> REMINDER: Spanky spent $2300 on some Amazon headphones named after a guy nobody's ever heard of, and that makes him better than YUO.

Cut the crap.   He doesn't have anywhere near that amount of money. 

Spanky wrote:

My electronics are worth more than your car.

Now tell us, WITH THE AUTHORITY OF GOD HIMSELF, all about the residence rules San Francisco Emergency services personnel have to abide by and the punishments for violators. 

Then, keep going for years and wonder why nobody believes a single word from you.   Creep.

$2300 for headphones to listen to digital music.

Tom Leykis wrote:

Yeah, in 1906, you fuqing liar - and I mean 100%.

No, Tom. The ordinance was on the books until June of 2000. Until 1979 they had to live in the city proper. That law stayed on the books until 2000 though it was not legally enforceable. From 1979 to 2000 the requirement was to live in the city or within five miles of the city. That requirement also ended in June of 2000 as well.

wrote:

$2300 for headphones to listen to digital music.

Are you into vinyl?

wrote:

Vinyl and tube amps give the truest sound.

It wouldn’t be possible for a tube amp to give the truest sound as tube amps naturally add harmonics that don’t exist in the source material.

You buy a tube amp specifically because it adds pleasant coloration. I love the sound and usually listen through my tube amp.

wrote:

Solid state amps are nasty and harsh.

You are repeating phrases you’ve heard. And you’re backpedaling.

wrote:

They really are.  Why are high end Marshalls and Fenders tubes?

You are mixing up different things.

An amplifier used in a performance is not the same as an amplifier used for home listening.

We can continue the conversation if you can, at least, admit that your statement that tubes provide the truest sound is not an accurate statement. This is, purely from a physics standpoint, an absolutely impossible statement.

wrote:

Nasty is nasty. At least, with guitars, the nastiness can be used effectively

You're uneducated on the subject. No need for further discussion.

Singed,
Proud Owner of Woo WA7 With 1959 NOS Tubes & Topping A900

Sockpuppet wrote:

True.

Except I got them from Bloom Audio, not Amazon.

This is incorrect.

I got the DCAs from headphones.com, not Bloom.

My bad.

https://headphones.com/products/dan-cla … headphones

Phillip_McCavity wrote:

My dad used to design amplifiers with tubes, and solid state, and his opinion was that solid state amps were better from a mathematical perspective.

All amplifiers introduce distortion. The newest solid-state amps introduce noise so low that there really isn't any reason to go lower. One of the biggest discussions is about what comes next from a feature perspective in solid-state amps since amplifier "transparency" is a non-issue.

My Topping A900 has a SINAD above 130: SNR at 151, THD <0.000055, absolute noise under 0.3uV.

These are absurd numbers. A random, decent pair of headphones is going to have a THD about 1,000,000 times higher.

These numbers are below any possible abilities of the human ear by large margins. A SINAD above 100 is considered to be the absolute threshold for human hearing. And a swing of 30dB is huge. If you go the other direction to a SINAD of 70 that is in the category of "you might hear some noise if you have really good ears and under the right set of circumstances."

As for tube amps, they are much, much noisier. But this isn't a bad thing per se. Tube amps introduce even order harmonics (2nd, 4th, etc.) and people find those harmonics to be quite pleasant in moderation. And that is the "color" that a good tube amp adds. I very much like the sound of a tube amp (or at least a tube stage) as to me it is more "relaxed" sounding. Some of the relaxation also comes from roll off in the treble so you don't get spikes of ultra-high frequencies. Not that I can hear them anyway since my old as fuq hearing rolls off about 13kHz.

But, if we go back to the original claim: that vinyl and tube amps offer the "truest" sound . . . that can't be true. This is because the "true" sound is the sound as put down on the vinyl at pressing time. Some might argue it is the sound on the master but today most vinyl is going to have some work done to the master specifically for vinyl. Or, more correctly, anything not desirable on vinyl will be fixed to the extent possible. Thus, if the true sound is the pressing and tubes make more noise than solid-state then we can conclude that solid-state is the truest reproduction of what is on the vinyl. Of course, even solid-state is not "true" since the SNR is not infinite. It's just "more true."

As a fruther aside, a lot of the complaints about solid state sounding harsh in the part are real complaints that just happen to be about much older technology. Solid-state amps tend to introduce odd-order harmonics that can be unpleasing to human hearing. But As SNRs and THDs drop so do the odd order harmonics.  They reaally dont exist anymore on any decent solid-state amp. I guess maybe if you bought a $15 Temu Class D amp, you might have some harshness. Otherwise you just won't have any noticeable coloration good or bad.