolor of some other switch” nor do I think that “all linears are basically the same” as so many newer people to the hobby would claim, there’s definitely quite a bit of heavy handed inspiration taken from the past in the development of newer switches. A sort of ‘copy my homework but mess up a few answers’ vibe, if you will. Fundamentally, though, this shouldn’t be too surprising when you consider the limitations that exist in switches being developed within the very specific MX footprint. Gone are the days of companies developing entirely new switches, actuating mechanisms, and machinery to produce such all on their own and in order to make your switches marketable to the masses, they need to fit in with the shape, size, and style of MX switches. Naturally this near standardization of designs in the hobby leads to the...

On a meta level, the majority of my articles here on Drop fall into one of two categories – ones that are short lists and ones that are comprised of winding historical or contextual ruminations about specific switches. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with either of these formats for discussing switches, they don’t always necessarily work for covering every topic out there. One such mold-breaking topic that I frequently get asked about at meetups is for my predictions about the future of MX style switches. Only a few short weeks ago at Keycon 2025 I was asked this question repeatedly, with multiple people trying to probe to see if I had any insider secrets I could share or if I knew the direction everything was going to head in the future. (Is it really all just going to end up being magnetic switches after everything we’ve gone through?) While my guess about the future is truly only as good as any other enthusiast out there, and I sure have been wrong many times over my time...

My first sub $200 board since 2018.  Okay, I’ve used sub $200 boards since 2018, but to be fair, I’ve not bought any to add to my collection. That all changed with the Neo Ergo. Last time I purchased a brand new keyboard kit at this price range was the original Tofu60. At the time, there weren’t many budget keyboard kits, and they were nowhere near as premium as budget keyboards are today. Many times they didn’t even come with PCBS and plates. It was expected that you were a hobbyist and that you were going to do your research in order to source your own internals.  The Ergo's internals are simple, but completely custom and proprietary. Which comes to the next point when it comes to older budget builds. It was all standardized. For better or worse, universal 60 percent boards were the norm. The Poker series keyboards popularized a standardized standoff location that was carried through early custom traymount keyboards like the once famous Hammer case. There is a...

It turns out that there’s still quite a few more crazy, obscure switch modifications that I neglected to go over in my initial list of ‘obscure switch modifications’ from about a year ago. Perhaps the most glaringly obvious of these was that of “jailbreaking” switches, something which I was reminded of by @Rob27shred who is both a long time keyboarder himself and dedicated reader of all of my stuff from all of my different platforms. Honestly, I’m a bit surprised that he had to point out such a piece of history to me as I remember those switches being the first modifications I ever thought of doing to my own sets of switches. Part of my amnesia on this topic, I imagine, has to do with the state of the keyboard hobby nowadays. Keyboards, keycaps, and especially switches are so finely tuned, so over the top engineered, and so much closer to technical perfection now than they ever were back when I started in 2017 that the thought of modifying anything nowadays is far from one of my...

The Sagittarius with GMK WoB! The featured board of this article. Chapters (CTRL + F to skip) Intro Disclaimer What IS a Passion Project? Why #1 - The Keyboards Themselves  Why #2 - The Story Behind the Keyboard Why #3 - The Person (or People) Themselves Conclusion Intro “It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.” - Paulo Coelho. I talked about this topic briefly in my “Why I Love Prototype Runs and Helping Keyboard Designers” article I wrote last December, but to me, there is something quite poetic about designers and the design process of keyboards. The journey that a lot of designers embark on as they join the hobby as a keyboard newbie, learning the ins and outs about keyboards and figuring out their preferences, dreaming about a project or keyboard that they want to create, then making that dream a reality as the keyboard becomes fully realized. I can go on for hours about it! I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of a...

