23 ms·
Do I really need to get out the soldering-iron again?
- baxtr 8y ago> 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 anyone reads this post I'm sure loads of people will tell me that my problems are all my own making and if only I invested in an iPhone all my problems would go away. Well you know what? APPLE IS A SYMBOL OF PRETENTIOUSNESS AND IGNORANCE - YOU DO NOT EVEN KNOW HOW YOUR PHONE WORKS - I DO NOT HAVE TO PAY A TAX TO APPLE TO LISTEN TO MY MUSIC. Well, at least it usually simply works.
- saagarjha 8y agoI 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.
- benj111 8y agoIs 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)
- klipt 8y agoSubmit patches: https://source.android.com/setup/contribute/submit-patches https://source.android.com/setup/contribute/submit-patches
- TeMPOraL 8y agoAndroid may be "open source", but it means little if you're not a company wanting to write their own clone, or a security researcher. Would I be able to fix just the media player service, and make my smartphone use the fixed version? Without flashing it with a brand new OS, losing data, warranty, OEM drivers, and ability to receive security updates? Didn't think so. Android "open source" delivers only half of the expected value.
- Rondom 8y agoI think it is just a matter of what one is most comfortable with. The HW-solution is a nice challenge, but I am sure, there are simpler ways to solve it. On a sidenote: I would be surprised if the issue he has is systemic too Android devices in general. I am sure others would have noticed it if was that widespread that it occurred on all devices.
- drops 8y agoMakes 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.
- humanrebar 8y agoThe real shame is that "tinker friendly" is a premium feature now.
- Rjevski 8y agoI see this a lot with Linux and non-stock-Android users.
- wingerlang 8y agoProbably, I have spent 100s of hours to make my iPhones better when in reality they would have worked just as well without the modifications. I frequently see people complaining and finding issues just so they can try to fix it, rinse and repeat. This also leads into his statement. I own an iPhone and I kinda know what's going on beneath the surface. I can open up disassembled binaries and anyone can look at the headers from google within seconds. That in turn would lead into that 99.9% of Android users have no knowledge of how Android works, so his whole statement is kind of odd.
- ignoreInstinct 8y agoYeah, 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 pretentious - also, add $1,000 for the name brand The author simultaneously complains that nothing works, but refutes using the only thing that works because it represents training wheels that are too fashionable and ostentatious. We can have nice things because that's for babies, and also too overtly glamorous and bougie. I just want shit that works out of the box sometimes. I also don't need X-Files alien logos and red backlit Hunt For Red October themes everywhere. And oh yeah, let's not get started on OEM spyware masquerading as harmless adware. (Cough! Lenovo! [0] Cough! Intel Management Engine! [1] Cough!) [0] https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Security-Malware/Malware-preloaded-on-new-computers/td-p/3876408 https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Security-Malware/Malware-preloa... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#Security_vulnerabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#Securi... Will someone other than Apple please step up to the fucking plate and not just dump trash onto the shelves at Best Buy?
- danw1979 8y agoNot everything at the <£100 price point is rubbish... 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.
- dep_b 8y agoThe 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.
- ThJ 8y agoThis guy is both smart and stupid at the same time.
- slx26 8y agoor smart and annoyed
- pdimitar 8y agoSmart and biased. Drinking the Apple hate juice in particular. I envy the people who have the free time to tinker but what they keep forgetting, time and time again, is that they are the minority. Many people have happy family lives and prefer to spend most of their leisure time with people -- or non-tech hobbies. I do enough programming already, thank you. (EDIT to add: and not everybody is in perfect health shape as well, so they use their free time to recharge -- not to work some more. Stress and overworking come with an army of health issues. Climbing a hill with a 50kg backpack, to give an analogy, is not as easy as it looks like from the side.) I respect smart hardware technicians but he lost me as an audience with his Apple hate.
- shaan7 8y ago+1 on "hate doesn't work". Just adding a perspective that you might be missing. The stuff that OP described doesn't really feel like "work" to him. To him its the exact thing you described - it helps him recharge - so that he can go back to "work" the next day :) [P.S. "I do enough programming already, thank you." doesn't help as well. To get an idea of how sad it is to read, imagine if someone tells an artist "I do enough painting already, thank you.". People love to do different things, and that is okay.]
- pdimitar 8y agoYep, I know it helps them recharge. But I find it sad how oblivious they sometimes are that others might be so beat up that they need an almost passive recharge. :( As for my programming, I actually do some small work outside of work hours on my own enthusiastic basis. But I have to tell you, even this minor 4-5h a week thing took me years of recharging and healing before I felt the passion for the first time in years and years. (As an aside, we the techies need non-tech hobbies but that's just an opinion.)
- mirkules 8y agoI chuckled when I read: > 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. Followed by: > APPLE IS A SYMBOL OF PRETENTIOUSNESS AND IGNORANCE - YOU DO NOT EVEN KNOW HOW YOUR PHONE WORKS So iPhone users don’t know how their phone works, but Android is awesome because it’s open source and the freedom you get with that but it’s too complicated to learn how it works. Okay.
- zanny 8y agoYes okay, its about having the choice and the option. Its rooted in the fundamental instinct to cling to freedom and seek it out. Even if you don't make a choice, having the option to is still empowering, because the absence of a choice tells you someone else made it for you. For many, that could be the same choice they would have made. That doesn't give any condolence to those who would have made a different one, but weren't given the option.
- mirkules 8y agoI understand the need for people to feel like they have a choice by using free software (the choice to modify it if they want to), but at this point it is just an illusion unless you are prepared to dedicate a huge amount of time. If you practically couldn’t do it even if you wanted to, does it still mean you have a choice? It’s a different time today than it was 40 years ago when RMS modified printer drivers, and software is much more complicsted than it used to be.
- jolmg 8y agoTotally depends on what you're thinking of modifying and how you want to modify it. Some experience gained through one modification also carries over to others, even when done on different programs. I've done modifications that only take a few minutes, and I have my systems setup so it's really, really easy to pick a package by name to modify it and distribute the mods to all my machines, complete with version control. I very much appreciate the ability to modify the free software I use.
- Nashooo 8y agoSame 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.
