A small DAC/headphone amp please
 

I have just bought a pair of Shure SE530 in ear monitors (earbuds).
Absolutely superb (albeit overpriced). In fact, I'm finding I like
them every bit as much as my trusty 15 year old Stax "earspeakers".

My music is all on my mp3 player and PC these days. I ditched all my
expensive gear a few years ago when I finally admitted to myself that
my ageing ears couldn't tell the difference between 128kbs mp3 and the
originals. Now I will also happily admit that my little Sony flash
player with the Shures sounds every bit as good as anything else I've
ever heard through headphones.

Now I want to be able to plug my Shures into my PC. What I want is a
little desktop DAC/headphone amp with volume control that accepts
either optical or USB iputs from the PC.

The people on Headfi forums - headcases, mostly - are well meaning but
many have lost the plot and obsess about things like thickening of
decaying transients in the lower mid registers etc etc

Does anyone have any advice on something that is reasonably
prefessionally designed and built and will do the job? Prices vary
from £50 (for the Headstage Lyrix) to the price of a family holiday,
all for a bag of bits that'd cost about £10 from Maplins. Then there
are professional USB soundcards like Behringer, E-MU etc, with lots of
flashing lights and connections, but apparently "poorly designed
headphone outputs".

On a related point, these "Headfiers" plug in the headphone output on
their mp3 players into these little amps to power their headphones.
What is the point of that? Surely you can't improve on the signal
coming out of the headphone socket? I know bugger all about
electronics but it seems that the most this would achieve is literally
just amplify the signal, by which I mean, just make it louder?

A small DAC/headphone amp please
 

wrote in message
...

On a related point, these "Headfiers" plug in the headphone output on
their mp3 players into these little amps to power their headphones.
What is the point of that? Surely you can't improve on the signal
coming out of the headphone socket? I know bugger all about
electronics but it seems that the most this would achieve is literally
just amplify the signal, by which I mean, just make it louder?

If the headphones you were using were difficult to drive (say less than the
standard 32ohm impedance), then there might be an improvement in sound
quality by relieving the mp3 player's headphone amp of the load, and
transferring it to an external amp.

But please note the word "if".

David.

A small DAC/headphone amp please
 

wrote in message
...
I have just bought a pair of Shure SE530 in ear monitors (earbuds).
Absolutely superb (albeit overpriced). In fact, I'm finding I like
them every bit as much as my trusty 15 year old Stax "earspeakers".

My music is all on my mp3 player and PC these days. I ditched all my
expensive gear a few years ago when I finally admitted to myself that
my ageing ears couldn't tell the difference between 128kbs mp3 and the
originals. Now I will also happily admit that my little Sony flash
player with the Shures sounds every bit as good as anything else I've
ever heard through headphones.

Now I want to be able to plug my Shures into my PC. What I want is a
little desktop DAC/headphone amp with volume control that accepts
either optical or USB iputs from the PC.

The people on Headfi forums - headcases, mostly - are well meaning but
many have lost the plot and obsess about things like thickening of
decaying transients in the lower mid registers etc etc

Does anyone have any advice on something that is reasonably
prefessionally designed and built and will do the job? Prices vary
from £50 (for the Headstage Lyrix) to the price of a family holiday,
all for a bag of bits that'd cost about £10 from Maplins. Then there
are professional USB soundcards like Behringer, E-MU etc, with lots of
flashing lights and connections, but apparently "poorly designed
headphone outputs".

On a related point, these "Headfiers" plug in the headphone output on
their mp3 players into these little amps to power their headphones.
What is the point of that? Surely you can't improve on the signal
coming out of the headphone socket? I know bugger all about
electronics but it seems that the most this would achieve is literally
just amplify the signal, by which I mean, just make it louder?


Firstly, as David Looser commented, the external amplifier will relieve the
MP3 player from driving what could be a severe load for it. It will also
normally drive your headphones to a higher volume than the MP3 player can.
Whether this is a good thing depends on how loud you want to play and/or
seriously damage your hearing.

You don't say what your PC is, but you may find that the sound
card/motherboard system that comes with it is actually quite good. If it
isn't, then there are many USB or PCI sound cards with headphone outputs.
One of the cheapest is the Behringer UCA202, (around £26) which, if other
Behringer products are anything to go by, is probably pretty good. If you
buy on-line, you get a chance to return the item if it doesn't suit under
Distance Trading regulations.

S.

