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Cheap to Audiophile with Simple Hacks
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."
Build some cheap speakers to go along with the player http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/Debertin/spbuild.htm
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Yay, electronic ricers.
Done and done! I'm there!
Nooo, you need MONSTER CABLES for the best quality! Aahhh, your signal!!
When we look at gadget porn our technolust is bust. Well, what does regular porn bust?
Wow, an audiophile article from the IEEE. Next thing you know, we'll have witch doctors contributing to the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
CD is bad enough as it is for audio quality, the fault isnt the player but the technology itself
20-20k just doesnt cut it, hence studios still use 48/96khz DAT for mastering or 192khz HD
at the end of the day if the mastering (CD or studio) is crap, no amount of polish will fix it
thats why people who work in pro studios laugh at audiophiles, ever wonder why studios dont use audiophile equipment ? its got nothing to do with price and everything to do with snake oil
All you need is a small budget, a soldering iron and a desire to void your warranty.
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...
I'd like to see him put this stuff on the scope before and after each of these changes. That way we could get an idea of what he means by a 'dramatic improvement'. I can see the op-amp changes and the power supply upgrades helping a lot... However I have a hard time believing that he would be able to demonstrate a difference in the analog output with some reference tones by, say, buffering the crystal from vibration on a standard scope. I'm sceptical he can hear the jitter too. Even cheap clocks these days are pretty damned good once everything warms up.
The spooky looking man from TFA looks like he wants to offer me ice cream, not show me cool stuff on moding a DVD player...yikes...
:
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Please allow me to hate the creator of the 120-character limit: *HATES*. Thank you.
I dunno, my time is too valuable to bother doing the upgrade myself. Better just to buy the high-end at 10x the price and save 100x in the cost of my time.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
That is the first real 'Audiophile' tweaks article I have ever seen. It actually detailed real changes you can make to improve the sound of your equipment.
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!
I grabbed one of those $35 "5.1 surround sound" speaker systems from Wal-Mart. They only accept a stereo input, and just kind of mix in the surrounds, center, and sub. So I popped it open and ran the numbers on the chips inside, locating the 6-channel volume control IC. I discovered that if I ran an audio signal directly to the inputs on the chip, it bypassed the stereo upmix. A few wires and drilled holes later, I had actual surround sound for my computer. Not gonna say it's the greatest sounding setup ever, but it was cheap.
This article is basically an advert for LC Audio (whose own stuff doesn't look anything special - look at the ringing on the scope trace of their wunderkind clock oscillator), mixed in with the usual audiophile crap (where's the blind A/B comparison?) with a healthy dose of stupidity; anyone advocating replacing safety-rated components on the mains side with unrated "audiophile" grade parts deserves to be sued by the first idiot who burns his house to the ground. The mains is a hostile environment, those components are designed to fail open-circuit for a REASON!
Jon.
"If you want the full 5.1 sound experience ("point one" is the subwoofer), you'll need to address all 6 channels." I gotta say, if you don't know what the .1 is in 5.1, you probably won't be noticing any of the improvements that this article promises. Classic case of not knowing your audience.
Man, this is racy stuff. When I read the first line:
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
...now I know the purpose of my EE degree.
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!"
...Gaurenteed oxygen free, is the only material to make speaker wires from; unless youre really high end, and buy the solid gold, 4AWG, rope lay, speaker wires. ...And if you have that kind of discerning ear, and money to back it, have I got a system to sell you... ..and some really good swamp, I mean, lakefront property to sell...
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Many low-end computers a la Dell have motherboards that also appear in high-end systems. Not all of them have those premium motherboards, so you have to search a little. The trick is to replace components such as supply, graphics card etc. with high-end equivalents. Also works particularly well if you buy a used HP/ IBM/Sun workstation at eBay and upgrade it to today's standards. A quality machine for a fraction of the price.
My $35 DVD player has a digital (coaxial) output, and my PS2 has an digital (optical) output (but, the laser is blown and it can't play disks with even the smallest scratches). Why mess with the electronics inside when you can get the audio data right off the disk into your system?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
No, this has only been noticed by Anonymous Coward.
case in point
High end audiophiles will squak. Meridian's G98 costs $6k (review), the Lexicon RT20 is $5k, an Ayre costs $6k, and the Arcam FMJ 29 (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 (about $600) (review) 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 difference, you've never had the pleasure of good quality sound. A wide, three dimensional sound stage with clear separation of instruments and fine detail puts a smile on your face. Being able to get that for much less than above (and have the second pleasure of do it yourself) is well worth it.
