Yet you are the one constantly complaining about harshness, not me as i experience none. But then i desoldered the opamps on the very first day.
And no, i don't claim that opamps sound necessarily harsh, one of my phono stages even uses some, but with great care towards PS routing, shunt regulation, resistor types, etc. And more importantly, those opamps do not drive headphones.
If i were a headphone user building an appropriate amp for my specific headphones would be a priority. More than one pair of headphones usually means more than one amp, as the requirements are often very different.
ynmichael, your honesty is commendable. I have been in the same situation (haven't we all) but realised that if I do something myself there are two strong physiological super powers that come into play; the "await" (now it's gonna happen) factor and the "proudness" (I did it) factor. I have learned to acknowledge these and now play along with them and I'm really suspicious of my "improvement" and let them sit for days before I judge them and finally *measure* them. Using a known reference is a good thing and it doesn't really have to be "better" than what your are developing but it should be good.
I wish you balance in the force! ;-)
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I wish you balance in the force! ;-)
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Hmm. Never experienced this. My usual reaction is: gee, this is a lot worse than expected 
On average about every 5th project or test i start provides an outcome exceeding expectations and the rest fall well short. For 2018 the positive outcomes were confined to DAM, Dartzeel and an LCR phono. Not much. Same with new passive components and wire and a much lower pass rate with commercial audio.
On average about every 5th project or test i start provides an outcome exceeding expectations and the rest fall well short. For 2018 the positive outcomes were confined to DAM, Dartzeel and an LCR phono. Not much. Same with new passive components and wire and a much lower pass rate with commercial audio.What everyone needs to understand is that the signal you send to your DAC, ripped from CD or as a digital file, has travelled through dozens of op amps, passed by even more cheap ceramic caps already and was subjected to all kinds of processes at the studio(s).
So, unless you have an analog source for reference, the differences you are hearing could be anything. I have tinkered quite a bit with analog gear and have mistaken a mushy signal path for "lack of harshness" or prefered "punchy" distortion over a clearer representation etc. even with a reference availible. It's practically impossible to be objective, and depending on time of day, personal condition etc. your own judgement may vary drastically.
I have found to be "correct" what works over time. I have been listening to the DAM1021 with the vref mod and the latest "soft" filter for a few weeks now and still like it.
So, unless you have an analog source for reference, the differences you are hearing could be anything. I have tinkered quite a bit with analog gear and have mistaken a mushy signal path for "lack of harshness" or prefered "punchy" distortion over a clearer representation etc. even with a reference availible. It's practically impossible to be objective, and depending on time of day, personal condition etc. your own judgement may vary drastically.
I have found to be "correct" what works over time. I have been listening to the DAM1021 with the vref mod and the latest "soft" filter for a few weeks now and still like it.
Did you ever try the new NOS? Technically it might be wrong, but as long as the following equipment can handle the ultrasonic content, (mine seems to have no problem) it is a very relaxed sounding alternative.
By the way, every real square wave out there is full of ultrasonic content and no recording equipment has audible problems handling that.
This is an excellent example of how listening preferences don't match. My setup is extremely kind to ultrasonic content, yet the new nos is completely unlistenable. Perhaps "relaxed" is not what i am looking for.
Thanks so much guys! It's truly wonderful to be able to hear a number of different perspectives from all around the world.
Can excellent speakers with real instrument references help arbitrate improvements beyond what headphones are capable of? Perhaps.
Will excellent headphone amplifiers make listening all the more transparent and our judgement all the clearer? Maybe.
Is this DAC harsh-sounding, or is it the natural timbre of instruments? If it is harsh-sounding, does the harshness come from the recording and mixing equipment? I'm not sure I can tell.
I decided to go back to fb2k without HQP because I'm 100% certain that it's more convenient and will save me a few seconds every now and then when I change sampling rates, while the difference in sound is unclear. I may be wrong, but it's okay. Perhaps this is as much detail as I can get from my judgement which is influenced by a large number of factors, including the unconscious bias of anticipation and the positive sense of accomplishment that is far beyond what we can perfectly compensate for willfully. In everyday life, biases might (or might not) be easier to control, but we're dealing with <1% here.
Will measurements save the day? Probably not.
Interestingly, I've heard people suggest that in research it's important to believe in your designs or proposals. I used to think it's a slight weakness, but, as we've all seen here, it could be worse than that. Of course, we eventually run experiments so we do get to feel safer about what we publish!
Can excellent speakers with real instrument references help arbitrate improvements beyond what headphones are capable of? Perhaps.
Will excellent headphone amplifiers make listening all the more transparent and our judgement all the clearer? Maybe.
Is this DAC harsh-sounding, or is it the natural timbre of instruments? If it is harsh-sounding, does the harshness come from the recording and mixing equipment? I'm not sure I can tell.
