[Trogdor]

What are the changes HFM can implement ReplayGain support? I really wish the 901 had that.

 

[KT66]

Normalizing volume is an effect that can only degrade the sound, I wouldn't expect to see such a feature in a
high end DAP 

 

[Mimouille]

Hey gives I might soon be letting go an iem card brand new as well as a TRRS balanced iem cable with TRRS to SE adapter. Details FS add to come, but contact me.

 

[CosmicHolyGhost]

Hey Mim, whar card will you be using?

 

[Mimouille]

Well I use the balanced card but balanced cables tire me as I have to add adapters to use with my other DAPs, so I will either continue with balanced card in SE mode or get a Minibox.

 

[CosmicHolyGhost]

Think just stick with SE on balance card....

 

[Mimouille]

Why ?

 

[CosmicHolyGhost]

Why ?

The more I listen to it and compare to balance, I find the sound a little too coarse for iem.. imho. I've actually grown to like running SE using balance card for certain music

 

[Trogdor]

Normalizing volume is an effect that can only degrade the sound, I wouldn't expect to see such a feature in a
high end DAP 

That is absolutely not TRUE. In fact, it's just the REVERSE.

 

[SilverEars]

That is absolutely not TRUE. In fact, it's just the REVERSE.

Hi, you sound like you have some experience with this.  Can you expand on this?  I really don't like the replay gain settings on my audio player when all of sudden loudness drops.  

  So, normalizing makes sense to do, but I don't know what happens with all these replay gain levels, if they decrease the SQ at all.

 

[Trogdor]

Hi, you sound like you have some experience with this.  Can you expand on this?  I really don't like the replay gain settings on my audio player when all of sudden loudness drops.     So, normalizing makes sense to do, but I don't know what happens with all these replay gain levels, if they decrease the SQ at all.

RG (and its elk) is simply adjusting your volume knob for you so all your songs are on a level loudness playing field. It doesn't change the samples in anyway - it's just adjusting gain up or down depending on how you set it up.

The volume in which you listen to changes the way your ear's perceive sound (your ear is not linear in its frequency response). And most modern music is too loud, causing some tracks to sound drastically different than others, aka the Loudness War. RG solves that to some extent by auto-adjusting the gain. Obviously, albums that have been mastered poorly will sound a bit worse when compared to records that have been mastered with fidelity in mind - but to me, that's a good thing!

The biggest issue with RG is in its implementation. The player needs to have different modes like the way Apple implements SoundCheck in iTunes. When you are listening to just one album then you want the gain settings all to be normalized between tracks within that album (intra-album normalization). However, in playlist mode, when you have a bunch of songs of various artists and genres, then the RG settings become more of an issue because you want each track to be relative to each other (inter-album normalization), not relative to the album they are contained in. Otherwise, the gain settings will sound very weird as you go through Bach, Beethoven, and Behemoth!

Bottom line, RG support would be a very, very nice feature to support on the 901.

 

[KT66]

Is the RG present in the signal path?

 

[Trogdor]

Is the RG present in the signal path?

No. Works like this:

RG will scan your album and approximate its overall loudness. It will then write a tag (just like "artist") to each track telling the player software how to adjust gain during playback.

Then a RG enabled player (software or DAP) will notice the tag and go, "Oh, you want me to play this track but adjust the gain by -2.3db." It will then lower it.

CORRECTION: Well, the 901 has true analog volume control which I completely forgot about. Don't ask me how...but I did. I guess I am so used to DAPs having digital volume...well anyway, nevermind, this ain't gonna work.

 

[qrtas]

Has anyone tried the HM-901 Accessory
S/P DIF Input/Output Cable

http://hifiman.com/Products/?pid=170

Can I actually output digital audio from the hifiman hm901 to a DAC using this adapter?

 

[ClieOS]

Has anyone tried the HM-901 Accessory
S/P DIF Input/Output Cable

http://hifiman.com/Products/?pid=170

Can I actually output digital audio from the hifiman hm901 to a DAC using this adapter?

 
Of course it can. Wouldn't be much good if it can't.