O2 vs TOTL

[xnor]

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By all means, demonstrate the machine that measures things like headroom, soundstage and detail.

 
Headroom of the O2 with 2.5x gain and power supply and a 2V source is about 3 dB, so the source may output up to 2.8 V RMS or 7.92 Vpp.
If this is not what you mean with headroom then you really should look up the term before using it. It has a clear definition.
 
Sound stage in headphones with stereo recordings? Not unless you do quite a bit of signal processing. To perceive real sound stage in front of your head you at least need crosstalk (some bad amps have lots, yay, but usually still not enough) and interaural time delay, both of which is a given with speakers. Sure there are binaural recordings for headphones, but there are not many.
With headphone listening, all spatial cues are in the recording but they are largely influenced by the headphones. Again, open type headphones provide more crosstalk, but what I'm talking about is stuff like frequency response peaks or resonances or loose bass due to bad damping factor etc. masking these cues.
 
Detail. Have you looked at the O2 measurements? It's high nonlinear distortion and noise floor that swallow details, both of which the O2 is devoid of.
Oh and the low output impedance helps in that regard as well.
 
 
 
Could you answer #536 please, so we can look if the amp you're preferring is indeed superior in all those regards?

 

[autoteleology]

Trying to compare the amp I have now to the O2 is like comparing a banana to a watermelon. Two entirely different sounds. But if you really need to know, it's a Little Dot 1+, which measures hilariously badly, and yet, sounds much more detailed to me than the O2. Explain this to me.

 

[jaddie]

How about the possibility that the headphones in question are a bit deficient in the high end, and the accuracy of the 02 does nothing to compensate for that, but your other amp does?

 

[autoteleology]

How about the possibility that the headphones in question are a bit deficient in the high end, and the accuracy of the 02 does nothing to compensate for that, but your other amp does?

 

[xnor]

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LOL, are you trolling us?
 
Also, your amp is what? The astro mixamp that outputs about 70 mW (1.5 V) into 32 ohms?

 

[autoteleology]

No. I use a transformer Stax amp, and feed it with a dynamic headphone amp. Some of us can't afford expensive full-size amps. You should have seen the condition my SRM-Xh was in when I bought it, before I blew it.
 
And no, it's the Little Dot 1+, which has probably the worst measurements I've ever seen on an amplifier. I expected detail loss because I know what tubes do, not to mention it's a hybrid amp. So, no, this isn't a case of expectation bias, but a case of defied expectations.
 
As an aside, the Mixamp has extremely poor synergy with my transformer, which is why I'm selling it.

 

[xnor]

So depending on how great your LD1+ is, you might hear mains hum, 0.2% to over 1.5% THD, a tiny bit of bass boost and treble roll-off.
All I can see that is close to the O2 is crosstalk performance, but all of that is with the LD1+ completely unloaded.

 

[autoteleology]

And I knew this before I bought it (I just wanted to learn how to roll tubes). So, then, explain to me why what I hear defies my expectations and the measurements.
 
We both have it in our signatures; why was something that I initially firmly believed to be one way, turn out to be experienced completely differently? Why does what I believe in present itself to be false? I'm not an idiot and I believe I have fairly strong listening skills, at least far better than the average layman.

 

[xnor]

Nonlinear distortion adds overtones (not only of course, but let's ignore everything else for now) and in the LD1+ these are added at a significant level. Maybe you pick that up as more details? In reality it's just stuff added that shouldn't be there.

 

[autoteleology]

Wouldn't that just change the tonality of what I'm hearing, and not introduce new sounds?

 

[xnor]

Hmm, one excellent example would be bass roll-off in the headphones and insensitivity of the human ear at low frequencies "hiding"  low frequency content, but overtones (which seem to be especially strong at low frequencies with that amp) have by definition a frequency that is 2x or 3x ... the fundamental frequency. A 100 Hz tone is much more easily audible than a 50 Hz or 33 Hz one.
 
Keep in mind that there are probably a lot more distortion products being added. The first intermodulation products of a 90 Hz and 100 Hz tone will be at 80 and 110 Hz. Real music doesn't consist of 2 tones but hundreds/thousands that change all the time.
 
