[speedylube]

what do you think about the modified th900? is it worth the money? mine is stock.

 

[zolkis]

Do you mean the Lawton mods? I am going to receive (hopefully soon) a Lawton tune-up mod, and I will tell my experiences. I expect good things, since the theory sounds consistent with my previous experiences, and the testimonies are good.
 
I am also positive about his bigger cups mod (although it's a waste for the nice original cups), but I'm a little bit skeptic about the high pads. However, Lawton definitely knows what he is doing. Oregonian has the full mod, and you find opinions in this forum about it (use search).
 
These mods described above, at least the felt damper will cost you less than $5 and may fit your bill... I think it's worth a try. A new set of pads will run you a little more money, but still worth, even if you only remove the cloth grill: it opens and clears up the sound.

 

[zolkis]

By the way, when we speak about portable players which work well with the TH900...
 
My portable rig is the Meridian Explorer / Resonessence Herus, fed from tablet/phone. My (office) desktop rig is the same, used from external battery power through a split cable, and run through my (truly excellent) "prototype" headphone amp. Sounds marvelous with the TH900. I prefer the Herus on the go (simpler setup, and drives the TH900 better), and the Meridian on the desktop (its richer way of musicality is closer to me than the somewhat dryer Herus'). The desktop setup is likely going to change to a dedicated NOS DAC, but that's a different (long) discussion [ and my home setup is an entirely different story, too].
 
One day I didn't have my portable DAC's at hand, so I fell back to my t/rusty Nokia N9 (the Linux phone all Lumia's were copied from) and tried it with the TH900. I was surprised to hear the N9 drives the TH900 just fine, and the sound quality (stage, resolution, musicality, dynamics, instrument realism) is within 1-5% or my desktop rig (depending on music)... which is still better when you switch to it (more relaxed and has an ease of musicality and control), but it's sufficiently close to make one wonder...
 
An N9 with 64 GB sells around 100-120 euros, which makes it about the cheapest portable player with good enough sound quality to make justice for the TH900. USB OTG doesn't work, unless you work it out yourself and flash the image - but it's not really needed, as the analog headphone out sound pretty amazing good, and going beyond spotify, 64 GB is plenty good to collect enough of your favorite flac's to entertain you for a good while.

 

[kurochin]

I have a N9 too. One of the early-batch "made in Finland" models, as a matter of fact. Elop killing off Meego was one of the biggest atrocities in mobile computing. Such a natural experience when combined with the N9's ergonomics.

Personally, I felt the N9 didn't quite cut it with the TH900. It's a bit better than my iPhone 5 (non S) with my FitEar MH335DW custom IEMs, but for the TH900 I found both smartphones rather uninspiring compared to my far-from-end-game Burson Soloist or Violectrc V200 desktop amps. My benchmark desktop amp remains the Bakoon HPA-21 which I had the pleasure of auditioning some months ago. My current "portable" rig is the iPhone hooked up to an AK10, but I don't bring the the Fostex out of the house, so that combo mainly gets paired with my FitEar.

I've heard the Chord Hugo does wonders with the TH900, but its very hard separating hyperbole from fact in the Hugo thread (seriously, everyone posting there has suddenly become a FPGA expert), so I can't really back that up until I get one in my hands.

 

[zolkis]

I have a N9 too. One of the early-batch "made in Finland" models, as a matter of fact. Elop killing off Meego was one of the biggest atrocities in mobile computing. Such a natural experience when combined with the N9's ergonomics.

 
Wow, good to hear, then you must have been close to its development and we may know each other . I was an N9 architect that time. There were some really world-class guys in the audio domain, and elsewhere, too. But Zed's dead baby, Zed's dead...
 

Personally, I felt the N9 didn't quite cut it with the TH900. It's a bit better than my iPhone 5 (non S) with my FitEar MH335DW custom IEMs, but for the TH900 I found both smartphones rather uninspiring compared to my far-from-end-game Burson Soloist or Violectrc V200 desktop amps. My benchmark desktop amp remains the Bakoon HPA-21 which I had the pleasure of auditioning some months ago. My current "portable" rig is the iPhone hooked up to an AK10, but I don't bring the the Fostex out of the house, so that combo mainly gets paired with my FitEar.

I've heard the Chord Hugo does wonders with the TH900, but its very hard separating hyperbole from fact in the Hugo thread (seriously, everyone posting there has suddenly become a FPGA expert), so I can't really back that up until I get one in my hands.

 
That adds a useful second opinion, since my TH900 is different than the stock . And it also depends on the source. I tried with okayish recordings and streaming - as the source quality increases, the differences become more clear. Also both at low and at high volumes (effortless, distortionless dynamics). However, at the (lowish) volume I usually use, the N9 pleasantly surprised me, and all I can say it's enough for me for the road . It's definitely worth a try.
 
About amp and source pairing, yes there are synergies, but often the short-term listening deceives people. I only believe in a combination of short-term and extended listenings. A simple test to tell whether you ear cheats you at the first/short listening is to ask yourself, which compared amp's or sources' tonality feels "deeper" (as pink-noise-deeper) at the same perceived musical resolution: usually the one with the perceived deeper/softer/more relaxed tonality is the better one, and the other is harder sounding. The N9 falls short on that vs my desktop system, but it's arguably better than most portable players.
 
