Cheap to Audiophile with Simple Hacks 348
petertrog writes "The IEEE has a story showing how you can turn a cheap DVD player into something that sounds a whole lot more exotic. All you need is a small budget, a soldering iron and a desire to void your warranty."
What about the speakers? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What about the speakers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What about the speakers? (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, good speaker design is quite difficult. It's both acoustic and electrical engineering, and a bit of black magic (or luck). Or you can buy a speaker kit, and build from other people's designs. I did that, and my $1000 speakers sound like $2000 speakers, and look like $20 home-made shit.
Re:What about the speakers? (Score:2)
Kevlar isn't stiff, it's strong in tension. Carbon fiber is stiff.
On the other hand, with the right weave and resin you can make a strong, stiff cone with kevlar.
Carbon would be better though...
Re:What about the speakers? (Score:2)
Re:What about the speakers? (Score:3, Informative)
I'd highly recommend the old horn loaded speakers by Klipsch like these klipschorns [klipsch.com] . They are so effecient. I don't want to start a flame war on tube vs. SS...pick what you want. Me? I fell in love with tube amps paired with horn speakers when I was twelve..
I finally was able to get a pair of the 50th anniversary K-Horns a few years back...and run them off a Decware [decware.com] amp that is SET tube
Re:What about the speakers? (Score:2)
On the other hand, might be a hell of a lot of fun to build your own speakers - but if it's $1000 for a $2000 sounding speaker (without support), then I might be tempted to still buy - ascetics can be important, and minor errors in building your speakers may result in getting $100 boom boxes instead of quality sound reproduction.
Re:What about the speakers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What about the speakers? (Score:2, Informative)
Just be patient while building them, and you can make them look good as well. Mine don't really look cheap, but they do look homemade.
Real Geeks (Score:2)
Cables (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cables (Score:5, Funny)
Nooo, you need MONSTER CABLES for the best quality!
Pfft. Monster Cables are useless--useless, I say--if you don't have a US$1500 power cord:
Tweak the power supply all you want, but it's pointless without one of those.Re:Cables (Score:4, Insightful)
$1500 power cord (The JBS review) the guy actually implies it is justified!
Does he not know what crap is behind the walls you plug into? How can you think that just the last 10 foot of a power cord is going to make any sigificant difference given the other kilometers of wire involved?
Re:Cables (Score:4, Insightful)
You underestimate the power of suggestion (and ignorance).
Re:Cables (Score:3, Funny)
-Adam
Re:Cables (Score:5, Funny)
'Power conditioning' conjures up the notion of a bunch of inductors and digital shit, introducing yet MORE noise. It's fine for your server. Don't listen to anything connected to it.
Re:Cables (Score:3, Interesting)
Power Conditioners are for the most part common place in any professional stereo system. Anytime you go to a concert I can almost guarantee that they're using a power conditioner. Most school PAs will have them too. Are they strictly necessary? No, but they do make a positive difference and aren't just for audiophile crazies (
Re:Cables (Score:2)
Solid silver.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Cables (Score:5, Funny)
- Open your skull and hack off your frontal lobe.
If you've performed the hack successfully you'll believe that $3000/ft speaker cable is a good idea. Congratulations, you are now a fully qualified audiophile!Re:Cables (Score:2)
The mind boggles.
Re:Cables (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cables (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me of a different story about those fancy expensive wine glasses that supposedly improve wine tasting experience.
They are still beeing hyped by some most prominent wine critics. In all professional reviews there was a clear improvement of wine score when tasted from those glasses.
The problem was - after those experiments were properly repeated as a double blind study, any difference completely dissappeared.
The lesson was - hype does affect your taste.
Actually, I am not saying it is bad. If they enjoy the illusion - that's just fine.
Re:Cables (Score:2)
Mmmm, sounds warm and crisp, with a hint of... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mmmm, sounds warm and crisp, with a hint of... (Score:5, Insightful)
The instructions involve things like replacing cheap caps with low-ESR versions, putting in better diodes in the bridge in the power supply, replacing cheap op-amps...
All these things are legit improvements and are also where the corners are really cut in the cheaper players.
So don't dismiss it because of the slashdot submitter/editor's ignorance.
Yeah, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
These are the sorts of things that get you from 16-bit perfo
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
How about learning a wee bit about how these things work, first?
