Apple Earpods with Dirac music player - full review

[dalethorn]

Here's the full story - there's a summary at the beginning of the review.

 

Apple Earpods with Dirac music player - full review - HiFi Headphones Forum - online headphone & earphone community forums

[dalethorn]

And the Youtube video review: Apple Earpods Dirac DSP Music Player Review by Dale - YouTube

[dalethorn]

I found something very interesting last night. Where I thought that the earbuds didn't get that close to the sound of the Earpods with the earbuds DSP correction, I discovered that it was mostly a fit issue. By rotating the buds' position in my ears (driver still facing ear canal), the sound became nearly identical to the Earpods, except still lacking the deep bass.

[jhwalker]

I found something very interesting last night. Where I thought that the earbuds didn't get that close to the sound of the Earpods with the earbuds DSP correction, I discovered that it was mostly a fit issue. By rotating the buds' position in my ears (driver still facing ear canal), the sound became nearly identical to the Earpods, except still lacking the deep bass.

 

For $2.99, worth trying out I like the sound - I wish Apple would do more re: equalization / DSP in iOS. Perhaps profiles for various popular headphones, and the ability to create a profile of your own based on the results of a quick wizard-driven hearing test

[dalethorn]

For $2.99, worth trying out I like the sound - I wish Apple would do more re: equalization / DSP in iOS. Perhaps profiles for various popular headphones, and the ability to create a profile of your own based on the results of a quick wizard-driven hearing test

 

Based on my understanding of this DSP, it's much more intricate than EQ, and so the DSP would have to be specific to the headphone jack of the Apple music player device. Making it work through to headphone amps would require a DSP for each headphone and headphone amp combination, i.e. tens of thousands. I tried going to a PA2V2 amp through the LOD, which I do regularly with headphones, and the sound was degraded that way compared to using the headphone jack. The DSP was working OK, just not tuned to that amp.

[wgscott]

â|0>

[dalethorn]

I spent the last few hours today with ~50 music tracks trying to find important differences between the Shure 1840, Senn Momentum, ATH ESW9a, and Earpods headphones, and all of these played things with enough clarity and balance to effect a good musical experience. Until I got to my ultimate test track for those finely-detailed upper harmonics. The Who - Bargain, a track my wife found for me in testing electrostatics -vs- dynamics. At approx. 55 seconds in, where the voice trails off with "...best I ever had", the word 'had' reproduces those details very well on the 1840, even better on the Senn HD800, and not too well on the Senn Momentum or ATH ESW9a. But the Earpods get very close to the 1840, and are much better than the Momentum or ESW9a.

[dalethorn]

I have discovered that the earbuds with Apple controls sound as much better than the earbuds without controls, as the Earpods with controls sound compared to the Earpods without controls. Apparently the purchased versions that cost $29 in the U.S. (both Earpods and earbuds) are the ones to evaluate, as the Dirac app makes best use of those.

 

I see from reading some high-traffic forums that most people don't understand what's going on with this DSP technology. It's not an equalizer or sound smoother - it's a technology that pre-processes every digital bit in the music track to prevent resonances and other problems in a headphone from being tickled, in advance, so there is no cleanup needed afterward. And thus the sound can be made nearly perfect, within the constraints of the music player.

[Melvin]

Thanks Dale! Let me just say .. wow.

[jcpom]

Dale - thanks for the Dirac heads up. I think the sound is pretty amazing. However, I hope my/our percpetion is not influenced by the louder volume I noticed using Dirac than w/o (the App conveniently permits A/B switching).

 

BTW, my recently purchased iPhone5 came with earpods including Apple controls. Is this the same as the purchased version? In addition to improved sound quality, earpods are much more comfortable to me than earbuds!

[Johan]

It would have been nice if their room correction software was priced similar .

[dalethorn]

Dale - thanks for the Dirac heads up. I think the sound is pretty amazing. However, I hope my/our percpetion is not influenced by the louder volume I noticed using Dirac than w/o (the App conveniently permits A/B switching). BTW, my recently purchased iPhone5 came with earpods including Apple controls. Is this the same as the purchased version? In addition to improved sound quality, earpods are much more comfortable to me than earbuds!

 

The new earpods I got with the iPod Touch latest gen. did not have controls, so I can only assume the ones you got with controls have the better sound. I purchased 3 sets with controls and got 3 sets free without, and the sound of the purchased earpods were the same between all 3, and the sound with the free ones were the same among those 3.

 

As to loudness, my experience with the Dirac players (I have 3 now, for Earpods, for t-Jays Four, and for the XTZ 12) is they rob some of the volume in order to do their processing. Having an earphone become more efficient in effect as a result of adding more processing would seem to violate the laws of physics.

 

But, bottom line is, the big headphone makers need to get going on this, because most of their headphones lack some basic sound qualities that Dirac provides to these in-ear headphones.

[dalethorn]

It would have been nice if their room correction software was priced similar .

