Audiophile Myths Proved Wrong!

[mr moose]

I've always been curious about those Turtlebeach external DAC thingys, I take it from your experience it was complete junk?

I have a few friends who use TB headsets, and have those little box amp/DAC things. 

 

I happened to have the opportunity to test out some TB headsets that claimed to have true DD surround in a wireless format that had only two drivers.  Apart from sounding worse than a dead dogs donger in the sun,  they offered no compelling reason why the same surround can't be offered on any other headphone.

[MayflowerElectronics]

I happened to have the opportunity to test out some TB headsets that claimed to have true DD surround in a wireless format that had only two drivers.  Apart from sounding worse than a dead dogs donger in the sun,  they offered no compelling reason why the same surround can't be offered on any other headphone.

 

Funny, I was at my friends house and he needed a mic for when we play DayZ. He remembered he had some old turtle beachers with the same usb thing. Terrible. I plugged it in and got a noticeable and LOUD hiss, audio and mic quality were both terrible. I didn't even ask how much he paid for them.

[antoainb]

The tune doesn't matter, could have used a walrus fart played through a tuba. The idea is to try to hear differences. 

 

Listen to an orchestra and then say that again.

[EmoRarity]

Listen to an orchestra and then say that again.

The tune doesn't matter, the idea is to see if you can identify what the walrus ate for breakfast and if the contents of the fart changed depending on the source.  

[Tr3vor]

The hiss was awful. 

 

With the speakers hooked directly up to the sound card though, it sounds pretty dang good.

 

The "amp" they have on there is more like just a resistor. I've had to use it more to quiet down what was coming out of my sound card. If I turned the sound card down and the volume up on that thing I'd hear buzzing, and it would bring back some of the dreaded "computer thinking" noise.

 

With all that garbage bypassed, its not bad, and the USB mic on it still sounds downright awesome for a cheesy headset mic, I commend them for that. 

[Cookybiscuit]

well whatever. All this whiny audiophile stuff has inspired me to improve my cruddy turtle beach headset.

 

So I went into the shop, got the soldering iron out and completely bypassed the shitty built in amp on the thing. Yay, hissing gone. Still can hear the "computer thinking" interference on my integrated. I won't have the functionality of the 2nd audio device for skype calls anymore though :\ but hey, that's what the windows mixer is for. USB mic on it still works though

 

Gotta keep my volume on windows at like 15% though, otherwise I'll blow my ears out 0.o

I feel your pain. I've got some X12's I use as a secondary set for far away from the computer, the cables running past a modem seem to create interferance. I also can hear noise when the mouse moves and when the GPU ticks/whines. What did you do to bypass the amp?

[Tr3vor]

I feel your pain. I've got some X12's I use as a secondary set for far away from the computer, the cables running past a modem seem to create interferance. I also can hear noise when the mouse moves and when the GPU ticks/whines. What did you do to bypass the amp?

I'm not sure on yours, but on mine I have 2 plugs that go into the computer, the 3.5mm and the USB. With the 3.5mm I just followed that cord into the box, that was my audio. I just found the 3 wires that go into the headset, usually labeled ground L and R and just soldered the L from the 3.5mm to the L to the headphones, the R to the R and ground to the ground. I then wrapped the exposed wire with electrical tape, shoved everything back into that little box and it works.

 

I can still hear that darn interference when I use my integrated though, but I think that's a problem with the integrated, not the headphones.

 

 

 

Another plus with doing this is that you can use the headphones with pretty much any device. Before I had to have the USB plugged in before I could hear anything, that was because that shitty amp needed power to insert fuzz in your ears.

[antoainb]

The tune doesn't matter, the idea is to see if you can identify what the walrus ate for breakfast and if the contents of the fart changed depending on the source.  

 

Ok, that was funny. 

[EmoRarity]

Ok, that was funny. 

its also true and I hope you got the point that I was making. 

[Cookybiscuit]

I'm not sure on yours, but on mine I have 2 plugs that go into the computer, the 3.5mm and the USB. With the 3.5mm I just followed that cord into the box, that was my audio. I just found the 3 wires that go into the headset, usually labeled ground L and R and just soldered the L from the 3.5mm to the L to the headphones, the R to the R and ground to the ground. I then wrapped the exposed wire with electrical tape, shoved everything back into that little box and it works.

 

I can still hear that darn interference when I use my integrated though, but I think that's a problem with the integrated, not the headphones.

