scanfiend

It really depends on the storage capacity of your DAP, and the threshold of quality you're willing to tolerate. Personally, I think 192VBR is a good compromise, though some guys would settle for nothing less than lossless.

Hmm....with those pads covering your ears, I doubt it would be very comfortable during strenuous excercise, especially if heavy sweating is involved Going to be hot around the ears, too. How about one of the Senn Sportsline headphones? Roughly $70++ (Challenger), but the design wraps around the back of the head, and seems secure enough for jogging, gym etc. Too bad the colours are a little bit too bright for my taste (bright lime green? )

I personally feel the nEar04's strong point is its clarity. Awesome for vocals and the instrumental music that I listen to. If you're into Hip-Hop, Heavy Metal and so on, you might feel the bass to be a lacking.

Jaben's at Aldephi sells the ESI cards, as he's the ESI agent in Singapore. Thought I saw some M-audio stuff in his place, but couldn't be sure. Anyways, I saw lots of M-audio stuff over at the Apple showroom in Wheelock Place and Cineleisure Jaben Network 1 Coleman Street #04-16 The Aldephi, S(179803) Tel: 6337-0809

The Beyond has a way too bright green LED The Battery II has a blue LED. Yeah, like what Top-Gun said, that's the only way to tell them apart, there's no external markings or anything. Unless you remove the housing and look at the PCB It's etched onto the PCB in large letterings

I have the Beyond hooked up to a Panasonic CT820 as well as to an ancient Sony PCDP via line-outs using Audioquest RCA to mini cables. I switch from the Panasonic to the Sony from time to time It sounds fantastic with my AKG K601! The Beyond is a Class A amp, so it runs hot. The Battery is a Class AB and runs a lot cooler. The Battery has 2 internal 9V Nimh rechargeables inside that is charged whenever you plug in the AC adaptor. It's good if you want your amp to be portable. I had no need for portability because it's for my bedside listening, so I used the Beyond instead. No charging circuits mean no additional complexity within the amp and less electronic noise Funky looks aside, quality is extremely high for the 2 Firestone amps. I have personally used the Battery and Beyond before settling for the Beyond. They feature adjustable gain, and the volume pot is smooth as silk. Absolutely dead silent, even when used with my UM2's If you're a tweaker you can even swap out the opamp chips to modify the sound. They even thoughtfully provide an allen key for you to open the case. I highly recommend these amps. Give them a go Fantastic value, especially if you try to bargain with Wilson a bit

Why go through all the hassle? And what are you going to do with all the emptied tea leaves? Like my suggestion in an earlier thread, just go to NTUC or Daiso and buy those empty muslin tea bags. They are used to stuff either tea leaves or herbs for boiling soup and stuff. It helps to make cleanup easier.

This thread has motivated me to hit the web for more information - ain't the Internet grand? It'll take me months to dig up all these info at a regular library, if at all All in all, I found it most enlightening. I hope fellow forumers will find it useful: Rip Rowan: Over The Limit http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/...6256C2E005DAF1C The Death of Dynamic Range: http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/dynamicdeath.htm What Happened To Dynamic Range? http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/dynamicrange.htm Imperfect Sound Forever: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/wee...und-forever.htm The Loudness War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

http://www.misterbg.org/AppleProductCycle/ Some comic relief from all the fevered anticipation

or stick your headphone jack into the line-out If it's a true line-out, you should get horribly distorted audio - at least that's what I got on my Sony PCDP With the Firestone Beyond or Govibe to the line-out and a pair of quality headphones, a PCDP will make a very viable and portable listening station, IMHO (well, maybe not with the Firestone )

ALBUM = Discover Orange Music ARTIST = Paul Cardall TITLE = Signs Of Affection TRACKNUMBER = 2 Oh yeah, I'm in a romantic mood

Indeed, not to excuse Creative or anything, but companies do release dud products from time to time. This headphone jack issue was an infamous problem for the Micro, as evidenced by numerous posts in various forums. They apparently did not officially acknowledge the issue, and some say newer batches do not exhibit this particular problem, because it was quietly fixed in subsequent manufacturing runs. But then, the damage has been done Unfortunately for Creative, they did not have the sheer charisma of a certain fruity company, who despite the lousy battery life of its earlier DAP's and its apparently current problematic notebook issues (overheating, random shut downs, mooing ?), that its faithful have all chosen to steadfastly ignore and continue to support it

