I only got into wired IEMs within the last year or so, so far the only ones I've had problems with are the Moondrop Arias (internet chatter suggests its a very common problem, so I really think people should avoid it).

Yeah, it was a reasonable/effective solution before low-impedance cans became more of the norm (presumably with the rise of the walkman/discman, where for similarly cost-sensitive reasons you'd rather need higher currents than higher voltages).

While it may flatter the Sennheisers, a few hundred ohms of output impedance will have much less agreeable effects for a lot of cans/IEMs, so I just want to assure OP that his headphone dongle is behaving as a modern headphone amp ought to.

Is there a headphone that doesn't get hate? Utopias are among my favorite all-rounder headphones, though their QC rep scares me a bit and replacement pads are as extortionately priced as the headphones. Their stock cables are also pretty shit, so if you're the kind of person to buy expensive cables, that's something else to budget for. I think these are headphones on the HD600 upgrade track, if that makes any sense. If you don't dig those, you won't dig these, and vice versa.

They're wired backwards so that they invert the signal (allegedly... this seems like the kind of thing that might vary depending on who's on the workshift at the factory that night). Ie, a sound that starts with an increase in sound pressure at the mic starts with a pressure vacuum at the eardrum, assuming phase was preserved through the recording. It's theoretically audible but as long as its inverted the same way in both ears, really not a significant issue with real-world audio content.

When driving the Magni from the computer, full volume (or nearly so) on the computer is the right way to set it up. The ALC8-whatever isn't going to get anywhere near overloading the Magni's input at full volume, and anything else is amplifying your computer audio's (considerable) noise floor.

What port are you plugging it into on the mobo? If you aren't doing this already, I suggest setting the volume on the computer to the highest it goes and controlling the volume on the amp.

(I don't think you'd have different results with the Heretic, for what it's worth)

Like all these receivers/boomboxes, the headphone jack is a bit of afterthought and does not have a dedicated amplifier, but uses the speaker amp going through a resistor. The resistor causes the amp's output level to be very sensitive to variations in the headphone's impedance at different frequencies, which for most dynamic driver headphones gives you a midbass "boost" (though what's really happening is that it's struggling to drive the other frequencies at the same level). It also reduces the control the amp has over the movement of the driver, but I'm not sure to what extent this has an audible effect. You can get the same effect with an impedance adapter dongle.

capacitors are one of the electronic components that makes up a crossover (or other analog filter). "chip" capacitor just describes their form factor.

Same way you hear dolby atmos with only 2 ears.

Though these surround sound virtualization algorithms aren’t super effective, from my experience. YMMV.

it’s a product that’s been out for what… a couple months? you’re an early adopter. for $20 that’s a small risk, but ya know…

i try to dissuade people from buying stuff with a bad reputation but it takes getting burned a few times before people stop falling for such “bargains”. fwiw, my Wan’er still going strong after a few months and it should sound very similar, but ya know, its only been a few months.

sure looks like it.

Crin updated his graph tool thing with a measurement of project red with a 75ohm impedance adapter, causing a big subbass boost, which suggests to me its a similar dual driver configuration as the Zero, where you’d get the same effect.

>I went to a music store a couple days back and got myself the AKG K371. At the store they had it for demo and it does sounds pretty nice on their demo but I wasn't really doing any critical listening and it's probably had a very EQ-ed song

I'm wondering if they silently changed the pad design or something, to address the complaints about the seal

While it's got that Harman bass shelf, boomy is not how I'd describe it (on the rare occasion I can get a good enough seal to not leak out all the subbass), certainly nowhere near the XM3's. I got my pair at Guitar Center and they sound like the demo units I listened to.

There is no upgrade you can make from the HD560s that's like going to an OLED panel or a 144hz monitor. 60hz is nowhere near the motion resolution of the human eye, and not even OLED is anywhere near the dynamic range of the eye (not sure about color gamut and stuff like that). With headphones, anything decent can reproduce the full range of frequencies you can hear and more dynamic range than you'd want to listen to. Different headphones may have a different tonal balance that you'd find more appealing, but there's just no room for some huge leap in fidelity.

Enjoying this very organic “scandal” being brought up by reddit accounts in broken English who’ve never posted about anything remotely IEM related before

here are some resources you may find useful:

https://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com (CSD plots for many headphones)

https://www.stereophile.com/content/innerfidelity-headphone-measurements (transient response)

https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/report/hp/sennheiser-hd-800s.php#gsc.tab=0 (not the easiest site to navigate, but lots of transient response measurement)

>louder=better

Almost certainly this. Even relatively small volume difference are going to confound any comparison you make.

Some IEMs may be somewhat sensitive to differences in cable impedance (and, probably more importantly, the amp's output impedance, which will double with the balanced output), but the Starfields shouldn't be.

Qobuz is the best audiophile-oriented streaming service I've used, but their library is unfortunately a bit lacking for me - but this is a matter of your music taste, so definitely give them a shot.

Spotify has comfortably the best music recommendation engine, but no lossless. Probably not a big deal, but I'm a paranoid enough audiophile that I just don't want to pay for that.

Apple Music is reasonably nice on iOS, but kind of half-assed if you want to use it on Windows, and not really designed for anal-retentive audiophiles who want their bits perfect.

Amazon Music is very low-rent as a service, but it's affordable (I already used Prime) and does the job I need it to do, so that's what I use.

I also buy stuff from Bandcamp a bunch. This is by far the most profitable avenue for the artist, these streaming apps pay nothing.

Fuck MQA, ergo, fuck Tidal.

IME when it comes to audio, if you have to ask whether you could be imagining a difference, you almost certainly are. If you have a computer with line in or some audio interface or something, you could record the output of both and run some tests with RMAA or REW but seems like a lot more trouble than it's worth.

RTings has devised some kind of "objective" metric of soundstage, you can read about their rationale for it.

"moar drivers = moar better" marketing sizzle?

while I'm sure you could make some reasonable case for a 2-way setup to separate high and low frequencies, a lot of the IEM market seems rather over the top, given what you can clearly do with 1DD.

>It did, however, merk a pair of KEF X300A speakers on me they went into error mode (that was an awful set of KEFs IMO anyways though)

what a great product, it even kills equipment you don't like

Bragging rights to other head-fi’ers? I’ve heard the Holo stuff and heard nothing to challenge my assumption that it’s a enormous waste of money for anyone who doesn’t thow around thousands of USD casually.

Movies are usually mixed with a lot of dynamic range (or in other words, low average volume). Turn it up.

What is the timescale there? kind of curious what that sounds like... a >10hz pitch difference oughtta be plainly audible but I haven't really heard Quarks DSP owners mention it.

The polarity of the sound waveform would be inverted (some people can hear it under some circumstances but its a subtle difference) or mismatched between channels (this is easy to hear), but otherwise, completely harmless.