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Topic: Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558? (Read 30862 times) previous topic - next topic
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Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #25 –
Quote from: saratoga on
Quote from: HTS on
What kind of db range are we talking about? I'm using an HD600 at 300ohms. The onboard Realtek soundcard drives it fine. In my experience there should always be a huge difference between 60% and 20% on the windows volume control?

Is the Asus card even weaker than onboard sound?


The Xonor cards have a stupidly high output impedance.  They're really bad at driving headphones for whatever reason.  Its the line out on them that doesn't suck.  It wouldn't surprise me if your onboard worked better in that regard.

Ah I see. I think it's Asus' tactic for selling their headphone driving cards, so they cripple the rest of their range.

However, the soundcards from other manufactures aren't crippled along with them. So I Asus is really winning a competition against itself.

I'm using an HTOmega Halo and the volume is at 25 percent on windows and 50 in music/movie players and web browsers. So that's something like 12.5 percent total of what windows can output?

When using the onboard sound, just doubling the sliders easily matches what I get now. So pretty much all the expansion soundcard is good now is for ASIO, otherwise I would have wasted 200 dollars.

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #26 –
Quote from: HTS on
Ah I see. I think it's Asus' tactic for selling their headphone driving cards, so they cripple the rest of their range.


I think its just them not caring enough to sell something better. 

Quote from: HTS on
I'm using an HTOmega Halo and the volume is at 25 percent on windows and 50 in music/movie players and web browsers. So that's something like 12.5 percent total of what windows can output?


Volume sliders are on a log scale, so its much less then 12.5%, at least in terms of output power.

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #27 –
Quote from: saratoga on
Volume sliders are on a log scale, so its much less then 12.5%, at least in terms of output power.

I don't know how it was programmed, is that the convention for all sliders (hardware and on screen)?

Quote
I think its just them not caring enough to sell something better.

So their other cards end up worse than what the motherboard comes with?

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #28 –
Quote from: HTS on
Quote from: saratoga on
Volume sliders are on a log scale, so its much less then 12.5%, at least in terms of output power.

I don't know how it was programmed, is that the convention for all sliders (hardware and on screen)?


Generally yes.  Linear volume sliders tend not to work very well because one side ends up being completely useless and the other side being impossibly sensitive. 

Quote from: HTS on
Quote
I think its just them not caring enough to sell something better.

So their other cards end up worse than what the motherboard comes with?


Sure, why not?  How many reviews of the Xonor have you seen that tested the headphone output rather then just doing a loopback test?  What proportion of users do think are going to measure it?  1 in a thousand?  One in ten thousand? 

Why should they bother to design something better if users don't care?

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #29 –
Quote from: saratoga on
Sure, why not?  How many reviews of the Xonor have you seen that tested the headphone output rather then just doing a loopback test?  What proportion of users do think are going to measure it?  1 in a thousand?  One in ten thousand? 

Why should they bother to design something better if users don't care?

Didn't the OP say that he had problems driving a 50ohm headphone? Many computer users are wearing hi-fi headphones these days, so they don't need to measure anything. Like the OP their ears can sense that the new soundcards sound worse than the free stock equipment.

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #30 –
Aren't those same computer users being sucked in to buying expensive amp/DAC setups though HTS? I know that was the advice I was getting when I started out in this hobby, I was being constantly told that the Fiio amps just weren't good enough for the headphones I had and so on.

That and a lot of the obviously PC aimed headsets and similar are nice low impedance jobs, excluding the Sennheiser PC 350 which seems to be high impedance purely to sell the matching Xonar card.

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #31 –
I've been doing some research and it seems the Xonar DX has over 80Ω output impedance, after finding that out I've instantly made my purchase and the Fiio E5 should arrive in about 2 weeks.

Sidenote: I the previous posts I was reluctant to move on to another DAC because in all other respects, the Xonar DX is indeed a very powerful DAC and a pretty big improvement over the onboard stuff I had before. Too bad it has such weird design choices, why oh why would it compress stuff when pushing the volume over 50? And why haven't I seen this issue brought up anywhere on the various forums/reviews I visited? I did about 1 week worth of casual research before choosing the DX so it's really weird people haven't complained about this before.

And thank you for pointing me towards http://nwavguy.blogspot.com ; I really gained a lot of knowledge by reading the various guides posted there, but I have to admit it left me confused in a lot of areas, it says here that you find out the ideal gain on your amp by calculating voltages, my question is, how do you find out what voltage the line out produces? Do you actually have to measure it? And if you lack a measuring device what would be an approximate "good" gain setting for the E5 paired up with 50Ω cans and a 80Ω+ line out? Does the Fiio even have different gain settings or is that the same as the volume control?

