NWR Music Streaming

Since the thread has gone in a headphone direction I’d love advise on a specific segment if anyone has knowledge.
Sports headphones. I bought the Powerbeats Pro and quite frankly for functionality and operation they are fantastic.
Don’t fall off in Gym or running etc, simplicity and connectivity have been brilliant. They are great......but they don’t have great sound.
For outdoors and gym I’m not sure I need much else but it feels lacking in detail and mid range

Is it just that the smaller in-ear types aren’t going to be very good in terms of sound or is there one that stands out amongst the pack and stays securely in ear. (I think I need an ear wrap around as pure in ear types tend to fall out of one ear in particular)
 
My friend who has HD-650 seems to have a similar view to you, Mark - he said:

"The 20odd year old HD650 are still my favourite headphone...

I’ve had all kinds, Grado’s, AKG, Beyerdynamic, Sony, Bowers & Wilkins, pffff, I have forgotten to be honest - some crazy money set-ups that went on eBay long ago.

My ear likes HD650’s and my wallet likes the availability of service parts.

For home listening I cannot give them any higher praise.

Doesn’t matter what they are plugged into either. Big valve power Musical Fidelty Amps, or an audioquest DAC dongle, or even my still have a plug smartphone.

I can and do spend hours listening with them.

I’ve had some much more expensive Grado’s- I forget the model now - wooden things - I just found them tiring.

They have great detail, space, attack, dynamics and all that stuff... but it all gets too much, my head had enough of it They never sound real or as easy to ignore as the HD650’s."

My friends who recommended Beyers are all heavily into dance music.
FWIW Nick, you’re right, your friend and I do agree.

The 650’s (and 600’s) do have a fairly fanatical following. They seem to do something that no other headphones do and that is give you balanced, accurate and non-shouty experience. You go to them, they don’t come to you. Those who want that experience really want that and nothing else will do. Of course not everyone wants that experience.
 
Looking at what someone said on the music thread, how do you work out what bit-rate you are actually streaming ?
Interesting question for (probably) Ray. I know on my setup through Roon I can see the full chain. Not sure about how anyone else can confirm their stream rates.

Also raises the question about what’s actually recorded. I think it’s used to be Hi-Fi News that use day to do an analysis on all so called Hi-Res recordings, most of which turned out to be upsampled to get the “headline” figure. I think some pretty serious test kit was required to do that analysis. Pretty sure you couldn’t do that at home, which is what the record companies were relying on.
 
I should say that my current headphones of choice are B&O H6. They're pretty comfortable and I think work well will classical music.

You obviously can't "feel" the bass like you can with speakers - I wonder if a headphone+subwoofer combination might work for this?! Or didn't someone used to do a chair with transducers in it to enhance the experience? Maybe some chair-mounted "Jecklin Floats" type arrangement would be another fun wheeze.... The idea here would be that, although far from silent, I could listen indoors and not drown the house house in noise.

Have to get myself a lightning to headphone adapter - or maybe one of those dragonfly things.
 
I should say that my current headphones of choice are B&O H6. They're pretty comfortable and I think work well will classical music.

You obviously can't "feel" the bass like you can with speakers - I wonder if a headphone+subwoofer combination might work for this?! Or didn't someone used to do a chair with transducers in it to enhance the experience? Maybe some chair-mounted "Jecklin Floats" type arrangement would be another fun wheeze.... The idea here would be that, although far from silent, I could listen indoors and not drown the house house in noise.

Have to get myself a lightning to headphone adapter - or maybe one of those dragonfly things.
Alex,
Just a word to the wise about lightning to headphone adaptors.
By and large they are sh*t and strangle everything.
If you have an Iphone you should also be aware that the Apple one has a DAC in built.......but it is the Sh*ttest of all I tried.
 
Alex,
Just a word to the wise about lightning to headphone adaptors.
By and large they are sh*t and strangle everything.
If you have an Iphone you should also be aware that the Apple one has a DAC in built.......but it is the Sh*ttest of all I tried.
I would definitely go for the USB converter. Given that I already have the camera adapter, I could get a Cyrus for under £50, or spend a little more for a dragonfly black. Or I could waste £8 on the Apple adaptor. Think that's an easy decision!
 
Looking at what someone said on the music thread, how do you work out what bit-rate you are actually streaming ?
Jonathan,
IIRC each of the source apps reveals the "claimed" bitrate.
by pressing the MASTER Lozenge on TIDAL or Ultra HD lozenge on Amazon, in the case of Bluesound I think their app makes it apparent though can't off the top of my head recall how.
The Amazon one is interesting as it seems to give 3 lines of data about original bitrate,bitrate streamed and bitrate your kit is playing....not sure any of it is truthful though.
 
I would definitely go for the USB converter. Given that I already have the camera adapter, I could get a Cyrus for under £50, or spend a little more for a dragonfly black. Or I could waste £8 on the Apple adaptor. Think that's an easy decision!
Alex,
Silly me, I was thinking about those useless connectors/ adaptors rather than an outboard device.
 
