5 ms·
A neat hobby in the nostalgia sense but I'm convinced many audiophiles are misled in the idea of audio quality. You can build something with a mathematically p
by nullwasamistake 7y ago
A neat hobby in the nostalgia sense but I'm convinced many audiophiles are misled in the idea of audio quality.
You can build something with a mathematically perfect decode and EQ using a raspberry pi. You want digital all the way to final amp stage.
For the amp stage (especially at low power headphone levels) the best amp option is a nice dedicated amp chip. For a few dollars and little external circuitry you can get a chip that will put out 10 watts into a sub ohm load with less than 1% THD. Class D too so it uses ~1/2 the power.
Good example, the old discontinued Sansa Clip, a $20 mp3 player the size of a tic tac box, has one of the best headphone amps tested. Combine it with rockbox firmware and you have a super practical headphone amp that will rival anything money can buy.
- thatcat 7y agoThanks for explaining this, I had wondered why my sansa clip sounds so great.
- nullwasamistake 7y agoNp clip is one of the greatest headphone amplifiers ever produced lol
- vonseel 7y agoI'm curious how something like the headphone amps or what you mentioned compares to the headphone outputs on a high-end audio interface, e.g. the RME Fireface line or similar recording products.
- nullwasamistake 7y agoThere's people that have done some independent testing of audio outputs. The quality varies widely so paying a lot is one way to make sure you have good outputs. A lot of phones have notoriously weak/bad audio jacks. Some built in motherboard audio outputs suck as well. However, in general, any dedicated audio card, even the cheapest soundblaster will have audio outputs just as good as extremely expensive audiophile stuff. Maybe not as much power output, but that only matters with high ohm headphones. Ditto with any Apple products, they've been known to have extremely high quality Cirrus Logic audio chips for a long time
- atoav 7y agoI have a Fireface and never had only the slightest issue with the headphone outputs. As somebody who understands quite a bit about analog circuits and has seen Firefaces from the inside I would definitly trust RME on that one, this thing is beautifully engineered
- vonseel 7y ago:) love my fireface
- chadcmulligan 7y agoindeed the days of having to spend a lot of money for hi fi audio are long gone, still people do though.
- antisemiotic 7y ago>You can build something with a mathematically perfect decode and EQ using a raspberry pi. You want digital all the way to final amp stage. There are people out there who buy rubidium clocks to time DACs and swear to deities that they can hear the difference.