[kwkarth]

Just wanted to mention quickly that the "blurring" phenomena you referred to, re the HD-800 vs the LCD-2 with complex music is ENTIRELY an amplifier issue, not the headphones. A more powerful amp would have revealed that if anything, the LCD-2 was faster and clearer than the HD-800. please don't take this wrong, but this sort of misinformation really bugs me sometimes. The headphone gets a bad rap when it was the amp that was at fault in the first place. I'm not discussing which headphone is a better headphone...That's not what's important here, and not my point. What is important is properly identifying an issue in the first place.

I thought the HD800 was harder to drive than an LCD 2?

It depends upon whether or not you're considering current or voltage requirements and also the dynamic of impedance vs. frequency of the load impedance. Yes, in some respects, the 800 is a much more difficult and challenging load to drive, but, if you run into a current delivery limitation first, then that consideration becomes all important if it happens to be the root cause of the failure or shortcoming observed.

 

[lee730]

Quote:

It depends upon whether or not you're considering current or voltage requirements and also the dynamic of impedance vs. frequency of the load impedance. Yes, in some respects, the 800 is a much more difficult and challenging load to drive, but, if you run into a current delivery limitation first, then that consideration becomes all important if it happens to be the root cause of the failure or shortcoming observed.

Aya more variables to make this already complicating hobby more complex .

 

[kwkarth]

It depends upon whether or not you're considering current or voltage requirements and also the dynamic of impedance vs. frequency of the load impedance. Yes, in some respects, the 800 is a much more difficult and challenging load to drive, but, if you run into a current delivery limitation first, then that consideration becomes all important if it happens to be the root cause of the failure or shortcoming observed.

Aya more variables to make this already complicating hobby more complex .

I guess depending on how one looks at it, that's part of the fun!

 

[dvw]

Quote:

The PC analogy is spurious at best - boutique audio simply doesn't have the economies of scale. Ring Cirrus, tell them you are from Acer and you need a quote on 500,000 chips. Hang up, then have a friend ring and ask them for a quote on 500 - get back to me with the price difference. Now ring your brick-and-mortar distributors and tell them that they are going to have to halve their current markups because the competition is so intense in your market that you cant see your gear moving off the shelf if it's a hundred dollars more expensive than the gear next to it, You can cut costs at your end, because you are shipping 500,000 units, right ? Right ,.....
 
The smartest thing Steve Jobs ever did was move Macs to the Intel chipsets - Apple no longer had to fund R&D on the PowerPC architecture and they could hook into the same speed and capacity improvements as the Wintel clone makers. Sure, I guess McIntosh or Cary or Atma-sphere could abandon their current range in favor of rebranded T-amps, but it doesnt work that way in audio, does it ? You could combine the buying power of everyone in boutique audio (OK, excluding parents like Harman - just the companies themselves) and it wouldnt be anywhere near the pull that the large PC and laptop makers have with chip makers. Group buy, anyone ? 

Unfortunately, it is true that if your order is less than 10K, you will be directed to the distributor that charges a much higher price. But it was not like this before. Audio gears used to have a much higher volume before. Companies like Pioneer, Yamaha and even smaller guys like Nakamichi all had much higher volume. The home theater and high prices basically drove average consumers out of the market. The actual audio consumer market is still quite large. It is just not the "high end" (high cost) market. All the "High Fi" audio stores that I used to frequent are either out of business or selling TVs now. All the R&D that's done on audio that I know of are in low power apps for mobile. The misleading hype aren't helping anybody except the companies like Monster and Bose. And people are willing to pay for them. 
 
Boutique shops that are basically DIY operation paid through the nose on component prices. If they are targeting a tiny market, to recoup the return on investment, the pricing becomes even more outrageous. That's my take.
 
My approach to buying gears is simple. Just like buying PC, I want to know the design and performance. Then I want to look at similar design from different vendors. The days are gone when you can sit in a dealer's show room for hours and evaluate the gears. Shopping is more or less by reviews only and reviews are not very reliable. 

 

[OJNeg]

Quote:

Unfortunately, it is true that if your order is less than 10K, you will be directed to the distributor that charges a much higher price. But it was not like this before. Audio gears used to have a much higher volume before. Companies like Pioneer, Yamaha and even smaller guys like Nakamichi all had much higher volume. The home theater and high prices basically drove average consumers out of the market. The actual audio consumer market is still quite large. It is just not the "high end" (high cost) market. All the "High Fi" audio stores that I used to frequent are either out of business or selling TVs now. All the R&D that's done on audio that I know of are in low power apps for mobile. The misleading hype aren't helping anybody except the companies like Monster and Bose. And people are willing to pay for them. 
 
