The All Purpose Advice Thread

what kind of sound are you looking for? Related to that, what headphones are you looking at to replace the Senns? I ask because the discussion seems to be mostly about features, which at the end of the day may not necessarily take the sound in a direction you want to go.

Edit: Never mind. ChaChaRealSmooth already covered it.

 

Will a dac like Holo Spring 2 help in this regard?

 

Guys what do you think about making a recommended content thread? an audio related feed by SBAF members.
Whether it's an article, video or what ever.

What do you think?

 

ZMF Auteur vs Aeolus? Really not sure which to pick....

 

Too my ears, the Aeolus is like an amped up HD650. The Auteur is kind of like a middle ground between an HD650 and an HD800. In the context of your current headphones, which has a place? I debated the same question for the longest time because I also have an HD650 and HD800 and couldn't figure out which ZMF would fit in the best. Aeolus was the fun pick, Auteur was the safer pick (more neutral and laid back), but in the end the Verite Closed captured my attention the most and was the most different from what I own. Not sure if I will get one, but it kind of made me not want either of the Aeolus or Auteur if I can only have one more headphone.

 

For all of you electronic geniuses out there...

Is a 20MHz bandwidth USB D-scope worth having around? For messing around with audio circuits and such at least, or should I look at something with more bandwidth (50Mhz or so)?

Basically, is 20MHz bandwidth on a D-scope mostly good enough for audio circuits? I want it mostly for amps, preamps, etc., but maybe some digital stuff like CD laser alignments or FM tuner alignments?

 

Anything is better than nothing.

But if you have the budget for something better, get something better. Sooner or later, if you're working with modern audio circuits, you're going to want to see communication between chips, or trigger on narrow glitches, or look for high-frequency noise on power lines, etc. A 100MHz scope will let you do a lot more of that sort of thing than a 20MHz scope will, and the price difference shouldn't be very much at all.

My personal preference would be for an old-school analog/digital hybrid like the Tektronix 2230. It's WAY faster and easier to use than a USB scope plugged into a laptop, it's more accurate, it's a lot more precise, and it won't inject its own noise into your measurements. I know it's futile to recommend a big heavy box like that to someone who's never used one, but do get at least a 100MHz D-Scope if your budget allows.

 

Any recommendations for an amp to pair with the Modius for IEMs? Something clean, smooth, no grain, no hiss, solid state, bang for the buck.

I still have an ADI-2 DAC here and it's great with my IEMs, but I'd prefer to send it home and just grab an amp for my IEMs (which get about 5-10% of my listening time, with almost all of the rest going to speakers and a small chunk to my HD650s).

 

Hi folks, noob here. I just reached out in a message to Puurr'n and have now found this thread. I will keep this brief and would REALLY APPRECIATE any help at all. I am 60, been a comic for 40 years; still do the odd gig and lecture at college but have just started to take my listening seriously as I have always loved music. Not a lot to choose from where I am in Sydney and I now have a Marantz CD6006, Heed Canalot III Q-Psu and HD600's, 650's and Audeze LCD-3. Am I way off the mark? I got the CD player because even though it is entry level it has a USB port and an apparently decent DAC. My big question is this; they sold me the Heed Canalot without a DAC in it, would my sytem work better with a decent DAC (I was thinking Schit Bifrost) and will that combine with the heed? Thanks!

Quick edit. I listen to mainly classical music. Only opera is 28 versions of the Ring Cycle (yeah, I'm one of those) and old guys stuff - Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Nick Cave and hip hop before it became user friendly.

Rob from Sydney

 

@Rob the Comic I haven't heard any of your upstream gear (and apologies if this is obvious), but it looks like the Marantz also functions as a media player for "MP3, WMA, WAV and AAC" from a USB storage device. If that and CDs are all the source material you need, then you don't need a standalone DAC. But if you want to use a PC/Mac/etc. as a source to play local files or use streaming services, then you'll need a DAC to provide an analog signal for your Canalot.

This is where I'm a bit confused. The Heed site says the Canalot has:

Does that mean the input connectors are there, but the S/PDIF and USB are non-functional and you don't have a DAC unless you get an upgrade card? If that's the case, then I guess you have a choice of getting said card and equipping your Canalot with a DAC, or getting a standalone DAC (Bifrost 2 is an good choice in general, no idea about synergy with the Canalot). Another consideration is that the Canalot only has one set of analogue inputs, so you'll either need a 2-into-1 switch or a preamp in order to connect both the CD player and the DAC.

Again, sorry if this wasn't what you were asking.

 

@Rob the Comic Mmm... Thought I should chime in for a bit - I had the Marantz CD6004 a few years back - While the CD player itself isn't too bad (wide staging, generally inoffensive presentation), I found that music loaded through the USB input to sound real funky. Veiled and lacking resolution.

Knowing Marantz, I don't think the USB input would have improved very much since then.

With your configuration, I would get a Bifrost - PC via USB for digital media, and use the Marantz as a transport for CDs.

 

So I'm looking to upgrade my desktop setup from the Topping D50/Massdrop O2 setup I currently have. I bought an Audioquest Dragonfly Cobalt a few months back (for portable listening) despite it apparently measuring "poorly", but have consistently found that I pretty much always prefer its sound over my desktop setup -- the D50/O2 just sounds cold, harsh, and dynamically a little flat in my (admittedly non-blind, only cursorily level-matched) comparisons, especially when listening to something like this. I want something with a lot more warmth and textural "depth", so to speak, especially in the upper bass and low-midrange region, but I don't particularly care about aggressive attacks and transients so much (I listen to quite a lot of ambient music). So I'm now looking to upgrade and based on what I've read here, a Modius/Vali 2 stack would be much more in line with what I'm looking for. Am I wrong?

 

Well, what is your driver? Pretty importing piece of missing info if you can stretch budget, Bifrost2/Asgard stack would be a pretty sweet upgrade, but cost is up there. Sell the D50/O2.

 

Oh yeah, silly oversight. HD6XX's mostly. Budget is pretty tight, looking <$500-700 if at all possible.

EDIT: I should also mention that these are Australian dollars. So, probably something more like $350-500 USD.

 

If you're interested in a Schiit stack, I would wait until next week to see if their "new product" will be relevant. They've stated that a new product is coming out next week, and my bet is on an equivalent amp to the Modius (based on a previous post by Jason earlier in July on Head-fi).

 

Picked up a used ZX300 here, but very few of my cd rips have the correct album art. I was already thinking about doing a "final" re-ripping, organizing and tagging of my CD collection, before boxing them up (maybe with cases, maybe not to save room). Anyways, for anyone who knows Sony, I need a recommendation as to a good cd ripping program that I might be able to future proof my collection, maybe even tagging that would be universal to include Apple, Sony, IBasso, etc. It would just be nice to do this once and never again. I've used Foobar in the past, but it can get cumbersome knowing what settings to use; and most of my albums I did on there aren't showing up album art. I kind of miss the good old days of Itunes ripping. At least, it was easy. Any recommendations? I'd love something with excellent tagging...

 

My own preferred workflow is Exact Audio Copy plus MusicBrainz Picard, but it's not a one-step setup. I have EAC set to rip to FLAC, and I don't tag at all during the rip. After the rip finishes I open up Picard and click the Lookup CD button on the toolbar. That gets me the metadata and tags from a pretty reliable database, including (usually) high quality album art. I then drag the ripped (and untagged) tracks into Picard and finish up there. It sounds like this may not be as smooth and simple as you'd like, so you could also look into dBpoweramp, which is often recommended and may save a step or two.