[Rocko1]

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Ok what exactly is a bottomed out driver? I don't have any EQ on and I tried listening to this at high levels and medium levels and the clicking is still there however, it seems to go away when playing at a low level. Not all songs do this. So I'm not sure if its the headphones because I can listen to bass head bass boosted (bassnectar) which has intense bass and there is no clicking whatsoever in that song. Just search YouTube "bass head bass boosted" and cluck on the one with 300,000+ views.

There should be no clicking on the song listed before unless you are over driving the headphones. You might have blown the drivers. If you continue to hear clicking on certain songs at medium volumes I would say they are blown. A blown driver can sound ok on some songs and bad/click/distort on others even at medium volume. I blew a driver using pink noise after only 1 hour at low-medium volume.
 
  Drivers can be damaged by causing the driver diaphram to distort or bottom out from over excursion in which case you will hear it if it has been damaged. Damaged drivers make strange sounds from clicking to buzzing during bass notes.  If you use enough power to blow the coil (melt it basically) then you'll probably hear nothing.

 

[DnB4Guy]

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So where do all you audiophiles get your music at?

• Amazon.ca
• Amazon.co.uk
• Discogs
 
This is where I get mine.

 

[Rocko1]

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So where do all you audiophiles get your music at?

Not youtube. Amazon.com-used/new cd's. Any song worth paying for should be lossless IMO.

 

[DJHeadshot]

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So where do all you audiophiles get your music at?

I either buy the CD from amazon.com and rip it myself to FLAC using EAC or buy the albums I want from amazon mp3 if its much cheaper that way or I only want specific songs.  I also download music from free legal music sites like ektoplazm.com or ocremix.org.  Amazon mp3 and Bandcamp also have alot of free downloads of album and songs in addition to there non free selection.  If your just looking to get access to allot of high quality music for a low price Spotify is $5 a month for unlimited streaming to over ten million songs at 320kbs on your  desktop pc or laptop.  $10 a month lets you stream as well as download songs for offline use on your android or ios device as long as your subscribed. 
 
Personally with my current equipment I can't tell any difference between high bitrate MP3 or FLAC doing abx test with critical listening let alone the more passive listening I normally do.  Both are capable of great sounding audio what matters more for how good something will sound disregarding personal preference is the quality of the recording or samples/synths(in case of electronically produced music) and the mastering done of the track which is out of our hands how good that will be. Allot of modern music especially the more mainstream music is compressed to hell with limited dynamic range and distorted clipping reducing the sound quality out of misguided believe of louder equal better.

 

[Shadowruse]

There should be no clicking on the song listed before unless you are over driving the headphones. You might have blown the drivers. If you continue to hear clicking on certain songs at medium volumes I would say they are blown. A blown driver can sound ok on some songs and bad/click/distort on others even at medium volume. I blew a driver using pink noise after only 1 hour at low-medium volume.

  Drivers can be damaged by causing the driver diaphram to distort or bottom out from over excursion in which case you will hear it if it has been damaged. Damaged drivers make strange sounds from clicking to buzzing during bass notes.  If you use enough power to blow the coil (melt it basically) then you'll probably hear nothing.

Ok so when I listened to those songs with the clicking at a higher bit rate (256kbps I believe) I heard Absolutly no clicking whatsoever. The bass was good and clean, no distortion. The sound quallity was great. Why is it if I listen with my xb500s at 192kbps I hear clicking but if I listen to 192kbps audio with my skull candy titans I hear no clicking?

 

[Shadowruse]

I either buy the CD from amazon.com and rip it myself to FLAC using EAC or buy the albums I want from amazon mp3 if its much cheaper that way or I only want specific songs.  I also download music from free legal music sites like ektoplazm.com or ocremix.org.  Amazon mp3 and Bandcamp also have alot of free downloads of album and songs in addition to there non free selection.  If your just looking to get access to allot of high quality music for a low price Spotify

is $5 a month for unlimited streaming to over ten million songs at 320kbs on your  desktop pc or laptop.  $10 a month lets you stream as well as download songs for offline use on your android or ios device as long as your subscribed. 

Personally with my current equipment I can't tell any difference between high bitrate MP3 or FLAC doing abx test with critical listening let alone the more passive listening I normally do.  Both are capable of great sounding audio what matters more for how good something will sound disregarding personal preference is the quality of the recording or samples/synths(in case of electronically produced music) and the mastering done of the track which is out of our hands how good that will be. Allot of modern music especially the more mainstream music is compressed to hell with limited dynamic range and distorted clipping reducing the sound quality out of misguided believe of louder equal better.

