Review: SPL Auditor - Page 7

Have you tried a different power socket?

I've tried at my house and also a friends. The same result.

I get hissing as well from the Auditor with the Denon AH-A100 and the Klipsch Image X10. Both are extremely sensitive and low impedance. I don't get hissing from the V200 with them. None of my other headphones produce any hissing with the Auditor so it's only the most sensitive and low impedance headphones that seem to produce hissing with the Auditor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheManko 

I get hissing as well from the Auditor with the Denon AH-A100 and the Klipsch Image X10. Both are extremely sensitive and low impedance. I don't get hissing from the V200 with them. None of my other headphones produce any hissing with the Auditor so it's only the most sensitive and low impedance headphones that seem to produce hissing with the Auditor.

Any way around that, I dont really wanna get another amp for just my D7000

try an 120 ohm adapter only trying you will see how your D7000 will sound with it . It's cheap soo , it's worth a try i think .

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragoonv 

Any way around that, I dont really wanna get another amp for just my D7000

Are you using unbalanced cables?

I didn't find any way to remove the hiss when I was trying. I'm using balanced cables and trying a few other power outlets had no effect on the hiss at all so I assume it's a consequence of the amp not being designed at all for sensitive low impedance headphones.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheManko 

I didn't find any way to remove the hiss when I was trying. I'm using balanced cables and trying a few other power outlets had no effect on the hiss at all so I assume it's a consequence of the amp not being designed at all for sensitive low impedance headphones.

This may be offtopic but, I had a audible hiss with the Burson 160DS also, especially with low-impedance headphones like the D7k. I had no ground loop and it was basically from the amp/dac, however, the DACMini is complete quiet, no hiss in any headphone, from my IEMs to the low-impedance full-size cans.

Aren't international shipping costs fairly brutal? When I sent my LCD-2s back to Audeze for the free R2 upgrade back in July I remember it being very expensive no matter the type of shipping I picked. It might not be worth it given that I live in Europe for the 100 ohm adapter.

A nice review of the SPL Auditor amplifier, no doubt. In my recent conversation with SPL Germany technical support I was able to get some information about the design of this amplifer. The thing I was most interested in was whether they used negative feedback and if so, how much did they add. Usually, this can have a negative impact on linearity but generally, 8dB is considered to be hardly noticeable and can lower the output impedance of the amplifier giving it a larger amount of current reserves to drive low impedance systems. To my surprise, SPL does not use any feedback which explains the 9 Ohm output impedance. Adding negative feedback would increase the absolute S/N ratio but would negatively affect dynamics in the relative sense and would certainly mean the amplifier's high end would not reach nowhere near the MHz range. This shows that SPL obviously designed the amplifier for maximum sound quality even if that meant certain compromises in terms of driving abilities when it comes to low impedance systems. 

Woo Audio claims their amplifiers are able to drive 8 Ohm systems but when I asked for further explanations and some technical questions and dilemmas I had, I didn't get the reply I was hoping for. The truth is, they do use negatobve feedback and use a large amount of it. This translates to a rather mellow sound with lack of control and mid-range overly saturated with harmonic distortion. People call this "tube sound" when in fact it is coloration and has nothing really to do with tube sound. A properly designed output transformer-less amplifier with abundance of cabacitance reserves and zero feedback will reveal this easily.

Cheers!

As for the resistance adapters, I would strongly recommend against them. Most adapters of this type use SMD components which are hardly intended for audio purposes, let alone critical ones such as using them between the voltage stage and magnetic voice coils in your headphones. This is a cheap trick usually used in speaker amplifiers, receivers and CD players where inserting resistors in series is attempted to compensate for the otherwise serious inherent design flaws. I won't go as far as to say only high impedance headphones have the potential to be truly excellent but if you must use this solution, then I suggest making your own adapter. You could use highj quality carbon or metal-glass resistors or even copper-wound resistors which will certainly be better than anything they will sell you even though even this will be a compromise.

Quote:

Originally Posted by akatona 

A nice review of the SPL Auditor amplifier, no doubt. In my recent conversation with SPL Germany technical support I was able to get some information about the design of this amplifer. The thing I was most interested in was whether they used negative feedback and if so, how much did they add. Usually, this can have a negative impact on linearity but generally, 8dB is considered to be hardly noticeable and can lower the output impedance of the amplifier giving it a larger amount of current reserves to drive low impedance systems. To my surprise, SPL does not use any feedback which explains the 9 Ohm output impedance. Adding negative feedback would increase the absolute S/N ratio but would negatively affect dynamics in the relative sense and would certainly mean the amplifier's high end would not reach nowhere near the MHz range. This shows that SPL obviously designed the amplifier for maximum sound quality even if that meant certain compromises in terms of driving abilities when it comes to low impedance systems. 

 

Woo Audio claims their amplifiers are able to drive 8 Ohm systems but when I asked for further explanations and some technical questions and dilemmas I had, I didn't get the reply I was hoping for. The truth is, they do use negatobve feedback and use a large amount of it. This translates to a rather mellow sound with lack of control and mid-range overly saturated with harmonic distortion. People call this "tube sound" when in fact it is coloration and has nothing really to do with tube sound. A properly designed output transformer-less amplifier with abundance of cabacitance reserves and zero feedback will reveal this easily.

 

Cheers!

very interesting read, thanks