Pink Floyd and Weed


Really enjoying some Pink Floyd, the Division Bell. Hi-Res download from my PC to my DAC. Anyway, listening to my headphones and noticing way less bass than through my main speakers, nothing I can adjust. My headphone playback is through a modified Musical Fidelity Amp going to a set of Sennheiser HD600 phones, is it the headphones or the amp sucking the bass life out of the music?

If necessary, I can replace the headphones or the amp, but not both.

Thanks!


grm

Showing 3 responses by russashe

@grm  First are we talking problems with Division Bell or everything through the headphones?  Accepting that this is a general problem not DB specific, do you have any way beside USB to get out from your computer?  I live in Canada so I am too busy rolling to spend much time swapping from USB to co-ax or toslink to compare sound.  I use something completely different to get hi-def and vinyl transfers from my PC to the stereo so I never bother with it but I have seem many posts commenting on differences between the various methods and USB didn't seem to be very popular.  Great for compressed or low def formats but the better the audio signal the bigger the differences according to most who commented.

As for the other issue, have you watched the Gilmour in Pompeii blu-ray?  Great show and if you take the same break the the band takes between sets ;) the startup to the second set will blow you away, crank it!
@grm Are you hearing weakened bass through the headphones on other sources or just the streamer.  If it's everywhere is there a chance the headphones are wired out of phase?  
Just as an experiment, use the equalizer in J-River to wind up the lowest two faders.  If you get the expected bump in bass energy see if there is a boost setting that makes the phones sound more like you want.  Also run the faders to the bottom to see the effect.  Try the same thing with your speakers, of course watch your levels, massive boost at low levels can be dangerous.  Also check out the analyzer in J-Rivers DSP section.  The graph will give you a decent view of the music you are sending out.  It's great fun to watch if you are a music lover who is also a tech head.  After you get used to looking at it you can easily see if a track should sound bottom heavy, balanced or bright.  Being able to see the "tone profile" of a track makes it easy to determine what the overall sonic character of the song is.  Before I get jumped, no it's not a high precision evaluation technique but it does help.
@grm  No worries glad to help but you still haven't said, is bass light on everything or just the Floyd.  Anyway, J-River is dead easy. Pick TOOLS from the menu bar, bottom choice OPTIONS.In the main box you have a list, the first choice is Audio Device, second is Settings.  Usually the only choice under Settings is "DSP & output format", choose that. In the new box along the left side is a list of functions ; equalizer, room correction lots of fun tools.  The last one is the Analyzer, select it with a track playing and you see a graph of the sound level/freq.  Don't worry about messing settings up it's a computer app.  If you get way out of whack chose the default preset.  Also you are usually asked if you want to save changes before exit.  The analyzer is just for fun but is very interesting in what it displays. For simple checks involving boosts and cuts just to see what happens the plain old equalizer is the place to start.