That's what I was talking about. It goes without saying that when the signal is pumped out at almost maximum volume, the audio would be terribly compressed, with very little room for dynamic transients before you run into the very real risk of signal clipping. I was playing extensively with line-outs on my DAP's over the weekend and came to this conclusion. Music sounded flat, muddy, congested, and has no dynamism and sparkle at all. In fact, I can only tweak the amp volume control just a little before it became unbearably loud for my UM2. Connecting the amp to the headphone out jack resulted in better sound for me, contrary to all the information I have read. That's because I can adjust the volume of the output (typically half max volume), and adjust the headphone volume via the amp. That got me thinking....why is this so? A line-out is a line-out right? My almost 10yr old Sony PCDP sounded heavenly with the AKG 601 and the Govibe through the line-out. Then I came across this: I stuck my headphones into the line-out jack and got horrible audio distortion and fade-outs (it's all in the interest of science ) Makes sense, since there is barely enough current to drive the headphone in the first place. All this makes me wonder - the fact that the audio comes out at some kind of volume (listenable using the headphones, albeit very, very loud ) imply some kind of amplification taking place, not exactly the "line-out" that I expect Wonder why this is so? Maybe the highly integrated circuit design of modern DAP's preclude the genuine "line-out" output?

Sorry to bust your bubble, but ALL of the amps you mentioned have hiss with the UM2 Having said that, the Go-Vibes have the least objectionable amount of hiss. So be warned if you freak out the merest hint of hissing

Enjoy your purchase The Firestone Beyond headphone amp is one great, under-rated amp! (can't seem to find any decent reviews on the 'Net anywhere). Probably because of it's funky exterior, most "audiophiles" probably sniff at it and wouldn't give it the time of day. In fact, I was kidding with Wilson that the surest way of making itself noticed would be to put the same amp in a fancy aluminum case and jack the price 3 times higher! If you have a PCDP, try hooking up the Beyond to the line-out using quality interconnects. The sound can give any full-sized CDP a run for its money, and it's relatively portable, to boot! That's my bedside listening setup

Here ya go.... http://www.sgheadphones.net/index.php?showtopic=5165 I would suggest you hook up the amp via your headphone jack rather than the line-out of you ipod....unless it has a "true line-out" rather than a "max or constant volume" type of line-out I do not have an ipod, so YMMV. Try out the 2 connections and pick the one you like best