- kgwxd 8y agoMany people perfer to own instead of lease, even in 2018.
- thanatropism 8y agoThis is fine if you're "stuck in your ways" (I want to use a less loaded term but can't come up with one) and have a collection of music you enjoy and have stopped keeping up. It's not even keeping up with current music; as I go from my early to my late 30s, the pop landscape has gone from parseable to alien. But there's still good music coming out and older good music you didn't know about. Hell, I only discovered the gigantic German composer Paul Hindemith six months ago.
- icebraining 8y agoFrom what I can tell, the streaming catalog is still a small subset of the CD catalog, so if you're into discovering new music, you're restricting yourself by only using the former.
- wilsonnb3 8y agoYou are restricting yourself to a subset by streaming, but that subset probably contains more music than you could listen to in a lifetime anyways.
- PascLeRasc 8y agoGood news - you can do both! I use Spotify for regular everyday listening and finding new artists/new albums by artists I like, and I collect vinyl for fun and to support artists more directly.
- blattimwind 8y ago> I enjoyed reading this. The whole time I thought however: that’s not an issue on my Apple devices. Except newer iPhones requiring a dongle to use headphones.
- Rjevski 8y agoA dongle is ~10$ and you can pick one up anywhere. This horrible contraption he had to build just to enjoy music costs way more in time & money.
- blattimwind 8y agoIt (the dongle) is still wholly unnecessary.
- jf- 8y ago> APPLE IS A SYMBOL OF PRETENTIOUSNESS AND IGNORANCE - YOU DO NOT EVEN KNOW HOW YOUR PHONE WORKS Is this guy for real? I don’t know the nitty gritty of how most of the things I use work, I’m only concerned that they work. Sounds like sour grapes.
- jf- 8y agoAfter re-reading the blog, I feel a bit bad about the negativity I and others expressed here. If you do read this xylon, don’t take it to heart! Also thanks for sharing your circuit, it certainly provoked an interesting discussion.
- mikestew 8y agoI’m only concerned that they work. Which, as you allude to, is not guaranteed no matter what it says on the tin. Samsung is my go-to for that point. Not that features were half-assed, or kinda worked. No, having an icon on a screen does not count when what backs that icon doesn’t even pretend to do what it says. (To be specific, their fitness stuff was literally laughable in how broken or, lets be honest, how unimplemented it was.) I think what gets missed is that the “Apple tax” (the “M$” for the 2000s, indicating the writer is to be ignored) is actually the “not a broken POS, and does what you thought it would do” convenience fee. Oh, sure, there’s Pixel and the like if you don’t like Apple. Last I looked, you’ll still pay the “Apple tax” even if it goes to Google. And I swear, the next neckbeard ranting about how people don’t how their tech works either better take public transit to work, be ready to rattle off the Otto cycle used by their ICE car, or STFU.
- PascLeRasc 8y agoI'm also excited to hear about their farming techniques.
- fredsted 8y agoThe guy is soldering a bunch of stuff to listen to music, so he's obviously not Apple's target market. Maybe he likes over engineered solutions? At least, it sounds like he just likes being contrarian. Android or Linux is not helping him much in this case, that's for sure.
- shaan7 8y agoIts not an issue on Android devices as well, I've no idea whats broken on OP's setup.
- jowsie 8y agoIt's a well documented issue. Maybe your headphones and/or ears just aren't sensitive enough to notice the issue. Plenty of people don't see the difference between flac and 240p youtube uploads, after all.
- shaan7 8y agoHmm, did you make the 240p vs FLAC strawman deliberately? Or is the bug (as you're able to reproduce it) really that bad? I know OP was using high-end headphones but I expected at least a slight hissle. (My attempts to reproduce were with a PX80, S2PGFY-003, JBL Pulse and Bose Companion 50. I included the speakers because I couldn't get the headphones to do the trick)
- HyperTalk2 8y agoI'm not sure why Apple is receiving any sort of praise here. I was constantly assaulted by an "explosion of noise" glitch when working with Logic Pro in OS X. I could have the system volume level set to the lowest possible setting (25% of 1 notch), and yet I'd still occasionally get deafening explosions of noise as if I had the system volume set to the full 16 notches. The explosion is just short enough that there's zero chance of you having any hope of ripping your headphones off as quickly as possible to spare your hearing. No, by the time you hear the explosion, it's already too late. I did in fact start losing my hearing from this and completely gave up on making music.
- vonseel 8y agoThat sounds like a hardware problem or drivers issue. If it was a software problem, why give up on music when there are other options both free and paid like Reaper, Ableton, etc. which run perfectly fine? I have not had any of the issues you are complaining about in Logic Pro X, FWIW, on multiple laptops and hardware audio interfaces over ~6 years of use.
- gyrgtyn 8y agoAll my apple stuff makes an annoying pop sound any time the music stops for more than some amount of time I don't know. Bluetooth and analog do it.
- aetherspawn 8y agoHeh, 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.
- _trampeltier 8y agoI 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.
- Renaud 8y agoExplanation of why there is lag when watching video and listening over Bluetooth and how it is taken care of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYW4J6FyyZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYW4J6FyyZU To ensure (kind of) that your BT speaker/headphones will be able to work with video, check they implement "AptX low latency". However, as they mention in the video, there are lots of ways this could fail: application playback issue, BT transmitter issue (although anything from the last few years should be able to handle this properly) or receiver issue (the most likely cause in older or cheap speakers).
- amelius 8y agoWhy does it use two opamps for the ground signal?
- ThePhysicist 8y agoSince you have two channels that source current (L and R) it makes sense to have two parallel op-amps for the GND pin to have the same slew rate & maximum current, as both L and R channels return current through the GND line (I would assume).
- mannykannot 8y agoI am curious as to why it needs any circuitry on the ground line - would a direct connection not work? (I guess I am assuming that L, R and ground are the only connections made to the headphones.) Do the amplifiers put a DC bias on the L and R outputs that needs to be matched on the ground, and if so, would a capacitor in series with the L and R outputs not be enough to isolate it?
- megous 8y agoYou could just use the middle connection between the two batteries as a ground. I'm not sure why he didn't do it. Perhaps so that the whole thing works longer even if one of the batteries is discharged faster. That would be my guess.
