Headphone amplifier!

[Ruan]

i presume you guys are taking the piss that you cant up the volume with software? Its well known that with the android phones and some sony ericcsson ones the sound limiter will stop people playing their music too loud. You have to use some software to reset the limit higher or use a program to up the volume of the file!

You understand the concept of gain vs volume...

Upping the volume of a file is NOT under any circumstances the same as increasing the volume of the amplifier...

Remember a file doesn't have ANY actual volume - it's maximum level is simply 0 which is MAXIMUM - you cannot have MORE than maximum in terms of the file - you simply run into distortion since it's just digital 1s and 0s... Upping the volume will simply distort it before you amplify it, so you're amplifying distortion... Meaning you'll clip the sound going into the amplifier and out the speakers because the gain on the input is simply too high... A'la:



Which in the end makes it sound shit... If you listen to something which has got the edges of the signal clipped off, it's going to sound shit whatever you do...

So basically, turning things to 11 just doesn't work... Get better headphones with a headphone amp...

People have said many times that the average sound quality of audio listened to today is significantly worse than 10, even 20 years ago - you can understand why!

</rant>