[yellow15]

Hi,
i've just ordered the AudioTrak Optoplay to replace my onboard soundcard at work.
http://audiotrak.net/optoplay.htm

From the specs, it says:
"Headphone Amp power: 50 mW Maximum "
so do you think it's good enough to drive my MS-1? Or would i get a huge (or very noticable) improvement if i get an headphone amp?

I would like to get a budget headphone amp but at the moment i want to save up and upgrade my home PC's soundcard to E-mu 0404 first and also want to order another headphone to use at home so i don't have to carry my MS-1 around all the time. So it means i have too many things want to buy and too little money in the bank (who isn't?

) and i need to prioritise my spending.

oh another thing, the spec say:
Sample Rate: 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 64 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz

so sample rate should i choose consider i only listen to CDs and some MP3s?
and what about if i watch some DVD movies?
I don't have any external decoder so does the sampling rate matter to me?

Thanks and sorry if i've asked some stupid questions

Richard

 

[Mr.Radar]

Sorry, can't help you with your amp question.

CDs and most MP3's use 44.1 KHz and DVDs use 48 KHz so you don't need to worry about the sample rate.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

I've heard the Optoplay with the SR60 before, and it sounded very nice. I wouldn't worry about an amp until you get a new source, or more power-hungry cans like 250-ohm Beyers or 300-ohm Senns.

 

[yellow15]

Thanks for the replies.

A slightly off-topic question.

Is that the headphone with higher resistance (like the 250/300ohm cans you mention) are harder to drive but also (generally) better sound quality (when you feed them with enough power)

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by yellow15 Is that the headphone with higher resistance (like the 250/300ohm cans you mention) are harder to drive but also (generally) better sound quality (when you feed them with enough power)

Definitely not. The R10 (32ohm) is one of, if not the best cans I've heard. The K1000 (100ohm?) is also great, as is the HD650 (300ohm) and DT880 (250ohm). Impedance really has no correlation with sound quality.

 

[Jasper994]

The OptoPlay will auto switch to whatever sample rate you're feeding it. I found that it sounds best when being fed a 96khz signal. Use Foobar2000 and turn on the SSRC upsampling. Set it to 96khz, 24bit w/strong ath noise shaping and you should be good to go.

 

[MiChael.]

Just curious, what benefits you get with noise shaping ?

In foobar option there's mentioned that dithering is useless above 16bit quantisation, I remember Peter Pawlowski and Case told that dithering for 16bit might be useful if there's DSPs in use... IIRC dithering downgrades dynamic range by couple desibels, digital world is cruel

Personally I don't hear the difference between dithering on and off and between noise shapings, but I do prefer it off. "The purest pure 1:1 digital signal

"

Oh, there's intresting site http://www.ff123.net/madchallenge.html

 

[Mr.Radar]

Dithering theoretically produces a 16-bit signal that looks closer to a 24-bit signal which should mean it sounds slightly better and, unless all your files are lossless, it should improve sound quality even when no DSP's are used because most (all?) lossy files decode to 64-bit float in FB2k.

 

[Yaboosh]

Will this device (Optoplay) give me a substantial sound increase over my onboard soundcard using my Grado SR 80s? Would this be better than just getting a Chaintech and using its lineout?

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yaboosh Will this device (Optoplay) give me a substantial sound increase over my onboard soundcard using my Grado SR 80s? Would this be better than just getting a Chaintech and using its lineout?

To your first question, yes, absolutely.

To your second question, I don't know, I guess the next time I hang out with Iron_Dreamer I can try plugging the SR-60 into the chaintech and doing a comparo with the OptoPlay... I'm not sure exactly when that'll be but probably fairly soon as we seem to be trying to organize a couple SoCal meets in the near future.

 

[Yaboosh]

Well hmmm, I am just afraid of being quite underwhelmed with the performance of the Optoplay and feeling like I wasted the 50 bucks.

It seems to me that the fact that the Optoplay has a built in headphone amp it would better drive my Grados and increase the sound quality over just the Chaintech without headphone amplication. Would the sound out of the Optoplay outperform a standard headphone out on a lower end Kenwood reciever? Sorry about the subjective questions, I dont know if these can be answered by those who have not personally compared, but I thought that it might be common knowledge around here that the Optoplay is better/worse than a regular headphone out on a reciever.

 

[Jasper994]

I honestly haven't ever heard a headphone out of a Kenwood receiver so I'm not sure about the quality of it. I will say the OptoPlay is much better as an amp/source than my TEAC receiver but beyond that can't comment very much. It's also much better than out of my Audigy Platinum ex's headphone amp but that's not hard...

Comming from an Audigy to the OptoPlay with the SR60 there was a very big WOW effect... does it hold a candle to my Audiophile USB's heapdhone amp? nope... but you're talking about at least 3x the price. Personally I'd look at it like this... for $50 you get a nice source that's very portable that can also drive low impedance headphones very well. If you're not going to be portable, get the chaintech and get an amp for it when you have a chance...

 

[thomaspf]

Interesting coincidence.

I have been playing around with the RMAA 5.3 test code and used my Optoplay and an DIO24/96 in digital loopback mode.

I was unable to get the Optoplay to produce a clean 24bit digital output. It works bit perfect in 16bit mode but I have no idea what happens at 24bit with my system. I tried WAV, DS, and ASIO via asio4all with equllay bad results.

I eventually managed to get a loopback recording done on the M-audio card alone using CoolEdit Pro(no ASIO support) and the recorded results are almost identical when compared to the test signal file.

Has any else of you checked whether the 24bit playback mode on the Optoplay is really bit perfect?

btw.
I personally found the analog output of the Echo Indigo to be more my taste.

Cheers

Thomas

 

[richx]

There is a utility that you can download from Audiotrak's website that allows you to enable digital data bypass mode. I think you'd want to enable that first before you test for bit-perfect transfers. Otherwise I think you'll be trying to stream PCM stereo data. Works for me ...

 

[thomaspf]

I have that utility but it's purpose is not to enable digital bypass.

By default 16bit PCM data is copied into 24bit frames and send over the USB bus to the Optoplay. You can force it to use 16 bit frames if you have a very slow USB port.

The second option let's you force the AC3 flags onto the S/PDIF frames in case you have problems with DVD playback.

Non of this helps for getting bit perfect playback of 24bit PCM.

Just to make sure everyone understand the problem. 24bit playback seems to work just fine. However if you record the digital signal you will find that it is of really bad quality. So somewhere the audio data is being modifed when using the Optoplay in 24bit mode. I tried wave, DS,and ASIO with varying degrees of bad results using Winamp
to play back the 24/96 RMAA test signal. The same file played throught the digital output of my DIO24/96 comes out perfect.

24bit on the Optoplay sure sounds different but not very good at least on my system. Am I doing something wrong?

Cheers

Thomas