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MDAC first listen (part XVII)

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Hello, my mdac has been in action for nearly a month, I seldom switch it off and has been listening thru mdac's headphone amp with a denon d7000, so far so good but only find the low frequency quite boomy, not tuneful and tight enough, what should I pay attention or make adjustment to if I want to hear a tighter bass? Do I need to upgrade the external power supply? Thanks. :)
 
lapkwan said:
Hello, my mdac has been in action for nearly a month, I seldom switch it off and has been listening thru mdac's headphone amp with a denon d7000, so far so good but only find the low frequency quite boomy, not tuneful and tight enough, what should I pay attention or make adjustment to if I want to hear a tighter bass? Do I need to upgrade the external power supply? Thanks. :)
Click to expand...

Different firmware seems to have an effect on the bass.
 
lapkwan said:
Hello, my mdac has been in action for nearly a month, I seldom switch it off and has been listening thru mdac's headphone amp with a denon d7000, so far so good but only find the low frequency quite boomy, not tuneful and tight enough, what should I pay attention or make adjustment to if I want to hear a tighter bass? Do I need to upgrade the external power supply? Thanks. :)
Click to expand...

Try V0.90... have you tried different filters, Optimal transient DD has a very different Bass to the other OT filters...
 
lapkwan said:
Hello, my mdac has been in action for nearly a month, I seldom switch it off and has been listening thru mdac's headphone amp with a denon d7000, so far so good but only find the low frequency quite boomy, not tuneful and tight enough, what should I pay attention or make adjustment to if I want to hear a tighter bass? Do I need to upgrade the external power supply? Thanks. :)
Click to expand...

I also recall that in the recent headphone frequency plots do I recall correctly that the Denon d7000 where shown with a big Bass Hump? Maybe I still have the effects of fever...

The MDAC has NO LF roll-off if you have Bass heavy headphones then that's what you will get with the MDAC - a lot of cheaper headphone outputs are AC coupled - there for rolling off the low Bass... MDAC is Flat to DC...

John
 
Hi John, besides without the wonderful screen saver function, will there be any bug in the V0.9 that is sq related if I use the usb input from my PC?
 
Hi John, the diagram for denon d7000 is at the very first post of this thread, it seems there is no hump at LF, indeed I always want to try the very first version 0.9, it is the screen saver function that has been discouraging me from doing so.
 
lapkwan said:
Hi John, the diagram for denon d7000 is at the very first post of this thread, it seems there is no hump at LF, indeed I always want to try the very first version 0.9, it is the screen saver function that has been discouraging me from doing so.
Click to expand...

Yes looking at the graph, the Grado are REALLY bad! Beats Audio eat your heart out!

That said your D7000 have a VERY wide and deep drop in the mid-band, this will make the Bass appear heavy... if nominilised to the mid-band - the Bass will then effectively become a peak - just depends how you look at it...

Do try 0.90 - its the only version I use.. shame about the screen saver...

John
 
Thank you John, the d7000's mid-band is really a problem, sometimes lessen the vocal's presence, but not many choices of close-back really, even though I have once thought of the Fostex TH900. I'll give v0.9 a go, and switch off mdac after use.
 
lapkwan said:
Hi John, the diagram for denon d7000 is at the very first post of this thread, it seems there is no hump at LF, indeed I always want to try the very first version 0.9, it is the screen saver function that has been discouraging me from doing so.
Click to expand...

Hi lapkwan,

D7000 are known as bass heavy phones... but indeed its sound signature will depends with what amp you use it
In oder to compare, did you try it with a dedicated amp...

I've got JVC DX1000 and can tell you that MDAC (0.90) headphones amp can provide very good bass, let me say about 90-95% compare to my dedicated amp.
I've had the low frequency boomy with some headphone amps but not with MDAC one :)

As suggested do try dif. FW and play with dif. filters, in 99% OT XD gives the best result for me
 
LittleToast said:
Hi John, I must say I am quite defeated in this. I could not figure out why my ipad 3 will play the 16bit/44.1kHz bit perfect test file as 24 bit through the MDAC's usb port. And why when I stream through home sharing, all my 16 bit files to the mdac are 24 bit files. I have reverted to 0.90 FW but it did not help a bit. BTW to my ears the A08 sounded better than 0.90, but that's a personal opinion. wav and aiff loaded into the ipad and played came up as 16 bit though. My guess is that the ipad3 has some issues. I will try an ipad2 when I get my hands on one.

Cheers. Isaac.
Click to expand...

Maybe a stupid question, but does your audio software nativly support the file format you are trying to play?

If I remember correctly, the bit perfect test tone is in WAV format, which many iOS and OSx based music player will not play correctly.

I read in this forum that a user converted the bit perfect file to flac and/or aiff to be able to pass the bit perfect test.

Computer audio is tricky, especially since most OS designers want to decide how sound is reproduced.

iPads dont have a Audio mixer to set up as the OSx has, correct? Otherwise it could actually be the iOS that tries to resample the bit rate.

Well, I wish you good luck with your problem and hope I, at least, didnt lead you in the wrong direction.
 
lapkwan said:
... but not many choices of close-back really ...
Click to expand...

How about the AKG K 550? On the "affordable" side. I prefer the AKG 701 (see in the aforementioned plot), but use the 550 where closed ones are needed. Have tried them only briefly with the MDAC, though.
 
Vessa, thanks for you help, I don't think JVC is my thing as it is of similar grade to d7000 so I'd be more interested in an "upgrade" such as to the Fostex th900 if I really want another pair of cans.

I've just switched to v0.9 fw, moreover, my usb isolator from Denmark arrived at last :D, v0.9 + usb isolator = more airy and tuneful bass :eek:, although I'm not very clear at this stage to what extend each of them contributes to the improvement in LF, but they work out well!

BTW, the d7000's LF is really so Low and powerful that may need to be tamed in some setup.
 
mbaudis said:
How about the AKG K 550? On the "affordable" side. I prefer the AKG 701 (see in the aforementioned plot), but use the 550 where closed ones are needed. Have tried them only briefly with the MDAC, though.
Click to expand...
I've found it's very difficult to choose headphones as they are not easy to get on demo. I heard AKG 701 briefly and thought they were OK but not stunning, then bought AKG 550 later just based on reviews. They seem to take a long while to 'burn in' but sound great now. Another reason shop comparisons are problematic. Bottom line is I'd recommend the 550's especially as Amazon now has them at £70 less than I paid :(
 
mbaudis said:
How about the AKG K 550? On the "affordable" side. I prefer the AKG 701 (see in the aforementioned plot), but use the 550 where closed ones are needed. Have tried them only briefly with the MDAC, though.
Click to expand...

Yes, I've tried a model of AKG with sublime mid to vocals, is it a signature to AKG? Most Kings of headphone of the mainstream brands are open-back, denon and fostex seem to be the exceptional few. btw, the mdac's headphone amp is very capable indeed, love it more and more and unwilling to change back to the Slee. :p
 
I own 701's they are distinctly light in the bass, which is a shame as otherwise they are very good.
 
lapkwan said:
What's inside the firmware that makes it sound different? A riddle to me! :confused:
Click to expand...

And something of a riddle to the firmware's designers too! It appears to be all about secondary, possibly tertiary, effects - that is, indirect sonic effects related to the processing operation itself.

JW has stated in the past that the various optimal transient filers (XD, DD etc) achieve the same 'result' via different filter coefficients*. So if you perceive a difference between the various optimal transient filters, you are hearing secondary effects at work!

By way of a very simplistic demonstration: 2+2=4 but 1+3=4 and 0+4=4. Different calculations yielding the same result.
 
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