[Seidhepriest]

SIGH. See this?
 
 

 
These are very seriously modded ATH-M50. With a simple fruity Touch player, G4 or G1, they challenge my monitor speaker setup on balanced wiring. Of course a fruity player is still a fruity player, running at lame 44/16. Of course it's still a lot duller than any high-res gear. But outdoors the headphones isolate even with quiet music, cutting off all outside noise and they do give a speaker-like presence (which is an achievement in itself for angled-driver headphones, with a minimal midrange/bass bleed). So, talk about portable hi-fi. All it took was some cheapish silver-plated wiring, a Neutrik plug, and Blu-tack. No portable player will ever replace a decent home setup until it's 96/24. But what is there, works pretty well, and yeah, close to a definition of hi-fi - the detail and ambience and resolution on those are stunning.
 
So. While true hi-fi may not be possible on the go (it's impossible with CDs in the first place), a set of suitably large and suitably modded headphones does the job of playing music accurately outdoors. As accurately as the format limitations allow, anyway.

 

[H20Fidelity]

Very seriously modded ATH-M50! :devil_face:

 

[BBBS]

Super Serious

 

[Seidhepriest]

The way the main cable is set up, it won't overload/unsettle a socket, it's an angled plug with a flexible dual heat-shrink/spring strain relief. The cable is fairly flexible (it's AWG 26 silver-plated copper twisted pair) and it's actually lighter than AT's original cable (which is heavily laden with insulation as many people prefer it heavy).
 
So, all of the problems the OP complained of are absent: flexible wiring doesn't unsettle a headphone socket; not very expensive (material cost was something like $60), great detail and isolation, no amp in-between (ATH-M50 are pretty efficient), no LOD. Who knows, maybe if he had a set like this he wouldn't have left portable hi-fi.

 

[Lock]

A portable Amp can be manufactured by an end user (single production run) for about $200 dollars that has an SN ratio over 100db adds next to no colour distortion or any other effect on the characteristics of the original source.  If this was mass produced by someone like Sony, if could probably retail at $50 and still be profitable.  
This isn't opinion, it's pretty much fact.  The Objective 2, is the example.  Tested in almost every possible way and produced reference quality amplification.
 
However, there are issues.  Firstly ignoring listener bias (I'm talking psychological bias), everyone is different and everyone's headphones are different.  I like the Sennheiser HD-25ii.  They sound amazing, however they can be a little bright.  If I listen on my Pioneer receiver they are distinctly bright, if I listen on my ipod direct they are less bright, if I listen on my ibasso D1 from my laptop they are much fuller, and the top end is a lot less harsh.  However, which source is better?  I have a Native Instruments ADJ 4 soundcard which is better than all of these, but is a very inexpensive bit of kit.  I'm sure with some headphones it would sound poor.
 
 
The point I am making is this.  If I listen to music, I want to hear it as the producer/artist intended.  I don't want it coloured, I dont want it distorted, I don't want it modified.  But, I also want it to be kind to my ears so I choose my equipment accordingly.  But there is no reason why it needs to be expensive.  These portable headphone amps/dacs that cost over $200 are an absolute con.  It is a racket and there is implicit collusion between manufacturers artificially inflating the price.  BUT because people want their headphones to sound a certain way (this is subjectively 'better') they get conned into spending hundreds if not thousands on something which is being used to COMPENSATE for the way their headphones sound....  Save the money and buy different headphones till you find a pair that is matched to a cheap and practical portable DAP that gives the sound you want.  When you want the 'purest' (assuming you can hear a difference) musical reproduction, save it for at home with some decent monitor speakers, an good sound card and some lossless flac or wav files.
 
 
I really liked the OP Post, I found it refreshing and very true.  Different portable amps DO sound different, but different does not mean better, different does not mean more advanced, different does not mean it contains more (significantly more) expensive components.  It means it sounds different and may be preferencial to some listeners because of their own ears and headphones.  But should someone carry around a massive wedding cake esque brick of sound equipment to slightly change their headphone performance? No, it's ludicrous.  People are definitely fooled by snobbery and brand bias.
 
