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Comment by Qub3d | Hacker News Reader

Objectivity and audiophile in the same sentence always makes me suspicious, especially when you are looking at the 100s to 1000s of extra dollars for 3-5% improvement on measurements (and good luck detecting that in an ABX test).

I moved to a modi/magni stack from a Fiio portable and I don't know if I'll ever bother to upgrade again.

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I wasn't familiar with Audio Science Review, but I looked them up and enjoyed their review of a *$350 power cord*.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/g...

At least from this one sample they look legit, if anything counter-audiophile, in the sense that it is objectively measuring the lack of improvement.

I'd also call the basic schiit stack (which I also have) counter-audiophile -- it is just a nice, solid piece of kit. (and an immediately obvious improvement over my PC's built in stereo jack, haha).

Lol @that link, $350 for a power cord and it's only 14AWG w/ no UL/CE rating? I'm apparently in the wrong business.

You don't understand. It's oxygen free copper! /s

> > objectively higher quality audiophile equipment

> Objectivity and audiophile in the same sentence always makes me suspicious

While we can't detect all the things that people talk about or rave about...

There's a whole lot of things we can measure pretty well; THD+N, intermodulation, frequency response, jitter & phase noise, etc. If something measures better on those simple measurements, and we're not deliberately looking for some warm distortion, etc-- we can know it's better.

His point is that cheaper equipment performs better on objective tests that Schiits. The "better" may not matter, but the point is that cheaper and better is a more desirable combo than more expensive and worse.

I mean human hearing is well known by now. We have a pretty good understanding what makes up certain sounds. Yet, given the nature of the subject on the fringes of perception people start to develope a lot of fantasy, like a child walking through the dark woods seeing monsters and mysterious creatures everywhere. You can surely measure everything, but you also have to do it.

Where audio stuff gets the hardest (and what makes the most impact) is room acoustics and the conversion from and to sound waves (so: microphones and speakers and their position within said rooms).

The power amplifiers, preamps etc. can then either be adequate or inadequate to drive those speakers or amplify those microphones neutrally. If you want everything else than high fidelity (e.g. the subtle crossover distortion and warm sound of a class AB tube amplifier) this is a different thing, but don't call it high fidelity.

More expensive and worse wins if it enhances your perceived social status. For example, Ferraris are not the best track cars, they're not the worst either, but they are a potent status symbol. In any case there exist much cheaper options which can outperform them.

Ironically, I'd be pretty hard pressed to believe you could tell the "quality" from a Fiio DAC compared to an iPhone

IIRC the iPhone dac/amp is supposed to be fairly decent for driving, like, normal headphones. At least in the past (not sure in the post-dongle days).

The Apple USB-C dongle is actually pretty well regarded as an inexpensive step up from onboard audio for “normal” headphones, and some folks will use it as a starter DAC to pair with an amp for less “normal” headphones …

sadly, it doesn't support mic if on windows - at least last time I've tried

That's interesting. It looks really tiny on their site, so I guess the analog signal must be generated in the computer? So it seem more like a "PC manufacturers typically put more effort into their USB implementation than their 3.5mm implementation" sort of thing, I guess?

It's even more interesting, there really is a tiny DAC embedded in the Lightning connector:

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Apple+Lightning+to+Headphone...

Neat! I had no idea. Wonder if their USB-C version is better than the one that came with my non-Apple laptop...

It would likely be quite easy if you could compare them back to back, as in swapping from one to the other and playing a controlled source with a hi-fidelity amp and good headphones. The analog side of digital-analog conversion is an art unto itself and I've found a lot of variance between DACs, even though I'm neither a sound engineer nor an audiophile. If you are just playing a 64k AAC file on your EarPods, probably not.

I use my iPad for ear training and I can absolutely tell the difference between my DragonFly red and the Apple USB-C DAC. I'm just better with the DragonFly.

Don't get me started on the Bluetooth headsets. For music they are ok but there's really basic interval training that I score 100% on with the DAC and like 80% with Bluetooth. Consistently.

Tangentially related: what tool(s) do you use for ear training on iPad?

I use Complete Ear Training for interval training, with the grand piano or the Rhodes sound pack. I switch pack every once in a while. I also use TonalEnergy Tuner to sing intervals or scales to it and see if I'm in tune.

In something like a year I went from "telling apart major and minor thirds is black magic" to being able to sing the major scale right like 60% of the time and I have an 80% success rate for all intervals up to a fifth. It did improve my piano improvisational skills by a lot.

Absolutely, and if I had an iPhone at the time I probably wouldn't have bought it.

I only started bothering with discrete amps when I picked up headphones with a 600 ohm impedance.

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