Kylv
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2013
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hahaha very nice post! i had a good laugh!
I was serious! I have pictures to prove it!
hahaha very nice post! i had a good laugh!
I was serious! I have pictures to prove it!
Umm... I spoke to the VP of V-MODA a few weeks ago. He told me there are a couple new products that will debut this year. One is a new IEM and the other I can't say, but I know that I will be buying it.
Do you have a price range for an amplifier? I'd start with something small and portable, since the XS is pretty efficient and doesn't need much power. Here's a short list of amps that have plenty of info on Head-Fi.
For bass boost:
JDS Labs cMoyBB v2.03 (My review)
JDS Labs C5/C5D
FiiO E6
FiiO E11/E11K
For bass and treble control, plus DAC functionality:
FiiO E7/E7K
FiiO E17/E17K
Keep in mind, for efficient headphones an amp doesn't make much of a difference compared to larger more power hungry headphones. You'll certainly notice a difference if you use bass boost or play with the EQ in the E7/E17, but your XS will still sound like an XS. The best way to get a different sound signature is to buy a new pair of headphones.
All electronic devices that play music have a DAC, which stands for Digital to Analog Converter. It is a chip that takes the digital information stored in audio files(WAV, mp3, aac, PCM, FLAC, ALAC, etc.) and converts them into an analog signal(electrical signal that runs to your headphones/speakers). Basically, a DAC does for sound what a video card in a computer does for graphics.
So iPods, iPhones, Android phones, laptops, PCs, etc. all have built-in DACS and they all have headphone amplifiers. Without a DAC or headphone amplifier, no cellphone will be able to play music through the headphone output. But the quality from DAC to DAC and amp to amp varies between devices. Most modern portable devices have decent DACs but the amplifiers are usually lacking since they were generally designed to power tiny earbuds. Also, they may suffer from EMI(Electro-Magnetic Interference) such as when the CPU is accessing something or when sending/receiving signals through wi-fi or cellular networks. You ever hear that weird buzzing noise when your cell phone rings next to speaker? That's EMI.
Now, if your phone or device has a crappy DAC or a crappy built-in amplifier and you run that crappy signal into ANOTHER amplifier(like a cMoy or a FiiO) all you're doing is taking the bad signal and making it louder. If your device has flabby crackly bass, and you use bass boost, you'll have more flabby crackly bass. This is called "double amping." However, this is an extreme example, and if you pair an amp with any decent cell phone or DAP(Digital Audio Player) it should help with increasing output power.
The reason for a dedicated DAC/amp combo, like the FiiO E7/E17, is you can bypass the internal DAC of your PC/phone altogether and just use the DAC/amp of the unit. If you have a crappy DAC in your device or the soundcard in your laptop dies, a DAC can be used as the soundcard instead. There are a few DAC makers whose names you'll see often on this site and each make will often be cited as having a signature sound. Wolfson DACS are usually known to sound "warm." I don't know how to end this explanation, so I'll just list a few of the most popular brands and be off.
Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM)
Burr Brown
Cirrus Logic
Texas Instruments
Wolfson
Yamaha