Topping dx3 pro+ is the full package. Don't rate any of the SSL interfaces

@@PaulThird Thx for the answer Paul. But would be L30 II an upgrade vs DX3 Pro+? I didn't fully get - "don't rate any of the SSL interfaces" - It means you don't know them to judge how their hp amps sound?

I know how they measure and I know a few guys that have had them and tested them. Emrah tested the SSL and told me that the hp amp audibly colors and distorts the sound when pushing the volume. Pretty much useless for cleanly driving headphones with low sensitivity. If you look at the specs it'll tell you enough. Output impedance of 10 ohms which is decent but not great. You are looking for impedance of 1 ohm as anything above 1-2ohm can impact the frequency response of low ohm dynamic headphones. THD of 0.05% is -66db which is in the audible range and not specifying at what mW/ohm so most likely even higher when pushed which explains Emrah's issue. 100mW max power into 32 ohm is very poor. Toppings e2x2/e4x4 interface has a professional grade hp amp and offers 580mW into 32 ohm. Even toppings £100 dx1 dac amp offers nearly 3 times the power at 32 ohm with 280mW. SSL doesn't have the power to drive planars correctly, nor offer clean power, or guarantee a flat frequency response with low ohm headphones That's why I don't rate ssl interfaces for headphones

@@PaulThird Thx for feather explanation Paul, I appreciate it. Now it's clear to me. So both DX3 Pro + and L30 II are an upgrade vs SSL2+. I already have DX3 Pro+, is its worth to buy an L30 II for mixing purposes? I can't afford RME or DX7 Pro yet;)

Nah dx3 pro+ will give you as much as you need. L30ii in conjuction with dx3 will give you more clean gain but you only need that if you plan on driving something super hungry like dan clarks or something

Only aes input. Outputs are xlr & rca

Zero latency

@@PaulThird Thanks boss and do you put the canopener after the Harman curve with the preset Mix Engineer?

Yes

@@PaulThird Legend thanks for the quick reply, thanks to you I'm changing my game 😂❤️‍🔥🫂

Dunno if I can be bothered tbh. Apparently make believe have allowed a lot of vile comments towards me on their channel and metric Halo have supposedly came out and said that I deserve it haha Comes with the territory but my worry is that these vile creatures will start having an impact on my business as the studio opens really soon. When you start fucking with the industry and their money.. Get ready for the army of bullying & abuse cause it doesn't rain, it pours 🤣

Twat is a term for idiot in the UK which we thought was funny so we wanted it to be that but cause we were on produce like a pro at the start, there were issues about twat meaning something different in the US so we had to change all the logos and stuff which was annoying. We just waved to have a laugh at ourselves and be a bit tongue and cheek but the Americans ruined brittish banter again 🤣

If you want to get better results then upgrade wherever you can in your monitoring. Id say at the moment I'd personally upgrade the headphones first

@@PaulThird what do you think of the apollo solo / arrow?

@@PaulThird I mixed for over 6 years on the beyerdynamic 770 pro 250 and my master being played world wide in clubs and festivals I really know this head phones so what is the reason to go for a Hifi headphone?

I upgrade to the 1770 pro 250 ohm and for me I hear a lot more than the 770 but at the same time there are similar. I understand that you are mixing on those and got your professional advies, but is is not just a human taste and what works best for each other?

There's no such thing as hifi and studio headphone. Odd marketing terms as audeze and hifiman are both planar magnetic. Both need tuned to harman as do beyers. All I can tell you is that if you want to hear more detail and accurately hear low end without colouration then the hifimans are the way to go. All headphones have a purpose but I have a very strange relationship with beyers where I've had translation issues and I've had others face the same problem. Honestly the most arguments I get online are from beyer users. On the podcast we've found that the majority of comments that completely disagree with the common consensus are beyer user's. Myself and others have seen a pattern over the years where beyers have their own sound which mostly translate to beyers. Beyers are coloured in the low end. You need to go up the price bracket to get dynamics that are really clean where planar magnetic headphones are a different design and don't suffer from the same colouration, as well as not being affected by impedance. You can put a planar through any impedance hp amp and it'll tonally remain the same, where dynamics are directly impacted from impedance. I don't know why but the most resistance I get is from beyer users haha you can still keep them as a second reference but if you get a pair of ananada nanos you'll hear what you are missing, especially in the low end Ed Thorne has closed bank audeze and switched to Ananda nano after hearing them

