Quote:
Originally Posted by granodemostasa
Problem 2: as a woodwind player, I know what we sound like. What I’m not hearing is the type of airiness that’s often associated with a flute or clarinet’s sound.
If someone could come up with another possible problem or tell me what is the weakest link in the chain it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
|
As Ori can tell you, what you're describing is some of what I'd said to him about this Zhaolu when he let me try it on his speakers and my own headphone rig. I'm not apt to blame his output stage as much as I blame the AD1852, though, and this is something I've noticed in some other implementations of AD's S-D chips. What I'm thinking you need is a bit more energy in the <1khz range as well as maybe in the ~15-18khz range with *maybe* a slight softening at 7-8 or a bit above that. This is really a total guess, though, but I threw it out there for you to play around with since your computer as a source offers some EQ options to test this out with. I don't know what your music sounds like, so I'm just guessing off of some types of music I've tried this on. Possibly even having a little bit of even order harmonic distortion (oh no!) could help.
How to do it? Well fortunately, it doesn't have to be done on the side of the Zhaolu. The suggestion to reduce jitter (from lan) is also a good one, though the amount you can probably accomplish is probably limited...especially in terms of generating audible results. I have tested some various cables for jitter/distortion and it can make a difference, but not in a way that corresponds to price. For my DAC, some of the best performance I achieved was using an old Recoton stereo RCA cable on IMD and THD+N *shrug*. I couldn't really hear a difference, though, which is unsurprising given the magnitude of the difference. On the amp side, the Headfive's use of LM6171 might help somewhat in depth, but I tend to be pretty firm about my recommendation against the BUF634 and it's possible that it just isn't giving enough in this respect. daba tells me he's having a meet this Saturday, and I'll be there, so maybe we can see if something can be helped on this.
I felt Ori's Zhaolu still turned in a strong performance, though, especially for the price. As such, I suspect the amp is playing weakest link right now, although it could turn out that the Zhaolu is limited in this respect. Ori noted observantly that sometimes you have to make comprimises in design, and he seemed to acknowledge my observation that in this case the comprimise might be losing that bit of depth and what I felt to be realism or 'soul' to the instruments in exchange for speed and punch. Given his objectives, this seemed like a sensible comprimise to me, and indeed I make comprimises with my own DAC that don't entirely please me (e.g. I'd like to steal some of that speed/punch ;D). That said, a lot can be done to improve the situation, and the detail and speed I imagine is a pretty alluring quality, so the most felicitous option is probably doing something on the amp side if you're still unhappy.
Also, did you hear that piece w/ the triangles last time on your current headphones, or a different model?
