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Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

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Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#91

Post by Kenji »

jumelles wrote: post #38
calinet6 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around $5,000. Lots of really good low-hanging-fruit actual improvements and solid equipment in that price range (combined, for the whole system); above that you're just getting crazy, and likely seeing marginal gains you can't actually hear and/or aren't worth the cost for what you (maybe, possibly, unlikely) might be fooled into hearing.

And I'd argue that's still extremely high. Something as simple as a standalone DAC or good headphones/speakers can make a noticeable difference, even entry-level devices!

Entry level can never deliver proper quality. You will be looking at thousands, at the very least 300-500$'s worth of equipment to get proper sound without noticeable hissing noises or gaps in the frequency spectrum. You simply cannot get it below that price unless you engineer and build the hardware yourself or get a good deal from a friend or off Ebay.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#92

Post by wavefunction »

kazinator wrote: post #72
robertAngst wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my thought. A cocktail of capacitors could do the trick.

We'd like to say "battery of capacitors", but we more or less cannot. Ironically, the word "battery" was originally used by Benjamin Franklin to refer to a bank capacitors, not to chemical cells.

"Battery" is a sort of nebulous term for a collection of similar objects working in concert, whether that be artillery guns or electrical cells. Consumer electrical batteries are a collection of electrical cells.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#93

Post by hydrox24 »

aaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #87
bb88 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically there is jitter in the digital domain, and it's possible to see problems at high bandwidth signals, but in low bandwidth transmissions like Flac, you're absolutely right. If you have nanosecond timing requirements, then those might be useful, but for audio they are overkill. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitter

FLAC????? Ew... Every audiophile knows that WAV sounds the best. FLAC quality is mediocre compared to WAV. Update: geez, it was satire... ...or was it? https://serato.com/forum/discussion/1541194 https://www.head-fi.org/threads/flac-vs-wav-format-surprisin...

You were not downvoted because people took your comment literally, you were downvoted because being snarky runs against the Hacker News guidelines, specifically:

> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Sometimes snarky comments will be forgiven if they are substantive. Yours contributes very little beyond what the parent/grandparent comments had already mentioned.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#94

Post by stordoff »

walrus01 wrote: post #70
bayindirh wrote: post #59

I don't understand this type of audiophiles. I also have a fairly high end, vintage audio system at home, but I'd never do anything like that in the name of audio quality. There's a quote I love about these people: A normal person uses the audio system to listen music, while an audiophile uses music to listen to his audio system.

One of the things I truly will never understand about "Audiophiles" is their willingness to spend money on products that are, from a technical basis, indisputably categorized as snake oil. For instance: https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided-Cable... It's an HDMI cable! The video signal has CRC in it and is packetized, it's either going to make it or it isn't. The quality of video delivered at, for in…

> it's either going to make it or it isn't

This isn't _strictly_ true - I've seen basically the equivalent of noise in a HDMI picture (white dots all over the picture), and eventually tracked it back to a faulty HDMI cable.

I did replace it with the cheapest (<£5) HDMI cable I could find though, so there is that.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#95

Post by AdrianB1 »

bayindirh wrote: post #59

I don't understand this type of audiophiles. I also have a fairly high end, vintage audio system at home, but I'd never do anything like that in the name of audio quality. There's a quote I love about these people: A normal person uses the audio system to listen music, while an audiophile uses music to listen to his audio system.

You don't understand the power of naivety, placebo effect, dreams and stupidity composed (multiply all). Not in any way intended to insult these people, I know a few (not as rich) and they simply do not want to understand the basic principles behind digital signals, error corrections etc. I know people that work in IT and still pretend that audio transmission over USB can add jitter to music and that a DAC can "open" or "close" "the stage" by low quality processing of the signal. There is no way to convince these people they are wrong, so I stopped trying many years ago.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#96

Post by dylan604 »

gerdesj wrote: post #28
remcob wrote: post #9

$100k in equipment, but I bet none of that went to an oscilloscope to actually quantify the problems they are imagining.

Quite. Why not also test your hearing first. Find a lab and offer them some serious money to test your "built in" equipment. Then you can get serious on delivering the best possible input. While you are at it, you'd better hire a decent studio and the artists, sound engineers etc and re-record to your spec. Recordings are normally designed to work reasonably well across anything from a car stereo to a disco. Now crac…

>If you were really serious then why not buy a small plot of land well away from the city and build a custom man cave (yes it will be a man!)

This is my dream retirement concept, except mine would be to continue taking pictures of the night sky. But thanks for the idea. Now I can plan on listening to high quality choons while I'm at it!

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#97

Post by confounded »

A tangent, but seeing as this thread has awoken the HN audiophiles: What should I look for/avoid in a DAC? Does it really matter if my source device is an iPhone/iPad?

Reading blogs and review sites talk about the personality of DACs has started to grind on me. Surely it’s just a question of accuracy which can be summarized in a metric?

(I’m currently probably going to get a NAD D 3045 integrated amp/DAC, mainly for the specs, and fond memeries of being a teenager with a 3020).

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#98

Post by AdrianB1 »

snovv_crash wrote: post #77
walrus01 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things I truly will never understand about "Audiophiles" is their willingness to spend money on products that are, from a technical basis, indisputably categorized as snake oil. For instance: https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided-Cable... It's an HDMI cable! The video signal has CRC in it and is packetized, it's either going to make it or it isn't. The quality of video delivered at, for in…

One theory I read (for good quality USB cables to a DAC) is that reduced packet loss reduces jitter, which means that the clock rate of the DAC doesn't have to adjust in order to keep the buffer populated, but not overflowing. Sounds plausible, but I'm not sure that packet loss is high enough to actually cause this.

A working USB cable does not create packet loss and definitely does not fix packet loss; if packet loss occurs because of the cable, the cable is defective, nothing else. There is no good quality and bad quality, there are cables that work as expected and cables that are defective.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#99

Post by atoav »

snovv_crash wrote: post #77
walrus01 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things I truly will never understand about "Audiophiles" is their willingness to spend money on products that are, from a technical basis, indisputably categorized as snake oil. For instance: https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided-Cable... It's an HDMI cable! The video signal has CRC in it and is packetized, it's either going to make it or it isn't. The quality of video delivered at, for in…

One theory I read (for good quality USB cables to a DAC) is that reduced packet loss reduces jitter, which means that the clock rate of the DAC doesn't have to adjust in order to keep the buffer populated, but not overflowing. Sounds plausible, but I'm not sure that packet loss is high enough to actually cause this.

Yeah but still, the biggest loss is going to happen within your plug/jack connection. So if you really care, solder your cables in. Better than every gold plated connector your audiophile purse is ever going to buy.

Also: Acoustics are what matters the most (and they are the hardest to get right, just by throwing money at the problem, that is why it is not usually beeing discussed that much).

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#100

Post by duskwuff »

walrus01 wrote: post #70
bayindirh wrote: post #59

I don't understand this type of audiophiles. I also have a fairly high end, vintage audio system at home, but I'd never do anything like that in the name of audio quality. There's a quote I love about these people: A normal person uses the audio system to listen music, while an audiophile uses music to listen to his audio system.

One of the things I truly will never understand about "Audiophiles" is their willingness to spend money on products that are, from a technical basis, indisputably categorized as snake oil. For instance: https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided-Cable... It's an HDMI cable! The video signal has CRC in it and is packetized, it's either going to make it or it isn't. The quality of video delivered at, for in…

And then there's even weirder audiophile accessories like cable elevators, amplifier stands, CD "demagnetizers", and "quantum chip" stickers -- all complete nonsense which doesn't even have any plausible way of affecting the audio.
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