The Fiio A5 thread: an upgrade of E12A, MUSES02+LME49600, 800mW, 19Vp-p, 12 hours
Dec 14, 2018 at 5:43 AM Post #796 of 1,039
OK - that's really weird - for a few reasons.

  1. The A5 is almost completely neutral - measures dead flat, practically wire with gain.
  2. The HD598 is not a bright headphone. it has a 10dB rise at 2-3 kHz and another one at 9-10 kHz. 2.3kHz is too early for sibilance. 9-10 kHz is too late. So your description of the A5 or HD598 being a cause seems strange
  3. The HD598 can tend to be a bit grainy in the upper mids - because the bump is too pronounced - perhaps that is what you're hearing?
My advice - drop the upper mid-range by about 4-5dB (2-3 kHz) and see if it makes a difference.

Also - check your music - perhaps it is also in the mastering? A hot track coupled with a headphone that overly boosts the upper mids can cause issues if you are sensitive to that frequency band. If that's the case - I'd sell the HD598 and look to get an HD6XX (Massdrop version of the HD650)

I will try reducing the 2-3 KHz band to see if the sibilance goes away from vocals. Thank you for responding. I highly doubt that the headphones could be damaged because sound from damaged headphones would be much more visible. Everything in the 598 seems very good except the vocals,
they just sound thin
 
Dec 14, 2018 at 3:10 PM Post #797 of 1,039
Yep, what Brooko said. I would venture to say that you might actually enjoy the sound of THD (many folks do), whereas the fundamentals in the vocal range on the Schiit gear was literally being masked. The A5 is very neutral IME; what goes in, comes back out. I even had my Beyer DT880/600s on it, with nary an issue, and they aren't exactly lenient when it comes to music reproduction.

OK - that's really weird - for a few reasons.

  1. The A5 is almost completely neutral - measures dead flat, practically wire with gain.
  2. The HD598 is not a bright headphone. it has a 10dB rise at 2-3 kHz and another one at 9-10 kHz. 2.3kHz is too early for sibilance. 9-10 kHz is too late. So your description of the A5 or HD598 being a cause seems strange
  3. The HD598 can tend to be a bit grainy in the upper mids - because the bump is too pronounced - perhaps that is what you're hearing?
My advice - drop the upper mid-range by about 4-5dB (2-3 kHz) and see if it makes a difference.

Also - check your music - perhaps it is also in the mastering? A hot track coupled with a headphone that overly boosts the upper mids can cause issues if you are sensitive to that frequency band. If that's the case - I'd sell the HD598 and look to get an HD6XX (Massdrop version of the HD650)
 
Dec 14, 2018 at 3:45 PM Post #798 of 1,039
I will try reducing the 2-3 KHz band to see if the sibilance goes away from vocals. Thank you for responding. I highly doubt that the headphones could be damaged because sound from damaged headphones would be much more visible. Everything in the 598 seems very good except the vocals,
they just sound thin

Try what Paul said, it should solve the issue.

If you still want to push things, I would also suggest the following:

Lower 3-5 kHz by 5-7dB, and increase 100 Hz by 3-5 dB This will push back the midrange, especially the upper midrange, and thicken the sound.
 
Dec 14, 2018 at 3:59 PM Post #799 of 1,039
Try what Paul said, it should solve the issue.

If you still want to push things, I would also suggest the following:

Lower 3-5 kHz by 5-7dB, and increase 100 Hz by 3-5 dB This will push back the midrange, especially the upper midrange, and thicken the sound.

Good catch George, I had the freq wrong earlier (will amend earlier post)

hd598.png

The grey is the raw frequency

If you drop the 3-5 kHz (especially parametric with a wide Q) you should be able to address the grain issue.

If you want to add some bass - I'd make it more sub-bass (around 5-60 Hz) for your rise.
 
Dec 14, 2018 at 9:10 PM Post #800 of 1,039
Good catch George, I had the freq wrong earlier (will amend earlier post)


The grey is the raw frequency

If you drop the 3-5 kHz (especially parametric with a wide Q) you should be able to address the grain issue.

If you want to add some bass - I'd make it more sub-bass (around 5-60 Hz) for your rise.

