Wags

Hello fellow enthusiasts,
This is my 1st post. I have a Dane-elek "SP". There is some white noise (sometimes described as "hiss") present when I use my IEMs. Will firmware updates resolve this issue? Also, how do I determine which version of firmware is presently on my player?

Thanks in advance!

audiofish

The microphones and recording hardware for built in recording is never any good on these things. (I'm guessing you're referring to Internal electret microphone?)

They're not designed for audio quality - only as a portable dictaphone.

If you want proper audio recording get either a minidisc recorder or a recorder with a line input.

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Wags

Sorry. What I mean by "IEM" is: In Ear Monitor (or canal phones). I hear the white noise when listening to music.

glacier

i think that's been a problem with the m6 since the beginning. i'm not sure though if firmware upgrades will solve it. i remember someone posted before that a certain type of earphones can help eliminate the hiss. someone else said that in-line remote controls do the trick.

PeterHamburg

Seems to me that an IEM with an impedance > 30 Ohm will make less noise ->
for instance D-jays.

Blackstar

Higher impedance phone do have less hiss, however the majority of people use earbuds and canalphones with impedance at 16 ohms.

It is a flaw in meizu's power supply i believe, improper grounding and shielding between the electrical circuitry and the chipset causes this. When my m6 warranty dies, i'm so going to mod that power supply.

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PeterHamburg

Maybe a simple resistor (15-18 Ohm) could solve the problem... not tried, but easier to test than to open your MEIZU

Blackstar

Oh hey, i'd rather modify the circuit than risk harming the audio quality by adding resistance to the output.

Just that meizu has great sound quality, which is ruined somewhat by a high noisefloor.

woW5

i notice that my new m6 has a lot of noise when i turned the bass to full and volume to full. is there any problem with my player, earphone or songs? Im worried its with the sound chip as on the first day i have excellent playback.

Blackstar

I'm not quite sure, I've heard reports that the SP version has less hiss, but until i hear one myself i'm not going to say that it doesn't.

The ability to hear hiss is dependant on the earphones you use and your own ears. Some people who can't hear high frequencies will report no hising, people who have sensitive ears, (good ears) will hear a great deal of hiss. And then there are the people who don't care about hiss and turn a blind eye to it

With my M6 TP version i get hiss no matter what i do. The only time when there is no hissing is when i first turn on the device. Once i hit play it will hiss, when i pause the music it will also hiss. Possibly a firmware bug, but could also be a hardware problem.

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8GB iPod Touch 2G > UE10 Pro

Nickle

I don't have any hiss, and you can check the firmware by going into settings on te main menu and then into help

PiZ

So far I've tried my SP miniplayer with 2 kind of headphones:

- Creative EP-630 (in-ear, 16 ohms) --> I can clearly hear the hiss noise in the background
- Sony MDR-Q66 (Clip-on headphones, 24 ohms) --> No noticeable hiss
That's exactly how it works on my player!

Hope this can be fixed in some way with the new firmware... but it seems rather a sort of "compatibility" issue, something hardware related...

DChronos

One thing I want to point out here... usually hissing is caused by electromagnetic interference across a circuit. You know how the headphones act as an antenna for the radio? It's picking up all the electromagnetic radio waves flying through the air all over the planet.

It's my guess that the reason lower impedance headphones have a more noticeable hiss is because lower impedance means it uses a thinner set of wires to allow better transmission of electricity, and a lower power usage in order to create the sound on the smaller speakers low impedance headphones use (inner ear and earbud types). The smaller wires means less electricity from the device to power the speakers, but means there is a better chance for interference from outside radio waves and other em interference.

This might just be the case, because I just read a wiki that explained impedance in headphones, and according to that, professional studio headphones have an impedance range between 300 up to 5000. They would need to be completely free from outside interference because they are professional studio headphones. But, higher impedance means it needs a lot more power to drive the speakers. There's kind of balance there with DAPs going on... low impedance headphones means longer battery life because it takes less power to drive the speakers, but can end up having more outside interference, or higher impedance headphones that take more power, but have little interference... hence, why to some, the M6 is loud at only 20, and to others, it takes all 40 notches to get full sound.

The OTHER thing it could be is interference on the circuitry of the M6 itself... though I think that's less likely the problem. I don't think that firmware is really gonna fully fix this, though. Might be some tricks they can put in to help cancel it out, but I'd have no idea about that.

I wonder if they have shielded-wire headphones out there, kinda like my quad shielded coaxial cable line (braided copper wire and foil layers to stop outside interference from messing up the cable signal). The only problem with headphones like that would be your radio signal would be 0 all the time. ^_^;

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FirePower

Low impedance means lower resistance to AC signal, it is the actual impedance of the earpiece driver that is being measured not the wire as such, good quality ear phones should be using lots of thin strands of twisted pair or shielded wire and should be very low resistance due to use of more wire than cheap budget earphones.
Remember these are audio transducers and have an frequency response 20Hz to 20Khz , so will not be picking up and converting any electrical / radio interference unless it is also in that range which I very much doubt.