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mmmm, sounds warm and crisp, with a hint of... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mmmm, sounds warm and crisp, with a hint of... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What an upgrade... (Score:3, Funny)
yeah, but if you lower the ESR too much, then that leads to leakage of weird, malformed RMS spikes at high current.
Re:Mmmm, sounds warm and crisp, with a hint of... (Score:2)
I regularly improve the quality... (Score:5, Informative)
The thing in the article that pegged my bullshit detector is the 'audible difference' in capacitors. I design high frequency pulse amplifiers, and at subnanosecond risetimes, capacitors act pretty awful. but in the audio range, there is no way to hear the difference in a good quality capacitor. Below 1MHz there isn't enough difference to measure. You might hear the difference between a low quality, floor swwepings quality z5u capacitor at 20kHz, an a high quality silver mica cap, but I seriously doubt it.
P-channel mosfets are more expensive than N channel mosfets; If you look at the parts in any car amp, the P-channel parts are the lowest rated; replacing them is an easy way to improve the capabilities of an amp. but you have to upgrade the power supply as well, usually to take advantage of the improvement.
And replacing the resistors in the signal path with metal film, if they're not already, is an audible improvement.
Replacing the capacitors, with no design check, will result in shit blowing up, just as specified. Inrush current is a bitch. Replacing the output caps on a power supply board with larger ones is not a good idea; the lead inductance is a design constraint. The need to go in the same holes.
Also, FRED diodes are soft recovery, with no ringing. Schottky diodes ring like a bitch, and are why fred's were developed.
If you add capacitance to a switching power supply, do it at the circuit you want to help out, not at the power supply. The resistance of the wire going to the circuit board will damp the inrush current to the additional capacitance.
1 ohm of wire makes a huge difference in the surge current when you turn it on.
If I spent $10 on a capacitor, I guess I'd say I could hear it too...
Re:I regularly improve the quality... (Score:3, Informative)
Basically I wanted
Re:I regularly improve the quality... (Score:3, Insightful)
"I'll fill in from a buffer while you're looking" is correct. "Usually this is done by repeating briefly the last good data" is complete crap. The player either plays the data from the buffer or it plays nothing. Shock buffering the servo does nothing in this case, where we have a C
Needs (Score:5, Funny)
Small budget - After getting a new computer, I have that
A soldering iron - Oh yeah, I've got that
And a desire to void your warranty - My desire to void my warranty has never been greater...
Let's see some scope output.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let's see some scope output.... (Score:5, Informative)
That article makes me embarassed to be an IEEE member.
Those "special $50 capacitors" sound like a rip-off. There are grades of capacitors, but no small-value cap costs $50 from Digi-Key.
Another amusing point is the mania for expensive RCA jacks in the audiophile world. Any BNC connector, which is what you see on pro audio gear (and most video gear), has better high-frequency response than the fanciest RCA jack. And BNC jacks latch, so they don't come loose. Yet the audiophile nuts are still equipping their overpriced amps with RCA jacks.
Really, if you're going to do stuff like this, the first step is to put a scope on the power supply outputs and watch them under load. If you see noise or changes under load, it's time to do power supply work. You may need to juggle capacitors or add inductors, like ferrite beads. It's quite common to see some digital noise spikes getting into the power to the analog circuitry, and you've got to get rid of that. But there's nothing mysterious about how to do it. Without measurement tools, though, you don't get anywhere.
Re:Let's see some scope output.... (Score:3, Informative)
i think you mean XLR's, ive worked in the PA biz for 15years and never seen a BNC for audio (video they use them though)
XLR's are the standard for line input (preferabbly Neutrik(TM)) because its 3 core balanced wheras RCA connectors are not balanced which means interference and crosstalk
Steve
GeminiAudio
Re:Let's see some scope output.... (Score:5, Informative)
If you have balanced output, XLRs are appropriate. But most consumer-grade (and even most audiophile gear) doesn't have balanced outputs. And, actually, BNC connectors have better frequency response; they're coaxial all the way through, and nearly flat to 50MHz at least. If you have access to a time-domain reflectometer, you can see the difference. Not that it really matters for audio.
For a good laugh, see these RCA cables. [rscables.com] Palladium wires with solid silver RCA plugs. "You will enjoy a pitch black background, deep, yet lightning fast bass, smooth midrange, and most importantly, seemingly limitless top end extension. Though not at all bright or fatiguing in any manner, Pure Palladium's sparkling highs allow for the presence of the often coveted sense of air as well as glorious imaging and soundstage. This interconnect possesses the ability to untangle even the most complex pieces of music." $1,550.00 for a pair of 1.5 meter cables.
