audio-tech

[steel escarp]

https://www.amazon.com/FiiO-KA11-Adapter-Amplifier-TC/dp/B0CS62JGW2

get this one

it has 200mW into 32 ohms, which gives you some nice headroom

[crude axle]

sweet, this looks decent, thank you. when you say 30mW power, is that like coming out of the headphone port?

[steel escarp]

30mW is what your motherboard can deliver to the headphone

https://headphones.com/pages/headphones-power-calculator this is a tool you can use to calculate how much power your headphones need

it needs about 63mW, but that is like the minimum, its better to at least have double available for the best sound

which the Fiio KA11 gives you, at 200mW

[crude axle]

I see. does that make the sound louder too, or just provide more power to make a wider range of sound?

[steel escarp]

you could get it louder in total, but you'll still control the volume via windows

you'll still have full control over how loud you are playing

[crude axle]

okay, I'll grab this then. thank you for your help!

[steel escarp]

you're welcome

enjoy

[crude axle]

didn't realise proper headphones were this much of a hassle to get right 😅

[steel escarp]

the pay off will be huge tho

[crude axle]

what will actually change? more bass and anything else? also would there be any sound degradation if I bought a USBC extender in the future? like female to male

[steel escarp]

the extender shouldn't cause noticable degradation, as its just power and digital data that is transfered over it

[steel escarp]

the bass will be noticably fuller, and you have more headroom to EQ

beyond that, compared to your pc's headphone jack, I think you'll notice it sounding better in general

[wispy gate]

nice! glad you like it. It sure is impressive for it's size, also kind of indestructable I've dropped it a lot

[desert salmon]

i’m dumb. i accidentally bought the first gen. no wonder it was 80 bucks

i might return and buy two 2nd gens for stereo

[wispy gate]

Dang, think you'll like the 2nd gen it's more balanced, clearer treble, better codec, and less distortion

[desert salmon]

i can get two for 220 usd

with the weight, i can easily pack 2 in my luggage

[wispy gate]

solid price, I haven't tried 2 but it should open up the soundstage a lot

[desert salmon]

the only thing is, how useful will stereo sound be while traveling

i already have a proper 2.1 in my home so i wouldn’t use these

[marble verge]

whats the best 60-80 dollar cad headphones for gaming

[wispy gate]

might be better to get 1 unless you want it for parties or something

[desert salmon]

that’s what i’m thinking

is it also worth 40 dollars more for the 2nd gen

i get a 3 band eq and 5.3

for 220 i can get a refurb soundlink max

[icy salmon]

anyone have thoughts on the edifier MR5s?

they seem like a pretty straight forward upgrade from the MR4, still having trs, rca, and then adding xlr and LDAC support for inputs

https://www.edifier.com/us/p/studio-monitors/mr5

[desert salmon]

how big are those

[cedar epoch]

Once again the Sennheiser cable has started to disconnect on the right ear piece, it's starting to drive me insane... I take good care of my stuff, yet it keeps doing this with regular intervals, it's starting to get rediculus

Starting to wonder if it's about time I start maybe looking at new headphones at this point if the cable is gonna keep doing this to me every few months :/

[wispy gate]

the max was kind of a step down tbh, returned mine. Too boomy

the EQ is pretty decent, filters seem to be in the right place (to my ear only)

mines on -2 bass, +2 mids, +1 highs

[north void]

What's your guys' opinion on the Beats Studio Pro for consumer headphones?

[wispy gate]

not as bad as the other beats, not as good as other headphones for the price

the 1000xm4 is 42% off on amazon for a bit more

What stands out to me in this review is that they say it's not comfortable and doesn't fit well. If you have a best buy near you it's probably best to try it on for yourself before committing to that purchase. Probably not a good headphone to wear with glasses on if that applies

https://www.soundguys.com/beats-studio-pro-review-96146/

[surreal nacelle]

beats

studio

What???

[wispy gate]

people like what they like, accept it, move on. The point of this hobby is to enjoy music. I feel like the community has lost sight of that

[zenith pawn]

what does studio mean that would make it mutually exclusive with beats

bro you produce musical beats in a music studio

[wispy gate]

I did some searching.. it's not worth trying to fix if the socket is broken

other than cleaning the contact points or sending it back it's probably better to get a new one. If the cable is the issue try hart audio cables

[livid ruin]

jcally jm20 max costs 20

it’s less clunky

still overheats

but it’s less clunky

[crude axle]

bit late now 😅 either way it would take weeks to arrive from aliexpress

thats the only place that sells it in my area

for an extra tenner i dont mind something similar arriving tomorrow

[livid ruin]

well, it is just better imo, the form factor, you can carry it in a medium sized wallet no problem unlike the fiio

[crude axle]

im not planning on taking it outside my room

and i have a secrid wallet which can't really fit anything in it anyway lmao

[livid ruin]

also if you get an unit with old fw i recommend updating it

you may run into some heat related issues in the long run

[crude axle]

was not aware these things had firmware i thought it was electronics only lol

but yeah i'll do that

[desert salmon]

tbh it’s expensive

even on sale

[broken grotto]

firmware is way more common than analog electronics now tbh

I 'member the days of analog control systems, where we had RLC cards you slot into things to adjust the controller.

nowadays you just adjust Kpi and call it a day.

[zenith pawn]

return to vacuum tube

[green marsh]

Preety sure "now" is the past 15 years

At least

[broken grotto]

it depends

some industries took longer than others.

also for some time when microcontrollers weren't as powerful as they are now, it made sense to do some things analog still.

or in fabric

I've been doing it a long time lol

even nowadays there's reasons to use analog, but more and more consumer products prefer to do things with a microcontroller for many various reasons

I've built a many state machines using discrete logic IC's and gates.

once you started moving into digital filters, modulation, and stuff you started to see more digital MCU's, but still used analog for latency sensitive applications and high-bandwidth.

in radar we often had analog frontends with digital backend processing, for example.

[green marsh]

Interesting

[broken grotto]

really the use of MCU's in consumer products is 100% cost.

that MCU costs less than a dozen opamps.

then you add in the "push out out the door," mentality, where you just get it to work and then promise to fix it with firmware

cant' do that with analog lol

in an audio sense though, why do they use FPGAs sometimes?

[desert salmon]

i can snag another gen 1 flex or 80. not sure it’s worth though. i hear the stereo pairing is a pain

[wispy gate]

For travelling 1 is prolly enough id say

[desert salmon]

yeah. maybe i’ll just stick with the gen 1

[haughty sandal]

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTraSSrtT/

[north void]

I got them for $130 from target. I was just wondering what other people though of em. Thanks for the response

[north void]

What?

[buoyant vale]

I think this guy is just coming to the shocking realization that studio is a marketing term

[lean grove]

The only substantial outcome of asking what other people think of what you bought is you feeling worse

Enjoy your headphones. Don't ask other people what they think about them.

[crude axle]

@steel escarp the DAC arrived, and i've already noticed its a lot louder now

the bass does sound a lot less flat now

[livid ruin]

they're not that bad for beats but still $130 is imo too much

[north void]

They're normally like $300 som

[livid ruin]

yes, price doesn't mean quality

there are some horrendously overpriced headphones out there

including most of beats

[warm scarab]

250 too much

[steel escarp]

good

even a 40 dollar dac/amp dongle can make a big difference compared to your default pc output

[crude axle]

yeah it sounds a lot nicer now

[steel escarp]

I went a bit far off the deep end with my dac/amp

I may have spent 4700 on the pair

but man does it sound nice

[steel escarp]

what are you noticing so far?

u liking the Hifiman Edition XS so far with your music?

[crude axle]

yeah its really nice, infinitely better than my shitty ass gaming headphones

the sound is much more vibrant imo

and games feel more immersive

[steel escarp]

ikr

it feels so spacious

enjoy rediscovering your entire music library

[crude axle]

🫡

[fiery elbow]

I'm pretty glad I got the Scarlett Solo Gen 4 instead of the Gen 3, having the XLR cable on the back is so much cleaner

[steel escarp]

lmao, at least discord knows

<@&750150305383186585>

[lone flame]

its okay.
but really REALLY bad for headphones tho

[vale summit]

Are there any cheap audio amplifiers worth a shot? ut to 50$?

[mellow gull]

lid on my earbuds randomly broke :(

case never felt solid in the first place, maybe I teardown the case and 3D print my own one?

[restive rivet]

rq
My dog's a d*ck puppy and chewed on my headset wire and now it isn't working. How can I fix it? It's the wire to the Seinhiser HD600 headset

It is currently seemingly a small puncture with an exposed wire.

[mellow gull]

isnt it just a 3.5mm aux cable?

[restive rivet]

Not quite, it's an aux that splits into two wires that plug into the L and R sides of the headset

The R side is what is currently broken

[mellow gull]

I looked up "sennheiser hd600 replacement cable" and got results pretty easy

[restive rivet]

any less than 30 dollars? That feels insane for a basic cable

[warm scarab]

solder it

[restive rivet]

I can try. Would it also work if I tied the exposed cables together?

[mellow gull]

idk if solder would introduce weirdness to the audio

[warm scarab]

yeah but you should cimp it or solder it instead

[warm scarab]

your headphone cables dont come out of the factory with welds on it

[restive rivet]

My dad probably has some wire crimps or something, I can try seeing if that could work.

