341–350 of 405 posts
In my limited experience audio is all about component matching. Sometimes you want distortion, like what you get from a tube amp. The right mix of distortion is what makes things sound good to some ears.
When I'm playing music on my stereo from my PC through USB, turning off the lights on my bathroom on the other side of the wall will momentarily kill my USB driver and as a result Spotify stops working. Electromagnetic interference is no joke.
That is absolutely NOT "electromagnetic interference", in terms of radiative electromagnetic noise. It's a wiring fault.
Long headphone cables don't help either.
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Oenologists can't even distinguish red from white in a blind test: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infam...
They were students and as such did not dare to question authority or were afraid to make a fool of themselves. This "study" has no value. I can certainly distinguish between the average $10 bottle and $50 bottle. Actually the study does have a value: It induces people to think there are no differences between wines and keeps the prices for the good stuff lower. So please continue to post it.
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It's almost as if there's a middle ground to be had somewhere. There are definitely things which can perceptually detract from audio which people just don't think about. I'm about to buy a couple power conditioners for my electronics because the wiring in my new apartment is garbage and every little spike in voltage comes through as a loud pop in my speakers and headphones. But more subtly, my audio is constantly bei…
Not sure why you got downvoted, I've seen crappy electricity in my own home office after I got a UPS for my computer system. It would have its fans kick in regularly to modulate the voltage that came in at a crazy high ~255v (Australia). I got the APC Line-R 1200VA Line Conditioner With AVR installed in front of the UPS and couldn't be happier now - it steps down the voltage and gives the UPS peace of mind. Try the A…
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DC to AC converters in common inverters (where your battery power gets turned into AC wall current) are usually digital (mosfets usually) and unless they're running at 96khz+, which is probably not the case even with "pure sine wave" inverters¹, they could also introduce some noise. Additionally, if you were charging the batteries at the same time, that charger could be carrying some noise into the DC current. Visibl…
So many things these days just convert AC back to DC though. (Maybe not vintage audio equipment though)
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Wow, that is pretty bad wiring. I can hear an audible hum from my subwoofer when my wife runs the vacuum or blow dryer but that’s about it. And those are about the highest pulling appliances you could have in a household and the sub is pretty big with pretty powerful amp.
Brushed AC motors degrade power quality, although they're normally equipped with filters.
Bad wiring and a sub-par setup will make that bleed right through your speakers.
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DC to AC converters in common inverters (where your battery power gets turned into AC wall current) are usually digital (mosfets usually) and unless they're running at 96khz+, which is probably not the case even with "pure sine wave" inverters¹, they could also introduce some noise. Additionally, if you were charging the batteries at the same time, that charger could be carrying some noise into the DC current. Visibl…
I'd love to see somebody sell an old-fashioned motor-generator set for generating absolutely pure sine-wave current from a noisy input. Give it a really heavy flywheel and maybe some complicated flexible interconnect between motor and generator, to remove any effects of the input power. Or, even better, have the motor crank up some sort of mechanical/hydraulic/pneumatic power storage, then switch off to let the gener…
Some datacenters have these attached to their generators to avoid the need for huge battery banks. They can actually support several megawatts. They spin constantly at the motor's rpm with a clutch that engaged when the input power is lost. This instantly jump starts the generator, at the grid's phase, and prevents
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No, cheap DACs are not “good enough” unless you’re completely indifferent to audio quality. There’s certainly woo and outright fraud in audio. But there’s also attention to detail. Professional studio engineers will spend $3000 on a high-precision digital clock for their DACs because it makes a clearly audible difference. Software people don’t understand that human hearing, and human sensitivity to timbre and distort…
> Professional studio engineers will spend $3000 on a high-precision digital clock for their DACs because it makes a clearly audible difference. I don't know what kind of frequency stability you really need (please enlighten me), but I checked on one of the components retailer websites, and found that even the most stable MEMS oscillators are only a few bucks a piece, any DAC or ADC manufacturer that claims that's wo…
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.
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There's a slight difference. AFAIK oenophiles don't typically try to use pseudoscience to justify their purchases (or encourage others to make purchases) If someone told me I should buy a wine because the doorknobs in the winery were special wooden knobs I would also question their judgement/sanity.
You evidently haven't encountered the biodynamic viticulture people, who are everywhere these days. They will tell you to buy a wine because its grapes were harvested when the stars were in a particular alignment and the moonlight a particular intensity.
I’m not kidding.