- mannykannot 8y agoAs it stands, 40% of its 23mA current draw is through the 1kΩ x 2 voltage divider... Now I am wondering if a circuit with the between-battery link connected to ground would risk damaging the op amps (or phones) if only one battery was in?
- snarfy 8y agoAll that because the android-media-player-service has a bug.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoYou can't really replace android-media-player-service on your phone with your patched version without replacing the whole OS and losing (among other things) automated security updates and OEM stuff... so I can see how a hardware fix is easier. The system of <phone> -- <headphones> is more modular.
- icebraining 8y agoYou probably can, by rooting and making an Xposed module. But yeah, the amp is more generally useful.
- IshKebab 8y agoI'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.
- Sidnicious 8y agoI'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.
- squarefoot 8y agoa: I had a similar issue on my Sandisk player and it was due to corrupt data on the SD. Formatting it then copying back the files from a backup solved the problem. the author's problem is different though; it seems his player doesn't like some files although they appear to be undamaged. I agree it's probably a bug in the decoder. b: a voltage divider would attenuate everything so the listener would end up raising the volume and the noise explosions would be unaffected. In my experience those noises are much louder than the music even at its louder peak, so a limiter would work better. A limiter is a circuit which let the audio signal unaffected up to a given level, then if necessary it starts limiting it to keep it to maximum that level. The limiter should be set up to trigger only with levels above the maximum original audio signal, so that although the noises wouldn't disappear, they would be confined to a lower level with the original signal left untouched.
- Sidnicious 8y agoa: Interesting! b: Good point, but I just meant quieting the hiss that the author ended up solving with the op-amp circuit, not the 'explosions'.
- squarefoot 8y agoAh, I missed the hissing part. Apparently he gets that noise only from a CD player, and that noise is constant through all song and unaffected by volume settings. That would mean the audio section of that player is really noisy and/or possibly the volume control has been put in the wrong place, for example too far (circuit wise, not distance) from the power amplifier section. When connecting multiple stages together care must be taken to minimize noise. Besides careful design and choosing low noise parts, some practices can at least reduce the perceived noise even on noisy devices, for example by putting the volume control just before the power amplifier. This ensures that when the user lowers the volume the noise generated by previous stages gets also lowered along the signal.
- temp0876456 8y agoBoy 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.
- notacoward 8y agoSo you bought an amp instead of making one. That's a fine solution, but it probably means that the $2K you spent on headphones was irrelevant.
- ricardobeat 8y agoA $100 amp and good headphones do the job just fine. The current generation of phones has very high quality DACs, beyond what was considered top of the line for premium audio players 5-10 years ago.
- Anderkent 8y agoI used to plug my AKG k702s (which are maybe not 'audiophile' $2k headphones, but are good enough) into a pixel 1 without any issues. Alas after an 'upgrade' to a pixel 3 after I crushed the first one against the deck while sailing, I had to buy a bluetooth dac and that doesn't seem to do as well.
- ikeboy 8y agoIs it just me, or are $10 branded earbuds just fine for music?
- bostik 8y agoProbably. I've tried a few different pairs and the pricepoint where sound quality becomes "good enough" seems to be somewhere around ~£35. If you want a microphone too, bump that up to ~£50. My _purely anecdotal_ experience is that cheaper headphones tend to work well for pop music, likely because their reproduction range is bass heavy. Sadly the moment you want to add podcasts into the mix, the balance is off. Spoken word just sounds stuffy. When I'm not on the move, you can pry my AKG K270 off my cold, dead hands.
- praptak 8y ago”It improves sound quality by taking away the hard work of driving the dynamic load of the headphones from the device" Can anybody explain that please? What is this dynamic load whose driving is hard?
- LeonM 8y agoConverting an electric signal into mechanical movement takes energy. Thus, current needs to flow from the audio amplifier in the CD player to the headphones. In electronic terms: the headphones have a low impedance (AC resistance). Due to a poorly designed circuit in the CD player, noise is introduced when current flows. So the more current is flowing, the more noise. Driving a dynamic load is not hard, it has been solved for a long time. The vendor just chose a poor design, probably to shave a couple tenths of a cent from the material bill. A proper designed amplifier requires very little current (ideally none) on the input. In electronic terms: the amplifier has a high impedance. Thus the amplifier causes very little noise when connected to the cheap CD player. The OP build a better amplifier that causes less noise when current is drawn from it, so using that results in a better quality sound.
- praptak 8y ago> Due to a poorly designed circuit in the CD player, noise is introduced when current flows. Thanks! This was the missing part.
- frabert 8y agoI'm no EE, but dynamic headphones (i.e. 99.5% of them) have a generally high impedance (relative to earphones) and require a higher voltage to operate. Add to that the fact that they are a mostly inductive load, and you get the recipe for a hard to drive device, that requires a high voltage paired with an strong inductive kickback
- rayrrr 8y agoEveryone seems to be seeing this as an Android vs. iOS debate, but I see it as a smartphone vs. dedicated device debate. If you're serious enough about photography, you don't complain about your smartphone camera's limitations, you get yourself a DSLR and multiple lenses. So if you're this serious about music, why not get a dedicated device? Look at what companies like HiBy and Hidizs are doing. I have, and my ears haven't been this happy since the early aughts.
- DubiousPusher 8y agoSeriously, you don't even need to spend a lot of money. If you search your local goodwill or garage sale circuit you can find some really nice old audio equipment. Pick up a CD player and a nice reciever for cheap.
- lightedman 8y agoI'm guessing you missed where the guy took a dedicated music playing device (CD player of decent quality) and obtained other issues. The fact of the matter is that most small devices have audio packages that simply are not up to the task, and that includes dedicated music players.
- Johnny555 8y agowhy not get a dedicated device? For the same reason I don't want to carry a big heavy DSLR around with me, because there's a limited number of devices I want to lug around. I ditched the DSLR years ago (yes, it took great photos, but not enough to make it worth the hassle). Though I still bring a pocket sized camera with me when I travel because my smartphone still can't compete with a big sensor and an optical zoom. While a dedicated MP3 player is small (to be honest, I didn't even know they were still made), it's just one more thing to keep track of and keep charged up.