Sure, timbre might change a bit with some instruments but the frequency spectrum of even a single tone will be a lot "denser" which I'd bet my money on people interpret as more detailed.

 

[skamp]

a machine can measure and analyze all day long, but it will never be able to perceive in the way humans do (at least not in their current technological stage). These are all concepts and qualities of music gear that everyone would agree exist, and yet I am unaware of any objective methodology in which someone could measure any of them. I am an objectivist, but only up until the point where something can actually be measured in some way.

Our "current technological" state certainly allows us to measure human-built audio gear in scientific terms (noise, frequency response, distortion, and time-based errors, according to Ethan Winer). The rest is human perception and psychology, which have nothing to do with the gear's actual characteristics, except maybe stuff like speaker / ear cup distance and placement, the way sound waves penetrate or bounce off certain materials, etc… which also can be measured.

BTW, you are most definitely not an objectivist. You use subjectivist terms and put forth subjectivist arguments, with subjectivist concerns.

 

[DefQon]

Quote:

About HA, I meant "high fidelity" in the larger sense, which includes lossless codecs (that achieve perfect fidelity) and lossy codecs (which strive to reach perceptual transparency). There isn't much talk about hardware, because these days it is very easy (and cheap) to get fully transparent gear. Beyond that, they haven't much to say about hardware, nor do they much care.

If it were difficult to find "high fidelity" hardware, you'd see a lot more recommendation threads, with a lot more details. When asked about hardware, their stance is usually something like "get anything that isn't completely broken".

I don't think you understand the definition of high-fidelity. HA is not strictly an high-fidelity forum, one could learn a lot of the engineering, technical side of sources and such though. 

 

[stv014]

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Nonlinear distortion adds overtones (not only of course, but let's ignore everything else for now) and in the LD1+ these are added at a significant level. Maybe you pick that up as more details? In reality it's just stuff added that shouldn't be there.

 
I would not discount simple factors like unmatched levels and expectation bias either, until they are ruled out. A cheap tube amp could have too high gain (I have seen some with 30 dB gain in the specifications), and therefore encourage listening louder, which is a cheap way of giving the subjective impression of "better sound".

 

[jaddie]

Quote:

Nonlinear distortion adds overtones (not only of course, but let's ignore everything else for now) and in the LD1+ these are added at a significant level. Maybe you pick that up as more details? In reality it's just stuff added that shouldn't be there.

The harmonics added by nonlinear distortion are usually a mix of even and odd-order harmonics, with odd-order dominant.  Doubtful that would ever sound "better". 
Quote:

 
Keep in mind that there are probably a lot more distortion products being added. The first intermodulation products of a 90 Hz and 100 Hz tone will be at 80 and 110 Hz. Real music doesn't consist of 2 tones but hundreds/thousands that change all the time.
 
Sure, timbre might change a bit with some instruments but the frequency spectrum of even a single tone will be a lot "denser" which I'd bet my money on people interpret as more detailed.

Timbre might change a tiny bit, but for the addition of harmonics to significantly change timbre in a way that would be perceived as positive, the harmonics added would have to be dominantly even-order, and at a very significantly high level, a process similar to the Aphex Aural Exciter (deliberate even-order harmonics dynamically mixed). Intermod products aren't harmonically related, and would always be perceived negatively, as would high-odd-order harmonics, which couldn't be effectively masked.  
 
I'm not on board with the concept that distortion can result in better sound.  Increasing distortion, and IMD is never in and of itself perceived as an improvement.  But just because an amp that measures with high distortion sounds subjectively better in a single, anecdotal case doesn't mean that the distortion itself is responsible.  What we don't know is what the total end result is of driving the Stax with a transformer "amp" driven by a relatively low power headphone amp.  There are other things going on relating to the headphone/transfomer/amp interface.
 
I can't quickly locate any info on the Stax transformer, but there could be some issues with the impedance it reflects back to the amp.  I was also under the impression that those things were meant to be driven from a speaker amp output, though that's a pretty distant and fallible memory.