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Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

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Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#121

Post by modzu »

fermienrico wrote: post #16

It is refreshing to see these types of articles. Of all disciplines of human interests and hobbies, Audiophiles are one of the most stubborn, misinformed, anecdotal and delusional bunch. Of course I am generalizing, but every time I engage in a discussion about audio quality, it is a losing battle. Not because of lack of data or supporting evidence, but because of the fundamental dissent for data driven arguments. Yo…

why generalize like this? indeed discussing virtually any subject with virtually anybody (except perhaps within academic circles) usually reveals how "stubborn, misinformed, anecdotal and delusional" their beliefs are

if i had to guess, it sounds like you have poor hearing ;P

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#122

Post by wrycoder »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #27
fermienrico wrote: post #16

It is refreshing to see these types of articles. Of all disciplines of human interests and hobbies, Audiophiles are one of the most stubborn, misinformed, anecdotal and delusional bunch. Of course I am generalizing, but every time I engage in a discussion about audio quality, it is a losing battle. Not because of lack of data or supporting evidence, but because of the fundamental dissent for data driven arguments. Yo…

Nothing wrong with vinyl, that’s more about physically handling the media, reading the sleeves, listening to an album the whole way through etc. Than the audio quality. No vinyl enthusiast would say the quality is objectively better, but the experience arguably is

What I miss are the album notes. It's easy to include a booklet with massive information in the CD jewelbox, but instead "they" dropped the notes. And these days, you can't even determine who wrote the song, as the track copyright information is missing. It's like ebooks, which often omit the year of publication.

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#123

Post by S_A_P »

Audiophilia is a study in contradiction. The ask is a flat "uncolored" accurate sound. The gear that sells for ridiculous prices is usually tube gear with limited bandwidth and makes ~15 watts at 5-10% (admittedly usually even order harmonic) thd. Hardly uncolored.

That said, and Ive mentioned this before on HN. My (now late) uncle had a bunch of audiophile friends in Dallas. He hung around folks who had spent upwards of 500,000 (yes you read that right) on audio gear. I can't forget the time I rolled up to a modest middle class home, only to find out that inside of this house was a pair of Focal Grand Utopias (selling retail for 250k at the time, though he said he paid around 60k for the pair). He had 2 750 watt tube amps, current era but the brand escapes me. For source material he had a heavily modified Technics SP-10 with 2 tone arm/cartridge combinations and a boutique tube phono preamp. This fed into a similarly heavily modified Dynaco tube preamp from the 1960s. When he really wanted to get serious, though, he had a studer 2" tape machine and a sizable collection of low generation master tape copies. If I hadn't seen this with my own eyes I would say my uncle was full of shit when he told me about it. You know what? it sounded freaking amazing.Im sure it is 90% placebo, and 10% the fact that he was able to play high bandwidth audio to concert levels with no stress or strain from the amplifiers. Was it worth 6 figures of money? not to me. But I am glad I got to hear it...

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#124

Post by modzu »

mbell wrote: post #85
willtim wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your generalisation is unfair. Most Audiophiles just want to listen to music the way the artists intended. This is not easy in a industry where colouring the sound is even celebrated, e.g. 'Beats by Dre'. I recently tried the latest noise cancelling headphones by Sony (1000XM3). The noise cancelling was excellent, but the bass was +5db overblown, boomy and drowned out most of the mids, the treble was dark to hide the…

> Your generalisation is unfair. Most Audiophiles just want to listen to music the way the artists intended. That is not my experience at all. Audio gear that is 'flat', in that it outputs as close a representation to the recording as possible is largely shunned in audiophile circles. They mostly want to listen to something that 'sounds good', with all the psychoacoustic baggage that comes with such a statement. As a…

generalizing what "audiophiles" want is like trying to generalize what the "blacks" want or what "canadians" want. it makes no sense. what sounds 'good' entirely depends on the source and the listener. so immediately you can see there is no right answer. if you want to listen to old elvis records maybe they sound best on old 60s gear. theres supposed to be some noise. all the girls goin crazy listening to it back in the day -- they were listening on the AM radio! the noise was part of it. listening to classical though -- have you ever been? no speaker can reproduce that experience. some come close; they are not noisy speakers. then there is bass, some people love to have lots of it layered thick on top of everything they listen to. some do not. etc, etc, etc

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#125

Post by seanp2k2 »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #64
willtim wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your generalisation is unfair. Most Audiophiles just want to listen to music the way the artists intended. This is not easy in a industry where colouring the sound is even celebrated, e.g. 'Beats by Dre'. I recently tried the latest noise cancelling headphones by Sony (1000XM3). The noise cancelling was excellent, but the bass was +5db overblown, boomy and drowned out most of the mids, the treble was dark to hide the…

