TheSloth

What a blast from the past! It’s almost eerie to see things I posted 15 years ago, long forgotten. If it’s still relevant, yes the DPS and Base Station are interchangeable, but the current delivery of the Base Station is much lower (the DPS was designed to power 6 devices simultaneously). I can’t vouch for the pin out, but it was indeed quite common to use HR power supplies for the Gilmore Lite which makes me think they are the same.

I actually just saw that the Drop THX AAA amps have between -6 and -12dB gain at low gain settings, depending on the model and SE vs Balanced, so clearly some commercial amps are built this way. I also have a suspicion that the HeadRoom amps had negative gain at the low setting, but I can't really remember that well (and if I can't remember, who will? 😛) I looked at the Pico Slim - that did seem like a great way of getting really fine grained volume control and is certainly an option to combine with an external DAC. Does anyone know of any integrated Amp/DACs with that sort of arrangement? It's true that there's no specific need for negative gain - it's just a way of getting round the fact that most analogue pots are crummy at the low end of the range. So perhaps what I should ask is this - what's the best way to get super low hiss output with near perfect channel balance and fine grained volume control with a very sensitive IEM?

You're right of course, it's unlikely that anyone is making a negative-gain-only product, but I do remember coming across some variable gain amplifiers where the lowest gain setting was actually negative, so L M H was something like -12, 0, +12 for example. I could use something like the Goldpoint if I use a separate DAC and amp, but I'm trying to keep the setup as minimal as possible. The other option is something with a DAC/Amp with very high quality digital attenuator that works at 32 bit for example. Really, I'm not tied to any particular technical solution as long as it is sonically pleasing.

Hello all! I'm looking for a decent but cheapish DAC/Amp that has significant negative gain, and was wondering if anyone knew of anything? I'm using it to connect to my digital piano software, with which I use a pair of Etymotic 4XRs. At standard levels and 0dB gain I usually need to attenuate by at least 24dB before I can even get close to half volume with most pots. I'll add that I'm also using it at relatively low output levels because of my messed up ears, so it really would be nice to have some meaningful volume range without having to use massive digital attenuation. Also, using that kind of digital attenuation still leaves the amp itself at a much higher output level which could potentially let accidental pops and any other noises come through extremely loudly. I tried this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01L4CPF7U/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 as a way of attenuating after the output stage, but I really hate that method and, unsurprisingly, it does mess with the sound (though that little thing is better than your average attenuator as far as I can tell). Anyway, ideas much appreciated!

That's the one! I liked that headphone.

I recently impulse bought a set of the 95x on EU blowout ($290 all in, which includes 20% VAT so that's a little ridiculous) - regretted the compete waste of money from the moment they said they wouldn't cancel the order until these things arrived earlier today. I've always been a QUAD fan, but found the STAXs in my budget to be ear-shreddingly shrill so really didn't know what to expect. So far, what a lovely transducer! Now I'll have to go back and read through this whole damn thread before asking annoying questions...☺️ By the way, does anyone remember the dynamic headphone that KOSS sold for a while years ago that used the exact same enclosure? I had a pair briefly in the days where head-fi was part of my life (!) and remember finding it extremely smooth and friendly to my ears. Then in a childish moment of idiocy I 'dismantled' them 'for the benefit of the community' and that was the end of that. But, sonically, goes to show how much of an effect the enclosure has on the sound.

I'd go find something seriously low distortion, and class A is probably a decent bet in this case because you don't need that many watts given the speakers' ultimate dynamic limitations anyway. I'd also say that you should take a close look at the distortion graph because you're going to be doing most of your listening at the lower end of the output range where distortion is often relatively higher (something that perennially irks a lower-volume listener such as myself) I have to say it's quite a testament to PW's original design just how little the newer models improve on the original. Oh, the improvement is clearly there - if PW could have manufactured the originals with the same methods and techniques as the current ones I'm sure he would, but really structural changes are the big difference. You aren't in a high-humidity area by any chance are you? (why is this in HT?)

Do we know anything about the tech in this? They claim state-of-the-art performance, yet I'm surprised to see a single supply DC power input. Yet their measurements look great and don't show any signs of that sort of compromises. Sorry for the kinda OT question.

Actually that does sound really great. What volume control setup did you go with? And as I understand it no gain stage at all? In other directions, anyone have any experience with the Benchmark DAC/amps?

Thanks for that - interesting observations on the pico, I would have expected that to be very quiet. I'm not sure how absurd my absolute sensitivity is, but the fact is that my own dynamic range is so limited that even losing just a few dB to hiss is significant to me. Do you have any more details about your buffer?

Thanks for the comments so far... My budget is whatever it takes . Ok, so not exactly - I refuse to spend just for the sake of it, but if there is a clearly demonstrable reason why I am getting more for my very specific use case after spending more, I'll consider it. I'm a bit of an objectivist at heart, so I'm not easy to convince on that one. The thing I see a lot when looking at amplifier designs is a lot of consideration on how to handle voltage gain, which is pretty irrelevant to me. The other thing I see often is crosstalk numbers and channel balance numbers that I'm not happy with. I expect channel balance to be pretty much 0dB at any volume setting, and crosstalk to be <-80dB across the entire audio band. I know that the audibility of crosstalk that is significantly worse than -80dB is debatable, but my brain needs to know that it's taken care of either way. And just in case I wasn't clear, this is an injury related to a somewhat tragic accident, not exposure to high volumes. I spent my life caring for my ears in every way possible, watching people around me ruining their hearing. But that's life, things can happen in the blink of an eye that render decades of effort moot.

Hello everyone, it's been years... (for anyone that remembers me anyway) I am researching what amp best suits my somewhat bespoke needs, and thought there might be some useful opinions here, especially since I've been rather out of it for ages. To cut a long story short, about one year ago I suffered an accident that damaged my ears, the result being that I have severely reduced dynamic range in my hearing. Though my sensitivity is normal and frequency response is good (i.e. little to no hearing loss), my pain and distortion threshold has been lowered to around 80dB. This means that for real music listening (classical in my case), I can manage with a level that sets absolute peaks at around 85dB. In order to maximise what I can get out of my remaining dynamic range, I find myself using IEM's (Ety 4XR currently) to cut background noise to a minimum. So I'm currently looking for an amp that would have vanishingly low distortion and noise into this kind of setup. Maximising transparency (of the 'straight wire with gain' kind, not 'extra detail' or anything described with a fancy sounding adjective), through minimum distortion, noise etc. are top priorities, whereas output power is relatively irrelevant for such low listening levels even with much more demanding headphones. In fact, with those kinds of levels I don't even need a gain stage per se, as a gain of 1x is usually too much to get into most volume pots' optimal range. In a way, I guess I'm looking for a maximally transparent headphone buffer, if such a design exists out there on the market. I don't care about the power scheme either - battery only, rechargeable, A/C only, it's all the same to me. I just want to get the absolute maximum from the music that what's left of my ears will allow... Any ideas?

There's no issue doing a clone of the partition that I need, however as far as I understand cloning that partition itself directly to the new disk would not in itself make the new disk bootable? The only guaranteed way I know is to clone the entire disk block by block, and that is impossible due to space constraints even given partition resizing etc.

Anyone have any experience with cloning a windows 7 installation to a new disk? This one is slightly complicated in that the disk is in two partitions, and overall is 500Gb and I want to clone to only a 120Gb SSD. I only need the C: partition (D: is manufactuers recovery partition), however I'm not sure how to make sure the thing boots normally without cloning the entire disk, which isn't possible in this case...

How do you find the sound with that placement? They are quite close to the back wall/corner with no damping I can see.