ASR review of for example Jontunheim 2 didn’t include much else…
But you can download a more comprehensive AP test report from Schiit’s website.
Btw, mine doesn’t behave like that. And that is also yet another SINAD plot.
And HD800 is 300 Ohm headphone… And I drive it from the balanced outputs.
I am almost at a point when it comes to dacs, anything measured at ASR to have excellent SINAD over 120, I won’t buy. Been serving me pretty well so far…
Its not an amp suitable for IEMs.
My IEMs have distortion figures below 1% across entire frequency range at 100dB SPL, lower at volumes I listen at. Something hard with any speakers at any price
An amp like Jout2 will ruin this kind of clarity
I wasn’t buying it for IEMs, I was buying it for the HD800.
And Ferrum Oor is for the AKG K601’s (600 Ohm). I hope it will work also for Neumann NDH 30, which I still haven’t got time to try out.
And T+A HA 200 is for their Solitaire P’s.
Each of these tools work very very well for the precise purpose I got those for.
I have also bunch of my own headphone amps I’ve designed and built over the past decades. But since those are not commercially available they are uninteresting for anybody else than me.
Aapo is using the Neumann NDH 20’s with iFi iDSD NEO and what I listened those with and without Oratory’s corrections, that combination works absolutely great to my ears.
Only case I could use IEMs is on travel. But my travel package is at the moment Shure SRH1540 + iFi xDSD Gryphon.
P.S. I had Benchmark HPA4 on demo loan, but I didn’t like it with DAC 200 + HD800 setup.
Yeh I had a plan for IEMs on travel
But you (and me with my headphones too) are EQ’ing to try and achieve what these IEMs achieve out of the box…
You are using Oratory’s EQ for a sample he measured and hoping your unit measures like his
I think his 10band EQ is too much, too detailed to use for other samples. Perfectly fine for his measured sample of course. He should just recommend 3-band for major issues, not fine grained
I haven’t touched my headphones for weeks now.
You need to experiment with silicon tips to get correct seal - but once you do, there is no going back
Next Open Back I’ll get is Dan Clarke Expanse. Proper performance out of the box. EQ not to fix major problems but to adjust to personal taste , which is perfectly normal
Well, this is very offtopic for this thread…
I’m fine with Oratory’s EQs (or AutoEq as well). There are some suggestions on the PDFs too for personal adjustments. But I’m equally fine with these headphones without EQ. HD800, SRH1540, etc. Doing the EQ makes it a bit better. For the AKG K601 quite a bit better.
I wouldn’t buy that Dan Clarke Expanse without hearing it first and trying for comfort. Their store locator didn’t find any stores in Finland. Let’s see if those are available for listen in Munich show. For that price range I would like Stax SR-009S’s. I have one very old pair of Stax headphones in storage…
As headphones are my work tools, I tend to wear those as long as possible in row. I can wear best ones for nearly 8 hours. I like open backs for work… Closed for travel.
Only IEMs I could wear for such long periods would be the custom molded ones, but I have not found ones that I would prefer and it is quite a bit of trouble and investment to get the molding done.
I got those IEMs, but I have not found time yet to try those out. Same as with the Neumann’s.
Yes comfort can be a problem and mainly due to nozzle size, which the custom moulding doesn’t really address. Some of these nozzles are getting huge.
The custom moulds have their own issues. A local retailer who provides the service (both scanning the ear and has link with Audiologist for the older style method) actually told me privately a lot of customers going for custom moulds end up going back to universal after long term.
@jussi_laako Kruunuradio is Dan Clark’s official retailer in Finland. Awesome service there. I use Aeon 2 Noire’s myself and I’m trying to justify myself buying E3’s, which I’ve now demoed twice. They’re probably the best headphones I’ve heard.
I like what ASR appear to be trying to do, to be honest, as a non-expert in this area I just want to know who to believe, and what to look out for. I have an approach where I want to see objective measurement if possible, review/s from someone I trust, and then to demo the kit at home if possible. In that Venn diagrem, objective, subjective and personal testing, I hopefully find kit that sounds and works well. Its a minefield though…
It is understandable but when most of the results are very similar and there aren’t any more specific measures like DSD implementation it means that they are mostly useless
This sounds like another person that just looks at the SINAD ranking and stop reading further
Nope… In particular with the AKM based DACs, ASR measurements give me a good clue whether it is worth testing DSD Direct or not 
No point having DSD Direct working if the general analogue and power supply stage performance is absolutely crap… 
SMSL D-6 is a good example
People in ASR seem to think that when certain SINAD threshold has been reached, everything above that will sound transparent and identical. This is simply wrong.
When it comes to other measurements ASR is doing to the DACs, you need know pretty much to interpret how something sounds based on that.
I have an advice for everyone. Simply borrow the DAC you’re interested in and listen to it yourself. Nothing beats that.
OK, great to know! I know the shop very well, got for example my Marantz CD-60 (SAA7220 + TDA1541A) from there, a veeery long time ago! Also swapped the original NE5532 opamps from there with a better Burr-Brown model, back in the days.
Regarding E30 and sending 44.1k there vs sending DSD256 there…
44.1k input:
vs sending DSD256 there:
High level fully correlated images with PCM input vs very low level of uncorrelated noise with DSD input… (source signal is 0 - 22.05 kHz sweep)
So which scenario is worse?
@jussi_laako youve mentioned a few time that with your A26 you run 44.1 families @dsd256 with ASDM7ec light. Is this just a preference thing or something measured with this modulator?
PCM input has distortion components at about -45 dB level (about 0.5%). DSD input has just some unrelated ultrasonic noise at about -87 dB level (0.004% of noise, unlimited bandwidth).
Also lower frequency distortion components with PCM input reach -95 dB (0.002%) while DSD inputs don’t have any of such visible.
So DSD input is massively better.
If you measure from analog domain, trying to tell ASDM7EC- ul, light or super different is not going to be easy affair. Practically they look the same, yet sound distinctly different (to me!). It is not to say one is absolutely better than the other though (depends on point of view).
But given my personal preferences, the DAC in question, feeding Ferrum Oor (+Hypsos) to AKG K601 (EQ’d in HQPlayer with Oratory’s corrections), my personal subjective exprience is that ASDM7EC-light works absolutely great for this case.
So I encourage to try out the ul/light/super variants without preconceptions. You can easily switch on the fly. Or tell someone to switch for you, if you like it blind.
Let us know what you think!
I’m loving ASDM7ECv2 it’s hard to pull away lol . Just thought I’d ask if your choice was preference or something else.
Hahahaha i blame the way how these modulators are named ultra light, light and SUPER, which hints the super is superior while ultra light is light weight!!
I did try the light and ul and quite like them actually