What I will say though is money is very well spent on digital cables.  I recently spent $5,000 on a new optical cable, it has dual copper shielding, a carbon ceramic, ferite blend sheath that means it has zero magnetic distortion and a artificial diamond clear coat on the fibre optic strands increasing their refractive index.  All in all it means there is zero signal degradation over long cable runs.  I have to run my cable almost 2000mm so was concerned I was not getting a pure signal path.  I was sceptical, but since using the cable, the stereo imaging is so much more defined.  On 5.1 sources the signal separation is also much better, it feels like you are actually in a concert, right infront of the stage.   
I bought this at the same time as a new HDMI cable.  It was only $2,000 but it is also top notch.  The entire cable has been vacuum sealed and the conductors isolated with inert krypton gas, each strand is suspended in its own vacuum so will get zero distortion.  It is also insulated with a depleted plutonium cesium mix.  The alpha particle emissions have a curious effect of allowing the electrons to pass through the pure CU conductors at close to double the normal speed.  It means for movies there is no lag between the picture and sound.  I have always been annoyed with the vocals are slightly out of sync with the actors mouths, this cable fixed the problem.  I was slightly concerned about the neutron radiation but the company I got it from gave me a discount on a lead shielded hifi rack entertainment centre.  Lead poisoning was a concern, but I just wear gloves when messing about with my AV equipment.
 
I did read this obscure article saying since Optical and HDMI signals are pure digital, that I could use a stainless steel cable with no shielding and see zero difference, but I'm pretty sure the guy had shares in those chinese ebay accounts that sell HDMI cables for $3 dollars, he is clearly just trying to rip me off and get my money.  The guys that sold me the $2,000 explained it using what sounded like science, plusss it came in a VERY nice box.  The box alone must have been worth $15, it also was wrapped in a piece of coloured velvet with a screen printed logo on, probably worth at least $5.  Why would u package a cable like that if it wasn't special?  I actually store the cable in the box all the time, I only take it out when I want to connect up my DVD player to watch a movie....
 
If any of you know of a decent USB or ethernet cable let me know, mine only cost $2, and $1 respectively and I really don't like how they colour the music that comes out of my laptop...
 
cheers for reading guys...  
Lock

 

[zluk]

It is true that it costs way too much for how they sound, but I still like it!

 

[Seidhepriest]

Quote:

What I will say though is money is very well spent on digital cables.  I recently spent $5,000 on a new optical cable, it has dual copper shielding, a carbon ceramic, ferite blend sheath that means it has zero magnetic distortion and a artificial diamond clear coat on the fibre optic strands increasing their refractive index.  All in all it means there is zero signal degradation over long cable runs.  I have to run my cable almost 2000mm so was concerned I was not getting a pure signal path.  I was sceptical, but since using the cable, the stereo imaging is so much more defined.  On 5.1 sources the signal separation is also much better, it feels like you are actually in a concert, right infront of the stage.   
I bought this at the same time as a new HDMI cable.  It was only $2,000 but it is also top notch.  The entire cable has been vacuum sealed and the conductors isolated with inert krypton gas, each strand is suspended in its own vacuum so will get zero distortion.  It is also insulated with a depleted plutonium cesium mix.  The alpha particle emissions have a curious effect of allowing the electrons to pass through the pure CU conductors at close to double the normal speed.  It means for movies there is no lag between the picture and sound.  I have always been annoyed with the vocals are slightly out of sync with the actors mouths, this cable fixed the problem.  I was slightly concerned about the neutron radiation but the company I got it from gave me a discount on a lead shielded hifi rack entertainment centre.  Lead poisoning was a concern, but I just wear gloves when messing about with my AV equipment.
 
