[bigshot]

Your turntable is calibrated to the RIAA curve. Once your preamp corrects for that, you have a regular line level input, the same as any other source. I guess if you find that all LPs sound wrong, you could apply a blanket EQ to it, but I don’t think many people do that. It’s different for 78s because there was no standard curve in the early days. But aside from that, LPs should all be calibrated the same.

 

[magicscreen]

Listen to MUSIC

Thank you very much.
You buy something, sit down and listen to it.
What do you hear? Do you like it or not?
This is the only important thing.

 

[bigshot]

You start from a place of calibration for fidelity. Then you can adjust to your own taste. But unless you start from accuracy, you flail about, not knowing where to start. That's why people end up with headphones with 15 different sounds. They can't find the sound they really like because it isn't anchored to anything real. Randomness produces random results.

 

[Bozzunter]

I don't even think that such people can't find the sound they really like. In my opinion it's the madness to try and "fine tune", "optimize", "improve" something (the sound) in a world where, alas, the optimal has already been reached way too many years ago (headphones, DAC, amplifiers, you name it). If you read the opinions about Sennheiser HD 800s, for instance, you find things like: "the bass is very weak", "the bass is perfect", "you don't understand bass"... with the peaceful conclusion "OK you listen to what you like". That may be the issue: OK, I'm entitled to listen to what I like, but I'd do a better service to myself to understand the sound a little more before rambling on delusional issues (Sennheiser is an example but you can find the same BS on basically every headphone).

In a way it's kind of intriguing to think that technology will always improve and make things better. That's why too many people can't accept that a $10 DAC (like the lightning to line out adapter from Apple) provides all it needs and even more. "Better" to think that we need the power of four or even eight DAC in order to process the sound, sigh.

On a personal note, I wouldn't really suggest to use EQ to find the perfect sound. Unless you listen to your own music, if you use Spotify it is not really practical (the internal EQ is a joke and you're forced to use external programs). It's way better to understand what's a good sound and one pair of headphones, two maximum, without going berserk with changing 1db here, 2db there and so on.

It's a real pity that Audeze's solutions with their own lightning cable with internal equalizer didn't become widespread. You can't go better than that on a practical level.

 

[118900]

I don't even think that such people can't find the sound they really like. In my opinion it's the madness to try and "fine tune", "optimize", "improve" something (the sound) in a world where, alas, the optimal has already been reached way too many years ago (headphones, DAC, amplifiers, you name it). If you read the opinions about Sennheiser HD 800s, for instance, you find things like: "the bass is very weak", "the bass is perfect", "you don't understand bass"... with the peaceful conclusion "OK you listen to what you like". That may be the issue: OK, I'm entitled to listen to what I like, but I'd do a better service to myself to understand the sound a little more before rambling on delusional issues (Sennheiser is an example but you can find the same BS on basically every headphone).

In a way it's kind of intriguing to think that technology will always improve and make things better. That's why too many people can't accept that a $10 DAC (like the lightning to line out adapter from Apple) provides all it needs and even more. "Better" to think that we need the power of four or even eight DAC in order to process the sound, sigh.

On a personal note, I wouldn't really suggest to use EQ to find the perfect sound. Unless you listen to your own music, if you use Spotify it is not really practical (the internal EQ is a joke and you're forced to use external programs). It's way better to understand what's a good sound and one pair of headphones, two maximum, without going berserk with changing 1db here, 2db there and so on.

It's a real pity that Audeze's solutions with their own lightning cable with internal equalizer didn't become widespread. You can't go better than that on a practical level.

My personal $0.02 worth: I think that the apple “dongle” is an excellent product for its money but I disagree that it is the be all and end all of DAC capabilities. Having owned a few DACs myself and having performed A/B testing (but not measurements, I rely on others to do that) I can definitely guarantee that there are DACs that significantly improve the sound and in particular the 3D depth imaging to a point that the recording sounds far more realistic, immersive and enjoyable, at a price though.

I put this down to the evolution of conversion principles based on the growing understanding of how the brain processes sound (in particular analogue waveforms constructed from digital data) as explained by people like Rob Watts who explains his theory in detail rather than the bunkum many others sell.

I also believe that technology (including materials technology) does advance and that this can bring changes and improvements, however these changes are seen every decade or so and certainly don’t translate into the “major” improvements some manufacturers try and fob every few years. The basic technological premises for the vast majority of components have changed very little and the vast majority of manufacturer’s are simply tweaking existing products and selling these as the “next big thing”.

 

[castleofargh]

I don't even think that such people can't find the sound they really like. In my opinion it's the madness to try and "fine tune", "optimize", "improve" something (the sound) in a world where, alas, the optimal has already been reached way too many years ago (headphones, DAC, amplifiers, you name it). If you read the opinions about Sennheiser HD 800s, for instance, you find things like: "the bass is very weak", "the bass is perfect", "you don't understand bass"... with the peaceful conclusion "OK you listen to what you like". That may be the issue: OK, I'm entitled to listen to what I like, but I'd do a better service to myself to understand the sound a little more before rambling on delusional issues (Sennheiser is an example but you can find the same BS on basically every headphone).

