I'm a noob, please educate me!

[Enthusiast Extreme]

Hey guys! I hope all is going well for everyone for everyone and happy holidays! I have a few questions that I need education on. I had a few good cars 2011 Bmw 335I M Package Coupe which had the Harman Kardon surround sound in it. Then I bought a 2011 Audi S5 coupe and it has 14 Speakers from Bang and Olufsen at 505 Watts. This is how I started being fascinated by music. Needless to say all of my audio files are 320 kpbs as well as a few flac songs. I just recently bought a pair of "audiophile" quality headphones. The Sennheisers HD650's (I briefly owned them before for few months but was very busy with work so had to sell them). I have a few questions.

I will be running them off of my PC, I have a Creative ZXR sound card that comes with a built in AMP that can handle 300 OMH and 600 OMH headphones, the Sennheisers come with studio jack and it plugs right in into the card. Obviously with me looking to get serious about my music I will be upgrading to an independent setup soon.

Here are the questions...

1. What is the break in period on the HD 650's? 200 hours?

2. Should I keep using 300 OMH or use 600? I read 300 somewhere but need confirmation.

3. All of my music is 320 kpbs, does it really make a huge difference between that and FLAC? Also what program works best for better quality. I noticed there is a difference when I listen to my music through VLC Player, vs Itunes, vs Windows Media Player.

4. Is ZXR a decent card to run these puppies? How would it compare with something like Omega Claro and Asus Xonar Essense?

Thanks for all the help guys! All your time is appreciated, the music world is very fascinating and I love music!

 

[AVT]

1. I would guess none. For a headphone that expensive, if there was a break-in period before they sounded good, the manufacturer would probably break them in themselves in the factory. My Audio-Technica Pro700MK2s sounded good out of the box. But I may be wrong here - those more familiar with Sennheiser may have better information.

2. 300 ohm vs 600 ohm is the impedance of the headphones. IMHO, it doesn't matter. Quality of the build and specific design of a pair of headphones is more important than impedance by itself, as is the source. What two pairs of headphones are you comparing?

3. FLAC is lossless, 320k is lossy. That said, I'm going to say something some will find controversial here: even with high-end audio equipment, you will not tell the difference between them, in a double-blind test. Same goes for other bit rates, perhaps even as low as 192k or 160k. Any difference people think they hear is the placebo effect. Why?

The key here is that while 320k is lossy, it's an incredibly accurate approximation of the original sound. The amount of information lost is tiny - smaller than the information lost due to imperfect headphones, and imperfect hearing. Why? Mathematically, mp3 is just a Fourier series approximation, and since we're approximating sound waves, which excluding the endpoints behave like continuous functions, the Fourier series converges rapidly to the original sound wave - you don't need that much data to get to the point where the human ear cannot tell the difference.

tl;dr, mp3 works just like jpeg, see this: http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/november32012/index.html

4. In terms of music, I would not go with a sound card at all. If you want a better source, use digital output via TOSLINK or USB, and get a good DAC (digital-to-analog converter) designed specifically for headphones. But try onboard audio first - the quality has improved massively in recent years, and may be good enough.

 

[siluro]

1. Well there's no 'exact' time for the break-in period. Just as you use it the signature may change slightly from when you first unboxed it. If you can, just play some pink noise through the headphones for a while, but otherwise continue to listen to them as you would.

2. 300ohm is what the HD650's are rated at.

3. 320kpbs is a great place to start. It really depends on the actual quality of the rip and more (for example if it was taken from a proper source or not). I personally do not feel you will see much (if any difference) going up to FLAC, but that being said you can always try to expand your library and find out for yourself if you prefer it more or not and see it's worth the upgrade.

4. I cannot really comment too much on the ZXR having not used one before. But owners of the HD650s I mostly go for higher end amps and dac and try to keep clear of sound cards all together. One of the most popular and highly rated amps for the HD650 would be the Bottlehead Crack. I've seen many postings where people have used the Aune T1 or the Schiit stack for more budget oriented options, hopefully someone else can enlighten you more on this subject.

 

[John721]

1) http://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/speaker-break-in-fact-or-fiction

4) The ZXR should be fine, but if you're wanting to try something new, and are doing strictly 2 channel listening with minimal desire for DSP, you could sell the ZXR and look at something like...

http://schiit.com/products/modi-2
http://schiit.com/products/magni-2

 

[FRZ]

I second selling the zxr for some external dac/amp combo. As mentioned above check schiit out, they make fantastic products and are very reasonably priced

 

[Archmage]

I wouldn't switch from one good sound card to another - you may as well upgrade and get more power if you're going do anything.

As an alternative to Schiit, the objective O2 dac and amp would be good. That would actually be my first choice because of its proven objective performance, as the name implies.

 

[Enthusiast Extreme]

Thank you for everything guys!!

 

[dandragonrage]

1. What is the break in period on the HD 650's? 200 hours?

There is none. There is only a "getting used to them" period which varies between people.

2. Should I keep using 300 OMH or use 600? I read 300 somewhere but need confirmation.

You should use whatever your headphones are, or whichever is closest, but it doesn't matter a whole lot unless you're trying to get a lot of volume.

3. All of my music is 320 kpbs, does it really make a huge difference between that and FLAC? Also what program works best for better quality. I noticed there is a difference when I listen to my music through VLC Player, vs Itunes, vs Windows Media Player.

