[hagenhays]

I thought I would chime in on the headphone/speaker debate.

I'm currently running a vintage marantz receiver with schiit dac and $1800 tekton speakers w/ a very high efficiency rating- - they are only getting 29 watts of power.

On my $200 headphones with schiit stack- modi multibit and vali2.
So price size my speakers should sound 6- 7 times better...do they? Certainly not. But my speakers easily beat headphones. With detail, decay time, freq resp, and timber. It's no different then when I run a cd thru my marantz cd player out my schiit dac...still beats a FLAC rip or streaming sight....details are just Lost, or if I put on a poorly mastered cd that I had repurchased....night and day difference between them....is it worth all of the quibbles...i would assume if you post on here you would say yes, if not you love trolling peoplee and get a life.
But to say there aren't very audible differences between headphones and speakers....then you must have flunked 8th grade psychoacoustics (physics)

 

[Lohb]

I was skeptical about all these USB gizmos but an iPurifier noticeably improved the treble, made it smoother and less brittle on a couple of DACs I tried it with Mimby including. And it's not in my head.

Yes, I found that too. Jitterbug however made the treble more brittle after a couple of expensive boutique opamps reveled that in an opamp rolling amp I have.

 

[Jimster480]

  Unless I am missing something USB uses an NRZI format which is a digital format using discrete pulses as opposed to continuous which is what an analog signal is.
 
https://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/eceprojectsland/STUDENTPROJ/2007to2008/blh36_cdl28_dct23/siam32-0.2a.pdf
 
 
 
"The actual data on the bus is encoded through the line states by a nonreturn-to-zero-inverted (NRZI) digital signal. In NRZI encoding, a digital 1 is represented by no change in the line state and a digital 0 is represented as a change of the line state. Thus, every time a 0 is transmitted the line state will change from J to K, or vice versa. However, if a 1 is being sent the line state will remain the same."
https://www.totalphase.com/support/articles/200349256-USB-Background

I'm glad someone else here knows how to use the internet.
Because digital and analog signals are not at all the same and don't work in the same ways.

 

[Jimster480]

I thought I would chime in on the headphone/speaker debate.

I'm currently running a vintage marantz receiver with schiit dac and $1800 tekton speakers w/ a very high efficiency rating- - they are only getting 29 watts of power.

On my $200 headphones with schiit stack- modi multibit and vali2.
So price size my speakers should sound 6- 7 times better...do they? Certainly not. But my speakers easily beat headphones. With detail, decay time, freq resp, and timber. It's no different then when I run a cd thru my marantz cd player out my schiit dac...still beats a FLAC rip or streaming sight....details are just Lost, or if I put on a poorly mastered cd that I had repurchased....night and day difference between them....is it worth all of the quibbles...i would assume if you post on here you would say yes, if not you love trolling peoplee and get a life.
But to say there aren't very audible differences between headphones and speakers....then you must have flunked 8th grade psychoacoustics (physics)

Well those are some high end speakers.
So you are basically agreeing with what I said previously then? Many people were saying speakers are better than headphones, but this really depends on the price point. I can see where speakers 6-7x more expensive are better than headphones. Although its difficult to say if they would be better than headphones also at the same price, personally I doubt it but I also believe that the law of diminishing returns kicks in and they could easily be comparable in 98% of cases.

 

[gregcss]

I'm just a regular Joe, with a regular job
I'm your average white, suburbanite slob
I like football and porno and books about war
I got an average house, with a nice hardwood floor
My wife and my job, my kids and my car
My feet on my table, and a Cuban cigar
 
What I can say is my speakers (RAAL & SEAS drivers) are substantially better than my $120 IEMs. They are, however, much more expensive.

 

[gvl2016]

 
I'm glad someone else here knows how to use the internet.
Because digital and analog signals are not at all the same and don't work in the same ways.

 
But noise and cable capacitance affect both. The spectrum of a square wave is just a bunch of "analog" harmonics, the higher harmonics get attenuated and the square wave becomes more like a trapezoid frame. This creates more uncertainty when the gates open or close in the digital circuitry leading to additional jitter. I suspect, however, that cables are rarely an issue but rather it is the USB chipsets in computers and RF noise that they leak.
 