Any common video cable with BNC connectors will do better than that.
Re:Let's see some scope output.... (Score:2)
Your comments are interesting. Do you know of any reliable resources where I can find out more about such things? I'm no audio nut by far, but I *am* interested in finding out what I can do to improve my audio gear without being hopelessly ripped off.
Re:Let's see some scope output.... (Score:4, Informative)
There's a tendency in the RF world to run everything through BNC connectors, whether you need to or not. Signal generators and scopes usually come with BNC connectors, so if you have those, you tend to have lots of BNC-BNC cables around the bench. Plus the little drawer of T-connectors, angle connectors, and adapters. Hence its popularity in the ham, broadcast, and scientific instrument worlds.
The main problem with RCA connectors is that they bend and become loose as they wear out. That's why they're avoided in PA gear. XLR connectors self-align better and latch into place.
Actually, I do servomotor control [overbot.com], which has most of the problems of audio but with bigger currents. Keeping the huge chopped motor currents from inducing noise into nearby analog sensors is a major headache. But with extra capacitors and inductors, it's a solveable problem.
In any case, without a scope you can't do anything but guess.
The ARRL Handbook is a good source for info about power supply filtering.
BNC connectors (Score:2)
Of course the BNCs have little adapters hanging off them to RCA, because nothing else (audio) I own has BNC connections...
Re:Let's see some scope output.... (Score:2)
The $50 capacitors are contiuously-wound film-and-foil polypropylene capacitors. They are very expensive not because their margins are so high, but simply becau
Huge difference between scope & human hearing (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is, you can try and make changes to flatten the frequency response as much as possible, but it may NOT be the sound output you're looking for. The scope would, of course, be useful to track down problems with power supply noise, but when it comes down to swapping op-amps or other stuff, it's often times more subjective than not, which is what his article says. Here, seeing the scope output is useless, because the only important this is whether you like the resulting sound output.
I'd like to agree with you on the part about the clock though, but I have never looked clock outputs when they get shaken/etc, so can't really comment.
Re:Huge difference between scope & human heari (Score:3, Insightful)
The scope isn't just to ensure a flat response. It can also tell you if changing one capacitor, op-amp, etc. for another one had any effect at all, or if the difference is psychological.
Re:Let's see some scope output.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The author provides no objective evidence of improvement. Instead, we get: "The tone had been slightly light(?). Modification increased the body(?) of the tone--for example, a guitar sound that previously was all string now includes the wood of the instrument. The stock unit had a bit of congestion(?) on dynamic passages, especially evident on massed strings. Not anymore; the top and bottom ends are detailed(?), extended, and inviting(?). The soundstage, that is, the virtual placements of the
Re:Let's see some scope output.... (Score:3, Insightful)
soundstage is, as you suggested, stereo separation. I might also include the presence of very high-frequency response in it, since there's some evidence frequencies we don't perceive conciously still affect our ability to place the source.
extended is ea
Re:Let's see some scope output.... (Score:2)
Re:Let's see some scope output.... (Score:2)
How can some people believe that!
Small budget, but cost of time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Small budget, but cost of time... (Score:2, Funny)
This from a guy running a blog named Silly Life.
Re:Small budget, but cost of time... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Small budget, but cost of time... (Score:5, Funny)
Foot...meet mouth.
Re:Small budget, but cost of time... (Score:2, Funny)
The author of the article bought his original DVD player for $100. You would rather buy "the high-end at 10x the price and save 100x in the cost of [your] time", meaning that you would spend $1,000 to buy a better player.
Let's assume that this project would take someone who is completely new to the subject 10 hours to complete. You, on the other hand, being smart enough to justify the high price of your time, can probably perform this upgrade in 5 hours (I'm assuming/being fairly conser
Re:Small budget, but cost of time... (Score:3, Insightful)
First real Audiophile tweaks article. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason people purchase expensive interconnects etc is because those components are very easy to change. NOT because they have a significant effect on the fidelity of reproduction.
To really improve the sound you have to improve power supply, decoupling caps etc, but even though the components are very cheap, it's a lot harder than buying a $500 interconnect cable.
I hope to see more articles like this in the future!