I think hiss will be more noticable to the younger members as their ears are more sensitive, Also it is most likely a power supply or lack of filtering in the miniplayer itself that is the problem, Be aware that designing low noise analog circuits in a device that also contains processsors, LCD , li-ion charger etc is very difficult to do in such a small device.

Lower impedance headphones uses more power. (currant /amps) 16 ohm will use twice as much current than 32 ohms at same volume setting (voltage) but will be usually more louder due to more powerful earpiece drivers (voicecoil and magnets) and hence allows lower volume to be used but also means lower signal to noise ratio.

Higher impedance headphones need more volume (voltage) to get same amount of audio level , buy increaseing volume they are increasing the signal to noise ratio.

Nickle

getting into the technical details now are we!

I think that may just be the case

DChronos

Low impedance headphones do not use more power. That's obvious just looking at them. A micro-sized, 3mm, 16Ω rated set of inner ear headphones would not use more power than, for example, my 2cm, 32Ω rated headphones. Here's a really easy example I'll use just to show power usage and the size of a device: a 1.5 volt battery will brightly light a small flashlight bulb. It will do nothing to a larger table lamp bulb. It obviously needs less power the smaller it is in order to produce the same thing, because it is physically smaller and easier to power. They wouldn't make something use more power to drive a smaller device.

Also, it says electrical impedance is the measure of opposition to current in a circuit. According to this DC equation, lower impedance doesn't mean higher voltage, it just means more resistance occurs. And since a "resistor" as far as I'm concerned can also mean anything that can be considered a load on a circuit, like headphone speakers, it means that more energy is actually USED in the circuit. By that, I mean more power is put to actual use, meaning the small headphones would be a lot louder for the same voltage compared to larger headphone speakers of higher impedance.

Also, I still think it's electrical interference, weather it's within the M6, or outside interference, which is very very common, btw. It's hard to make a fully shielded circuit inside a smaller device, because smaller size means less space for any kind of shielding in the circuitry. The headphone wiring has almost no shielding, too. If it did, it shouldn't be too useful for being used as an antenna. I'm sure that the smaller headphones just make the interference more noticable because they require less power to make them do something. Also, the frequency response has nothing to do with interference issues, it's the frequency range in which the headphone speakers are capable of producing. 20Hz is just about the lowest sound the human ear can pick up, and 20KHz is about the upper range of human hearing, though we can actually hear higher. The range posted is a general range used for all headphones, as far as I've read.

I looked up info about this stuff a month or so ago, because I wanted to know what it meant when I got my next pair of headphones. I will admit, though, that I'm not some kind of genius about this stuff, though I know plenty about electronics. I might be wrong, but this is what it's looking like to me.

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Blackstar

Lower impedence stuff draws more current from your device, so if you want to fry your M6, try plugging in a 4Ohm speaker to it for several hours =D

As DChronos said it should be related to electrical interference that i agree, and as i've said before, when my m6 warranty dies i'm going to check out the power supply of the M6 and shield it with a plate of metal, just to isolate the possibility of the power interfering with the chipset, which is what i suspect the hissing problem to originate from.

On the other hand, I also believe this could be the case of the sound chip. Comparing it to my reference Sony MZ-NH1 portable, the M6 feels like it has artificially boosted frequencies. (feels like a bump in the 60-80Hz region and a hump from 4K region onwards, using no sound enhancements). Now that may sound good to the casual listener, but those with higher quality equipment will start to hear the artifacts. Now, suppose we have a true flat eq (sound chip not tweaked) flat eq should sound relatively dull. When it sounds a bit lively you know something has been tweaked.

Tweaking the higher frequencies, boosting them for that matter does introduce hiss to audible levels.

My last theory of hiss on M6 is related to the power output of the headphone out port. If you stress the amp and increase voltage to it just to get an average 18mW per channel it will hiss. Its sorta like having a tape deck playing a blank tape. Low volumes, hiss not really audible, crank up the volume, hiss will be present. [This doesn't seem to be the case though, as even when my volume is muted there is hiss]

johnnyz86

hiss has more to do with sensitivity directly than impedence (which is indirectly related).

the hiss is driving me nuts for when im listening quietly and don't have non-IEM's with me... i'm almost driven to sell it

hopefully the new firmware will help it. i mean, werent the new layers for something??

Blackstar

lol 8-layer PCB for "clearer sound" XD, believe the hype if you will.

goods

I have the Creative EP-630 headphones and don't get any hiss, the same goes for my brothers miniplayer, do you hear the hiss between songs?