Average consumers don’t consider it’s for SEO, I guess.

Ouch, bad luck.

Someone that made of fortune on GME or AMC or BTC buy this man a Christmas miracle! I would do it if I had ever been able to get in on any of my many market insights.

it vibrates quickly while also oscillating slower. back and forth at 80 times per second while going smaller quicker back and forth motions while riding the bigger slower wave... Of course it is a mashup of the two, but it makes two tones, even if it is one combined output at the transducer. It's all in the semantics of how you want to approach and define these things, really.

both can be correct depending on how you want to define the parameters of the semantics. the meme isn't funny to me, but it makes sense, but it can also be considered as you said.

so when the cone is moving at 80hz while also vibrating at 2kHz on and off, it's not making more than one sound? The source is two sounds, and it plays both by playing them by making only one sound at the same time from one driver... it's to be considered only one sound? Semantics is weird.

🍻

It happens, no mean tone intended.

I’m done arguing with you. You are either trolling or stubbornly confused.

+6dB when referring to amps and power/voltage as we are here and have been, is a voltage factor of 2x, which is a power factor of 4x. Hard fact. Period. Written in stone. +10dB (when talking about power factors of amps) is a factor of 10x power. Again, hard fact. Period.

Arguing points on something we aren’t taking about which is SPL in the air you are bringing up, aside from what the peak output level will be from a given power level serves nothing except to prop up your broken talking points and bad math.

You typed in 0.0001 mW rather than 0.001 mW

0.0001mW or 0.1 uW is at a power factor of ten less than a microwatt, again, a microwatt of power into this load makes for 70dB SPL output in this example. 100nanowatts is 60dB.

So, if people want to believe you, they are free to. But you are mistaken about we have been discussing, well, trying to. While I’m sitting here listening to a mastering converter with amp at no more than 4 uW and down to about 0.25uW or 250 nanowatts on this song that is averaging about -12dBFS with HD650. All known variables.

You know how I know this? A Stepped attenuator with 1dB steps, a known power output and also professional dBFS meters with peak values and average values. Along with the actual math needed to figure all this out. Even ~approx calculation is possible for a one dB step with an easy to remember power factor.

So, when I say to people, yes, an Apple dongle can drive most headphones pretty well… I mean it. I use one too. With many headphones. But it doesn’t mean it sounds exactly the same as a mastering oriented pro voltage level DAC/amp, especially when listening rather low.

4uW for 74dB peaks isn’t that outlandish is it? It’s like 33dB ambient right now.

Have a good one man.

I didn’t say you did. I said be mindful of headphones rated in dB/V since it is different than dB/mW - IE - HD650 ~98dB/mW or 103dB/V

You might be confused about the output power levels we are discussing (in relation to the amp’s distortion and noise at these levels) and how the decibel scale reflects power output factors of amps and therefore SPL… factoring for certain efficiencies at certain nominal impedances and the associated decibel levels they produce.

You’re tripping over your shoelaces correcting me, when my math is spot on.

1 microwatt is 1/1000 of a milliwatt. So spec of 100dB/mW divided by a power factor of -30dB or minus 10^3 is 70dB/uW not 52dB at 15 microwatts, which would be around 82dB SPL for that load.. give or take.

Can I help you with the fundamentals of the decibel (in relation to power output) which is a logarithmic scale? -3dB is half power, -6dB is 1/4 power, -10dB is 1/10 power. And vice versa for positive factors. 2x, 4x and 10x.

-6dB is a halving of voltage

-12dB is quartering voltage

So you can take any efficiency at dB/mW and figure out the equivalent at a microwatt by subtracting 30 decibels. 10 microwatts is subtracting 20dB from the dB/mW rating, etc.

Be mindful of dB/Volt ratings

-30dB meaning minus 30dB, not 30dB.