In a way it's kind of intriguing to think that technology will always improve and make things better. That's why too many people can't accept that a $10 DAC (like the lightning to line out adapter from Apple) provides all it needs and even more. "Better" to think that we need the power of four or even eight DAC in order to process the sound, sigh.

On a personal note, I wouldn't really suggest to use EQ to find the perfect sound. Unless you listen to your own music, if you use Spotify it is not really practical (the internal EQ is a joke and you're forced to use external programs). It's way better to understand what's a good sound and one pair of headphones, two maximum, without going berserk with changing 1db here, 2db there and so on.

It's a real pity that Audeze's solutions with their own lightning cable with internal equalizer didn't become widespread. You can't go better than that on a practical level.

People having different feelings about headphones can be explained by HRTF, seal quality, previous headphone, music tastes, and the vast freedom of interpretation for flowery vocabulary.

If people have a different placement and seal quality on a hd800, of course they can experience very different amounts of bass. Sean Olive argues that it might be a lead cause of disagreements when describing the sound of headphones.

About EQ, if we stick with the HD800 as an example, there will be occasions when EQing it will objectively be better than using some other headphone coming closer to my perceived flat. The tricky question in the end is always to know what we need. Then everything else goes pretty smoothly IMO. Sadly, I'd say that most audiophiles have no clue so they endlessly try stuff until they get lucky. There has to be a better way to approach that hobby and again, that's just my opinion, EQ is a great way to explore and learn about ourselves. It's also a great way to turn an "almost there" headphone into a "I like that".

 

[Bozzunter]

I put this down to the evolution of conversion principles based on the growing understanding of how the brain processes sound (in particular analogue waveforms constructed from digital data) as explained by people like Rob Watts who explains his theory in detail rather than the bunkum many others sell.

Rob Watt's theoretical ramblings has been more than debunked in this very forum, with scientific arguments. What he really defends are a bunch of concepts with no relevance whatsoever for practical listening, starting with his theory of samples. It doesn't surprise that his DACs go from $400 to $20,000, and if I lived in US I'd be more than wiling to plan a blind test in person and to offer 20K against $50 to whom discerns any difference between his products and the Apple DAC.

 

[bigshot]

3D depth imaging is one of those terms that sounds very technical, but it’s actually just another flowery term for subjective impression.

I don’t have the Apple dongle, but I have a stack of Apple products and I have yet to find one that isn’t audibly transparent, and an order of magnitude better specs than transparent too. If you hear something as better than an Apple product, I would strongly suspect that expectation bias has more to do with it than sound quality.

 

[castleofargh]

My personal $0.02 worth: I think that the apple “dongle” is an excellent product for its money but I disagree that it is the be all and end all of DAC capabilities. Having owned a few DACs myself and having performed A/B testing (but not measurements, I rely on others to do that) I can definitely guarantee that there are DACs that significantly improve the sound and in particular the 3D depth imaging to a point that the recording sounds far more realistic, immersive and enjoyable, at a price though.

I put this down to the evolution of conversion principles based on the growing understanding of how the brain processes sound (in particular analogue waveforms constructed from digital data) as explained by people like Rob Watts who explains his theory in detail rather than the bunkum many others sell.

I also believe that technology (including materials technology) does advance and that this can bring changes and improvements, however these changes are seen every decade or so and certainly don’t translate into the “major” improvements some manufacturers try and fob every few years. The basic technological premises for the vast majority of components have changed very little and the vast majority of manufacturer’s are simply tweaking existing products and selling these as the “next big thing”.

If you want depth and 3D imaging, do yourself a favor, stop using headphones and get some nice multichannel system + albums/movies. Or go read about HRTF and psychoacoustics, and find gears that might implement that in a more or less customized way with headphones. Because the tentative justifications by Rob Watts for doing too much of everything on the basis that he can, are real close to marketing fairy tales.
There is no research backing any of his grand subjective claims. What we know about human hearing screams that he's talking nonsense. Just because he somehow convinced people to give him a platform to share his perception fantasies, doesn't mean there is anything true about it.

Listen to him when he talks about math and engineering. The man is real good at that. But when he talks about humans and psychoacoustics, he's clearly no better than any other random audiophile with some weird idea. If his ideas were correct, you wouldn't have a clue what sound localization is, because at anytime in real life there are stuff several magnitudes louder than what he's trying to fix, that are constantly added to any given sound source. And yet, it all works out fine. His ideas about human hearing are silly, and the magnitudes he declares relevant are ludicrous. You can't salvage something so wrong.
I could add 3 national anthems 50dB below the sound of a given instrument and I would still have the necessary cues to locate that instrument with a precision within my very human abilities. Using a gazillion tap filter and -250db noise shaping is great if you're trying to isolate the fart of a dude on the other side of the planet at the time of the recording for some CIA pet project. Although we don't have the tech to record anything with that level of accuracy in the first place, and we most likely never will, sorry CIA.