[lean grove]

https://tenor.com/view/itysl-notreally-not-really-gif-21670106

[warm scarab]

why do you need one

[vale summit]

i bought some IEMs and i was thining about changing my Arctics nova for beyerdynamic dt 770 pro

[warm scarab]

you dont need an amp for this

also dont but a dt770

[lone flame]

no dt 770

[vale summit]

Why no Dt 770?

[restive rivet]

Got them exposed enough to maybe do something with them

Idk what the tethery wire is for, protection maybe?

Maybe I am doing it wrong but touching the tips didnt seem to produce audio

[lone flame]

in short

https://tenor.com/view/its-shit-disappointed-displeased-dissatisified-dismayed-gif-13775656

[elfin cave]

Yo I bought Sennheiser HD630s, now I am having buyers regret because i got randomly recommend on Reddit that they were not that great and not comfortable, what are your guys review, while i was looking into it they seemed great some even ranking it higher than Air Max

[warm scarab]

i think that shows how bad the air max are instead of hd630 being good lol

[lean grove]

if you dont like them then nothing we have to offer should impact that.

[elfin cave]

They still to be delivered

[restive rivet]

Try them out for their return period. It took me a bit to get used to my HD600's from Hyper Cloud X II's

[lean grove]

💀
wait for them to be delivered and try them out.

[sand grove]

Hello recently I got a blue yeti nano and I have Turtle beach stealth 600 headphones, however I want to upgrade. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good pair of headphones (doesnt need to have a mic built in) that has really good audio directionality. I want to use them to play games like war thunder where I need to know where the sounds coming from. Please try and keep them under 120 usd.

I would also want them to be wireless

[steel escarp]

its gonna be hard to get something good and wireless at that price, if your headphones still work, I'd stick with them

any significant upgrade is out of your budget

[sand grove]

Well I would like to still have options because i can save for it

[steel escarp]

HyperX Cloud III S Wireless is actually not bad

but its like 130 EUR

[sand grove]

actually its on sale for 120 usd

Is the audio quality better then the stealth 600

[steel escarp]

they are a pretty big upgrade over your turtle beach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN-MUaR9zeM

[sand grove]

screw it ill get them

[steel escarp]

make sure you get the correct model

the Cloud III wireless S specifically

@sand grove

[sand grove]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0F6NZWPTC/ref=sw_img_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

These right

[steel escarp]

that should be it

there are multiple variants it seems?

seems cosmetic

cool there is a white option, if you enjoy that

[sand grove]

Probably wouldn't stay too white for very long lmao

[steel escarp]

yeah... white is often a mistake for gamer setups

[sand grove]

apparently there cloud alphas are on sale too

[steel escarp]

wouldn't get those

I looked at the measurements

the Cloud III S seem to be the most coherent out of all of their lineup

in terms of how natural/balanced things will be, tho with a bit of enhanced bass, since its for gaming and all

[sand grove]

Alright ty

[livid ruin]

overhyped

[steel escarp]

its 120 dollars

for the price its not bad

[livid ruin]

logitechs are less...

[steel escarp]

name a better logitech then

[livid ruin]

g535 idk

not better but much cheaper

[steel escarp]

I think I would take the cloud iii s, seems to have significantly better bass extension

and seems to isolate sound better

[livid ruin]

the logitechs have existed for much longer, i'm not saying the III S are bad but they cost 1.5x more

[main spoke]

read somewhere the hd 560s “scales well with a good amp” i know nothing about audtio tech what does this mean

[lean grove]

some people believe that there's hidden performance to unlock from some headphones by giving them a fancier amplifier.

but headphones aren't that complicated. the 560s is remarkably easy to power, so I think the people that say that just like the way that those headphones sound with that amplifier.
there's no reason to believe that theres a hidden dimension to a headphohne remaining uncovered until the right amplifier comes along.

[steel escarp]

amp scaling should be disregarded

for most headphones

[desert salmon]

@wispy gate earfun uboom x is not good. just listened to it on several eq profiles

how do 4 drivers sound worse than 1

a much bigger casing with more power

and it sounds bad

virtually no upper bass

[lean grove]

i can make 50 drivers sound worse than 1 no issue. its remarkable easy

[desert salmon]

and not as much clarity in the vocals

[desert salmon]

intentionally sure

[wispy gate]

Bad tuning

[desert salmon]

even with the 10 band eq they give, i can’t change much

it still sucks

[wispy gate]

Bose has insane engineers, world class

[desert salmon]

i hate how they appeal to normies who love low end boosted bass

a lot of bt speakers have such a v curve

[desert salmon]

yea that makes sense

even with 10 bands, i can’t amplify the upper bass

[livid ruin]

at least from their marketing materials 😂

still can’t get a lot of things right on their “budget” headphones

[wispy gate]

Their headphones are just fine

Apple and sony have billions to throw around still no eq still cant do anc like bose can

[desert salmon]

the airpod pro (3rd gen) has pretty good anc for what it is

[lone flame]

Bose is in the Audio world

Genelec has World Class Engineers

[wispy gate]

Bose ANC is impressive
Replies with a speaker brand 🤡

Bose released the first ANC headphones ever in 1989, Genelec makes speakers for people who think money is a personality

[crude axle]

@steel escarp listening to all my music again has been fun lol

[desert salmon]

genelec does make good stuff, but they’re ridiculously expensive

[steel escarp]

Ikr, everything just sounds good on them

[livid ruin]

if they were 70$ then up to the hype, but <120$?

also depending on the reviewer that 9kz can be up to 12db louder than 4khz

nothing horrible but may be worth considering

[steel escarp]

Considering its for gaming, the boosted upper treble is useful

[elder thistle]

are you sure about that

did you see some of the things they've done with dsp and weird full-range drivers

[lone flame]

its close to the preference bounds so

[haughty halo]

guys I need best headphones under $300 that can be wired and bluetooth at the same time, I was thinking sony xm5 for $250. Use case daily drive, light gym, hardcore gaming, work meetings, any recomendations?

[buoyant vale]

Discord thinks you are a spammer

[haughty halo]

discord just hates me

[wispy zephyr]

is it true the hifiman edition xs don’t really need an amp these days for most of the sound quality? (on windows desktop)
my audio codec is a realtek alc4080

[livid ruin]

can't confidently say

but $20 dac will work for sure

no need for a $100+ dac with xs

[wispy zephyr]

i guess ill buy one with the headphones and test it out to see if i need it or not

[molten lotus]

Bought some new speakers

Infinity primus 140

30 euros

[steel escarp]

a guy in here bought a Fiio KA11 for the Edition XS, and the difference was notable compared to the pc output

[wispy gate]

Yea its just such a ridiculous comparison, their desktop monitors are like $7000 and he's comparing them to headphones lmao

If we are talking who has better engineers Ill go with the people who actually invent things

https://youtu.be/3KPYIaks1UY?si=ulm0erL2oQonwoau

[prime minnow]

I like bose as a company

[zenith pawn]

do you listen to music on your suspension

[broken grotto]

sometimes

[north void]

You could go for Beats Solo or Studio Pro

I like mine

[elder thistle]

imagine

[elder thistle]

depends how loud you listen, really

they are inefficient/quiet headphones, and I have killed a headphone jack by running it at max

make sure whatever you plug it into is rated for 16 ohm loads if you're gonna play it loud

[warm scarab]

invented a system that cannot be incorporated into anything

yeah

soft suspension isnt magic

and electromagnetic suspension essentially achieves that

[wispy gate]

Who said it was magic lmao

This man is shadow boxing ghosts

[warm scarab]

statement was to be derogatory due to counting it as soft suspension

anyways the technology is really bad

[wispy gate]

So is your argument, bose has made a lot of impressive advancements in multiple fields

Objectively they have good engineers, sorry if that hurts your ego

Snobs are the worst part of this hobby.

[broken grotto]

cant make good without making bad first.

sincerely, former product R&D

[warm scarab]

anc yea

else nah

[broken grotto]

bose is one of those companies that will let their engineers do wild stuff for no reason

it's actually a great company to be a part of.

[warm scarab]

they are really good at anc and wireless transmissions

else they are kind of a meme

they are a meme even in audio with some of the shit they made

[wispy gate]

Then why are you saying they have bad engineers

[broken grotto]

bro got warshipped

[wispy gate]

Gets his personality from hating on things smh

[warm scarab]

bose 802

[wispy gate]

From 1 product that isnt a headphone 🤡

[warm scarab]

what headphone would you recommend from them?

overpriced anc meme 1

or overpriced anc meme 2

maybe overpriced in ear meme X pro

[wispy gate]

Qc ultra is fine with eq

[warm scarab]

mid headphone becomes less mid with eq

good to know

how much does this set you back again

[wispy gate]

Ooh moving goalposts now

Suddenly engineering is fine his complaint is now price

[warm scarab]

they aren't a good company to buy anything from nor has their engineers achieved anything in regards outside of anc and transmission

[wispy gate]

Im sure if you change the topic enough you can feel like you're right about something lil man

Moving goalposts again - anc and transmission dont count anymore

People really put up with you irl?

[warm scarab]

saying I am moving goalposts meanwhile 70% of your messages being ad hominems

😂

we live in a society

🪞

[broken grotto]

he might just be drunk tbh

[warm scarab]

impotent rage

tough week on the couch?

i know a guy that can fix things dw

[wispy gate]

You could take all that genelec money and pay some people to hear all about what brands you hate

But Im not wasting my time with someone who acts intentionally obtuse, cheers

[warm scarab]

wow why are you moving goalposts

i never said we should talk to people about stuff we hate??

are you building a strawman??

omg

get your clown ass out of here

[wispy gate]

https://tenor.com/view/triggered-ninjaturtle-turtle-angry-gif-21556809

Snobs triggered mission accomplished

[warm scarab]

rename yourself to wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

https://timeline.bose.com/

what a rich history

[lean grove]

Damn we clowning in Klaus? Lemme join in. Gimmie a sec to read the messages.

