MayorSimpleton
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2006
- Posts
- 254
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- 89
*Edit - sorry, this turned into a very long post and a bit of a rant!*
I'm fairly new to this Head-Fi business, about a month ago I set about building myself a heaphone-based system.
I bought an X-Can V3 (unmodded at the moment, new tubes are on the way) to power my Arcam CD72, and bought a pair of DT880's and a pair of MS2i's - one of which was to be sold when I decide which pair I like best. At first, I was very happy with my new kit - but as the days have rolled on I have become less so.
The problem is loudness and harshness, and it's with both sets of (very different sounding) cans. I cannot get the X-Can more than about a 1/8 of turn up on the volume without it getting painful. This is worse on newer CD's (90% of my collection, all recorded too hot) and not quite so bad on older ones. Even with the volume down low, the sound is just harsh and basically not nice to listen to.
Now I know that sound quality of the X-Can can be changed/improved with different tubes and possibly upgraded caps etc, but given that all of my kit is fairly decent mid-fi stuff, I would have thought I should be able to get a satisfactory sound with it in stock mode. But it ain't really satisfactory and the truth is that I just don't want to listen to it for any more than half an hour at a time. I'm sure it's not just me having over-sensitive ears or something becaue I sit and listen to the same music as lossless WMA's on my iRiver iHP140 through Shure E4c's for 8 hours a day every day at work with no problem at all, and the sound is really great (not saying it's better quality, but it is much more enjoyable to listen to).
Anyhoooo - after doing some reading up, I have come to the conclusion that the cause of my woes is the high output of CD players (2.0v and upwards) pushing the amp too hard (please excluse the laymans' terminology), with 'hot mastering' of modern CD's adding to the problem. (Or have I got this completely wrong?) I feel like I can't even start to get to know the headphones themselves properly (or possibly even the amp for that matter) because they can't begin to shine given this inherent mismatch. I can tell that there is 'great SQ' in there somewhere - but how do I release it?
So what are your thoughts? What do you suggest guys? I'm thinking of trying attenuated interconnects which seems like a bit of a last-ditch resort to a; allow me to use more of the volume control, and b; possibly counter the effects of the too-hot mastering of most of my CD's. I was thinking of starting high at about 20db of attenuation. What's your experience with these - do you use them? I'm sad to say that getting attenuators may well be a last resort for me because if they don't work I'll be ditching the entire headphone idea and going back to a regular speaker system, which will be a real shame. Unless I'm missing something else very obvious here?
As an aside - I must admit that I am quite surprised that this issue doesn't come up more often here on the board. I assume that most of us have got CD players as our main source hooked up to our headphone amps - and my kit isn't out of the ordinary in any way, so why don't I see more people talking about the same phenomena that I'm experiencing? Or is attenuation a 'given' that doesn't even warrant mentioning?!
Cheers, and looking forward to your idea's,
Pluck
I'm fairly new to this Head-Fi business, about a month ago I set about building myself a heaphone-based system.
I bought an X-Can V3 (unmodded at the moment, new tubes are on the way) to power my Arcam CD72, and bought a pair of DT880's and a pair of MS2i's - one of which was to be sold when I decide which pair I like best. At first, I was very happy with my new kit - but as the days have rolled on I have become less so.
The problem is loudness and harshness, and it's with both sets of (very different sounding) cans. I cannot get the X-Can more than about a 1/8 of turn up on the volume without it getting painful. This is worse on newer CD's (90% of my collection, all recorded too hot) and not quite so bad on older ones. Even with the volume down low, the sound is just harsh and basically not nice to listen to.
Now I know that sound quality of the X-Can can be changed/improved with different tubes and possibly upgraded caps etc, but given that all of my kit is fairly decent mid-fi stuff, I would have thought I should be able to get a satisfactory sound with it in stock mode. But it ain't really satisfactory and the truth is that I just don't want to listen to it for any more than half an hour at a time. I'm sure it's not just me having over-sensitive ears or something becaue I sit and listen to the same music as lossless WMA's on my iRiver iHP140 through Shure E4c's for 8 hours a day every day at work with no problem at all, and the sound is really great (not saying it's better quality, but it is much more enjoyable to listen to).
Anyhoooo - after doing some reading up, I have come to the conclusion that the cause of my woes is the high output of CD players (2.0v and upwards) pushing the amp too hard (please excluse the laymans' terminology), with 'hot mastering' of modern CD's adding to the problem. (Or have I got this completely wrong?) I feel like I can't even start to get to know the headphones themselves properly (or possibly even the amp for that matter) because they can't begin to shine given this inherent mismatch. I can tell that there is 'great SQ' in there somewhere - but how do I release it?
So what are your thoughts? What do you suggest guys? I'm thinking of trying attenuated interconnects which seems like a bit of a last-ditch resort to a; allow me to use more of the volume control, and b; possibly counter the effects of the too-hot mastering of most of my CD's. I was thinking of starting high at about 20db of attenuation. What's your experience with these - do you use them? I'm sad to say that getting attenuators may well be a last resort for me because if they don't work I'll be ditching the entire headphone idea and going back to a regular speaker system, which will be a real shame. Unless I'm missing something else very obvious here?
As an aside - I must admit that I am quite surprised that this issue doesn't come up more often here on the board. I assume that most of us have got CD players as our main source hooked up to our headphone amps - and my kit isn't out of the ordinary in any way, so why don't I see more people talking about the same phenomena that I'm experiencing? Or is attenuation a 'given' that doesn't even warrant mentioning?!
Cheers, and looking forward to your idea's,
Pluck
