Images of items I have purchased (except trainers [no feet pics])

[Rroff]

I've never believed in amps making a huge difference (assuming they are built correctly and not intentionally colouring the sound, as well as delivering enough power) and my personal findings have agreed with my assertions through the years. Properly built DACs/Amps have virtually negligible impact on sound.

The key thing whether voltage or current is the amp being able to control the speakers properly - headphones don't magically get better from using an amp, but they can sound worse with the wrong or insufficient amp. Something which actually holds a lot of DACs/amps back is the use of general purpose capacitors which introduce distortion - especially on some mass produced devices which use them in the signal path which is the big difference people often hear when an amp (and/or DAC) either has a cap-less audio path design and/or more optimal capacitor selection.

 

[mrk]

Here's the thing, though.

I've never believed in amps making a huge difference (assuming they are built correctly and not intentionally colouring the sound, as well as delivering enough power) and my personal findings have agreed with my assertions through the years. Properly built DACs/Amps have virtually negligible impact on sound.

This is probably why I prefer speakers. That world is far less of a mess than headphones are. Klippel reveals all.

Sometimes we just have to accept that things are not as black and white as we've seen for years, that technology evolves for the better and gets smaller in the process. Years ago Bluetooth audio would have been laughed out of the room, yet today we have LDAC/LHDC and some others across the board for lossless streaming, whilst audio latency as low as 20-30ms using aptX-LL for gaming/realtime audio use.

There 100% are differences between amps, too, as Rroff says, these differences are often a result of the architecture in the design. R2R and current mode are specifically used in high-end amps and DACs for a reason, they are the most natural/organic sounding with the cleanest signal path, whilst mainstream amps use more traditional architecture. For the last 18 months or so these higher end designs have made their way into compact form factor in stuff like this.

If you haven't been able to hear the difference between various types of amps then either your sample size has been small, or perhaps even your ears just don't notice them, which is also a strong but subjective variable. Doesn't mean a difference doesn't exist, as the people of audio science review will happily demonstrate with analysis graphs of output signals etc, since any audio output can be measured, but a wave graph only tells half the story at the same time.

As for sound colour, that's completely subjective since some people prefer stuff sounding bright/sharp whilst others prefer a more natural warm sound - Which is why some brands are well known universally for one style over the other, there is no right or wrong here, just a preference.

You can also simply look up all of this, it's 2024 and people have already done the legwork with both objective and subjective analysis comparing these specific things in amps and DACs.

 

[Martynt74]

Just what the audience of GD love. Gadgets and Toes (sadly uncovered this time)

Second pool robot. This one is solar and just sits on the surface hoovering up pollen/leaves etc. Probably the more useful of the two.

 

[bloodiedathame]

Just what the audience of GD love. Gadgets and Toes (sadly uncovered this time)

Second pool robot. This one is solar and just sits on the surface hoovering up pollen/leaves etc. Probably the more useful of the two.

It's easy to forget that other countries have good weather. And pools. FML.

 

[Andybtsn]

I'm definitely going to start banning feet pics; no one needs to see them.

 

[bloodiedathame]

I'm definitely going to start banning feet pics; no one needs to see them.

Please don't. I'm making a good living reposting them on feetfinder.

 

[fez]

Please don't. I'm making a good living reposting them on feetfinder.

I've had more luck with OnlyFeet

 

[Martynt74]

I'm gonna need to start adding watermarks! I'm not seeing a penny of this

 

[jpaul]

more mental torture presented by the enticing swimming pool, each to his own

This is it, smaller than a matchbox and uses patented tech via current mode drive instead of voltage to drive any heapdhone you plug in, has 4.4mm balanced output, puts out sound volume that beats the previous amps I bought and returned (DX3 Pro+ and Fiio K7), and is powered by USB, What is this black magic... Online commentary says this thing matches or beats a Schitt stack and I can easily believe that though have not heard a Schitt yet.

what are you doing for power supply on this (was it you who who previously posted an aftermarket linear usb supply, maybe vincent) for home use you can add a good supply,
but for the portable market this tries to address, I'd have reservations relying on your phone battery and quality of output, versus inbuilt supply and quality regulator. (which would put up price point)
You have an analogue volume control on the headphones too ? as opposed to potentially reducing bit resolution from the digital source.

 

[mrk]

more mental torture presented by the enticing swimming pool, each to his own


what are you doing for power supply on this (was it you who who previously posted an aftermarket linear usb supply, maybe vincent) for home use you can add a good supply,
but for the portable market this tries to address, I'd have reservations relying on your phone battery and quality of output, versus inbuilt supply and quality regulator. (which would put up price point)
You have an analogue volume control on the headphones too ? as opposed to potentially reducing bit resolution from the digital source.

Wasn't me,.