Bose spares no expense to make some of most weirdly well engineered mediocre products.

Like they give themselves these massively stoopid design constraints and do a real good job of making the thing, all to deliver something unquestionably mid but with great profit margins.

[warm silo]

Cant forget how they just made expensive smart speakers paperweights this year

like hundreds of thousands of overpriced soundtouch crap just went poof

with no local option besides aux in

anyways bose is just overpriced underperforming made for the masses gear that rides on the brand these days

[desert salmon]

bose is definitely capable of making good stuff, but most of their stuff is pretty mediocre

this trend follows suit in car audio too. sometimes they can make some exceptional systems, but most of the time they’re average

[zenith pawn]

but bro they made a soft suspension

can't argue with that

[warm scarab]

should have made it stiff maybe some autist in le mans would have used it something

and then the fia bans it a week later or something

[buoyant vale]

What a well engineered garbage can

[sleek lily]

@warm scarab tbf, it's probably more bad company culture and business side that make Bose so trash. Their engineers probably know what they're doing at least

[warm scarab]

i dont know man, when have they invented something unique?

[sleek lily]

But not much you can do when the average middle manager has an IQ lower than their own gpa

[warm scarab]

the electromagnetic suspension counts even if its a meme ig

what then

[sleek lily]

They probably aren't tasked with inventing things though

[warm scarab]

okay then what makes these engineers special

[sleek lily]

The company culture is probably aimed at making them find the cheapest way to complete a need

[warm scarab]

then how can you come to the conclusion they are good engineers

is what im getting at

[sleek lily]

I didn't say they're good

[warm scarab]

im saying general argument wise since that was the goalpost

not that you've personally said it

[sleek lily]

Just that id wager it's probably the management side of the business that makes the company so bad

[warm scarab]

yeah sure

a lot of bright minds everywhere but you can't say they are very bright without results

[sleek lily]

@warm scarab these are the results that matter

[lone flame]

it even sucks in the trash!

[tranquil mason]

is anyone here an expert on those stupid 2012 sonos play:1 speakers? i also have a sonos connect.

also DMing me would be easier, im trying to connect it but it keeps failing, and the sonos app cant find the sonos connect so i cant connect to that

[elder thistle]

bose was still a major force in getting a lot of low frequencies from small drivers and small enclosures

they also somehow got a lot of high frequency use out of specialized full range drivers

alongside dsp shenanigans

I respect these achievements and their positive effect on the bt speaker market mainly

it just doesn't mean that such a bose product can replace real speakers

[left jungle]

I wonder if soundcore is a good buget brand

[charred dove]

got my lttstore order, but i already have DT 900 Pro X, would be this be worse or equal to it ? (mostly in terms of gaming, especially shooters)

[livid ruin]

Can you return them in case you don't like 'em?

[lean grove]

Whats wrong with your 900 pro x

[charred dove]

absolutely nothing

[charred dove]

im from lebanon, at most i could sell the Sennheisers

[blissful portal]

What do you fellas think of the Bose wave cd player music system?

[blissful portal]

I think the performance of those two headphones are similar. The big difference would be preference

[charred dove]

yeah, thats what ive been seeing online

might just open them and try them for like a day or two

[warm scarab]

just use spotify

[charred dove]

hell nah

[warm scarab]

why not

[charred dove]

because youtube music/youtube premium is a way better deal

also isnt spotify right now like $15 a month ?

[warm scarab]

okay

valid

i thought you'd try to justify buying the cd player

[charred dove]

lol no, better off just downloading high fidelity audio files

[lean grove]

It's also got one of the lowest quality streams on the market

[warm silo]

#teamtidal

[livid ruin]

oh, do you already have them?

try them

[charred dove]

yupp, just tried it for 1-2 hours, dont like it honestly

feels cheap compared to the DT 900 Pro X

[livid ruin]

i find them light but not necessarily cheap

though the pads do like to pick up every bit of dust

[livid ruin]

hifimans or oneodios is what i find cheap and behave cheap for example when you extend and descend the headband slider few times the plastic parts can start to chip and leave this microplastic litter

like hifiman likes to use some of the cheapest lego feeling plastics ever

[charred dove]

pads are more comfy on the beyers for me

[livid ruin]

it doesn’t matter much really but… it is to consider

[charred dove]

although the clamp can be a bit strong when you first get it

[livid ruin]

the pads on the 1.8m cable version of 560s are not good just ok

do you have the 1.8m or 3m version?

the 3m version also doesn’t have the best pads but probably lil better than the 1.8m version

padding is also different on the new 1.8m version

also the 1.8m version can sound a brink different than the 3m but it’s not significant, but from reviewers it seems to be at times worse than the older 3m ver.

[robust glade]

Guys

What mic should I get?

Live streaming and recording and content creation and gaming

Budget 100€

[lean grove]

Samson q2u or a atr-2100x with a boom arm.

[robust glade]

Okay

How come do you recommend these particular ones?

[desert salmon]

tidal ui is ass

[desert salmon]

i have the q2u. great budget mic

don’t get a shitty boom arm. it will fall apart

[molten lotus]

Kinda proud of this install

[steel escarp]

Kinda clean. Hope u never switch dacs tho

[lean grove]

Because they sound good, are pretty easy to use, and have both XLR and USB so you can upgrade later on with a dedicated audio interface.

[wispy gate]

it's 2025 bro

cd's are a waste of money

if you want to be retro get a record player, at least you can find the records for it

[charred dove]

you mean 1.8 meter cable ? if so, yes

box literally only came with the headset, nothing else

[torn zephyr]

Should i upgrade from my razer kraken v1’s after 11 years of abuse?

[livid ruin]

the newer one is sadly imo bit worse

(1.8m version is new)

well "new" it's like 3 years old now

[blissful portal]

Vmoda boom mic pro. It has the best over all convenience

[karmic latch]

Any suggestions for an audio mixer? I currently have a USB DAC/Amp for my PC (Scarlett Solo Gen 4) and want to be able to also listen to my Switch 2 audio at the same time

Don't want a capture card because of the added latency, and my PC's mic-in port has a ton of static noise

[wispy gate]

https://a.co/d/2H0ctv5

[charred dove]

yeah felt like it, they're selling it for 99 pounds on the UK website

what i saw yesterday

https://www.sennheiser-hearing.com/en-UK/p/hd-560s/

for anyone interested, seems like a great deal to me

[zenith pawn]

https://blog.szynalski.com/2025/12/is-spotify-lossless-really-lossless/

spotify lossless is lossless; finally someone wrote an article about it

[livid ruin]

Doesn't matter anyways

[zenith pawn]

yeah

i just remembered some people here thinking it was false advertising and not lossless

[livid ruin]

No.99999 of companies using misleading/downright false advertising/claims

[zenith pawn]

huh

[charred dove]

anything for a few extra $$$

[livid ruin]

In their defense "lossless" could mean that the formatting they use sounds to people like raw uncompressed files

[zenith pawn]

did you misread the article

spotify lossless is lossless

[livid ruin]

I didn't

[nova wagon]

#audio-tech message
I guess this?

[zenith pawn]

yeah

i assume CAudioLimiter is the thing golden was seeing in that video

[nova wagon]

Probably yea.
I think it's fair for golden to mention that spotify is technically not lossless, since its competitors can run in exclusive mode just fine to bypass the os mixer

[zenith pawn]

or just use a better OS

well i guess better is subjective

[nova wagon]

Yea

[zenith pawn]

you could say other OSes not protecting your speakers is worse

[nova wagon]

wait really?

[zenith pawn]

I don't think macos or linux do, I imagine for most hardware you'd damage your ears far before damaging the drivers

[chilly locust]

Isn’t Lossless 100% not 97%? Nvm, didn’t read the second to last paragraph

[stuck bolt]

😆

[karmic latch]

Anything smaller? I honestly don't need half of the stuff this thing has xd

[wispy gate]

Not sure what you're looking for, your mixer has 2 inputs

I don't know of any with 3

PC > USB > Scarlet
Switch > 3.5mm or 6.35mm > Scarlet input

[warm scarab]

you can just google what you want

plenty of 2in1out mixers

[karmic latch]

Yeah I tried this but noticed a ton of static noise. I'll try a different cable next before going with your rec.

[karmic latch]

I found a few that I was skeptical of so I thought I'd ask here. Wanted to make sure I wasn't buying eWaste

[warm scarab]

you can compare it and return if it messes up your audio

[stuck path]

Might be a long shot but anybody know why since I got my wave xlr my audio in shadowplay clips is like double audio

like it sounds layered or something

[oblique thorn]

I have a pair of usbc iems and they don't quite reach my pc, will using a usbc extension cable have any noticeable effect on audio, specifically latency?

[broken grotto]

no.

[supple robin]

Is it going thru stream mix also?

It might be recording both stream mix and desktop audio

[stuck path]

Thanks

Yeah that was good

saved

[supple robin]

Yay

[acoustic osprey]

i just bought some zigaat arete x Freshreviews IEM's, and every reviewer said to buy a apple 3.5 to usb C DAC to get the most out of these IEM's.
When i plug mine in my apple DAC i get very bad audio quality and static background noise,

if i plug the IEM's straight in my gaming PC's Motherboard i get clean sound but now i dont know if im missing out on better quality if i would buy a differrent DAC?