For those interested there is an experiment underway in the audiophile/geek community to see if you can tell the difference between hi res samples (96/24) and downsampled versions. Link is The HD-Audio Challenge II | Real HD-Audio
Have you done the test yet, Peter?
I'm rather excited now, as I dropped the car off in Coventry for its audio upgrade. I was bemoaning the lack of an analogue or wired input to the MCU, but the guy there seemed to think that better quality streaming (eg APTX) didn't make a lot of difference and that the super duper dsp/amp/speakers wouldn't be compromised. He also confirmed that so many middle-aged+ men had been coming to him because domestic pressures meant that use of a traditional Hi-Fi was rarely allowed. Not sure that many of them would actually use their car as a listening room without actually driving anywhere (as I intend to do) but plenty of people do spend a lot of time in their cars.
 
Have you done the test yet, Peter?
I'm rather excited now, as I dropped the car off in Coventry for its audio upgrade. I was bemoaning the lack of an analogue or wired input to the MCU, but the guy there seemed to think that better quality streaming (eg APTX) didn't make a lot of difference and that the super duper dsp/amp/speakers wouldn't be compromised. He also confirmed that so many middle-aged+ men had been coming to him because domestic pressures meant that use of a traditional Hi-Fi was rarely allowed. Not sure that many of them would actually use their car as a listening room without actually driving anywhere (as I intend to do) but plenty of people do spend a lot of time in their cars.
Alex,
Do let us know your initial reactions I am sure it will be worth it.
Thinking aloud you may have to make some physical accomodations if you are going to be at high spl’s.
Your guys may have already factored that in, but I had to do a bit of work on my ageing Saab and whilst I am sure trim on the newer Tesla models is improved the early S models I encountered would have vibrated if one were to even hum along.
 
Alex,
Do let us know your initial reactions I am sure it will be worth it.
Thinking aloud you may have to make some physical accomodations if you are going to be at high spl’s.
Your guys may have already factored that in, but I had to do a bit of work on my ageing Saab and whilst I am sure trim on the newer Tesla models is improved the early S models I encountered would have vibrated if one were to even hum along.
This guy knows what he’s doing. Has loads of prizes from competitions in UK and Europe (who even knew such competitions existed?!)

07-07-2020 09-01-33.png
 
Last edited:
All this discussion over bit-rates and DAC performance is great but in my experience the single most dramatic improvement you can make to HiFi listening is to align the position of the speakers and your listening position. I'm sure there are scientific papers (and non-scientific theories) on the perfect listening geometry.
 
OK, so my car now has a Zapco ST-6X DSP amp and some Micro Precision 5.16 in front doors, Micro Precision 5.8 in the dashboard bit and a 10 inch sub (Hybrid Audio i10SW) in the boot. It'll take a while for the speakers to loosen up, but sounds quite good to me so far. Can certainly go more than loud enough before distortion is bad. However, I'm told that it's too loud for the neighbours! Maybe I'll have to drive away somewhere to listen to the music now...
 
Last edited:
OK, so my car now has a Zapco ST-6X DSP amp and some Micro Precision 5.16 in front doors, Micro Precision 5.8 in the dashboard bit and a 10 inch sub (not sure of the driver there, but it's raining, and I'm not going back out) in the boot. It'll take a while for the speakers to loosen up, but sounds quite good to me so far. Can certainly go more than loud enough before distortion is bad. However, I'm told that it's too loud for the neighbours! Maybe I'll have to drive away somewhere to listen to the music now...
Alex,
Good Luck,
Do tell us either here or in the listening thread what you choose to play for your first serious session.
Out of interest IIRC you are an iphone user, are you / can you in any way use the lightening connector to carry the audio into your ST6?
 
Last edited:
Alex,
Good Luck,
Do tell us either here or in the listening thread what you choose to play for your first serious session.
Out of interest IIRC you are an iphone user, are you / can you in any way use the lightening connector to carry the audio into your ST6?
I do have a Cyrus Soundkey connected via a Lightning "camera adapter" that allows me to use headphones that could possibly be used to drive the line-in - not sure about impedance. My guy didn't provide me with an aux-in socket (and Tesla certainly don't hold that that kind of old-fashioned stuff). I'm still wondering why he seemed reluctant. Will ask.
Not sure about "serious sessions" but I've listened to various tracks from Chopin Etudes (Ashkenazy) and some baroque Organ stuff (Peter Hurford) via Nutcracker (Grand Pas de deux is a favourite) through to some more modern popish stuff like Amanda McBroom (a lovely recording by Sheffield Labs), Joan Armatrading and some film sound track (Tron!). I also listened to the latest Mutter upload. Interestingly, the vocal on that sounded a little shrill and wearing on the ears - will have to listen to some professionally recorded sopranos to see if this indicates a weakness in the system (which may play itself out with more hours running-in) or just the limitations of the source (I didn't get it when listening on headphones, so suspect the former).
I didn't get tweeter upgrades on Lee's advice. He said that their positioning within the car was not conducive to them being able to strut their stuff properly (although there are spare channels and cabling should I wish to upgrade later). I think the SB 5.28s are quite pricey, so he may be right, but there was a bit of high end "airiness" missing compared to my home speakers/headphones. Maybe that's just not achievable in the space?
One funny problem is that I wanted to get the audio to play something for a long time to run itself in, but whenever I open the car door, it turns itself down! I might have to put a bag on the driver's seat to convince the car to allow music to play when I'm not there...
 
Top