- PascLeRasc 8y agoIt doesn't have to be a whole separate device. The Audioquest Dragonfly is the size of a USB stick, runs off your phone's power, and provides excellent DAC/amp capabilities. Fiio also makes some similar mobile DAC/amps. Here's a nice long article on the details: https://www.computeraudiophile.com/ca/bits-and-bytes/an-audiophile-switches-from-ios-to-android/ https://www.computeraudiophile.com/ca/bits-and-bytes/an-audi...
- alkonaut 8y ago> YOU DO NOT EVEN KNOW HOW YOUR PHONE WORKS I know it does work. Would I prefer to have a more open phone and computer? Sure. At the cost of having to ever tinker with it? No. I just switched my home built raspberry + HiFiBerry with expensive speakers to a simple closed Sonos system for the exact same problem the author had with linux, audio hardware, noise. Having something that just works and I don’t have to care how is a blessing and in the future that is where I’ll put my money. Ignorance is bliss.
- alexkavon 8y agoI think one of the most fascinating relationships that humans have with technology is that we expect everything to just work and that’s the end-goal/advertised dream. However it’s never been that way and for good reason. Between competing technologies and human interests the actually reality of technology is that it’s all broken.
- 013a 8y agoI 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 perfectly are (1) my TV output, and (2) every single Apple product. I'm wholly convinced that the computing world is, in general, regressing. Audio has been a huge loser in this fight. Today, many modern phones don't ship with 3.5mm jacks. If you want lossless audio, you literally can't find it, even though there's zero reason companies like Spotify couldn't stream it when available (even if it costs extra) (Spotify literally asks artists to upload the masters when they publish, they have that data and then throw it away). Many artists don't even publish physical CDs anymore, so its a game of luck if they have a website where I can buy the FLACs/ALACs. And if you want the actual files to, you know, live your life in a completely legal way, those are gone. Its more than just audio. Watching movies sucks; you now pay full price to effectively indefinitely rent movies, and have them taken away at any time. eBooks are the same and always have been; the world's oldest technology has been coopted by companies like Amazon to increase revenue, and there's practically zero competition. Applications suck; we're puking web and electron everywhere, eating up every conceivable megabyte of memory available literally only because developers are lazy, and now you're consistently asked to pay a monthly fee to access this functionality literally only because companies are lazy. Modern operating systems suck; restricting filesystem access, exposing proprietary application APIs which fundamentally make applications unportable and thus contributing to the rise of Electron/RN. Somehow we took systems and workflows that were amazing throughout the 90s-00s and, in the course of a decade, completely ruined them.
- HocusLocus 8y agoWow I can sympathize. Sounds like you're discerning a S/N ratio problem that would have disqualified the designs from 'high fidelity' in the late 70s and through the 80s. And you have to wonder if in your TV/Apple the hiss is there but is being noise gated. I too believe there has been regression. All it takes is one generation to 'interrupt' consumer expectations of ever increasing quality. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18569013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18569013
- twtw 8y agoCan anyone comment on what's going on with the ground channel in the circuit here? Seems like you would want to tie the input ground to the virtual ground between the two 9Vs and then maybe buffer the output ground, but this circuit doesn't do that - it just replicates the L/R chains twice between grounds. Also, what's the point of adding the two 9Vs and then splitting them again with the two 1k resistors? Why not just pull ground from in between the two 9Vs?
- s800 8y agoDoesn't make any sense to me either. He's burning 2ma for no reason.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- opencl 8y agoThe duplicated amplifier as ground design is pointless and pretty much strictly worse than using a normal ground, but has somehow become semi-popular among certain misguided parts of the audiophile community. Good article about it here[1]. The problem with just using the middle of the batteries as ground is that it creates a potentially headphone-damaging DC offset if the batteries drain unevenly for whatever reason. The resistor bridge is the simplest way to avoid this problem, though there are lots of ways to create a dual rail power supply with various tradeoffs[2]. [1] http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/05/virtual-grounds-3-channel-amps.html http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/05/virtual-grounds-3-channe... [2] https://tangentsoft.net/elec/vgrounds.html https://tangentsoft.net/elec/vgrounds.html
- dejaime 8y agoI love how people can do this type of stuff. Whenever I get out the soldering iron to fix any problems, I face a 50% chance of success against 50% chance of fucking it beyond repair. Well, I guess it fixes it in both cases...
- JshWright 8y agoIf it ain't broke... fix it until it is...
- dijit 8y ago> I do not have to pay a tax to apple to listen to my music. Well, neither do I to be fair. I seriously dislike iTunes but it can take more input than just the store.. Regardless of the official Music player app there are third party ones, some of which are super simple (presenting a http upload on the network and allowing playback of uploaded media) or, in my case, Plex (with a plex pass for local sync)
- chrismeller 8y agoI think his point was less about the purchasing ecosystem for the music and more about the premium for the hardware/OS/brand/accessories/what-have-you required to play any music at all. Though, seriously, if I can throw a little bit extra (shockingly not a lot, compared to similar modern Android offerings) at my phone and not have this kind of basic problem and, presumably, other basic problems of a similar nature then there is a tipping point of efficiency that isn’t terribly far away.
- notacoward 8y agoInteresting point buried in here: since Android is open source, you could go in and fix the bug, but then because you're not running an official Android version you'd lose access to the Play Store and other services. Something's not really free if there's a penalty for doing it. Since freedom to run a modified version of software yourself is one of the four freedoms of free software, this highlights the difference between free software and open source. I'm not saying open source is bad and everyone should prefer free software. It's just a good example of the difference between the two in practice rather than in some debate about licenses and the abstract principles behind them.
- icebraining 8y agoSo if I make a proprietary application that only runs on, say, Ubuntu, does that mean GNU/Linux is no longer really free, since you can't replace your distro with Arch without losing access to my application?
- jstanley 8y agoIf your application is an intrinsic part of pretty much every GNU/Linux system, then yeah, pretty much. It's not GNU/Linux that's not free, but it makes it hard to use a GNU/Linux system that is free.
- jjeaff 8y agoPlay store is not a requirement. You can use f-droid or something similar and it has most everything you might need.