--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com

A small DAC/headphone amp please
 

wrote:

The people on Headfi forums - headcases, mostly - are well meaning but
many have lost the plot and obsess about things like thickening of
decaying transients in the lower mid registers etc etc

In other words they're talking horse manure.

Graham

A small DAC/headphone amp please
 

wrote in message

I have just bought a pair of Shure SE530 in ear monitors
(earbuds). Absolutely superb (albeit overpriced). In
fact, I'm finding I like them every bit as much as my
trusty 15 year old Stax "earspeakers".

Interesting. I've heard Stax earspeakers, and frankly I don't know what all
the fuss is about. For example, Sennheiser HD580s sound about as good to me,
maybe a tad smoother.

My music is all on my mp3 player and PC these days. I
ditched all my expensive gear a few years ago when I
finally admitted to myself that my ageing ears couldn't
tell the difference between 128kbs mp3 and the originals.

That of course depends on the MP3 - some music can be coded accurately
enough at 128 kb, and others can't.

Now I will also happily admit that my little Sony flash
player with the Shures sounds every bit as good as
anything else I've ever heard through headphones.

Well, certainly as good as anything you've heard lately. I suspect that if
you could get the ears from some 14 year-old that took good care of his, you
might hear things a bit differently. ;-)

Now I want to be able to plug my Shures into my PC.

What's wrong with the green jack on the PC?

Don't knock it until you try it!

But if you try it and find it lacking, it might be because it simply does
not get loud enough.

There's a little device called a "Boostaroo" that gives a 6 dB gain, which I
find helpful with some earphones. The price in the US is under $30. When I
put it on the test bench, it was very, very clean, conservative specs
notwithstanding. I circumvented the battery problem by making up some AA
battery simulator out of dowels and brass screws, and power it with an old 5
VDC power supply from a cable box that was dustbinned years ago.

What I want is a little desktop DAC/headphone amp with volume
control that accepts either optical or USB iputs from the PC.

IME PCs with optical digital outputs for audio are very rare, but USB jacks
are very common. If you want to spend some money, there are a modest number
of USB-based recording interfaces that also have headphone jacks on them.
The quality is going to be pretty good, but you're going to pay for a lot of
hardware that you may never use.

Here's some example:

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_u...kUSB-main.html

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Transit-main.html

http://www.emu.com/products/product....roduct=1 7511

The people on Headfi forums - headcases, mostly - are
well meaning but many have lost the plot and obsess about
things like thickening of decaying transients in the
lower mid registers etc etc

If the discussion was rooms and speakers, yes. If the discussion is
headphones, then its more likely that there would be a thinning, rather than
a thickening.

Does anyone have any advice on something that is
reasonably prefessionally designed and built and will do
the job? Prices vary from £50 (for the Headstage Lyrix)
to the price of a family holiday, all for a bag of bits
that'd cost about £10 from Maplins. Then there are
professional USB soundcards like Behringer, E-MU etc,
with lots of flashing lights and connections, but
apparently "poorly designed headphone outputs".

It's really hard to have a poorly designed headphone output, other than to
not have enough loudness.

On a related point, these "Headfiers" plug in the
headphone output on their mp3 players into these little
amps to power their headphones. What is the point of
that?

The headphone jacks on MP3 players are generally built on the weak side to
keep kids from blowing their ears out.

Surely you can't improve on the signal coming out
of the headphone socket?

Actually you can. There are a number of possible directions:

(1) Just plain louder.

(2) Incorporate some kind of HRTF processing to make the subjective
experience more like listening to speakers or live.

(3) Add effective equalization to touch up the natural variations in how
various headphones interface with people's ears. At that level, ears can
vary considerably.

I know bugger all about
electronics but it seems that the most this would achieve
is literally just amplify the signal, by which I mean,
just make it louder?

That is one of three general kinds of possibilities.

A small DAC/headphone amp please
 

wrote:

On a related point, these "Headfiers" plug in the headphone output on
their mp3 players into these little amps to power their headphones.
What is the point of that? Surely you can't improve on the signal
coming out of the headphone socket? I know bugger all about
electronics but it seems that the most this would achieve is literally
just amplify the signal, by which I mean, just make it louder?

Well ..... a dedicated headphone amplifier will present a higher impedance
load to the headphone output circuitry and this may very well result in a
lower distortion figure as almost all 'power amplifier' stages exhibit
higher THD with lower impedance loads. Additionally there 'may' be an
improved bass response if the output circuitry uses coupling capacitors
since the size of capacitor that's physically possible to fit in such a
device is limited and may not give as good a bass response as one would
like.