[verbal fog]

curse of tidal only half working for me but downdetector has yet to give me any definite answers so i have to suffer on soundcloud instead(its not that bad but meh i prefer 2 working platforms)

oh also i recently got some mdr7506s and b&w P5s

the 7506s are really good at bringing fowards detail and theyre pretty well made but id still take my mezes over them overall but they definitely have some really nice qualities

the p5s cost someone like 300 new and they have a dead driver and have a "leather and aluminum" construction but the main filler material is still plastic

ill get the driver fixed at some point though but the working one does sound good but i wouldnt buy them for 300 but some people are insane i guess

[elfin quail]

guys Linus & DMS have B&K 4128/5128 HATS measuring rig and FR targets, they could've put the data to Squiglink.

i bet theres many gaming peripherals that LTT had measured other than IEMs and Wireless Headphones/Earphones TWS

[zenith pawn]

we must end the graphing tyrrany

[elder thistle]

how exciting

audio reviewer starter pack:
bk5128
earplugs
a muzzle so you can't talk about the sound
truth enhancement serum for when you're given headphones for review
a degree in not listening to anyone

[white gate]

There's a lot of challenges with squiglink, particularly if you're using newer standards like 5128

Biggest being that people continue to directly compare gras and 5128 data when you can't do that

But also the hptf variation measurements shown by the headphone show, DMS and LTT are much more beneficial than single line squigs

[elder thistle]

wait how did you learn this

I thought the last time they did a headphone video was the bengoo headset

[elder thistle]

I suppose it's cool data to have, but I'm not sure how practical it is. don't people wear headphones almost the same way each time? and why would it have any implications when the response( when turned into an eq) already contains serious errors with what parts are smooth or have sharp peaks/dips

[broken grotto]

"almost the same way," does NOT mean the same transfer function.

here's an example of a transfer function you might see,

where:

x is seal quality, 
y is pad compression symmetry,
z is pinna interaction, 
and S is jaw position.

if any one of those values change slightly, the transfer function is different.

[zenith pawn]

but what you are saying is a small change could cause a very large difference in the output?

disproportionately

[elder thistle]

I have never tested a headphone where a small change in a plausible wearing position creates a huge change in frequency response outside of breaking the seal

[zenith pawn]

i should have put a question mark on that btw

idk if its exactly what's being said

[elder thistle]

if such a headphone existed, why would we think a 5128 measurement would find this deviation for someone else's ear at the same frequency

or the same amount

a fixed amount of movement of the earcup corresponds to different % changes in distance of a given point on the headphone baffle to nearby parts of the pinna, depending on which point on the baffle is used

or what pinna is used

so it stands to reason that a large seating change causing a 1db change at 8k for one person's ears, would take a smaller seating change to recreate that boost with a different pinna

the earcups are moving across something

[white gate]

It's not about the positioning. Headphone measurements on a GRAS or 5128 or any other rig already should be an average of many seatings if the person knows what they're doing.

It's about showing how the headphone behaves on different listeners even after compensating their HRTFs away as many headphones behave quite differently. You can design a headphone specifically for one particular rig and it won't have the same behaviour on another rig or listener.

Data from gras cannot be directly compared to 5128, which is one of the big issues with squiglink

Squiglink also just shows raw measurements, not compensated, which also is a step back

Squiglink is handy for collating stuff together but for more proper evaluation there's a reason why headphones.com and LTT are both using a more modern approach

[elder thistle]

oh I thought those bounds were related to positioning

[zenith pawn]

what's the modern approach ltt and headphones.com are using

[elder thistle]

so it's the lower/upper bounds from several different rigs, all df compensated or similar?

[reef wagon]

Love the smell of new electronics.

[broken grotto]

this depends on the specific transfer function.

consider a system with high sensitivity.

suppose the change in the transfer function with respect to x is quite large.

would this make sense?

would the transfer function change relatively greatly if the headphone's seal ranges from perfect to poor?

suppose that the value of x ranges between 0 and 1, where 0 is a poor seal and 1 a near-perfect seal.

but now lets suppose we're testing.

well, i'll let that sit

if someone wants to lean into the probability side of things I can do that.

[elder thistle]

why are you acting like this is math

this formula(tm) is as mathematical as f***around = find out

just say what you mean

[zenith pawn]

what i was attempting to do

i don't really get what all of that is supposed to be for when it basically boils down to "maybe, maybe not"

that's what i was trying to get at

none of us have any idea what H(f) actually contain inside

you can only guess about it's qualities

it seemed like what you were trying to imply was that the transfer function might be very sensitive

--
I don't know, I am so confused because I reread that tirade like 5 times and it doesn't seem like it says anything more than me trying to get the essay from 300 words to 500

[lone flame]

What if the creator (i think Super* Review did) added that kind of function to squig link

a button "HpTF Variance" and woosh. you can see the "variance"

we may need a open source B&K Measurement website

because for me its sometimes annoying to find 5128 measurements because so many people do different measurements on their own website. then you have to go there, trace and so on...

[elder thistle]

there's no official DF curves for probably most of the rigs used

[elfin quail]

alright, i do not plan to compare data from one rig to another

but to find information on the peaks or dips, since it's an objective measurement with the highest accuracy as of now with the 5128 . so I'd know where i may find the sound to be sibilant or dull.

[lone flame]

iirc you can compare IEC 711 and Gras if the same Pinna was used

but im not sure

[elder thistle]

keyword may

your own ears are going to create plenty of peaks and dips that aren't on any measurement

the rig with the highest accuracy is probably the one that's closest to your earshape

of course the canal simulator quality/tech matters too, but wow is earshape a game changer

[elfin quail]

if its an average of many seating position its a decent representation.

[elfin quail]

im not interested in comparison of different rigs, i know each rig have its own representation of measurement.

[elder thistle]

ft1 vs jackson ear

wont find that on a rig

but you may find things that resemble certain parts

like the small 800hz notch

[elfin quail]

we eq to our preference but nothing wrong in seeing its frequency response on a HATS

[elder thistle]

I didn't say anything about preference

[elfin quail]

i do say it

[elder thistle]

what I mean is I didn't eq this to preference, I eq'd it to hrtf/df tilt

[elfin quail]

cool.

[elder thistle]

🤔

what I'm getting at is that yes, you can see the frequency response of a headphone on a HATS, but it's literally only for the hats

it's not for you or me

it may be close enough that you can base some things off of it, but it's far from a reliable metric of how something will sound to you tonally

[elfin quail]

well its fine if the peaks or dips aren't there on our own head, theres no problem, so whats wrong with seeing the measurements on a HATS

i know that it deviates from our head, but its not bad to base it somewhere

[elder thistle]

the power you give it in your purchasing decisions

it must be understood and regulated yes

[elfin quail]

i give it a demo -> see measurement -> purchase or not came after.

[elder thistle]

the actual and more off-topic answer I'd give you though is that delivered frequency response has almost no bearing on how a headphone ultimately sounds

[elfin quail]

well, some objectively good on a measurement can sound bad to me and vice versa.

[lone flame]

with +7db bass?

it already HAS a ton of bass (with proper seal)

[lone flame]

Bass and mids are oftenly very VERY close

the most varaince starts at ~3kHz

[elfin quail]

true

[elder thistle]

inverted eq

[lone flame]

ah ok inverted. makes more sense now

even tho i don't understand the EQ anyways

i just Trace it an substract that with the FR

[elfin quail]

play a FR sweep or pink noise on a loop and find where its sounds the harshest

[lone flame]

yes

OR

measure speakers, make that "neutral"

and try to match the tuning of the callibrated speaker to your headphone

at the end. add preference (mostly easy ones like bass, warmth, air bla bla)

[elfin quail]

well thats assuming i have decent room acoustics

[lone flame]

i dont

i just measured my shitty placed speakers in my room

EQd it to ~ -0.5dB Tilt

EQd my HD800s. Done

sounds fcking awesome

[elfin quail]

using your ear or with a calibrated mic for the room

?

[lone flame]

UMIK-1

and my HD800s is so insanly on Target of 5128

its REALLY close lmao

[elfin quail]

your speaker calibrated out of the box which speaker is that

[lone flame]

HS7

[elfin quail]

yamaha?

[lone flame]

ye

[elder thistle]

I mostly listen to the mc450 without eq these days

my brain is accepting it's massive tilt

[lone flame]

Blue: Target 5128 DF Tilt
Red: FT1 (measured on 5128)
Yellow: Jackson EQ

[zenith pawn]

[lone flame]

RAW

after EQ

(bass looks different now cuz i changes some stuff but didnt measured again)

[elfin quail]

i dont have reliable mic for measuring all i have is my phone mic.

[lone flame]

yeah that aint gonna work

fr. get UMIK-1

its easy plug and play

you can download the CAL file from their website (for your specific unit ofc)

and in REW it just works easly

[elfin quail]

thanks for the help

[lone flame]

ye

UMIK-1 is not the best

but for little stuff like home setups it should be more than enough

and for me it made a HUGE upgrade

[elfin quail]

i dont have a monitoring speaker yet, but probably be useful for EQ ing my car speaker

[elder thistle]

I think you still have it upside down

[lone flame]

on your EQ + = - right?

[elder thistle]

my eq is basically a df-esque compensated frequency response measurement

in terms of how it's shown

[lone flame]

idc what it is. just asking if its reversed

like + and - are "swapped"

[lone flame]

u told me it was reversed

so i did it reversed

[elfin quail]

seems confusing enough.