I just edited in the SPL marker when I realized you misread the factors and thought I meant listening at 1uW is 30dB- it’s ~68dB fwiw. 98dB/mW minus 30dB (a power factor of -1000x = 1uW)

With a stepped attenuator and signal meters on a pro unit, it’s easy to figure out with math that I am listening at the range I described, around 1-16uW and it is totally clear with HD650. Not everyone listens this low, but many do. When it’s even later I listen even lower. Again, Tons of people report topping out at around 70dB on many a listening session.

Listening at 30dB huh? Ok. Well, have a good one then. Your math is way way way off.

Didn’t condescend to you, nor did I give any “condensation.”

Take it easy man.

If you actually check, tons of people listen at 68dB-73dB on peak, not average… the lower range there is pretty much close to 10 microwatts.

HD650 is close to HD600. 650 is ~98dB/mW, so -30dB is 1 microwatt. (68dB SPL)

I listen at this level often. I listen to speakers at 1mW often too. People over estimate power SPL factors into many loads.

89dB/1000mW speakers French Be tweeters, ~flat, 10mW is 69dB is on the loud end. 1mW listening is common. This has a ton of sound power. Headphones are often 10000x more efficient or more.

So no, people do often describe listening at 1/100 of 1 mW. Or 10microwatts on HD600 on forums. 70dB is commonly reported. Cranking it is 76dB or 80dB. For many listeners.

> And in those edge cases where you can audibly hear the distortion and noise, it would be worth getting a lower noise source. —-> For all other cases it doesn’t matter <—-

Dissent in the interest of knowledge and in common hobby with all of you:

Purportedly. Or if it sounds good, you can embrace it. Whoa, what is this sourcery? (Sorcery) “Get you a topping DAC amp and it’s the best it will ever sound.” Maybe. It depends?

Just as the prevailing notion for years and often still is that lossy 320 kbps doesn’t matter vs FLAC for most listeners is purported… since, usually drawing false conclusions from fact based datasets provides the easy false consensus to win arguments with zero honest discussion en masse and sustained in a tick tock manner of forum discourse over time.

Very similar and same are not synonymous. With the tendency to exclude all cases that buck the tailored talking point that “none of this matters… “audibly” and for anything within the constraints to make it easy to defend, at that - is a convenient way to dominate the conversations on the internet at large. Forever. Perceptually is a better term here, and all listeners are not the same. Perception is not consistent, changing the parameters of the listening changes the outcomes.

plain and simply, though close in sound quality, the atom amp is not identical to an O2. For me and my hardware. Not for all potential listeners that don’t demonstrate ability to discern fine differences between mostly alike signals on blind tests with statistics will notice anything at all.

Considering this to be based only in placebo or bias is the easy and quick surefire way to discount and nullify any anecdotes that are, for an individual, assessments that are actually based in reality. “Prove it!” Is the cry. Since the social psychology of forums has perpetuated this type of discourse and made it worse with downvote and upvote buttons.

There is no IRL universal comparator hardware rig like with for music files at ABX.digitalfeed.net to allow swaths of hobbbyists to “test” in a consistent and rigorous manner to even find out.

It is the MO of this subreddit to approve and support tests of something like a D10 and a Modi DAC that do not find any difference. Despite that the methodology is so poor, why bother. Even the best posters’ methodology that mention they did notice something almost always gets dinged for their levels matching or whatever can be used to discount the test, no matter how well people try.

So unless we can have everyone that tries to look into have not only a perfect method with blind or double blind testing proctor, along with a dummy load and a high precision multimeter or an analyzer with an o-scope and levels displays to whatever factor is needed to match the voltages/power levels precisely, then also have seamless and silent instantaneously but blindly controlled switching, that has to be totally non destructive to the signal to try this out at a large enough scale to even matter statistically and remain consistently rigorous; what are we even doing? One or five songs on one day is not a meaningful test. People that pass lossy vs FLAC tests can fail with a couple mistakes despite accurately reporting what they heard.

