Good, the forum members don't need more misinformation from some IT guy who thinks he actually knows something about computer architecture.

I find this thread hillarious. DRAM bit-error rates are ridiculously low. If you aren't doing extremely high precision floating point calculations where you use the result to make a safety critical decision you don't need ECC. ECC is single-bit correction and not really all that useful, it's...

Yeah the higher impedance headphones are easier to drive. However, as you point out, the higher impedances need more voltage which can be problematic if you like to listen loud.

Higher impedances are, in general, always easier to drive loads. For an amplifier, as long as the sensitivity is not outrageously low, it is actually easier to drive a 300 ohm load than a 32 ohm load. HD650 is pretty good out of a portable really. One of the worst is AKG K701. It has a...

WM8740 has internal op-amps already that are most likely worse than the very good op-amps you have available externally.

Threads like this are why I almost never visit here anymore. A lot of people come here to learn and they get confused/brainwashed by charlatans like the original poster. Having been around quite a while I can pick out the good from the bad, but I feel bad for new readers who are being fed...

OPA2134 is excellent. Making sweeping statements about an op-amp without knowing anything about the circuit it is in is useless. Non surface mount ceramics probably Z5U, horrible, remove them and replace with stacked (not wound) construction metalized polypropylene or polyester. I wouldn't go...

You need a PLL + VCXO... you cannot pull a normal XO

I found that on the W2002 the pad compression was very evident. I bought a new-in-box W2002 a while back and I found the pads somewhat uncomfortable and difficult to get a good position with out of the box. After 6 months of heavy use I glanced at the pads one morning and I was surprised at how...

Receiver jacks are NOTORIOUS for high output impedances which give bassy, warm, bloated sound. Even a cheap onkyo 'transistor radio' receiver I have does this. You are allergic to the truth Adam. If you like that bloated sound more, that is fine, but realize that it is your receiver that is...

The HD650 makes a much better speaker. The K701's leakage is sort of focused and directional compared to HD650 due to the design of the cups. I find that K701 leaks MORE than HD650 depending on where you are positioned relative to the headphones. With that said, I wouldn't use them like that...

If you are going to buy a finished product, my advice is to buy something you can return. Some people do not like to admit it, but EMU 1212m is at a pretty high level and there are some external dacs that are worse. Personally, I don't buy into the whole non-os thing and you may well find the...

To me, K701 is the most balanced headphone I have ever heard. It is very good at everything, but not the absolute best in any area. It doesn't have the midrange of W2002, the bass of HD650, the attack/impact of a Grado. It does have a very good midrange, very good treble, very good detail...

Not entirely true Jagorev, I was expecting K701 to have little bass and yet they have plenty... BUT not as much midbass as HD6x0, and it is pretty clear from comparison.

The point is that the amp is a poor design from a technical standpoint. AKG K701, SA5000, and 98% of other headphones are designed to be driven by an output impedance of as close to 0 as possible. A large mismatch like in this case causes very noticeable things to happen; mostly bloated bass and...

Given the same sensitivity, lower impedance is harder to drive than higher impedance.

Seems like implementation counts... the one I heard only would be quiet with high impedance headphones.

The soundmax measures... not so well, but probably better than many onboard codecs. It definitely measures worse than an M-audio Revolution, yet sounds better I think, at least with Senns.

I have a laptop with the Analog Devices Soundmax in it also, it sounds extremely good with HD6x0, seriously. Big soundstage, incredibly smooth, and musical for whatever reason ...and I hate using adjectives like those, but that is the best I can come up with. Not the last word in detail or...

The white lettering was burned off does not necessarily suggest they were killed by heat in the first place, although possible. I've killed one before and in the failed state, applying power to them causes extreme heat and smoking.

I think that if you do not bypass the adj with a capacitor then the output can never see the full differential, can't remember exactly.

The rating is differential, not maximum. If you look on the internet you can see examples of people using LM3xx regs at hundreds of volts. I use Linear LT1084 in my dynahi psu which is rated for even less voltage than the LM338 (35 I believe) and it has survived hundreds of power-on cycles at ~45V.

I do have a massive heatsink, but my dynahi psu with a 35V transformer does not get very hot at all. Far less heat than the dynahi itself and I am using identical heatsinks; it would be hard for me to believe the opa541 overheated. Unless, of course, it was not making contact. I actually used...

I had a new ATH-W2002 and it took 500+ hours before it got to its final sound. At first I figured it was the driver breaking in, but really what I found is that with the W2002 it is all in the pad. The earpads become softer and much more compressed with a lot of usage and that puts the driver in...

Who cares what magazines think? Do you borrow their ears before you listen every night? If there is one thing I have found out from reading head-fi, it is that people have wildly different opinions on things I thought were pretty cut and dry. I'm sure I could find at least a few people here who...