Oratory actually mentioned that unit to unit variation was very low on the Hifiman HE4XX, I added the channel matching part as a logical extension of that....so I'd expect your Sundara which is a more expensive Hifiman headphone to have at least as low unit to unit variation as the HE4XX. Oratory normally gets his headphones from retail samples that people send in to him, not review samples sent directly from the manufacturer. I don't know why your Sundara apparently has deep bass extension according to you, instead I trust Oratory's bass measurements for the reasons I mentioned in an earlier post.Hifiman is also known to send out review samples that differ from current production samples.
And because they match channels very well, doesn't mean there isn't a big spread in sample to sample performance. You can still match L+R.
I'm not saying Oratory's measurements are wrong. I'm saying that there examples out there that have better bass extension than the one he shows in his measurements and mine could be one of them (I suspect so) and maybe it is consistent with the most recent production lots.
Johnyang is just referring that the L30 performs better at the 0dB gain level rather than the +9dB gain level....so I think he's just saying you should use 0dB medium gain setting where possible. And your second part of John Yang's message you highlighted where he said "Then adjust volume to taste" - he means twiddling the volume knob on the L30 amp to get your desired listening level (not altering the digital volume to get your desired listening level). He also says to set the DAC (E30) as close to maximum volume as possible, so he's saying to keep digital volume as close to maximum as possible, and then you use the volume knob on the L30 amp to alter to your desired listening level whilst also hopefully having the L30 on medium gain (which is the 0dB option), as the medium gain option is the cleanest.... in a good way, not in a bad way.
I didn't talk about hearing loss at very high frequencies. I talked about losing treble sensitivity at the usual below 10 KHz frequencies. Unfortunately, age-related hearing loss (or rather "hearing degradation") isn't limited to very high frequencies. Hence the usual "I'm sorry, come again please ?" by many older people.
I too thought that, but the L30 designer seems to say otherwise for his amp. Turns out it's very handy that way! I love leaving the volume knob in max position and just adjusting digital volume from my keyboard. Here are John Yang's messages :
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I'm sure no difference can be heard anyway. The L30 is a beast and its performance for any knob position is way beyond human hearing capability.
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