But either way, current drive architecture has no issue with power if being used on a smartphone, it literally sips power so you don't see much extra power drain from the phone nor any power interference issues thanks to said architecture.

Having said that, I do not use this for portable listening, this is my desktop headphones setup leaving the desktop amp only to drive my bookshelf speakers. This is what I mean, it is so good that I just don't care about desktop amps for headphones any more, no power isolator is needed (I don't believe in them anyway for modern stuff, maybe in the olden days when PCs had wild transients and whatnot) - Just plug it into a USB port on the monitor, stray lead going to the back of the PC etc and off it goes, 100% clean sound just like through a desktop amp powered from the wall socket.

I only have planar magnetic headphones now, the Hifiman does not have volume control, Windows controls the volume which is the norm for a dongle DAC anyway. The default sound mode with the DAC in Windows is 32bit 48KHz, this is fine as most of my listening is with 48KHz content anyway, and Windows 11 processes all audio internally at 32bit float as well, so saves a resample at the OS level leaving the DAC to handle everything - Peace of mind above all else whether anyone can actually hear any difference or not remains undetermined.

The Edifier/STAX has onboard volume control but it's set to 100% and I control the volume via Windows master again - But that headphone is typically used wireless anyway for convenience and in that configuration, onboard volume control is synchronised with Windows so nothing needs to be done.

There is no audible resolution loss and absolutely no distortion at any volume level. If I cranked the volume up too high I would almost certainly destroy the Hifiman planar drivers as it gets too loud to bear above 60%

 

[Tephnos]

Sometimes we just have to accept that things are not as black and white as we've seen for years, that technology evolves for the better and gets smaller in the process. Years ago Bluetooth audio would have been laughed out of the room, yet today we have LDAC/LHDC and some others across the board for lossless streaming, whilst audio latency as low as 20-30ms using aptX-LL for gaming/realtime audio use.

There 100% are differences between amps, too, as Rroff says, these differences are often a result of the architecture in the design. R2R and current mode are specifically used in high-end amps and DACs for a reason, they are the most natural/organic sounding with the cleanest signal path, whilst mainstream amps use more traditional architecture. For the last 18 months or so these higher end designs have made their way into compact form factor in stuff like this.

If you haven't been able to hear the difference between various types of amps then either your sample size has been small, or perhaps even your ears just don't notice them, which is also a strong but subjective variable. Doesn't mean a difference doesn't exist, as the people of audio science review will happily demonstrate with analysis graphs of output signals etc, since any audio output can be measured, but a wave graph only tells half the story at the same time.

As for sound colour, that's completely subjective since some people prefer stuff sounding bright/sharp whilst others prefer a more natural warm sound - Which is why some brands are well known universally for one style over the other, there is no right or wrong here, just a preference.

You can also simply look up all of this, it's 2024 and people have already done the legwork with both objective and subjective analysis comparing these specific things in amps and DACs.

You're quoting the people at ASR who will tell you exactly what I told you. They don't generally faff about with all this amp crap. They will just measure them and if it measures low enough to not be noticeable to human hearing for any deficiencies, then they'll recommend it as good as it gets. That's why they'll recommend amps like the Atom Amp/Dac because they're cheap and measure low enough to get the job done. The underlying technology used is utterly irrelevant, all they care about is how it objectively measures (plenty of R2R amps have been crapped on by ASR for measuring terribly).

This whole debate wouldn't be a thing if what you say could easily be objectively proven in output measurements... but they haven't. We're still waiting for a so-called definitive answer to this question.

 

[Raymond Lin]

I stopped chasing audio perfection years ago in my 20's, especially as one gets older, the hearing gets worse anyway, not sure how the increase in quality makes up the difference.

 

[Tephnos]

The key thing whether voltage or current is the amp being able to control the speakers properly - headphones don't magically get better from using an amp, but they can sound worse with the wrong or insufficient amp. Something which actually holds a lot of DACs/amps back is the use of general purpose capacitors which introduce distortion - especially on some mass produced devices which use them in the signal path which is the big difference people often hear when an amp (and/or DAC) either has a cap-less audio path design and/or more optimal capacitor selection.

The big change with modern technology is a lot of these newer and cheaper amps all measure superb, even on the distortion side. We can see that in ASR reviews so from that standpoint there is objectively little to no difference amongst the amps that measure well.

Nobody would disagree by saying there could be differences in amps not up to spec. That's why we say properly built amps which don't colour the sound. Is a very expensive, highly specialised amp going to sound different from an Atom Amp if their measurements fall below the threshold of human hearing? That is the real question people argue.

I stopped chasing audio perfection years ago in my 20's, especially as one gets older, the hearing gets worse anyway, not sure how the increase in quality makes up the difference.