People that are of the mind that none of it matters need not even actually try to pass the test. Click no difference. Click. While people that do notice fine differences in other tests would have to listen and pick carefully. Why bother to try to prove to people that won’t believe you anyway and will bury even the best and most rigorous testing with the tides of text in a matter of three days. Fail and they mock you. Pass, for real, they mock you. It couldn’t be so, I don’t notice anything type reasoning in what is on an individual listener/music/hardware basis a variable equation.

if this is the demand of the pro “mildly different sound profiles exist” camp but not of the “none of it matters” camp this isn’t good science. Especially if we restrict and exclude all these verifiably different scenarios in place of a mindset which is limiting the consideration to hardware that is supposed to be “transparent” and act on a “very similar is equivalent to same” assumption with the demand of proof on the opposite side, it creates a lazy and uninformed majority to defend all this. One that also demonizes anyone who demonstrates why it matters, even with amps that if you look at the SINAD, most would say it’s all transparent and same = same. It depends on a lot of factors.

Also, if listening low, at say 60 or 70dB peaks or below, many loads with certain amps will have the possibility of THD and a noise floor becoming audible, especially when the music dips below peak, sometimes by 10 or 20dB+… depending on the DR and nature of the music. Intros and outros.

The THD+N of a DAC at 40dB down signal and the character of an amp at low levels into sensitive low impedance loads all add up.

And just as before, we then have people say things like, “well, the distortion and noise level that ASR says is the threshold actually doesn’t matter you can’t hear it anyway.” Have your cake and eat it too type of thinking.

Electrical math and performance are hard facts for circuits… looking into it properly for a more informative analysis is a lot more involved than a 1kHz test tone at unity gain and a couple levels sweeps for THD+N at 33 and 300 ohms.

The chart for the Apple usb-c dongle doesn’t go to 1 μW for some reason anyway. But we can extrapolate decently.

(I often listen to speakers at 60dB max c-weighted peaks, fwiw)

Well, plenty are much lower levels than 10 μW… for example, campfire andromeda 2020, 7.01millivolts or 3.84 μW (these are 12.8 ohms) is good for 94dB at 1kHz. So the distortion numbers go up even more for lower impedance usually and lesser voltage/power.

Then you get into the impedance curve of a headphone or iem with dips below nominal impedance which have even more distortion levels still.

A little distortion isn’t the end of things and can actually soften the sound sometimes. People often don’t even really understand what a harmonic spike even is for a 1kHz tone. Distortion bad! But why do certain tube amps sound so rich and natural and alive?

For andromeda 2020 if my quick calculations are on track, 88dB is just below one μW

78dB is ~ 1/10 of one μW

All rough math since rounding tiny numbers compounds.

The Apple dongle being what it is, is not the point. It is good, but you can do better for many loads. Many amps that have been deemed “transparent” at 2 volts are simply not when it comes to actual power levels. And that isn’t a bad thing, but it does allow for the possibility of amps to impact performance within the threshold of audibility.

But then people come along and say none of that matters anyway. Can’t have it both ways; but the subreddit does, somehow.

Just wrote this in reply to a comment linking to some of oratory1990’s thoughts on amps. I am linking here so OP can see.

Amps generally are reducing voltage for headphones from line level (since they are mostly very sensitive or efficient) - the amp is outputting less voltage than it receives but is increasing current to be able move and control the physical driver membrane via the alternating electrical signal applied to a dynamic driver’s coil and magnet system. Same goes for most types of drivers, with various quirks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/z5wwmn/comment/ixzbgik/

One thing that this subreddit almost always ignores, (including it seems to some degree, even wonderful headphone acoustics guys like oratory,) is that at very low output in the 1-100microwatt range, particular amps can start dipping into the range where where THD+N start becoming mildly audible. Especially for low impedance headphones, say 32ohms or lower. But it could happen with 50 ohms too, I just don’t have charts to reference like we for a 33ohm load on ASR.