- jstanley 8y agoI know, and I do. In fact I don't have play services installed at all. Unfortunately most people consider the play store to be a necessity, so its non-free nature is a problem.
- notacoward 8y ago
- g5095 8y agoBuy a DAC
- Trombone12 8y agoWere would that go? The author doesn't seem too keen on actually soldering on the inside of the devices, and they all give analogue out. Maybe you meant an amp?
- Jaruzel 8y agoA USB DAC connected to the old-laptop maybe? I have one on a Mini-PC that's the player for my music library - totally moved the digital-to-analogue conversion out of the noisy PC, and results in really clean audio. Obviously you get what you pay for - a £20 DAC wont do a very good job, but a £100 one will be good enough for most people.
- icebraining 8y agoAndroid supports digital audio out: https://source.android.com/devices/audio/usb https://source.android.com/devices/audio/usb
- dextersgenius 8y ago> _It turns out that all music players on Android actually play music using the Android-media-player-service._ This is inaccurate. Neutron music player bypasses Android's Media Player APIs and talks directly to your DAC and plays music without resampling (if the DAC supports it). Never had any audio popping or explosions using Neutron, and I've tried it on 6 different devices so far without any issues (LG G3, Nexus 6P, Nextbit Robin, OnePlus 3, Note 8, OnePlus 6). My headphones are a Beyerdynamic DT880.
- peatmoss 8y agoIt seems like bypassing the APIs which might screw up the audio with downsampling, and something like this is what the OP needed: https://www.audioquest.com/dacs/dragonfly/dragonfly-black https://www.audioquest.com/dacs/dragonfly/dragonfly-black Edit: would work out of the box with the Eee PC he has as well.
- shittyadmin 8y agoI've never had any problems with "explosions" using standard media players, even when plugged into my HD650s - anyone else have that happen? HN is mostly engineering types, the poster clearly has that mindset, we should be filing or looking for a proper bug report for this instead of crafting hacks or talking about alternative products altogether right off the bat.
- amelius 8y ago> we should be filing or looking for a proper bug report for this instead of crafting hacks or talking about alternative products altogether right off the bat As if Google even considers reading any bug reports ... :(
- ricardobeat 8y agoCould’ve spent $199 on an iPod, have high quality audio, load your own music, no “apple tax”. Coincidentally I was looking for something like an ipod shuffle this week and it’s become almost impossible to find, beyond some cheap thrift-store MP3 players.
- DanBC 8y ago> I was looking for something like an ipod shuffle this week and it’s become almost impossible to find, What's wrong with the Sandisk products? EG Clip Jam: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Clip-Jam-MP3-Player/dp/B00VXMY262 https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Clip-Jam-MP3-Player/dp/B00V...
- jaifraic 8y agoAh, I miss my good ol' Sandisk Sansa Clip+. This device with rockbox firmware and a MicroSD-Card had an amazing interface, enough storage for lots of music, supporting FLAC and other lossless formats, all while being small, lightweight and providing high audio quality. For about 40 bucks.
- DanBC 8y agoSadly, I think some of the newer devices can't take Rockbox. I think the Clip Jam can't.
- KWD 8y agoI was getting tired of replacing batteries in another device and after some searching located the SanDisk Clip Sport. It was also only around $40. USB rechargeable, FM radio, and a micro SD card for my music. I've been very happy with it.
- stinos 8y agoThere's actually quite a bunch of less than $199 solutions (and also not requiring a soldering iron) the OP could also have used to achieve a good experience listening to music. One solution would have been to just buy that 15 year old hardware he talks about, a lot of older digital music players still just work, I have a bunch of them. Or an external soundcard for a laptop. Or stream music from phone to a Raspberry Pi with a DAC. Or a portable CD player which doesn't hiss.
- squarefoot 8y agoMost modern laptops have more than decent audio output, but if more quality is needed one could buy a small external sound card for a lot less than €100. This one for example would fit easily in a notebook bag. https://www.thomann.de/gb/miditech_audiolink_light.htm https://www.thomann.de/gb/miditech_audiolink_light.htm About the article circuit, I 'm not that sure the 5532 is a good part for headphone amps, unless the phones have a high impedance and resistance: they're intended as preamplifiers (and very good ones) so they hardly can supply the current to fully drive phones, though I guess they can still be ok for listening to soft jazz in a quiet room:)
- MegaDeKay 8y agoRegarding the op amp selection, he just used them because he had them lying around. "If you wanted best possible sound you'd use some actual audio op-amps rather than these cheap NE5532P. And buffer the output of the op-amps somehow. But of-course size and cost balloons if you start adding buffers and stuff." What I like about his project how he simply used a couple magnets to hold the lid on. Microsoft did something similar on my keyboard, but I don't know that it is something used much on DIY projects like this.
- peter_retief 8y agoThere is a lot of satisfaction in understanding and building your own electronics
- sasaf5 8y agoAre Bluetooth headsets still much behind wired ones in terms of sound quality?
- vardump 8y agoAs an owner of Bose QC35... yes. The headphones themselves sound pretty good. But when playing over bluetooth sometimes compression artefacts are audible. The artefacts are caused by the bluetooth protocol for stereo audio itself, so you're going to hear them even if you play FLAC files. Also latency is pretty horrible. 200 ms+, enough to be obvious.
- akho 8y agoBose QC35 are, I think, AAC and SBC only, so this is to be expected.
- rvense 8y agoI think those are what I have at work. I'm quite sure they do a bunch of stuff of DSP/EQing to make them sound better than they are. When you turn the power off and use them as normal headphones they're mediocre at best.
- hunta2097 8y agoHave had 8 android phones. Literally never heard anything like this.
- creeble 8y agoMe either. My last three Android phones (two Motorola and an HTC) have excellent sound from their headphone jacks. I use my phone and two iPads on a regular basis with headphones, and I've never heard pops between tracks or noticeable hiss with any of them.I I write audio software on embedded Linux devices for a living. I know what clicks and pops between tracks sound like, and usually why they happen. But I don't think this guy's two-op-amo buffer is doing what he thinks it's doing.