5.1 cheapo (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:5.1 cheapo (Score:2)
Very disappointing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Jon.
Re:Very disappointing... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, any idiot who burns his house to the ground like that gets what's coming to him. There's no liability (nor should there be) in the sharing of stupid ideas. Liability lies with the implementation. Allow me to share my recipe for sewing needle salad:
I eagerly await the first spurious lawsuit.More exotic DVD player (Score:4, Funny)
When those of us who are into "gadget porn" look at the latest state-of-the-art home entertainment gear
I didn't know what he was talking about until I got a little further:
Taking the modification yet further, you can also replace both of the X-rated capacitors
Re:More exotic DVD player (Score:2, Funny)
gadget porn != porn gadget.
Finally... (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems simple enough. Basically you're replacing components with ones that are better with no major rewiring of the circuitry. Diodes with faster switching times, add noise reducing capacitors, gold terminals instead of nickel or tin, replace the op-amps to get better slew rates and less distortion... etc. All this is pretty much what the more expensive models would have done anyway.
This is a good general reference for those who aren't afraid of electronics. But, I strongly warn against it for anyone who really doesn't know what they're doing (especially the ones who can't solder). These components are simple enough, and swapping identical devices shouldn't be too hard, but going from schematic to PCB is very challenging if you're not used to it.
On a side note... Favorite quote: "Plug it in and turn it on. No sparks or smoke? Terrific!"
Re:Finally... (Score:2, Funny)
It's okay. Most slashdotters read comments, not TFA.
Why not just use the digital output? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not just use the digital output? (Score:2)
Re:Why not just use the digital output? (Score:3, Informative)
Uh.... (Score:2)
Re:Uh.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uh.... (Score:2)
Sounds Only Like a $1500 Player? (Score:2, Interesting)
High end audiophiles will squak. Meridian's G98 [meridian-audio.com] costs $6k (review [avrev.com]), the Lexicon RT20 [lexicon.com] is $5k, an Ayre [ayre.com] costs $6k, and the Arcam FMJ 29 [arcam.co.uk] (highly rated starting end of high end) will set you back $3k. The top reference player, Meridan 808, will set you back $20k.
The Denon 2910 [denon.com] (about $600) (review [audioholics.com]) is the beginning of better quality players. The article being discussed does exactly what a lot of the higher end players do -- swap out cheap parts for better ones. For those who don't think it makes a differ
Distortion (Score:3, Funny)
Dumb question (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Dumb question (Score:3, Insightful)
At any rate why would you spend so much time and effort improving your DVD player if you have it hooked up to a crap amp? It's the equivalent of trying to turn your economy car into a hot rod by simply installing a sports exhaust and air filter (and maybe a huge spoiler and some stripes).
Audiophile == Whacko (Score:4, Insightful)
So this guy's player sounded better after he replaced the caps, resistors, power supply? He could tell by listening to it? With how much - a day - interval between the two auditions?
One of two things happened - he made no discernible difference and only imagines he improved the equipment. Or he made it much, much worse, and likes the distortions he introduced.
Correctly functioning players - even the cheapest - have such low noise, low distortion, and flat frequency response within the human audio spectrum that nobody has yet been able to demonstrate - in double-blind level-matched synchronized A/B comparisons - that they can tell the difference.
If you want to improve your stereo performance, concentrate on the "I/O" devices - speakers, monitors, and microphones. They introduce many orders of magnitude more color than the electronic components.
Re:Audiophile == Whacko (Score:4, Informative)
Sure some people induce voodoo into the audiophile world but that doesn't mean there aren't any real world differences. I would bet you that YOU could tell the differences between two CD players (assuming one was very good and one was merely decent) in a GOOD system setup.
All CD players do not sound the same! I repeat. All CD players do not sound the same. And you don't have to be an audiophile to know it.
They will sound the same in a piece of SH*T system. I repeat. They will sound the same in a piece of SH*T system.
I can put my dad and my mom in front of my stereo system and they can tell the difference. They are the first ones to complain that they wouldn't be able to hear a difference so why waste money. Then all of a sudden they are talking about how clear it sounds. Girlfriend was the same.
I could put them up against two decent CD players (one a Marantz Special Edition and one a Toshiba DVD player) and swap them with very good CD players (a Creek CD player or any CD player with my external DAC1), and they could tell the difference on otherwise equal equipment.
