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Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

naughtycomputer.uk

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Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#11

Post by benj111 »

saagarjha wrote: post #3
baxtr wrote: post #2

> Right now I'm absolutely astonished at how difficult it appears to be to just listen to music with a good pair of headphones. Is it not 2018? The media is full of talk about preposterously ambitious ideas such as AI and self-driving cars and yet I can't even listen to a fuck-damn music track? O_o I enjoyed reading this. The whole time I thought however: that’s not an issue on my Apple devices. Then I read: > If any…

I find this especially humorous given this: > Although Android is Free Software, meaning I can modify the code, it would probably take me months to learn enough about music decoding and the Android-media-player-service to write a fix.

Is it actually open source in that you can actually submit a fix though?

Judging by the awful 'random' I would suspect not. (I havent used it I some time so it might have been fixed, but you used to get clustering of tracks from a given album)

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#12

Post by IshKebab »

I've had this problem a lot with sensitive in-ear headphones. I guess it is a problem of dynamic range - the same amplifier has to drive insensitive and sensitive headphones, so to avoid being too quiet on the insensitive ones (definitely noticeable) they make them super-loud at the cost of easily audible noise when you're using sensitive headphones on low volume.

I actually bought Google's active USB-C audio dongle to solve this for my Mi A1. It works, but I think USB-C is not a good port for headphones. It isn't robust enough - if you wiggle it around as if it were in your pocket you easily get glitches.

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#13

Post by Sidnicious »

I'm super curious…

a. What in these files triggers the explosion of noise (and whether other people have run into this or the author would mind sharing a representative problem file).

b. Whether an output attenuator (or "resistor") would work to quiet the noise (edit: the hiss, not the explosion) without a powered circuit.

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#14

Post by temp0876456 »

Boy does this person need to look at the ‘good headphone’ market.

I paid (a very reasonable) $2k for a set of reference headphones and a suitable amp/DAC to drive them.

I could have spent a lot more.

It is hard to drive a set of headphones with enough SQ to make them worthwhile.

You cannot plug a set of headphones into an Android phone and expect anything good to happen. And lots of DAPs suffer from software problems as well (lots of them are Android based...).

Getting good sound from a portable device, without software issues, is really only solved at the top end of the market ($700 - $4000).

It’s a bit easier if you want to use a computer as a source but far from cheap.

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#16

Post by humanrebar »

drops wrote: post #5
baxtr wrote: post #2

> Right now I'm absolutely astonished at how difficult it appears to be to just listen to music with a good pair of headphones. Is it not 2018? The media is full of talk about preposterously ambitious ideas such as AI and self-driving cars and yet I can't even listen to a fuck-damn music track? O_o I enjoyed reading this. The whole time I thought however: that’s not an issue on my Apple devices. Then I read: > If any…

Makes me wonder if the guy wants (subconsciously or not) to have more problems with technology he’s using just to have an opportunity to tinker with it to make it better. Certainly seems like the type. Not necessarily a bad thing, though, but in such case he might as well drop the complaining tone.

The real shame is that "tinker friendly" is a premium feature now.

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#17

Post by _trampeltier »

aetherspawn wrote: post #4

Heh, I’ve had a Bluetooth set of earbuds from JBL for about 2 years and they’ve been providing great sound (and are really convenient as I work like an auto electrician a lot of the time and I can leave my phone in the toolbox). A good alternative perhaps besides building a portable amplifier.

I bought a Bluetooth speaker a couple of months ago. Sounds great, but if I watch a video, the sound is lagging. I thought about to get Bluetooth headphones, but after that experience I think, I just stay with cables.

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#18

Post by danw1979 »

ignoreInstinct wrote: post #8
baxtr wrote: post #2

> Right now I'm absolutely astonished at how difficult it appears to be to just listen to music with a good pair of headphones. Is it not 2018? The media is full of talk about preposterously ambitious ideas such as AI and self-driving cars and yet I can't even listen to a fuck-damn music track? O_o I enjoyed reading this. The whole time I thought however: that’s not an issue on my Apple devices. Then I read: > If any…

Yeah, but what really gets under my skin is that every other company out there is okay with producing garbage. Meanwhile, Apple produces things that work comparatively well, doing what you expect and then, claims that reasonable functionality is premium . And then catches shit for being pretentious. So, let's step through that once more: - garbage is normal - functional and interoperable is premium - premium is prete…

Not everything at the I recently got a £20 Havit Bluetooth receiver and connected it to a pair of £70 Sony MDR-7506 headphones. The receiver drives the headphones louder and with less distortion than my iPhone can, and the battery lasts for a few days of intermittent listening. Whatever loss is introduced by the aptX coding is invisible to my ears.

I'm blown away by how good this setup is given the price and there shouldn't be any dependency on an expensive source device to run it.

Re: Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?

#19

Post by Nashooo »

baxtr wrote: post #2

> Right now I'm absolutely astonished at how difficult it appears to be to just listen to music with a good pair of headphones. Is it not 2018? The media is full of talk about preposterously ambitious ideas such as AI and self-driving cars and yet I can't even listen to a fuck-damn music track? O_o I enjoyed reading this. The whole time I thought however: that’s not an issue on my Apple devices. Then I read: > If any…

Same thoughts except with my Android phone and Bose QC. Wireless, noise cancellation and never any problems with explosive noise. Also it is indeed 2018 so what's he doing with ripped CD's, there are a lot of streaming services out there right now.
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