- mattlondon 8y agoLikewise - never experienced any of these issues from any android phones I've had (mainly nexuses and pixels, but some old HTC things years and years ago), both wired and via bluetooth.
- johncolton 8y agoFor < $100, I got a USB device which is a DAC+PreAmp+HeadphoneAmp which works great with all Androids, iPhones and computers. I didn't have to solder or breadboard.
- gcp123 8y agoI’ll happily pay the “apple tax” so I can live my life and not have to deal with all the bullshit you did just to listen to some music. Good lord. I’d rather experience the world then mess around with the tech that’s supposed to be helping me live better.
- vikingcaffiene 8y ago> I’ll happily pay the “apple tax” so I can live my life and not have to deal with all the bullshit you did just to listen to some music. This. All of this. The author calls apples products pretentious and berates anyone who owns one for not knowing how their phone works. You know what? I don't give a flying fk about knowing how my phone works. I have a million other things to worry about in this world. It doesn't make me pretentious to spend extra to have an experience I don't have to think about.
- bhj 8y agoIt’s amusing to still hear “Apple tax” in 2018, as if there is no additional value in better hardware, software and support for many people’s use cases.
- yaseer 8y agoIf anything, the 'Apple tax' is greater in 2018 than it has ever been. I say this as having owned 3 Macs for the last 10 years. 4-8 years ago, the gap between Apple and the rest was so stark, it seemed paying for a premium Apple product was a no-brainer. Even Linus got a Macbook air because the hardware was such a leap ahead. Not only has the gap closed, Apple have been left behind, with inferior build quality in key areas (keyboards). This has coincided with raising prices further. The 'Apple tax' is now a real phenomenon, not just the price of premium.
- lern_too_spel 8y agoLinus hasn't used a MacBook Air for several years now. Apple's devices are now inferior in every category.
- solemsigne 8y ago> Shame Maplin closed because now I have to order parts off the internet and WAIT. Local electronics shops are indispensable when you get a whim to make a curious solution to your particular problem. By the time the parts get to you, you just can't help but think how much easier it would have been to just buy something and just feel dumb.
- fsloth 8y agoI had to dish out for Audioquests Dragonfly red just so I could enjoy my headphones on pc. The audio quality is really good but I can't really endorse that as the general go-to solution since the price is quite steep. Would not go back, though.
- rdescartes 8y agoHow the last schematic works ? What is the purpose of 100 ohms resistor and diode in series for ?
- megous 8y agoTo discharge the capacitor when he turns the thing off in a controlled fashion? Otherwise the current will slowly leak through the zener diode and the 100kohm resitor and the capacitor will stay charged. So when he turns the thing on the next time it would not do the expected timed battery charge indication he wants.
- worldstarPanda 8y agoEarstudio bluetooth DAC by Radsone would solve all his problems. Check em out they are neat.
- makecheck 8y agoI saw similar problems creating music and sounds: having “good” audio hardware means that every sound flaw you have is now obvious and annoying. I had to be much more careful. Frankly, good sound production and programming are both underrated, they are not trivial.
- pdimitar 8y agoI'll allow myself some generalization here. I know several very smart and creative hardware technicians and system administrators. I admire them. I truly do. They are more independently thinking than most other programmers I know, are much more resistant to trends and fashion in technology, and rarely complain about the tech they must use. Throw Python, Perl, PHP, bash and what not at them, they can and will curse but will get the job done every time. In that regard, they are hard-working and resourceful. And I have a lot of respect for them. That being said, I cannot help but notice things common among all of those that I know or used to know: - Apple hate without any regard for the advantages it gives you. - They use 80-100% of their leisure time to tinker and work outside their main work hours. One of them recently got divorced by his wife. She said the guy barely spent any time with her. I don't know if their relationship wasn't sour before but still, it's partially indicative. - Obliviousness how Android is not the end-all-be-all of free software -- because it's not; Android is PARTIALLY open-source and comes with a lot of strings attached. Flash a ROM and your warranty is voided. But to them, if you can tinker with your tech then you absolutely, factually, practically, and for all intents and purposes, are using free tech. Details like warranties and hours-long sessions to make basic functions work again be damned in the process. - Complete disregard for convenience and utter lack of respect for others' time. As mentioned above, they usually spend most of their free time working, are not stressed out or burned out, are in good health shape, and find it mysterious that people might be exhausted and would just want to lie on the couch reading a favourite book -- or napping. --- I am somewhat saddened to say the OP's article confirms my bias towards hardware technicians. He's undoubtedly smart and good at what he does but also heavily biased and lacks perspective. I believe such resourceful people should be more open-minded. If he's reading this, I hope he takes it as a constructive feedback from the sidelines and not bashing. All I am saying is that their attitude is not helping them being taken more seriously. If you turn a blind eye to nuances (case in point: Apple hate from his side) then you are not objective in your discussions.
- flocial 8y agoPerhaps that level of obsession is what makes them good at their jobs. You can't really fault people for wanting greater control over the tech they own. Repairability of hardware and true control over what we can install on our phones might not seem important in the name of convenience but I'm grateful for these people fighting the good fight and drawing attention to these issues.
- edoo 8y agoPro tip: There are enough PCB shops now that small designs like this can just be done in free EDA software in minutes, 10 boards in your hand with a stencil 9 real days later for less than $50 shipped. The stencil lets you paste the board all at once, you place parts and hit it with a heat gun until everything sets. For audio stuff you get the advantage of keeping everything nice and tight with lower noise. I barely bread/proto board anymore since it is so cheap and easy to get boards made now.
- GuiA 8y agoAny recommendations for the US? All the circuits I’ve ever made were breadboarded, this could be a fun direction to take.