.. Of electronics I buy; the main amp in my car I bought for ~$150, put in ~$50 in better transistors, and a few critical resistors, and have a really nice amp, until it overheats. The watercooling project is next, I guess.
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...
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Right, so basically I should first get a $30 manual, then replace all the caps with $50 ones, and change the RCA jacks with gold-plated ones?
I am pretty sure that if one conducts double blind tests there will be no difference.
This crap is a lot like the monster cable crap I used to here--to use a *high quality* cable for the toslink digital jack. I mean, I could use my coat hanger instead and still make the bits pass. All BS.
... "vibration-induced clock jitter"? Get to fuck...
A signal which comes out cleaner on the scope, up to a certain point, will also sound better to the human hear, but past that point, it just comes down to preference. This is why studio engineers often add "color" to a song, and why some audiophiles still swear by vaccum tubes. The vaccum tubes don't produce anywhere near a flat frequency response through the 20kHz range, but instead color it in a way that people describe as "warm."
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.
But can he tell me how to build a filter to add distortion so it sounds like the "sweet, sweet" sound of a $20,000 tube amplifier?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Don't most people hook their DVD players up to their receivers using either an optical or a coaxial digital cable? Why would changing anything in the dvd player make any kind of difference in the sound quality if all the player is doing is passing along a digital bitstream to the receiver?
...couldn't you just use a cheap ups that cleans up the output?
The clock is in the DAC, not the player.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I don't know how widespread they are, but they definitely crop up in the wild on audio gear. The (now aged) Cambridge Audio DACMagic II I'm listening to has BNC for inputs and digital pass-through, as well as XLR and RCA outputs. It was only a couple of hundred dollars a few years back.
Of course the BNCs have little adapters hanging off them to RCA, because nothing else (audio) I own has BNC connections...
Audiophiles believe in paranormal phenomena that cannot be verified by any scientific process.
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.
go take an equalizer and throw the values at all kinds of levels. congested quickly becomes a decent adjective for what you'll hear at some settings. describing sound is a little like describing color, except you can show color on the internet and in print but you can't do sound without being live and thus you must use goofy words to describe what you hear.
http://www.brentcastle.com
Does any of this article apply if you use the optical out and have some other component decode the stream?
Does anyone still use the analog audio outputs on DVD players? I know some high end players have good decoders in them- but I've always heard that its better to buy your DVD player based solely upon the video quality, and use optical out to a quality receiver since sinking more money in a DVD player isn't going to improve the sound of other components going to your receiver, but a better receiver will improve all components?
Build their own drivers too, not just stick a set in a homebuilt box.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Then [after making modifications] spin a disk on auto-repeat for a day or two to "burn-in" the unit; the sound will surely improve during burn-in.
And I also hear the sound-enhancing fairy named Audiophile will visit during that time.
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. [bla bla bla]
In all likelihood, you'll agree that the project was well worth the effort. Maybe it was even a learning experience.
After spending a few hours of your time, you probably will want to feel it was worth the effort. A real learning experience would be to then run an A/B/X test and show how many of these enhancements you're imagining. Swinging over to the Hydrogen Audio listening tests forum would be a start.
It's like having a slow program, finding code that you think is a cause, making changes, but never measuring the actual difference the changes make.
Warning: Non work-safe.
Gadget porn
What's the point of upgrading the current generation of dvd player when it can't output HDTV anyway. These things will be gone and forgotten in two years.
Audiophiles are the best example of the placebo effect. Just ask John Vestman...
Two other engineers (in session with me) heard the sound change when we raised the client's computer off the floor with soft isolation pads. The only thing that changed was what the computer was sitting on. We found that setting the computer on a hardwood floor made the sound more immediate and crisp, compared with setting it on soft isolators. On the floor, the snare sounded punchier, the kic more immediate, and the overall sound was tighter. A solid platform is even better when vibration isolators are used - and you'll be amazed at the difference a great power cable makes too
http://www.johnvestman.com/digital_myth.htm . Some other hilarious examples of audiophile stupidity can be found on his site.
And of course you need a $200 power cord plugged into a $2 power bar! http://nautiluspro.com/power_cords.htm
Not really, colors are very accuratly defined by wavelength, mixtures of colors in print are accuratly defined by their dithering pattern (or how ever the color was created), and when doing proffesional level work, even variations caused by different brands of monitors is accounted for.
This all is worth squat to the average person though, who cannot really tell if his or her monitor is not properly color calibrated, nor do they care.
Likewise for sound, unless something has been compressed so much that it sounds like it is under water, no one much cares.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Placebo effect. The only way you can "feel" vinyl is when the excruciating pops and clicks hurt your ears. Vinyl is lower quality than CD. YFI. YHL. FOAD.