Frequency response all equal? Give me a break. There is NO deep bass coming out of the Toshiba DVD and the Marantz (which I had high hopes for) has no clarity. This isn't the kind where you have to strain so hard to hear the differences.
I don't think I can tell the difference between any pair of decent audio cables but I can hear the differences in the CD players. I would never confidently be able to A/B audio cables. I will A/B anybody on my CD players anytime.
Although I can't say for sure that is absolutely frequency response as it might be some other artificat that reduces the bass response. I'm not an audio scientific expert (though pretty well versed) but perhaps it is a bad harmonic that makes the bass appear weaker. Whatever. I HEAR a difference.
Also, frequency response isn't the be all end all. It measures one specific very controlled setup. The Marantz lacks crispness though it can very well not be frequency response. It could be something else. My DAC has a re-timing crystal that removes jitter. Again. I'm not going to try and explain the differences. Merely that there are differences.
The point is this. You CAN hear differences. ANYBODY can hear differences not just the audiophile elite. I was as skeptical as anybody on first blush. In fact, I always thought all CD players sounded the same until I was demo'd a good system.
But only in a good sytem. And people have A/B'd difference successfully in the past. It is a myth that people can't A/B differences for a lot of components. People have. I would suggest a CD player is one of the easier things to A/B differences on (in a decent system).
In regards to a good system, small differences can make or break it. For example:
(a) If I push my Paradigm Reference Studio/60 speakers anywhere near the back wall (like 95% of people have it set up) the image falls flat and I probably would have a hard time hearing the difference.
(b) I recently re-organized my bedroom so that the bed is now in front of the speakers. Unfortunately, while this config is nicer for me layout-wise, the imaging now sucks due to the bed's intrusion on the signal. I might have a hard time hearing the differences now.
I would agree that you, the reader right now, couldn't hear the difference in your system, as it is now. But in a properly controlled good system, I would be shocked (shocked!) that you couldn't hear the difference between a decent CD player and a lousy one.
p.s. I'm the first one to call bull-carp on the guys at Best Buy. The guy was trying to convince me that the digital HDMI/DVI converter from monster was WAY BETTER than the Acoustic Research (I think) one. I would have bet $10,000 against that he could see the difference in A/B testing unless one was defective. It's DIGITAL!
Re:Audiophile == Whacko (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but did they actually care?
So explain this to me (Score:2)
Audiophiles are not crazy!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Audiophiles are not crazy!! (Score:3, Insightful)
2) This is /., we don't need an excuse to be geeky, or mind people who are. What we do hate is lies and pretentiousness. The guy who memorised pi never pretended it was anything other than "hey, I'm good at r
Re:Audiophiles are not crazy!! (Score:3, Insightful)
And then... (Score:2, Interesting)
Unworthy of IEEE (Score:2, Interesting)
Whither the IEEE? (Score:2, Interesting)
The starting premise, that manufacturers use the least expensive components they can get away with is no big news. This has been considered good engineering just about forever: use those parts that are good e
The most useful part of TFA... (Score:3, Informative)
It's 90% crap (Score:5, Interesting)
Screwing around with the power supply is just stupid, a decent Tripp-lite conditioner or a UPS would handle line noise much better, simpler, and more safely..
Replacing the op-amps with better ones is probably the best tip in the whole article, and the only thing that is likely to have a serious impact on the sound. Replacing caps and other components in the signal path will have some effect.
The jacks have to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
All this 'gold-plated, super oxy-free' stuff is pure hokum. Sure, the cables might conceivably make a difference when you're using an Apogee converter to run audio from your RME Hammerfall through your $50K amp to your $250K mastering monitors.
But on a consumer-level system with unbalanced jacks? Please.
Unbalanced cable can only be run for 3 feet without serious risk of RFI and EMI corrupting the signal. You can run balanced cable 1000 feet before you face similar risks.
Pro recording and audio environments use almost entirely balnced gear, because it provides the signal quality necessary for major recording projects. For cable, it's plain old Mogami or Belkin. We break out the fancy-looking gold-braided super cable when we get a cranky performer who insists that our gear is simply not capturing his muse, because he always delivers perfect performances. Slap those into the mic chain, and watch them listen to the playbacks, nod knowingly, and say "Yeah...it sounds right now"
Nothing has acutally changed, but it sure makes some people feel better, and the same thing is at work in the audiophile arena.