[elder thistle]

why

[elfin quail]

bcos i dont understand it

[lone flame]

and?

u didnt answered my question

[elder thistle]

an eq is the opposite of a frequency response measurement

[lone flame]

Blue: 5128 DF -1dB Tilt/oct
Red: FiiO FT1 measured on 5128
Orange: "positive" Jackson EQ
Green "negative" Jackson EQ

[lone flame]

rephrase please

bcs idk what u mean by that

[elder thistle]

you perceive a frequency response

[lone flame]

yeah

with EQ you can change the base tuning

[elder thistle]

you add eq to negate the frequency response so things sound normal

this is subtraction

and the result is 0

[lone flame]

sometimes you need to add stuff

[lone flame]

For that you would need to know exactly what your HRTF is and how the FT1 measures on your head

[elder thistle]

I basically know this with a small margin of error

[lone flame]

looking at your EQ. i doubt that heavily

[elfin quail]

to put it simply what do you achieve with the EQ on FT1? do you add bass shelf or reduce the bass?

[elder thistle]

I don't know what you did to get the orange line, but it's now leaning in the right direction

[lone flame]

under ~3kHz the variance is nearly noneexistence in average

[elder thistle]

I get that that's the theory, but it doesn't work in practice

I get a lot of nulls in the 70hz area on a lot of headphones

[lone flame]

seal issue?

[elder thistle]

not all headphones, not always 70hz, not always the same amount either

nah seal's good, I've put rubber bands on before and used more sealed earpads

also that'd kill the bass extension with closed backs

things can also happen near 1khz

I've confirmed weird things near 400hz on the mc450

the 3khz variation thing just doesn't apply to actual human beings

[lone flame]

fr.
i just don't trust in what you hear

[lone flame]

the measurements i showed where human beings

also i doubt that your Anatomy is that different that it's really like that

[elfin quail]

well iguess thats is his own HRTF

[elder thistle]

then there are things they can hear that aren't being shown by the measurement process here

[lone flame]

i doubt it personally that it's THAT different

i think he mixes up the sound he is used to with what he hears as neutral

[elder thistle]

that wouldn't make sense

[lone flame]

ofc it does

[elder thistle]

my brain can't consciously correct for that 70hz dip for example in real world listening

I had to encounter it with frequency sweep testing and many reference sources

you'll also notice I have lots of eq's where I have minimal or no bump in that area, and it aligns more with measurements

the same process is used

[lone flame]

still i doubt it in general
unless there is actually something different about you

maybe really weird Pinna. but from your vids it looks "average"

bcs no matter what i do with my EQs.
The headphones sound all really close to each other in tuning

always have to lower 3kHz region cuz. i dont like it

and some annoying ass peaks in treble

like here. my HD800s EQ

and this sounds REALLY close to my Speakers

(in terms of tuning)

added a bit preference (the 3dB Bass shelf) and done

on other headphones it doesn't look that good sadly 🙁

funny thing about that EQ is

[elfin quail]

well i guess many products rarely sound the way we want it to be, such as for me in IEMs i find those "meta" tuned to have too much sub bass or some other they add too much treble energy between 4-10k (which is very perceivable to me)

[lone flame]

i did it by ear. wanted to sniff graph

noticed it was fcking 5128 DF xD

[lone flame]

i have Ear canal diff

[elder thistle]

I'm a little surprised you'd think a bass notch not shown on rigs is that weird. or that current research suggests it's impossible for that dip to naturally exist under a good seal

[lone flame]

stupidly insane peak in ~3.5-4.5k region

like 12db or so

on every IEM xD

[elder thistle]

if research is that limited though, it will reveal itself once people stop being so certain in theories laid out by the existing research

but as you know I'm not fond of frequency response shenanigans in general

[lone flame]

like the one with the DT 770?

[elder thistle]

I don't think the world will gain much of anything if we conquer frequency response

[elfin quail]

i guess its just that quite many iems add lower treble energy based on seeing 5128 graph.

[elder thistle]

maybe someone can save their k92

[lone flame]

Frequency Response is just awesome

[elfin quail]

very cool so see sound i agree

[lone flame]

we need a way to measure a individual one

[elfin quail]

in ear mics

[lone flame]

has flaws

just tipping the electrical signal from the ear into an amp and ADC

[elfin quail]

but its a way to compensate for calibration person to person, like how CIEMs works

[lone flame]

time will tell more truth 😄

when it comes to our brain and how it works, humans are

[elder thistle]

in a way it's come full circle

[lone flame]

imagine your brain knows where all your organs and muscles are.
But you may had sore muscles of some you never knew there was onexD

[elder thistle]

we wish to solve the brain or maybe ears, but unfortunately our brains are in the way of progressing research on this

[elfin quail]

elon musk brain chip plays music directly to our brain ( with unskipabble ads )

[lone flame]

my question is

If you play a insanely loud signal directly in your brain

you should be able to hear it as loud

but will it damage you?

bcs. earts where not used to process that signal

Finally i can listen to 200dB music without getting hearing damage

[elder thistle]

drugs or something

[lone flame]

also. are ours ears really lossless?
in our ears there are moving parts.
But when something moves it creates also energy as heat

[elfin quail]

probably need that bass vest

[elder thistle]

can't drugs stop neurons from talking to eachother

[lone flame]

so the signal we perceived is not the actual original one. its different

im just messing around

[lone flame]

people go on rave and be

https://tenor.com/view/neuron-activation-neuron-gif-1455356329209493514

[elfin quail]

its easier to get the singer to sing privately, than to understand audiophile science

[lone flame]

but its not lossless

bcs the signal loses stuff of its original amount of energy

[elfin quail]

its lossless you shrink the singer to enter your ear canal

[lone flame]

i dont want a chipmunk voice in my ears

and it also would tickle me

[elfin quail]

its okay, you can always+ 50db of bass shelf and slowed down using tiktok edit so it wouldn't sound like chipmunk

[elder thistle]

as soon as data has so much as the thought of being represented by a single electron, it is lossy

[lone flame]

Lossless is just nonsense 😄

i like my Atom compressed audio

[elfin quail]

dont give audio company idea. they'll made another $1m DAC with no electrons lost.

[lone flame]

wait

why don't we build cables that transfers signals without electron compression

[elder thistle]

neutron bombardment audio codec

[lone flame]

untouched market

"with our supracool audio cable"

[elfin quail]

audio cables aint pure enough unless we made audio cable from fiber optic with lossless light transmission

[elder thistle]

but even the rate of time is slightly different in every position in the universe

there will always be rate distortion among other things

no not rate distortion in a typical sense

[lone flame]

we just build a whole Audio Chain with that idea

[elder thistle]

but like vinyl

[lone flame]

wait guys

waves stretch over a distance

thats why light gets red

so we already listen to "slowed" music

[elfin quail]

from serious audio talk to audio tomfoolery

[lone flame]

thats why my music sounds 0.00000000001 semitones off

[elder thistle]

I have a shoebox with a truly lossless dac using undisclosed technology

inside

[lone flame]

https://tenor.com/view/technologiaaa-meme-arab-gif-943247736730314355

[elder thistle]

but you cannot confirm the existence or non-existence of this magic dac unless the box is opened

and I won't let you open this

schrodinger's dac

[lone flame]

Schrödingers DAC?

[elder thistle]

this is the secret to lossless technology

its existence cannot be disproven if not observed

[zenith pawn]

that's encompassed in all the various human related transfer functions (if that were a term)

STRF
psychological and physiological transfer function?

[elfin cave]

Yo brothers, I recently bought Sennheiser HDB630 and was trying out abx testing, however i noticed when i change sampling rate to 96k in audio MIDI macos i belive (not sure) is upsampling/resampling it. Is there a way it can autosample as per the source. IPhone handles it perfectly

they way i confirm sampling rate is through the sennheiser app. ( tried both USB and analog connections)

[zenith pawn]

macos definitely changes output sampling rate automatically in my experience

realistically, it doesn't matter as long as the output sampling rate is greater or equal to the source

[elfin cave]

hmm, strange

[broken grotto]

I have spent years in DSP and signal processing.

it is just math.

I understand the frustration, but you can't ignore the way we describe systems, which is mathematically.

you even considering looking at a frequency response measurement is mathematics.

your measurement rig likely has DSP.

this is even before considering the headphones themselves, where the driver acts as a mass-spring-damper system on top of its electrical characteristics.

on top of all that you have the probability models you use to approximate many characteristics, which is where measurements are derived.

A measurement is rarely ever a direct reading of a physical thing. It's a statistical estimator. On any measurement rig, you are merely estimating the headphone's frequency response with some statistical certainty.

[elder thistle]

this isn't math

it's a list of things that affect hptf and it's written like math by someone who wants to feel smart

you can't plug in numbers for the variables here. you can't even get numbers for many, and there's no standardized ways to know what formulas are to be plugged into this one in order for this final formula to work

just quit while you're ahead. we get it

[broken grotto]

ok buddy.

guess my 10 years of describing any signal processing technique with math is irrelevant.

