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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?

#211

Post by kryptiskt »

bitwize wrote: post #192
chaosite wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You never owned the copyright on the content, but you did own the thing. Not a "single-use license". Owning a CD is exactly like owning a book, in that way.

Grandparent was correct. Copyright law only allowed for private home exhibition of the music/movie. VHS tapes even came with a warning from the FBI. As in, the people who might show up at your house if you copied the movie or showed it to a large group of people.

Reselling of media is long established as legal in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

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

#212

Post by justin66 »

Odd that the author poses this question:

Maybe it doesn't like the metadata in those tracks?

and doesn't go on to discover the answer. If my ripping and encoding routine were doing something funky that causes problems I'd really want to know about it, and it wouldn't require me to debug Android as the author implies.

It's true enough that Android playback probably shouldn't be glitching, but if the track metadata is invalid or pushing the limits of what you can do, whatever he's doing to his tracks is likely to cause problems in places other than Android playback...

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

#213

Post by acabal »

013a wrote: post #156

I have a pair of powered studio monitors (Mackie MR5), and I completely relate to this problem. Many PCs and phones will emit an audible hissing noise while plugged in. I've tested on a dozen different devices, with integrated and external DACs, five hundred dollar sound cards, massively shielded cables, practically every modern OS you can name, tweaking every audio setting exposed to me. The only devices that work p…

Re. flac downloads, Bandcamp (almost?) always offers a flac download option. You'd be surprised how many bands have a Bandcamp page, even if they're signed to labels.

The option is not well advertised. After you purchase a digital download, there's a tiny arrow next to the 'download' link that allows you to switch the download to flac.

I always download flac and consequently spend a lot of money at Bandcamp!

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

#214

Post by LeoPanthera »

dep_b wrote: post #53
danw1979 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

The DA on older iPhones is mediocre, the DA in those lightning converters is even worse. Try a separate DA if you really want quality audio output.

> the DA in those lightning converters is even worse

Absolutely not true.

https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-qu...

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

#215

Post by mindslight »

IMHO your circuit topology looks wacky. Perhaps there's a goal to making your amplifier ground ride in the middle of the waveform, but it could just as well be unintentional. So my immediate thoughts -

You've already got a real split supply with 2x 9v batteries. If you use that instead of deriving a virtual ground, you will save 9mA of quiescent current.

How purposeful is that whole low side duplicated circuit and why? [0] It seems like since you're using batteries, hooking signal ground directly to your ground and driving the output single ended would work fine. Or if you want to work towards being able to AC-power, then a differential input op-amp topology and still drive the output single ended.

Isn't there a vibrant cottage industry of external USB DACs and headphone amplifiers and whatnot? I'm more of a receiver+speakers type of a person, but I often see newly designed stuff for headphones.

[0] Driving both sides does get you the ability to swing the output a full 36 volts. But given that your goal is to cut the signal by 11 and also that by mixing both channels you can't actually do that lest you get crosstalk in the form of clipping, I don't think this is your goal!

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

#216

Post by woah »

anotheryou wrote: post #201
013a wrote: post #156

I have a pair of powered studio monitors (Mackie MR5), and I completely relate to this problem. Many PCs and phones will emit an audible hissing noise while plugged in. I've tested on a dozen different devices, with integrated and external DACs, five hundred dollar sound cards, massively shielded cables, practically every modern OS you can name, tweaking every audio setting exposed to me. The only devices that work p…

Did you do a blind test on spotify's high quality vs lossless? At least with 320mp3s I could only get it right with certain songs and not too consistently. I'd say my room treatment has a far bigger impact. (but regarding hardware I'm totally with you and haven't found the source of my rather high noise floor either)

It all really depends on the gold plating of your cables

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

#217

Post by andthat »

013a wrote: post #156

I have a pair of powered studio monitors (Mackie MR5), and I completely relate to this problem. Many PCs and phones will emit an audible hissing noise while plugged in. I've tested on a dozen different devices, with integrated and external DACs, five hundred dollar sound cards, massively shielded cables, practically every modern OS you can name, tweaking every audio setting exposed to me. The only devices that work p…

You tried balanced cables?

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

#218

Post by thinkmassive »

013a wrote: post #156

I have a pair of powered studio monitors (Mackie MR5), and I completely relate to this problem. Many PCs and phones will emit an audible hissing noise while plugged in. I've tested on a dozen different devices, with integrated and external DACs, five hundred dollar sound cards, massively shielded cables, practically every modern OS you can name, tweaking every audio setting exposed to me. The only devices that work p…

Any advice on a quality Lightning to 3.5mm adapter? The official Apple one is so flimsy that one or both channels cut out anytime I move the phone. My workaround is to heatshrink the cable and both ends, so it’s rigid enough not to cut out. But it’s ugly and probably won’t last more than a few months.

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

#219

Post by hmottestad »

dep_b wrote: post #53
danw1979 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

The DA on older iPhones is mediocre, the DA in those lightning converters is even worse. Try a separate DA if you really want quality audio output.

I have to agree with the other commenter here. I have not noticed any difference moving from iPhone 6s to 7 (with dongle) listening through my Shure 530 headphones.

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

#220

Post by nycticorax »

A USB DAC+amp seems like the right answer if you don't want to break out the soldering iron and don't want to buy an Apple product. I just don't think makers of commodity hardware have much incentive to spend money on good audio circuitry. But if their USB ports didn't work, well, that would be a real problem. I have an earlier model of this:

http://www.schiit.com/products/fulla-1

that delivers good audio quality (to my non-audiophile ears). The one I have is not perfect: there's some static when you turn the volume knob (maybe a good design tradeoff at the price, I don't know), and the metal edges on the enclosure were sharp enough that I took it apart and filed them down a bit (others might not have been bothered by this, but I was). But there sure isn't any background hissing like there is with the built-in headphone jack on my Dell workstation.

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