I did read this obscure article saying since Optical and HDMI signals are pure digital, that I could use a stainless steel cable with no shielding and see zero difference, but I'm pretty sure the guy had shares in those chinese ebay accounts that sell HDMI cables for $3 dollars, he is clearly just trying to rip me off and get my money.  The guys that sold me the $2,000 explained it using what sounded like science, plusss it came in a VERY nice box.  The box alone must have been worth $15, it also was wrapped in a piece of coloured velvet with a screen printed logo on, probably worth at least $5.  Why would u package a cable like that if it wasn't special?  I actually store the cable in the box all the time, I only take it out when I want to connect up my DVD player to watch a movie....
 
If any of you know of a decent USB or ethernet cable let me know, mine only cost $2, and $1 respectively and I really don't like how they colour the music that comes out of my laptop...

 
Instead of mocking honest people, do the experiment yourself.

Get two sets of Audio-Technica ATH-M50. Should set you back something like $340 or more, but hey, you insist on blind denial. That costs.

Then get the following:

AWG 26, 30, 32 silver-plated copper twisted pair wire; in my case the AWG 26 was cheap as there're spools of the stuff lying around for studio wiring, but, it shouldn't be too expensive off EBay either. That might cost some $30-35.

Techflex jacket for the cable - should be something like $7-10, shipping included;

A 3.5 mm. plug - Neutrik/REAN NYS231 is standard and cheap, likely around $1-1.5;

A pack of Blu-Tack - really cheap, maybe $5 at most.

Assuming you're not an empty-handed critic, there must be a soldering iron and solder lying around. Also screwdrivers.

And spend a day or two modding one set of ATH-M50.

Then use a standard player like the IPhone or IPod Touch for two days of testing - one day with the stock ATH-M50, another with the modded set. Just walk around with the player on for a couple days. See which one you like the most.

About low-res formats like CD audio: detail limit for sampled signals is signal frequency*8. That leaves 4 sampling nodes per half-cycle, which is what's needed to properly draw a waveform. Likewise, 16-bit only leaves 4096 voltage levels at -24 dB. At -30 there're 2048, -36 1024, etc. It's all lame, dull and cold and hollow.
 
True hi-fi requires at least 160 KHz/24-bit (20 KHz*8).

 

[Seidhepriest]

Quote:

I have a pair of Sennheiser HD-25-1 II. Renowned for durability and honest sound reproduction, hence their use in a lot of studios. I bought some pure copper silver plated cable, kevlar tech flex from a place in NW London, and bough a neutrik plug and also some cardas connectors.  I used silver solder and made up a set of cables.  The cable did make the phones sound a bit better (imo) it's true, and it was well worth the  <£25 I paid. However, these are not digital cables, which was my point. I also asked my mate at uni, he is a Masters student in electrical engineering to test the cable. He measured the signal response (it's all technical so I can't explain all of what he did with the oscilloscope, because I don't understand it myself), what he did say was there was no measurable difference between the new cable and the original steel Sennheiser cable measured between frequencies of 18Hz and 22KHz, I believe he did this test at various levels of current. He also pointed out there was, although measurable, only negligible difference between these cables and a paper clip under the same test.  I will post a pic of me cable, it does 'look' sweet.

 
We use K-240 Studio and K-271 Studio for vocals. They have some benefits over Senn gear, like increasing contrast between notes, so musicians can actually play better in K-240, say. Also pretty good spatial definition.
 
You cannot just measure current conductivity. What matters is current modulation quality. How well the cable can preserve electroanalogue wave shapes. In my own experience, stock cheap copper cables cause delays between arrival of low and high frequencies, they also get stuck/dead/depressed harmonics in the midrange and high frequencies. I've got three different cables for the K-240, one stock AKG (rubbish) cable, another from a Hong-Kong maker, and one I built myself from SPC twisted pair. They all are different (the SPC TP is the cleanest/quickest). So what you do is the same as what we did: you record a MIDI score, play it back through a synth, and use different patch cables to test. The studio owner recorded a short MIDI passage, sent it to Roland JV-2080, and recorded the output back through a MOTU interface at 96/24. The waveforms were different for SPC cables and regular street-store copper cables. Basically with a good cable everything arrives on time, there're no delayed current bits (which is what causes harmonic deformation) and no delays between different frequencies. Everything's lively and comes in right in time.
 