Not sure what that coupling/test rig is doing without DSP but jackson knows all.

nor what this is about: https://www.mathworks.com/help/audio/ref/interpolatehrtf.html

[livid ruin]

hey, don't forget it's not just htrf, seal issues, head size, etc but also how your brain processes sound

in practise

[elder thistle]

brain is important

we need to use it when listening, as well as when quantifying how headphones may work

avoiding overextending the scope of research is as important as avoiding placebo

[zenith pawn]

it doesn't really seem like the formal math definitions were relevant for what the conversation was about

[lone flame]

our brain still expects our an atomies processed unique sound

[livid ruin]

you may be able to set your audio perfectly for your physical head but then comes how your brain perceives which frequency and there we go… you now need to know the neural pathways and chemical activity in your brain xd

[granite drum]

then people get earpiercings, stretchers of different materials and sizes and locations, changing hair , a clogged up nose closing of that tube (here its called eustachius) , open and close their mouth ,... earwax , so...

[elder thistle]

how dare you do any of those things

this is the audiophile channel

[lone flame]

oh yea. forgot about the earpiercing resonance.

[granite drum]

🙂 used to go to parties where the volume was so loud with so much sound pressure that when walking 15meters in front of the stage , you had trouble keeping your balance and walking straight because your middle ear had no clue what was happening anymore 🙂 , it does clean them out pretty well 😄

[safe mauve]

convince me to start using IEMs again. I bought expensive ones like over 50 >100 sometimes and all of it breaks within a month or two, literally used it on a laptop only, didnt wear while sleeping, didnt wear while going outside as well. asked 12 people about their experience, 10/12 answered theirs broke within 2-5 months of usage same price range. Is CHU 2 even gonna last more than 2 months?

[broken grotto]

I opted to leave the loop open since I realized I was getting too into the weeds.

thanks for the reasonable reply. That's a more reasonable comment to make. If anyone's ever curious about the math, then I'm happy to talk about it and can provide MATLAB examples.

[noble axle]

Funy

Moar funy

[wispy gate]

Have you tried not smashing them with a hammer?

[granite drum]

tha math, yeey 🙁 its all fun and games untill you actually have to figure it out lol 😄

ow for those intrested aswell here is the whole collection : https://web.ece.ucsb.edu/Faculty/Rabiner/ece259/Reprints/ 🙂

[broken grotto]

Someone's in DSP

[granite drum]

more like understanding it for then doing it in c++ for VST

long term project in my spare time atm as doing it myself quickly ,... didnt work out 🙂

so its more specificly that (specific linear phase low/hi pass filter , then it is DSP mathematics intrest in general ,... ( i have the basics principles down form Analog Electronics class in school (how they translate to a digital analog i never dug myself into, i understand the digital audio part well enough and how it should work when analog :D)

(and yet i prefer digital audio as format over analog :D)

[broken grotto]

Feel free to reach out with questions.

[vital bough]

https://www.amazon.com/COOMAX-Earpiece-Invisible-Earphone-Covert/dp/B00XT3X0I4
isnt this dangerous
trying to wear earbuds
without anyone noticing
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FXSC665C?psc=1

everyhting thats listed as discreet is way too obvious

and these the only stuff i can find

[granite drum]

how discrete does it have to be , because things might be more discrete as you might think , this guy only got found out because he lost signal and started tapping his ear , and only security cameras after the fact revealed it when they were watching for it ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm--1fZbSIg

this might also be a verry discrete option : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_conduction

[vital bough]

well

discrete enoug

to where you wouldnt see if you were walking by me

[vital bough]

the 2nd one is a good option

[granite drum]

https://www.spyshop.pl/wypozyczenie-mikrosluchawki-z-petla-indukcyjna-24h-150.html

[vital bough]

this is NOT reaching the united states in 24 hr 😭

[granite drum]

https://pingaoculto.com/

[granite drum]

https://www.onlinespyshop.co.uk/bluetooth-invisible-earpiece/
https://www.kspyworld.com/category/spy-earpiece
https://www.spyequipmentuk.co.uk/counter-surveillance/secure-communications/

i used tho have a good shop for these things but i cant find it anymore the sold like crazy stuff, , a electronic board the size of a flat cell battery that once turned on beeped loud but random intervals between 1minute and 4 hours , and it beeped between 0.2sec and 3 seconds or so never long enough to pinpoint and to sporadic and possibly long silent times to wait for it but to loud not to care, hide it in someones office and watch them go mad over a month or 2, start tearing everything open and appart ... 😄

was made so battery lasted insane amounts since int barely used any power ever 😄

[safe mauve]

very funny. reply again once you have a logical answer. here's some more context. I only use it on my laptop, never on my phone, never while the laptop is charged, and never while I go to sleep. just a light use on laptop. based on that context, your brain should be able to comprehend that the IEM is not smashed with a hammer.

[wispy gate]

Very hard to believe 10/12 ppl you talked to have broken iems

[zenith pawn]

if someone says discrete instead of discreet one more time I'm gonna crash out

[glossy obsidian]

any recommendations for 2.1 speaker set up budget $150 also its for my pc

[granite drum]

i actually have a dumb question, on your computers (wich os?) , i think most of you have the sampling rate of your dac's set to something like 48khz or 96khz , but if you play music sampled at 44100hz , do you just play it at 48khz or does your audioplayer(wich?) resample automaticly? or does your os or soundcard driver(asio4all?) resample everything to the correct outputsamplerate?
i have my sytem(linux / pipewire) set to 48khz btw at the moment, and my audioplayer foobar outputs directly to easyeffects(pipewire) so also 48khz , but i do have a resampler in my dsp chain(pphs) that resamples to 48khz,...

[granite drum]

(why , if you ask me if i have broken headpones, then yes prolly 3 ones still laying around somewhere, same for inear plugs 20 broken wired or so, , and wireless budds also 1 set broken and two sets that miss one of the two earbuds,.... dont really have real iems but i would guess that if i had a couple prolly there would be a broken one amongst them

[wispy gate]

Ok but thats not how stats work

[zenith pawn]

I thought macos, and possibly pipewire when configured correctly, switch the output to 44.1 kHz automatically. But otherwise (I think always on windows), it gets upsampled

probably the buffer is so enormous that it has almost immeasurably 0 loss

[granite drum]

on windows i really have the feeling that that is not the case ,... playing a 44100hz track with everything set to 48khz makes the track play faster to my feel but its been a while so

[zenith pawn]

that is certainly placebo, the only difference would be a slight background hiss at an extremely low volume

[granite drum]

and even with a hube buffer , if you can buffer 2880K samples ,if you would fill it with an audio track sampled at 44100 hz of 1 minute long , the last 234K samples of your buffer will be empty so when the buffer plays at 48k your left with less than a minute of audio

[granite drum]

why would that be ?

[zenith pawn]

you don't just take the 44.1 kHz samples and send them directly to the 48 kHz output and zero the rest of the samples
You essentially reconstruct the original signal, then resample it at new positions (distance of 1/48000 of a second each), and send that to the output

and then of course there's a bit of error in that process when done in a world where you have a finite length of time and a finite precision of the samples, so you use randomness to spread out the error into some sort of noise

Also iirc the high frequency gets attenuated a bit, but not to an audible degree

[granite drum]

no you dont zerro you have a file with 234k samples of audio , 1 minute long at 44100hz exactly,...
next if you play that file, you copy the values for each sample , to the buffer , since you only have 243samples , you fill the first 234k samples oif the buffer (theoretically if the buffer is nto emptying)
you dont make more samples unless you resample the file

your not reconstructing anything , reconstructiong the original signal is jte job of the DAC not the buffer

de buffer feeds the dac

at a certain samplerate , 48k in my example

[zenith pawn]

I'm confused what you think is happening; the audio system on the OS is resampling the audio on the fly

[granite drum]

im just saying its not resampling i think ,

maybe the driver (asio4all has an option for it yes)

[zenith pawn]

I mentioned reconstructing as a way to describe how resampling works conceptually, I believe it's accurate

[zenith pawn]

what would it do if not resampling? if the DAC is running at 48 kHz and expects 48,000 samples in a one second period, but you only give it 44,100 samples, what are you doing to the remaining 3,900 samples the DAC is accepting

that's why I referred to "setting to zero", i.e. if the buffer was zero initialized and you only set the first samples, leaving the rest as zero

[granite drum]

so looked it up windows only resamples in shared mode , not in exclusive mode and asio bypasses the whole oreal and also by default does not resample, and i think most audio people would be using asio (whats the point of a dac if not so)

[zenith pawn]

meaning it's just reconfiguring the DAC to use 44.1khz when you play music directly out at 44.1 khz

[granite drum]

na you give it audio, at 48000 samples a second, if the audio file is recorded at only 44100 samples a second , doesnt matter you feed the samples at 48000 a second so the audio file wil reache its end faster than expected

[zenith pawn]

It'd be pretty obvious if, due to some bug or something, it wasn't resampling since you'd hear a pop or something every (48000/buffer size) seconds

[zenith pawn]

The music player is gonna be clocked against an absolute clock (real time), not somehow clocking against the sample rate of the output dac

[granite drum]

its esier to look at it like a bucket , of audio , if you fill it with water , fi you ar draining the bucket at 1cl a second and you poor a bottle with 100samples in you have water for 100seconds , h9ow fsast the bottlel with teh 100 samples was filled doesnt matter, only if its different form the bucket it will eitehr sound faster or slower

[zenith pawn]

From another perspective , look at it this way:
48000/44100 ~= 1.088
It would be extremely obvious something is wrong, i.e. try speeding up a video by 9% and listen

[granite drum]

if you switch asio from 44100hz to 192ljz while audio is playing you can actually hear it 🙂 the buffer suddely gets drained faster and audo is faster for a moment (untill the buffer empties ofc,(asio also switches the host so depending on that it depends after that)]

[zenith pawn]

