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Apollyon
Mar 4th, 2005, 08:32 PM
Split for "problems with dress extreme features"


(Quick note: physical isolation from noise helps your listening experience but doesnít improve signal to noise ratio. Signal to noise ratio refers to the amplification + source end of the chain, itís a measure of electrical signal vs. electrical noise, not the physical noise you hear from the outside environment)

I didn't mean signal to noise ratio in the electrical sense, but effectively, acoustic isolation will help increase the actual quantity of (desired signal)/(unwanted signal). I was using signal to noise ratio as a figure of speech. As to the relative frequency response of the headphones, who is to say what is accurate? What is the reference? Hi-fi gets to be more of an art rather than science or engineering when subjectivity is invoked. BTW, have you tried headphones from Shure or Etymotics? The Shure's were my first choice, but Bay/Bloor Radio did not carry them, nor could I find them elsewhere in Toronto. Mind you, I use my Sonys with an iRiver IHP-120, which does not pack significant output power, so I don't know how they respond at higher power levels. Ideally I would imagine that the headphones should be evaluated for frequency response across the entire audible spectrum from minimum input signal power to maximum. Of course, this will also be dependant upon the amplifier characteristics including saturation, total harmonic distortion etc. But that is getting much too involved.

Well, I grossly overestimated the mass of my head and so the finally amount of force my head would sustain if I fell off a bike was an insane amount. This convinced me to always wear a helmet during bike rides, but my TA grading my homework wrote next to my answer, "How big is your head?"

That is quite funny actually. I notice that many people find it hard to estimate the weight of various body parts. I once had an exgf claim that just one of her breasts weighed approximately 11 po

unds. Unfortunately we never got around to verifying that. That figure sounds highly exaggerated to me. Perhaps she meant the pair of them combined, which sounds much more reasonable. If so, I feel very sympathetic to the poor souls who have to bear such burdens. Lets all give them a helping hand ;)

shibalsheki
Mar 6th, 2005, 05:18 PM
BTW, have you tried headphones from Shure or Etymotics? The Shure's were my first choice, but Bay/Bloor Radio did not carry them, nor could I find them elsewhere in Toronto.


I own a pair of shures. There is a distributor in Canada

http://www.shure.com/scripts/intl_reps/default.aspx?country_dbi=Canada

call the guy up and find the reseller closest to you


... As to the relative frequency response of the headphones, who is to say what is accurate? What is the reference? Hi-fi gets to be more of an art rather than science or engineering when subjectivity is invoked.


yes ìHi Fiî becomes a black stupid art, but lets not kid ourselves, ipod/mp3 player + ex71s (or most headphones including anything I own) don't even begin to approach hi-fi. At ìlow to midfiî levels it's pretty clear when equipment doesn't sound accurate or good.

Apollyon
Mar 6th, 2005, 10:11 PM
yes ìHi Fiî becomes a black stupid art, but lets not kid ourselves, ipod/mp3 player + ex71s (or most headphones including anything I own) don't even begin to approach hi-fi. At ìlow to midfiî levels it's pretty clear when equipment doesn't sound accurate or good.

Many apologies for deviating from the thread topic, but I am curious. I have heard a number of people rave about Apple iPods, but have never personally given them a listen. How does the quality compare? Has anybody listened to the exact same mp3 on an iPod versus another device through the same headphones? I have never seriously considered acquiring an iPod, however I am becoming tempted, moreso because of the breadth of 3rd party accessories, including car kits and wireless remote controls.

awong
Mar 6th, 2005, 10:23 PM
what ever you do, don't ask ric about the ipod, I believe there was a thread earlier where he stated his opinon. lol

shibalsheki
Mar 8th, 2005, 09:53 PM
Many apologies for deviating from the thread topic, but I am curious. I have heard a number of people rave about Apple iPods, but have never personally given them a listen. How does the quality compare? Has anybody listened to the exact same mp3 on an iPod versus another device through the same headphones? I have never seriously considered acquiring an iPod, however I am becoming tempted, moreso because of the breadth of 3rd party accessories, including car kits and wireless remote controls.


yes ìHi Fiî becomes a black stupid art, but lets not kid ourselves, ipod/mp3 player + ex71s (or most headphones including anything I own) don't even begin to approach hi-fi. At ìlow to midfiî levels it's pretty clear when equipment doesn't sound accurate or good.

Many apologies for deviating from the thread topic, but I am curious. I have heard a number of people rave about Apple iPods, but have never personally given them a listen. How does the quality compare? Has anybody listened to the exact same mp3 on an iPod versus another device through the same headphones? I have never seriously considered acquiring an iPod, however I am becoming tempted, moreso because of the breadth of 3rd party accessories, including car kits and wireless remote controls.

Yep, several devices MD (sp, lp, hi-sp, etc), some flash players, ipod, creative zen, iriver h10

The difference between most of the most of the hard drive players are very minimal, blind tested Iím sure most people couldnít tell the difference. I think the ipod and iriver use variants of the same Wolfson DAC and I could be mistaken but I think the creative zen uses a Wolfson DAC as well. Youíll get better sound by using higher bitrates vs. switching between any of these boxes.

Flash players vary the most

I used to think MD sounded the best, it did for a while, however, ATRAC3 and MP3 sound pretty much the same at 256KBs, at 132kbs the latest ATRAC sounds better then 128kbs mp3 (atrac3 doesnít do 196).

toml
Mar 8th, 2005, 11:57 PM
A good tutorial on optimally encoding mp3s

http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/encoding.ars

minbo
Mar 9th, 2005, 12:18 PM
The quality of music from an iPod is quite good. It doesn't compare under critical listening to a good LP/CD/DVD sourrce, but for car, commuting in the train or car or a noisy work environment where you have to use headphones, I really can't tell the difference between an old Archos Jukebox unit, a relatively old Rio, three generations of iPods and the CD/tapedeck/radio or each other. It functions well enough for casual listening at home as well on a some fairly high-end systems.

For walking about I use the Sony MDR-Ex71sl in-ear headphones. The in-ear design as noted produces good sound isolation so that I can utilize lower playback volumes when listening to my music. What I hate however is that the rubber ear plugs fall off the earphone and get lost so you use one of the other sized pieces. Eventually you run out of rubber pieces and can't use the headphones. I haven't been able to find replacment rubber pieces so now I bought a second one. If/when I run out of rubber pieces I be looking for different headphones altogether.

I encode all my MP3's myself with CDex/Lame at VBR 32kbs to 320kbs