 

[DuncanDirkDick]

Your turntable is calibrated to the RIAA curve. Once your preamp corrects for that, you have a regular line level input, the same as any other source. I guess if you find that all LPs sound wrong, you could apply a blanket EQ to it, but I don’t think many people do that. It’s different for 78s because there was no standard curve in the early days. But aside from that, LPs should all be calibrated the same.

My argument has nothing to do with RIAA, rather with technicalities of LPs and their mastering. You cant compensate for mono bass cutoff (which is mastering specific) or low SNR. I know it's quite common for people wanting a different sound signature for a noisy analogue source and a high SNR digital source. I'm just challenging your "coloration in the last piece of the chain" argument. Using EQ wouldn't be coherent to that as well.

 

[bigshot]

Mastering is supposed be consistent across the board. You’re talking about custom EQing each LP differently to correct mastering errors. I have tens of thousands of records and I don’t feel a need to do that. The only thing I have in the chain right in front of my turntable is my Burwen noise reduction unit. I EQ 78s individually on my shellac turntable, but that’s because there was no standard response curve back then.

 

[118900]

If you want depth and 3D imaging, do yourself a favor, stop using headphones and get some nice multichannel system + albums/movies. Or go read about HRTF and psychoacoustics, and find gears that might implement that in a more or less customized way with headphones. Because the tentative justifications by Rob Watts for doing too much of everything on the basis that he can, are real close to marketing fairy tales.
There is no research backing any of his grand subjective claims. What we know about human hearing screams that he's talking nonsense. Just because he somehow convinced people to give him a platform to share his perception fantasies, doesn't mean there is anything true about it.

Listen to him when he talks about math and engineering. The man is real good at that. But when he talks about humans and psychoacoustics, he's clearly no better than any other random audiophile with some weird idea. If his ideas were correct, you wouldn't have a clue what sound localization is, because at anytime in real life there are stuff several magnitudes louder than what he's trying to fix, that are constantly added to any given sound source. And yet, it all works out fine. His ideas about human hearing are silly, and the magnitudes he declares relevant are ludicrous. You can't salvage something so wrong.
I could add 3 national anthems 50dB below the sound of a given instrument and I would still have the necessary cues to locate that instrument with a precision within my very human abilities. Using a gazillion tap filter and -250db noise shaping is great if you're trying to isolate the fart of a dude on the other side of the planet at the time of the recording for some CIA pet project. Although we don't have the tech to record anything with that level of accuracy in the first place, and we most likely never will, sorry CIA.

I do own a 5.1 system, thanks, but your comments don’t really tell me why I’m getting very strong depth perception from one product and not others and then after noticing this independently I read his explanation which confirms this and goes some way towards explaining it.

Maybe it is all BS, but if that is so could you kindly expand on why his ideas about human hearing and interpretation are so wrong?

you cite how people wouldn't have a clue what sound localization is, because at anytime in real life there is stuff several magnitudes louder than what he's trying to fix, but surely the whole point is that in real life the sounds you hear aren’t converted to digital before you hear them.

don’t get me wrong, if you have a valid point that you can illustrate I would be more than happy to learn more, it’s why I’m following this thread in the first place.

 

[118900]

3D depth imaging is one of those terms that sounds very technical, but it’s actually just another flowery term for subjective impression.

I don’t have the Apple dongle, but I have a stack of Apple products and I have yet to find one that isn’t audibly transparent, and an order of magnitude better specs than transparent too. If you hear something as better than an Apple product, I would strongly suspect that expectation bias has more to do with it than sound quality.

Doing A/B testing and hearing a significant difference in the depth (or at least perceived) depth of field?

I did an A/B test a few years ago between a generic USB cable and an audioquest “carbon” one (before I had found out about asynchronous signal transfer) and heard zero difference between the two (having purchased the audioquest cable before hand so you definitely expect bias) so you may be right but I try to be critical of equipment I compare.

again I may be absolutely wrong and the results of what I heard may simply be in my mind but I would like to know the science behind it all

 

[sonitus mirus]

Doing A/B testing and hearing a significant difference in the depth (or at least perceived) depth of field?

I did an A/B test a few years ago between a generic USB cable and an audioquest “carbon” one (before I had found out about asynchronous signal transfer) and heard zero difference between the two (having purchased the audioquest cable before hand so you definitely expect bias) so you may be right but I try to be critical of equipment I compare.

again I may be absolutely wrong and the results of what I heard may simply be in my mind but I would like to know the science behind it all

Until you can show that you are actually hearing a difference, the science is going to be restricted to psychology.

 

[118900]

Rob Watt's theoretical ramblings has been more than debunked in this very forum, with scientific arguments. What he really defends are a bunch of concepts with no relevance whatsoever for practical listening, starting with his theory of samples. It doesn't surprise that his DACs go from $400 to $20,000, and if I lived in US I'd be more than wiling to plan a blind test in person and to offer 20K against $50 to whom discerns any difference between his products and the Apple DAC.

It’s 10 not 20 not that that changes things. I will search the forum, thanks