rant: Headphone amps are overrated

[Rameish 0]

I deliberately kept my mouth shut on this one as I felt Ablaze was onlyt half serious.

 

Okay my 2¢:

 

There are several things wrong with using a computer as a source - with or without a soundcard of whatever quality. It (the computer) was never designed to be an audio product and as such the powever supply is not geared for it. I have offered to come to your place b4 to audition your computer/sound card to change my mind about it. I do have an open mind about these things :-)

 

Second - specs mean nothing to me. I do not like the simplier upsampling devices either - was not impressed by perpetual tech upsampler and DAC. The 2 cost somthing like 2K then.

 

3rd a good transport (are there any left with the demise of the CDM9 series???) in a flimsy chassis with a fan?? (most computer have one) and a PS that's powering up a hard drive that spinning away is not IMO a very promising start to the audio chain.

 

Coming back to the so called "direct path" it can sorta work if you have a high impedence headphone that's also relatively sensitive. Howver the sound is very thin ( that is everthing is very sparkely yet you do not feel the presence of the musicians). It's a bit like surround sound in the -ve sense (it sounds like piped in music).

 

That's not my idea of high fidelity which is what hi-fi means after all.

 

However, if you like it, then hey enjoy. You've found your Nirvana (for now ;-)

Edited August 25, 2003 by Rameish

[ablaze 0]

I don't have the technical know-how to explain all that jitter and error correction and what-not, so I won't bother. What I can say is, sure, the computer in general was not engineered to be an audio device, but the sound card was designed (at least the good ones ) to produce the highest-quality sound possible, including minimising the effect of noise, and other factors that would make a typical computer unfavourable for good sound.

 

I've pasted some links along the way, here's more:

http://www.stereophile.com/showarchives.cgi?280 DAL Carddeluxe

http://www.stereophile.com/showarchives.cgi?299 RME Digi96/8 Pro

it has to mean something that stereophile actually reviewed these soundcards (and we're not talking about the crappy "Creative" variety mind you ) and even bothered to compare them to hifi gear costing thousands, no?

or this famous one from avsforum, where branxx compared the high-end soundcards' analog outputs to the outputs on his other equipment, like his Lexicon MC-12B, and actually PREFERRED some of the soundcards.

 

I assume that at least some links have been perused?

 

 

anyway, I really need to bring my comp down to the next meet. together with my gigabytes of uncompressed music.

[Rameish 0]

Or could I come to your place? I'm always interested in listening to new equipment - yes even computer soundcards.

[ablaze 0]

hehe. no no. room's an embarrassing mess.

 

will try to think of something for the next meet

[Rameish 0]

Okay lah. I don't mind mess. Anyways we're going OT - well sorta OT so I'll use the PM.

 

Once againg I excited about headphones, amps and sources.

[ablaze 0]

as a parting note on computer-source issues, lemme quote the first few words of the stereophile review for the DAL Carddeluxe:

Digital Audio Labs CardDeluxe PC soundcard

 

By John Atkinson, September 2000

 

Convergence. There, I've said it. I swore I wasn't going to use the "C" word, but when you're faced with writing about a product that smashes the boundaries between component categories as completely as the CardDeluxe does, you have little choice.

 

"But it's only a PC soundcard," I hear you groan. "What's the big deal?"

 

The big deal is that while soundcards?since the very first SoundBlaster?have aimed low with respect to sound quality, and have often failed to reach even that standard, the CardDeluxe (and some other new cards I intend to write about at a later date) represents a no-compromise attitude to computer sound that is worthy of an established high-end audio company. I was impressed with what I saw and heard of a prototype CardDeluxe at an AES Convention a couple of years back, so when Digital Audio Labs contacted me in fall 1999 about a review, I jumped at it.

link here

 

 

 

so, how come nobody's sliming me for thinking amps are over-rated?

[tee 0]

My little contributions here :

 

Hi-fi means high fidelity, ie. reproducing music in a way that is very close to the real thing which is heard during a recording or live performance.

 

In some instances, an understanding of how the composer (by reading the program notes) wanted the music piece to be played is also important. This relates to how the emotion and feeling of the music should be communicated to the audience by the players or singers and whether such elements or sensations have actually been felt.

 

So here, we have the emotion, feeling, musical details and sense of "live" performance as key attributes to make a music piece sound "great" to our ears. That is how i make judgement to whether the music from headphones or speakers sound fabulous and if so, i'll think the gears are good stuff or having right matching.

 

So everyone here, how frequent do you attend concerts...whether acoustic jazz (which seldom uses electrical amplication - therefore what you hear is what they play, plus the effect from enviromental acoustic), concerto (must listen in esplanade's concert hall - to hear how the various musical instruments sound in aggregration, and the feelings injected by the players and conductor) and vocals (whether in studio rooms or larger performance theatre) ?. The is the REAL reference point upon which the recordings or music from your sound cards or CDP can be compared. If you don't, then it is extremely difficult to explain to you the meaning of "musicality" or "sonic nirvana" in real sense.

 

On headphone listening, because the generation of music is coming directly into both ears without any reflective sound waves from the surrounding, the effect is already artificial. Hence, in most cases, music is coming from within the head, not in front of you. This requires psychological adjustments or using x-feed, but still it is different from normal concert listening. However, the important element is whether you can still enjoy and feel the music. And the compensating factor for the loss of frontal soundstage is the increase in details that you should be able to listen to (vis-a-vis the speaker system). Here, the amplification is critical to serve this objective. Also, as there is no environmental "filtering" to the music coming from your CDP, what comes out of the cans is what goes right into your ears. So, where is the "dampering" effect ? The headamp again. It serves to provide certain sonic signature that makes your listening more pleasurable, with description like "less harsh", "warmer", "tight bass", "sweet vocal", "nice timbre"....of course, i wouldn't want to commit that all these attributes are solely the result of right amplication. Instead, i would say that it is the result of combination of the other system components, ie. matching and balance of the source, headamp and the cans.

