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3
Audio Hardware / Re: Headphone amp?
Last post by includemeout -
Quote from: modulusshift on
So I have an old CD player that has captive line out RCA cables in the back (Magnavox AK601, not that it matters), and I have my trusty Sennheiser HD598 headphones. I have two cables for the headphones that end in 3.5mm and 1/4” jacks respectively.

I have until recently been using my AV receiver as the amp between the above, which is a Sony STRDH790, and has a 1/4” jack on the front. The CD player sounds great through my speakers hooked up to that receiver, but I also like to listen via headphones. I was wondering if I could see any benefit from a headphone amp in that case, and upon research heard mention of “high output impedance”, caused by the headphone output on my receiver basically just being some resistors slapped onto the speaker amp to get the power levels right. Combined with my 50ohm headphones, I read this could lead to overemphasized bass (which does seem accurate, it’s fatiguing amounts of bass with some sources and I can’t EQ the receiver in headphone mode I don’t think), and that I should either use higher impedance headphones, like 500-600ohm, or use a different amp.

Is this scientifically supported so far? If so, what’s a reasonable and cost effective way to connect my headphones to this CD player? I’ll be on the lookout for a CD player with a built-in headphone output at the local thrift stores, I suppose, but I do quite like this one, it can play my burned CD-Rs no problem
I recall having a similar experience with a pair of low-tier Sennheiser HD-490 headphones (the old late-90s model, not the current "pro" offer) when coupled with a high-impedance amp back in 2005-06.

Though notoriously a bass-boosted, low-tier, low-impedance offering from the German brand, its V-shaped frequency response didn't bother me when just strolling down the streets of London back then.
(in good old early noughties fashion, there seemed to be a race for the largest pair of headphones one could lug around, so looking inconspicuous was the least of our concerns).

Back indoors, the result with the high-impedance output of my already aging, but reasonably good Hitachi Ha-12 amp was more or less what you've come across recently: the boomy bass kind of smudged the midbass, making a muddled cacophony that, on a positive note, at least made me take the plunge and buy a pair of HD 580s and let the HD 490 go.

So, as you've already hinted at, since you're not willing to part ways with the HD 598, and alongside finding a CD player unit with a phone jack in the second-hand market/thrift shop, the plan B is obviously getting a new low-impedance amp.

Keeping in mind every person's idea of cost effectiveness differs, plus the fact you didn't mention any budget or location, I honestly think any good-to-great quality model might be the right choice.

Googling "low-impedance good amps", you get the likes of JDS Labs's Atom Amp+ at $99. From memory, I think one of the models by Schiit (Magni, Heresy or equivalents - don't know which is currently in production, so cannot comment on prices) would be worth considering if you decide to go the amp route.
6
FLAC / Re: Multithreading
Last post by Replica9000 -
I haven't tried gasc mode much with flaccid.  One option that seems to make encoding painfully slow is the  --analysis-apod option. 

Turns out using that option makes flaccid a pretty good stress test tool.  I've recently built a new computer with a Ryzen 9900X (@ktf, I can test avx512 instructions if you decide to implement them).

I left the system on stock PBO, but wanted to undervolt to keep temps down.  The system passed tests using Prime 95, AV1 encoding and reference flac encoding.  However, when I fired up flaccid with high settings, the program crashed or the PC froze.   The current test has been running nearly two days, and at the current rate, might take a week or two (or more!) to finish.  I think I'll call you system stable at this point.



The current command:
Code: [Select]
flaccid_avx2_noasm --in NIN_The_Fragile.wav --out NIN_The_Fragile.flac --lax --workers 24 --mode peakset --peakset-window 300 --analysis-comp 8pr15l32m --output-comp 8pr15l32m --analysis-apod tukey(5e-1);subdivide_tukey(47/1);gauss(5e-1);welch;connes --output-apod tukey(5e-1);subdivide_tukey(47/1);gauss(5e-1);welch;connes --blocksize-list 128,256,384,512,640,768,896,1024,1152,1280,1408,1536,1664,1792,1920,2048,2176,2304,2432,2560,2688,2816,2944,3072,3200,3328,3456,3584,3712,3840,3968,4096,4224,4352,4480,4608 --merge 1 --tweak 1 --queue 4608



7
General Audio / Re: The "business model" of hybrid codecs with correction files
Last post by skamp -
To be perfectly clear, at least on UNIX-like operating systems, once a hard link to a file has been made, one can move either file (the source or the hard link) as much as they want, wherever they want, as long as it’s on the same storage device.

Each file (the source or the link) will keep pointing to each other, and modifying either file (like, say, tagging) will always affect the other file, wherever it is located. That’s because they’re really just a single file, with more than one path attached to it within the filesystem.

There is no difference between the “source” and the “link”: they’re the exact same file, just referenced with different paths. As opposed to a symbolic link, which is NOT a file.

With symbolic links, as soon as you move the source, the link breaks (unless the symlink is a relative path and the new location of the source remains compatible with that relative path).

I haven’t really used Microsoft Windows since 2002 so I have no idea about what it can do.