grrr223
All I want for Christmas is Radio Shack Cat.#910-4380
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2001
- Posts
- 350
- Likes
- 10
Introduction:
As many of you know, I am new to this whole headphone thing, but I decided to jump in the deepend when I went from a pair of cheap Sony's to my HD600s, and about a week later I picked up the DSP Pro on E-bay for $45. I would just like to say that it is a fun little gadget that is easily worth what I paid for it, I don't know about the $199 it retailed for, although I think most people got it bundled with their HD580s. Anyway, here goes...
Physical Description:
If there is one thing that the DSP Pro is, it is solidly built. Weighing in at 24.5 oz. it's case is solid metal. It's like a tube that has been flattened to be about 8 inches long, 3 inches wide, and 3/4 inch thick. The ends have plastic covering them with the input going in the top and the outputs at the bottom. The input consists of a 6 pin plug (shown in the picture) that takes care of the left and right audio channels as well as power, at the other end of this 12 foot cable you will find 2 rca plugs and a jack to plug in the end of the AC adapter. This allows you to plug into the outputs of your receiver and sit at your couch and have full control. At the bottom are 2 1/8" jacks which are for either 2 sets of headphones (each with independent volume control) or to output the L,R,C,S channels through the use of 2 stereo 1/8" to RCA connecting cords I used it solely for headphone listening so I cannot comment on it's performance in those aspects.
Equipment Used:
Source: Macintosh G3 playing CDs and DVDs on it's internal DVD player as well as a few MP3s
ICs: I plugged a stereo 1/8" to RCA Monster cable into the G3's headphone jack. Since both the DSP PRO and this 1/8" to RCA cable were terminated with male RCA plugs, I used Monster Female to Female RCA adapters to connect the two.
Headphones: Sennheiser HD600
Features and Performance:
This device is loaded with user adjustable features from bass control to dual volume controls, and even the ability to adjust where you are sitting in the soundfield.
The first step is to choose which set of "ears" it uses to creat it's effects. The DSP Pro has 15 different HTRFs programmed into it, and the first thing you need to do is listen to a series of clicks with your eyes closed and try to imagine which set sounds like speakers placed 1 meter directing in front of you, it's kinda tough, the differences are very subtle. It's pretty easy to tell which ones sound very wrong, but it's not so easy to tell which is right, I just kept it on the default setting for my tests, I imagine that changing this could have large differences in surround imaging.
I then used the test signals to see if this thing could really create surround imaging, cycling through the 5 speaker positions with the hissing noise sounds really incredible, you really can pinpoint where the speakers are supposed to be coming from.
On with the movies, the best part, I chose for my first demo the scene in Gladiator when Maximus is taken into the woods to be killed near the beginning of the movie (I'm sorry, I forget what chapter) and at one point, he throws a sword at someone, and I am so familiar with how real that sounds on my home theater that I thought it would be a good choice. And the verdict is...WOW!!, it did sound like it was traveling from right to left BEHIND me, as it should.
You can select 3 different rooms (Hall, Club, and Theater) and 3 different channel modes (Dolby Surround, Stereo, and Mono). I was using the theater setting, and cycling between Dolby, stereo, and mono, and the difference between stereo and doly was incredible, the soundstage really filled in front to back in addition to side to side, I think I might actually use this little gizmo to watch DVDs this semester (until my parents release my DVD player back to me).
You can also adjust the ambience, which they vaguely describe as how intimate the room is, i think it adds a delay of some sort, which effectively makes the room sound bigger. The other cool feature is the seat adjustment button, what this does is move you to the front or back of the soundstage (by adjusting the ratio of the volume of the front and rear speakers). On Metallica's S&M DVD it really was incredible how you could close your eyes and imagine whether you were sitting either at the front row or the back row or anywhere in between. Towards the extremes though it sounds a little unnatural and distorted, but it does allow some nice fine-tuning of the sound.
Final Word:
The surround effect on DVDs was incredible, I can't wait to use it some more, i will post a followup to this at some point, although it may not be until i get back to school in the fall. Overall, it is worth $50 easily, but my biggest problem with it is something they call a feature. The AVC (Automatic Volume Control) which "compensates for great differences in volume" which should be written as "distorts the dynamic range intended". It sounds like you are listening to a Sony portable with AVLS (Auto-Volume Limiter System) turned on, which distorts the sound by chopping loud sounds above a certain threshold to be the same level as much quieter sounds and detroying the dynamic range of the recording. And unfortunately, as far as I can tell, you can't turn it off. So, while the imaging and surround effects were great, the volume tended to be distorted rather noticably. Don't take my words to strongly though, I think if I adjust the 3 different volume settings in the chain (DVD audio control, computer volume control panel, and then the DSP Pro) so that I can still get a loud enough signal without having the DSP's volume turned up high, it may not become as distorted, but aside from that, I would recomend this device for late night listening or maybe just extracting the surround effects while watching a DVD on your computer.