 

 

 

Another plus with doing this is that you can use the headphones with pretty much any device. Before I had to have the USB plugged in before I could hear anything, that was because that shitty amp needed power to insert fuzz in your ears.

Are they still plenty loud? Normal listening volume is probably at 80% on the dial, taking the amp out quieten them at all?

[Tr3vor]

Are they still plenty loud? Normal listening volume is probably at 80% on the dial, taking the amp out quieten them at all?

 

 

 

Not at all. I've been using the amp more like a resistor. I used to have the sound card at 80% and controlled the volume with the built in amp. I can only have the volume on the card at about 18% before it blowing my ears off. They are practically louder after taking out the amp.

[Cookybiscuit]

Pretty dumb, guess its because they are designed for console use where its more difficult to adjust the volume. Thanks, might try this at some point.

[Tr3vor]

Pretty dumb, guess its because they are designed for console use where its more difficult to adjust the volume. Thanks, might try this at some point.

 

 

 

Yeah, so your PS3 doesn't deafen you

[Tr3vor]

On a totally serious note...

 

 

PRODUCT OF THE YEAR

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814999012

[h264]

On a totally serious note...

 

 

PRODUCT OF THE YEAR

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814999012

 

I think that's my pick for the #1 dumbest computer part ever.  I should find one just so I can say I have one, but I believe the original MSRP was $100.  Not kidding.

 

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/monitor/his-iclear.html

 

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/his-iclear-claims-to-reduce-noise-really-just-fills-an-empty-pc/

[Tr3vor]

I think that's my pick for the #1 dumbest computer part ever.  I should find one just so I can say I have one, but I believe the original MSRP was $100.  Not kidding.

 

It was.

 

It's only good for wasting just a bit of power.

 

(Just in case you didn't notice, I was being extremely sarcastic in that last post. Not entirely sure you did or not.)

[LAwLz]

Wow, I've only watched a bit of the video and skimmed through the rest but from what I've seen the video is pretty awful. It's a mix of true facts, misunderstanding facts, bad tests, huge generalizations and flat out misinformation. It's rare to see the comment section on YouTube be decent, but in this case it seems like the comment section is more educated than the people in the video. ihasmario replies to a lot of points they made.

 

 

"Flac is pointless"
By pointless do you mean an effective manner of storing compressed, lossless copies of the original that can be modified and transcoded in a way that is not additively destructive?
"Within margin of error and placebo effect"
Do you even know what these two things are?
"Humans can hear 20-20khz in a wide range of studies"
Most of these 'studies' actually identify most adults as stopping reasonable audibility at 16khz.
"Even 96kHz is overkill. It does nothing"
By overkill, do you mean that it allows a Nyquist frequency of 48khz as opposed to 22.05kz (or 24khz), allowing for perfect reproductions of audio without frying speakers, aliasing into the audible spectrum, etc with less steep LPFs, which as a result impart less noise?
"I've seen upward of 300"
On a DAC/ADC? Where is he quoting this figure from, what products? Or is he referring to DSP and ASPs?
"It sounds like you're on a telephone"
The quality of a telephone has more to do with its bit depth than its frequency.
"It should be the same difference"
Except, even in frequencies we can hear, the human ear is significantly weaker at detecting high frequencies, and the acoustic reflex and parts of the brain will actively filter many of these frequencies if there are louder noises present in the region of 300-4khz. This is why shaped dithering and quantisation noise is shaped upwards.
"Tubes are terrible". "I grew up with warm sound"
Which tubes are you referring to? There are very noisy (Bad tubes), and tube systems which, when presented with a reactive or resistive load present <0.01% distortion - significantly less than many 'solid state' amplifiers. 
Tubes haven't had "warm" sound for a long time. Please stop referring to the use of tubes in guitar amplifiers to the use of tubes in power and headphone amplifiers. Although the technologies are the same, the reason for their use is fundamentally different.
"Solidstate does not distort the sound at all"
So basically you're saying that solid state amps break all known laws of physics and thermodynamics, and that it should, in theory be possible to have a solidstate amplifier supplying and outputting the same line level signal - without degradation, for an indefinite amount of time and cycles? Because that is logically, demonstrably, and patently untrue.
"Do an EQ"
Muh phase.
"Tube amps are only for fun"
Or, for example, having the high stress part of the circuit (with the lowest MTBF) easily replaceable. Or, for example, driving higher voltages at lower costs due to the easier nature of OTL designs in tube amplifiers. 
"Vinyl is recorded in 24bit"
Except, if we use Fourier transforms of the potential output, the total potential bitdepth of Vinyl (as expressed as a product of its total DNR) is lower than even CD. Are you referring to digital pressings of 24bit audio? Because every CD recorded today is going to be mastered in 24bit (actually, that's not true, most of it is going to be mastered in 30+bit float audio which gives extra headroom, which is why clipping masters in most DAWs does not cause the audio to clip), and then mixed down to 16/44.1. This tells us nothing about the actual media it is pressed on. Or is this mouthbreather confusing 24bit rips with a 24bit source?
"If you can use the quality"
What quality are you referring to?