This is demonstrated by ASR’s own charts and audibility thresholds. Of course most people don’t understand the electrical physics and math and effect on perception beyond a huge 2 volt unity gain signal like a 1kHz tone masking all the THD+N tones… but we don’t listen at 2 volts. “Transparent” doesn’t matter if it’s 120dB, it’s not always “transparent” for the below example at real world levels of <70dB to 80dB

2 volts into an AKG K371 is 120dB at 1kHz. Actual music at below 70-90dB (90 is very very loud, mind you…) in the range of <5mV to ~55 mV (millivolts), as shown by ASR charts for many amps do fall into a zone of audibility for these types of THD+N.

1 volt into 32 ohms at 1kHz for 114dB is 31.25 milliwatts. This would damage your hearing. Down at 60-80dB the THD+N is basically the same but the 1kHz test sine wave signal isn’t dominating the scene.

This is the faulty analysis that ASR and the whole subreddit subscribe to.

Any DAC output at 1 to 2 volts or more (with whatever THD+N qualities) is attenuated with the potentiometer, etc. to the end of gain on current for headphones by the amp but at a massive reduction in voltage from the source level.

This is lost on most of this subreddit, but it is based on the laws of electrical math and the analysis here is based on Amir’s own work. His charts and the thresholds he and nwavguy put forth.

Many just fail to ever see or hear this point and have hand-waved it away whenever mentioned.

I like HD650 with an iPhone dongle, 1 volt is good for 103dB… but prefer a professional level DAC/amp with ~7v SE and ~14v balanced for them along with that units much cleaner pro level +4dBu signal and for the ZMFs too.

300 ohm and other high impedance headphones are less susceptible to the THD+N thresholds even at microwatt range, but the nicer amp isn’t doing “nothing” beyond an Apple dongle…. Which, as I said, is quite listenable and sounds good for most headphones.

Get something like an amp or DAC for them with a balance control.

Is DT880 600 ohm with 100 ohm an industry thing?

If so, Then get an amp with around 7.75+ volts into 600 ohms with a 100 ohm OI

That’s approx 100mw into 600 ohms raw RMS without the complex impedance curve of the headphone and the interaction with the OI of the amp

You can drive high impedance headphones with low Ouput Impedance amps but the higher output impedance options are like a nice analog EQ very tasteful sometimes

It just means an amp with a 0.1 ohm impedance can remain totally flat on the output within its 20-20k range without the OI and headphone interaction affecting the frequency response.

Like 32 ohm headphones on a 1 ohm OI, ratio is 32:1

If it were a 4 ohm OI it’s 8:1 still flat

If it’s a ln 6 ohm oi it would be 5.333:1 with some some frequency response impact for good or for bad. It depends on the headphone impedance curve and the listener and the final FR.

The really low Output Impedance amp devices can be suited for a wider range of even lower impedance cans too…. Sometimes even IEMs if the amp has a low noise floor. Low impedance and medium impedance options.

Lots of power into low and high impedance… voltage on one end and current on the other to make the power rating with the impedance (resistance)

These can vary by amp how much voltage and current they have driving various impedance loads hi and low.

You can use pretty much any pair of headphones with any amp that have less than the 8:1 ratio (headphones to amp) … some will give good results and some will give bad.

Oratory1990 even talked about how a less than 8:1 ratio can be ok to a certain extent with certain headphones and the amp pairing that isn’t 0.1ohm OI. Or 1 or whatever.

Certain lower voltage and therefore power amps with or without high output impedance can be great with the right headphones. It just depends on the system and you and what you are listening to.

Depending on the Frequency response impact from the OI to headphone impedance ratio for the actual impedance curve oh the headphones, it could have a nice bass boost and other up or down from totally flat output with slightly less than 1:8 ratio at 1:6

600ohm cans have a lot more Lee way than a pair of 32 ohm cans for this kind of thing. It can be quite nice with the right pairings, but the prevailing notion is not the only answer, especially for high impedance headphones.

Amp could suck too. So try it out if you have it.

What amp is it? Can’t compare to two hypotheticals with a couple stats.

400mw into 600 ohms is just over 15 volts, which is pretty high.

YW

BTR5 should be fine.

Bane: For you!