[TabooPc]

My brother has the HD598, whenever someone wants a recommendation for a first audiophile headphone, that is the one I give.
 
IMO, for the price, it beats the rest of the competition. The first thing I would say, is steer clear of amps until you really know the sound of your headphone well. Once you get listening and know what good sound actually sounds like, then you should start to move up.
 
Quote:

Bump.
 
Here's an update. I've been using XLD and it seems to work beautifully. Very simple.
 
However, I have a question. I have downloaded a torrent of Ok Computer by Radiohead in FLAC. I have also ripped the same CD onto my hard drive using Apple Lossless Encoder in iTunes. So I put of the albums onto iTunes. My question is, why are the files of the songs from the torrent significantly larger than the files from the songs I ripped onto my computer? For example, the first track of the file from the torrent download is 108 mb, while the same track from the actual CD itself is only 34 mb.

 
Different compression has different space efficiencies. When I rip raw WAV from cd's, the bitrate is near 1400kbps. The flac I download is always around 700-900kbps. Different things are lost when you compress, but as long as its flac, nothing audible will be lost.

 

[Michgelsen]

A ~4 minute song can never be over 100MB in wav at 16/44. There's clearly something else going on, but we do not have enough information in this thread to find out what.

 

[RcasMavs]

Quote:

 
IMO, for the price, it beats the rest of the competition. The first thing I would say, is steer clear of amps until you really know the sound of your headphone well. Once you get listening and know what good sound actually sounds like, then you should start to move up.
 

 
Even if I was leaning towards a $60 FiiO just as a precursor?
 
Quote:

A ~4 minute song can never be over 100MB in wav at 16/44. There's clearly something else going on, but we do not have enough information in this thread to find out what.

 
How can I find out if it's at 16/44? Is that a setting on XLD? 

 

[TabooPc]

Quote:

 
Even if I was leaning towards a $60 FiiO just as a precursor?
 
 
How can I find out if it's at 16/44? Is that a setting on XLD? 

Most music is 16/44, unless you've specifically downloaded it higher.  I don't think they even put 24/96 on cds. (atleast not average ones). HDtracks.com has a ton of albulms in high quality, 24/96 +. To be honest I don't believe that there is an audible difference between 16/44 and 24/96. After 320kbps mp3, I don't hear much of a difference. 
 
The reason I wouldn't get an amp first, is part of the fun of it is to slowly step up. If you jump right into an amp you would be skipping a step. I don't think its that bad if you start with a lower end amp. I mean theres nothing wrong with it, but personally I needed time before I could consider an amp... 
 
The first headphones I got were the Grado sr225, they have good bass (but being new to audiophile headphones I wasn't impressed with the bass). Then I bought the HD650, which had more bass, but It was still missing. So I bought a Little Dot MKV amp, and still didnt get the thump that I wanted (but it was closer). After listening to the HD650s for a long while, I had some spare money and I decided to buy the AKG 702's. They were more detailed than the HD650s, but at the cost of that thumpy bass and warm sound. Putting the Grados to rest, I continued to listen to the HD650s 70% of the time and the AKGs 30% of the time. After exparimenting (buying and owning) two more pairs, the beyerdynamic dt880 and the denon D5000, I was ready for a step up. I sold the 702, 650, 880, and D5000s and purchased the HD800s. After doing that I was really getting settled into what I liked in sound. 
 
I recently recieved the Audeze LCD-2s and I am loving them, more than the HD800s in ways, and less in ways. I also have a Woo Audio 6 SE amp on the way, which I hope will add the final thump to my bass, widen my soundstage, and end my purchases. But knowing me, it will never end.
 
Anyways, sorry for the lifes story and bad spelling! xD
 
Its funny, now that you ask, I'm even pondering it all myself. Haha.

 

[Michgelsen]

No, it's a property of the file which you should be able to see mentioned somewhere, maybe under 'properties'? I'm not familiar with your system.
It could be that you downloaded a high res or a multi channel torrent. The torrent does not appear to be a normal 16/44 cd rip.
 
Quote:

 
How can I find out if it's at 16/44? Is that a setting on XLD? 

 

[RcasMavs]

Possibly. How would I go about checking that? I just downloaded another album (the new McCartney rerelease of Ram) and it's upwards of 100MB a file.

 

[RcasMavs]

I actually do think it might be that I have downloaded a hi-res file.

 

[Paul Graham]

Im no expert but I think this is the case.
 
Im an audiophile in heart but am still on a big learning curve when it comes to formats and so on....
In my case I started out ripping CD's to iTunes in lossless to get the full range of data possible and I noticed the difference, 
However, I then installed Audirvana free and i have a few albums in both Ape Lossless & FLAC.
Through the iMacs line out I didn't really notice a huge difference, But through my DacMagic 100 its a totally new ball game.
Listening to FLAC files through my DAC is far more impressive over the Lossless files IMO.
 
