dex85
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2009
- Posts
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- 14
you're right, given we're both talking about Audacity decrease of volume. well, you should have quoted it earlier to be clear about what you were responding to.
OK that was a little over my head.. so this is probably a stupid question, but are you saying that reducing the gain could actually reduce sound quality too?
The gain of the headphone amp in the control panel is in fact only a digital volume control. the gain of the headphone amp is fixed in hardware & not adjustable except by dropping the approprate bits in software. there are no gain control switches of any kind in the board whether they be transistor or solinoid. Note that there is no solinoid switching sounds during gain changes, only during output or input changes. There is also no gain control in the pinout of the amp itself as I have looked that over in the manufacturers documentation of that amp. So contrary to what Robscix says (not denegrating him here as he is usually right on in what he says) it is entirely reasonable that there is no difference in sound quality whether using Audacity or the soundcard control panel gain setting for the headphone amp as both adjust the gain by reducing the volume by 1 or more bits to get the correct volume fore that setting.
If you cannot find a difference between the low gain and high gain then something surely is wrong. Have a cup of tea and chill
The only difference is with high impedance headphones you now have sufficient drive to get the to the proper listening volume. If you can in fact drive them to the same volume at a lower gain setting then the sound is in fact identical. Any difference you think you hear is actually placebo effect. You believe there is a difference even though none in fact exsists. No matter what the headphone amp gain is set to, if the volume is matched the signal is represented by the same number of bits on the Asus Essense cards
So in other words, there's no point in using any headphone amp if you can get the volume loud enough without one? Which would mean that amps only increase volume? Or does this only apply to the essence card?
So in other words, there's no point in using any headphone amp if you can get the volume loud enough without one?
It sounds to me like you don't like the Sennheiser house sound.