[liamstrain]

Some songs, especially certain live recordings, don't play nearly as loud as I'd want them to be).

 
 
That sounds to me like poor mastering, not a specific flaw in either PMP or headphone. Certainly there is not a lot of wiggle room with planars and an unamped portable device. But I do not know many people who want to use planars for portable use - they are large and do not isolate well. So there is something to be said for selecting the right tool for the job at hand.
 
This is different than trying to assess the relative performance impact of any given part of the chain. It's a matter of appropriate equipment selection for the task. 

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

That sounds to me like poor mastering, not a specific flaw in either PMP or headphone. Certainly there is not a lot of wiggle room with planars and an unamped portable device. But I do not know many people who want to use planars for portable use - they are large and do not isolate well. So there is something to be said for selecting the right tool for the job at hand.
 
This is different than trying to assess the relative performance impact of any given part of the chain. It's a matter of appropriate equipment selection for the task. 

Well yeah it's poor mastering in this case, but I still do have files like that and I want to hear them well. There are cases where a low volume song isn't poorly mastered too. I only used an iPod as an example because of Jaddie saying all you need is an iPod, I was pointing out that there are many exceptions to that.
 
But anyways I was probably going off on a tangent that I shouldn't have, so I'll stop. I just thought saying that certain components contribute X% to the sound might give people the wrong impression.

 

[bigshot]

But the problem isn't the iPod, it's the cans you're using with it. There are lots of headphones that are suited to the task and sound plenty loud. Your cans need amping, the iPod doesn't.

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

But the problem isn't the iPod, it's the cans you're using with it. There are lots of headphones that are suited to the task and sound plenty loud. Your cans need amping, the iPod doesn't.

If my goal is to get the sound my current setup has right now, then the iPod is not suited to that task. Sorry, but there are no HE-400 clones that are easy to drive that I know of. I don't even know of a dynamic headphone that has a flat FR from 20Hz to 1kHz.
 
At any rate the area of the problem is all a matter of perspective. If there were headphone's that could be easily driven and happen to have the exact same specs to the dot of my current headphone's, I could either get those headphones or just get an amp. There's two ways of solving the problem, you can't just say that only one of the solutions is correct.

 

[jaddie]

Forgive me if I point out the obvious, but this thread is about "picking on cables".  Then Takeanidea asked about different pieces of the system and what percent of the total sound they made up, which included cables. 
 
You guys are now talking about headphone compatibility with various source devices...can we move this or start a new thread?

 

[bigshot]

You'd probably have to get an amp no matter what portable DAP you use. The headphone jacks are designed for use on the go with portable headphones. It's assumed that when you come home, you plug your iPod into a dock and listen through a receiver using bigger cans. That is a natural expectation I'd say.

 

[bigshot]

This thread is dozens of pages in. It's going to drift at this point.

 

[jaddie]

No doubt.  But it's not helping others with the same questions to cover this topic here.  And as you can tell, some would like to take the new direction and drill way in.  Just a suggestion to start a new one or whatever.  It's not going to rock my world much either way.

 

[Takeanidea]

I have just sold my audiolab m-dac on ebay for a big loss. I guess I should have sold it on head fi. But my point is after blind testing I couldn't tell it from my hrt streamer pro.
So it had to go. And...I also put in the description "if you're on a tight budget and you're not sure if you can afford this , the good news is you'll not need to spend more than £1 on a usb cable to get it working at it's best. It sounds exactly the same whether you have a £1 or a £100 cable"
No one objected and I sold it in less than a day.
I now have to have the confidence to sell my hrt streamer pro and my m2tech young dac. I am still feeling there is the slightest of refinement in the sounds of the young in the blind tests. Also I heard a noticeable difference putting it through my novo headamp compared the headphone out on my laptop.
Am I cracking up?

 

[jaddie]

Quote:

I have just sold my audiolab m-dac on ebay for a big loss. I guess I should have sold it on head fi. But my point is after blind testing I couldn't tell it from my hrt streamer pro.
So it had to go. And...I also put in the description "if you're on a tight budget and you're not sure if you can afford this , the good news is you'll not need to spend more than £1 on a usb cable to get it working at it's best. It sounds exactly the same whether you have a £1 or a £100 cable"
No one objected and I sold it in less than a day.
I now have to have the confidence to sell my hrt streamer pro and my m2tech young dac. I am still feeling there is the slightest of refinement in the sounds of the young in the blind tests. Also I heard a noticeable difference putting it through my novo headamp compared the headphone out on my laptop.
Am I cracking up?

You might be cracking up.  And you might still be hearing a difference.  The two conditions aren't mutually exclusive. 

 
We know nothing about your laptop's headphone out do we?  And the published specs provided by Novo is the usual incomplete stuff manufacturers like to publish.  There could well be a difference.  I'd put my money on the Novo being better than the laptop. 

 

[Takeanidea]

You might be cracking up.  And you might still be hearing a difference.  The two conditions aren't mutually exclusive. 

We know nothing about your laptop's headphone out do we?  And the published specs provided by Novo is the usual incomplete stuff manufacturers like to publish.  There could well be a difference.  I'd put my money on the Novo being better than the laptop. 

Thank god. I'm still getting the voices in my head but whipping myself continously in the groin area with some 1/2 metre black rhodium rca cable is beginning to help

 

[Takeanidea]

At least it was good for something

 

[ultrabike]

Quote:

Thank god. I'm still getting the voices in my head but whipping myself continously in the groin area with some 1/2 metre black rhodium rca cable is beginning to help

Keep up the good work