As many of you know, I am new to this whole headphone thing, but I decided to jump in the deepend when I went from a pair of cheap Sony's to my HD600s, and about a week later I picked up the DSP Pro on E-bay for $45. I would just like to say that it is a fun little gadget that is easily worth what I paid for it, I don't know about the $199 it retailed for, although I think most people got it bundled with their HD580s. Anyway, here goes...
Physical Description:
If there is one thing that the DSP Pro is, it is solidly built. Weighing in at 24.5 oz. it's case is solid metal. It's like a tube that has been flattened to be about 8 inches long, 3 inches wide, and 3/4 inch thick. The ends have plastic covering them with the input going in the top and the outputs at the bottom. The input consists of a 6 pin plug (shown in the picture) that takes care of the left and right audio channels as well as power, at the other end of this 12 foot cable you will find 2 rca plugs and a jack to plug in the end of the AC adapter. This allows you to plug into the outputs of your receiver and sit at your couch and have full control. At the bottom are 2 1/8" jacks which are for either 2 sets of headphones (each with independent volume control) or to output the L,R,C,S channels through the use of 2 stereo 1/8" to RCA connecting cords I used it solely for headphone listening so I cannot comment on it's performance in those aspects.
Equipment Used:
Source: Macintosh G3 playing CDs and DVDs on it's internal DVD player as well as a few MP3s
ICs: I plugged a stereo 1/8" to RCA Monster cable into the G3's headphone jack. Since both the DSP PRO and this 1/8" to RCA cable were terminated with male RCA plugs, I used Monster Female to Female RCA adapters to connect the two.
Headphones: Sennheiser HD600
Features and Performance:
This device is loaded with user adjustable features from bass control to dual volume controls, and even the ability to adjust where you are sitting in the soundfield.
The first step is to choose which set of "ears" it uses to creat it's effects. The DSP Pro has 15 different HTRFs programmed into it, and the first thing you need to do is listen to a series of clicks with your eyes closed and try to imagine which set sounds like speakers placed 1 meter directing in front of you, it's kinda tough, the differences are very subtle. It's pretty easy to tell which ones sound very wrong, but it's not so easy to tell which is right, I just kept it on the default setting for my tests, I imagine that changing this could have large differences in surround imaging.
I then used the test signals to see if this thing could really create surround imaging, cycling through the 5 speaker positions with the hissing noise sounds really incredible, you really can pinpoint where the speakers are supposed to be coming from.
On with the movies, the best part, I chose for my first demo the scene in Gladiator when Maximus is taken into the woods to be killed near the beginning of the movie (I'm sorry, I forget what chapter) and at one point, he throws a sword at someone, and I am so familiar with how real that sounds on my home theater that I thought it would be a good choice. And the verdict is...WOW!!, it did sound like it was traveling from right to left BEHIND me, as it should.
You can select 3 different rooms (Hall, Club, and Theater) and 3 different channel modes (Dolby Surround, Stereo, and Mono). I was using the theater setting, and cycling between Dolby, stereo, and mono, and the difference between stereo and doly was incredible, the soundstage really filled in front to back in addition to side to side, I think I might actually use this little gizmo to watch DVDs this semester (until my parents release my DVD player back to me).
You can also adjust the ambience, which they vaguely describe as how intimate the room is, i think it adds a delay of some sort, which effectively makes the room sound bigger. The other cool feature is the seat adjustment button, what this does is move you to the front or back of the soundstage (by adjusting the ratio of the volume of the front and rear speakers). On Metallica's S&M DVD it really was incredible how you could close your eyes and imagine whether you were sitting either at the front row or the back row or anywhere in between. Towards the extremes though it sounds a little unnatural and distorted, but it does allow some nice fine-tuning of the sound.
Final Word:
The surround effect on DVDs was incredible, I can't wait to use it some more, i will post a followup to this at some point, although it may not be until i get back to school in the fall. Overall, it is worth $50 easily, but my biggest problem with it is something they call a feature. The AVC (Automatic Volume Control) which "compensates for great differences in volume" which should be written as "distorts the dynamic range intended". It sounds like you are listening to a Sony portable with AVLS (Auto-Volume Limiter System) turned on, which distorts the sound by chopping loud sounds above a certain threshold to be the same level as much quieter sounds and detroying the dynamic range of the recording. And unfortunately, as far as I can tell, you can't turn it off. So, while the imaging and surround effects were great, the volume tended to be distorted rather noticably. Don't take my words to strongly though, I think if I adjust the 3 different volume settings in the chain (DVD audio control, computer volume control panel, and then the DSP Pro) so that I can still get a loud enough signal without having the DSP's volume turned up high, it may not become as distorted, but aside from that, I would recomend this device for late night listening or maybe just extracting the surround effects while watching a DVD on your computer.
