Dan Lavry
Member of the Trade: Lavry Engineering
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2008
- Posts
- 150
- Likes
- 16
Quote:
Hello,
It was around a couple of years ago that I went to the Head-Fi convention. I was a guess lecturer, and the subject of my lecture was “digital audio”. But I recall being asked a question regarding headphones. It was in regards to “balanced headphones”. What could be the difference? I recall pointing out that the a low impedance headphone, having a common return wire will have some impact on reducing channel separation. Say the headphone is 100Ohms, and the common wire (plus connector) is 0.1 Ohm, then we are dealing with -60dB reduction in separation… It is not much, but a good ear can surprisingly sensitive.
The lecture was recorded: Part 1 has some(not all) of my talk about the issue of headphone separation:
Dailymotion - Dan lavry_part11, a video from kramer5150. headfest, headfi, lavry, DA-10
I use headphones a lot. So I decided to take a deeper look at the issue. Clearly, if I send sound to the left speaker and “block” my right ear, I can hear the sound into my left ear. But if I block my left ear, I hear the sound with my right ear. With speakers one hears both speakers with both ears. But with headphones, all of the left signal is sent to the left ear, and all of right signal is sent to the right ear. That is a very fundamental difference between speakers and headphones, that can not be denied.
Most (virtually all) the musical material is mixed and mastered for speakers. A good mastering engineer may pay a lot of attention to the stereo sound field. There are tools, both hardware and software, for creating music for distribution. But a proper reproduction is based on assumptions that do not always hold. The home speakers are not always positioned in a way that closely emulates a mastering facility setup. The mastering guy can not come to adjust the setup in every home
and of course, there are many of us that use headphones…
So I decided to design a DA that will offer a stereo field adjustment for music, not during the music preparation stage (mixing and mastering), but AFTER the music preparation is done. The idea is to have the stereo field adjustments at the hands of the end user, for dealing with specific setups, be it specific speaker setup or for headphone use.
I got into it because of headphones, but decided to also address speaker correction, so I offer 3 settings for narrower image and 2 settings for wider (of course there is also a “normal mode”).
I lot of people like my DA10 so I decided to evolve the product, by adding to it the >PiC< ™ which is a Playback Image Control. People love the DA10 sound but I did hear some good comments and suggestions:
First, the DA10 did not offer a way to turn off the analog outputs (rear panel) while listening to headphones. Second, when turning the power off, there was a “loud click: at the headphones (turn on was OK). The user needed to take off the headphones before powering the unit off. Those issues are headphone issues. The DA11 solves those issues. Of course there were other more general additions (the main ones are a USB computer interface and the ability to respond to a universal remote control).
The idea for doing the >PiC< started at my visit to the head-fi convention (about a couple of years back), This is also the first place I came to (besides Lavry Engineering site) for my DA11 product announcement. The DA11 is not limited to headphone use, but it is certainly very oriented towards headphone. I use headphones very often, I designed the playback image control for my own personal enjoyment. I love it. I also have a DA11 hooked to the wide screen TV (Toslink connection - digital optical link) with the analog XLR outputs connected directly to a pair of powered speakers (with XLR’s).
Regards
Dan Lavry
Lavry Engineering - Unsurpassed Excellence
| Originally Posted by shamu144 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Just when I was starting to think about a computer based source ! It looks like the perfect DAC for me 
|
Hello,
It was around a couple of years ago that I went to the Head-Fi convention. I was a guess lecturer, and the subject of my lecture was “digital audio”. But I recall being asked a question regarding headphones. It was in regards to “balanced headphones”. What could be the difference? I recall pointing out that the a low impedance headphone, having a common return wire will have some impact on reducing channel separation. Say the headphone is 100Ohms, and the common wire (plus connector) is 0.1 Ohm, then we are dealing with -60dB reduction in separation… It is not much, but a good ear can surprisingly sensitive.
The lecture was recorded: Part 1 has some(not all) of my talk about the issue of headphone separation:
Dailymotion - Dan lavry_part11, a video from kramer5150. headfest, headfi, lavry, DA-10
I use headphones a lot. So I decided to take a deeper look at the issue. Clearly, if I send sound to the left speaker and “block” my right ear, I can hear the sound into my left ear. But if I block my left ear, I hear the sound with my right ear. With speakers one hears both speakers with both ears. But with headphones, all of the left signal is sent to the left ear, and all of right signal is sent to the right ear. That is a very fundamental difference between speakers and headphones, that can not be denied.
Most (virtually all) the musical material is mixed and mastered for speakers. A good mastering engineer may pay a lot of attention to the stereo sound field. There are tools, both hardware and software, for creating music for distribution. But a proper reproduction is based on assumptions that do not always hold. The home speakers are not always positioned in a way that closely emulates a mastering facility setup. The mastering guy can not come to adjust the setup in every home
and of course, there are many of us that use headphones…So I decided to design a DA that will offer a stereo field adjustment for music, not during the music preparation stage (mixing and mastering), but AFTER the music preparation is done. The idea is to have the stereo field adjustments at the hands of the end user, for dealing with specific setups, be it specific speaker setup or for headphone use.
I got into it because of headphones, but decided to also address speaker correction, so I offer 3 settings for narrower image and 2 settings for wider (of course there is also a “normal mode”).
I lot of people like my DA10 so I decided to evolve the product, by adding to it the >PiC< ™ which is a Playback Image Control. People love the DA10 sound but I did hear some good comments and suggestions:
First, the DA10 did not offer a way to turn off the analog outputs (rear panel) while listening to headphones. Second, when turning the power off, there was a “loud click: at the headphones (turn on was OK). The user needed to take off the headphones before powering the unit off. Those issues are headphone issues. The DA11 solves those issues. Of course there were other more general additions (the main ones are a USB computer interface and the ability to respond to a universal remote control).
The idea for doing the >PiC< started at my visit to the head-fi convention (about a couple of years back), This is also the first place I came to (besides Lavry Engineering site) for my DA11 product announcement. The DA11 is not limited to headphone use, but it is certainly very oriented towards headphone. I use headphones very often, I designed the playback image control for my own personal enjoyment. I love it. I also have a DA11 hooked to the wide screen TV (Toslink connection - digital optical link) with the analog XLR outputs connected directly to a pair of powered speakers (with XLR’s).
Regards
Dan Lavry
Lavry Engineering - Unsurpassed Excellence
