[airs]

DP1 is rocking my world still - haven't felt the upgrade itch at all since I received it.

 

[leeperry]

 
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DP1 is rocking my world still - haven't felt the upgrade itch at all since I received it.

OK, sounds like a plan!

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Been listening non-stop and buying loads of new music and headphones.  I guess the DP-1 must be doing something right 

HE500, eh? I think I love my vintage orthos too much to dare venturing into neo-orthos...their sound is pure bliss to my ears off the DP-1 when I play bass heavy 70's music. 
 
I guess I can go seek a new hobby now that the audiophilistic monster has been fed...one less thing to worry about, pheeew that was a long ride I can tell you that 

 

[BrainFood]

Quote:

HE500, eh? I think I love my vintage orthos too much to dare venturing into neo-orthos...their sound is pure bliss to my ears off the DP-1 when I play bass heavy 70's music. 
 
I guess I can go seek a new hobby now that the audiophilistic monster has been fed...one less thing to worry about, pheeew that was a long ride I can tell you that 

 
 
 
Wicked smiley, man!    
 
 
Yeah the 500's or maybe the 5LE's, which appear to be a full 100 grams lighter.  The 5LE's might need more current than the DP-1 can provide though?  Would love to try vintage orthos but I don't have enough confidence to open them up for any kind of modding, which seems to be a prerequisite with vintage.
 
I've been gravitating towards slightly lower sensitivity cans in order to allow decent range on the volume control.  With my 32 ohms, 98dB RS2i's, I was at 9 O'clock, which made it difficult to find the correct volume.  OTOH, the 250ohm, 97dB Beyer DT-150's are between 10 and 11, which is just about an acceptable range.  The Shure 1840 at 65 ohm, 96 dB were also fine at around 10-11.  It means low impedance cans with an SPL of 98 or above, such as AT's, are out for me unless I use a different amp- which I'm not sure I can be bothered to do.  
 
I'm more than happy to pursue other hobbies and areas of life.  Sixteen years obsessed with audio is already too long 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

[leeperry]

Oh yah, I've got an endless goldmine of killer smileys 
 
Well, yamie orthos sure have magical mids....I've read quite a lot of yamie lovers stating that the LCD-2 was clearly technically more advanced but that at the end of the day the magical sound of the yamies just wasn't there. And the guy who designs the Hifiman drivers told me that he has never heard a yamie vintage ortho....talk about reinventing the wheel 

 
Vintage orthos need very beefy amps, otherwise they sound utterly flabby and lifeless....but the DP-1 delivers, as you would expect. 
 
Indeed, they're vastly inefficient so I can usually go up to 11 o'clock, which provides more headroom than I actually need.
 
The only neo-ortho I would be interested in is the 5LE..but it looks very bulky, and I'm really not fund of those cups cable connectors....good to see that the LCD2r3 will be using the angled LCD3 connectors.

 

[BrainFood]

Why the 5LE and not the 500, out of interest?  They seem pretty similar.
 
Good to hear that the DP-1 has plenty of juice. Any idea what it outputs at, say, 50ohms?  I can't see this info on the April site.

 

[leeperry]

Well, I don't mean to threadcrap w/ ortho discussions, but the nice thing about vintage orthos is that they are dark sounding...I'm really not interested in shrill/bright sounding headphones. FWIR, the LCD-2 and HD650(too bad it's not an ortho ^^) would be right up my alley...and I also read that the 5LE was a darker sounding version of the 5. Apparently the 400/500 are pretty bright, and I'd rather not have to resort to EQ in order to kill my ear canals resonances again: http://www.head-fi.org/t/413900/how-to-equalize-your-headphones-a-tutorial
 
Those vintage orthos allow me to go "look ma! no hands" and the only VST plugin I'm actually using is a very subtle xfeed filter(I couldn't DBT it, it's only here to make my brain happy).
 
This review is a bit biased as the guy didn't hear the TOTL yamies, but only the lower grades...he still says that 5LE walks all over them: http://www.headfonia.com/vintage-yamaha-orthos/3/
 
But I've heard the YHD-2 and HP-50, they really didn't sound good to me. And this said, he prolly got a 5LE freebie from the manufacturer so it could have been cherry picked. That's the problem w/ all headphones, QA, aging for vintage ones and manufacturing discrepancy mean that there will SQ variations amongst different batches.
 
I guess the LCD2r3 would be killer, but +$100 for the leather headband, import taxes to Europe, poor resale value once a new rev is out, yadayada...We've all read that the T1 was a monster technically speaking, but that it wasn't too musical sounding. I guess the sweet sound of the DP-1 could counterbalance this issue, but I mostly listen to bass heavy 70's music and yamie is where the party's at for me. I'm not taking 1K€ gambles when the yamies sound so goooooood off the DP-1 

 
I'm not sure about the headamp specs of the DP-1, but FWIR it sounds good w/ the LCD-2 so your HE-500 shouldn't sound too bad either!

