[Arttt]

I am not arguing against science or computer measurements. In my opinion audio science compliments beliefs, and beliefs complimenting audio science. It's my opinion and I'm not trying or willing to talk anyone into sharing it here on a forum.

How ever asking for demonstrations and proves on a forum , to back up me saying hd800 needs an amp to be driven to its full potential, that hd800 can't be driven properly from laptop headphone output, is ridiculous.

Your way of arguing around the whole thing ,Steve , was too silly to not make a joke of it, but to call it trolling? How sensitive are you...grow up
Your suggestion to leave this forum is turned down * yawn*
I like it hear, I'm staying

 

[Arttt]

Indeed I did, and I still stand by it fully.

There are caveats, however. Laptop-outputs aren't all the same, and if you look you'll be able to find both good and bad examples.
But the central point still stand: it's the electrical parameters of the source, and those of the load you intend to drive, that decide whether it's a match fit for purpose. Not price, brand name or fashion.
Transparent is transparent, as bigshot likes to say.

I have heard hd 800 on MacBook Pro retina, on Lenovo think pad models, on older models of MacBooks. Even thou I find some laptops do a better job driving hd800 than the other laptops, it simply can't drive it perioud.

Now you going into price,brand, fashion doesn't matter thing, seems to me you had experience with some "expensive" gear and left unsatysfied. But what does that have to do with discussion rather hd800 can be driven to its full potential by laptop headphone output or not, you going of topic man...

Of course if naim or hegel makes a product of bad sound quality it won't matter if it's high priced and has brand name on it.
Seems to me you are emotional about this price/brand/fashion thing...

Simply , you choose a product that sounds good to you and pay a price that is asked for it. Why make focus on prices and brands...

 

[Steve Eddy]

How ever asking for demonstrations and proves on a forum , to back up me saying hd800 needs an amp to be driven to its full potential, that hd800 can't be driven properly from laptop headphone output, is ridiculous.

No, it's not. And if you can't understand why its not, you're in the wrong forum.

se

 

[Arttt]

No, it's not. And if you can't understand why its not, you're in the wrong forum.

se

Alright, seriously now.
Have you heard hd800? Have you heard hd800 straight out of laptop headphone output?
Have you heard it driven by amp, like Auralic Taurus with a source like naim dac or hegel hd25 ???
And you heard no difference ?

Can you honestly say laptop headphone output is enough to drive hd800?

If you want " scientific valid proves" that will make my posts substantial about hd800 needs an proper amp and a dac to be driven to its full potential, contact Auralic, Hegel or Naim.
They have great support team and will be happy to provide you with all the information you seem to want from me.

As for the science sound forum, i will be the judge of rather I'm at the right forum or not!
I find information at this forum that I find both interesting and useful....
That's rude of you to constantly remind me or even trying to convince me that I don't belong here...

 

[cdsa35000]

Why argue with house trolls? Their main valid point is its gives sound, nevermind the quality thats subjective.

 

[Arttt]

I am just amazed how someone wouldn't " hear " the difference between proper amped hd800 with decent source, and a laptop headphone output...

Never the less, I agree, this discussion became pointless.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Alright, seriously now.
Have you heard hd800?

Yes, I have.

Have you heard hd800 straight out of laptop headphone output?

Yes, I have, as well as out of an iPod Nano.

Have you heard it driven by amp, like Auralic Taurus with a source like naim dac or hegel hd25 ???

Yes, I have.

And you heard no difference ?

There is a difference between hearing a difference and perceiving a difference. People perceive differences all the time. However that doesn't mean that the differences that are perceived have anything to do with the equipment and are in fact actual audible differences which are actually heard. This is well known and well established and why someone simply saying "I heard a difference" doesn't inform us as to whether or not there is any actual audible difference. That's why controls must be used to separate what people claim to perceive versus what is actually heard. Otherwise, we learn nothing.

Can you honestly say laptop headphone output is enough to drive hd800?

What exactly do you mean by "enough"? The HD-800 is a quite sensitive, high impedance (ranging from a bit over 300 ohms to a bit over 600 ohms) headphone. It is very easy to drive. So I don't know what you mean by "enough." It would be easy to drive even with the headphone output from a laptop.

Do you have any understanding at all of electronics and amplifier design? If not, how ecxactly do you come to this conclusion? What exactly informs your understanding of this other than your belief that the headphone outputs on a laptop just aren't "enough"?

If you want " scientific valid proves" that will make my posts substantial about hd800 needs an proper amp and a dac to be driven to its full potential, contact Auralic, Hegel or Naim.
They have great support team and will be happy to provide you with all the information you seem to want from me.

In other words, you don't have an answer, so instead you try and obfuscate and deflect by saying "go ask someone else" to support your empty-handed claims. That's just a load of nonsense. It wasn't Aurilic or Hagel or Naim who made the claims. It was you. And if you can't support them, then dont make them!

As for the science sound forum, i will be the judge of rather I'm at the right forum or not!
I find information at this forum that I find both interesting and useful....
That's rude of you to constantly remind me or even trying to convince me that I don't belong here...

I say you don't belong here because you bring nothing to the table except empty claims. And this simply isn't the forum for empty claims. That's what the other forums are for.

se

 

[Steve Eddy]

I am just amazed how someone wouldn't " hear " the difference between proper amped hd800 with decent source, and a laptop headphone output...

And there are people who would be amazed that someone wouldn't "hear" the difference after putting photographs of themselves in the freezer. Or taping little bags of rocks on their interconnects or AC outlet. So what makes your claims any different? There's virtually nothing that's too absurd for some number of people to claim "hearing" differences. So what exactly puts you claims over and above claims about frozen photographs or little bags of rocks? Or do you already have photographs of yourself in your freezer and little bags of rocks taped to your cables and AC outlets?