 

Findings on the matching and balancing acts for various systems can be found in various review magazines. It has a long history. So this topic is best left to be dealt with in separate occasion. However, one important conclusion coming out of the mix-n-match exercises is that the weakest link (ie. bottleneck) should be ultimately re-located to the most costly item in the whole value chain of the sound system. This would optimise the cost/efficiency leading to the best possible musicality that the system can achieved and involves the few steps of upgrading that we commonly see (called debottlenecking in technical terms).

 

To me, however, i place a lot of emphasis on the Source. It is the starting point of where the music flows. It is the point where the choice of recording has the largest impact on the ultimate sound output. It is the point where a lot of technologies have been researched and developed to break new frontiers such as SACD, DVD-A and the new hybrid. It is the point where most tweakings (whether on power supplies, resonance dampering, vibration control and EMI/RFI shielding) can be economically done to achieve immediate sonic upgrade. With this importance, i will allocate 50% of my budget to the source, with 30% for the cans and balance 20% for the headamp. However, while headamp takes a backseat on fund allocation, its importance should not be neglected.

 

And to reduce this portion of budget for headamp even further, i would recommend that you try one of the clones. For me, the Clones RA-1 was a pleasant surprise that blows my mind away (i'll give a short reveiw later on). This clone, bearing the signature of firefox, has such a good match with my Grado RS-2 that it becomes my ritual greet for the morning by spending at least 20 minutes listening thru it on the unique sound of Philip Glass. Talking of decay, i could hear the third or even fourth harmonics from the timebre that it generates. And the sweet vocal from Yang Xiao Ling is forever so magnetising. Wow...i just simply can't help but to shelf other headamps away.....

 

So here i am, with little knowledge on the latest DAC technologies or technical terms or specs ...eg. ?? AKM4381 a 24/192 dac on 110dB dynamic range, ?? Lynxtwo on CS4396, 120dB DR, 24/192,-100 dB THD+N, this is my little contribution on the topic, ablaze. In fact, I can't differentiate between good or bad DACs by sighting. But let me listen to a marvellous piece of music with good recording, and i can certainly tell you the truth. Nothing but the truth, for headfiers, audiophiles and the like........I am on my way to sonic nirvana.

 

[ablaze 0]

tee, I'm flattered you chose to write such a long reply to my thread, and you make some VERY good points.

 

I guess the true test is in the listening. I'll be working on that for the next meet for sure.

[Rameish 0]

Okay, let me know if you need help bringing the computer along.

 

Tee,

 

I glad you like the Clone - in fact it's better built sans the wood case. I'm making some changes to the basic design to see if it improves the sound. Need to "cook" different values and caps and maybe even the op-amp - then it won't be a Clone but who cares right?

 

 

[fishball79 0]

Ok on the technical side of things... I asked an EE friend about this idea and it was shot down.

 

CD Player outputs are designed to connect to pre amps circuitry. These circuitry are typically 50 to 100k ohms and the signal from cd player typically 2 to 2.83V.

 

I thought why by adding a 10 or 100k volume pot it would give similar impedances, I wrong though.

With a pot in series and to get a good volume out of the cans would need an impedance of somewhere CLOSE to the cans' impedance, 32ohms. Having the pot parallel to the cans is worse.

 

For example, at 50k ohms, the cd player would give around 40ua. Plug in a pot and grados cans and you would typically give about 50-100 ohm impedance. This would mean the cd player's output stage will now have to give 20 to 40mA. That exceeds the output current limit of most opamps used in cd player's output buffer.

 

In the end either you damage the opamps, dont get enough juice for the cans or hear the opamps distort.

 

What is always needed is a buffer which matches impedances. Buffers are active circuitries (needs power) Slap a volume pot to this and you get a minimalist headphone. It is also a minimalist pre amp.

[tee 0]

Ablaze, please let me know if you want to attend some of the concerts. For the prize of a CD, the impression may be more lasting than most of us would have thought so....esp for audiophiles and headfiers.

[ablaze 0]

I think the last concert I attended was a Roxette one about 10 years ago haha

 

fish, I'm trying to get JaZZ in here to share his expertise on this. since he's one of the few who've actually TRIED it. (don't you get sick of all this talk "on paper"?)

[Blues 0]

ok blaze, suggestion:

you make that thingy or something.. bring it to the next meet and let everyone test. Then let them comment ... this way people will actually LISTEN to it.. and not just speculate. Right now who actually has heard them? not many. Even going to head-fi ..probably only jazz and that zilla guy.. the rest are probably shooting them down without having listened to the direct path(aka pure speculation).

Like I said, I am very interested to hear something that sounds as good and can save me money on the amp... if it's really that good . So.. bring it on yeah?

[fishball79 0]

Ablaze,

 

Well as you know from our last meet I'm interested to try but NOW after a talk with friend i have reservations. Its not a matter of better sound but possibly damage Lets see what Jazz say too.

 

 

[huangyong 0]

hey, guys, why don't SGH organize a trip to some concerts. and to know how to apprciate music better.