you can stick the daw insert through bertom curve analyser (there's a delay compensation button that should get the phase to read accurately) and if you see change to the phase response when adjusting hf then it's linear phase

Available for patreon members

@@PaulThird aaa thanks didnt know that

Fletcher munson curve isnt fixed though. It's a curve based on how humans perceive different SPL

I have Intel and didn't work well for me 🤷‍♂️

If you want the best DAC amp for your headphones and speakers then go for the topping and connect to RME via AES if that's all you have left. Remember there is a reason why RME have the ADI-2 Pro FS. The UFX is good but not end game

@@PaulThird Thank for the advice i appreciate it, i ordered it today and look forward to trying it out. Thanks again for the advice.

Nah I dont bother with them. I'll look at the MDN at some point but only because Marc wanted me to try it out

I'll need to put it through doctor one day via metaplugin and check to see how much harmonics it adds and how much the phase is skewed so I can see what it's actually doing to the sound chaining 8 in that particular order. Sometimes I genuinely think some mixers take the piss sometimes to fuck up everybody online 🤣

Sometimes yes, cause for £30 it can literally save you thousands 🤣

I mentioned aliasing at the very end. Mixhead doesn't have any oversampling, MSaturator does and X4 or X8 will push most aliasing artifacts under audible threshold even when pushed. When you get both to hard clip it's nearly identical in every way, transfer curve, aliasing, harmonics etc Hammerstein shows that main 3rd order of harmonic (which is essentially the main audible order of harmonic) is at same level in both

🤓🤓

I think Dan Worrall did it

🤓🤓

A box that amplifies line level signals for use with headphones

Well yes, DAC to Speakers is speaker conversion. DAC to ADC is Analog gear conversion. 2 different relationships and interaction with the DAC. You need to clarify exactly what you are moaning about here. There isnt a test I can accurately use to scientifically quantify what I hear in the apollo through speakers. DAC is a very very complex subject that is still being debated today. There is a different relationship with speakers and to measure what comes out the speakers I would really need something like an £11k neumann dummy head which would allow me to record the speakers in the room binaurally, which means I could run a headphone blind test with various engineers and test if the results are consistent. But all that will do is tell me that people genuinely can hear a difference via the DAC. It'll never explain what is causing the difference. Somebody like Dave Hill would have had a crack at it, guy from chord will have a theory but it's all things that are heavily debated. All I can say is that I wasn't happy with the x6 DAC to Speaker conversion, nor was I happy about the hp amp. It's a different "issue" I hear to the audient. Audient sounds more accurate than apollo but that haze I hear causes me to rely on the topping. It was frustrating cause it was a hassle selling x6 and swapping everything over to evo 16. Genuinely if the DAC to Speakers was high quality I wouldve kept the apollo but it was the last string for me along with all the other windows compromises Ed Thorne hears the same, MSM hears the same and many others have complained about it over the years as well. All I can tell you is that there is the same terminology that creeps up which is muddynes which is vague, but I dunno what it actually is, perhaps distortion based in the low mids, maybe IMD hump or something distortion based, impedance based, maybe the dsp architecture is causing an issue.. God knows, but all I can tell you is that I didn't like speakers and headphones through it, but you can obviously take that with a subjective grain of salt