Hi fellow forumers! I know there is a keen interest amongst many of us on headphone amps. Below is a cut and paste from various threads in different forums on the matter. I've saved the posts that I feel that is most relevant, and they don't necessarily come from the same thread, so it may read a little disjointed. I do think it's informative, and if nothing else, should generate some great discussion in Sgheadphones (I hope) Happy reading! ---------------------------------------- [Tomb-headfi] Your conjecture is somewhat close, but you don't get a cigar, yet. You are confusing a volume control with amplification. Even the lowliest portable can drive many heaphones to ear splitting volumes. However, most of that volume will be produced by the peak power capability of the amplifier circuit at a very limited set of frequencies, and the rest will be distortion. As a for instance, one of the first introductions to hi-fidelity sound is that you notice that higher quality equipment can produce higher volume without as much irritation. Most easily see this comparison with speakers; it is very little different with headphones. Music consists almost entirely of transients on top of a baseline of more-or-less constant tone, depending on the music. Quality amplification (translated: separate headphone amp) will have plenty of power to produce the constant tone for an overall acceptable volume level, but will also have plenty of power in reserve for any transients. Besides transients, there is also the problem of differing power levels needed for different frequencies. Bass frequencies require more energy and require more power. There again, another reason for a huge amount of power over and above the simple rating of a headphone's Sound Pressure Level (SPL) efficiency. All of this is pretty much an afterthought in basic component players, including iPods, etc. There are many more design considerations to deal with that have a greater influence on affecting overall product design. That's one of the reasons you see only earbuds or very efficient headphones with portables. They simply do not have the necessary design for a better power supply. Simple Physics dictates that more power is possible with much less effort if the voltage is higher (Power is dependent on the current squared). Unfortunately, batteries are probably more limited in voltage than current, but pretty much limited in both. That's why you a see a culture of headphone amplifiers with power supplies up to 24V, and many with batteries up to 18V. It simply isn't possible for mfrs to include this stuff in portables meant for the masses. So, the extra headphone amp is all to ensure that every frequency, every transient gets all the power a quality pair of headphones want. The result is not necessarily an ability to turn the volume up, but a crispness, airiness, and prescence that never existed before in your headphone listening. [Mulveling-headfi] First of all, forget the misconception that the purpose of hifi headphones amps is just to go louder - it's about higher quality at comparable volumes. Anytime you listen to headphones, you're using an amplifier to drive them. The amplifier could be the built-in amp from an ipod, a dedicated headphone amp, or sometimes people even use the output stage of their source as the amp. When you plug your headphones into a receiver or integrated sepaker amp, a numer of things could be happening: 1) the headphone jack is driven by a headphone amp stage built into the receiver; usually of exceeedingly poor quality 2) the jack is powered by the preamp stage of the receiver 3) the jack is powered by the power amp stage with resistors added to bring the level down It is true that amplifiers cannot mitigate distortions from a source. However, amplifiers always add distortion of their own, and this is often what audiophiles seek to minimize by replacing the low quality "stock" headphone amps with a higher quality one. Note that this point is sort of debatable though - some types of distortion are considered euphonic in moderate amounts, while other kinds of distortion sound awful even in small amounts. Anyways, the point is that amplifiers sound different because they add different types and amounts of distortion to the signal. Cheap amps (usually the kind that are built in) often add judicious quantities of the bad, non-euphonic kind of distortion. Also of importance is that an amplifier will often output increased distortion when driving a load it wasn't designed (or not properly designed) to drive. Here's where we get into the need for a powerful dedicated headphone amp - low impedance headphones need an amp with high current capabilities, else the amp will be strained (and distort more). High impedance headphones require a higher voltage swing (again, else distortion). High quality amps will typically be capable of large current and voltage swings, keeping distortion low over a wide rage of headphone impedances. The output impedance of the amp also affects distortion. High output impedance will cause distortion, but the quick fix (global negative feedback) itself is considered to cause very non-euphonic distortion. There are many design considerations to an amp that all affect the sound. A single transistor or opamp can't come close to doing the job right, which is why high end amp design is complicated and why the cheap built-in amps sound like crap. Sometimes you'll see people chain a higher quality amp after a lower quality amp stage, ie: using a dedicated headphone amp from the ipod headphone jack. At first such an arragnement seems counterproductive - why would you want to add the distortion from two amps into the signal chain - however it's not necessarily as bad as it seems. By feeding the ipod amp into another amp, you're presenting the ipod a different load than that of a headphone. Typically, the input impedance of an amp is very high (10,000 - 100,000 ohms, compared to 32 - 300 for headphones), which is easier to drive (meaning lower distortion) for many preamp and headamp stages. Same with people who are using their sources (ie: soundcard) to directly drive headphones. By adding a dedicated amp, they take the burden off the source's output stage so that the overall distortion goes down (or becomes more euphonic ). [Tomb-headfi] Yep, you are correct - IMHO. Personally, I prefer 1/2 to 3/4 of the volume control, but it depends on quality of the source. You are correct to suspect that you can start clipping with the source prior to an amp if the volume is too high (assuming no line out, of course). Turn the volume too low, and your amp may be amplifying more noise than signal. I truly believe that without a line out, it's an experimental process. ---------------------------------------- [NotJeffBuckley-Hydrogenaudio] Huh. I didn't know you post here, MirrorSaw. Yeah, you need a headphone amplifier to adequately power high- and low- impedance headphones; low impedance headphones require more current to accurately reproduce bass frequencies (and thus benefit more from large coupled capacitors, such as the 2200 microfarads found in the PA2V2 or the 1800 microfarads in the Go-Vibe), while high impedance headphones require more voltage to excurse the drivers and avoid op-amp clipping. The current provided by a typical portable audio player is usually less than 15ma