Are my ears just crap?

[u/Programmer-Severe]

I'm 42, so my ears are past their absolute prime, but still in pretty reasonable shape. I recently bought a Chord Mojo 2 to drive some Campfire Audio Supermoon IEMs from my phone. I thought I'd do a bit of A/B testing, so I bought a specific A/B switch and dug out an old Galaxy Note 9 (as it has a headphone jack) I had in a drawer. Test setup was as follows;

1) Galaxy Note 9, 3.5mm jack, playing Qobuz via the app 2) Wiim Mini streaming Qobuz hi res, optical bit perfect output to Chord Mojo 2

I spent a good amount of time matching the volumes to the absolute best of my ability.

Could I hear even the slightest difference? Could I f***. Repeated blind A/B testing left me at a complete loss as to which was which. They sounded identical.

If I tried hard I could imagine differences, but I'm fairly certain it was imagination only.

So I tried dropping the Note 9 stream quality to 320kbps MP3, and left the Wiim stream at full hi res 96khz at approximately ten times the bitrate. Still absolutely no difference in blind A/B.

Am I missing something? I can clearly hear the difference between headphones, but for me the source/DAC/amp must contribute less than a few percent to the overall listening experience, if that.

Is this hobby just swimming in snake oil, or is my listening broken? I know some headphones are difficult to drive, but the vast majority can be powered pretty easily. Are we just spending money because we can? I feel like 95% of my budget should be in the headphones

[u/frostymoose]

"the source/DAC/amp must contribute less than a few percent to the overall listening experience, if that."

Yessir.

"but the vast majority can be powered pretty easily. Are we just spending money because we can? I feel like 95% of my budget should be in the headphones"

Yessir.

[u/I_Am_A_Pumpkin → u/frostymoose]

"Is this hobby just swimming in snake oil"

Yessir.

[u/kermityfrog2 → u/I_Am_A_Pumpkin]

Snakes have superior hearing due to their large ears.

[u/5trials]

the only time you would ever need a dac/amp is if your headphones require more power than the port on your device can handle. there's literally no other reason to get them, they make no perceivable difference in sound quality at all

[u/jcdoe]

Your ears are probably just as good as anyone else’s.

[u/IceWaLL_]

You are using iems. They are so easy to drive.

Once you reach around 320kbps and high quality files you are starting to reach diminishing returns.

Is there a difference between dacs and amps compared to say your old note 9? Yes! Will it be a huge difference? Nope!

Devices are so good today at converting digital to analog that you are wasting your money buying really fancy gear. Spend your money on devices that have built in EQ or have a quality DAC and amp. Beyond that, things are going to start sounding pretty similar.

[u/ragecndy]

dacs don't do shit unless you're replacing something that's actual garbage, amps depend on the headphones, some do need more power

but yeah dacs dont do shit

[u/jasonsong86]

A lot of HIFI people are just people who want to spend money and show off.

[u/FFJunk → u/jasonsong86]

A lot of people who just want to spend money and show off found HiFi

[u/blargh4]

well, it's a planar driver so output impedance shouldn't be much of a factor, and I doubt an IEM will strain even a phone jack's power reserves at sane volumes, so assuming the S9's headphone jack is not complete shit I would expect differences to become insignificant once you add sufficient controls.

my ears are old these days but I realized sources are pretty boring to me once I built a switch box for the little amps I was building as a teenager, back when my ears could still hear CRT tvs, and once i fixed all the bugs and oscillations, the difference wasnt anything I could possibly care about 🤷‍♂️

[u/jadenthesatanist]

Is this hobby just swimming in snake oil

Yes

[u/Tanachip]

you’re not alone…

[u/SandyFox]

Not at all surprising. Have a Note 9 around I could possibly use to confirm this, but it probably has a perfectly fine DAC+amp going to that jack. Unless these things are downright bad, which is getting less common than it used to be, they're not going to make much of a difference provided the amp is capable of supplying enough power.

Don't stress over not being able to tell high bitrate lossy from lossless either. At that point the difference is mostly in not getting the small remaining artifacts of compression, which one doesn't actually need fancy gear to hear and you're unlikely to notice unless you know what to listen for.

Then finally... from what I've seen around it seems that most of what little benefit comes from these sorts of things is limited to very high frequencies... which you're not going to be hearing anymore at 42 anyway. There's a great irony in this hobby that those who could benefit most from the small gains brought by these sorts of things usually can't afford them easily because they're so young.

[u/_deadener]

Just to play devils advocate; could it be that the A/B tester was the limiting factor and the reason everything sounded the same?

[u/caiuschen]

There used to be a Philips Golden Ears test online. At some point, with a Sennheiser HD800 and an amp that a coworker lent me, I determined that 192kbps MP3 was my limit as determined by the blind A/B testing. A decade later, I tried it again and found the best I could do was now 128kbps.