For digital, optical fibre quality also makes sense, some cheap plastic is actually murkier than other. As for electrical digital, again, it's basically a square wave modulation, so EMI and metal quality will affect quality too. The actual modulation speed for digital can be in MHz (clocks are transmitted at 256 times the sampling rate). The ideal for electric digital is twisted pair with a coax shield. Or just coax if cheap. But it has to be shielded to avoid induced hum/noise and phase deformation, especially if the standard does not support balanced wiring/recovery (which consumer gear doesn't). Now because actual electroanalogue smooth transitions are not transmitted over the digital modulation, it likely doesn't matter much what the material is, though at some point it will affect transmission speed.

 

[Seidhepriest]

Nobody says it has to be uber-expensive cable, but if you look at an optical terminator and it's murky, cheap plastic, then obviously there's an issue.

 

[Lock]

Quote:

Nobody says it has to be uber-expensive cable, but if you look at an optical terminator and it's murky, cheap plastic, then obviously there's an issue.

You are obviously very knowledgable, so I wont challenge the accuracy of what you have stated. However I would make a point regarding your comments on digital cables.
 
I was referring to audio quality and reproduction.  The digital optical cable cannot introduce humm, or distortion or effect the performance of data transmission UNLESS it is not fit for purpose and data is being lost.  This could be due to an inappropriate material with an unsuitable refractive index, or because of substandard terminators which don't fit snug and can move during operaton.  still, a £10 quid cable would be fine..  I will concede that the speed of light is only constant in a vacuum and 'could possibly' travel slightly slower through some transition mediums, however if there is no data loss I seriously doubt the difference could in any way be measured without the help of CERN, but I cannot be 100%.
 
With regards to conductor based digital cables, if the cable is introducing hum, surely this is an earthing issue with the cable and the audio equipment? Not an erroneous signal being introduced at the pre analogue pre dac stage?  Think about it, surely this makes no sense?  
 
Regarding latency, I grant you that this could cause a problem for studio recording if it is not consistent and predictable across the frequency range.  I don't believe however that this would be measurable over the 1m typical cable run of a home system. In a studio environment it probably would need to be addressed.  Whether it is a $2,000 cable, worth of R&D and materials is another question still.  I stand by my view that for home AV there is no user discernable advantage for digital sources in buying anything but basic digi cables.  I concede that in certain studio environments there might be some benefit from spending a little more on digital cables, but not the astronomical prices some companies charge....

 

[Seidhepriest]

Quote:

You are obviously very knowledgable, so I wont challenge the accuracy of what you have stated. However I would make a point regarding your comments on digital cables.
 
I was referring to audio quality and reproduction.  The digital optical cable cannot introduce humm, or distortion or effect the performance of data transmission UNLESS it is not fit for purpose and data is being lost.  This could be due to an inappropriate material with an unsuitable refractive index, or because of substandard terminators which don't fit snug and can move during operaton.  still, a £10 quid cable would be fine..  I will concede that the speed of light is only constant in a vacuum and 'could possibly' travel slightly slower through some transition mediums, however if there is no data loss I seriously doubt the difference could in any way be measured without the help of CERN, but I cannot be 100%.
 
With regards to conductor based digital cables, if the cable is introducing hum, surely this is an earthing issue with the cable and the audio equipment? Not an erroneous signal being introduced at the pre analogue pre dac stage?  Think about it, surely this makes no sense?  
 
Regarding latency, I grant you that this could cause a problem for studio recording if it is not consistent and predictable across the frequency range.  I don't believe however that this would be measurable over the 1m typical cable run of a home system. In a studio environment it probably would need to be addressed.  Whether it is a $2,000 cable, worth of R&D and materials is another question still.  I stand by my view that for home AV there is no user discernable advantage for digital sources in buying anything but basic digi cables.  I concede that in certain studio environments there might be some benefit from spending a little more on digital cables, but not the astronomical prices some companies charge....