Well, you're not wrong. Starting by 20s your extended ranges (above 10KHz) start to noticeably dip and beginning at 30s they just freefall massively. A threshold of 20dB would be considered mildly impaired hearing, and you can see how much we're losing by age 30 in that region.

 

[mrk]

You're quoting the people at ASR who will tell you exactly what I told you. They don't generally faff about with all this amp crap. They will just measure them and if it measures low enough to not be noticeable to human hearing for any deficiencies, then they'll recommend it as good as it gets. That's why they'll recommend amps like the Atom Amp/Dac because they're cheap and measure low enough to get the job done. The underlying technology used is utterly irrelevant, all they care about is how it objectively measures (plenty of R2R amps have been crapped on by ASR for measuring terribly).

This whole debate wouldn't be a thing if what you say could easily be objectively proven in output measurements... but they haven't. We're still waiting for a so-called definitive answer to this question.

No, like I said, I literally bought it for myself after reading reviews online and not understanding why it was getting rave reviews and everything because nothing that small could possibly sound that good.

Yet here we are, the fact of the matter is it beats desktop amps short of spending 4 figures on something better. I know because I've had amps costing up to £800 and this beats all of them for headphones output quality.

Now that I've heard it for myself and not returned it, I really am not bothered about any other online commentary because I've read all that and decided for myself after buying it if it's a keep or return.

If anyone wants to verify themselves then all they have to do is buy and return a good pair of headphones and an M15i, the return process costs £0, and you have your definitive answer. If people are that adamant that I am wrong then this simple test should be of no issue since you're getting a full refund anyway.

I know what my ears tell me, I've been doing this long enough, and I will always be outright blunt about my view on things like this regardless of who is commenting.

I stopped chasing audio perfection years ago in my 20's, especially as one gets older, the hearing gets worse anyway, not sure how the increase in quality makes up the difference.

Whilst true that hearing gets weaker as we get older, that has nothing to do with soundstage and imaging/details. These are features that everyone at any age can hear and the amp or DAC used will dictate how much of that is audible and to what level of quality. The frequency range doesn't matter in this context as even at a young age headphones and amps like these have a range that far exceeds what the human ear can hear anyway., but you can feel things like sub-bass beyond human hearing inside your head, that is something only a certain combo of headphone and amp can deliver, and soundstage/imaging detail can be heard by any age on any capable kit.

Again, if you've not heard stuff like this in person then you have zero baseline to compare against. That's why I keep buying and returning stuff after testing them for myself after seeing commentary and wondering wtf the fuss is all about.

 

[Tephnos]

'Trust your ears' is irrelevant in scientific terms because of placebo. You know this. This is why these conversations never go anywhere because objective proof cannot be provided (or it would be a settled debate) and it always falls back to 'I know what I hear'. Well, I *don't* hear what you hear, and I've tried. In the end, changing the actual speakers/headphones is what makes the difference for me. I know someone who thinks like you do (dozens and dozens of headphones and amps/dacs), and he headed to a popular headphone meet in order to do blind tests with his equipment. The results ended up shocking him, as the vast majority of people heard absolutely nothing between his gear and the results were no better than random... yet despite that he still believes. You test stuff out sighted and without any kind of proper blind testing rig, I'm willing to bet. I'm sure you absolutely do hear what you think you do, but whether that exists outside of your own head is the question that is still not answered.

As for headphones, their ability to produce accuracy above 10KHz is limited. Our ear/ear canal shape vastly messes with the regions above 10KHz in a very individual basis (due to HRTF), making any kind of standardised tuning difficult. That region is also known as the ear piercer/ice pick freqs when you are using headphones/IEMs compared to speakers, which is often why you see a heavily damped frequency response there compared to the rest of the FR (super trebles lose energy very quickly while travelling through the air, which is why flat speakers have a perceived rolloff at those regions when it hits your ears. Headphones sit much closer to your ears so need to attenuate the highs to compensate).

For example, in sealed units (closed backs, IEMs), the ear canal becomes a sealed chamber and due to the length of the ear canal being equal to the wavelength of a 13KHz tone, destructive resonance starts around there that destroys the HF response.

 

[mrk]

There is no placebo, like I said, again, I bought headphones /amps back to back to hear for myself, I must have spent £1000+ alone on headphones the last 2 months or so just to find the perfect headphone after buying the models that people raved about most online and in the end ended up buying and keeping model I least expected to buy as it was over my set budget, and even that I needed to mod to get the final sound that my ears preferred lol but thankfully that was a cheap DIY and all's well.

I stand by my stance on this and will not be changing it as I know what I'm hearing based on direct comparisons. You either trust it or you don't, I am not bothered either way as I've done the legwork to figure out what is actually best between everything I've had.