per channel, which can lead to notable distortion with low impedance headphones that require more current draw - I'm not sure to which headphones you refer when you say "overwhelming majority;" I'm sure many of the exceptionally sensitive cheap headphones designed specifically for volume headroom and tuned for bass resonance are more than adequately driven by a portable player's voltage swing of less than 2v at less than 30ma total output current, but I wouldn't want to use less sensitive 32ohm headphones with any less than 50ma per channel available. Further, the capacitors are there primarily for dynamic headroom; they supply current for particularly taxing excursions where an op-amp's steady output would be insufficient. That's the "real purpose" of coupled output capacitors, nothing nefarious there (although I agree that 2200microfarad is rather in excess of what is necessary, especially with a low voltage op-amp, but it extends the flat response considerably beyond the audible spectrum and into sub/hypersonics). [steve999-Hydrogen Audio] May I add..... buyer beware!!! Headphone amplifier channel balance for low-level listening can be a major issue too, IMHO. Noise can be an issue both in terms of noise floor due to too high gain or just poor s/n ratio, and in terms of ground hum noise. Noise tends to be more of an issue with very sensitive low impedence phones like the MDR-V6s, especially if the gain is too high. An amp's ability to work around difficult ground-loop hum issues can be quite important, IMHO. These issues are what separate the good stuff from the just okay stuff, in my experience. A near-0 ohm impedance headphone amp will usually have the least impact on frequency response, though some phones are designed to be driven from an industry-standard 120-ohm jack. Some smaller battery-powered amps will have trouble driving very low-impedence phones without some small amount of bass rolloff (the ipod photo headphone out had this problem, as I understand it). The biggest problem with high-impedence, low sensitivty phones like the HD600 and HD650 is usually not noise or channel balance at low levels but just getting them loud enough without pushing the amp's performance limits too far (resulting in clipping or distortion), and this is usually only an issue with battery-powered portable equipment. Most things that you plug in a wall will drive them very comfortably. I use a Behringer UB802 mixer. The input gain is adjustable on two channels if you are a perfectionist. Or you can just use other channels with fixed gain. It drives my Senn HD580s and Beyer DT880s very easily, and my Sony MDR-V6s very quietly. My confidence in my UB802 increased when a friend took measurements on its big brother, the UB1202, and it did quite well for noise, frequency response, and distortion. Though I am not the expert on this stuff. The UB802 mixer also has bass, mid, and treble controls, and multiple inputs and outputs. And panning controls that you can use as a primitive (but continuously variable) crossfeed for old recordings with excessive or tacky stereo separation. And pretty flashing lights. Price: $60. Expensive headamps edge on over into snake-oil-ville as price increases, IMHO. In many circumstances, a home receiver or home CD deck (with headphone jack) or computer sound card will provide solid amplification even with the HD600s or HD650s, IMHO. As to whether one could hear a difference versus an expensive headphone amp in an ABX test, I make no claims. I can tell you based on experience that any difference is not worth it to me, though. A $100 portable amp could be genuinely useful if you are going to use such hard-to-drive headphones as the HD600 or HD650 portably. Thing is, you could get a second pair of really nice and more practical headphones for portable use for the price of that portable amp. If someone is thinking of paying $200 or $300 or more for the meager amount of amplification needed to drive a pair of headphones, I suggest taking the time to come to a better understanding of what you are paying for. If someone at hydrogen audio asserts you need to pay that much for transparent headphone amplification, I say prove it. What is it -- T.O.S. 8? [niktheblak-Hydrogen audio] I do notice that you used the phrase "get the proper sound out of them..." ... if "proper" means loud, then yes, you'll need a headphone amp to drive them to loud levels. If "proper" means a pleasant sound at decent normal listening levels, then a special headphone amp is not required. Unfortunately just 'loud' doesn't quite cut it. The problem with computer/other line-outs is that they generally have high-impedance output and expect a very high-impedance load, such as 30,000Ω amplifier input. When someone plugs a 60Ω headphone into a line-out expecting 30,000Ω load, the frequency response characteristics of the line-out may change considerably. Probably the single most common phenomenon is attenuation of lower frequencies since they usually have the lowest impedance in most headphones. So you can achieve a sound that is 'loud' but still lacks a major proportion of the spectrum. Also when volume (load) is yet increased with such an underpowered source, pretty much anything can happen to the frequency response curve, but it almost certainly won't be flat. And at this point we've drifted a long way away from 'hi-fi'. So basically a headphone amp's most useful purpose is to perform impedance matching between line-out and a pair of headphones. If you already have a low-impedance output expecting a low-impedance load (such as high quality headphone output of a mixer table), then you shouldn't have major problems driving headphones and don't need a headphone amp. ---------------------------------------- [Wikipedia] On the other hand, the final power amplifier stage of a typical audio device often introduces distortion. But "line out" is derived from some point before that final amplification takes place. So "line out" signals tend to be of higher quality than those from a speaker (or headphone) connector. "Line in" expects the kind of signal "line out" provides. So you can typically connect the "line out" connector of one device with the "line in" of another. However, if you do this with a straight cable, and both devices are AC powered, you may run into ground - loop - hum. A typical "Line in" inputs is actually a high impedance input with an impedance of around 10,000 ohms. When a "Line out" signal output, with its impedance of around 100 ohms, is connected to a high impedance "Line in" input like this one, the result is that most of the voltage (over 99%) appears across the input resistance, and almost none of the voltage is dropped across the output impedance. This is the desired effect. Since the impedances are far from matched, very little power is transferred, but the goal is not power transfer, it is voltage transfer. These are voltage signals (as opposed to current signals*) and it is the signal information that is desired, not power to drive a transducer (e.g. speaker) or (transmitting) antenna. [Cnet Audio Glossary] An audio jack on a sound card or other media device that outputs line-level (0.5- to 2-volt) analog signals. Suitable for sending signals to stereos, tape decks, and so on. By contrast, a headphone output can produce signals 10 or more times that strength.

