General Headphone Audio

[Rroff]

I dont have any experience with "audio grade" capacitors but when i replaced all of the ones in my audiolab dac the other year i used thd cheapest ones i could find on ebay and didnt notice a difference.

Caveat that a different design might have different results but I hand built an O2 amplifier and rolled a massive amount of capacitors including Nichicon, Elna Silmic, WIMA, even sourced some out of production supposedly legendary vintage LCR audio ones (totally overrated in my opinion).

Found some interesting stuff along the way though including that most "audio" capacitors are way over hyped but there is also some nuances to that story. Again as above I'd caveat that things like ESR can mean you can't just roll any given capacitor in a design and get good / correct results without a solid level of engineering knowledge and a capacitor which might not work well with one design might be excellent with another.

One of the more interesting discoveries was that using the right bypass capacitor on the ubiquitous LM4562 opamp dramatically improves its already good performance - even in well designed commercial products if they lack it - almost makes me wonder if TI sabotaged it to protect their higher end LME49xxx opamps.

 

[mrk]

That's why some manufacturers ignore the reference deisgns supplied by chip makers and instead adopt their own designs, which may include discreet architecture or a mix of other designs to get better than stock sound from chips that are otherwise used with those reference designs by cheaper manufacturers. That sound guy who I forget the name of on youtube did a good video on it earlier this year actually and it's why some amps cost so much because whilst they may use the same DAC chips as found on much cheaper models, the circuitry is customised enough to then stray away from a reference design and have its own unique sound. I think the X9 is one such product that does just that.

It seems the WARMER thread has been cleansed by the mods, or is being. I had a PM saying not to be inappropriate as apparently someone reported a recent comment as it offended them - I've merely paraphrased what people have discussed in the Headfo thread for the Warmer as it's relevant to the discussion since this DAC does not abide by the usual /rules/ of DAC design since it's made ignoring measurement accuracy in favour of subjective listening pleasure.

People...

 

[Angst]

I imagine they still designed it with measurements in mind, they just had a different target they were aiming for instead of the cleanest signal possible. Hard to design a product based purely on subjective opinion without measurements, probably measured what people find subjectively pleasing from test groups or existing research and targeted that. Much like how the harman target is based on what people find subjectively pleasing rather than a pure flat reference reproduction.

 

[mrk]

Certainly probable that played a part though my take on it was exclusively base don the CEO's interviews where he states it came about because of his personal love for old tube amps and his experience of them from the past.

 

[Raymond Lin]

Still not shipping update from ZMF....normally when you order a headphone from them, as they are built to order, it's anything from 4-8 weeks wait. Especially during their busy season like Christmas. But I bought a B-stock one, so it's already done, yet nothing now for 10 days. I emailed them a couple days ago and was still being quoted the 4 weeks shipping time frame, so it has a chance to go through their QC.

What? Surely the fact that it is B-stock is because it went through the QC already?

So weird.

 

[mrk]

Maybe they are shipping you a on b grade one instead for whatever reason?

The Dunu tips arrived today and I am using them actually on the Ai4 Pro as they fit nicely and are more comfortable lol.

Also the Sennheiser 2 pin to 3.5mm adapters arrived and they too work great. one cable for everything now.