Dreadhead

Hello all, First a little background: I recently switched to cranking my GS-X up to high gain and then a buddy came over with Edt. 9s I heard hiss (even when the volume is set to zero). I checked and I can't hear the hiss with my HD650, D5000s or SA5000s. I tried my Shure SE530s and the hiss was there with them too. I did all these checks after disconnecting it from my DAC3 at the back of the amp. On medium gain the hiss is inaudible with the Edt. 9s and slightly audible with the SE530s. On low gain the hiss is barely audible with the Shures when the amp is cranked. This all makes sense since the gain switch is in the feedback loop on the amp so it should drop gain and also cause the amp to be more stable and hence less hiss. I've spoken to Justin and after a meet this weekend he's going to take a look at the amp. If he doesn't find anything then so be it. My understanding is that Justin's stuff is as quiet as it gets for SS headphones stuff. I'm just wondering if I'm just expecting too much? I would think you should be able to have a dead quiet amp (with no input) even with SE530s. I even invested in a PS Audio P300 power re-generator that did lower the noise floor of my setup by getting rid of some transformer noise that my Linn Classik had been introducing to the interconnected system. It unfortunately does not lower the noise floor of the GS-X when it's the only thing plugged in though. I should add that I want to be able to keep my amp set to max gain etc and use the volume control on my DAC3 since it's theoretically better and any noise should be below anything audible. The noise floor of the DAC3 is below that of the GS-X that's for sure, when you plug it in there is no appreciable increase in the hiss.

blashemy!!! It's incredibly expensive so it must be good! ps. The measurements section of the Stereophile review of the Wavac nearly made me pee myself at how horribly it seemed to perform.

Beautiful! Your wood work is amazing. I can't wait to hear how it sounds.

d_rayman, there is no point in changing from an RME sound card to another high end sound card just to output digital to a DAC1 (or any other DAC that is jitter resistant). The fact is that because your DAC is essentially jiitter resistant up to a wide range of jitter (due to the reclocking inside the box) the change in transport will do NOTHING. There is a reason the designers generally do not include a clock input on DACs that do reclocking: it removes their ability to reclock the signal. If you don't like your DAC1 change your DAC but otherwise with your setup I don't think you will gain anything (other than placebo like effects) I don't think that you're going to listen to me because you don't seem to listen to anyone else but I thought I'd put my 2 cents in.

deepak, I have not tried that one. I pretty much only use the DEQ2496 for everything. It has 10 band parametric built in but I'm sure it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that one does.

A buddy of mine came over for a couple hours this morning and we auto-equalized his Edition 9 (to the calibrated curve I got from Room Eq Wizard). He was impressed enough to ask me to store the curve so when he figures out how to get an eq into his computer based system he can match it. I'm looking forward to showing a couple more people later in the month at a micro meet.

Yeah I spoke to him about it too and he said that parts were the major issue but he did build some prototypes. I tried to get him to sell me them but no luck. Essentially all that's different is the new modules would put out more power so at least for a GS-X there is no need other than for K1000s, I still want them though....

In a short answer to your question though I'm going for flat frequency response at the measurement probe. No response curve. I can't acheive it exactly but I'm within a couple dB in most places as it stands I looked into this a while ago and I can't understand why people would say this. Flat is flat in my opinion. The different frequencies do attenuate slightly differently when traveling through air but to be honest if you do your room correction at the listening location then even this doesn't play in. Sound energy is sound energy. My theory is that the reason headphones are better at the details is that they are closer to your head so they only need to put out a lot less energy and hence the drivers are able to smaller and more finely controlled (especially at higher frequencies). Of course I am a lay person so if there is proof of the statement I'd be more than happy to eat crow and use whatever the scientific optimal is for headphones. On the other hand the natural approach to recording that you describe ends up trying to do what I do with a probe. Music on site -> unflat recording tools -> "flat" mastering speakers -> adjustment to "sound like music site" -> send to media -> flat speaker/headphone response -> smile on my face. I am a guy who takes a scientific approach to most things but I am in this hobby because I love music Right now my system succeeds in calming bringing out the bass in music without it being overpowering and still harsh ro shrill, everything sounds extremely natural but all the details are there (even the annoying ones like the violin players breathing too loudly just before they are about to play which I hear in the hall as well). I think people may be pleasantly surprised if they tried this for themselves and that's why I'm sharing it.

In my opinion there is no way to achieve "true to the source" (or musician) there is only true to what is on the media. In most recording studios, it's my understanding that they use room correction etc to get as flat a response as possible in their system and do their mix the way they want. If I match that I'm getting what they recorded to the highest fidelity that I can. I could also go after the "room correction" standard which is sloped 1dB/octave (or about that, my DEQ has it as an option). I read a review of some incredibly expensive eyeball looking speakers in Stereophile recently and the room correction curve was what the manufacturer used (out of his preference). The reviewer said he found it a bit too colored, but that's his opinion too. Some argue about the equal loudness curves but in my opinion that not a good reason for going away from the flat response curve (or room correction curve). If you start trying to guess what the response of the mastering studio was you're just justifying your own flavor to the sound. I'm not arguing that this is inherently wrong I just don't want to do it.

Heard back from Berhinger and there is no proximity effect so I should be set

interesting. Does it happen even if you turn down the volume a bit? To get my open headphones to have enough correction without clipping at low frequencies I have to offset all the gain by a couple db to give me the headroom I need.