 

So far all Dirac has provided for is the in-ear type of headphones, since the larger headphones are typically used with big desktop gear rather than small music players. And I think you can see that while Dirac and earbuds/IEM's represent a one-shot deal for the DSP to correct, the combinations of desktop gear and big headphones are a much more complicated situation. And then when you jump another rung up on the ladder, rooms and speakers represent the most variety of all - we can't just hand someone a DSP and they plug it in and go.

 

Now with a room DSP, what are you changing? Equalization, parametric style? With the closed loop of music player and earphone and DSP, specific for each earphone and player, that can be done and the user does not need to tweak anything.

I suppose a user could tweak a parametric equalizer somehow, but how does a user correct for impulse response? Can a user like myself do at home the exact same thing Dirac does in its lab for Earpods/Apple i-device/Dirac music player?

[Johan]

I was only refering to the fact that I paid 487 euro for their room correction software while their app cost 3 euro .

 

Regarding room correction, that is done much more sophisticated compared to 'x' band parametric eq and Q-factors, corrections are applied per Hz. And it does correct the impulse reponse automatically, I did not have to do anything except take some measurements.

 

So far all Dirac has provided for is the in-ear type of headphones, since the larger headphones are typically used with big desktop gear rather than small music players. And I think you can see that while Dirac and earbuds/IEM's represent a one-shot deal for the DSP to correct, the combinations of desktop gear and big headphones are a much more complicated situation. And then when you jump another rung up on the ladder, rooms and speakers represent the most variety of all - we can't just hand someone a DSP and they plug it in and go.

 

Now with a room DSP, what are you changing? Equalization, parametric style? With the closed loop of music player and earphone and DSP, specific for each earphone and player, that can be done and the user does not need to tweak anything.

I suppose a user could tweak a parametric equalizer somehow, but how does a user correct for impulse response? Can a user like myself do at home the exact same thing Dirac does in its lab for Earpods/Apple i-device/Dirac music player?

[dalethorn]

"Just take measurements" sounds so simple, but that can't be. What gear do you need for that, and how do you validate (calibrate) it?

[Johan]

In fact it is that simple, it is a short and completely guided process, and you only need a measurement microphone, you can get more info here:

 

Dirac RCS | Dirac Research

[wgscott]

In fact it is that simple, it is a short and completely guided process, and you only need a measurement microphone, you can get more info here:

 

Dirac RCS | Dirac Research

 

Thanks. I am going to try this, even though no one laughed at my Dirac notation joke.

[TimDH]

Thanks. I am going to try this, even though no one laughed at my Dirac notation joke.

 

Dale- I don't see why the Dirac player won't work through a headphone amp, so long as you use the line out from the headphone jack. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that all it's looking for is something inserted into the headphone jack. One would assume that the DSDP correction applies to the headphone primarily, and should be pretty transparent with a good amp.

 

I have also been trying an app called "AMP" by Audyssey (Apple Store app), the room correction folks. They have a number of headphones to choose from, and the list is growing. I tried the app on my Bose QC15 for airplane travel, and it made them significantly better, although still not very good. Another app recommended by some folks on Head-Fi is "Accudio", which has a very large list of headphone EQs. I'm not sure it does the impulse response correction, which would be ideal, but it does compensate for frequency response variations in many headphones.

 

T

[dalethorn]

Dale- I don't see why the Dirac player won't work through a headphone amp, so long as you use the line out from the headphone jack. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that all it's looking for is something inserted into the headphone jack. One would assume that the DSDP correction applies to the headphone primarily, and should be pretty transparent with a good amp. I have also been trying an app called "AMP" by Audyssey (Apple Store app), the room correction folks. They have a number of headphones to choose from, and the list is growing. I tried the app on my Bose QC15 for airplane travel, and it made them significantly better, although still not very good. Another app recommended by some folks on Head-Fi is "Accudio", which has a very large list of headphone EQs. I'm not sure it does the impulse response correction, which would be ideal, but it does compensate for frequency response variations in many headphones.T

 

Plugging the ipod/iphone into an amp from the LOD (not headphone jack) does work well as expected. Using the headphone jack to any amp will always degrade the signal, since you're adding more signal processing after the fact, not before as Dirac does.

 

But equalizers are a problem, because on the one hand they're complex to adjust, and on the other hand they don't correct at 1000 or more narrow points like Dirac does. The simple fact that Earpods sound better *overall* than most headphones up to several hundred U.S. dollars is a real heads-up for me. It got much better just tonight when I tested the new XTZ Earphone-12 with its own Dirac player. Very, very fine sound.

[danq]

Another thumbs-up for dirac, is what their software does for my desktop system using the small XTZ speakers and a simple Topping amp. They do compensate very well for speaker effects. I imagine that the room processing suite somebody referred to above would be outstanding.

[wgscott]

I've been playing around a bit with this, and it is very straightforward.

 

If you have a decent USB microphone, the two week trial is great for doing painless room measurements...