Sonic Impact Gen 2 T-Amp ? - Page 4

Pano · 21st October 2007, 04:44 PM

Glad to do it!

Denver was fun, our room was a big success. Proof that you can get great sound at 1/4th to 1/10th the cost "normal" Hi-Fi. There was no one at the show even close to what we were doing.

Colorado is nice, but it's always great to come home to Maui.

Kensai · 22nd October 2007, 01:45 PM

Oh sure. Just rub it in. Colorado is just about as far west as I've managed to get so far.

Anyhow, I've been convinced that what you've been doing is the way to go since I first heard the original T-Amp. Of course, I don't have the electronics skills (or the time at present to devote to gaining them) to really dive into moding and building, so I'm just looking for the best, cheap stock things.

I don't hear much about JVC Hybrid Feedback tech, I suppose mainly because its proprietary and not much use to DiYers, but I've got the core of an old JVC Hybrid Feedback shelf system that I'll be comparing anything against. It pretty much trounced the original T-amp (mainly in bass weight and liveliness) and Presonus HP4 headphone amp I was using as pre (it had peaks around 2.2khz and 7.2khz that I had to notch out with EQ just to get proper sound, both on headphones and through the monitor outs). The JVC even sounds better driving headphones than the dedicated headphone amp (I've pretty much determined that the HP4 is a crappy headphone amp).

I use an E-mu 0404 sound card as source, and it gives me tons of EQ flexibility (which I need to use with my current B20 fullrangers on small OB), but I'd like to get away from that as much as possible. In fact, if I could get to needing no EQ (plans for either enclosures or OB bass assistance; already got the supertweeters and caps in hand so I can dump the top end EQ), I could just upsample everything to 176.4kHz which really does sound alot cleaner and more detailed. Just want to make sure any amp I might get will at least not kill the bass or SQ over the headphone out.

Kensai

Lostcause · 22nd October 2007, 02:45 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Kensai
I use an E-mu 0404 sound card as source

Hi Kensai, I'm just playing around with one of those and wondered if you have any tips on the best setup for windows?
Sorry for the 'off-topic' question....

Kensai · 22nd October 2007, 02:56 PM

Lostcause,

Email me with more detail about what you're looking for, and I'll see what I can do.

Kensai

gychang · 22nd October 2007, 03:01 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Kensai
Oh sure. Just rub it in. Colorado is just about as far west as I've managed to get so far.

The JVC even sounds better driving headphones than the dedicated headphone amp (I've pretty much determined that the HP4 is a crappy headphone amp).

I use an E-mu 0404 sound card as source, and it gives me tons of EQ flexibility I could just upsample everything to 176.4kHz which really does sound alot cleaner and more detailed. Just want to make sure any amp I might get will at least not kill the bass or SQ over the headphone out.

Kensai

Kensai: as u know I have the same JVC, never heard the earphone jack til u mentioned and it sounds excellent. I assume u have it hooked up to PC, with E-mu? How do u have it all setup? Are u up sampling it via E-mu?, using foobar?

thanks,

gychang

Kensai · 22nd October 2007, 04:09 PM

I have it hooked up via a 3' Hais dual mono 1/4" to stereo 1/8" cable as the line in on this unit is only the stereo minijack and the outputs on the EMu are discrete 1/4" TS phono jacks. Its the only discrete cable for the purpose I could find, and its not the most robust cable in my collection, but it sounds noticeably better than using stout phono-RCA cable of the same brand and then adapting that down to stereo mini.

The EMu runs a PatchMix application that lets you do tons of stuff (way more than I actually understand). It allows you to save settings in "sessions" and I keep different sessions for say, my B20 OBs, my Grado SR-80s, my Koss KSC-75, an unmodified session for running out to the receiver in the living room, a 176.4kHz session for listening to music over headphones or general playing around. Its ability to apply EQ in the digital domain is almost unlimited in its flexibility. You will eventually start clipping the DAC if you apply too much, so there's a bit of balancing to do between your speakers, amps, and the DAC when you start going for extreme EQ. The main drawback here is that you can only apply EQ to sessions that are running in 44.1/48kHz mode (its a combined mode since it covers all of your common materials like CD, most compressed music, DVD and video games).