I also generally recommend increasing the sub-bass, this is what I do, and mostly decrease the 100 Hz area, but I had a feeling the user might have wanted a slightly thicker sound, which is why I suggested an increase in the 100Hz area/
 
Dec 15, 2018 at 12:22 AM Post #802 of 1,039
Yep, what Brooko said. I would venture to say that you might actually enjoy the sound of THD (many folks do), whereas the fundamentals in the vocal range on the Schiit gear was literally being masked. The A5 is very neutral IME; what goes in, comes back out. I even had my Beyer DT880/600s on it, with nary an issue, and they aren't exactly lenient when it comes to music reproduction.

My impressions were posted on the basis of selected songs that I have listened time and time again. After listening from the A5 I wasn't getting any details that the Schiit had supposedly masked. I don't know how thd sounds so it could be that I just like thd without knowing how it sounds.
Having said that I got the same kind of details on both A5 and Schiit. The A5 seems faster than Schiit. But the real difference is that A5 presents vocal range which is slightly thin compared to the other frequencies which in turn increases the need to turn up the volume that makes the overall sound too loud to listen. The second difference is that A5 presents the last sounds such as 's' in a very peaky way. I wish there was a way to simply cut off those 's' sounds and leave everything else as it was.

I am pasting the name of song and the moment in the song to be more precise.
The name of song is "Moment of Surrender" by U2. And the moment of shouty vocal is :) the stone was semi precious:)
Stone begins with a 's' that is very painful and this is what I have been alluding to.
 
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Dec 15, 2018 at 1:13 AM Post #803 of 1,039
Recording sounded pretty awful actually. Likely its heavily compressed and the sibilance is in the recording.

Just so you can see what U2 has done to its music over time - http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/artist?artist=u2

Back in the 80's they released some excellently recorded albums. Its not the amp - its the recording.
 
Dec 15, 2018 at 1:24 AM Post #804 of 1,039
Dec 15, 2018 at 1:30 AM Post #805 of 1,039
Perhaps the Magni is coloured - the A5 definitely isn't
 
Dec 15, 2018 at 3:45 PM Post #806 of 1,039
Perhaps the Magni is coloured - the A5 definitely isn't

That is exactly my take on this. I don't think there's anything wrong with enjoying the color that some gear may apply to music. The only issue with this IMO, is that you may be missing out on good timbre, and imaging, etc. For whatever reason, the e12a seemed warmer to me, somewhat like Sennheiser to Beyerdynamics. Perhaps sell the A5 and find an e12a on the used market and try it? I have both hanging off the pre-outs of a Clarett 4 pre, and they sound great.

Needless to say, you could indeed have a defective unit, who knows?
 
Dec 15, 2018 at 4:02 PM Post #807 of 1,039
That is exactly my take on this. I don't think there's anything wrong with enjoying the color that some gear may apply to music. The only issue with this IMO, is that you may be missing out on good timbre, and imaging, etc. For whatever reason, the e12a seemed warmer to me, somewhat like Sennheiser to Beyerdynamics. Perhaps sell the A5 and find an e12a on the used market and try it? I have both hanging off the pre-outs of a Clarett 4 pre, and they sound great.

Needless to say, you could indeed have a defective unit, who knows?

No chance for me to sell the A5 and get the E12A. But if E12A is warmer then could there be a way to manipulate A5's sound to make it sound like the E12A?
 
Dec 15, 2018 at 4:40 PM Post #808 of 1,039
No chance for me to sell the A5 and get the E12A. But if E12A is warmer then could there be a way to manipulate A5's sound to make it sound like the E12A?

On the A5, if you use it in high gain mode it adds a slight bit of warmth, that sounds more like a tube amp. You’ll obviously need to readjust the volume once going from low gain to high gain.

Someone measured it and found it was introducing a slight bit of distortion to get the desired tube amp effect.

I don’t know how accurate the information is, but if you search in this thread you’ll see where this is discussed.

Someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong...
 
Dec 15, 2018 at 5:37 PM Post #809 of 1,039
High gain just raises the noise floor. To get a tube effect it would need to raise even ordered harmonics specifically. I’ve seen no evidence of that. I can remeasure - but I don’t think they stand out specifically
 
Dec 15, 2018 at 11:51 PM Post #810 of 1,039
On the A5, if you use it in high gain mode it adds a slight bit of warmth, that sounds more like a tube amp. You’ll obviously need to readjust the volume once going from low gain to high gain.

Someone measured it and found it was introducing a slight bit of distortion to get the desired tube amp effect.

I don’t know how accurate the information is, but if you search in this thread you’ll see where this is discussed.

Someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong...

My impressions were posted on high gain. Turning into high gain never brought that wamth.
 

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