Yes the noise surrounding headphones is incredible (pun not intended), even stranger I find the denigration of 'studio monitor' quality very odd. Recently I bought a nice pair of headphones, naturally enough I wanted the ones that colour the music the least, went looking in the headphone section at the nearest consumer electronic shop for the ones that were on their web site and couldn't find them. There were stands…

Right; and there are real studio monitors, like https://meyersound.com/product/hd-1/ (popular for film) and the Yamaha NS10 https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story , popular because it's so bad that if it sounds right on the NS10s, it'll sound right on anything. You don't always want a near-field critical listening device, and most studio headphones must be durable first, leak as little sound as possible second, be cheap third, and sound amazing fourth. Watch some videos of {your favorite artist} recording and look at what they use: it's probably something like a Beyerdynamic DT880 Pro (~$200), Sennheiser HD 280 ($100), or Sony MDR7506 (~$75). Professional musicians on-stage will use something like a Sennheiser ew 300 personal monitor system with custom in-ear monitors (JH, Westone, Sensaphonics, or something cheaper and universal-fit like Senn IE 40 Pro or Shure SE series). Aside from DJs getting paid to wear them at shows, most professional musicians aren't using gear from big-box retailers...they're using stuff from Guitar Center / Sweetwater / zZounds / Musicians Friend / that little music shop around the corner, who sell actual professional equipment.

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#126

Post by smcameron »

irrational wrote: post #26
Matsta wrote: post #10

The majority of all active speakers produced nowadays are Class-D, it's nothing really new (and the fact they are super cheap). No idea how this guy wrote this article and didn't come across DIY Audio (or he just didn't mention it in the article). There is a tonne of information here: https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/class-d/

I have some questions. My son has been taking guitar lessons using a classic guitar. Using the advice of his instructor we are getting him a begginer's electric guitar for christmas. We also need to get him an amp. Is the amp in this article the same kind of amp that you could plug an electric guitar into? I know nothing about music or instruments, but I do know about electronics so I was thinking it might be fun to…

Short answer: No. Guitar amps are weird, not like hi-fi amps at all. In a hi-fi amp, distortion is the enemy. In a guitar amp, distortion is sought after. Driving the pre-amp section of a guitar amp into clipping is extremely common and desirable. Doing the same with a hi-fi amp is not. A hi-fi amp will be typically connected to speakers with a woofer and a tweeter and maybe a mid-range, trying to accurately reproduce all frequencies. A guitar amp typically has nothing but 12 inch speakers. A guitar amp is literally half the instrument. Plugging a guitar into a hi-fi amp is faithfully amplifying 1/2 of an instrument. You'll end up buying a guitar amp anyway. Just get a guitar amp.

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#127

Post by ericd »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #117
mbell wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your generalisation is unfair. Most Audiophiles just want to listen to music the way the artists intended. That is not my experience at all. Audio gear that is 'flat', in that it outputs as close a representation to the recording as possible is largely shunned in audiophile circles. They mostly want to listen to something that 'sounds good', with all the psychoacoustic baggage that comes with such a statement. As a…

>audiophile circles >They mostly want to listen to something that 'sounds good', with all the psychoacoustic baggage that comes with such a statement TL;DR the technology is so good and so cheap now that what you get from a $150 set-up today rivals stuff costing much more from a decade ago. I still recommend spending 90+% of your budget over a few hundred dollars on better actual reproduction equipment, be it speaker…

Just curious, how do you feel about the Schiit Stack?

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#128

Post by sneak »

function_seven wrote: post #100
sneak wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your external dac is indistinguishable to your ears from the internal one in whatever device you are using to supply it with bits. This is precisely what OP is talking about.

There’s a huge gap in quality between most onboard DACs and externals. It’s not necessarily because the onboard is worse at C-ing the Ds to the As, but because they’re not isolated from the noisy electronics that share the power supply. My laptop emits different squeals when I scroll a window, for example.

That’s not the DAC.

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#130

Post by toast0 »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #110
function_seven wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a huge gap in quality between most onboard DACs and externals. It’s not necessarily because the onboard is worse at C-ing the Ds to the As, but because they’re not isolated from the noisy electronics that share the power supply. My laptop emits different squeals when I scroll a window, for example.

That's just shitty grounding. Try putting one of those 3-to-2 prong adapters on your charging cable and you'll see right away.

Shitty circuit layout maybe, but it's much easier to move the dac outside the noisy box than to fix the cicuit layout. Most computers today can manage a digital audio output, either through HDMI, spdif from the sound card, or via USB. Keeping the analog path away from noise is sensible in a way that 96kHz and oxygen free cables are not.
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