Boutique shops that are basically DIY operation paid through the nose on component prices. If they are targeting a tiny market, to recoup the return on investment, the pricing becomes even more outrageous. That's my take.
 
My approach to buying gears is simple. Just like buying PC, I want to know the design and performance. Then I want to look at similar design from different vendors. The days are gone when you can sit in a dealer's show room for hours and evaluate the gears. Shopping is more or less by reviews only and reviews are not very reliable. 

 
I've noticed many people are guilty of overspending on their computers due to a simple lack of knowledge. People who spend big on CPU clock speed but then cheap out on the power supply make me quite angry. PC hardware manufactures love to put inflated numbers next to their products so they can seem better than the competition.  In reality, there are bottlenecks and limitations that exist, just like in any technical field. Not to mention all of that "headroom" is usually not being taken advantage of.
 
You keep pointing to the computing world as an analogy, but I don't think it's a very good one. For one, with a piece of computing tech, whether it be desktop or mobile, it will become "obsolete" in just a few years. Not saying that it won't work. The desktop I built in '08 performs fine with most games and is still running strong. But as new formats, interfaces, etc. as well as the the demands of new OSs, games, software, etc. progress, your tech will not be what it was, in both value and performance. Computers depreciate fast, mobile devices even faster right now. When the new piece of tech comes out, whether it be a super-duper graphics card or a shiny new iPhone, people trash their "old" gear and shell out big bucks to buy retail. Buying value becomes much more important when you're going to have to replace the product in a few years.
 
In the simpler world of audio, good amps and speakers remain good. In terms of performance and usually value. The equipment becomes a permanent piece of furniture that people take pleasure in owning. Not to mention, no one is really making breakthroughs in the audio world (besides mastering engineers who try to push the tracks beyond 0dB).

 

[purrin]

LOL. Seriously. I've spent more on video cards over the past 20 years than DACs.

 

[germanium]

Quote:

 
I'll let most of this go as the poor logic is obvious.................."most amps can not produce even twice the rated power"??? 
 
Anyway, in spite of all this marketing one upmanship, I don't recall the Stasis series as having field reliability problems.

Why is this poor logic when it is true?
 
You quote a small peice of what I wrote out of context & try to make out that I'm somehow oblivious to the truth. The truth is most amps can not produce even double thier rated power (There are actually some that can do bursts of up to 4X thier rated power but I did not care for thier sound).
 
I never said that all stasis amps by the way will similarly fail but truth is that one did & I seen that possibility years before it actually happened. Will all fail similarly? No, but some will under that test scenerio. You also have likely no knowledge of any failures be cause you are not the manufacturer which would know if there was any other similar failures. This type of thing can happen in high dynamic range music. Did I say it will always happen? No. I also said that it was one amp that even the objectivist publications said it sounded special as in extreme fine sounding above similarly speced amps as of thier time of manufacture.

 

[Chris J]

Quote:

Why is this poor logic when it is true?
 
You quote a small peice of what I wrote out of context & try to make out that I'm somehow oblivious to the truth. The truth is most amps can not produce even double thier rated power (There are actually some that can do bursts of up to 4X thier rated power but I did not care for thier sound).

 
The statement lacks clear context.
Why would you ask a 100 Watt amp to output 400 Watts? I assume you are relating all this to an 8 ohm load?

 

[germanium]

Quote:

 
The statement lacks clear context.
Why would you ask a 100 Watt amp to output 400 Watts? I assume you are relating all this to an 8 ohm load?

 
 
I told you what the purpose was in the original post so it appears that you are just baiting an argument so I will not say anything more to you on this subject.

 

[estreeter]

Quote:

Unfortunately, it is true that if your order is less than 10K, you will be directed to the distributor that charges a much higher price. But it was not like this before. Audio gears used to have a much higher volume before. Companies like Pioneer, Yamaha and even smaller guys like Nakamichi all had much higher volume. The home theater and high prices basically drove average consumers out of the market. The actual audio consumer market is still quite large. It is just not the "high end" (high cost) market. All the "High Fi" audio stores that I used to frequent are either out of business or selling TVs now. All the R&D that's done on audio that I know of are in low power apps for mobile. The misleading hype aren't helping anybody except the companies like Monster and Bose. And people are willing to pay for them. 
 
Boutique shops that are basically DIY operation paid through the nose on component prices. If they are targeting a tiny market, to recoup the return on investment, the pricing becomes even more outrageous. That's my take.
 
My approach to buying gears is simple. Just like buying PC, I want to know the design and performance. Then I want to look at similar design from different vendors. The days are gone when you can sit in a dealer's show room for hours and evaluate the gears. Shopping is more or less by reviews only and reviews are not very reliable. 