Programs shouldn't make much if any of a difference but I suppose it isn't impossible. The quality of 320Kbps MP3 can vary depending on how it is encoded and with what program. Some MP3 encoders, like the very old Xing encoder, are crap and always color the sound in a bad way. But with a good encoder (LAME is pretty standard and pretty good), 320Kbps will be transparent with nearly any source material (music) and listener and equipment. It's extremely unlikely for you to find one that sounds more than 'very slightly' worse than an uncompressed/lossless version. That said, I don't like or recommend MP3. AAC and Ogg Vorbis and some other formats are better (meaning smaller files for the same quality or more quality at the same size). Do NOT reencode your files, though - just start using AAC for new stuff. You can use FLAC if you want, though I don't bother.

4. Is ZXR a decent card to run these puppies? How would it compare with something like Omega Claro and Asus Xonar Essense?

Yes, it is, and only bother changing it if you can hear a problem like distortion/hiss (bad SNR) or if it can't get loud enough for you without distortion. This includes going for external DACs and amps and stuff. If you need them, you will know it. Meaning you will be able to hear problems with your current setup. A properly working electronics setup with relatively good quality stuff is going to generate distortion well under 1%. Your speakers/headphones will generate at least 100x more distortion. Don't spend a lot of money to change something so insignificant you won't be able to hear it. Though on the plus side, your mind will likely play tricks on you and tell you that things did improve.

 

[B00nie]

If you're a noob you must be educamated not educated!

 

[devman]

?

3. FLAC is lossless, 320k is lossy. That said, I'm going to say something some will find controversial here: even with high-end audio equipment, you will not tell the difference between them, in a double-blind test. Same goes for other bit rates, perhaps even as low as 192k or 160k. Any difference people think they hear is the placebo effect. Why?

Maybe I've been browsing the wrong places but I don't think I've ever seen anyone seriously argue that they can tell the difference between mp3 320cbr and FLAC. That being said I store things in FLAC for archival reasons (so I can re encode them later if I need to) but I listen to them at mp3 190vbr (my audio equipment isn't that fancy).

 

[AVT]

Maybe I've been browsing the wrong places but I don't think I've ever seen anyone seriously argue that they can tell the difference between mp3 320cbr and FLAC. That being said I store things in FLAC for archival reasons (so I can re encode them later if I need to) but I listen to them at mp3 190vbr (my audio equipment isn't that fancy).

VBR is another interesting technique that, if done correctly, can further reduce file size, while maintaining quality. As far as I'm aware it splits the sound wave into many pieces, and drops information from them unevenly where more information is dropped in places where it would not be heard anyway, and more is kept in places where it's necessary to maintain the original sound wave, and then merges everything back together. I don't know the details, but my feeling is that it's much more challenging to do this well than a simpler compression scheme. That said, I've not heard anyone complain about VBR or say that it should be avoided, so the way MP3 does it is probably pretty good. I suspect some aspects of what VBR does are actually present in all MP3 files, otherwise a file that is dead silent may end up quite large (see this picture to see why). The computer scientists and mathematicians that design this stuff can come up with all sorts of cool tricks.

Now archival, on the other hand, is indeed a good reason to go with FLAC. If you decode and re-encode with two different algorithms (or even two different implementations of the same algorithm), there's no guarantee on what information the algorithm keeps, and what it discards. Basically, when going from lossy one format to another, it'll drop more signal, while re-encoding the previous encoding software's error, which could result in poor sound quality and poor compression of the underlying signal - the worst of both worlds. Now, if the encoding software's author spent a LOT of time trying to do it correctly, everything's fine, but who knows whether or not they cared about a scenario that very few people will use that much.

 

[devman]

VBR is another interesting technique that, if done correctly, can further reduce file size, while maintaining quality. As far as I'm aware it splits the sound wave into many pieces, and drops information from them unevenly where more information is dropped in places where it would not be heard anyway, and more is kept in places where it's necessary to maintain the original sound wave, and then merges everything back together. I don't know the details, but my feeling is that it's much more challenging to do this well than a simpler compression scheme. That said, I've not heard anyone complain about VBR or say that it should be avoided, so the way MP3 does it is probably pretty good. I suspect some aspects of what VBR does are actually present in all MP3 files, otherwise a file that is dead silent may end up quite large (see this picture to see why). The computer scientists and mathematicians that design this stuff can come up with all sorts of cool tricks.

Now archival, on the other hand, is indeed a good reason to go with FLAC. If you decode and re-encode with two different algorithms (or even two different implementations of the same algorithm), there's no guarantee on what information the algorithm keeps, and what it discards. Basically, when going from lossy one format to another, it'll drop more signal, while re-encoding the previous encoding software's error, which could result in poor sound quality and poor compression of the underlying signal - the worst of both worlds. Now, if the encoding software's author spent a LOT of time trying to do it correctly, everything's fine, but who knows whether or not they cared about a scenario that very few people will use that much.

FWIW, 190 VBR is the V2 preset on LAME. It is listed over at Hydrogenaudio as being transparent.

"These VBR settings will normally produce transparent results. Audible differences between these presets may exist, but are rare."

VBR should be preferred to CBR unless you have a player that can't handle VBR (which should be rare these days). 320 CBR isn't necessary for transparency, 245 VBR or 225 VBR are high enough while yielding a smaller file. So the only reason you'd use 320 CBR is for archival, but FLAC is much better for that anyway.