Guys I need some help here regarding audio and shit like that. I don't want to ask on head-fi because that place is full of shills.
People told me that DAC+AMP make your headphones sound better. I had no idea which one to buy and since they all looked weird I decided to buy a new soundcard. And it really did make my headphones sound better, but not entirely better, some shit sounds worse now.
For example the song Decade Dance by Jasper Byrne, at 0:08-0:10 there is a very high sound, on my old soundcard it was painfully high pitched. Now with my new soundcard it is better balanced. Bass is also better. On my old soundcard the bass sounded kinda boomy and mushy, kinda like the shit subwoofers that people build into cars. But now the bass is tight instead. It's hard to explain to be honest, but it basically went from BOM to BAM, if that makes sense. But it is not entirely better, there is for example a lot more bass now (I am not using a EQ or some other bullshit) and it makes certain songs sound worse.
Sooo apparently those devices really change the way your headphones sound, which leads me to the question, what the fuck should I buy? I bought the Creative Sound BlasterX E5, which to be honest is not really what I want. It has a shitload of gaming features that make my headphones sound worse. Also it is portable. I first thought it would be nice to have a portable device like that but then I remembered that I don't really listen to music outside. I think it would make more sense to have a device without those features that focuses more on what I actually need, good music quality.
I want to spend as little as possible on this shit.
One more thing, I want to return this Creative soundcard. I bought it two days ago and I am not really happy with it. So, you know I am not not trying to buy a device I can run alongside this card, I want this card gone and I want something new instead. I just don't know what to get yet.
Evan Lee
Schiit Fulla 2. Objectively excellent DAC chip. Ojectively good circuit design. Quality construction. Extreme flexibility and connectivity.
Unless you're a complete and utter faggot you will want both your DAC and amp to be as neutral as possible. Schiit, Cambridge Audio and Steinberg are a couple companies that offer competetively priced dacs and amps (interfaces in the case of Steinberg) with very neutral sound. Unless your headphones have huge power requirements there's no need to spend >$200 for a DAC/AMP combo, at that price point or below there is a plethora of options that offer completely neutral sound.
As for the E5, the DAC in it is the Cirrus Logic CS4398 which is excellent, but you can also find it in the Asus Xonar U7 which can be had for a shitload less so the question is what the hell do you get from the E5 that makes it so expensive?
Most likely though what you're experiencing now are not the limitations of your DAC or amp or even your headphones but rather the limitations of your source. If your source is shit your sound will always be shit no matter how much money you dump into your equipment, and I'm not talking about the bitrate of your audio files.
Post a download link to Decade Dance, I'd be willing to bet an awful lot the waveform of that track looks fucking nothing like pic related.
Hudson Perry
Got this off jewtube from the HM2 OST. Notice any differences between this and what I posted above?
Jayden Jones
why didn't you get a schit dac amp
Jaxon Thomas
Okay I see what you mean, uploaded the file to mega mega.nz/#!WElDlTbA!5PlsDgvr72PmoIM0HfPwynN9mL0BKhtJ9N-r8bBPFDg That one song I upload is pirated, so I have no idea about the source, but a lot of my songs are straight from beatport, so if anything is wrong with those the artists sell them that way.
Because here in EU they are expensive as hell compared to the US. The Schiit Fulla 2 recommended by the user above costs € 125,00 instead of 100 dollars like in the usa. This means I am basically paying 132.31 dollars for that thing. Also the Creative soundcard I have right now was only 125€ here, which is the reason why I bought it. There was a little discount on it.
Nicholas Ortiz
That's not what a fucking source is you dunce, in the context of audio playback the source is the source medium — meaning a CD, wax cylinder or more commonly an mp3 file.
And in this case your source is utter fucking dogshit. Not only is the dynamic range trash tier but it's also littered with clipped samples.
This is the norm for almost all music produced today and your example isn't even that bad compared to most of the garbage that's played on the radio. Most people call it "the loudness war". Look it up on jewtube if you haven't heard that phrase before.