The upsampling I do is via Winamp. I use the out_asio plugin for that which not only has configurable resampling but allows you to bypass the windows K-mixer which remixes everything to 48kHz (even stuff that's already at 48kHz). I've been able to resample DVD to 96kHz using FFDshow, but that doesn't sound very good (just seems like a bit of tacked on functionality there). At 176.4kHz, you can use your player's built in EQ, but in Winamp, just engaging the EQ, even if you leave it flat, obviously degrades SQ. For alot of music, using the 176.4 over my phase plugged B20s is a better trade off than 44.1 + PatchMix EQ. It seems to extend the FR in both directions, and since phase plugging the B20s, the top end has almost been good enough in this mode for me to be satisfied with no EQ or supertweet. However, the bass starts rolling pretty quickly around 100-120Hz without the EQ, so its not a good fire-and-forget strategy with my current speakers. I'm just wanting to make sure the new T-amp won't have that first order rolloff under 100Hz like the original.

Another random note on using a high sample session in PatchMix . . . it causes anything you run through the EMu's line in to be sampled at that rate, so it has a similar effect on the SQ as it does for digital music. I find it great for my game consoles that live near my PC.

Kensai

So for useablity's sake right now, I leave everything in 44.1/48 mode and just have a session for each device that has an appropriate EQ stack

Lostcause · 22nd October 2007, 05:14 PM

Thanks for that Kensai, very useful info

I'm running a modified charlize at the moment, soon to be a duet of modified kensingtons into my fullrange MLTL's so it's a pretty similar setup.
The kensingtons will give me two more channels to play with should I need tweets....other than that the software just might do the trick....

Cheers
Lee

fidelity · 22nd October 2007, 05:25 PM

I find oversampling to 176.4k (FLAC tracks) via out_asio.dll in winamp gives a inferior sound output on my stock EMU 0404 using a fid-audio breakout cable.

I've yet to attempt moding the card which gives a significant improvement to the cards analog output.

Kensai · 22nd October 2007, 06:48 PM

I generally only use .APE which is lossless. I'm not real familiar with FLAC, but are your tracks compressed at all or lossless.

I've certainly seen enough cases of software re/upsampling causing SQ to drop, so I'm not sure what may be up there. Which version of Winamp are you using? I use 2.9x . . . I've not had the best of experience with the 5.x versions, SQ wise.

Kensai

Kensai · 12th November 2007, 12:39 PM

pano? We're still interested in hearing your impressions.

Kensai

21st October 2007, 04:44 PM	#31
Pano diyAudio Moderator Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: North Carolina Blog Entries: 4	Glad to do it! Denver was fun, our room was a big success. Proof that you can get great sound at 1/4th to 1/10th the cost "normal" Hi-Fi. There was no one at the show even close to what we were doing. Colorado is nice, but it's always great to come home to Maui. __________________ Take the Speaker Voltage Test!

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22nd October 2007, 01:45 PM	#32
Kensai diyAudio Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: St. Louis	Oh sure. Just rub it in. Colorado is just about as far west as I've managed to get so far. Anyhow, I've been convinced that what you've been doing is the way to go since I first heard the original T-Amp. Of course, I don't have the electronics skills (or the time at present to devote to gaining them) to really dive into moding and building, so I'm just looking for the best, cheap stock things. I don't hear much about JVC Hybrid Feedback tech, I suppose mainly because its proprietary and not much use to DiYers, but I've got the core of an old JVC Hybrid Feedback shelf system that I'll be comparing anything against. It pretty much trounced the original T-amp (mainly in bass weight and liveliness) and Presonus HP4 headphone amp I was using as pre (it had peaks around 2.2khz and 7.2khz that I had to notch out with EQ just to get proper sound, both on headphones and through the monitor outs). The JVC even sounds better driving headphones than the dedicated headphone amp (I've pretty much determined that the HP4 is a crappy headphone amp). I use an E-mu 0404 sound card as source, and it gives me tons of EQ flexibility (which I need to use with my current B20 fullrangers on small OB), but I'd like to get away from that as much as possible. In fact, if I could get to needing no EQ (plans for either enclosures or OB bass assistance; already got the supertweeters and caps in hand so I can dump the top end EQ), I could just upsample everything to 176.4kHz which really does sound alot cleaner and more detailed. Just want to make sure any amp I might get will at least not kill the bass or SQ over the headphone out. Kensai

