Recent comments in /f/headphones

Egoexpo t1_iy7rlqx wrote

Reply to comment by wijnandsj in Good music recommedation test your headphones. by MittensForYou

When evaluating headphones, what is most important is activity in different frequency ranges; in the Harman tests, pop and classical music are the best for testing headphones. Polyphia is very similar to pop songs in terms of activity at different frequencies. The dynamic range is not that important for this specific activity.

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nipsen t1_iy7r9qz wrote

Reply to comment by soldkeyboard57 in What does it mean to properly “power” a headphone? by soldkeyboard57

Np. But sorry if I sound like I'm .. really mad at someone, or something... But there's just so much bs floating around.

I guess I should have added something about where the amplifier even comes in. Sometimes you might just have a power-source and some digital transfer standard. I think most of the time, this is what you have now. You have a laptop and a usb-c, or a phone with usb-c. You might have a similar setup with hdmi. So what you're really requiring in that case is a) a very small dac that produces something reasonable (what's needed here is a 1 cent chip). And b) a very small amplification of that converted signal.

A good amplifier will do both of those from the digital source, and have noise-filters in that process, along with some equaliser voodoo, very often. This stage is typically where the actual differences in sound "feel" comes from. For example, when you listen to something from Hegel, you are not just getting the raw signal (if there is such a thing), you are getting something that they feel mimicks the feel of an orchestra-lounge. And that comes in the conversion stage for the most part (when you map out the entirely non-analog signal), and in the noise-filters after it, and then finally in the ranges the amplifier will work best at against such and such speakers.

So imagine a different scenario where you have a leveled output from an analog source (like a casette player, or a cd-player with it's own conversion stage), and now your amplifier is supposed to magick this signal into something that can produce richness and beauty on a huge rig -- this isn't trivial at all, and sometimes not really possible. Now you're suddenly talking about having a sound-feel from the amplification that sometimes very clearly and obviously is going to favour a high impedance speaker setup where the sound coming out is "cleaner" and "crisper", than what you would get out of it if there was noise being amplified, if there weren't noise-filters, if you didn't sacrifice some of the input to get a good spectrum out, etc., etc. This stuff is the realm where a lot of the really knowledgable people who know sound come from, and in that realm you can hear the difference between a good and a bad amp. And it is not just subjective, there are very specific things being done to the noise and signal here in that amplification process that causes signatures and "feels" that may be good or bad, or whatever.

But since we have a digital source now, and can skip a lot of these issues, first of all, it is possible to get really high definition audio output without garble, right? There's less and less need to level recordings, people have dacs that do that. That's huge. Should be, at least. Because not only could you get the actual sound of the source at much higher definition, you can level it against whatever your target is right there.

So what we are really looking for is just a dac that does minimal things to the audio input, and then an amplifier that just amplifies that analog signal a tiny amount without causing too much distortion. Like...

https://www.adv-sound.com/products/accessport-lite

And you suddenly have an analog signal from a phone that is going to objectively be a billion times better than what a 10k Euro amplification theater system would have been fed just 15 years ago. And on top of that, you have amplification drawing on the usb power source, getting you potential effect peaks that can comfortably handle low volume on semi-high impedance speakers.

Can you do better than this 29 dollar thing for an amp? Yes. Can you do worse? Yes, absolutely, there are cheaper ways to do the same thing. Can you do /significantly/ much better than this 29 dollar thing, though, in the context I mentioned with the amplification of a record-player or a cd-player with it's own dac, when outputting to a headset? In the sense of.. could you capture more of the sound-picture by switching to a gigantic amp? That is actually questionable. XD

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Mansao t1_iy7oq3v wrote

Reply to comment by Un111KnoWn in I do use Spotify more nowadays by UnnecessaryMovements

The good thing about flac (and other lossless codecs) is that you can convert it to any fancy new codec in the best possible quality. But if you convert from a lossy codec to another one, the losses will add up (and at some point will become audible)

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alesimula97 t1_iy7nz4w wrote

Reply to comment by Emmerson_Biggons in Headphone wizardry by SupOrSalad

That is the exact point I was arguing against, maybe you should read my comment again

Our hearing is not one-dimensional, whether the dimension of sound is measured exactly by our ears or interpreted by our brain does not matter, what matters is we DO perceive 3dimensional sound and that makes audio equipment that plays sound from different directions produce a noticeable effect

Now, you say that due to its "interpreted" nature it is easily tricked, but since it varies from person to person due to our personal HRTF, you cannot trick it both "accurately" and universally and it would require personalised tuning to achieve an identical result as sound coming from a specific direction

So wouldn't that make a "smart" headset that can adapt to its user or allow him to calibrate 3d sound, and an headset that actually plays 3d sound, both valid options?

And wouldn't the latter be the most accessible option, since it works ootb?

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klogg4 t1_iy7n7cv wrote

Reply to App for decibel level? by SpareAnywhere8364

If you have FiiO BTR, Qudelix 5k or smth like that, then there is a convenient way - through a built in calculator in an app. Otherwise there's not.

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IMKGI t1_iy7n1yx wrote

Reply to New Yamaha headphones by Shirubax

The XLR cable itself is 900$? Considering thats their first planar headphone and they are throwing that much marketing BS around i really don't have high hopes for that headphone, probably gonna be on par with 800S at the very best

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