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baph

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    What are you consuming right now?

    in General Banter

    Posted

    5da7b321d55be003_m.jpg

     

    that looks phenomenal, no cheese though?

     

    Nope, just onions, cilantro, salsa verde and salsa roja. And deliciously cooked and seasoned meat. From the King Taco in Pasadena, CA.

     

    The pic isn't mine; I'm at work so I just did an image search, but close enough. 2 carne asada, 2 al pastor.

    Autechre - Oversteps (WARP210) [The MegaThread]

    in Autechre

    Posted · Edited by baph

    Well, the Apogee Duet works only with Macs. I think it works with the powerbook G4, but you might want to check. It's firewire 400, not USB (firewire 400 is a lot nicer for actually recording tracks than USB 2, IMO, if you ever plan on recording with it). It's portable, but it has a really simple, clean interface, and the sound quality is extremely good. I think you can be happy with one of those without getting a dedicated headamp, unless you have ridiculously hard to drive headphones.

     

    You can probably find one for around $400, which is maybe a little high, but Apogee's DACs are really incredible. They're intended for studio use and are very clean. And since the Duet is marketed at small studios and mobile musicians rather than money-burning audiophiles, it's priced really well for what it is.

     

    There are plenty of reviews on the Duet on head-fi, so maybe see if it looks good to you. I love mine, obviously, but at the very least it's worth thinking about.

     

    Edit: from Apogee's website, the sys requirements are

    Computer: Mac G4 1GHz or faster, G5 or Intel CPU

    *

     

    Memory: 1 GB RAM minimum, 2 GB recommended

    *

     

    OS: 10.4.10 or greater

    *

     

    Connection: FireWire 400 port

     

    Sorry if I sound like a shill. This little thing has kept me happy for a few years now without feeling the need to throw more money at audio equipment, is all.

     

     

    I like oversteps.

    Autechre - Oversteps (WARP210) [The MegaThread]

    in Autechre

    Posted

    I'd recommend an external DAC instead of an amp for improving low-impedance phones. Even my cheap Hot Audio USB DAC greatly improved the clarity and detail for my HD555 vs having them plugged into the laptop's onboard sound. I now have HD650s and an amp, but the DAC + HD555 served me very well for years, and I'd still say that setup is 80% as good as the HD650 + amp, which cost about 5x more.

     

    yes! my Denon D2000s are so close I can smell them. They're departed from Buffalo at 11:20pm last night, so definitely by Monday I'll get them, maybe today. After doing more and more research (you really need to with AMP/DAC), i finally understand what everything does, and the products available.

     

    yea i definitley need a low impedance USB DAC, good call. i was looking at either Practical Devices XM4 or iBasso D10 Cobra (both good with D2000s according to Head Fi.org)...

     

    Yeah, DACs are a Good Idea. I use an Apogee Duet, which is an extremely good DAC (and is also a really nice I/O for recording). And the headphone-out stage is good enough to drive something like HD650s. If you have a Mac, I can't recommend the Duet enough, both for sound quality and versatility.

    Autechre - Oversteps (WARP210) [The MegaThread]

    in Autechre

    Posted · Edited by baph

    I was trying to avoid thinking about how I owe much more in taxes than I have in the bank. It helped.

     

    I also apparently deleted a whole paragraph about HD-595s while making an aborted edit attempt, so the apperance of HD595s later in that fucking essay doesn't make any sense. But you get the idea.

     

    I'm basically going to give my entire life a :facepalm: right now, and go listen to oversteps and inevitably fall asleep during Krylon.

    Autechre - Oversteps (WARP210) [The MegaThread]

    in Autechre

    Posted

    thanks so amplifiers somehow improve sound quality and not just amplify i guess. i'll have to get one.

    I've never got this either, are headphone amps like £300 speaker cables, like they're meant to be all fancy pants and make things sound brilliant but just make things louder ?

     

    I know this is OT, but basically it comes down to impedance. If you have a headphone with 32 Ohm - 50 Ohm impedance (most consumer phones or portable phones, and some high-quality stuff like Grados), generally it's going to sound fine out of portable gear or a laptop. It doesn't take much juice to drive those.

     

    However, if you have professional/audiophile 150 Ohm, 200 Ohm, 300 Ohm, 600 Ohm, etc, headphones, they won't really be driven to their full potential out of portable gear. You'd have to crank up the volume level on something like an ipod to get something listenable volume-wise, and even then the sound quality won't necessarily be ideal (muddy, muffled, too much bass, weak bass, whatever).

     

    An amp (coming from a clean line-out on whatever source you have so that you're not reamping from the original headphone jack) basically provides enough juice to drive more picky, pro-quality headphones. It's not about raising the volume, it's about providing enough juice to drive the headphones fully (at lower volume, even). It's basically just providing a high-quality output stage to cleanly drive high-end gear.

     

    So whether amping is beneficial really depends on the headphones. There are other factors that come into play, and the above isn't entirely accurate, but it's close enough to get an idea.

     

    Edit: speaker cables, on the other hand, are snake-oil, pure and simple.

     

    thanks. my headphones i currently have 32 ohms impedance. the ones i'm looking at (Denon AH-D2000) have 25 ohms impedance. Even the HIGHEST QUALITY Denon headphones --- the Denon AH-D7000 for $999 --- have 25 ohms impedance.

     

    so my question (how long will this off-topic discussion be tolerated?) is: do only some "audiophile" headphones have high impedance??