1. Take your computer, make sure it's on a UPS, so you won't have to worry about voltage problems.
2. Purchase (and install) decent sound card
- This means pretty much any sound card that is a. over $50 and b. has never been anywhere near creative labs. (I don't even trust em if they're too close to the soundblasters on the shelf, some of the creative labs aura might infect the card)
3. Plug computer into stereo system.
Excellent sound has been achieved.
And I mean that a literal sense.
What a good idea this is! Heh....he's right you know, they really DO save on every component they can when producing these low-end devices.
The good thing is that you can do this with other devices too - not just DVD players and such.
I'm quite happy about this Slashdot post as it has sparked me into something I really didn't think about. To me - IT SHOULD have been obvious as I have my own little private "electronics-lab" with all the trimmings a geek ever could wish for.
And yet it's all collecting dust. Time to dust off those Digital-Scope's, frequency counters, voltage meters & precision inductivity/condensator testers.
Btw folks - you can get HEAPS of CHEAP electronic-components from surplus sales
on EBAY. It's a goldmine!
Oh...and make sure you brush up upon those soldering skills
plus --> When you do this - remember - SAFETY FIRST!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Using the wavelength to describe a color to a blind person wouldn't go very far would it. Its like describing sound in text. Very difficult to relay without using completely unrelated words.
http://www.brentcastle.com
1) For something as subjective as viewing paintings and sculpture, I find it interesting that everyone here is trying to bash people for trying to increase the quality of sound in their stereo. One reason may just be a generational problem where modifications were much more apparent in equipment 30-50 years ago. 2) I also find it funny that everyone is bashing the audiophiles when only a few stories below is about a guy who memorized >80k digits of PI (far less useful than modifiying stereo gear). Just so you know how relevant 80k digits of pi is: "If one were to find the circumference of a circle the size of the known universe, requiring that the circumference be accurate to within the radius of one proton only 39 decimal places of Pi would be necessary."
http://www.brentcastle.com
In the end, get another brand-new player and someone to help you double-blind test it. And please, broadcast it live on the net.
I wouldn't think their use were limited to DVDs. I've assumed and often been abandoned dead or old CD-ROM drives whereof the previous owners have wanted DVD capability upgrades. It's a great episode of salvage rights! I took an old servo from a CD-ROM drive and made a centrifuge out of it. With another servo from a CD-ROM drive, I've been trying to build a turn-table so I can use a diamond blade on a submerses pane of glass to grind it to a convex lens for a telescope project, with poor success thus far. In many other projects, I used the CD-ROM drive housing for breadboard enclosures. Also, I don't need to buy variable potentiometers and LEDs anymore, but that's about all you can pull from them. I save plastic inside them to melt it down with a injection moulder i am slowly learning to build.
without prejudice
Any info on how to build a high end audiophile turntable?
This is not an engineering hack, this is the same trap all the tweako audio magazines fall into. Sure it sounds better after he spend a hundred bucks and a few hours of his time... show me the measurements and I'll believe it wasn't an emotionally influenced subjective improvement.
You describe the color of sound as warm? I think your senses are a bit messed up there. (sorry, Google reports only 13 hits for "synaestesia support group", and none of them seem to be a synaestesia support group)
When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
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 enough technically and least costly. The key is "good enough", though for what? The subsequent discussion on audio and video quality just indicates that the player is working as it should. As to distortion, there is only the subjective opinion that the cymbals don't sound as clear as they should, but there is no further indication of whether this comes from the player or the amplifier chain following.
Then the discussion proceeds to take apart and redo the power supply... Not components in the signal path, but the power supply. A switching power supply that is powered direct from the mains, with X and/or Y-rated capacitors and inductors in the power entrance, and a somewhat carefully orchestrated feedback loop that causes its components to oscillate and generate the correct DC voltages for the electronics. Apparently, (and fortunately) most of the really important components are surface-mount and thus not amenable to this kind of tinkering. The argument goes on that this more "stiff" power is needed for more accurate bass-response. Hello? this isn't a 30 Watt tube-amplifier we are talking about here, where such an argument might hold, but something that puts out a few tens of milliwatts of power into maybe 600 Ohms at the most. Unless the power supply is pathologically feeble, this is really just -- marketing-speak, to use a polite term.
However, even if putting in larger filter electrolytic capacitors might be harmless, the replacement of the X-rated capacitor with an "Auricap" which is evidently NOT X-rated, sounds dodgy, as in potential fire hazard. The Auricaps seem to be marketed as non-electrolytic replacements for electrolytic capacitors in the signal path, and might do a fine job here, but we're not expecting any of our precious signal to enter the mains are we?
