good headphone dac image
chanesaw4
I've recently bought the ATH-M500 Audio Technica headphones. I was wondering, what can I do to get the most out of them? People have mentioned Headphone Amplifiers, a better soundcard, and so I'm wondering what ALL there is to do to improve my sound quality performance?
I meant to say ATH-A700, not M500. Sorry
Answer
Nice choice, that's a quality pair. First thing: I think the burn-in time for those is about 30-40 hours. So play some white noise and pink noise with a program like Burninwave Generator while you're asleep or at work.
From what I've read on the head-fi.org forums, the a700 are easy to drive so you don't really need an amp. The resistance is 64ohms which is relatively low. But if you did get an amp, it sounds like you'd need to spend about $200 to notice any difference. Your best bet would be the AT-F100 (from googling I found a distributor of it: http://www.ornec.com/g-w-at-f100-a-class-headphone-amplifier_QQC100296C). The AT sounds for audio-technica. It's apparently an amp designed specially for audio-technica headphones. However it's not portable. On the forum there were 2 other amps recommended for the a700 but they cost about the same. One of them is portable: the XM5.
I don't know much about which sound cards are good but yes, if you listen to music from your computer, you'd benefit from having a good sound card. You could find information at head-fi's "computer audio" forum, or just search "sound card" and you'll find a bunch of informative threads.
Your alternative to a sound card would be to get a DAC, which would take the signal from your computer but then decode the signal using its own chips instead of the computer's. You'd plug the DAC into your computer and the headphones into the DAC.
The simplest improvement you can make, if you don't already do it, is use high-quality formats/bitrates for your music files. The highest quality is Lossless, which is the same quality as a CD. The next in line are OGG, AAC, and MP3. Use the highest bitrate possible, and to save space make it variable bitrate.
Hope this helps. Enjoy the cans!
Nice choice, that's a quality pair. First thing: I think the burn-in time for those is about 30-40 hours. So play some white noise and pink noise with a program like Burninwave Generator while you're asleep or at work.
From what I've read on the head-fi.org forums, the a700 are easy to drive so you don't really need an amp. The resistance is 64ohms which is relatively low. But if you did get an amp, it sounds like you'd need to spend about $200 to notice any difference. Your best bet would be the AT-F100 (from googling I found a distributor of it: http://www.ornec.com/g-w-at-f100-a-class-headphone-amplifier_QQC100296C). The AT sounds for audio-technica. It's apparently an amp designed specially for audio-technica headphones. However it's not portable. On the forum there were 2 other amps recommended for the a700 but they cost about the same. One of them is portable: the XM5.
I don't know much about which sound cards are good but yes, if you listen to music from your computer, you'd benefit from having a good sound card. You could find information at head-fi's "computer audio" forum, or just search "sound card" and you'll find a bunch of informative threads.
Your alternative to a sound card would be to get a DAC, which would take the signal from your computer but then decode the signal using its own chips instead of the computer's. You'd plug the DAC into your computer and the headphones into the DAC.
The simplest improvement you can make, if you don't already do it, is use high-quality formats/bitrates for your music files. The highest quality is Lossless, which is the same quality as a CD. The next in line are OGG, AAC, and MP3. Use the highest bitrate possible, and to save space make it variable bitrate.
Hope this helps. Enjoy the cans!
Setting up TV speakers and headphones for different volumes?
James W
My partner's parents have an issue where, his father tends to want the TV on louder than the mother likes. Is there any kind of setup where the father could maybe wear headphones set at a different volume to the TV for their mutual comfort? Ideally the setup would allow the use of headphones only when it's just something the father wants to watch, but then allow speakers when the mother would like to listen also, just at a different volume.
This would be through a fairly modern 32" LCD TV. We currently do not have any kind of headphones and would appreciate any suggestions for ones that would work well if such a setup is possible.
Answer
What Byron said, but I will add many TVs lack an analog audio out, so you need an audio DAC to convder TV digital audio to analog audio.
What Byron said, but I will add many TVs lack an analog audio out, so you need an audio DAC to convder TV digital audio to analog audio.
Powered by Yahoo! Answers
No comments:
Post a Comment