@@PaulThird i don't see what makes "speaker" conversion different to a regular line level conversion. Apollo's Monitor outs are usually a bit higher specs than the others, but you can see this reflected only measured, you will not hear it. Digital conversion: this is a super simple subject, only people make difficult. You record the output of the Apollo X6 with its in, and if you can't tell the difference, then case closed (i'm sure the EVO checks this out too). Exactly like you do with your plugin ABs. You don't need a dummy head either. You use a proper mechanical AB switch or a monitor controller, and you'll be surprised to hear no difference between you fancy DAC and let's say a Focusrite Clarett. When people say they hear the difference of DACs in this category are usually subjects of improper blind A/B test. If you did your plugin reviews without Plugin doctor or without null test: that would be exactly the same. People would "hear" the difference. Spoiler: with proper test, people would fail telling the differences of the converters in this category. I did it many times, everyone who claimed to hear difference failed. No exception. This is how psychology works: we have expectations, we have bias, and we hear it happen even when it does not. The X6 has exceptional HP outputs compared to other interfaces, but i agree with you that a dedicated hp amp would beat it. The EVO is a great interface too, and suprisingly affordable. Features are insanely well thought, and thanks to pointing this out. The early runs had many failing units, but based on your video they probably sorted it out. And the X6 is definitely not for you, but it is still among the best converters money can buy right now. We have to give it that one. It outperforms our auditory systems easily. Or the speakers, which has distortion, FR figures magnitudes higher than the X6. If you hear mudiness: it is you. Or: if you heard a difference of your EVO and the other DAC you mentioned (can't remember), then it is your DAC failing or designed to color sound. The DAC myth is over.

Let's look at this scientifically. The only way you can measure DAC in graphs is by running it through an ADC. You need to convert the analog signal back to digital. Science is that it is a different test condition than running through speakers. In speakers there is a big amplification stage, there is impedance matching, there are various different factors compared to running through ADC. Its not apples for apples and it never will be, that's the science. Ed has the X6 & the X16. The X16 he told me doesn't have the mud or low mid build up of the x6 or whatever it is we hear in x6. X16 measures impeccably on audio science review. I've not heard x16 in my studio but from what Ed has told me if I had x16 I probably would've kept it. I remember the day he got x16, and that was when he realised that the x6 had that mud in it. He thought he was going mad until he asked me and I told him I'd always heard it in the x6 and that's why i would always stick with the topping. I don't have any measurements for x6 like what audio science review has for the x16 so it could be jitter. Here's the thing with jitter that goes deep. Dave Hill of crane song always talked about the importance of jitter in DAC's, especially when running through speakers due to the big amplification of the signal. Manufactures always tend to use a 1khz tone for jitter, where Dave Hill was talking about jitter over the entire frequency spectrum. With his solaris and avocet he was achieving sub pico second jitter over the whole spectrum. Solaris had jitter in the audible spectrum down to 0.045 pico seconds. X16 measures around 10 pico seconds (from what UA state) but on a 1khz tone. but what about jitter over the rest of the frequency spectrum? Here's a snippet from a Dave Hill paper "The measurements indicated that the D/A was working correctly. The first listening test did not go as one expected. On the first listen, the old circuit sounded better. After listening for a short time, with one’s ears learning what the sounds are, the observation changed. The old circuit was not warmer; it was muddier, less clear and did not image as well. This raised a large number of questions (some are technical and some have to do with ear training" See how mentions about mud in his observations. Does the x16 have better jitter specs than the x6?.. 🤷‍♂️ That's the problem. I don't have any measurements of the x6 and this was something that Dave pushed over his career, was showing results over the entire audible spectrum. Without having testing equipment costing like £20-40k I can't reliably tell you what that difference is in the x6. All I can tell you is that there is a common thread among engineers I know that have listened to x6, and it's all been unprompted. With DAC to Speakers we are dealing with science that I can't tell you. I can't measure the level of detail that I need to know. I have no way of accurately measuring jitter, or even jitter over an entire frequency spectrum. If I start going into firm conclusions as to why I hear what I hear then it's pure Dunning-kruger effect as I have don't have enough knowledge or experience to accurately determine that. All I can tell you is what I hear and make pretty uneducated guesses which doesn't really help anybody.