In incredibly rare cases artists will also release their shit on vinyl where there is literally a physical limitation to how badly you can fuck up the dynamic range of a recording without having the needle jump out of the groove. Even then, half or more of contemporary vinyl releases are still bound to be utter shite with literally the same master as the digital release being pressed after a quick pass of a smoothing filter to attempt to "even out" all those clipped samples, but spoiler alert clipped samples are unrecoverable so you're still stuck with the same godawful harsh popping noise where there used to be music because the cocksucker of a producer cranked the peaks up beyond the point of no return.
You have only one solution and that is to find some better music to listen to. There is not a goddamn thing you can do to make brickwalled rubbish sound good.
Isaiah Perry
ayy lmao
this is the waveform of the flac from the mega link, it's orders of magnitude worse than what I ripped off jewtube at 128kb/s Did you seriously think you'd get higher quality sound by downloading a file ten times larger?
Andrew Campbell
Well it is very possible that the guy who made the torrent just used the in game files and turned those into a flac thinking it would rise the quality. He is selling a different version of that song on bandcamp, but I am not going to buy that one anytime soon.
Are you using adobe audition to check those files?Because there are some other files I would like to check.
Also, is there anything I can do to fix this? I guess there isn't much one can do to fix a fucked up song, but then again this device I have right now kinda fixed part of that song.
Luis Jones
Those aren't a need but a want you retard
Landon Richardson
I am doing this right? they all look pretty weird to me and all except the first one are bought ones. "2017-02-24_08-24-59.png" is pirated but the others are either bought from beatport or bandcamp.
I love music, if it makes my shit sound better I need it.
Jeremiah Adams
Thank G-d OP didn't post in the consumer thread like he should have
Like I said, there's nothing at all you can do to make a brickwalled track sound good. It'll be just as terrible to listen to out of an orpheus system as it will be out of a set of laptop speakers.
That shit has been ruined in production and there is no way to undo the damage done and recover the lost dynamic range.
Have fun digging through torrent trackers trying to find digitized vinyl for a 50/50% chance of a decent master/rip. It's still going to be leagues better than wasting your time with the utter drevk that is CD/digital releases where less than a fraction of a percent of all albums you come across will have dynamics comparable to even the absolute worst vinyl pressing.
This is your life now, you can either accept listening to music that has been deliberately ruined for the sake of sounding louder out of mobile devices or over the radio in people's cars/burger joints or you can become one of those weird motherfuckers who listens exclusively to vinyl rips because in today's modern music landscape that's the only way to obtain music in its unmolested form.
You'll be fucking grateful though when you crank that volume knob as far as it will go without it making your ears bleed.
Grayson White
I don't get it, with people spending 300-1500 and more on headphones you would think people would protest this crap. Why isn't anyone complaining about this? And why are even the smaller musicians doing this?
Anyway, I guess I just stick to my crap soundcard then.
Connor Evans
Because people spending tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands have good taste in music and listen to classic
Henry Ramirez
Plenty of dumb motherfuckers too who buy into the beets meme and who think headphones with an insane bias in the 20-1000hz range aka nigger bass is the pinnacle of high-fidelity sound.
Elijah Campbell
But don't you want something new after a while?
Kevin Hall
beats are what, like $500? poorfag shit
There's more classic than you can listen in a lifetime. Might venture into popera if you're feeling edgy.
Eli Nelson
Unless you have neutral or near-neutral headphones there is no reason at all to get a DAC and/or amplifier.
Most people buy an expensive DAC+Amp combo and plug pleb-tier trash like Skullcandy or BEATS into it thinking its magically going to make them amazing.
Ryan Anderson
I seriously doubt that skullcady owners would buy a dac or amp, especially not the better stuff like schiit. People who own beats might buy them because they think very high of themselves, but I doubt it to be honest. Because if you do some research on audio you will run into articles that say beats are shit.
Lucas Butler
I have seen it happen Beats owners are a special kind of retard, they see Dre on the side and think its magically good.
Elijah White
Lesser known artists have to compete too y'know. Let me remind you that ever since the walkman entered the scene portable media has made up the lion's share of all music sales. I was too young at the time but I don't recall there ever being any protests against the fucking pitiful bit depth of cassettes, were there? The sad truth is >90% of people don't give a flying fuck about the actual quality of the music they listen to, only that it's rythmically pleasing to them. How do you suppose people would respond if you were to slip in an impeccably mastered vinyl rip into their playlist full of brickwalled nigger tunes? They would get mad and confused why the music suddenly became so quiet despite them having their iphones volume at max — because that's the paradox of loud music actually being quiet and vice versa. The piss weak drivers in a phone or laptop can't make your head rumble to a track peaking at -6db but they can sure as shit make your ears bleed if you play something that's been clipped to hell and back.
