milo8
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2015
- Posts
- 30
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- 13
In DAC mode, the Amp is always turned on (which is normal) and therefore you are able to hear hiss in quiet passages with sensitive in-ears (but not with full-sized cans).
When you are using the DX80 on its own as native music player, the Amp section is turned off when playback is paused -> no hiss for sure.
Everybody gets the same SNR from the DX80, however not everybody's ears are equally sensitive to hiss, not everybody is listening at the same volume and not every headphone/in-ear is equally sensitive (with full-sized HPs and insensitive IEMs, there will be no audible hiss even for those people who are sensitive to such things and listening at rather low volume).
If you are a bit interested in reading about hiss, here's an article by Shure: http://shure.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3830/~/hiss-and-noise-when-using-shure-earphones
The German one is better and more detailed, but this one's okay as well (expect for the thing with the damper/attenuator mentioned at the bottom which surely lowers the IEMs' impedance and therefore lowers/eliminates hiss but also skews the frequency response of multi-driver in-ears).
It's hissing while I watch youtube videos. This can't be normal...