Recent content by MRC01

Does Timex still make mechanical watches? Mechanical to quartz isn't a fair comparison.

You are right that digital and conventional analog volume controls both show similar behavior: SNR drops 1:1 (more or less) as you turn down the volume. Digital controls have one advantage though: unlike analog controls, they maintain perfect channel balance at all settings. IMO, the best...

As others mentioned, that noise is the IEM responding to noise in the amp's output. You can think of it as a design flaw in the amp. But more accurately, a limitation not a flaw, if the amp was designed for inefficient headphones not for IEMs. If the amp has a high SNR (more than 100 dB) you...

One important thing I've learned reading reviews here is that at 1/4 to 1/2 volume, where we typically listen, the preamp's SNR and SINAD are usually significantly less than at its full output. All good preamps have noise & distortion below audible thresholds at max volume, but this doesn't...

This same test went around here months ago. IIRC, at the very end of this audio file there is an obvious "tell" and someone here was listening for that (instead of listening for the actual distortion). That Tracy Chapman file is not ideal for testing distortion because it's a mediocre recording...

Yes that was the idea, though the ordering of values doesn't have to be completely immaterial. Even if noise shaping constrains the available patterns, there may still remain more than 1 way to encode the same signal. Which must still be the case, the above mentioned data rates suggest DSD...

Wow. Then DSD has many different ways (bit encoding sequences) to encode the same signal. Because many of the permutations mean the same thing (decode to the same analog wave), it has wasted bits. That makes DSD an inefficient way to encode the signal. This makes data rate comparisons...

This might be a dumb question, but it will help me understand how DSD works, so here goes... If DSD encodes 0 and 1 whenever the amplitude is below or above zero, how does it encode the amplitude of the signal? For example when we change the volume of a waveform, that doesn't change any of its...

I too am a proponent of listening at moderate volumes. And I consider the 85 dB measured to be "loud" not "moderate". Here, the above graph shows that the EQ increased bass distortion by about 10 dB. My point is that lifting attenuated bass always increases distortion, so be aware and do it with...

Of course one always has to do that to prevent clipping, but it doesn't solve the problem I'm talking about. In the above graph, bass distortion increased by about 10 dB. But that distortion didn't leak into the mids & treble, because the overall SPL at which they measured it was low enough...

One of the challenges in boosting attenuated low bass up to neutral levels is that it increases driver displacement, which is a contributing factor to distortion. If the bass is significantly attenuated (say, more than 6 dB), then boosting it all the way up to neutral can make it sound loose or...

Speakers, not so much. Most speakers & headphones are easy to differentiate in blind testing.

Some expensive cables are improperly designed or constructed. For example, high reactance or improper grounding or shielding. In this case, the differences may be audible. Yet my experience suggests that is the exception, where the norm is that most expensive cables aren't improperly designed...

If one is an objectivist and knows they are expensive cables, expectation bias and placebo could provide that perception ;)

Those graphs are different, but I wouldn't call them drastically different. The key resonances are at the same frequencies, though their strengths are relatively different. And in both graphs the HD800's skull-tingling resonance at 6-7 kHz is the strongest one, which we know from experience to...