 
 
You may find this thread entertaining - it seems to have struck a chord with a  few Head-Fiers:
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/615944/photography-killed-the-audio-store-aka-brick-and-mortar-is-dead

 

[Chris J]

Quote:

 
 
I told you what the purpose was in the original post so it appears that you are just baiting an argument so I will not say anything more to you on this subject.

 
I'm not trying to bait an argument.
In your original post you state you are not an EE, so fair enough, I'll drop it.

 

[madbull]

I been using an Icon HDP as dac for some time, now I just bought a V800. I hope to hear some difference...

 

[joeyjojo]

Quote:

I been using an Icon HDP as dac for some time, now I just bought a V800. I hope to hear some difference...

 
Then you certainly will (whether it's there or not)!
 
trollface.jpg

 

[LizardKing1]

I'm at page 10 of this thread now, because I have way too much free time. I've read a few good posts, some stupid ones, and the rest are in the middle. I understand most of this had already been said hundreds of times, but I for one had never read many of these opinions.
I guess I am what you consider an objectivist, the kind that doesn't really know his engineering, but quotes people who do a lot. Annoying, I know, but I never think too much of it.
 
Anyway, ever since I took interest in objective audio I've read this countless times:
 

There was a time when everyone thought the world was flat, and then they were proved wrong​

 
This is somehow supposed to invalidate objectivity as a whole because, you know, the concept of the shape of the Earth up to the XVIth century is totally comparable to analysing an audio signal in 2012. It's a dumbed-down way of saying we don't know everything, which in itself is an annoying thing to say. It's also mentioned how there are certain things completely unexplainable by science. I believe there are things we can't explain as of yet, but saying they are unreachable is basically validating your own beliefs - if science can never say you're wrong, then you're right.
 
Also, let's give things their deserving weight. Someone claiming that they hear a difference between 2 amps that should sound the same isn't exactly going to set aflame the foundations of science. There's the theory of gravity, and if someone says they just saw an apple accelerating into space you don't need to rush over to observe and study the phenomenon, because it's much more likely that they're hallucinating than that the Laws of Physichs suddenly changed in a specific point of the Universe.
 
There's one point that gets thrown around a lot, and a valid one: are there aspects in audio that we can't yet measure only with the available methods? I seriously have no idea. This isn't really an anti-objectivist argument, it's more like saying we need to be more objective and understand things better. What I am absolutely sure of is that this won't be some unclimbable mountain, some lost truth that mankind can't reach. We put a man on the moon, I'm sure eventually we'll be able to account for every 1dB change in a sound wave.
 
So my question is this: if indeed there is some aspect in an audio signal going through an amplifier, and it's one we can't measure, but somehow some amps are better at it than others, how are the companies building these better amps measuring this effect? And why don't they advertise this? Because they can't just be making amps with this unmeasured quality out of the blue with out they themselves measuring it, the same way you don't type gibberish on a computer and then expect it to compile into an amazing program - engineers feel free to correct me, but don't you kind of need to know what you're doing? And if I had a company which made amps with good measurements on a quality never before measured, I would try to show it to the world! Not only do they not reveal this, they won't reveal the already very well-known measurements - you get a FR graph, voltage output and impedance output (for example, Violectric, which I consider a good company, won't list the HPA V200's output impedance, voltage or power into loads, nor what gain settings there are).

 

[mikeaj]

Quote:

So my question is this: if indeed there is some aspect in an audio signal going through an amplifier, and it's one we can't measure, but somehow some amps are better at it than others, how are the companies building these better amps measuring this effect? And why don't they advertise this? Because they can't just be making amps with this unmeasured quality out of the blue with out they themselves measuring it, the same way you don't type gibberish on a computer and then expect it to compile into an amazing program - engineers feel free to correct me, but don't you kind of need to know what you're doing? And if I had a company which made amps with good measurements on a quality never before measured, I would try to show it to the world! Not only do they not reveal this, they won't reveal the already very well-known measurements - you get a FR graph, voltage output and impedance output (for example, Violectric, which I consider a good company, won't list the HPA V200's output impedance, voltage or power into loads, nor what gain settings there are).

 
The red portion is a good point that I think deserves re-highlighting.  I mean, seriously, what's the design process behind improving something you can't demonstrate?  If not, I want to hear about it.  (Next, we'll have people saying that it's trade secrets...)
 
 
By the way, I think you're looking for this page:
http://www.violectric.de/Pages/en/technical-data.php
 
Damping factor into 50 ohms -> output impedance, via a trivial calculation.
 
On a side note, say what you want about audio benchmarks correlating to sound quality and listening experience, but would it kill people to at least provide honest output power specs into different loads?