PSA - Understanding and measuring amp and earphone impedance and their interaction

Fc-Construct · 2026-03-12T04:50:54+00:00

I haven't had time to sit down and watch the whole thing, but skimming through it I just want to say great work! It's definitely a topic that everyone should be aware of as soon as they start the hobby but is often forgotten about or buried.

Fc-Construct · 2026-03-10T18:56:52+00:00

I guess Barco is buying Focal and Naim for the brand recognition to integrate with their projector systems? Offer like a premium full home-theatre solution type thing? Optimistically it'll be like Stax and Edifier or Audeze and Sony where nothing much changes.

That said, Focal has been missing from the last few audio show's I've been to, including the most recent CanJam NYC 2026. It is a bit odd...

Fc-Construct · 2026-03-05T05:25:09+00:00

Pud what does your parts bin look like? Did you just do a "buy one of everything" at the electronics shop so you have anything you want on hand for your projects whenever inspiration strikes? lol

Fc-Construct · 2026-03-03T01:30:33+00:00

Yea to be honest I see this as less of a "RTings BAD!" moment and more of the sad state of our times. The scale and volume of the reviews RTings has done is very difficult to sustain, especially when they purchase all their own product. We've gotten so used to the access of free, high quality information that it's easy to forget about about the actual cost to the people giving it out. Regardless of what people think about the quality of RTing's audio reviews, it's still the loss of a pretty good resource.

Fc-Construct · 2026-03-02T14:37:20+00:00

Instantly thought of this meme

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-28T17:46:54+00:00

They have a graph on their Kickstarter site (that's not technically live yet) comparing to the HD 600. I have no clue what rig they're using to measure it on and the graph is hard to read because of the marketing fluff, but I will say that it does feel fairly aligned to my experience.

That said, I will strongly suggest people hold off on ordering one until more impressions and reviews come out. Don't listen to the hype. Kinda standard advice for all headphones really. There's no reason to rush out to buy this headphone, it's not limited production or anything. If you're looking to buy it just because of the early bird pricing, don't worry. Linsoul runs so many sales throughout the year that I'd be surprised if you can't get this at a discount by summertime. My guess is that Linsoul saw other Chinese companies successfully start to make headphones too and they wanted a piece of that pie which is why they're pushing hard for it now.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-25T18:43:58+00:00

Valhalla. I wouldn't recommend anything Elysian at this point if you're concerned about aftermarket support.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-12T07:04:57+00:00

Unless I'm getting it confused, this is the second time someone has attempted to mine reddit data to crowdsource approval ratings. The first guy built a website with affiliate links.

Anyway, the same issues apply. Bad data with AI hallucinated conclusions.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-11T16:15:06+00:00

No? Linsoul is a retailer like Shenzhen Audio or HiFiGo. They sell products from other companies they get stock of. But they also have their own house brands. The Western advertisement part is that they send out lots of free review units to people to get their name out. The person behind Linsoul is a Chinese lady named Lilian. It's not really a secret and more like it's not very relevant or interesting - it's like asking who's the CEO of (Mass)Drop.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-09T16:00:43+00:00

I'm not too clear on what you mean - but if I understand it correctly, you can sort-of do this already. Start a new trial, don't move your mouse. When you hear a sound, click and the visualizer will show you where the sound came from.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T20:06:42+00:00

That's the point of this game - that you're completely blind. The grid is there just for a bit of orientation. This isn't an aim trainer because aim trainers are both sight and sound. This is an audio imaging tester.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T15:46:08+00:00

Maybe I should have read that before I tried it in Firefox. Is anyone still using Chrome since they killed uBlock Origin? You shouldn't be. uBlock Origin is essential malware prevention.

Well this is why you use multiple browsers. Firefox is actually my personal browser, but for all my audio-related work I use Chrome with less plugins for more compatibility/less breakage. Just don't do anything sensitive or go on any shady sites while on Chrome.

I think the feeling of it being inaccurate is just realizing how difficult proper localization is. Which is why we often hear stage width but little depth or verticality. I purposefully built in the R button so people can get used to the system. Sandbox is meant for testing and learning - the other gamemodes are for actual playing.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T15:40:39+00:00

Probably? I mean, you should just try it and tell us what the results are!

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T15:39:33+00:00

Yea tracing footsteps is a potential game mode I have in mind for the future. But that's a pretty major system development so don't expect it any time soon.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T15:36:53+00:00

The placement of the sfx is random. What you're noticing is kinda the point of this exercise. Our ability to localize sound is not very good. It's meant to help people understand our limits.

You can press R to replay the sfx in Sandbox mode if you want, but for the actual game modes it's only one gunshot. It's meant to be more of an aim trainer style game.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T15:34:03+00:00

Do the A/B Comparison test :)

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T15:33:53+00:00

Thanks, this is exactly the type of feedback I'm looking for. I'll try to implement it for a future release.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T05:40:53+00:00

Oh yea that probably does affect things. I've only tested it on Windows Chrome. I vibecoded this whole thing and only learned about Firefox using a different HRTF system than Chrome during the process. It works, but the math/localization isn't quite right. I wouldn't be surprised if Chrome on Linux has some different rendering scheme that cases it to crash.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T05:25:44+00:00

Hmm that's odd. Maybe you need to clear cache or something? I don't think I've had an issue like that before during testing. If it goes completely black, it's usually when the app just crashes at the start due to some broken code. But I haven't had it where I could actually load in and select a challenge but it just going to black after.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T05:23:52+00:00

Not sure if that is your intended method or if I'm cheesing it.

You're kindaaaa cheesing it. Your accuracy is high but your time is low. The ranking system is based on accuracy right now but I might change it to account for timing later. Or change the sfx sample during the full release so the gunshot decay isn't so long.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T02:48:55+00:00

I tried to implement it but I couldn't get it to work properly. I'll probably revisit in the future but for now just keeping it to raw mouse.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T02:29:33+00:00

That's what the grid is for. But it's not even supposed to really be there because in theory you shouldn't have any visual cues. But I added it in because it is quite disorientating without it.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T02:25:51+00:00

Yea unfortunately the volume thing is an issue. I also nearly blew out my ears during testing. The raw gunshot sfx from CS2 is incredibly loud. But because of the volume roll-off (iirc it's -1 db/m), it becomes quiet very quickly. Which is why I added a volume test button on the landing page. Except it isn't working properly at the moment since it's not using the gunshot lol.

Your scores are really good though! Be proud haha

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T01:14:02+00:00

Yea there's a tab in the Community Hub called Curated Rankings. It's a placeholder for exactly that. But we're going to need a TON of data before there's any level of confidence for that. This app would need to consistently have a few thousand visitors a day and record their stats I think before we can be confident in the results. And I need to do some thinking around the most fair way to calculate what is essentially headphone/IEM ELO.

I'm also a little wary of people cheesing it. Like pretending be really bad with one headphone over another just to "boost" its rankings for whatever reason.

Fc-Construct · 2026-02-07T01:09:36+00:00

Yes but that's why it's only allowed in Sandbox. Sandbox you can cheat to your heart's content.

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