Oh are you talking about it just sounding weird for a split second after changing settings? I thought you meant it perpetually sounds different

[granite drum]

no i mean you can hear the screech when you do that k after that since the hoist also siwtches and whatever host you use might just either stop playback or it migh do resampling itself (or with a DAW , the instuments just startmaking more samples ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJVfcEh0QPk

[zenith pawn]

It's hard to read that message; but if you're not resampling, the source and output rates differ, and the buffer is a finite size, then something has to break down. Yeah actually you would hear it speed up, but you'd also hear pops as you hit regions where there were no samples remaining

Remember that you're breaking up the audio into finite length chunks, you're not taking the entire audio file as a whole and sending it to the DAC

There's some point the difference has to be reconciled, that time should probably be at the end of every buffer

[zenith pawn]

This part responds to that video link, btw

[granite drum]

regionss where no samples are remaining do not exist unless your cpu cannot copy samples fast enough

a track is just a series of samples , the metadata has the samplerate but your cpu just copies samples at the rate it can untill the buffer is filled or the source ran out of samples (in case of live mic orso)

its why rt kernels are nice for djing as it guarantees that samples will be copied at a given interval, hence if the system can handle it now it wont ever underrun no matter the load on the system

[zenith pawn]

Imagine you roll a wheel with a constant circumference and rotational speed, and the linear distance you're actually traveling is larger: something has to make up for that difference (unless you like compress space and time using gravity or something); the wheel has to slip at some point

[zenith pawn]

I am almost certain this isn't how audio players work

I will take a look at one

[granite drum]

im kind of verry certain , your not on a wheel but on a conveyerbelt that moves at a speed , if you empty a box on it how fast the box(the track) recorded doesnt really matter ,...

[zenith pawn]

Idk how to explain it but it should be obvious from this file in cmus https://github.com/cmus/cmus/blob/56446f70e86445caa96f6f4f0188f175fc1fd9a0/op/pulse.c that the clock determining the rate at which audio is played is happening elsewhere (from a system time clock), not the sample rate of the output device

[granite drum]

a track 44100hz of one minute is just a blob of 2646000 samples ,

there is no seconds diveder in it or whatever ,

[zenith pawn]

But no DAC takes a 1 minute 2 MB buffer for your audio and holds it to play back

[granite drum]

the samples have no lenght only a value of volume

[zenith pawn]

it is being divided into small buffer sizes; you can see your buffer size in pipewire I believe defaults to like 1/4096 of a second or something?

[bold prairie]

whats a good headphone amp for the dt 770 pro

[zenith pawn]

It might be in terms of samples

But you're chopping up the audio file into small chunks and playing those for a certain amount of time

[granite drum]

my dac is set to 32 samples of buffer , so my cpu cant copy much at a time and has to switch to that task allot to keep the buffer filledwhen blaying, but it doesnt care if the track waa 441000 hz it just copies the samplesand they dont have lengt , the dac just takes at a given rate

[zenith pawn]

The audio player takes a group of 4410 samples out of the audio file, and knows that's 10 ms so sends it to the (hypothetical) device that's expecting a 4410 sample buffer that it will play for 10 ms

[zenith pawn]

It does though, there's a sample rate the DAC is set to. Otherwise how would it know how much delay to put between each sample from its buffer during reconstruction into your ears?

The buffer itself doesn't have any temporal meaning so that has to be metadata on the side

In the form of a sample rate on the DAC

[zenith pawn]

The sample rate on the DAC is what's creating that relationship between buffer length and the period of time it's presented for

If the DAC is changed to 48 kHz, receiving a 4410 sample buffer has a different meaning in time

[hidden moon]

That statement is so wrong.
I buy all my music on Compact Disc now.

[buoyant vale]

Actually cheaper than buying lossless a lot of the time

[hidden moon]

Also, that's irrelevant.

[lapis pulsar]

guys i have like a very bad earbuds
is it possible to change its CODEC somehow

like make it a better codec

or is it hardwired to the earbuds, like is it fixes

fixed*

[zenith pawn]

what earbuds are you talking about specifically

[lapis pulsar]

Umm
Like its kinda a local brand, popular in india but not anywhere else
Boat 701 prime anc

[lean grove]

@thin void a while ago I remember you did a video of some japanese piezoelectric headphones.

You mentioned that they "sounded like hearing damage."

Do you remember what headphones they were and if the video is still up? I can't for the life of me find it or the headphones.

[granite drum]

after digging in to it , (havent fully reached the bottom of it) it seems we were both wrong to a certain degree, for direct channels (like asio, or exclusive mode on windows) no resampling is happening on the audio channel side of things , and if that was all what is to it i would have been the closest to the real workd , but any media application that allows for eq ing or any other audio effect , will do a thing internalli called suppersampling do do the audioprocessing with... so at this point the original samplerate of the audio has been lost totally. and what happens next isthat whatever asio is set to as samplerate, can be output arbitrarely ,... this only works mostly fawless if their is no extreme difference like trying to have a media player play gsm audio (8k/s samplerate) to play at 192k/s . thats the player side , so the cpu can now copy a stream of samples to the soundcard, when on wasapi and not exclusive mode , windows uses a 512samples large buffer in memory for every audio stream, before they get mixed together to another 512k buffer , that then gets copied to the adress space of the soundcard. if the driver of the soundcard hasnent prepared an adress space for the buffer on the card , hardware "mode" the card unless designed to do this wont even use its buffer internally(think AC97 or onboard sound eg, that do not really have a hardwarebuffer) , when set to hardware buffer and something else doing the mixing (reason why you can only assign one stream per soundcard using asio in an asio driver) most DAC's completely ignore whatever an audio sample is supposed to be anyway(has been lost anyway) the only thing they are aware of is how fast the whole of the buffer should be shifted out ,... at wich point the dac suppersamples it again before presenting it to the actual DAC in the dac , wich is usually set to a verry specific samplerate that cannot change, since suppersampling is a lossy opperation depending on the alorithm used ,...

it seems this wast always the case btw,... (duh) , and back when 44100khz (wich was picked for a verry specific reason, only way to be consistent on both ntsc and pal that is also above the nyquist frequency of the human ear for most people) it mostly would have worked more or less the way i tought it worked.

kind of sad for all the audio files , that basicly all their pure audio still gets supersampled and introducing artifacting to then being downsampled again introducing more artifacting and filtered to remove most of it,... making what is going to the speakers about as impure as , playing vinyl on a planet with gravity like earth lol

[granite drum]

also ignoring what i said above for a second and assuming we are still when things were simpler ...

• Why would the audio player take a group of 4410 (for example ) ? think about it for a second , as there would could be a good answer for it
  ... if you dont think about it form the audio palyer does a and or b , but rather as from the standpoint of the cpu, (on windows when set to optimize for background tasks , wich is as close as you can get to RT(fully preemted kernel sheduler aka realtime kernel) behavior (on linux)with windows , the kernel makes sure that the asio program will get serviced on a verry regular interval , the asio program then has the kernel copy data from the buffers in memoy in a FIFO kind of way to the adress space of the soundcard , as much as required to fill up the specified buffer again ... all this time the cpu has no clue about the time since its did not need it , it just copies data as always , the kernel swithces tasks again , one of wich it switches to may be the mediaplayer, if so it wil copy more samples from the audio file located itn the media players memory space , to fill the buffer of the asio driver in memory again, once that is done the cpu checks how many smamples it copied (kind of as its prolly just increasing a samplecounter in memory for ech copy) . another routine in the media player might be to check the number of samples copied since playback to the statingpoint of playback and adust the timer to reflect the change in ms , thats the only point where something that can be considered "time" enters the frame , since time is a clusterfuck in programming anything you do can do without time you do without,.. the DAC has its internal clock generators and depending on how acurate they are it reads data from its buffes to its dac at that pace... if the kernel is not an RT kernel the next time the asio buffergets read is not set and dependant on the systemload , risking underruns , but also makes the number

samples that have to be added to the buffer variable , and becaue of this variable timing you defenetly want to make sure to fill up the buffer completely , and even for an rt kernel youd want to fill up the buffer to as much as you are able to, think that i have my buffer sizes set to : 32 samples at 44800hz playback thats not allot of time or audio thats in the buffer so my cpu has to have refilled it atleast every 0.0006s or i get buffer under runs , unfortunatly the monitoring software i use does not record how long it has been acitve for, .. however it does keep track of the number of underruns that have occured :

[thin void]

the TakeT H2+. I could never forget something that bad lol

[lean grove]

🫡 thank you kindly

[granite drum]

(if you want a funny little experiment)
write some c-code that does one thing and one thing only , check systemtime as acuratly as provided , compare it tho the previously read value and keep the min and max of the comparissons and the average , printing them to stdout ,.. thats only the diffence in reading from it , now think how with that information you can get to writing software that acurately can mark of 10ms intervals without blowing out your cpu to 100% load just for the time checking , if you know the audio is 10ms thats one but that also means that exactly 10ms later you have to make sure to copy the next 10ms be to early and you have to wait(not happening) until there is place for the next 10ms in the buffer , if you're to late you get an under run ,
ah but what if the buffer is 20ms and you copy 10ms each time? since you have no idea how much time was elapsed since the last time , you still have to tink of a way to exactly find out , because if you copy 10ms to the buffer , if you were late a ms each time so far after 10ms the buffer will be empty , if your eary by a ms each time the buffer will overrun so you or you have to go check system time and be verry acurate with it just in order to know if you have to aske the audio program to give another 10ms or not , lastly some code i wrote for a vst that instantly reduces gain in relation to a sidechanel input (like a ~0ms kind of compressor or so) note how at no point in the code any notion of time is made or taken into account 🙂

ow and forgive the nextline '{' in that code i dont normally do that , but its how the VST3 sdk from steinberg has setup the code so ... i went with it

[blissful portal]

Why do iPhones do this? The lowest volume is super loud on every non Apple headphones. I would think something is broken if I didn’t have apple earbuds to compare to.