 

 

[winders]

   
But noise and cable capacitance affect both. The spectrum of a square wave is just a bunch of "analog" harmonics, the higher harmonics get attenuated and the square wave becomes more like a trapezoid frame. This creates more uncertainty when the gates open or close in the digital circuitry leading to additional jitter. I suspect, however, that cables are rarely an issue but rather it is the USB chipsets in computers and RF noise that they leak.
 
 

Bingo!

 

[Jimster480]

   
But noise and cable capacitance affect both. The spectrum of a square wave is just a bunch of "analog" harmonics, the higher harmonics get attenuated and the square wave becomes more like a trapezoid frame. This creates more uncertainty when the gates open or close in the digital circuitry leading to additional jitter. I suspect, however, that cables are rarely an issue but rather it is the USB chipsets in computers and RF noise that they leak.
 
 

Yes you are right, but bceause they are electrical pulses and the wave isn't read in the same manner it is not affected by interference the way analog signals are.
Like I was saying before the issues with USB come from power leakage from other components or crosstalk (random power in the data pins).

 

[bigro]

The Definition of an analog signal is it is continuous in time and value which a digital signal /"Square" wave is not. TOSlink Uses NRV of which NRVI used by USB is a derivative of. Still Digital. Again I have seen nothing that supports what you re saying. if you have references please provide them, If I have been wrong all this time, I would like to fix that.

 

[darkarn]

.
Ya i will use both. I use optical on my TV to my speakers but at my desk I have 2 desktops so one will be connected via optical and the other via USB unless the second one has coax.

If your motherboard has SPDIF Out header, you can get the SPDIF Out bracket and then use Coaxial Out from it. I am doing this instead of the Singxer and it is being great!

 

[gvl2016]

The Definition of an analog signal is it is continuous in time and value which a digital signal /"Square" wave is not. TOSlink Uses NRV of which NRVI used by USB is a derivative of. Still Digital. Again I have seen nothing that supports what you re saying. if you have references please provide them, If I have been wrong all this time, I would like to fix that.

 
A square wave looks pretty continuous to me

 

[gregcss]

What is all of this science telling us about the Mimby? Sounds like there are still two camps; Ye and Ne camps to 'connector choice sounds different'. 

 

[Clemmaster]

The Definition of an analog signal is it is continuous in time and value which a digital signal /"Square" wave is not. TOSlink Uses NRV of which NRVI used by USB is a derivative of. Still Digital. Again I have seen nothing that supports what you re saying. if you have references please provide them, If I have been wrong all this time, I would like to fix that.

Google and Wikipedia are cool sources, but you should look for all the definitions. For instance "analog signal".

Electrical signals are analog. Your USB is transmitted (most of the time) over electrical wires. The representation of the data is digital, but the transmission is good old analog.
Same goes for optical transmissions. Unless you go down to the quantum theory, light is a wave, as well. It sure does behave like one for the considered dimensions.

 

[darkarn]

  What is all of this science telling us about the Mimby? Sounds like there are still two camps; Ye and Ne camps to 'connector choice sounds different'. 

 
Right now I am in the third camp: the "I need all connectors so I use each that suits the source the best and then just enjoy the Mimby (and maybe focus on getting work done lol?)" camp

 

[bigro]

Google and Wikipedia are cool sources, but you should look for all the definitions. For instance "analog signal".

Electrical signals are analog. Your USB is transmitted (most of the time) over electrical wires. The representation of the data is digital, but the transmission is good old analog.
Same goes for optical transmissions. Unless you go down to the quantum theory, light is a wave, as well. It sure does behave like one for the considered dimensions.

They are nice search Engines/ Sources but I have spend my time behind a bench and I have yet to see the use either of those sources to produce anything that support that support this, however  If we are going to get down to the physics level that's not where I was approaching this from and I get the strong feeling that's where you are based on your  "light is a wave" comment. The Non Physics differentiation between Analog vs.Digital signals is one is a continuous waveform of infinite values while the latter is discrete and binary values. Experience and google and wiki say so . In the non physics world there is a clear differentiation in the signal type and characteristics and that is where I am approaching this from.  I think we are looking into different windows of the same house. If you have the sources that do go down to the "physics level" that will not make my eyes water I really would like to read it as I am approaching this from a pure electronics stand point of what you see on a scope and encoding methods etc (the dining room window, essentially finished the product) and you are approaching this from a stand point of a signal as it travels on the wire (the Kitchen Window, where the the raw Ingredients live).