And should I leave the windows volume at 50 and adjust things on the amp or should I lower the volume in windows so it doesn't reach +20db? Is having the sound sometimes reach +20db a bad thing or should I not worry about it?

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #32 –
Quote from: HTS on
Quote from: saratoga on
Sure, why not?  How many reviews of the Xonor have you seen that tested the headphone output rather then just doing a loopback test?  What proportion of users do think are going to measure it?  1 in a thousand?  One in ten thousand? 

Why should they bother to design something better if users don't care?

Didn't the OP say that he had problems driving a 50ohm headphone?


If he did, it wasn't reason enough for him to return the card, so I doubt Asus cares.

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #33 –
I've been using Xonar DX + HD 380 (54 Ohm) extensively (plugged into headphone out on the back of the card) and I have never heard any audible FR issues. And I'm quite a critical listener.
Do you have the auxiliary FDD power supply connected properly?

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #34 –
@Martel: Yes, I have everything connected properly, if the auxiliary FDD power supply is not plugged in the card does not work at all.



Ok, so I received the E5 today and as soon as I plugged it in I heard a ton of noise/ringing problems, I tried listening to a couple of songs at various levels trying to determine how best to calibrate the AMP. In the end I gave up but seeing as now I have a cable that could connect the speaker output to the mic input on the soundcard I decided to download RMAA and perform a couple of tests to determine where exactly the problem was.

After reading the testing guide for the Xonar DX here (yes, there's a dedicated guide for the DX, that alone should raise eyebrows) I discovered that the "default" level for individual channels in the mixer was actually 76/100. After resetting the values in the mixer to this very strange default level I discovered that indeed, now I could send a 0db signal generated by SineGen and it would no longer "peak" at 50/100, only when using 100 in the master windows volume control would the sound reach the maximum allowed in the Xonar Mixer; +20db.

Here are the results of the tests as well as a short description for each:

1. FiiO E5 - windows volume at 100/individual speaker settings at 76 - AMP volume was adjusted according to the input volume and it was reporting distortion even before the test begun (and no, the FiiO was not plugged in)
2. FiiO E5 - windows volume at 50/individual speaker settings at 76 - AMP volume was at MAX and the input volume was reported to be -7.0db
3. FiiO E5 - windows volume at 70/individual speaker settings at 76 - AMP volume was close to MAX and the input volume was the recommended -1.0db
4. Standard loopback (no amp), windows volume at 100/individual speaker settings at 76 (anything higher and the input volume clips)



Why is this distortion occurring? I did some tests with SineGen do try to identify it and it seems the threshold is audible and occurring between 79% and 80% master volume level and 76% channel volume (later edit: this seems to be at exactly the +10db mark when generating a continuous 0db tone). Is the AMP receiving to much voltage? And if so what would be the recommended settings? Should I stay well away from the threshold and boost a lot on the AMP or should I try to get closer to it and rely less on the AMP for boost? The really strange thing is that the distortion kicks in completely and not gradually, it is audible even when the AMP is at the first volume tick, so at a really low volume.

Right now I lowered individual channel volumes to 65% in order to impose a sort of limit to the master volume, right now even at 100% I don't hear the distortion, I'm not too close to the limit as I wanted to stay on the safe side.

The good news is that I can finally listen to loud volumes and it doesn't seem so harsh anymore. For obvious reasons I had a hard time doing an ABX between the AMP and the Line Out, the sound coming from the AMP seems clean enough, but I'll report soon after I go through a large enough sample of musical genres.

So yeah, why is the Xonar so weird in so many areas?

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #35 –
Quote from: Patrunjica on
Ok, so I received the E5 today and as soon as I plugged it in I heard a ton of noise/ringing problems, I tried listening to a couple of songs at various levels trying to determine how best to calibrate the AMP. In the end I gave up but seeing as now I have a cable that could connect the speaker output to the mic input on the soundcard I decided to download RMAA and perform a couple of tests to determine where exactly the problem was.


Do you have your headphones plugged into the loop?  If not, the test is rather pointless.  We know the line out on the device is fine, and your link further confirms that.  Its headphones that are said to work badly.

Quote from: Patrunjica on
Why is this distortion occurring? I did some tests with SineGen do try to identify it and it seems the threshold is audible and occurring between 79% and 80% master volume level and 76% channel volume (later edit: this seems to be at exactly the +10db mark when generating a continuous 0db tone). Is the AMP receiving to much voltage? And if so what would be the recommended settings? Should I stay well away from the threshold and boost a lot on the AMP or should I try to get closer to it and rely less on the AMP for boost? The really strange thing is that the distortion kicks in completely and not gradually, it is audible even when the AMP is at the first volume tick, so at a really low volume.