Needless to say, I stopped watching at this point. I'm surprised he didn't mention "muh stair steps" during the vinyl vs CD comparison, because that is exactly where the level of understanding of this 'expert' is.

Why don't you do some fact checking before posting the next video? Was this video about dispelling Audiophile myths or spouting them?

Please feel free to respond at any time, Tek Syndicate.

 

Oh and before people go "you're just a hater/audiophile that don't want to get told", the FiiO E10 is pretty much the only DAC/AMP I recommend, and I have said that vinyl is inferior to CD as far as sound quality goes (assuming the same master was used), and that I can't tell the difference between FLAC and 320Kbps MP3 before.

Just don't like misinformation and half-truths.

[MayflowerElectronics]

What do you think was wrong in the video? 

[YajirobeFromDC]

What do you think was wrong in the video? 

 

I guarantee you all the people in the comments whining either have buyers remorse from buying a sound card or owning $5000 worth of snake oil audio equipment

[MayflowerElectronics]

I guarantee you all the people in the comments whining either have buyers remorse from buying a sound card or owning $5000 worth of snake oil audio equipment

 

I'm sure some do. But I'm here to defend anything I said in the video. As I've said about 7 times in Logan's forum, I type better than I talk, and sometimes my brain works faster than I can talk, and I don't explain things clearly or as thoroughly as I should, but I can back up everything I said with facts, articles, and knowledge I've learned throughout college. The majority of peoples arguments are versus flac vs MP3. This thread alone shows that for the overwhelming majority of people, it doesn't matter. There are a bunch of audio engineers, and recording artists that also have confirmed this on Logan's forum. I never said FLAC is useless as a medium, it's just useless for playback. It's needed for archival purposes, but that's about it. People are also defending that tubes are needed for guitarist recordings. I 100% agree, but people are missing the point of the video. I'm talking about PLAYBACK, not recording. Tubes introduce much higher distortion and artifacts than SS amps (and for most tube amps, noise). That's just a fact. They cost a LOT more to buy, then you have to spend X amount of money on tubes over its lifetime. There's a reason we stopped using tubes in the 50's. 

 

And people seemingly forget that I said at the end of the argument, if you like tubes, more power to you. I'm just explaining why they are bad, and that you should know the facts before buying a tube vs SS amp.

[ShearMe]

Just don't like misinformation and half-truths.

 

Most of the people watching the video wont understand a full truth anyways. It's not like they're releasing this video for to break the spell Head-Fi has cast upon it's members.

[Tr3vor]

Quick question.

 

When we talk about kilohertz, we're not talking about pitch but the amount of times per second that the audio hardware is pushing new information to you. So how is it relevant that we can only hear 20khz pitches or whatever when we're not talking about the pitch?

 

I can't tell the difference between 192 or 96 or whatever, but why is it such a dramatic difference when you go to around ~22khz to 44? There theoretically should be no difference at all according to you.

[MayflowerElectronics]

Quick question.

 

When we talk about kilohertz, we're not talking about pitch but the amount of times per second that the audio hardware is pushing new information to you. So how is it relevant that we can only hear 20khz pitches or whatever when we're not talking about the pitch?

 

I can't tell the difference between 192 or 96 or whatever, but why is it such a dramatic difference when you go to around ~22khz to 44? There theoretically should be no difference at all according to you.

 

Because of the nyquest theorem. It's half of whatever the given number is, so if it's 44.1khz, it can go up to 22050 hz in the audio range. So when you bump down to 22khz, you are only allowed up to 11000 hz in the audio range, effectively destroying half the audible range in the music.

[ShearMe]

Quick question.

When we talk about kilohertz, we're not talking about pitch but the amount of times per second that the audio hardware is pushing new information to you. So how is it relevant that we can only hear 20khz pitches or whatever when we're not talking about the pitch?