22nd October 2007, 02:56 PM	#34
Kensai diyAudio Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: St. Louis	Lostcause, Email me with more detail about what you're looking for, and I'll see what I can do. Kensai

22nd October 2007, 04:09 PM	#36
Kensai diyAudio Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: St. Louis	I have it hooked up via a 3' Hais dual mono 1/4" to stereo 1/8" cable as the line in on this unit is only the stereo minijack and the outputs on the EMu are discrete 1/4" TS phono jacks. Its the only discrete cable for the purpose I could find, and its not the most robust cable in my collection, but it sounds noticeably better than using stout phono-RCA cable of the same brand and then adapting that down to stereo mini. The EMu runs a PatchMix application that lets you do tons of stuff (way more than I actually understand). It allows you to save settings in "sessions" and I keep different sessions for say, my B20 OBs, my Grado SR-80s, my Koss KSC-75, an unmodified session for running out to the receiver in the living room, a 176.4kHz session for listening to music over headphones or general playing around. Its ability to apply EQ in the digital domain is almost unlimited in its flexibility. You will eventually start clipping the DAC if you apply too much, so there's a bit of balancing to do between your speakers, amps, and the DAC when you start going for extreme EQ. The main drawback here is that you can only apply EQ to sessions that are running in 44.1/48kHz mode (its a combined mode since it covers all of your common materials like CD, most compressed music, DVD and video games). The upsampling I do is via Winamp. I use the out_asio plugin for that which not only has configurable resampling but allows you to bypass the windows K-mixer which remixes everything to 48kHz (even stuff that's already at 48kHz). I've been able to resample DVD to 96kHz using FFDshow, but that doesn't sound very good (just seems like a bit of tacked on functionality there). At 176.4kHz, you can use your player's built in EQ, but in Winamp, just engaging the EQ, even if you leave it flat, obviously degrades SQ. For alot of music, using the 176.4 over my phase plugged B20s is a better trade off than 44.1 + PatchMix EQ. It seems to extend the FR in both directions, and since phase plugging the B20s, the top end has almost been good enough in this mode for me to be satisfied with no EQ or supertweet. However, the bass starts rolling pretty quickly around 100-120Hz without the EQ, so its not a good fire-and-forget strategy with my current speakers. I'm just wanting to make sure the new T-amp won't have that first order rolloff under 100Hz like the original. Another random note on using a high sample session in PatchMix . . . it causes anything you run through the EMu's line in to be sampled at that rate, so it has a similar effect on the SQ as it does for digital music. I find it great for my game consoles that live near my PC. Kensai So for useablity's sake right now, I leave everything in 44.1/48 mode and just have a session for each device that has an appropriate EQ stack

22nd October 2007, 05:14 PM	#37
Lostcause diyAudio Member Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: NW UK	Thanks for that Kensai, very useful info I'm running a modified charlize at the moment, soon to be a duet of modified kensingtons into my fullrange MLTL's so it's a pretty similar setup. The kensingtons will give me two more channels to play with should I need tweets....other than that the software just might do the trick.... Cheers Lee

22nd October 2007, 05:25 PM	#38
fidelity diyAudio Member Join Date: Jan 2007	I find oversampling to 176.4k (FLAC tracks) via out_asio.dll in winamp gives a inferior sound output on my stock EMU 0404 using a fid-audio breakout cable. I've yet to attempt moding the card which gives a significant improvement to the cards analog output.

22nd October 2007, 06:48 PM	#39
Kensai diyAudio Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: St. Louis	I generally only use .APE which is lossless. I'm not real familiar with FLAC, but are your tracks compressed at all or lossless. I've certainly seen enough cases of software re/upsampling causing SQ to drop, so I'm not sure what may be up there. Which version of Winamp are you using? I use 2.9x . . . I've not had the best of experience with the 5.x versions, SQ wise. Kensai

12th November 2007, 12:39 PM	#40
Kensai diyAudio Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: St. Louis	pano? We're still interested in hearing your impressions. Kensai