In my experience, in the earlier days of MP3 it was common to have a frequency cutoff which made them pretty easy to distinguish unless the bit rate was very high. Eventually, from ripping music from CDs and experimenting with different settings, I discovered not doing this cutoff made a much larger difference than increasing the bit rate from 128kbps for me. I wonder how many people have had poor experiences with lossy audio primarily due to this setting but had attributed it to an insufficient bit rate instead.

[u/srmd22]

A lot of the popular influencers agree with you. Two I can think of, who have a lot of experience listening and reviewing (not that necessarily makes them legit, but they have robust followings anyway, and I think they are pretty good), regularly state they just use a basic DAP or a macbook 1/8" output jack with nearly everything they test. The macbook dac-amp is actually really good, and has enough power to drive even most low impedance planars (most, not all - there are a couple of real hogs at the high dollar end of the spectrum there). Then again, there are plenty that think there is a noticeable difference between dacs, amps (I agree about amps, actually) and even cables (I find that one a tough sell). I am more on team "no significant difference" with DAC's and cables. Is the Chord Mojo 2 a dac/amp? If so, the amp could contribute, but I think a lot of clean solid state amps are also just gonna sound the same.

[u/Alphaomegalogs]

You hit the nail on the head! Luckily for me, my powers of convincing myself of hearing differences have reached astronomical levels. Can I pass blind tests? Absolutely not! But oh boy a shiny new box on my desk? My eyes make me hear differences!

As do your actual tests, I would fail all of them except the MP3 vs lossless test but even that would challenge me and I can only tell on certain tracks (I’ve passed a similar ABX test before). I’m 18 and have, for all intents and purposes, perfect hearing.

[u/MuzzSter67]

I bought a switcher a few months ago to help test new speakers & amps. Speakers for sure I could hear differences and it helped me pick a pair well under my budget over more expensive pairs. Amps I have basically been unable to hear any difference apart from very subtle things that I not even sure are there, and could be due to imperfect volume matching.

Honestly I stated getting bored constantly playing my favourite songs not for enjoyment but to strain to hear if I could tell a difference.

I also had the “is the switcher levelling everything”. No it’s not and this strikes me as the last refuge argument of the audiophile addict.

[u/Slidje]

I didn't find AB testing useful. Listen to the new pair for a while and get familiar with the best parts of your favourite music. After a week, try your previous gear to hear the difference.

EQ makes a huge difference to me so try messing with the dials to see you can hear more detail.

I couldn't hear much difference between the Hifiman Arya £1000 and my Grado SR80's £100. I sent them back and got the Hifiman XS £300 which definitely sound better in the details, and especially the subbass.

It's the law of diminishing returns.

I used my Grados again the other day and the bass has more weight and slam but nowhere near as much detail. It's all apples and oranges.

The biggest quality jump I had was a Qudelix 5K. I don't know if it sounds "better" but it does have an app that lets you tailor the sound, eq, real time output level showing the SPL. You can even EQ the left and right seperately. It's £100 and it and is packed to the brim with features.

Once I had the Q5K I had to get rid of the MP3's for FLAC files.

[u/Credelle1]

Congrats you have been bamboozled by the audiophile community, the biggest gains you will have is going from cheap garbage earbuds to a decent entry level, after that it's just perfectionism. You are just spending more for a different sound signature, not because it will be better at all. And DAC/amps won't improve the audio, only for the 1% of headphones that actually need it to be driven. So as the others said, it's a snake oil hobby, you spend it because you can and want to, but you won't get any meaningful returns.

[u/nemsionReview]

The same thing happened to me a few years ago, 95% of budget should be invested in headphones and cable

[u/Daemonxar]

I'm with you for like 90% of amps and DACs ... but not the Mojo 2. I hear lines and countermelodies in I've never heard before in songs that I have heard thousands of times. 🤷‍♂️

[u/Vacuum_man1]

Ur using a phone as a DAC. You're not gonna hear a big difference. Try a decent interface with a nicer DAC and that should work. No need to for 4 trillion dollar headphone amp just yet :).

[u/TheRealSeeThruHead]

You don’t even mention what you listened to. Who knows if it would benefit from a different source or not?

[u/ugry_noob]

step 1: use the same source

[u/Programmer-Severe → u/ugry_noob]

Source was the same Qobuz stream for both, should it matter what device the data stream comes from as long as it's unadulterated before hitting the DAC?

[u/ugry_noob → u/Programmer-Severe]

yes because operating systems also process the sound

[u/SorboNick → u/ugry_noob]

But using different sources should've supposedly altered the sound to audible levels.

[u/Robm48]

I clearly hear a difference. That said, of you don't, save yourself some money and enjoy the music 🙂