The fact that there is an X-rated capacitor there at all and not just a cheaper one, is that this is sitting across the mains voltage, and has to conform to specific requirements from the UL, CSA, TUV and so on, lest they refuse to List or certify the equipment for sale. And probably more important, that the component fails safe and does not start a fire.
Googling for "aurocaps" shows several sites catering to the same merry lot who depends on "oxygen-free" cables, and praise the virtues of the gold-plated RCA connectors... There is a reason why professional kit uses XLR or BNC connectors, or even 1/4inch jacks by the way, and it has to do with mechanical and electrical stability and shielding, not any magic properties of gold or nickel that makes one good and the other bad.
It goes on about replacing more of the bypass capacitors in the digital processing section, and mentions the possibility of clock jitter. Technically correct. But no quantitative information, no measurements done on a distortion analyzer or even a picture of the signal on an oscilloscope. Just all this non-scientific hand-waving that if we put in more expensive capacitors the sound will be better.
Finally, op-amps and possible replacements. Again, the observation is that the amplifiers are low cost, and obviously we could put in better and more expensive ones. Low cost is not the same as crummy; had the manufacturer put in really bad ones, everyone would have heard. Again, it is a matter of good enough, though the only parameter that might make a difference would be the noise of the amplifier. Unless they are really atrocious (with obvious effects on sales), gain and slew-rate would not matter, except for marketing purposes.
My guess for what might constitute the perceived "improvement" in this case, is that the frequency response of the audio chain has changed, boosting the higher frequencies, and thus made the modified unit appear to sound better.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
That's not really true.
Firstly, in a correctly designed circuit, valves will have a very flat frequency response. There are some restrictions on the top end due to grid-to-plate capacitance, but you can get round them.
Any colouration is normally due to audio transformers (only really used in valve circuits) or microphonics.
The reason that valve circuits sound 'warmer' than transistor ones is that they are often very simple and clean. Typical solid state circuits have many more gain stages and suffer from opamp related artifacts like crossover distortion.
It's the lack of this harshness that makes valve circuits sound 'warmer', not euphonic distortion. The whole 'valves are warmer' thing started when the first transistor amplifiers came out, which sounded undeniably bad. Things have got a lot better since then.
(I'm talking about valve studio equipment designed for accurate reproduction and being used within it's headroom here, not fuzz boxes. It's quite possible to build very dirty sounding valve equipment if that is what you require.)
"cheap DVD" to "DivX DVD".
Or how about "Cheap-TV to VGA-monitor cable".
I know, I know, it's an excellent article, but there are some of us who always want more.
"All you need is a small budget, a soldering iron and a desire to void your warranty."
No problem there.. I always have small budgets in stock!
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
There are no reliable sources for such things and you can't improve your audio gear without being hopelessly ripped off. Of course, you could look up the place where the 15-years-in-the-PA-business guy works. Tell him you're interested in gear with BNC connectors! Afterwards you can criticize eachother behind eachother's backs.
...wasn't TFA itself but its link to the Troubleshooting and Repair of Small Household Appliances and Power Tools FAQ. Good stuff there.
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
If I was writing jokes, I couldn't make anything this funny.
Of course, I have to admit, I hate AC power with "restrictions".
So, if this guy has you hacking your power supply to clean it up. Why not just put a device in front of the PS to provide cleaner power to the equipment? If you clean up the feed to the inputs, they might send better signals to the AMP, but the AMP is going to muddy them up when they are sent to the speakers.
m l
p
You could go high end... and spend thousands.. and http://www.richardgrayspowercompany.com/index2.ht
or you could go to Circuit City/Good Guys and pick up something more mainstream for much less. http://www.monstercable.com/power/lineRefPower.as
The vaccum tubes don't produce anywhere near a flat frequency response through the 20kHz range, but instead color it in a way that people describe as "warm."
Nonsense. A properly-designed vacuum tube audio amplifier can easily provide flat frequency response out to 20 kHz and beyond.
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.
"Why don't you interface with my ass...by biting it!" -Bender B. Rodriguez
The Samsung DVD-HD841 does NOT have an HDMI output (I wish it did), only a DVI out.
when the warranty expires for a gadget, an average joe would be like, "shoot, i need to be more careful now". when the warranty expires for a gadget, a geek would be like, "sweet! i get to take it apart now!"
HD Trailers
That's because you can't spell synaesthesia.
