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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

#371

Post by KozmoNau7 »

tinco wrote: post #364
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"More love" in this case doesn't have to mean more than maybe a retail price of $50 or so, to get a DAC with a frequency response so flat and a noise level so low that any difference to more expensive items is purely academic. Digital to analog conversion is a solved problem, with inexpensive commodity parts. Even if you buy an expensive DAC, the studio gear used to produce the music you listen to has gone through do…

You think they're overpriced, but I bet you no one is getting (very) rich off these $400 DACs. Even more, I think many of them profit so little every once in a while a company pivots or goes out of business. An Audi also has just a couple thousand of extra love worth of physical cost added to it, but the retail price is easily upwards of $20.000 above the equivalent VW car. That's because if you sell fewer units, the…

No one is getting rich off DACs, except for the makers of outrageously overpriced 4- or even 5-figure retail price units. After all, DACs are commodity hardware, boutique devices serve primarily serve as audio jewelry, with no technical benefit.

The DAC I use cost less than $30, yet performs well beyond the limits of human hearing. The DriveRack did have an MSRP around $300 when it was new, but usually $200 on sale, but it does do a whole lot more than a DAC, and the base price level for pro gear is somewhat higher than for consumer gear.

As I said, people focus way too much on electronics, when even basic devices are more than good enough. I don't even have to use the DAC anymore, after I switched to DisplayPort for my monitor, which has a perfectly good analog stereo output. The only reason I keep the Toslink DAC hooked up is pure laziness.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#372

Post by microtherion »

Nordo wrote: post #321
janekm wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably mostly the latter. The headphone adapter with recent iPhones measures remarkably well for such a tiny device: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/what-is-the-sound-quality-of... (scroll down a little for lots of geeky measurements). It's hard for our brain to comprehend that such a tiny gadget can sound so good, so I suspect that accounts for a lot of the perceived difference. Also, some music can sound better w…

I've always wondered if the headphone adapter contains a DAC or if it just acts as a breakout box for a DAC already in the phone. I found some people claiming it does, but none that I can see cite a source for it.

As far as I know, lightning connectors (as opposed to their 30 pin predecessors) carry no analog signals, so the DAC necessarily has to reside in the headphone adapter.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#373

Post by TylerE »

mrob wrote: post #226
TylerE wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Digital transmission/storage ensures the signal is not affected no matter how much noise is on the line (well, as long as it can be transmitted at all...) There is no such thing as a digital transmission. All signals are analog.

Digital transmission refers to the whole transceiver system, not just the transmission medium. If I can put a "1" in and reliably get a "1" out, it doesn't matter that it was only a 0.9 part way down the wire.

But that's the question, isn't it? If 0.0001% of the time you get 0.45v instead of 0.9v on the far end, now what?

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#374

Post by jonsen »

hwillis wrote: post #356
jonsen wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power from the grid is AC. It falls to zero a hundred times a second.

Sure, but it doesnt depend on the load. Two different kinds of voltage variance.

It does depend on the load. The grid voltage is transformed to a lower suitable voltage. The transformer has an inner resistance as a battery has.

The AC voltage is rectified and smoothed with a relatively big capacitor. There is a ripple in the DC voltage because the AC can only charge the capacitor in the part of the AC cycle when the varying voltage is higher than the voltage level on the capacitor. If you charge an equal size capacitor from a big battery there will be ripple due to the inner resistance of the battery, but much less ripple because the battery voltage is always higher than the capacitor voltage. Other things equal the battery will give a smoother DC to the amplifier.

Anyway ripple is not the problem in question here. The problem is various noise from the grid finding its way through the transformer and further into the amplifier. There is very little noise from a battery compared to the grid.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#375

Post by jmalicki »

Udik wrote: post #279
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wine might be a better comparison (at least a Rolls and a Toyota look different). Many could tell the difference pretty well between a $5 and $20 bottle (hint: the $20 one is the one not loaded with sugar), but not a whole lot of people can tell the difference between a $20 bottle and a $200 bottle. The law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty quick with both wine and audio. I think with audio once you’re in over a…

> difference pretty well between a $5 and $20 bottle (hint: the $20 one is the one not loaded with sugar) Wine loaded with sugar??? AFAIK, in a dry wine all the sugar is converted to alcohol- even in the case it's been added before the fermentation, which is still pretty rare, at least in major wine producing countries. That is definitely not the difference between a $5 and $20 bottle of wine (in Italy you can still…

It also depends on the wine... The difference between a typical $10 bottle of pinot noir and a better $30 bottle is like night and day... But most varieties aren't as delicate and hard to make, so the differences get way more subtle.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#376

Post by jmalicki »

kalleboo wrote: post #210
baddox wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously don’t spend $1000 on a normal passive HDMI cable, but I’ve found that increasingly the all-or-nothing argument doesn’t work for some reason. I recently had to upgrade all my HDMI cables to get 4k HDR video working reliably. Before upgrading, the video would work, but I would occasionally see white “sparkles” on the video output. Googling this problem led me to many people recommending upgrading HDMI cables…

Certainly there are bad cables, and sparkles are clear signal dropouts. The description of that cable though, says Perfect-Surface Technology applied to extreme-purity silver provides unprecedented clarity and dynamic contrast . An HDMI cable can not affect the "clarity" or contrast of the image or audio it carries. It can just succeed or fail (and failure results in obvious pixel noise, not some overall lowering of…

All cables have some probabilistic failure of corruption, it isn't binary. It's the same as what going from 5 9s in your application to 7 9s, which involves a huge cost with distributed databases multiple data centers etc. etc... For most people it's a waste, but if you really value not having the occasional white speck, it could be worth a better cable, which may cost a lot more to recover design costs of making a cable very few will want to buy.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#377

Post by jmalicki »

nathanlied wrote: post #134
rubito wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

huh, besides the BS, isn't the file loaded into RAM first anyway?

You know what's next - sell audiophile-grade RAM. Gold-plate everything.

It's called ECC... And I happily pay for it.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#378

Post by computerex »

x100vc wrote: post #311
hansjorg wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They were students and as such did not dare to question authority or were afraid to make a fool of themselves.

What's your basis for making this silly assertion? These were Oenology students. It's not like they pulled random students off campus.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#379

Post by gerdesj »

Izmaki wrote: post #307
gerdesj wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hire an electrician. While you are at it, get them to do a quick inspection of the rest of the 'leccy stuff at your home. Throw away any power bricks/wall warts/devices whose name you cannot pronounce easily or can't even read. Clear the fluff out from behind your fridge. Fire is no joke and given the EMI in your place I suggest you take it seriously. I'm not suggesting that fire hazards are exacerbated by EMI but th…

I live in an apartment with little or no connected ground. We had weird laws once that allowed electricians to cut corners which they did. If its serious, I could try to convince the landlord... Hmm...

That does not sound too good. I doubt that the weird laws allowed outright dangerous practice but you never know. I don't know your landlord (obvs!) but you are probably keener on your own well being than they are.

Please get some advice: blow a few quid (bucks, whatever) on a sparky. If you have a friend who knows what they are on about then bribe them to come over and cast an eye over things.

Just to re-iterate the point: it is not normal for your bathroom light to cause a USB (bus) to crash in another room.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#380

Post by sigi45 »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #95
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"…

Whatever your basic statement was, it's proven valid. Tremendous how much you can discuss it in such a wide small area. AD, wine, Jitter ...

:-)

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