Arius sorry if I came off harsh. No harshness intended.

You obviously know a lot more than me so I'll take your word for it. All I know is that I can not prevent the dip at 13.5 kHz (at some of the peaks at other frequencies and troughs at others) no matter what I do to the EQ. The phones just won't respond well there. I interpreted this as a resonance of some sort. If I stated that wrong then sorry. In the end it still does not retract from the fact that I have very much improved my phones performance.

where do you put the CD in? Just kidding. That looks great

New Hand EQ job (blue=uncorrected, gold=hand). Most of the difference between the auto-eq and the hand eq is the fact that the calibration file for the ECM8000. From Now on I will modify the the target curve for the auto-eq to match the calibration curve from REQ. In the end it sounds nothing short of amazing in my opinion. So liquid

Red=uncorrected Green=hand corrected (different than yesterday???) blue= Auto Equalized

Man oh man I should reread these things before I hit submit I apologize for all the spelling and grammatical errors in the above posts. My guess is that this is working so well in my system because my GS-X still has a lot of juice to spare for these phones and can deal with the increased outputs where needed. In the end most of the corrections are on the order of 3-5 dB with 3 big ones (10 db parametric) to correct for some resonances (funnily they come out as dips not peaks). Maybe this will lead me back to a beta22 but I doubt it. Anyway I've been giving it a lot of thought and I think that I'm no longer in the market for the Qualias. The equalizing has fixed the differences between the Qualia and the SA5000s. I think I now have phones that may beat the Qualias (The bass is certainly better: just as controlled with more punch) and all that for under a grand (Headphones, DEQ, mic and foam). I am going to let my WTB over at HF fade away I think and just be happy with what I have. I'll get a chance to hear Qualias again in a couple weeks so I can do a comparison then but I don't really expect any surprises. Of course I'm probably entirely wrong

I messed around with REQ through my FA66 and it's downright impressive. I stupidly saved over the auto-equalized version but for my SA5000 I started with the auto eq and now I have (after a lot of tweaking) pretty much flat response between 20 and 20kHz with one dip at 6.5 kHz that I just can't get rid off but it is very narrow now. I'll rerun the DEQ based auto-eq and compare the two with my ears and see what happens but it looks like it seems to accentuate the highs more than DEQ (I used the ECM8000 calibration file).

So you're saying an SPL meter with a stated frequency range cutting out above 100 hz (I don't remember the exact number it's probably even higher, I have the same one) is more accurate than the ECM8000/DEQ combo? I don't buy it. That software looks neat though. My FA66 has a 48v phantom powered input that I could hook the ECM8000 to and do the same thing. Cheers, Chris

Certainly is is more complicated. I'm not saying the phones sound exactly alike. The control and pace are still whatever they were before. For example I still think the SA5000 has better control than the D5000 but to be honest the difference is MUCH smaller; it's like taking the difference between different pairs of headphones and making it the difference between two SS amps for easy to drive phones. One thing that is truly interesting is how the character of the pink noise changes as the auto-equalization goes (you can always hear the output of the other ear). It really shows you how much you're changing the character. Oh and I will warn you that all of the phones I have done this for now sound bright at first. The SA5000s have increased highs and even the D5000s have a couple dB of correction upwards. At first it sounds odd but it grows on you fast when everything sounds so right. At first I was like "what the hell" and after a well done classical recording all was well again (the drums still had great impact and). The DEQ I have is the Behringer Ultracurve Pro DEQ2496 (used entirely digitally in this case) and the measurement mic is the Behringer ECM8000: AUDIO TECHNOLOGY - EQUALIZERS & ACCESSORIES - ULTRACURVE PRO DEQ2496 : Ultra High-Precision Digital 24-Bit/96 kHz EQ/RTA Mastering Processor MICROPHONES / HEADPHONES / WIRELESS SYSTEMS - CONDENSER MICROPHONES - MEASUREMENT MICROPHONE ECM8000 : Omnidirectional Measurement Condenser Microphone I am still a little confused on the ECM8000 because its an omnidirectional mic so I thought it did not have the proximity effect and one box it comes in said it does not have it and then the inner box around the carrying case says it does. I included the supposed effects of this in one of the equalization I did (by modifying the target curve) and in the end the phones seem very very bass heavy which made me conclude it did not have a proximity effect. I'm going to email Behringer and make 100% certain. If I'm wrong I'll switch to doing that too.

Well it's a fairly cheap measurement mic but it's calibrated to +/- 1 dB from 20 Hz to 20 kHz and the auto eq is accurate to about that range too. It all depends on how patient you want to be to let it do its thing but in the place where the headphones have narrow banded effects the alorithm has to take the best fit but can not get exactly flat. Perfect it is not, but it is better than uncorrected. In the end throughout most of the fequency range 1dB is below audible differences in levels (or at least that's my understanding).

Today I finally made my fake ear (block of modeling foam with a hole) for my measurement microphone and hooked it up to my digital equalizer. It's bloody cool, you put the heaphones on the ear and run the auto eq (automatic algorithm using pink noise and a RTA) and you've got pitch flat response I know for a fact it would drive many nuts but to be honest I'm having a great time. The only boring thing is that it makes d5000s sound like sa5000s or whatever sound like whatever (as long as both are equalized). Anyway I look forward to trying this out with other phones too. It'll be interesting to see how much correction is required. For the d5000 it's a lot down low and for the SA5000 it's more even (as I would expect). Both have quite a lot of correction up high too.