Quote:
Originally Posted by Igotnothing
I understood most of that, the last two sentences mean sweet FA to me though. That's an interesting point regarding the Fulla vs the creative labs. I'm lacking in knowledge about fully how DACs and amps work vs sound cards. My mind still goes to the old days whne onboard sound was terrible and you needed a creative labs card to get good audio. That doesn't seem to be the case any more? Getting one of the Fulla's will cover those bases?
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So breaking my previous last-two-sentences down:
"It's nice to have those silent noise floors and max dynamic range, but overall most transducers are the primary source of signal colouration."
The gist of it is that superior electronics allow for better dynamic transience - basically: quieter quiet passages since there should be inaudible electronic noise, and louder peaks such as kickdrum note since your amp won't clip trying to drive high voltage (or/and current). However electronics tend to already be "good enough" in a lot of cases. Better than good enough is still good enough.
On the other hand, transducers - the headphones themselves and their interaction with your ear profile - have wild fluctuations. There are very few, if any, headphones that give a neutral reproduction of the source material they are fed. Even the best headphones have their own unique sound - and this is not ideal behaviour. You don't want a camera that filters your photographs - it would suck to have a consistent greenish tone on any pictures you shoot, right?. You want a camera that reproduces reality. And on the other end of that, you don't want a monitor to add a green tone to those pictures either. Sure, someone might enjoy manually adding a filter to these pictures for artistic reasons - but that should be individualized to the art. You want accurate transducers - cameras, microphones, monitors, speakers, headphones, and all the electronics in between.
Well headphones by nature struggle to be accurate, and so are the greatest weakness in the signal chain, by far. Which leads into:
"Are you using your DT990s with a convolution to something like the Harman curve?"
Convolution filters basically take the raw frequency response of your headphones, and apply aggressive finite impulse response modifications to the outgoing frequency response to make it as close to neutral as possible. Think of it as very specific automatic corrections to your headphone's innate flaws. It's a very powerful method of equalization, far moreso than the types of EQ most are familiar with.
The Harman curve is probably (with room for debate) the closest thing we have to neutral reproduction of the source material - it's equivalent-ish to flat frequency response from a loudspeaker system.
So by using a convolution on your PC with your DT990s, as long as your electronics are good enough, you should get the closest you can to accurate sound reproduction (neutral). It's like calibrating your TV. Sort of a no-brainer when you spend that much money on headphones!
As for the second half of your post:
Sound cards ARE DACS and amplifiers, among other things. And a lot of onboard sound is actually very good these days. The one drawback of onboard sound - and this was magnified in the distance past - is that there can be a lot of EM interference from other devices in a PC - for example the video card when running may generate a flux that passes right through your sound board and wreak havoc on your noise floor by inducing random beeps and hums. The grounding system of the PC might also be a source of noise. Without going into a full electronics engineering course - let's just say that own its own most onboard sound is likely good enough, although high impedance headphones with limited sensitivity may require more amplification (but again - don't assume onboard doesn't have great amplification itself!). A lot of measurable noise isn't necessarily audible. A lot of audible noise isn't necessarily perceptable in an environment that may have furnace vents, computer fans, nearby freeway traffic, wind, etc. Electronics noise is only one small part of the goal of lowering your noise floor.
The main benefit of dedicated or outbound dacs and amplifiers is that they have more measures in place to isolate the sound from the computer's electronic noise. All they are getting from the computer is a digital bitstream, and then they are the devices responsible for creating the analogue signal that will ultimately arrive at the transducer (the headphone drivers).
Separates such as the JDS Labs pieces I linked earlier are definitely a premium solution. Do you need 470hp from your car to drive down crowchild at 7 am on a tuesday? Nah but that doesn't stop boys from wanting our toys.
p.s. not to get too recursive on you but:
Quote:
Originally Posted by GranteedEV
Well headphones by nature struggle to be accurate, and so are the greatest weakness in the signal chain, by far.
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Oh yeah, one addendum to this:
Incompetent studio mastering is the greatest weakness in
some signal chains, especially contemporary music production. Dynamic range compression is a huge problem and it's intentionally implemented into source material by people who are supposed to be professionals.