I don't know about this specific card, but its not unheard of for devices to allow gain that would push a full scale waveform into saturation.  Often this is done so that one can boost low level signals up to more comfortable levels (e.g. when playing back audio from a weak line in or unamped microphone).  I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #36 –
Oh, it's not simple distortion, it changes the sound drastically! The intermodulation distortion graph shows this best; at 79 it behaves like the green line, and in one small tick of the volume control it changes into the white one.

And like I said, it was only occurring in combination with the E5, I was just curios why was this happening as none of the various reviews warned about the dangers of feeding the AMP to much volume via the soundcard. Maybe this is just my ignorance talking but I assumed you feed as much into it as possible so that it has volume to boost in the first place. Is this a fault in the design of the AMP or is the way Xonar is handling the line out is aberrant at high volumes? This is what I'm curios about really.

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #37 –
Quote from: Patrunjica on
Maybe this is just my ignorance talking but I assumed you feed as much into it as possible so that it has volume to boost in the first place. Is this a fault in the design of the AMP or is the way Xonar is handling the line out is aberrant at high volumes? This is what I'm curios about really.


No, amps are designed for a maximum input, usually the half a volt or so from a line out.  Googling the E5:

http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/03/fiio-e...dphone-amp.html

Quote
NPUT CLIPPING THRESHOLD: To measure how much signal you can drive the E5 with, I gradually raised the input voltage until clipping was detected with the E5’s volume turned down. The answer is a lot! it didn’t start to have a problem until around 760 mV RMS:

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #38 –
Quote from: Patrunjica on
Oh, it's not simple distortion, it changes the sound drastically! The intermodulation distortion graph shows this best; at 79 it behaves like the green line, and in one small tick of the volume control it changes into the white one.


Your subjective comments and measurements are exactly what one gets with simple clipping distortion.

Quote
And like I said, it was only occurring in combination with the E5, I was just curios why was this happening as none of the various reviews warned about the dangers of feeding the AMP to much volume via the soundcard.


The fact that you can clip out an amplifier by either feeding it too much signal, or by increasing its gain too much is so obvious that nobody talks much about it.

Quote
Maybe this is just my ignorance talking but I assumed you feed as much into it as possible so that it has volume to boost in the first place.


To be blunt, this is indeed your ignorance speaking. ;-)

Quote
Is this a fault in the design of the AMP or is the way Xonar is handling the line out is aberrant at high volumes? This is what I'm curios about really.


Clipping is usually pretty easy to avoid - you just turn the gain down until the equiment no longer clips.

If you want to do a thorough test of an amp, turn its gain way down but not all the way off, and see how much signal you can apply without making it clip.  Note the output voltage at that point.

Then turn the amp's  gain way up, and again see how much signal you can apply without making it clip. If the output voltage is signficantly different between the two tests, then you have a reportable, but not exceptional finding. 

The largest output voltage that you can obtain with any gain setting (IOW gain setting chosen to optimize output) is also reportable.

We usually test equipment at from 1 to 3 dB below the clipping voltage with a 1 Khz signal with the rated load(s).

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #39 –
Heh, figured as much but some of the comments and reviews really threw me off, particularly nwavguy's review.

And I already did just that, I turned the amp to it's minimum and I turned down the channel volumes until I no longer heard those extra tones that were added to a simple 1kHz signal, at that point I decreased the volume by a couple of steps just to be safe, now I can go all the way to 100 on the windows control without having to fear that I would overload the amp.

Thank you for all your responses, the AMP is behaving superbly so far, (well, except for the fact that I have to recharge it daily). This is what my ears wanted all along. Its still kind of bewildering to think that none of the reviews mention the compression/harshness when turning the volumes of the Xonar all the way to max.

Cheers!

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #40 –
Quote from: Patrunjica on
Its still kind of bewildering to think that none of the reviews mention the compression/harshness when turning the volumes of the Xonar all the way to max.


Well, it's generally going to be used with portable media players not sound cards so it's not that surprising that this wasn't spotted or picked up. Now if a desktop amp like the E9 was doing it then yeah it'd be surprising.

Charging it is indeed annoying but now that you know an amp fixes the problem for you, you can consider whether investing in a desktop amp or an amp/DAC combo (sometimes cheaper than the former) is worth it for lessening the hassle. You might prefer to put that money towards more music or something else and live with the charging issue and so on.

Do I need a Headphone Amp for a pair of Senn HD 558?

Reply #41 –
Oh sorry, I meant the reviews for the Xonar.