[inconnu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by splaz /img/forum/go_quote.gif The glass is half full.

Actually, NelsonVandal, it seems to me like your glass is always half empty!

 

[NelsonVandal]

Sometimes it's full, sometimes it's empty. Sometimes it's in between, yes. I guess that's why we keep hanging here at Head-Fi instead of just listening to music.

 

[inconnu]

Btw, have you tried an AD8620 in the XTRA?

 

[NelsonVandal]

Yes I've tried AD8620 in Xtra. It sounded just like ... AD8620. Harsh treble, weak mid and bass. Overall the sound was compressed or limited. Great soundstage, really pinpoint accurate, this is AD8620's strongest part. But the soundstage was a bit limited compared to not using an opamp or AD8058. AD8058 has an unnatural big soundstage, unfocused, and is a bit "lightfooted" as Andrea put it. There's no weight in the mid, hollow. A bit like the LM6171/72 but with a much cleaner treble.

 

[inconnu]

I have the AD8620 in the Xtra, and I don't recognize the same attributes as you described. I hear a refined unexaggerated treble, and present intimate and full mids. Ok, the mids might be just tad dryish, but not lightweight.

Mightn't it be that yuor source or cables are influencing your perceptions? I'm using a full sized home CDP with a fluid and musical sound signature, and pure copper interconnects - no silver.

 

[NelsonVandal]

BTW, AD8620 was the reason i broke the PCB in Xtra, and I had to hardwire AD8058 to a resistor. The PCB is fragile. Be careful!

 

[NelsonVandal]

No, I think it's the opposite. To my ears AD8620 has a fatiguing sound that makes you look for faults in your system. Whatever you do to try to compensate for it, you'll never be satisfied. I don't believe that expensive cables and connectors do that much difference. I can't really see that 20 cm of copper would have any impact on any audiosystem, compared to 20 transistors, resistors and maybe capicitors packed in a little silicon chip (or whatever makes AD8620 or any opamp up).

For instance, I cut my HD650 cable to about a third. If the cable is that kind of crap people here say, there should be a tremendous difference, but the sound was abut the same. I can tell you that the common input opamps have a great inpact in sound quality and sound signature. Bad opamps kill good music! Just try to bypass it the next time you roll opamp, and you see what I mean.

The difference is not that clear until you have listened to a lot of different recordings. Then you start to hear the AD8620 all over everything.

 

[NelsonVandal]

Oh sorry Inconnu, i didn't answer your question. Sure, I use IHP120 most of the time. I still hear great differences between the various opamps. I hear a clinically clean treble with AD8058 (that doesn't mean I like the chip) without a trace of sibilance, almost as it was a deesser built in, using IHP120 and in your eyes crappy cables. With the same set-up, I hear sibilant voices, harsh treble, thin mid and bass using AD8620.

Maybe you have a point. IHP120 is not the highest fidelity around. Maybe coloration adds upp one on the other. Maybe it's a synergy-thing. I really hate thinking about synergy. It makes life so much harder.

 

[inconnu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NelsonVandal /img/forum/go_quote.gif No, I think it's the opposite. To my ears AD8620 has a fatiguing sound that makes you look for faults in your system. Whatever you do to try to compensate for it, you'll never be satisfied. I don't believe that expensive cables and connectors do that much difference. I can't really see that 20 cm of copper would have any impact on any audiosystem, compared to 20 transistors, resistors and maybe capicitors packed in a little silicon chip (or whatever makes AD8620 or any opamp up). For instance, I cut my HD650 cable to about a third. If the cable is that kind of crap people here say, there should be a tremendous difference, but the sound was abut the same. I can tell you that the common input opamps have a great inpact in sound quality and sound signature. Bad opamps kill good music! Just try to bypass it the next time you roll opamp, and you see what I mean. The difference is not that clear until you have listened to a lot of different recordings. Then you start to hear the AD8620 all over everything.

I disagree about the cable thing. A good quality cable can make much more difference than switching op-amps. Note that a signal cable is typically much more crucial to sound quality than a power cable, due to the much weaker signals the former carry, thus much more liable to degradation.

Instead, I agree that the stock headphones cables are not a significant limit to their own headphones in about any case ever seen, the less so if we're talking of the HD650 cable.


Concerning the AD8620, I beg to differ. I regard it as one of the more faithful op-amps to the input signal. I really haven't had any comparable problems to yours in living with it (HD650 for me, as well). Not that I'm claiming that it's prefection!

 

[inconnu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NelsonVandal /img/forum/go_quote.gif Maybe you have a point. IHP120 is not the highest fidelity around. Maybe coloration adds upp one on the other. Maybe it's a synergy-thing. I really hate thinking about synergy. It makes life so much harder.

Well certainly it can never be like a serious home CDP! Sorry but that's in the nature of the concerned things.

 

[NelsonVandal]

Glad you're back from the dead. I still doubt you could pick a 20 cm fancy cable from a 20 cm standard microphone cable or cheap no name cable, in an A-B blind test. If you're right about cables, you should use no cable at all, just an adapter, connector to connector. How short must a cable be not to be audible? Is the quality loss not depending on the length of the cable? Is a 100 m quality cable better than 1 cm bad cable? And I can't understand that you can't hear the faults in AD8620. The 8620 is Hi-Fi, not music, to my ears that is.

 

[inconnu]

To me the AD8620 is one of the "musical" op-amps. An op-amp that I would label as "hi-fi rather than music" being the LM6171/2.

I really think that our so different sources (before the cables) are the culprit for our different perceptions.