 
Yeah, a TOSLink cable doesn't have to be expensive, you could get one for 5 bucks and it'll be all right. Still, the issue is there - murky plastic can cause jitter issues and it can degrade link quality. It can cause dropouts. This is because even for 48 KHz, the actual S/PDIF bandwidth is 100 KHz to 5 MHz. Because of the clock being transmitted over the same link. At these speeds obstacles to electricity and light do become an issue.
 
So some dodgy Chinese cheap quality optical fibre links will not work well. They can cause frame dropouts, especially at higher sampling rates. This does have to do with transparency - literally. No, you don't have to spend thousands, but a $10 optical link from a well-known manufacturer makes sense, rather than buying a $2 cheap low-QC Chinese thing.
 
About electrical: nope. Make an experiment, put together a microphone cable from three wires over a length of 3 m. with XLR connectors. No shielding. Plug a condenser microphone into it. Turn phantom power on. You'll get awful hum and interference noise. Shielding matters, in fact the very purpose of coaxial mesh around a single conductor is just that - EMI shielding. Earthing is different, you'd get ground from one of the wires. The hum and interference noise will be induced into the microphone cable by the many EM fields around. Now, there's a lot that affects EMI, one of the reasons for EMI in a microphone cable being the extremely small numbers of current (mV/mA). It's very weak current, so anything around affects it. But you never run a balanced condenser microphone cable without shielding. Even if balanced, it's still very sensitive to EMI. And the same EMI is floating around anything, in fact even people can be radio antennas. And the same EMI does affect data cables, possibly causing serious timing issues. It's mostly important for realtime data streaming; where the data rates are low and there's error recovery, a packet that couldn't be decoded can be re-sent. But in huge data rates data has to be transmitted undistorted. When streaming video/audio digitally in realtime, it'd be crazy to use unshielded electric conductors for digital data. Trust me, I've many friends working in the broadcast business, and one of them is a regional manager for a company that does digital video transmission for TV networks over optical fibre. They also have specialised electric/optical S/PDIF converters among other things, and wherever there's electric wiring it's all shielded (not just coax or mesh, also heavy steel cages) and set up to avoid any EMI sources.
After all, digital is just modulated analogue and the waveforms transmited electrically are vulnerable to all the same distortion as regular electroanalogue waveforms.
 
Astronomic prices are pretty much dictated by people who are convinced that dumping more money on something, even unreasonable amounts, will buy them the absolutely best thing possible. They often have no correlation with reality. But if anything consumer kit will be more vulnerable to distortion/interference than pro kit. Testing different HDMI and S/PDIF coax cables though is possible, you just open the things up, see what they've got for shielding, how much shielding they've got, and try bandwidth tests on them - transmit data through the cables, whichever one supports higher sustained data rates wins.

 

[Seidhepriest]

By themselves, any exotic materials and the like don't guarantee much. Silver makes sense as an analogue conductor because it's the best more or less common electric conductor and it does not degenerate much with oxidation (and silver oxidates very slowly, without rust). That's why coating copper wires with silver will improve conductivity, among other things it'll prevent copper oxygenation.
 
With digital cables though, yes, silver can improve throughput too, but because all data is basically transmitted as a high-frequency square waveform, waveform shape accuracy isn't such a huge issue. Copper and steel with a coax shield ought to work fine. At any rate, what matters is the sustained transfer rate for the data stream in which the picture and sound go. So testing an electrical cable for digital audio/video ought to be as simple as doing sustained data transfer tests. If it can transmit more, that really means the materials are good enough to sustain higher modulation speeds, and that's the big winner then.
 