- edoo 8y agoChina is the 9 day shipping component. I use JLCPCB most and SeedStudio because depending on the features each has their own pricing benefit. If you are comfortable with a paste syringe and the component count is small you can skip the stencil and order multiple projects at the same time to seriously save on shipping. Youtube has great videos on stencil pasting and reflow soldering with a heat gun. If you aren't familiar with EDA software you can start at Fritzing or EasyEda and move on to Kicad. Altium is the standard at big businesses. Here is an example of an MCU based tilt sensor I made earlier this year. I have about 12 hours total into it including inception/design/layout/soldering. It would have taken me 12 hours to breadboard it with components I couldn't use in production. I do this a lot so my process is rather streamlined. I made about 25 boards this year, mostly small test circuits. https://imgur.com/a/XJxp0tO https://imgur.com/a/XJxp0tO
- hak8or 8y agoGo with OSH park instead of China. Their support is gnebuinky amazing, and the service in general. Is 5 days for a 2 layer board with 5 dollars per square inch of design for 3 boards, and free shipping. The company is active on Twitter and its founder is awesome based on interviews he gives with various electronic podcasts.
- openloop 8y agoYeah you do.
- flocial 8y agoI'm a bit flabbergasted by all the "wow this person just wasted all his free time fixing a nonexistent problem instead of just getting an iPhone" on Hacker News of all places. Yes there's an ideological bent to the whole exercise but that's precisely the kind of passion you need to deep dive into creating your own audio device over a minor annoyance. Yes it's clunky and expensive to maintain but you have to admire the commitment and technical expertise to build a working product from scratch.. It was an entertaining read and I'm sure a good mental jog for the author.
- vikingcaffiene 8y agoIts not that he spent the time and effort to do it. I personally took exception the sentiment that iPhone owners are somehow less competent or capable simply because they would rather spend their time solving problems other than listening to music on headphones.
- genericone 8y agoThere's a lot of smart and well-off people on HN that are not tinkerers. This article scratches the itch for tinkerers who could envision walking through the described steps themselves. On the flip side, this would be a non-problem to others, simply purchase the other thing and stop griping about manufacturer's cent-saving BOM hacks. Anyway, if the problem becomes big enough, some individual/organization will see the market opportunity somewhere, hopefully.
- ummonk 8y agoIf he had just said "I want a phone I can tinker with, so the iPhone doesn't fit the bill", no one would object. The problem is his claim that Apple is a symbol of pretentiousness and ignorance, simply because it provides convenience and out-of-the-box usability without needing to know how it works. Most people don't tinker for a living / hobby, and thus don't have the luxury of spending large amounts of their valuable time figuring out how the device works and tinkering with it. Not understanding this actually a sign of pretentiousness and ignorance.
- flocial 8y ago
- projektfu 8y agoIs this actually a bug in Android (confirmed by someone else on a different phone) or is it a bug in the implementation by this OEM? I haven't experienced it but I also do not use this writer's particular sound files. I think the underlying point is very important. It does seem like quality has been sacrificed in many products to shave a few pennies off the BOM. Why should today's portable CD players be substantially worse than the ones available in 1995? I get that they are asking $25 instead of $115. But SONY and Panasonic have left the market, leaving it to the drugstore quality ones, and they don't appear to want to make a product that plays a clear sound. As far as circuits are concerned, I can't help but notice that a TI TPA6100A2 costs $1.11 at qty 1, and outputs stereo from a 1.6-5.5V single supply drawing a max of 50mw. This would substantially reduce the weight and power draw of his mini amp. A couple rechargable AA batteries would do.
- jjoonathan 8y agoThey are not shaving BOM pennies, they are shaving NRE pennies. The components to produce good audio are dirt cheap, even for a consumer product, even in quantity. Keeping digital noise out of analog circuits, however, takes effort. Getting the software to not drop step functions at inopportune moments takes even more effort. They won't do these things unless they feel they have to.
- duck2 8y agoTwo 9V batteries and four op-amps for a low-current output buffer seems like overkill. does anyone know about a better way to go about it?
- bascule 8y agoOne possible solution: get Bluetooth headphones instead, such as the equivalent Bluetooth Audio-Technica headphones to what's pictured in the post, the ATH-DSR9BT: https://www.audio-technica.com/cms/headphones/6117c014c965cd1a/index.html https://www.audio-technica.com/cms/headphones/6117c014c965cd... "The ATH-DSR9BT over-ear wireless headphones employ Audio-Technica’s new Pure Digital Drive system, which allows the headphones to operate without a sound-degrading D/A converter that conventional wireless headphones rely upon. Instead, the ATH-DSR9BT utilizes Trigence Semiconductor’s Dnote chipset to receive the digital audio signal from a Bluetooth wireless transmission, process and transfer it to the driver where the digital pulses of the chipset move the voice coil and diaphragm forward and backward to create the sound waves heard by the listener."
- setquk 8y agoJust buy an iPhone. Oh no wait. No hole that decent headphones fit in. Have a 6s with a dicky headphone hole and some nice HD25’s. Not sure where to go. I feel like my time on this planet is nearly over.
- samatman 8y agoSuggestion if you haven't: take a plastic dental pick and try to get lint out of the headphone jack. I've had to do this sooner or later to every phone I've owned, except my latest, which lacks this port entirely.
- setquk 8y agoYeah I’ve done that. No luck. I’ve used switch cleaner on swabs as well. Think it needs a new port. However I can’t be bothered to take it to Apple store yet.
- AdmiralAsshat 8y agoCan't say I've ever had the explodey sound any of my Android phones through the audio jack. I've had it a handful of times with some bluetooth buds, but I'd just as soon chalk it up to their cheapness. I do have the hissing sound he's described when using my ATH-M50's with my phone, and even my laptop. My solution (albeit more expensive than his DIY one) was to buy a portable DAC/amp, specifically a Fiio E17[0]. It connects via USB/micro/C, and it's worked on every laptop and Android phone I've had since the Samsung GSII. It also used to be able to dock with a separate desktop amp[1], until my dock broke. There are plenty of other portable, Android-compatible DAC's that are not too expensive. It's a bit of a bummer to feel like you need to pay for yet-another-piece-of-gear just so you can enjoy your audiophile headphones with your audiphile-quality music on the go, but sometimes that's the price of fidelity. [0]https://www.amazon.com/FiiO-Alpen-Portable-Headphone-Amplifier/dp/B0070UFMOW/ https://www.amazon.com/FiiO-Alpen-Portable-Headphone-Amplifi... [1]https://www.amazon.com/FiiO-Desktop-Headphone-Amplifier-Dock/dp/B004M172FY/ https://www.amazon.com/FiiO-Desktop-Headphone-Amplifier-Dock...
