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blorg t1_j69d6ie wrote

Reply to comment by abhikkp in These are not the same by disco_g

There are other measurements, like I linked in the first post, showing the TC44C is entirely linear and has no bass boost. I'm just doing this measurement again with an actual IEM in there (from the same company and of similar impedance to yours) in case it could be something like the effect of output impedance on the impedance curve of the headphone- although in this case the output impedance of the dongles is both extremely low, and 64 Audio as you say yourself has their LID technology with very flat impedance curves.

I'm open to there being certain differences, or interactions... like I said I have issues with the Helios on the TC44B, although I'd blame the Helios for that.

I just object to people characterizing stuff like a DAC/amp that measures entirely flat in frequency response as being "extremely bassy". It's just not. "Extremely bassy" is frequency response and it's measurable, and it's not there. Maybe there is something else that doesn't come up... but a tonal difference like that will be there in the frequency response.

One thing that sometimes can happen to cause this, is if you have some setting that is different between the two devices, like you have a bass boost APO attached to the TC44C, but not to the other devices. That is exactly the sort of thing that could cause this.

I don't have the Cayin RU6. Wolf/L7, Archimago and SBAF have measurements though. It doesn't measure well objectively. Archimago liked it though, or at least appreciated it wasn't trying to be high fidelity but was a device "with character" aiming for a certain type of sound. The others, not so much.

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abhikkp t1_j69eyjx wrote

Very much appreciate how cordial this interaction has been :)

I will read through all of this! On your note about APO -- I don't use any onboard software EQ.

Finally, I have used my IEMs with the iFi Gryphon as well, which has a Burr-Brown chip and is supposed to be "warmer" than other devices but I found literally no difference between the Gryphon and the Apple Dongle in sound quality or frequency response. And even the Gryphon sounds less bassy than my TC44C unless I enable Gryphon's bass boost. Maybe it's just the interaction between my TC44C and my IEMs but that's what I've found in my daily use case.

Nonetheless, clearly, you have a ton of personal experience in the hobby, so I will absolutely respect your expertise and opinion on this matter. I just think my anecdotal experience is also worth sharing!

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blorg t1_j69n06x wrote

It's not that you'd be deliberately using some sort of software EQ. Rather that some audio "enhancement" (and a bass boost is one of the stock Windows enhancements) got attached to the TC44C but didn't get attached to the others.

If you literally don't hear any tonal difference across a wide range of other different devices, but hear a really distinct one on the TC44C- this really indicates that there is something messing with the sound on that one. Particularly as no other subjective review of the TC44C seems to find it "extremely bassy", they use words like neutral, flat, clean, accurate, transparent, the most I found was one review in the other direction, going with mostly neutral but "slightly bright".

You could measure it yourself, download REW and just do a tone sweep with it and record it, do the same with another DAC to make sure any variance isn't the recording device. If you do do this, don't use exclusive mode, this will ensure it goes through whatever you normally have going on. You'll either see this dramatic difference in the measurement, or you won't.

If you do- it confirms you were hearing something real. I'd suspect if it is there, it's a configuration issue. It's also possible it will measure entirely flat. Either way it's another data point, you can interpret it as you like. If I had ONE thing that sounded radically different than everything else, that sounded the same- I'd wonder why.

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