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couple questions....

post #1 of 3
11/28/09 at 2:20am
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i was looking at pictures of the "predator" amp, and i got a couple of questions....now, i have a pair of er4ps, that sound amazing....but, i am assuming that running an amp will give a big improvement. i expect that sometime in the near future, i will spend some outrageous amount of money on some obscure boutique headphone....with that in mind, not that its pertinent to this question. what is the cable that comes out of the dock of the ipod and hooks into the amp called, is this some bypass of the online amp of the ipod? and if so, i would assume this would increase the sound quality....i use all hi quality mp3s mostly about 320, would having such a set up be in vain because the mp3 files....i get pretty obsessed with stuff like this, and i really like toys i think im going to go all out soon and buy some stuff- so any info would be good..
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post #2 of 3
11/28/09 at 2:38am
The cable what you want is an LOD. They can be found without dishing out too much money, and can be relatively cheap to make. However, you can find very expensive ones like the ones that ALO makes. You don't really need to spend all thought much money, though.
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post #3 of 3
11/28/09 at 5:33am
If you use an amp, you would be advised to get the 75 ohm ER-4P to ER-4S converter cable, as many amps can't deal with the low impedance of the ER-4P and produce hiss.

The gains from amplification are likely to be subtle at best, and you would get more benefits from using a better DAC than the cheapo Wolfsohns Apple puts in the iPods, e.g. using a dock that bypasses the iPod analog circuitry altogether, but then we're not talking about something portable.

A much better option IMO is to use a USB DAC/Headphone amp like the HeadAmp Pico or the RSA Predator, connected directly to the USB port of the PC or Mac you have your iTunes library in. They are quite capable, I've used Sennheiser HD650s with my Pico. Of course, garbage-in, garbage-out. 320k MP3s are not so bad, but you should really consider lossless.
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