I decided to go back to fb2k without HQP because I'm 100% certain that it's more convenient and will save me a few seconds every now and then when I change sampling rates, while the difference in sound is unclear. I may be wrong, but it's okay. Perhaps this is as much detail as I can get from my judgement which is influenced by a large number of factors, including the unconscious bias of anticipation and the positive sense of accomplishment that is far beyond what we can perfectly compensate for willfully. In everyday life, biases might (or might not) be easier to control, but we're dealing with <1% here.
Will measurements save the day? Probably not.
Interestingly, I've heard people suggest that in research it's important to believe in your designs or proposals. I used to think it's a slight weakness, but, as we've all seen here, it could be worse than that. Of course, we eventually run experiments so we do get to feel safer about what we publish!
That is part of the fun. Every audiosystem is lacking, technically, so our ears have to decide.
If you look at the specs of a professional tape recorder from the 50s and 60s, it seems impossible that anything sounding good could have been recorded with it. But still, “kind of blue “ eg sounds stellar, so good. you hope the sound survives the ad conversion.
early digital renderings of it did not so well. Back to NOS, just for the fun of it, I am going to build a fifth order analog passive filter at 20khz to suppress at least the garbage around and above 44.1 kHz and hear what is happening to the sound. You never know...
There are no square waves "out there" and therefore, square waves are not something that needs to be reproduced.
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Slightly OT:
A very interesting thread that has made me spend my weekend listening to the three players mentioned lately: foobar, J.Rivers, HQPlayer - this was done via modded Khorns, modded Nakamichi preamp and TI's TPA3255. Dac is Curryman with improved power suppy which gets its signal from Lucian's WaveIO (with shunt PS).
To my ears the clear winner....HQPlayer. I don't think I have ever had such an open sound that makes even "difficult" recordings such as solo violin a lot more "bearable". So the admittedly clumsy way you load files into the player etc. seems to be an acceptable downside. Time will tell if this first impressions is going to last.
A very interesting thread that has made me spend my weekend listening to the three players mentioned lately: foobar, J.Rivers, HQPlayer - this was done via modded Khorns, modded Nakamichi preamp and TI's TPA3255. Dac is Curryman with improved power suppy which gets its signal from Lucian's WaveIO (with shunt PS).
To my ears the clear winner....HQPlayer. I don't think I have ever had such an open sound that makes even "difficult" recordings such as solo violin a lot more "bearable". So the admittedly clumsy way you load files into the player etc. seems to be an acceptable downside. Time will tell if this first impressions is going to last.
Synthesizers are out there, some wind instruments, anyway, loads of instruments produce overtones beyond 20khz, think of cymbals and all kinds of percussion...
By the way, a good trick to test a recording chain is to shake a key ring in front of a microphone, that’s mostly overtones way beyond 20khz, if the recording still sounds like what you heard live and not like ear grinding noise, you’re lucky. You would be surprised how often there is just noise left.
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Please open a thread about this when ready. Have you planned upon what inductors to use?
Please confirm all listening was done without upsampling or other manipulations.
HQP has also the option for using a NAA. Did you explore this?
One thing really important I didn't mention in my previous posts: do ABX tests when things are between absolute clarity and utter chaos. Statistical methods are the only tools we have to combat the randomness, noise and bias in our sensory perception, which at this point I hope everyone acknowledges... If it doesn't pass ABX, then there's either not a difference or it's not important.
Fedde, stay with polymer caps in lower capacitance if you want lower ESR. 0.6mm is perfect.
Fedde, stay with polymer caps in lower capacitance if you want lower ESR. 0.6mm is perfect.
So you have basically compared upsampling algos, not players. Not a very useful info as HQP alone offers a myriad of different sounding upsamplers.
Yours was one short audiophile career
As someone with a background in math I'm quite embarrassed that statistical tests didn't occur to me as critical earlier - I guess I was never exposed to so much randomness in my thinking before. A statistician probably would've realized this right off the bat.
I spent almost an hour trying to identify differences in a few carefully selected 20 second segments between fb2k no upsampling vs SSRC upsampling with the ABX plugin. A few times I felt sure I spotted a difference, but they didn't quite last once put to the test. Then I tried HQplayer just out of curiosity, which I should preface by saying it's problematic at least that they don't provide converter functions - are they avoiding ABX tests? Wikipedia also says pops and clicks during track change should be eliminated in ABX test because they impact short term auditory memory - I doubt anything can be preserved through HQP's noisy seek process. In the end, a couple of times I thought I heard a difference between HQP and FB2k. But sadly, I was unable to prove myself.
Also, all tests are between software upsampling and 1.19 linear. I was using EQHQv5 before and there is probably a noticeable difference between that and 1.19 linear. It seems Soren did a good job with the new filters!
Also, in my experience with music and virtual surround DTS tracks, balanced (dual-mono) has a much larger soundstage or more 3D sound representation than SE, and SE than my laptop output. Other things improve too obviously, but soundstage is the thing you immediately notice - strange that no one online said anything similar about HD650 balanced signal though... This claim is tentative, of course, until I get a chance to have someone come over and help me conduct ABX tests. But I'm pretty confident about it.
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