As playitloud said, so many people invest a lot of money for achieving appliance synergy (i.e. complementing/masking errors with each other), when bigger improvements can be made by changing some cheap stuffing in the headphone . Of course that doesn't invalidate the choice of good synergy, but at least helps setting price priorities . 

 

[up late]

this hobby really is rocket science

 

[speedylube]

i ordered chord hugo and i should get it in three weeks. i have an ak240. with my chord hugo and ak240, i hope it will be a good match up with my th900. better be for the price.

 

[Audio Jester]

i ordered chord hugo and i should get it in three weeks. i have an ak240. with my chord hugo and ak240, i hope it will be a good match up with my th900. better be for the price.

yeah, it's an expensive piece of kit. Have you got any other DACs to compare with it? It would be good to read your impressions.

 

[kurochin]

Originally Posted by zolkis /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
About amp and source pairing, yes there are synergies, but often the short-term listening deceives people. I only believe in a combination of short-term and extended listenings. A simple test to tell whether you ear cheats you at the first/short listening is to ask yourself, which compared amp's or sources' tonality feels "deeper" (as pink-noise-deeper) at the same perceived musical resolution: usually the one with the perceived deeper/softer/more relaxed tonality is the better one, and the other is harder sounding. The N9 falls short on that vs my desktop system, but it's arguably better than most portable players.
 
As playitloud said, so many people invest a lot of money for achieving appliance synergy (i.e. complementing/masking errors with each other), when bigger improvements can be made by changing some cheap stuffing in the headphone . Of course that doesn't invalidate the choice of good synergy, but at least helps setting price priorities . 

 
Oh, believe me, I'm all for priceerformance, or to be more precise, I believe that if the cost of your sound system exceeds the cost of your music collection, you're doing it wrong. That's partly why I can't justify buying a lot of equipment I like, despite being able to afford most of it (provided I only eat cup-noodles for the following few months), which is why I never purchased the Bakoon amp I loved so much - I could buy a LOT of music for that much cash.
 
All I'm saying is - despite rating the N9 quite highly for a smartphone, I don't think it quite manages to entertain the Th900 the same way my desktop amps do. I must disclaim that I tend to go for a darker, bassier kind of presentation with my rig/chain - what most people consider neutral or natural, I simply find too bright or thin sounding, especially with headphones and iems - which might go some ways in explaining my preferences. With lesser headphones (like a Focal Spirit or B&W P7) or even ultra-sensitive flagship custom in-ears, I think I could easily live with the N9 (or maybe even the iPhone) as the lone source. Still, that probably wouldn't be the case for long, thanks to that bastid Elop!!
 
Oh, I'm not a software dev (some contrib work for Tmux and a couple of obscure tiling window managers for X, but that's it) and have never been affiliated with Nokia (or the current Jolla) in any way. I got the Finnish N9 via an acquaintance who does design work for a lot of tech companies in the region.
 
 
 

this hobby really is rocket science

 
Not really. You can easily survive by living in denial. It does help to know some buzzwords so that you can yell "FPGA" or "PRAT" out loud like a moron every now and then. Helps you blend in.

 

[up late]

think you mean living in ignorance but thanks anyways. was starting to feel too under qualified to be here.

 

[money4me247]

hahah yeaa. I agree. this hobby isn't really rocket science. There is just a lot of jargon that makes it sound more complicated than it really is. Also, audiophile dictionary is ridiculous, so you can sound like a baller.
 
Maybe the amplifier design or dac design stuff would be more rocket-sciency. Amp stuff I respect & realize I may not totally understand yet. Dac stuff seems like voodoo... it's not the actual dac chip or even the components used that affects the sound but the implementation? lol. wellll, that just makes it 100% impossible to direct compare anything except from subjective impressions.

 

[kurochin]

  lol. wellll, that just makes it 100% impossible to direct compare anything except from subjective impressions.

 
See Truth #2;
http://www.soundandvision.com/content/laws-acoustics

 

[up late]

the rocket science crack was just that. this hobby is nothing like rocket surgery or brain science.

 

[money4me247]

  See Truth #2;
http://www.soundandvision.com/content/laws-acoustics

hahah i'm assuming you are disagreeing with me. Yes, please inform me how to objectively compare DACs without relying on subjective impressions and I'll give you a big hug. It would make my life so much easier.
 
From all my research, it seems that at the end of the day, specs & components have no correlation with sound quality or performance. Everyone just says it is all about the implementation, but how can you critic the implementation when companies do not publish their inside designs? that only leaves us with reading other people's reviews. considering how subjective this hobby is, omg what a nightmare.

 

[kurochin]

Eh? No, I was agreeing with you, in fact. People can say whatever they want because of the subjectivity factor. They can also create an entire dictionary of weasel-words to back up their opinion and a separate thesaurus of excuses for when the weasel-words fail.

TL;DR - It's all in the ear-wax.