Graham

A small DAC/headphone amp please
 

Serge Auckland wrote:

I ditched all my
expensive gear a few years ago when I finally admitted to myself that
my ageing ears couldn't tell the difference between 128kbs mp3 and the
originals.

OW !

Graham

A small DAC/headphone amp please
 

"Eeyore" wrote in message
...


Serge Auckland wrote: No I didn't!! Keiron99 did!!



I ditched all my
expensive gear a few years ago when I finally admitted to myself that
my ageing ears couldn't tell the difference between 128kbs mp3 and the
originals.

OW !

Graham

Nevertheless, although I have been able to tell 128kMP3s against the
original, if just listening to the MP3 without being able to compare with
the original, I'm not conscious of anything missing. In fact, that's true
right down to low streaming bit rates. The quality may be well down on the
original, immediately obvious with an AB comparison, but under conditions of
use typical for an MP3 player, the quality is more than adequate for
entertainment.

I think that's the great achievement of psychoacoustic data reduction, that
it really does work the way the designers intended.

S.



--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com

A small DAC/headphone amp please
 

In article , Serge Auckland
scribeth thus
"Eeyore" wrote in message
...


Serge Auckland wrote: No I didn't!! Keiron99 did!!



I ditched all my
expensive gear a few years ago when I finally admitted to myself that
my ageing ears couldn't tell the difference between 128kbs mp3 and the
originals.

OW !

Graham

Nevertheless, although I have been able to tell 128kMP3s against the
original, if just listening to the MP3 without being able to compare with
the original, I'm not conscious of anything missing. In fact, that's true
right down to low streaming bit rates. The quality may be well down on the
original, immediately obvious with an AB comparison, but under conditions of
use typical for an MP3 player, the quality is more than adequate for
entertainment.

I think that's the great achievement of psychoacoustic data reduction, that
it really does work the way the designers intended.

Pity they don't use it how its supposed to be in the broadcast field;!..

I can tell the difference with MP3's their noticeable till you get up to
320 K or thereabouts!..

S.




--
Tony Sayer

A small DAC/headphone amp please
 

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article , Serge Auckland
scribeth thus
"Eeyore" wrote in message
...


Serge Auckland wrote: No I didn't!! Keiron99 did!!



I ditched all my
expensive gear a few years ago when I finally admitted to myself that
my ageing ears couldn't tell the difference between 128kbs mp3 and the
originals.

OW !

Graham

Nevertheless, although I have been able to tell 128kMP3s against the
original, if just listening to the MP3 without being able to compare with
the original, I'm not conscious of anything missing. In fact, that's true
right down to low streaming bit rates. The quality may be well down on the
original, immediately obvious with an AB comparison, but under conditions
of
use typical for an MP3 player, the quality is more than adequate for
entertainment.

I think that's the great achievement of psychoacoustic data reduction,
that
it really does work the way the designers intended.

Pity they don't use it how its supposed to be in the broadcast field;!..

I can tell the difference with MP3's their noticeable till you get up to
320 K or thereabouts!..

S.




--
Tony Sayer



I think I know what you mean. MP2 as used in DAB and DSAT radio shouldn't be
used at less than 256kbps if quality is important. At one time,
Broadcasters, at least European Broadcasters, were custodians of quality,
and would resist any new-fangled stuff like audio processing if quality was
thought to suffer. The IBA, of blessed memory, refused to allow processing
for many years, and required all radio studios to meet Code of Practice
until their regulatory side was stripped from them. Now, of course, anything
goes. The cheapest for the mostest.

By the time digital broadcasting became possible, there was no regulatory
framework in the UK that cared a hoot for audio quality. You can't really
blame broadcasters who have shareholders to feed for chasing the maximum
audience. If that means DAB at 92k, and FM processed to hell and back, then
so be it. If you're ever in France or North Germany, listen to Radio France
or NDR and see how radio should still be done, then listen to their local
Commercial stations. As bad if not worse than anything we have. The
difference is that RF and NDR are state-supported and still maintain audio
standards. Our BBC has to chase audience figures like a commercial station
or their license fee suffers. Radio 1 is processed excessively, although
the recent change from the old IDT processors to new Orban 8500s should have
made a considerable difference. I don't listen to Radio 1 for long enough to
tell.

Rant over.

S.





--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com