CTRL + F to quickly skip to each tip/trick below: Tip #1 - Cheap Dust Cover (Shower Caps) Tip #2 - Upgrade Your Wire Keycap Puller to Plastic Tip #3 - Test Your PCB/QC Your Board Before Building Soldering-Specific: Tip #4 - Take Your Time. Set Yourself up for Soldering Success Tip #5 - Using the Right Size Soldering Tip Tip #6 - Soldering Loose Switches/Plateless Builds - Rubber Bands Tip #7 - Fixing Crooked Switches After Soldering Extra Tip - Test Your PCB After Soldering… BEFORE You Put Away Your Soldering Equipment Intro & Disclaimer A recent mistake. Mixed three sets of beige PBT keycap sets and spent a good while having to separate everything... “I wish I had known about this sooner…” I can’t tell you the amount of times that I’ve said those words out loud, or thought about them when it comes to the keyboard hobby. Whether it’s what someone in the community has told me, or something I found out myself, even things that may seem so simple as using...

Hello to my fellow keyboardists and to the keyboard curious alike! Allow me to introduce myself, my name is triggidy. I’ll be writing articles on Drop from time to time. I have been in the keyboard hobby for over four years now. In that time I have collected several keyboards and too many artisan keycaps. You may also find me streaming keyboard builds occasionally. What is a keyboard meetup? Meetups are a great place to check out artisan keycaps as well as keyboards. I love meetups. In my opinion they are the best part of the keyboard hobby. Offering the opportunity to see your friends in the hobby as well as the chance to make new ones. Don’t have a keyboard to bring? No problem! There will be plenty of unique and often breath-taking keyboards to feast your eyes on. In fact, if you are curious about the hobby but haven’t decided on purchasing a custom keyboard kit, there’s no better place to get a feel for your preferences. Here you will have the chance to type on a...

Welcome back to this series where we’re designing kick-ass keymaps! After covering basics like how good/bad QWERTY is, the power of layers and the potential of custom keymaps, we took the first real steps in designing your tailor-fit keymap by looking into some options for compiling a corpus in general and also with a more useful personal corpus in mind. Quick recap: in this context, corpus is simply a fancy name for a big chunk of text. Today, we’re going to analyze your corpus (or pretty much any text if you haven't done your homework yet) and discuss some basic language statistics along with common metrics that can be used to quickly evaluate a keymap, and also to compare layouts. This is the next logical step in our journey if you're aiming to craft the optimal keymap for yourself. Character/bigram/trigram frequencies To begin with, let's examine the character frequencies in our corpus. The occurrence of different letters can vary significantly not only between...

One of the many pictures that SplodeyBaloney took at the Iowa meetup this year. FinnGus cat board, skate board (guess which MT3 set that is!) and STOP sign “macropad” courtesy of Jack/Pikatea. TL;DR Educating myself and knowing what I like and don’t like allows me to plan my purchases better compared to when first starting out where we tend to buy anything and everything just to try things. Understanding that I should focus on what I enjoy instead of buying things because others say it’s a good purchase. No fear of FOMO. Taking purchasing breaks and enjoying what I currently have. Spending time with my boards instead of upgrading/sidegrading or moving on to the next thing. The social aspect of the hobby. Good keyboard friends end up being good friends. Chapters (CTRL + F to skip) Intro Disclaimer Background Sections The Approaching Storm - The Hobby in the Eyes of a Newcomer Turbulent Winds - First Steps Into the Hobby The Main Points  The Eye of the Storm - The Lull...

My polycarbonate (PC) Jixte with GMK Striker. TL;DR 6 sound test videos. One compilation video, one for each keyboard (Rainy75, CSTM65, polycarbonate Jixte, aluminum Jixte), and one Lewitt Mics only video for ease of listening. Do know that while sound test videos may not capture sound accurately, if you keep everything the same and just switch keycaps around, these are great comparative sound test videos. Yes, I titled this article “Short” sound comparisons as a joke since these videos are 1-5+ hours long. Let me know what your thoughts are! Which keycap sets sound the same? Which sound different? Anything surprise you? Chapters (CTRL + F to skip) Intro Disclaimer The Configurations and Details The Videos Themselves Conclusion Intro: I have a problem.  For some weird reason, I love to create really long sound test videos of keyboards, keycaps, and switches (more keyboards because I stick with the usual 8 switches and 4 keycap types for the most part). Yes, I totally...