Sure, different compositions of metals have different abilities to conduct signal, but once you get to a certain level of qaulity (which all basic cables meet), it doesn't matter too much.
Re:It's 90% crap (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd add one cable to
desire to void your warranty... (Score:3, Insightful)
Audiophile ... (Score:3, Insightful)
In case you're wondering: snake oil. (Score:5, Insightful)
- Making the power supply filter capacitors "20% bigger" is a silly idea, for MANY reasons:
- Most electrolytics come with a -20% to +100% tolerance. Because of their construction, it's hard for the manufacturers to get them much closer than that.
- Plus in any well-designed power supply the capacitors are intentionally chosen a bit oversize to handle 50Hz or low line voltage situations.
- Electrolytics have a steep cap versus temperature curve. The engineers know this and specify 40% bigger caps to handle the times you use your CD player in Alaska.
- The filter caps are isolated from the audio circuits by a voltahge regulator chip, which provides about 60 to 90 db of isolation. There's just NO WAY one can notice the effects of a 20% change in capacitance, when the effects are mulffled by a factor of a million to a billion.
- The original filter caps have to be very specially chosen for compatibility with the high frequencies and ripple currents. Is it likely the average joe tweaker is going to choose something that approaches what the actual power supply designer chose? Not likely.
- Replacing the power supply diodes with "faster" ones is a waste of time and money. Any noise the old diodes generate (if any) is many decades above thre audio range. Plus the CD player has to pass FCC emission limits, so they can't be too noisy to begin with. Skip this mod.
- Changing op-amps is really ridiculous. Op amps are always used with huge amounts of negative feedback, which reduces their individual quirks and distortion by a huge factor. I've worked with dozens of op-amps, and have never found one that's not capable of handling your typical audio. A typical 30 cent op-amp already has about 0.001% distortion, thousands of times lower than a golden-eared indivuidual can discern. Skip this step too.
- Tapping into the DAC outputs is a REALLY bad idea. Apparently this guy hasnt a clue about Nyquist limits and sampling rates. You HAVE to filter the output of the DAC's, as they're intrinsically rife with sampling-rate related harmonics and aliasing. Those op-amps are there for a reason!. Don't even think of doing this.
- Putting caulking on the crystal is wet-your-pants funny! There's absolutely no need for this. Crystals are designed to resonate at one frequency. They're totally insensitive, by factos of a billion or more, to any other vibrationary frequency. As an example, there are very precise aerospace radios, with dozens of crystals, none of them caulk-damped, used for life-critical navigation and landing systems, and they work just fine for decades of constant use in vibraty, shaky old prop planes. Put the rope caulk around your windows, not on your crystals.
- If you like the look of gold-plated jacks, install them. There will be absolutely no discernible difference in the sound, but they look neater.
Sorry to rain onthis guys parade, but IMHO there should be at least a token nod towards reality.Re:In case you're wondering: snake oil. (Score:3, Insightful)
I at first thought this might be fixing a real problem and making a relatively expensive solution (fast diodes) for it. 1N400X rectifiers doing 50/60Hz power rectification CAN produce some low-level switching garbage (modulated at a 60
Re:Gadget porn vs regular portn (Score:2, Funny)
Re:polishing a turd (Score:2, Insightful)
To allow more headroom while recording.
To prevent generation loss while editing and mixing.
To enable releases on newer media than CD. (Or just upsample the 44.1, no one complains anyway.)
Sure, 24/96 does sound a little better than 16/44.1 on a solo'd vocal, but once you have your final master, all compressed and eq'd up, it makes very little difference. There is only around 6db dynamic range on
Re:polishing a turd (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, maybe if your dog is an audiophile, but as a human I'm perfectly satisfied with equipment that reproduces sound in the frequency range I can hear.
Re:polishing a turd (Score:2)
Re:polishing a turd (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think you can really hear past ~22kHz, and if your speakers went there, and if your cable could pass that frequency, well, so be it, but you're hearing what isn't intended to be heard, dog.
The reason to use higher sampling rates is to obtain more accuracy in that critical 20Hz to 20kHz range.
Consider how many samples a 10kHz sine wave receives, if the sample rate is 40kHz. Yup, 4 samples. So you have four digital 'dots' which get connected
Re:CRAP (Score:3, Funny)
You're going to replace a toslink.... fiber optic... cable, with a.. coat hanger?
*head explodes*