Latency, more than anything, will be a product of incorrect picture/audio synchronisation at the source, and if the player's any smart, it ought to allow compensating for audio/video sync (VLC certainly does that in software). If the sound is delayed by 5 msec., delay the picture by 5 msec. and start the playback 5 msec. later, that kind of thing. Alternately the TV/display's decoder might lag, or any electronics inside it (e. g. sound DAC receiving audio data delayed compared to picture decoder). But, to prevent any lag at the signal receiver you just buffer both video and audio data and reassemble/sync audio/video frames before starting playback, again compensating for any delays if necessary.

 

[Lock]

Quote:

By themselves, any exotic materials and the like don't guarantee much. Silver makes sense as an analogue conductor because it's the best more or less common electric conductor and it does not degenerate much with oxidation (and silver oxidates very slowly, without rust). That's why coating copper wires with silver will improve conductivity, among other things it'll prevent copper oxygenation.
 
With digital cables though, yes, silver can improve throughput too, but because all data is basically transmitted as a high-frequency square waveform, waveform shape accuracy isn't such a huge issue. Copper and steel with a coax shield ought to work fine. At any rate, what matters is the sustained transfer rate for the data stream in which the picture and sound go. So testing an electrical cable for digital audio/video ought to be as simple as doing sustained data transfer tests. If it can transmit more, that really means the materials are good enough to sustain higher modulation speeds, and that's the big winner then.
 
Latency, more than anything, will be a product of incorrect picture/audio synchronisation at the source, and if the player's any smart, it ought to allow compensating for audio/video sync (VLC certainly does that in software). If the sound is delayed by 5 msec., delay the picture by 5 msec. and start the playback 5 msec. later, that kind of thing. Alternately the TV/display's decoder might lag, or any electronics inside it (e. g. sound DAC receiving audio data delayed compared to picture decoder). But, to prevent any lag at the signal receiver you just buffer both video and audio data and reassemble/sync audio/video frames before starting playback, again compensating for any delays if necessary.

all very good points. and tbh nothing I didn't already know.  Anybody who knows what a Faraday cage will understand shielding.  You have kind of made my point though, in as much as the issue for digital data transmission is negligible in all but absolute junk cables, moreover that remotely good AV equipment will use methods to correct for data loss or latency.  And it doesn't surprise me that comercial operations use extensive techniques.  However, for anything but home set ups, the issues with correction for data loss in studios or media situations does sound like a very good reason to go overboard to prevent it.  Thanks for providing the insight, it's a good debate

 

[Seidhepriest]

Didn't decent DVD/Blue-ray players come with sound latency compensation anyway? It's there mostly to compensate for sound travel time, for multichannel installations in larger spaces. But, my point is, if, say, an HDMI cable supports a certain data transfer rate with no error correction, then that is it. It can transfer digital audio/video in time. The real snag though is that HDMI does not have error correction. Meaning, it's not like an Ethernet file transfer where you send a file and if a chunk of it gets lost it's automatically retransmitted as soon as the receiver says it hasn't received chunk N of the file. Nah, a dropout is a dropout. No chance to do anything about it. So long HDMI cables may have problems. If you ask me, send HDMI signals over silver-plated twisted pair with a beefy shielding over balanced converters and they should be fine. But nobody does that in practice. Silver's too expensive
 
Take a read here: http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/dvihdmicomponent.htm
 
That page actually states that because of poor impedance stability twisted pair isn't very suitable for HDMI. That is, the way the cable standard is, it's not very suitable for the job for long runs.

 

[trunolimit]

I work for a high end AV installer. Even though HDMI standards have gotten better (offering 10gig over copper) we would never use long HDMI runs to transfer audio or video. We use fiber and at minimum cat6a with HDMI baluns at each end. Electrical interference in our environment is such a hassle that we have begun to turn down jobs if they aren't willing to go fiber. Having clients complain about issues with pushing 1080p over anything less is just not worth it. Fiber is at the point where the cost is negligible. Most equipment comes with fiber ports built in so the frequency of us having to use converters is diminishing. Really in this day and age there is no reason not to use fiber when distance is a concern.