The "what audio equipment did you buy/get today" thread [56k warning!!] - Page 116

I got both of these for only $40 =D I also got the AVP 8000, but its pretty beat up and does not function. Sorry for the bad quality pics, ill probably take some better ones with my digital camera once these are cleaned and up n running

awesome find! now get them working.

This!

They have been tested and work just fine. All I need is the pre-amp and ill be good to go!

Nice. Provided they don't have some weird requirement for it, I wouldn't bother with the matching preamp.

I was one of the first in the world to have a prebuilt O2 Amp and I prefer the two-box option as it gives me options to only just use the DAC or headphone amp sections.
Bad photo was due to bad camera settings more than anything else lols. Audio Poutine ran outta the bling Gold case that I wanted

ODAC + O2 + HRTF calibrated Toneboosters Isone = so beyond good.

My settings:



Your HRTF settings (Head size, ear size) will be different as the HRTF differs between people. I have a large head. The manual gives you a very good guideline to how to configure it properly.
The bump in bass is to compensate for the lack of bass impact in headphones comapred to speakers. Therefore you have to compensate about +4 dB from a balanced sounding headphone such as the DT880. the upper bass frequencies are bumpd by about +1dB as I want the frequency repsonse curve to be more like the beyerdynamic T1, which is the most scientifically balanced sounding frequency response wise (for headphones) + factoring margin of error in measuring.

Volume limited my F2K by -5dB so the bass boost doesn't digitally clip. Subjectivelly found .32 sec T60 reverb time to be the best sounding (close to the recommended .3 sec for a recording studio). Found .3 to be too 'dry' sounding. There isn't much, if any, frequencies below 35 Hz in music, even bassy music, so the rolloff is fine.

Set my Windows and F2K to 24 bit, 44.1 kHz as I volume limited and don't want to negatively affect sound quality. Bit depth only matters in sound quality when you use a digitally controlled volume control as lowering the volume sheds off bits. At about 13 bits bit depth (-18 dB using a digital volume control from 16 bit, 1 bit is about -6 dB) is where it affects sound quality (thus why you hear the difference between 8-bit and 16-bit music). Changing it to 24-bit output means I have the headroom to lower the volume digitally all I want without it affecting sound quality. It isn't because 24-bit is inheritly better than 16 bit. Also VSTs such as Isone operate in the 24-bit environment.

Can never go back to the two-blob effect (and thus imaging problems) of headphones.

Sources:

http://en.goldenears.net/388

http://en.goldenears.net/index.php?mid=KB_Columns&document_srl=1884

http://bit.ly/MX0rVC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ -highly recommend viewing!

The others, such as T60 reverb time, diffusion, is pretty easy stuff to find. Yay for science!

I also have a FiiO E17 that will be arriving sometime in the next few days. (These two purchases are mostly unrelated, as the amp is more for my DT990 250; the Phiatons don't really need extra amping.)

Oh, and I also picked up a pair of Pioneer CS-A31 speakers (from the late '60s?) that someone was throwing away, I still need to hook them up and test them. (pictures maybe to come later)

Isn't this canceling out everything you've obtained by going to such a "neutral" DAC as the 02? And also getting "neutral" headphones like the DT880?

I think you've answered your own question. He, like I do, prefers a more reference sound, than a hi-fi one.

By my understanding, those two things are the same. The goal of most self proclaimed audiophiles seems to be finding the combination of equipment that provides the most "neutral" sound, being that it does not add any coloration to the original recording. Any part of the audio frequency response shouldn't be exaggerated or misrepresented. Adding EQ to a seemingly poor recording may be OK, but to add it to such a device as the 02 DAC seems to go against all of its design principles and most everything that MWAV guy preaches on his website.

Not that I agree or disagree with those accounts, it just seems like the exact opposite approach that I would have expected from someone who bought that device so I was kind of surprised to see that type of software processing being used.