     

    thanks for your description tho...

     

    Yeah, the Denon's are supposedly in a bit of a grey area; they're low-impedance, but also have a lot of driver mass and supposedly benefit a good deal from amping.

     

    So basically, yeah, only some audiophile headphones have high impedance, but there are other issues that factor into "sensitivity" of headphones.

     

    But maybe even more basically: generally, if something's geared to be driven from high quality sources like receivers(back in the old days, these had high-quality headphone outs; over the years this has stopped being the case, which is one of the main reasons the headamp market got started) or studio equipment, they'll need a powerful headphone out, and hence (unless you have some great vintage studio gear) a headphone amp.

     

    If a headphone's geared for portable use, generally it's going to be low impedance and easy to drive from portable sources.

     

    I have a pair of Grado HF2s, which I think definitely count as audiophile phones. They're only 32 ohm, and they sound really great out of an iPod. That said, if I switch to my Apogee Duet (studio gear, but not vintage), they sound a lot better. Part of that is because it's a cleaner source, but they're also driven with a bit more authority because of the better headphone-out stage. It's not a night and day difference with the HF2s, but there's still a non-negligible improvement. That said, because the Grados are easy to drive, I get a lot of enjoyment out of them straight from my ipod.

     

    I also have a pair of 300 Ohm Sennheiser HD650s. I can plug them into the iPod, but to get to a normal listening level, I have to dial the iPod volume way up. It sounds ok, but also really dark and distant. When I plug them into the Duet, they're a lot tighter sounding and much less dark/muddy, and a listenable volume is only a few notches up from 0. I've heard the HD650s once out of a really good dedicated headamp (unlike the Duet) and they sounded better; more balanced, clearer and still less dark.

     

    The HD650s scale a ridiculous amount, but that's their intended function. The Grados and HD595s don't; you can max them out with amplification at a more reasonable price-point (although you can always get a cleaner source). That's their intended function.

     

    I'd imagine the Denons are similar to the Grados and HD595s; they'll benefit noticeably from being driven better, but you won't need to plunk down some ridiculous audiophile-snob cash to get them to sound great.

     

    (Sorry for OT.)

     

    Uh, oversteps.

    Autechre - Oversteps (WARP210) [The MegaThread]

    in Autechre

    Posted · Edited by baph

    thanks so amplifiers somehow improve sound quality and not just amplify i guess. i'll have to get one.

    I've never got this either, are headphone amps like £300 speaker cables, like they're meant to be all fancy pants and make things sound brilliant but just make things louder ?

     

    I know this is OT, but basically it comes down to impedance. If you have a headphone with 32 Ohm - 50 Ohm impedance (most consumer phones or portable phones, and some high-quality stuff like Grados), generally it's going to sound fine out of portable gear or a laptop. It doesn't take much juice to drive those.

     

    However, if you have professional/audiophile 150 Ohm, 200 Ohm, 300 Ohm, 600 Ohm, etc, headphones, they won't really be driven to their full potential out of portable gear. You'd have to crank up the volume level on something like an ipod to get something listenable volume-wise, and even then the sound quality won't necessarily be ideal (muddy, muffled, too much bass, weak bass, whatever).

     

    An amp (coming from a clean line-out on whatever source you have so that you're not reamping from the original headphone jack) basically provides enough juice to drive more picky, pro-quality headphones. It's not about raising the volume, it's about providing enough juice to drive the headphones fully (at lower volume, even). It's basically just providing a high-quality output stage to cleanly drive high-end gear.

     

    So whether amping is beneficial really depends on the headphones. There are other factors that come into play, and the above isn't entirely accurate, but it's close enough to get an idea.

     

    Edit: speaker cables, on the other hand, are snake-oil, pure and simple.

    Save State bending

    in EKT General Discussion

    Posted

    krYlon reminded me that a while ago I accidentally corrupted a save on my megadrive emulator, if I then try to load other save states it sounds like it's trying to create various oversteps tracks. The first 30 seconds is me loading up another save in sonic and the other minute is Super Hangon -Sonic hangon.mp3

     

     

    And here's one I just recorded 15 minutes ago from loading Ecco Jr ... It's quite epic ! It reminds me of the tape loop experiments from the 50s. It gets stuck doing the sound at 8:30 until I restart the emulator.Ecco Jr.mp3

     

     

    Holy shit, this is wonderful.

    Autechre - Oversteps (WARP210) [The MegaThread]

    in Autechre

    Posted · Edited by baph

    What's the Cafe Press shirt-sizing like? I mean, is a large decent sized or is it super tight? The American Apparel larges are about as small as I can go, accounting for shrinkage and the like. But I also don't want to be swimming in my frigging shirt. Oh god, this is making me anxious, oh god.

     

    edit: ok, I see one of them is a preshrunk Hanes, so that works. I'm'a order that shit, after saying the same thing for two years already.

    Autechre - Oversteps (WARP210) [The MegaThread]

    in Autechre

    Posted · Edited by baph

    There's some really nice, subtle use of dynamic range on this album; a few tracks just get a teeeeny bit louder in certain passages/climaxes, and I'm finding it really effective. Has anyone looked at waveforms? I'm guessing Oversteps might be less compressed for maximum loudness than Untilted, but not sure.

     

    There's a lot of intentional distortion in Oversteps, but there also seems to be a good bit of headroom. This album sounds fanfuckintastic.

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