So will the iPod touch 4th gen support FLAC? And are you saying that compressed music is worse than uncompressed music?

 

[DJHeadshot]

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So will the iPod touch 4th gen support FLAC? And are you saying that compressed music is worse than uncompressed music?

The ipod touch does not support flac with the stock music player and I was talking about dynamic range compression not lossy(mp3,aac,etc) vs lossless(flac,wav,etc) compression.  FLAC vs high bitrate mp3 does not sound any different to me in ABX test with critical listening.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
 
And yes more heavily compressed music with less dynamic range sounds worse.  This in example below between 2 different version of a metallica song.  The Guitar Hero one had less compression vs the CD version which was far more heavily compressed even through youtube at 360p the quality difference its easily noticeable.  Nothing you can about it if the track has been compressed like this there nothing that will decompress it the sound quality is permanently altered and there being two different mastering of the same song isn't common the exception being older albums that get re-released and remastered and tend to sound worse on the newer releases due to being more heavily compressed and the original release sounds better this is not true all the time though.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRyIACDCc1I

 

[Shadowruse]

The ipod touch does not support flac with the stock music player and I was talking about dynamic range compression not lossy(mp3,aac,etc) vs lossless(flac,wav,etc) compression.  FLAC vs high bitrate mp3 does not sound any different to me in ABX test with critical listening.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

And yes more heavily compressed music with less dynamic range sounds worse.  This in example below between 2 different version of a metallica song.  The Guitar Hero one had less compression vs the CD version which was far more heavily compressed even through youtube at 360p the quality difference its easily noticeable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRyIACDCc1I

And how do you know what the dynamic range of a song is? And so I'm guessing that the higher the bitrate the more dynamic range a song has?

 

[Rocko1]

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And how do you know what the dynamic range of a song is? And so I'm guessing that the higher the bitrate the more dynamic range a song has?

No, the bitrate has nothing to do with the dynamic range. The DR is how the song is mastered. Read this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

 

[DJHeadshot]

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And how do you know what the dynamic range of a song is? And so I'm guessing that the higher the bitrate the more dynamic range a song has?

The bitrate of the song does not effect the dynamic range.  You can roughly check using audacity a freeware program so you can view the wave form of a music track the more variation there is in the peaks and valleys of it the higher the DR is. 
 

 
 
I use a plugin for foobar2000 that can analyze a songs dynamic range and there also a stand alone software program.  I wouldn't worry to much about it though and focus on enjoying your music.

 

[Shadowruse]

Thanks guys! Hey rocko1. Did you read my older post on this page about how the clicking went away inmy xb500s when I played it at a higher bitrate? Does any one know why that is?

 

[Roller]

Quote:

The bitrate of the song does not effect the dynamic range.  You can roughly check using audacity a freeware program so you can view the wave form of a music track the more variation there is in the peaks and valleys of it the higher the DR is. 
 

 
 
I use a plugin for foobar2000 that can analyze a songs dynamic range and there also a stand alone software program.  I wouldn't worry to much about it though and focus on enjoying your music.

 
Good find on the foobar2000 component.
 
Also, lol at 2007's loudness

 

[Shadowruse]

Anybody know if downloading from iTunes is better than downloading from amazon? Also what is the bitrate of the songs downloaded from iTunes and amazon? I just feel like it would be easier to buy through iTunes because I have an iPod touch.

 

[DJHeadshot]

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Good find on the foobar2000 component.
 
Also, lol at 2007's loudness

Yeah Its a useful tool the only annoying part is that it leaves these log files in the same folder as your music files by default for each song you scan.  If you go to Preferences -> Advanced -> Tools -> Dynamic Range Meter  and you can turn it off though took me a while to figure that out.

 

[DJHeadshot]

Quote:

Anybody know if downloading from iTunes is better than downloading from amazon? Also what is the bitrate of the songs downloaded from iTunes and amazon? I just feel like it would be easier to buy through iTunes because I have an iPod touch.

Quality wise there pretty much the same amazon music is encoded in mp3 using lame at V0 variable bitrate(averages somewhere between 200-250 kbs but will go as high as 320kbs in the more complex parts of a song) or a constant 256kbs bitrate.  Itunes music is encoded at 256kbs AAC.  If you want to go with itunes for convenience and integration thats fine you could easily use both and just add whatever you buy from amazon to your itunes library.