Here's a sample of some newer music, all of it sourced from vinyl. There's a couple different genres represented but it should give you an idea of what to look for in terms of dynamic range. Feel free to open up the individual files in audition or audacity and compare their waveforms to what you've been listening to.
Oh and a note on mp3 vs flac, no human has ears able to pick up sounds beyond 20khz, audio files with a sample rate beyond double that (the nyquist frequency) are wholly pointless unless you're an audio editor or a turbo-autist who absolutely must have a reference library for all his music.
Luke Morris
I hate the thought of data getting lost. Even if I don't hear the difference, I have enough space to store music.
Brayden Bailey
enjoy your shit audio
Luis Nelson
...
Hudson Collins
Well you can't see most of the light's spectrum either, but you sure as fuck would notice if someone stripped infrared from sunlight.
Hudson Murphy
...
Jeremiah Phillips
How would I when I haven't seen sunlight for the past three months?
Jackson Sanchez
...
Levi Edwards
Guys, I am still comparing my two soundcards to each other and it seems like the new one makes everything sound worse, because it amplifies the mistakes in the songs.
You see, this soundcard has a gain switch, low for headphones below 150 ohm, and h for headphones above 150 up to 600. And since my headphones need 250 I keep it on high. When I put it on high my headphones get a lot louder and I also hear shit that I didn't hear before. Like in one song there is rain in the background, but you hardly here it normally. It is there, but you barely notice it. But when I switch gain to H it becomes loud enough for me to notice.
But weird sounds like, idk how to describe it but shit that sounds bad is amplified a lot too. Some of those mistakes are hard to notice when I turn gain to low and on my default soundcard.
I am really confused right now. I do get that my soundcard or dac/amp can't fix fucked up music, but at the same time it can make shit sound different to the point where I prefer the shittier card.
Hunter Bell
Comparing different dacs/amps using literal trash as your source is no way to go about your business, download the sample of vinyl rips I made for you and use that to evaluate which output is superior.
Jaxon Hill
>Trains t. RMS
Gabriel Turner
This, storage is so cheap these days
Hudson Smith
Before you waste any more money ask yourself these questions Are your headphones shit? If they are, visit the wiki and a get a pair that are recommended. Examples that don't require an amp are the Sony MDR-V6 or the Audio Technica ATH-M50 Are my headphones being driven correctly? If you have higher impedence headphones, such as the HD600 or the AKG K7-- series, you would benefit from having an amp Do you hear noise from your existing audio outputs? If you do, you would benefit from a DAC.
John Robinson
okey dokey I bought LCD-2's, a Shite Bifrost Multibit DAC, and a Valhalla 2 Tube Amp but I didn't really notice a difference between those headphones with all that shit vs. straight out of the iPhone (or, really, much of a difference between headphones and $100 earbuds).
Where do you suppose the problem lies? ☐ music (CDs with Toslink out to DAC) ☐ CD player (cheap $100 whatever) ☐ DAC ☐ amp ☐ headphones ☐ my plebian ears
Levi Lopez
Do paint swabs of slightly different shades also look the same to you?
How deeply do you listen? If you stand outside, can you explicitly identify specific positions of the many sources of sound around you?
Closing your eyes honestly does help. Your other senses heighten in response - touch, hearing, smell. You have to listen closely. I immediately notice differences between sources with the same tracks of music, and I am not quite sure how anybody could miss it. Tube amps are also noisier and less accurate than solid state, what you might hear as ringing or other harmonics from the tubes may be getting mistaken as identical distortion coming from your phone.
Xavier Thompson
no I've a pretty good eye for color tbh when I'm outside i'm usually thumbing frantically through my phone lest my brain start working
Maybe I'll get into vinyl, if indeed the albums are better mastered
Gabriel Scott
wow. Good Shit / 10 thank you.
Asher Lopez
wadda bout on board dacs on motherboards? are they compatible with linux?
Jack Russell
There is a hell, and I am living it.