- Johnny555 8y agoI DO NOT HAVE TO PAY A TAX TO APPLE TO LISTEN TO MY MUSIC. Is it better to pay a tax to Google and not be able to listen to your music? (I say that as an Android user who hasn't run into this problem, though 90% of my listening is through streaming services, I still have all of my CD's sitting on a hard drive, but they are all (as far as I know) available over streaming now, so I just use that)
- DFXLuna 8y agoCould someone with more electronics experience than me explain the difference between the what the author made and a an off the shelf amp?
- justin66 8y agoOdd 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...
- mindslight 8y agoIMHO 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!
- snovv_crash 8y agoThis way you don't increase the BOM complexity, just a second of the same chip and the same resistors. Technically, also your THD+N adds in parallel instead of being chained, although I'm not sure there will be a discernable difference unless you uave some kind of phase delay issue (in which case you should fix that first...)
- mindslight 8y agoYou must be thinking of some other common headphone amp design? The changes I'm talking about would just get rid of like half the components.
- jacquesm 8y agoI think the trick here is that the resistors are much more precise than two batteries of unknown origin will be at providing a symmetric supply voltage without further stabilization. So they serve as a 50/50 voltage divider whatever the input voltage is, 7+9 or 6+8 on half full (or half empty, depending on your mental make-up) batteries, it would still work just fine. Binding the central line between the two 9V batteries to GND would give you the situation you describe, indeed you could then drop the resistors but now you have a fairly high risk of ending up with an asymmetric supply voltage, which means one side will clip earlier than the other.
- nycticorax 8y agoA 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 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.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mhh__ 8y agoWith all "high quality" audio matters like this - and compressed music - I genuinely don't understand what the point is. I listen to a lot of different music (Pop, Jazz, Metal, Microtonal stuff etc.) through a lot of different mediums (Good preamps into really expensive amps etc., cheap headphones, overpriced headphones) an I honestly think the point of diminishing returns is at about £30. For the price that some people spend on their audio gear, you could buy several musical instruments: A far more fulfilling (and sociable) use of too much money IMO.
- clarry 8y agoI have several musical instruments and a bunch of relatively high end audio gear. The point of dimnishing returns starts at $0, what matters is what kind of quality you want. Every once in a while, I buy some headphones in the <$100 range but I generally turn away in disgust because the sound just isn't good to my ears. This summer, I had to buy a new phone, I went for a OnePlus 6. I figured I could use another pair of IEMs/earbuds so I bought the kit they offered with the phone. Tried them once, for about ten minutes, and threw them away. Yuck. These are obviously $2 kit of garbage sold at a massive premium..
- Azerb 8y agoFormer audio engineer here. Generally this is the result of high noise floor and poor power management on the amplifier side - not powering down when content isn't playing or incorrect power sequencing on the power down of the amp.
- Vanayad 8y agoI have the exact same headphones, and while I don't have the 'exploding' sound when listening on the phone, I do have the constant hissing and it is driving me insane!
- iOSGuy 8y agoThe tirade against Apple in the middle article is pretty silly. Android OS has a terrible bug that means you can’t listen to your preferred music on your device. iOS does not have this bug. As someone who uses and develops for both OS, this seems like a no-brainer to me.
- korethr 8y agoIf he's able to get that much of an improvement with 5532s, I'm curious what he could get if he used modern opamps. Granted, the 5532 has been the opamp to beat for sound quality for decades, but someone posting by the handle NwAvGuy dis a shootout of opamps comparing and measuring the specs that actually matter for quality audio use back in 2011[1]. That was 7 years ago, and the various component vendors have released some new devices since. I suspect a slight redesign using a 2068 for the gain stage and a 4556 for the buffers would do even better, and drain the batteries slower because of less quiescent current of modern devices. The circuit design looks weird to me. Wouldn't it be better to use a inverting setup on the opamp to get get some attenuation, and then feed the gain stages into a high-current opamp like the 4556 as a buffer to drive the headphones, or perhaps a transistor that'd be good at the job? And why are there a pair of parallel gain stages on the ground line? Why not just throw your gain stages on the signal lines, ground ground and let it be ground? 1. https://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/08/op-amp-measurements.html https://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/08/op-amp-measurements.htm...
- kwccoin 8y ago@13a note this “... (2) every single Apple product.” work but not PC and phones. Consistent with the article trying both Android and Linux ... Consistent with image that Apple is in the A/V world. Just wonder there are exception e.g. would Sony (a multimedia company) would have the same problem.
- patchtopic 8y agoI think the author of the article just wanted to get out the soldering iron.. as otherwise a few minutes on a search engine would have revealed the existence of the CMOY headphone buffers and a plethora of similar devices for laptops and phones already out there, including ones with their own high quality DACs.. unless there is something I'm missing here?
- fipple 8y agoThe absolute best analog out from a portable audio device that I’ve seen is an iPhone 6.
- kazinator 8y ago> Battery life is only a few hours unfortunately because the circuit draws an enormous idle current of 23mA :o This is because the device is silly. Firstly, there is an unnecessary voltage divider for generating a reference voltage. It is too stiff (resistors are too low-valued at 1K + 1K). This provides a reference voltage that is conveyed to high impedance destinations. 18V into 2Kohms means this consumes 9 milliamps! Secondly, the device contains a bizarre circuit that tries to amplify the GND-GND path, using two op-amps in parallel. The numbers check out: 9 mA for the voltage divider, plus around 8 mA x 2 IC-s (typical value from datasheet): 25 mA. Here is how we can fix things. 1. We have two batteries! That is a true dual voltage supply! We can just take the center reference voltage between the two batteries. By doing that we lose the voltage divider entirely, and save 9mA of supply current. 2. We can lose the GND-GND amplifier, and just provide a proper end-to-end galvanic ground connection. We eliminate a pair of op-amps, and thus an entire IC chip. We're now down to the current draw for a single NE5532. 3. Use a different op-amp. The NE5532 isn't great for driving low impedances like headphones. There are op-amps that are better suited for this, and draw less quiescent current.
- chemmail 8y agoSounds like all this guy needs is a dragonfly.