[granite drum]

because , apple is against apple blasphemy , you buy apple you buy into the apple ecosystem and thats mandatory , the only reason why you can plug in 3rd party devices is because of lawsuits that they can no longer use their proprietary first party only conectors, but for all intends an purposes ist only supposed to fit , not to work properly , so as long as it does something in the regard of what its supposed to , it will do it in the most onnoxiously unusable way, to the amount the cannot be sued for it but also so nobody makes use of ti

[wispy zephyr]

i just got a pair of hifiman edition xs, i was wondering if there's something i should so i hear good imaging, because rn listening to music doesn't sound much different from my airpods pro 2. could it just be that my motherboard dac or codec (alc4080) isn't good enough and a dedicated amp/dac would improve it? they're also quite quiet on max volume

[lean grove]

A dedicated amplifier will definitely get you to louder levels.

A DAC might improve some of the things you're having issues with, but it's hard to know if what you're hearing is the headphones or the source.

The airpod pro 2's are pretty good too.

[wispy zephyr]

i'm listening to a 100mb flac song file so i don't think it could be the source

[wispy zephyr]

yeah but these are over ear so i'm guessing i'm supposed to hear music around me kind of?

which i don't think i am currently

[lean grove]

The source is your motherboard audio. Lossless media played through shit can still be shut.

[lean grove]

The soundstage you'd expect from nice headphones is greatly exaggerated and is usually relative to other headphones.

You will only get actually good soundstage from speakers, or from binaural recordings meant specifically for headphones.

https://youtu.be/5WeYBxFrQpo

[shell moat]

I've had a pair of ATH-M50x's for a few years, and the hinge on one side is breaking. My last pair went the same way after a few years of use. I'm looking for my next pair of headphones, any suggestions on something with good fidelity and durability? I run through a Scarlett 2i2 as a DAC. All suggestions appreciated!

I do not want ANC in whatever pair of headphones I get

[lean grove]

How much money do you want to spend and are you okay with open backs?

[shell moat]

I've never owned open back, but I was looking at HD 600's

I think budget wise I'd like to stay in the $500 or less bracket

don't need to spend $500 on them but I think that'd be my upper limit

[lean grove]

They're a pretty good option. The 6XX's are a cheaper alternative and are one of my favorite headphones. Very similar to the hd600, just a touch warmer.

[zinc rain]

HD560S’s are solid. I have em and I’m happy with em

Also way under $500 lmao

[shell moat]

Yeah the hd600's are like $250 on amazon right now

[lean grove]

Not a bad price.

[shell moat]

$280*

less than b&h

[lean grove]

6xx should be around $180-$200 right now

[shell moat]

how do open back compare? I've not used them extensively

[lean grove]

Open backs are a much more natural presentation and are easier to tune.

Minor downsides of letting outside noise in and inside noise out. But as long as you're in your own room it's a non-issue.

[shell moat]

yeah this would be my desk pair 100%

[lean grove]

I say send it

[shell moat]

What's the diff between the HD560s and the hd600?

just the soundscape?

[lean grove]

Slightly different sound signature.
560s is gonna have a bit better bass extension and a bit more V shaped.

[shell moat]

sent it, thanks for the advice!

[zenith pawn]

That sounds a lot like what I was trying to explain but can you send links to what you were reading?

[zenith pawn]

I was using 44100 as an example buffer size, in reality it'd be a small size like 512 samples for example; the point being it's much smaller than the entire song

[granite drum]

-> i use 32 samples (see screenshot) i started with this : https://dspace.tul.cz/server/api/core/bitstreams/39cee442-acf3-4ba4-8a9f-7b9988a8abe4/content then fell down the rabithole

[lean grove]

Tell us what you think when you get it

[granite drum]

appart from the whole thing being somehow timeaware, , due to the software suppersampling , its always filling its own buffer with the sound sampled at the samplerate set by asio, it still just gets copied untill the buffer is filled , as time unaware as it can be, only the otherend is also set to be that samplerate, the fifo, gets cleared at that speed on the DAC then it gets suppersampled again for the actual DAC wich expect and arbitrary but fixed samplerate you cant change so 🙂

[zenith pawn]

Yes

The sample rate is the time awareness

[granite drum]

ah you missed my intend behind that question, it can be any size ofc , was more to think about why not one more or one less in general since it can take any amount , if it takes a certain amount because its some time interval your stuck figuring out time on a pc , wich is a pain , because you have to poll something that keeps track of time,and due to the sheduler your never sure when your get your next poll again so your time might be over shot , or your checking so often your hogging the cpu just to check time so you would be trying to check as little as possible but still be acurate? , so its avoided to work without depending on time intervals especially when you can do without,

[granite drum]

by that i mean your cpu or your program has no ffing idea how much time is elapsed at any point ,.. and your cpu is just copieng samples to fill the buffer untill full no mater the buffer size or the samplerate,... if its its turn to do that, it reads samples at location a , writes them to b untill b is full

the audio player only gets updated and calculates how much time is elapsed after the fact , and it gets calculated from the number of samples that got cleared (how much could be copied to the fixed size buffer) tells you how far the dac was at clearing and thus playing samples ...

[zenith pawn]

when you say supersampling, do you mean oversampling?

[granite drum]

pick any language you want and pick a time interval you choose , now wite some code that prints out the unixtim in ns, everythime that time interval has passed , or as close to it as you can,...

[zenith pawn]

I don't think the implementation details affect the core concept I was trying to say; if you want to transmit directly to device without an audio mixer then both the audio player and the device need to be on the same page and using the same sample rate
However, if you have an audio mixer then it doesn't matter as long as the output is >= the source sample rate; oversampling is lossless with the exception of quantization noise

[granite drum]

i mean something like this https://www.analog.com/media/en/training-seminars/tutorials/MT-085.pdf

[zenith pawn]

And the other idea I was talking about is you can't sustainably accidentally speed up the audio only due to a disagreement in sample rates, without having gaps in the buffers, since the audio player is clocked against its own, wall time, not the buffer's emptying
This would never happen and if it did, would be extremely obvious

It's not an audio related statement at all, really, I am going at it from the sort of systems engineering perspective (I believe it would be called)

[granite drum]

the way i understood it is that suppersamling is oversampling by allot

[granite drum]

so thats actually not true (the gaps thing) they would never occur however your right that you cant have a dissagreement between what the player outputs and what the system presents to the buffer of the audio card, but thats more due to ASIO enforcing it and the player havving a suppersampled signal ready to be downampled to whatever asio demands ,... then that ithas any relevance to the track being played and what its samplerate is ,...

[granite drum]

damn safe coding and hardware acces limitations , wast trying to demostrate it with some code but it seem you dont get access to your soundcard directly anymore without going trough the apropriate kernel driver, (being alsa most likely) wich then doenst allow you to mess about with writing incorrect stuff to the memory , since its the driver and is supposed to do thing correctly,... 🙁 i was more used to if i want a bit at a certain place in the adress space to be one , i shoud be able to do that 🙁 its my pc afterall

rip /dev/dsp

[zenith pawn]

time to write your own kernel module

[granite drum]

well , its been on my list but havent gotten around to that yet ... need another paralell life really

https://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/

have had that one bookmarked ever since i saw this youtube clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juGNPLdjLH4

ive written a EFI driver before , but thats easier less stuff in your way to wrestle with

not even libc to stand in your way :p

hehe i started doing pc audio like this (but in QBASIC on dos not in C ) using your PC-Speaker (the thing that beeps when you booted old pc's :p)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH8UITZadf4

[karmic latch]

Question, does DAC quality matter, or is the amp what carries? Still trying to get my Switch 2 audio to play through my PC without buzzing noises.

Currently deciding between a 2nd DAC to plug into my switch and an HDMI audio extractor

[lean grove]

Its both. Kinda like asking if its the CPU that matters or the GPU. and in your specific case, your computer's audio input is also factoring into the equation

so what you need is a way to get high quality audio out of your switch, which is easy. as long as it supports standard USB audio, you can get a decent dongle for ~$20 that will have good clean audio

[karmic latch]

My input interface is a Scarlet Solo so kinda doubt it's that

[lean grove]

eh. you'd be surprised. sometimes you can have weird stuff like ground loop noise

but yeah if you have something serious probably not the cause

[karmic latch]

Are those standard or just defects

Like is that something easily testable?

[lean grove]

whats the noise sound like

can you record it in audacity real quick

[karmic latch]

It's a buzz where the pitch and intensity changes depending on what I'm doing on my Switch 2

[lean grove]

oh well if its dependent on the switch

[karmic latch]

Can't rn, I'll send a clip tomorrow tho

[lean grove]

then its probably electrical noise from the switch

[karmic latch]

That would make sense but it doesn't have a buzz when undocked, only docked

[lean grove]

well that's because the power source is changing from a very clean DC battery to a very noisy power supply plugged into the wall

this is making more and more sense

[karmic latch]

Dang didn't know DC could be noisy

[lean grove]

yeah. batteries are really clean for audio. almost no noise.