skyther

Hehe sorry moltar, I was just trying to help a fellow buddy n00b :happy: I guess my clumsy self stepped on somebody's toes :laugh: My cheap arse equipment's too shameful to be seen by everyone

Naw, don't threaten "Mr. Elite", or he'll feign his 'resignation' from the MD community again. Let's just give him the respect he wants and maybe his ego will shrink a little. :laugh:

Gee, I thought mods here were organised... guess not. Still doesn't explain why you're allowed to break the rules, hmm? Not your board, is it? Since you're setting such an excellent example for an ex-mod, I guess I should follow too, eh? Budak bodoh yang tahu cakap banyak aje. You can ban me if you wish. I never knew owning an iPod was such a crime The attitude of some people nowadays, tsk tsk... and I thought I was bad

Dude, anyone here can tell you that Eggos are the most popular headphones around here. Excellent performance/price ratio, designed for portable use, and yes they are foldable. They're also Sony. I never said Sony sucks, I said it was specifically the V500/700/900 that sucked. You'll have to go through the extra effort of buying them from an e-tailer if you want something good.

With all due respect, Mr. (ex)Mod... http://forums.minidisc.org/viewtopic.php?p=19111#19111 I have nothing useful to contribute, but at least I may be better than someone who has but won't. (ex)Mods going against their own rules/suggestions == bad.

Errrrrrrrrrrrr... no, Vx00 series sucks. I had a V700, sold it off about half a year ago.

I didn't think you got my point. Besides the fact that 'junk' equipment state false SNRs, every manufacturer's SNRs are measured with different standards. Using SNR as a comparison will not be fair. And btw, let's not refer it to 'Chinese' junk. I know of some pretty good chinese stuff, and I don't think it's fair for you to categorize everything of Chinese make as junk. When you measure SNR, are you measuring a digital signal? No. How then can you measure the level of noise? If SNR is measured at an analog output, can it be accurately compared to a clean digital source? How do we know if one manufacturer's measurement equipment is more accurate than another? Oversampling = interpolation. Usually it's also an excuse for poorer filters in equipment. While this allows for a higher theoretical SNR, it doesn't always work. Garbage in, garbage out. Your output will always be limited to the quality of your input, and that's the general rule of thumb. Not to mention that oversampling is done at the DAC, and by this time the signal has already passed through the DSP. There is really no point in claiming a higher SNR from the use of 'imaginary' data. Noise shaping, to what I know from my limited knowledge, adds extra noise to smoothen out existing noise. This could possibly raise the noise floor. Both these techniques may result in colouration of the output signal. Exactly my point. You assumed that most people ripped their own CDs. In this situation, that's a very wild assumption. The comparison was obviously not done very scientifically, so it's not fair to conclude that the iPod has a low SNR just because you 'hear' hiss when the player is set at a loud volume. Maybe I should use gain, since volume would be more appropriately used to refer to the actual volume at that point of the track. It's useless to introduce oversampling and noise shaping here. The iPod only utilizes digital filtering. Oversampling works mainly for CD players, not Digital Audio Players. You have numerous formats that can be encoded at various sample rates with varying resolutions. Introducing oversampling would be introducing extra complexity and cost. The iPod isn't just a thumbdrive that's been converted to play MP3s. It was designed from ground up by PortalPlayer on contract with Apple. And no, the hard drive does not cause interference, simply because everything is played from the buffer memory.

Heh, you got me there. But like you said, those are technical limits. CDs at 96dB would clip. The published SNR (of cheap audio products made by poor manufacturers) is often the rated SNR of a single audio component used in the product, not the SNR of the final output. Even then, the speakers/headphones used would make a difference. The SNR figures are already taken from the wrong place, so what use is providing the dynamic range and THD doing? As you said, the technical maximum SNR for CD is 96dB. Yet a good number CDPs are quoted for a >100dB SNR. Is that even possible? Did they measure that at the outputs? No. Now if you turn the volume up but your source is quiet, is it fair to deduce that you have a low SNR? AFAIK, the iPod does NOT produce any noticable hiss at normal volumes. This is where it gets interesting. My MP3s are gained to 87dB. With the volume set at ~80% of the scale, there is no hiss or background noise. I'm certain that it's not the equipment, and I'm also certain that lufs' observations are not based on identical sources used on the various equipment he listed. And TBH, I doubt the majority of HDP/MP3 player users play only tracks which are self ripped.

First off, the technical limit for S/N ratio for MP3s is 90dB, in fact all digital audio is rated for 90dB. That's the simple reason why almost EVERY mp3 player manufactured is rated at 90dB, sans the unscrupulous ones. Second, every manufacturer uses different methods of measuring SNR. Creative has a rubbish method for measuring SNR, I can assure you that. Most of their listed specs are pure marketing, aka. BS. They have a history of misleading users (Audigy 1's pseudo '24/96'), so I don't see why anyone should trust them anymore. There's also no point in advertising a SNR of 98dB overall if your product is sold as a MP3 player. The wolfson chip in the iPod is rated for 98dB SNR, but it is definately not guranteed that your output SNR will remain the same. The quality of the components used, from the DAC, the opamps, up to the headphone connector jacks will cause a drop in SNR. There is hence no official standard for measuring SNR. The static you hear is caused by excessive gain, and has absolutely nothing to do with SNR. SNR in this case would be primarily affected by the source of your music. Sweeping statements you have there.

I didn't think superglue would be sonically transparent Can't you find replacement foamies somewhere? Even here in 'Deadsville', erm, I meant Perth, I could get a pack of 8 for less than 2 bucks.

Lossy pretty much equivalent to lossless? Doubt it. With reasonably good equipment, the differences are obvious, regardless of the bitrate. Bitrate only affects the degree to which the compression is applied. 256kbps is considered high bitrate. Most lossy codecs, including MP3, will reach a satisfactory level of transparency (for portable use). At that bitrate, the differences between the various popular lossy codecs (ATRAC, AAC, OGG, MP3) are minimal. Where the codecs will show their differences will be around the 128~192kbps range, but to rank high bitrate lossy to be approximately equal to lossless is improper.

Sometimes, the older, the better. If that's true for alcohol, why can't that be so for audio? I'm not exactly sure about the MDR-7509, but the MDR-7506s are otherwise known as MDR-V6s which are good if you like bass. From that review, it seems that the MDR-7509s have been tamed a little, but the best advice that anyone can give to you for headphones is to try them out for yourself. Sound is subjective to each person's hearing... not everyone's ears are the same, y'kno.

:ohmy: ...... I'd like to slap you guys in the cheek real hard Anyway, if you insist on calling my home cheap labour, at least spell it right.

FB2k was designed for complete gapless playback, hence you get that problem. The split second gap that Winamp creates causes the Xitel to pause the transfer for that moment, and that's what lets the MDR recognise a track mark. You've really got no other choice with FB2k other than the insert gap plugin.

iTunes has probably written something in the ID3 tags that does not conform with what SS2 understands. I'm guessing that you use sound check, try turning it off if you are.