[doctorjazz]

I've had some headphones that don't play well with the Pono. The Ety 4P didn't sound great to me with them, and now I'm finding that my custom acs Encores don't play well with it either. The high end rolls off significantly to my ears (using the Pono line out into the Liquid Carbon, then plugging the Encores into the LC fixes the problem).
Just sayin'

 

[Venture Guy]

I'm finding that I've pretty much got to run everything in balanced mode to experience full bliss...

 

[doctorjazz]

Don't have balanced cables for most of my headphones...the acs actually is used with balanced cable, still better with an external amp.

 

[_gl]

Yep I have to try balancing my KSC75's before giving up on the big P.
 
Does anyone UK-based have 1m leftover of some decent cable they could sell?  Cheaper is fine, I don't think boutique is worth it (yet), definitely not for KSC75.  eg. Mogami 2534 seems to come recommended.  Flexible and not too fat would be pluses.
 
Also, maybe silver is worth it to get more brightness? (but then high-res might be too bright, sigh).

 

[Venture Guy]

Balanced mode gets you 4 times the power. Plus it gets rid of some subtle distortion. I think a lot of the complaints people are having is the same one I had with almost everything I have run single-ended... not enough low-end slam.

 

[doctorjazz]

When I use my balanced ace Encore ciem with the Pono, I have plenty of power, can't turn the volume up more than 1 or 2 notches, in fact. But, what I find is I get high end roll off, cymbals are hard to hear, some other issue involved here, ?impedance?, no clue...

 

[_gl]

When I use my balanced ace Encore ciem with the Pono, I have plenty of power, can't turn the volume up more than 1 or 2 notches, in fact. But, what I find is I get high end roll off, cymbals are hard to hear, some other issue involved here, ?impedance?, no clue...

 
Argh, what cable did you use - oh they're already balanced?

 

[doctorjazz]

Acs used Linum cable, but I needed to have an adapter made for the Pono version of balanced.

 

[FFBookman]

The denialists spot fake facts like "humans can't hear above 20k" to build their position on. Except it's not true once you parse it out.
 
Humans DETECT vibrations outside of the testable range of the human ear.
 
It's vibration. It's not "sound".  It's vibration. Many many things outside of our ears pick up vibration.
 
 
NO ONE AGAINST HI-RES ACKNOWLEDGES THIS.
 
Touch them in the chest. What frequency is that?  Blow past their eyelashes.  What frequency was that? It's not on a scope or a waveform drawing.  Walk up the stairs in their house.  I bet they feel it. Did they hear it?
 
Every single hair in the human body detects vibration. Nearly every joint has vibration sensing nerves. Yes your elbows and knees can "hear".
 
Our chest cavity, our eyeballs, our nose hairs, etc.. It all reports directly to our brain. In actively moving stereo, based on current position of our bodies and the sound sources.
 
If you don't think the human senses are "hi-res" I just can't help you. Enjoy your 8-bit ears. Like living in Minecraft.

 

[meat01]

I thought we were moving past the science stuff.

 

[_gl]

  Balanced mode gets you 4 times the power.

 
Why 4 times rather than 2?
 
Just realised I could use some 22AWG 4 -core wire meant for LED wiring I had lying around (sorta like ribbon cable), so I've already soldered it in.  It's not shielded, but the Pono balanced tech doc doesn't show a shield connection, expect it's fine on short cable runs.
 
Now have to wait on my Neutrik/Rean TRS connectors.  Will post an update with pics in a few days.
 
EDIT: BTW, is anybody running balanced into an amp (or audio interface)?  I hear the same issues on the line out, so that might be worth trying next.

 

[Venture Guy]

   
Why 4 times rather than 2?
 
Just realised I could use some 22AWG 4 -core wire meant for LED wiring I had lying around (sorta like ribbon cable), so I've already soldered it in.  It's not shielded, but the Pono balanced tech doc doesn't show a shield connection, expect it's fine on short cable runs.
 
Now have to wait on my Neutrik/Rean TRS connectors.  Will post an update with pics in a few days.
 
EDIT: BTW, is anybody running balanced into an amp (or audio interface)?  I hear the same issues on the line out, so that might be worth trying next.

power=voltage squared divided by resistance... so one volt goes to two in balanced mode, and power is increased from one squared=one to two squared=four, so four times the power.

 

[_gl]

  power=voltage squared divided by resistance... so one volt goes to two in balanced mode, and power is increased from one squared=one to two squared=four, so four times the power.

 
Cool.  Of course balanced mode must drain the battery more, what sort of reduction are we talking about in practice?
 
 
BTW, I have one annoying issue left - when my SD card (with my desktop audio files and art) is in the player, it goes into an endless reset loop when I go to 'Songs', 'Settings' or 'Playlists'.  The other tabs work fine, ie. Artist works and I can scroll through & can play music without issues.
 
Anybody seen this before?  It's probably some file on the card that trips it up, but any pointers will speed up the troubleshooting.
 
(as I mentioned before, there actually was an old firmware file still left on the internal memory, but I cleared everything off it and that solved half the GUI issues).

 

[FFBookman]

  I thought we were moving past the science stuff.

 

[Kerouac]

 

 

 
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