Thomas Butler
it doesn't fit 100% of your requirements but this is pretty close apple.com/shop/buy-ipod/ipod-nano You can even get it in Space Grey to match your phone!
Cooper Mitchell
Silly goy, MP3 players are so 2008 :^) why wasting time purchasing songs only once and saving them to your hard drive, when you can stream it from Spotify™ and Google Play™? You just press Play and It Just Werks, and you have instant access to our massive catalog of clouod music!
You should also use your smartphone for that, totally not because this way we know exactly what you listen and we can build a profile we can sell for money and share with the police so they can identify you in case the police is looking for a cybercriminal who listens to such and such artist, it's definitely because it's so cumbersome to carry a phone and a media player around, don't you think? :^)
Nathan Watson
Audiotechnicabro, kudos for the suggestion. I'd like to add my own: if you live in the Third World, where 15K USD a year counts as an upper-middle-class salary, the ATH-M30X are a good choice if you don't want to fucking shatter your bank. They cost me 100 USD and their sound quality is still pretty great.
Most retrowave is pretty fucking good quality these days, same with a fair bit of non-pop electro. Don't listen to any music that's produced by jews and you'll probably be in good shape. The biggest issue is that a lot of people just have shit hearing and they're not exposed to good sound in the first place. Once you know what to listen for it's unbelievable how many places crank blown speakers or worse, but nobody notices because nobody's listening to the music. It's just noise to the average normie.
John Scott
M50s are great.
Jeremiah Nelson
Why not purchase a used iPod classic? They can run Rockbox and you can swap out the internal hard drive with an internal multi micro SD or SD slot. That gives you your SD card support, Rockbox support, and solves your problem of smaller SD cards being cheaper since your MP3 player would have slots for 2-4 of them.
Samuel Ross
Don't be a fag. A lot of people still download their music, and higher storage options are being offered through the bigger competitors. It'll be a matter of time before 512 options are offered up.
Is it really possible to swap the internals, and put in one or two micro sd slots as the main source of memory?
Easton Edwards
The iPod classic used a 1.8" hard drive, same as the Zune, and I've seen boards with multiple micro SD slots that use the same connector as a 1.8" hard drive. The micro SD slots would be internal though so you wouldn't be able to swap them without disassembling it.
Charles Anderson
I have an old ipod video, and without the proper skills, I'm afraid I'm at a loss without a guide.
Chase Flores
If you can afford them the M70x is far better than the M50x, I have both (brought the M50x and a year later brought the M70x as my work headphones) and the difference is noticeable not to mention the M70x is more comfortable.
Christopher Torres
The K550 is a strong contender at a lower pricepoint.
Joshua Evans
audiofags are retarded, its not going to sound better because +20hz, better positional audio perhaps
Nathan Sanders
How can you guys still suggest those? You guys act like you are in a secret club. The M50, HD598, DT 770 and those shure headphones (can't remember the name) are the first thing everybody suggest when people ask for good ~$150 headphones. Everybody and their grandmother has probably tried those at one point.
Ryder Hughes
Would you prefer it if we acted like a bunch of hipster faggots?
Hunter Morris
I am just saying that you should stop handing out free blowjobs to people who use the same headphones that you do. Because those headphones are VERY popular and every nigger has tried them already.
I bought the official soundtrack on steam today and it looks the same as the pirated one
Aiden Perry
Underrated post.
Camden Reyes
It's really nice to see an audio thread that cuts through the snake oil and bullshit.
Maybe they do make nice products, but Shiit leave a very bad taste in my mouth since they're shilled relentlessly on head-fi and its sister site, halfchan /hpg/. I do not regret getting an O2 at all, it's open hardware and the designer ran an excellent blog for a long while.
Connor Rodriguez
very funny user
Evan Sullivan
If the OP is still looking at his options: The ideal dac perfectly reproduces the sound, if it changes how it sounds, then it is a bad dac. The same is true for solid-state amplifiers. Though there is also a market for tube amps that do modify the sound, they have no appeal for me. Get an amp if you have headphones that need one, there is no benefit if your soundcard provides ample power. Get a DAC if your output has interference, not otherwise. An external dac might give you technically better audio if you measure it, but it's not something that will survive blind testing.
