Attention: necro thread. Oddly enough, the 2kOhm HD424 is rather easier to drive than the 600 ohm HD420SL. I am guessing that it's a rather high-efficiency driver - which would also explain why bass response takes a nose dive below about 200 Hz already (those familiar with loudspeakers may have...

You can switch level display in Vista/Win7 from x/100 to dB, at least in the playback device properties, Level tab. Right click in the field with the number. (That's rather well-hidden indeed.) The slider response itself is somewhere between linear and logarithmic, presumably mimicking its...

Sounds more like coincidence tbh.   The very first thing I'd do if HD25s were intermittent would be wiggling the cable connector at the earpiece affected. Of course it's not impossible that the driver itself has a problem or the contact spring is bent.   When in-ears go very weak, usually...

Digital attenuation at sufficient precision (24 bits and up) can be regarded as transparent. Thankfully so - I like ReplayGain!   That said, the total dynamic range provided by an oldfashioned analog volume control / amplifier may be 130 dB or more. Achieving that sort of performance in a DAC...

^ Sounds about right. ;)   Actually it's about entirely items 1), 3), 5) and 8) for me right now, though 2) could use some work as one of my speakers is acting up (and getting to the problematic part is quite a pain).

Are you sure about K271/272 sensitivity? Going by Tyll's results, they ought to be at 107-110-ish dB/V. Spec is 104.   Data for more / older headphones (usually spec, some measured) is available in ye olde sensitivity table in my spreadsheet department, along with a simple sound output level...

If you're using some semi-current version of Windows, you may want to give EqualizerAPO a shot first. That gives you a system-wide fully parametric EQ.

I prefer medium-bitrate MP3s on my Clip+ as they give 13-ish hours of battery runtime rather than 8/9-ish hours. Does that count?   (Admittedly this directly relates to file size, as the difference in battery drain is caused by varying flash memory activity.)   In addition, sometimes...

It might actually be. Output impedance for the X3 is very low (spec = <0.3 ohms), and the AD8397 does not like driving significant amounts of capacitance without some extra series resistance. 2.2 ohms is recommended for up to 470 pF in the datasheet, while otherwise 270 pF is the recommended...

I'm a little surprised a SB card would be misbehaving like that. Those I've seen usually had muting transistors installed. Maybe the Audigy 1 didn't yet, but e.g. a SB Live! 24-Bit does.   I did have one card once that produced a big POP upon powering up and down, an Audiotrak ProDigy 7.1...

Bumpity-bump. You guys may be interested in the level calculation spreadsheet that I put together a while back. Ye olde sensitivity calculator (dB/mW <-> dB/V <-> dB/V@given R_out) is here.

^ That first one reminded me of something... [Portico Quartet - News from Verona] ...and then there's this lovely track I stumbled across recently: [*Shels - Butterflies On Luci's Way]

Quote: "Down On The Corner" - Creedence Clearwater Revival  

That question seems mighty fuzzy to me. Maybe reword it with some more detail?

With ~256 kbit VBR AAC we should be way in diminishing returns territory. You'd probably need some funky kind of hearing damage to make out any differences at this point. I mean, even half that bitrate tends to be transparent to a large majority of people.   These days, encountering audible...

Quote: /me likes that line of thought. :D   Definitely one of the coolest things about the '80s (much like present days) was variety. It's hair metal as much as dance pop, new-wave and sophisti-pop, folk and alternative rock, world music and newage, singer-songwriter and post-punk, goth...

OK, so it's a slow guitar piece with a bit of jazzy-feeling percussion coming in near the end. Let's see...   What about some Michael Rother? Kolbe & Illenberger also are great. Otherwise I'd suggest looking at the various usual suspects among "guitar heroes".

^ That's a good one. I'd heard of them, but never checked them out.   Here's a fairly obvious choice when it comes to the thread topic: The Polyphonic Spree!   I'll also suggest Kimbra - Cameo Lover   There's a number of Concrete Blonde songs that have a soothing effect on me...

Quote: Well, yes and no. When looking at resulting bitrates for VBR tracks for a given quality setting, you can definitely see some variation depending on material. It is not always a direct correlation, but e.g. pop tends to yield higher than average bitrates while classical orchestra...

Laurie Anderson is a genius and all, but I'd classify her more as a storyteller than a classic singer. Anyway...   A word of warning: Do not start going through this thread when it's getting kinda late. (Don't ask how I know. You can thank me later.)   Let's see whether we can't...

I get along with LAME -V 6 -q 0 quality MP3s just fine, and have been quite unable to ABX 'em. This, however, assumes that the combination of MP3 decoder and ReplayGain ensure that no clipping occurs on playback even if peak amplitudes are larger than 1 (I've seen more than 1.5 times full scale...

Yours truly.

If in doubt, I'd just do a mono downmix and see whether the effect is still there. It's not like cans or volume pots never had any imbalance.   BTW, sometimes voices can also wander around somewhat, especially over IEMs. A bit of crossfeed tends to do away with that.

^ The above post suffers from genius overload. :D   "Contemporary folk" in itself is a very broad affair. It covers everything from the likes of Pete Seeger over numerous talented people of the '60s and '70s, Suzanne Vega in the '80s and '90s (pretty consistently good btw) to present-day UK...