Headphones, headphone amps, line outs and optical line out?

[dazzer1975]

Hi,

first, I am not confident about the best place to post this so chose this forum, sorry if there is a more suitable forum for this post, feel free to move it there, cheers.

First entered the mini disc arena about ten years ago with a kenwood player, had it stolen 6 mths later and never bothered with portable players for a few years.

However, the last 5 years or so I have been using hdd based iriver players such as the h340 and ihp 120, before finally succumbing to the magnetism of apple where I now have a few ipods, a couple of sansas and the trusty irivers.

The start of this year however I discovered headphone amps and iem's etc etc so have been really pursuing sonic qualities from my portable equipment, to this end, I have just bought a sony mini disc player mz-n910 (hopefully will be getting an mz-rh1 before the year is out also).

Now, the main point of this post; what are the options in terms of marrying these mini disc players up with portable headphone amps? Do these players feature true line out? if so do any feature an optical connection? I notice a couple of players feature an optical "in", but I am curious as to what equipment and purpose you would implement this connection?

Any help ideas, experiences of how people use and implement their players alongside other equipment such as amps etc would be greatly ap[appreciated.

T.I.A.

[dazzer1975]

wow, no one here espousing mini disc for their sound quality uses headphone amps etc?

[A440]

what are the options in terms of marrying these mini disc players up with portable headphone amps? Do these players feature true line out? if so do any feature an optical connection?

The quick reply is that only the very first portable MD units--the MZ-1--had optical out.

Optical is a digital stream that needs to be converted, sooner or later, for your old-fashioned analog ears. Optical in--recorded through a special cord from an optical output--is a good thing to have when recording. Optical is not so important on playback--though it would have been useful, before Hi-MD offered digital uploading, in making exact copies of music in the old MD formats (SP, LP2, LP4) before the RH1 allowed those to be uploaded. But to get an optical output into your ears, you would need a Digital-Analog Converter in the signal path, which would be expensive and, for a little portable player used in the real world, kind of ridiculous.

You can look at this page -- http://www.minidisc.org/equipment_browser.html -- to see what units offer what outputs. Many "line" outputs are a switch in the menus that, as far as I know, just boost the headphone output into a higher-volume output.

The RH1 is a step up from the N910 in many ways. Its headphone output is better. It plays uncompressed .wav. It plays mp3 files without having to convert them to ATRAC--a step that is lessening the sound quality of any mp3s you are running through SonicStage to play on the N910. But it's a lot of money to spend for a portable player. It's really made for recording.

You don't need line-out for a headphone amp. A headphone output should be strong enough.

A headphone amp will do for minidisc what it does for any CD player, mp3 player, etc. I use a little Cmoy in an Altoids tin when I've goofed and recorded a concert at too low a level, or I want to hear all the detail for home listening with my wonderful Grado SR125 headphones. But since it's the size of the MD unit, I mostly do without it.

The true sound-quality nuts go for the now discontinued Cowon IAudio X5 or M5, which can play .flac files. The X5 has some odd design notions, like a non-user-replaceable rechargeable battery and a separate little plug that needs to be used for recording, transferring music or recharging. Depends on whether you consider sound quality to be the one and only criterion.

Edited July 25, 2008 by A440

[dazzer1975]

Hi Guys,

First off, thanks for the replies, very much appreciated.

Well, I ordered and received the rh1 yesterday, and as anyone with a new toy am in love with it, even thinking of purchasing a pair of binaural mics to explore binaural recordings.

there is only 2 (that I know of) portable headphone amps which feature an optical in connection and a dac so any player with an opitcal out is a good thing, and certainly a novel thing for me to play around with at any rate. I have the iriver h120 which features an optical in and out but have yet to purchase one of those amps featuring an optical connection, but, as it is on the horizon for me I thought I would ask regarding the md players. Headroom make one, Ibasso discontinued one called the d1, but is set to replace it soon.

However, all that being said, being able to record my cd collection via optical connection and then play back through the rh1 using a headphone amp and some high end portable cans would be a glorious experience. I dug out some old md's I had and the sq straight from the headphone out of the player was really rather special, I can see why everyone seems to speak highly of the sony hd amps built into these players.

The x5, yes that is on my hitlist but sadly only available used now and even so, very rarely seem to come up for sale anywhere.

Can I ask, if you were to take your md player outside the home to do some recording, what would be your usual kit? just the player, discs and a mic and literally thats all or is it all uber expensive specialist equipment?

[A440]

However, all that being said, being able to record my cd collection via optical connection and then play back through the rh1 using a headphone amp and some high end portable cans would be a glorious experience.

The x5, yes that is on my hitlist but sadly only available used now

Can I ask, if you were to take your md player outside the home to do some recording, what would be your usual kit? just the player, discs and a mic and literally thats all?

Recording via optical is unnecessary. You can send .wav (or PCM) versions of your CDs to minidisc via Simple Burner, on your software CD--much faster, no loss. Though why you would want to use a whole minidisc to hold just one-and-a-fraction albums on CD is a mystery to me when you could just carry a portable CD player. You can also rip a CD to 320 kbps .mp3 and transfer a bunch of albums via SonicStage to a minidisc, which is more sensible. If you can genuinely distinguish .wav from 320 kbps .mp3--and I mean in a genuine blind test, not knowing which is which--then you are a rare individual indeed.

The X5 shows up refurbed now and then on Ebay from Cowon itself, a.k.a. jet-audio.

There's a whole Live Recording forum here. To record speech or ambient sounds, yes, you can just plug a stereo mic into the mic jack. But anything loud or bass-heavy (even acoustic sources like pipe organ) will overload the mic preamp, so for anything but recording speech or quiet sounds you are better off recording through line-in with either a battery module (loud sources) or a preamp (quiet ones). And you will want to learn how to use Manual recording level rather than Automatic.

I use the small, stealthy, cheap Sound Professionals BMC-2 binaurals (though I am disenchanted since Sound Pros revealed that it considers the two mics matched if they're less than 3dB apart, which is a huge gap) and the Microphone Madness Classic Mini battery module. About $120 at most.

But you can find other and considerably more expensive options depending on exactly what you want to record. To see some of the many possibilities and price ranges look at Live Recording here or, for true madness, try www.taperssection.com .

Hope you Rockboxed your H120 if you intend to record with it. That's line-in only if you expect to get any kind of decent quality.

Edited July 28, 2008 by A440

[Strungup]

You can also rip a CD to 320 kbps .mp3 and transfer a bunch of albums via SonicStage to a minidisc, which is more sensible. If you can genuinely distinguish .wav from 320 kbps .mp3--and I mean in a genuine blind test, not knowing which is which--then you are a rare individual indeed.

I can , 320 is nice , but , it ISNT CD , not in my ears .

[greenmachine]

There are huge differences between the quality of different encoders. Some low quality hardware encoders cut off at 16 kHz even when recording at 320 kbps mp3. LAME is considered to be one of the best.

[A440]

Guitarfxr, you are the definition of a rare individual. I mean that in a good way.

[Strungup]

There are huge differences between the quality of different encoders. Some low quality hardware encoders cut off at 16 kHz even when recording at 320 kbps mp3. LAME is considered to be one of the best.

I agree with that I have heard that myself , some software encoders have that prob as well , Audacity with Lame versus Peak Pro to mp3 was a big difference