 

[BrainFood]

Thanks, I was looking for that EQ thread!

 
Anyhow, I just came across four Solid Tech Discs of Silence that I'd completely forgotten about:
 
http://www.solid-tech.net/products/isolators/discs-of-silence-4537455
 
There's an immediate sense of the sound relaxing.  Through my DT150's, tonality and soundstaging is improved.  Will have to more listening but what I can say for now is that it the DP-1 does appear to benefit quite a bit from improved feet/ support.

  April could have supplied better feet I think.
 
 

 
 
 
BTW, I'm also using AMR gold fuses that came free with a previous DAC ....FWIW
 

 

[leeperry]

Very nice feet! Well, the underside of the DP-1 gets very hot after a while(being Class-A and all)...so taller feet will drastically lower its temperature, hence improving the SQ because all its IC's provide lower distortion at lower temperature.
 
How would you rate the SQ improvement of the fuse? I've tried silver DC power cables that sounded plasticky and shrill to the utmost so I'm willing to believe that a "better" fuse could help.

 

[BrainFood]

I don't know really- ought to do an A-B one of these days. Got one in the cable plug too.
 
Thanks for making me aware of trying better feet/ support in your earlier post- I'd recommend doing this to all DP-1 owners.  FWIW, my DP1 is also sitting on a Base platform, which I bought second-hand 

 
http://www.audiophilebase.com/platforms

 

[BrainFood]

Calling Lee perry 

 
In the spirit of discussing possible tweaks for the DP-1, I'm intrigued about the Polabs USB isolator you mentioned on the Audiophilleo thread.  Does it improve DP-1 USB performance?

 

[leeperry]

Oh, I haven't tried it on the DP-1 yet. I was told that the Olimex would work w/ the U3, and it's using a very high ripple DC-to-DC power isolator...so the Polabs with a clean PSU should do wonders.
 
I want to foolproof all my tests w/ cheaper transports(including XMOS based) before playing evil tricks on my main $3K DAC 

 

[BrainFood]

Sounds good - look forward to hearing how it goes. 

 

[leeperry]

Alright, it's very much on: 
 
Too bad Windows whines for "XMOS DFU" drivers when reverting to 12Mbit/s USB 

 
There is a swiss company selling a XMOS board that comes with a jumper to either force UAC1 or UAC2: http://www.abc-pcb.com/?page_id=187
 
'"DFU" seems to be what XMOS called the firmware of their USB audio controller, and I guess Windows has no clue how to drive it in UAC1 mode. I tried another XMOS based transport that also made Windows whine for DFU drivers.
 
The very same U3 board that's in the DP-1 was reported to work perfectly through ADuM4160 on a Mac, so as usual MacOS is far smarter when it comes to USB audio. So this little trick would more than likely work on MacOS(and prolly Linux as well) up to 24/96. Windows needs drivers that no one seems to have bothered coding, tough luck 

 
I'd still fancy putting together a triple conduit DIY USB cable and feed this clean PSU to the U3 board....time will tell whether I'll find the knowledge and motivation to do it, as the DP-1 already sounds pretty darn amazing as is ^^

 

[BrainFood]

 
Quote:

Alright, it's very much on: 
 
Too bad Windows whines for "XMOS DFU" drivers when reverting to 12Mbit/s USB 

 
 

 
Shame about the error messages- at least with XP.   But there's an audible improvement of some kind?   Polabs are doing free shipping until the end of the month but I'll pass if it doesn't work without whining..
 
 
 

as the DP-1 already sounds pretty darn amazing as is..

 
I agree, it's a great DAC!  My only complaint is the high gain makes it difficult to find the sweet spot with low impedance, high sensitivity cans- unless one resorts to tweaking the volume a little from the PC (which is meant to be bad for sound quality, isn't it?).  Unless I do that, I'm left with orthos or a much-reduced selection of dynamics.
 
The other thing I don't like is- if you turn volume right up to disengage the pot, you can forget to turn it down again and risk damaging your speakers or cans-. I did it once to Shure 1840's.

 
The Upsample function defaulting to 192k instead of 'last position' is also annoying but Simon Lee told me that it will be addressed in the next firmware revision.   Hopefully, he'll also change defaulting to USB.

 

[leeperry]

I also tried the W8 CP and it whined for DFU drivers in the exact same way as XPSP3 did.
 
Can't tell about any SQ improvement as the XMOS chipset would require a plain UAC1 backward compatible mode in order to work on Windows via a  12MBit/s USB line.
 
Digital volume attenuation is not nearly that evil if your player applies it in 64fp and then dithers to 24int(uLilith and foobar both do), it's all been explained in details at http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/resonessence/2.html 
 
but I usually like to listen at a low volume as it'll force my brain to go fetch for low level details and I prefer to preserve my hearing anyway 

 
This said, some orthos sound boxy at low volume IME...luckily the yamies very much don't.
 
I never turn off my DP-1 but yes it would be great if the UPSAMPLE feature didn't enable itself each time you turn the DP-1 back on.