An mp3 is a lossy codec. What this means is that it discards data during the encoding process. That means the data that was discarded is gone forever. You cannot reconstruct something out of nothing -therefore you can never get the "original" uncompressed song, no matter which lossless codec you use to transcode.

Here you go - some homework for you http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless

Couldn't be you then....I travel this route around 8.00 am That chap was wearing something like this: http://www.headphone.com/productPhotos.php?icn=0020110990 Except that the centre grills are blue, probably a mod of some sort It's humongous, so it's not exactly inconspicuous

Hmm, I occasionally see a big guy wearing Beyers with blue driver housings when I commute from Jurong East to Raffles Place. Wonder if he's you

I just swapped my Firestone's adaptor with the one from Jaben Found out that all newer 24V adaptors included with Firestone amps/DAC feature 3mm tips instead of the 2.5mm tip of the earlier models. Firestone products have a 3mm AC input jack, so all the older adaptors fit - the newer ones fit better

Welcome to the wonderful world of PC audio As an analogy, the different software decoders you use to play back your ripped music stored on your HDD would be the CD players in Hi-Fi systems. I tried Winamp, Creative Mediasource, WMP, and Foobar2K and they all exhibit subtle differences in audio playback.

Congrats on your purchase! Hope you'll enjoy it for a long, long time You mean you're using a PDA for MP3 playback?! Wow, never would have guessed. I tried using my SE K750i to play back my mp3's - tried it once and never again Be aware, though, with your current setup you can possibly tell the difference between 128kps and higher bit encoding (i.e. 192kps or higher), so with your higher storage capacity, you can really go to town with your lossless encoding Do note, though, that higher bit rates can eat into your battery life.

Let me try to give it a shot here - and if I get my facts wrong, please don't flame me OK, music mastered onto a CD is digital data, and any CD-ROM (dedicated CDP or computer CD/DVD-ROM) should be able read that data without issues. All CD-ROM drives contain error-checking routines, and unless the drive is seriously out-of-whack, the digital data stream should be identical. Arguably, a computer CD-ROM probably has more stringent error-checking routines - an error that slips through, would at worst, cause an audio glitch in a CDP, but can cause data corruption or programs to "crash" in the case of a PC. Now, if you're talking about music playback, other components downstream will come into play. If you're using a laptop, the digital stream has to be routed through the internal sound card's DAC, and finally out through the output jacks. It is generally accepted that if you're using the built-in sound chip on the motherboard, the music output generally suffers in comparison to a dedicated CDP. You have issues with electronic and RF inteference from the PSU and the motherboard that can adversely affect the sound. A separate audio card like the ubiquitous Creative would certainly improve the sound, but some audio "purists" still have issues with the DAC circuitry in consumer oriented sound cards. Some audiophiles bypass the soundcard altogether by routing the digital stream out to a dedicated, external DAC via USB. When they do this, they are basically using their computers as transports. In fact, there's a whole section in headfi.org on using computers as a source. It can be a good solution. I'm using a Firestone Fubar II external USB DAC, and to my ears, at least, it offers superior music playback compared to my Audigy soundcard. Some of those external DAC's are also astonishly expensive, and IMHO, way too fiddly.