I find them a tad quieter on the volume side, Yet I find it a crisper, More detailed image and actually easier on my ears.
as for getting into all the figures etc, I can't remember right now and I don't have it all switched on, But I THINK I noticed a difference in output re-khz etc...
 
 
Hope any of that helps?!
 
Oh and Hello

 

[deathzero34]

I am no way qualify to discuss high end equipment and such but if you are starting a collection of high rez (or just a large collection) of song you might want to get a decent size HD in raid 1 to be safe. Raid 1 will automatically copy the data onto a second drive making a copy . Of course a raid 1 set up will, unfortunately, cost more then 100$. (but there nothing more infuriating then losing 1tb of info out of no where. Trust me it hurt.)

 

[obobskivich]

I actually do think it might be that I have downloaded a hi-res file.

What OS do you use? More or less regardless, just select the file, and click Properties (so that's right-click on Windows, I think it's Command+Click on Apple). Alternately, what's the file extension? .flac? .alac? .wav? Like they said, it can't exceed 100MB (for reference, my WMA-L rips of the Tron albums (from CD) are 30-40MB a piece at ~1Mb/s). Regarding higher bit-depth and sample rate, you can make much bigger files (there's a reason Blu-ray discs needs to be 50GB...), but it's really past the point of diminishing returns when you get down to it. There's a great article floating around from Xiph about why bigger files are pointless.

Some technical quibbles I had:
WAV from a CD will always be 1411kbps - that's 1:1 from the disc. FLAC, WMA-L, ALAC, etc are forms of "lossless compression" (don't even get me started...) which result in somewhat lower (and usually VBR) bitrates, and therefore smaller files. It depends on the material going through the encoder as to how much it can deflate. Complex work often means bigger files (if you just have a bunch of sine tones or something it will make a relatively small file).

Im no expert but I think this is the case.

Im an audiophile in heart but am still on a big learning curve when it comes to formats and so on....
In my case I started out ripping CD's to iTunes in lossless to get the full range of data possible and I noticed the difference, 
However, I then installed Audirvana free and i have a few albums in both Ape Lossless & FLAC.
Through the iMacs line out I didn't really notice a huge difference, But through my DacMagic 100 its a totally new ball game.
Listening to FLAC files through my DAC is far more impressive over the Lossless files IMO.

I find them a tad quieter on the volume side, Yet I find it a crisper, More detailed image and actually easier on my ears.
as for getting into all the figures etc, I can't remember right now and I don't have it all switched on, But I THINK I noticed a difference in output re-khz etc...


Hope any of that helps?!

Oh and Hello

This post confused me. Do you mean Ape (.ape) vs flac? Otherwise I'm lost - flac is itself lossless (along with ALAC from iTunes).



Regarding the amp/no amp thing: I would suggest getting an appropriate amplifier to drive whatever headphones you get. I see no reason to under-drive or otherwise use something in an incompatible way.

 

[deniall83]

If you are looking for a truly awesome amp/dac for a limited amount of money then I have to suggest the Objective 2 amp and Objective DAC. Both were designed by an electrical engineer who spent countless hours testing them and making sure they were up to the job. The ODAC measures almost as well as the $1600 Benchmark DAC but it's a tenth of the price. I can't post a link to this certain individuals blog because he has been banned from this forum but a google search for Objective 2 amplifier will lead you there. You can buy both the O2 amp and ODAC from JDS Labs.

 

[Paul Graham]

Quote:

What OS do you use? More or less regardless, just select the file, and click Properties (so that's right-click on Windows, I think it's Command+Click on Apple). Alternately, what's the file extension? .flac? .alac? .wav? Like they said, it can't exceed 100MB (for reference, my WMA-L rips of the Tron albums (from CD) are 30-40MB a piece at ~1Mb/s). Regarding higher bit-depth and sample rate, you can make much bigger files (there's a reason Blu-ray discs needs to be 50GB...), but it's really past the point of diminishing returns when you get down to it. There's a great article floating around from Xiph about why bigger files are pointless.
Some technical quibbles I had:
WAV from a CD will always be 1411kbps - that's 1:1 from the disc. FLAC, WMA-L, ALAC, etc are forms of "lossless compression" (don't even get me started...) which result in somewhat lower (and usually VBR) bitrates, and therefore smaller files. It depends on the material going through the encoder as to how much it can deflate. Complex work often means bigger files (if you just have a bunch of sine tones or something it will make a relatively small file).
This post confused me. Do you mean Ape (.ape) vs flac? Otherwise I'm lost - flac is itself lossless (along with ALAC from iTunes).
Regarding the amp/no amp thing: I would suggest getting an appropriate amplifier to drive whatever headphones you get. I see no reason to under-drive or otherwise use something in an incompatible way.

like i said - BIG learning curve lol.  I do believe Ape vs Lossless aka FLAC is what I meant.