Never the less, I agree, this discussion became pointless.

It's only pointless because you've made it pointless with your empty claims. Don't try and lay the blame on others for your own shortcomings.

se

 

[castleofargh]

 

also I think you have interpreted some posts, I doubt anybody here said that laptops were driving a hd800 correctly.

"Even a humble laptop headphone-out will suffice with something like the HD800." Post#35 by limpidglitch

sorry I stand corrected.
well there probably will be some laptops with a soundcard that can output enough for a hd800. it's really not the hardest headphone to drive. it might be a little extreme example, but I actually don't know much about soundcards specs. so I won't make any claim ^_^. 
 
 

Besides castleofargh, you taking it to extremes , either be all about measurements made by computers or being some kind of voodoo shaman with a stick and a necklace made of headphone drivers...

I think measurements made by computer are important and I do believe there will be always more to the sound that we can measure...

 
Quote:

Why argue with house trolls? Their main valid point is its gives sound, nevermind the quality thats subjective.

for both of you: it's all a matter of where you're looking at the sound. in your head, we have to take your own ears ability, your brain, and your own interpretations of some stimuli as space or tempo cues. it's at least right now impossible to measure and why you think sound is more than just pure objective values.
 
now if you want to measure the sound coming in the air at 1point, it's pretty simple, that's all about recording the air pressure changing across time at that one point. nothing else, there are no magical particles in the air, just vibration changing the pressure and making our eardrum to move a certain way.  the sound can bounce in all directions, it can come from 10speakers, the resulting sound at that one point will be the accumulated changes in air pressure, and so can be expressed with 1 unique pressure value.
you want it in stereo, just measure the pressure changes in 2 chosen points.  there really is nothing else, 1value for each ear changing in time.
 
and if you go back inside the audio gear itself, then in the analog part before the headphone, it is all about voltage changing with time. 1per ear. and really nothing more. voltage will translate in the amplitude of movement in the driver.
the need for the amp is to make sure left and right voltages don't mix too much, to keep a nice noise to signal ratio, and to be sure to provide enough current with the voltage to make the mechanical driver to behave as it should.
so making the headphone is a tremendously hard thing to do well. but providing the right voltage and current is actually not that hard for 1 particular headphone. and it's certainly not hard to estimate the needs for a headphone.
 
now if you go back to the digital parts (before the DAC up to the CD) what is sent is 1numerical value per side, changing in time. those are the samples in PCM streaming.
 
so you see, at any point except in your brain, music can be and is expressed with 1value changing in time. if there was more to it, then no record would be good enough. even DSD only records a voltage swing. same for a vinyl. so the sound becoming more complicated than that is really just distortion and noise.
 
that's what I believe, what many people believe and to put it simply, how any modern audio system is built. to deal with 1value changing with time for each channel. only 1! hard to lose science with that I tell you.

 

[cdsa35000]

Sorry for trolling, I see the OP posted at the wrong section.
Here's your opinions/claims/experiences must be backuped with your own verifiable science and measurement. Think better next time huh.

 

[SilentFrequency]

Sorry for trolling, I see the OP posted at the wrong section.
Here's your opinions/claims/experiences must be backuped with your own verifiable science and measurement. Think better next time huh.

I think maybe you are looking for the "trolling" section?

This is the Sound Science section

 

[cjl]

I think measurements made by computer are important and I do believe there will be always more to the sound that we can measure...

I (and I suspect many other people here in Sound Science) hold precisely the opposite view. Not only is anything that is audibly different also measurably different, but there is more we can measure than there is to the audible sound. The sensitivity of our measurement capability to detect differences is much, much more sensitive than our ears' ability to distinguish audible differences.

 

[cjl]

As far as the laptop driving an HD800 discussion goes, I would have to say that it depends. Some laptops can probably drive an HD800 just as well as any dedicated amp. Many cannot. However, it is always measurable. I've seen some laptops that have appallingly bad headphone outputs, and I've seen some that have extremely little voltage swing. Either of those could make it so that an external dac/amp would be helpful in driving good headphones. However, that is all measurable. Meeting the criteria required to drive an HD800 perfectly really isn't that hard, since as many people said above, the HD800 is a fairly easy load (as headphones go). While not every laptop will drive it perfectly, any laptop with a well-designed headphone output will, and a headphone output or amp to drive an HD800 perfectly can be made pretty inexpensively and without much difficulty (you certainly don't need a thousand-dollar exotic amp).

 

[SilentFrequency]

As far as the laptop driving an HD800 discussion goes, I would have to say that it depends. Some laptops can probably drive an HD800 just as well as any dedicated amp. Many cannot. However, it is always measurable. I've seen some laptops that have appallingly bad headphone outputs, and I've seen some that have extremely little voltage swing. Either of those could make it so that an external dac/amp would be helpful in driving good headphones. However, that is all measurable. Meeting the criteria required to drive an HD800 perfectly really isn't that hard, since as many people said above, the HD800 is a fairly easy load (as headphones go). While not every laptop will drive it perfectly, any laptop with a well-designed headphone output will, and a headphone output or amp to drive an HD800 perfectly can be made pretty inexpensively and without much difficulty (you certainly don't need a thousand-dollar exotic amp).

When I first got my hd800's I had to buy a cable adaptor for it to work off my iPhone 4s and then it didn't play very loud so then I got an amplifier and it allowed me to play my hd800's louder, so I guess from that point of view an amp did its job for me anyway, though I haven't tried my hd800's without amp in my iPhone 6 + so I don't know how that would sound yet as I just tend to use my amp all the time now.

 

[krismusic]

SilentFrequency. I have yet to here a high end amp. I can highly recommend the O2. I don't know if there is better out there but it's good enough for me with my 600's. You should be able to get a home trial so nothing to lose.