 

[henson0115]

'Trust your ears' is irrelevant in scientific terms because of placebo. You know this. This is why these conversations never go anywhere because objective proof cannot be provided (or it would be a settled debate) and it always falls back to 'I know what I hear'. Well, I *don't* hear what you hear, and I've tried. In the end, changing the actual speakers/headphones is what makes the difference for me. I know someone who thinks like you do (dozens and dozens of headphones and amps/dacs), and he headed to a popular headphone meet in order to do blind tests with his equipment. The results ended up shocking him, as the vast majority of people heard absolutely nothing between his gear and the results were no better than random... yet despite that he still believes. You test stuff out sighted and without any kind of proper blind testing rig, I'm willing to bet. I'm sure you absolutely do hear what you think you do, but whether that exists outside of your own head is the question that is still not answered.

As for headphones, their ability to produce accuracy above 10KHz is limited. Our ear/ear canal shape vastly messes with the regions above 10KHz in a very individual basis (due to HRTF), making any kind of standardised tuning difficult. That region is also known as the ear piercer/ice pick freqs when you are using headphones/IEMs compared to speakers, which is often why you see a heavily damped frequency response there compared to the rest of the FR (super trebles lose energy very quickly while travelling through the air, which is why flat speakers have a perceived rolloff at those regions when it hits your ears. Headphones sit much closer to your ears so need to attenuate the highs to compensate).

For example, in sealed units (closed backs, IEMs), the ear canal becomes a sealed chamber and due to the length of the ear canal being equal to the wavelength of a 13KHz tone, destructive resonance starts around there that destroys the HF response.

if you cant trust your ears then in theory what your saying is all headphones sound the same, because placebo makes them sound better or worse. this is categorically not true even scientifically like you say, they all have different ranges for a start... some lower, some higher, some broader, some narrower. take a pair of standard £10 headphones from any brand and compare them to something like Sennheiser hd650 are you saying you cant hear the difference? i can money back gaurentee you will hear a difference, not quality per say, but you will hear more of the original composition of what the song should sound like. i think your talking at the extreme end of the scale where all really high end headphones or amps/dacs sound similar but not the same, if you say this then you clearly havnt used enough of them or just dont care about the differences you can hear. and i didnt even get into response times or anything remotely technical. sure blind testing is a good way to say people can be wrong about something, but it doesnt mean they are completely wrong and the complete opposite is true.

edit: and no im not saying trust all the marketing

 

[Rroff]

The big change with modern technology is a lot of these newer and cheaper amps all measure superb, even on the distortion side. We can see that in ASR reviews so from that standpoint there is objectively little to no difference amongst the amps that measure well.

Nobody would disagree by saying there could be differences in amps not up to spec. That's why we say properly built amps which don't colour the sound. Is a very expensive, highly specialised amp going to sound different from an Atom Amp if their measurements fall below the threshold of human hearing? That is the real question people argue.

I have trouble with this - I experimented with building headphone amps for a few years and have several devices which objectively measure the same or one better than another but can clearly hear a difference between them - and a common one I find is having general purpose electrolytic capacitors capacitors in the audio path - even when by every known metric if two audio devices measure the same but one has electrolytic capacitors in the audio path it sounds to the ears dull compared to the other.

 

[Martynt74]

Whilst i certainly don't want to be dragged into this discussion. Presumably it's similar to an engine. You could have 2 engines which produce 200bhp, however ones an old american 6l V8, and the other is a small 1.4l turbo.

"measurement" wise, they both produce the same output, but very different in other ways.

Similar to Class A/Class D amps. They might measure similar on certain measurements but sound very different.

 

[Raymond Lin]

Whilst true that hearing gets weaker as we get older, that has nothing to do with soundstage and imaging/details. These are features that everyone at any age can hear and the amp or DAC used will dictate how much of that is audible and to what level of quality. The frequency range doesn't matter in this context as even at a young age headphones and amps like these have a range that far exceeds what the human ear can hear anyway., but you can feel things like sub-bass beyond human hearing inside your head, that is something only a certain combo of headphone and amp can deliver, and soundstage/imaging detail can be heard by any age on any capable kit.

Again, if you've not heard stuff like this in person then you have zero baseline to compare against. That's why I keep buying and returning stuff after testing them for myself after seeing commentary and wondering wtf the fuss is all about.

I do have a baseline.

When I was "chasing", I chased hard. I am one of the first members on Head-Fi.com (no. 46), I used to go to the annual What HiFi shows, I have the older Musical Fidelity Tube Headphone amp, I had silly Van Den Hul Ultimate cables. I even built my own kettle lead with better shielding...I got my HD600 before the HD600 became the standard.

I do have a good baseline, and I already knew about this product from a video on Headphone.com about 6 months ago, that guy that looks like Eddie Redmayne reviewed it on his channel.

So, I know what good audio sounds like, I have just stopped chasing. The difference now is hard to tell whether it is merely imperceptible to placebo.