I can't tell the difference between 192 or 96 or whatever, but why is it such a dramatic difference when you go to around ~22khz to 44? There theoretically should be no difference at all according to you.

The maximum sound wave frequency a file can contain is half the sampling frequency. Sampling above 40 helps when recording and mastering for various technical reasons, but for playback it is unnecessary and potentially harmful to the audio quality.

[smjpl]

What do you think was wrong in the video? 

 

Did you see the "show" button?

 

Wow, I've only watched a bit of the video and skimmed through the rest but from what I've seen the video is pretty awful. It's a mix of true facts, misunderstanding facts, bad tests, huge generalizations and flat out misinformation. It's rare to see the comment section on YouTube be decent, but in this case it seems like the comment section is more educated than the people in the video. ihasmario replies to a lot of points they made.

 

ihasmario's comment

 

"Flac is pointless"

By pointless do you mean an effective manner of storing compressed, lossless copies of the original that can be modified and transcoded in a way that is not additively destructive?

"Within margin of error and placebo effect"

Do you even know what these two things are?

"Humans can hear 20-20khz in a wide range of studies"

Most of these 'studies' actually identify most adults as stopping reasonable audibility at 16khz.

"Even 96kHz is overkill. It does nothing"

By overkill, do you mean that it allows a Nyquist frequency of 48khz as opposed to 22.05kz (or 24khz), allowing for perfect reproductions of audio without frying speakers, aliasing into the audible spectrum, etc with less steep LPFs, which as a result impart less noise?

"I've seen upward of 300"

On a DAC/ADC? Where is he quoting this figure from, what products? Or is he referring to DSP and ASPs?

"It sounds like you're on a telephone"

The quality of a telephone has more to do with its bit depth than its frequency.

"It should be the same difference"

Except, even in frequencies we can hear, the human ear is significantly weaker at detecting high frequencies, and the acoustic reflex and parts of the brain will actively filter many of these frequencies if there are louder noises present in the region of 300-4khz. This is why shaped dithering and quantisation noise is shaped upwards.

"Tubes are terrible". "I grew up with warm sound"

Which tubes are you referring to? There are very noisy (Bad tubes), and tube systems which, when presented with a reactive or resistive load present <0.01% distortion - significantly less than many 'solid state' amplifiers. 

Tubes haven't had "warm" sound for a long time. Please stop referring to the use of tubes in guitar amplifiers to the use of tubes in power and headphone amplifiers. Although the technologies are the same, the reason for their use is fundamentally different.

"Solidstate does not distort the sound at all"

So basically you're saying that solid state amps break all known laws of physics and thermodynamics, and that it should, in theory be possible to have a solidstate amplifier supplying and outputting the same line level signal - without degradation, for an indefinite amount of time and cycles? Because that is logically, demonstrably, and patently untrue.

"Do an EQ"

Muh phase.

"Tube amps are only for fun"

Or, for example, having the high stress part of the circuit (with the lowest MTBF) easily replaceable. Or, for example, driving higher voltages at lower costs due to the easier nature of OTL designs in tube amplifiers. 

"Vinyl is recorded in 24bit"

Except, if we use Fourier transforms of the potential output, the total potential bitdepth of Vinyl (as expressed as a product of its total DNR) is lower than even CD. Are you referring to digital pressings of 24bit audio? Because every CD recorded today is going to be mastered in 24bit (actually, that's not true, most of it is going to be mastered in 30+bit float audio which gives extra headroom, which is why clipping masters in most DAWs does not cause the audio to clip), and then mixed down to 16/44.1. This tells us nothing about the actual media it is pressed on. Or is this mouthbreather confusing 24bit rips with a 24bit source?

"If you can use the quality"

What quality are you referring to?

Needless to say, I stopped watching at this point. I'm surprised he didn't mention "muh stair steps" during the vinyl vs CD comparison, because that is exactly where the level of understanding of this 'expert' is.

Why don't you do some fact checking before posting the next video? Was this video about dispelling Audiophile myths or spouting them?

Please feel free to respond at any time, Tek Syndicate.

 

Oh and before people go "you're just a hater/audiophile that don't want to get told", the FiiO E10 is pretty much the only DAC/AMP I recommend, and I have said that vinyl is inferior to CD as far as sound quality goes (assuming the same master was used), and that I can't tell the difference between FLAC and 320Kbps MP3 before.

Just don't like misinformation and half-truths.

 

This is a really good topic. Looking forward to the response.