I am trolling
For God's sake there are children reading - must we discuss audiophillia on slashdot??
audiophile, n: Someone who listens to the equipment instead of the music.
while (!asleep()) sheep++
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Robert McNeice is a business and information-technology consultant for the financial services industry. He is an audiophile and occasional tweaker.
I believe this explains everything. It is good to know that he only occasionally tweaks.
Lindsay Blanton
RadioReference.com
Rip EVERY single last wire out and replace with silver wire (or, if you can't find that, then use silver coated oxygen free wire), replace all of the capacitors with polypropylene, silver mica, or paper caps (use only 10% or lower tolerance caps). Replace all resistors with 1% tolerance, zero capacitance mil-spec pieces (they cost a dime each at most electronic surplus stores).
What you just bought for $125 or so on E-Bay, along with $30-$40 in parts, with a few hours of soldering work will give a MacIntosh amp a run for the money.
See if you can find the pentode-triode modification online or in a VERY old "Glass-Tube Audio" magazine and convert the first stage tubes to triode operation instead of Pentode, and it will DEFINATELY keep pace with amps selling for up to $2,500 or so. (my modded amp's power output is essentially flat from 15hz -> 80Khz with only a 3db rolloff at 100Khz)
If you are a dyed in the wool audiophile who likes the "vintage" look, then you might want to consider a project like this.
It's a lot of fun for only a couple of hundred bucks, and it will sound like it's worth thousands.
The frequencies higher than 20kHz affect the timbre of the frequencies below 20kHz by interference. A hard filter at 20kHz changes the tonality of the sound. While a crossovers rolls off a given dB amount per octive, a CD recording is a hard filter since it cannot reproduce a sound greater than 20kHz.
Also, while the average human can't hear much above 18kHz or so as pitch, the ears and brain perceive higher frequencies as directional information. Similarily frequencies below 20Hz aren't perceived as pitch, but they are felt via light touch, touch, pressure and my favorite pain and those lower frequencies affect the subjective perception of sound.
If you are using digital signals for audio or video you only have to worry about one power supply, the reciever.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
"Hey, let's go find some Fembots and void their warranties."
If you condiser a UPS, they come in several flavors. The best ones provide a clean analouge (sp?) power signal out from batteries. Cheaper ones provide a digital output.
Think of it this way AC power is a sine wave that is supposed to peak and trough at the same level every time. As long as the frequency and voltage are correct - that's all the end user cares about. A good (aka expensive) UPS is about like this:
AC/WALL -> convert to DC -> Battery (DC Sink)
Battery (DC Resiviour) -> Convert to AC -> Equipment
Less expensive UPS designes do not convert to the true sine waves, but simply provide peak and trough levels when the wave goes from positive to negative. Good enough for Servers, not so good for (some) Sterios.
In any case, most sterios have their own DC sinks called CAPICITORS that provide power for the componants after the Sterio's POWER SUPPLY provides "digital shit" as in DC power to the sterio's innards.
now rinse and repeat
"ascetics can be important"
Thats bloody inhumane..making speakers out of monks.
Ascetic:A person who renounces material comforts and leads a life of austere self-discipline, especially as an act of religious devotion.
I think the word you were looking for was Aesthetics
Next time just use "looks" maybe?
A signal which comes out cleaner on the scope, up to a certain point, will also sound better to the human hear, but past that point, it just comes down to preference. [...] 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.
Er, wha?
When I listen to a recording of a violin on my audio system, I want it to sound like a violin I hear at a concert -- you know, out there in the real world. That's what audiophiles aim for.
I suppose there are people who say "Gee, the music I'm listening to sounds *too much* like the real thing -- I should tweak it some so it sounds 'warmer' (whatever that means)".
I don't know what these people have to do with real audiophilia, though. I would guess they don't get out much...
Here, seeing the scope output is useless, because the only important this is whether you like the resulting sound output.
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.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
It seems rather unlikely that companies I've never heard of would have factories producing better parts than Panasonic, Sanyo, etc.
Panasonic and Sanyo produce parts on mass production lines, and do so within financial constraints. Actually Sanyo does make a very good capacitor that is well known in audio circles - they even use OFC copper for leads.
(My guess is that these companies just relabel parts from name-brand manufacturers.)
Some do. I know for a time one well known audiophile brand was having their parts made by Illinois Capacitor company - ever heard of them? They also make capacitors that get rebranded by other big names... like those ones you just mentioned.
The parts are still made to specifications determined by the customer. Solen and other companies like this specify certain materials companies like Sprague and CVX would not. They are able to do this because their customers will pay the extra money for the better part. Imgine that, a free market economy... some people!
The bit where he said "Each brand affects the sound in slightly different ways" actually made me laugh out loud.
Then you should spend more time listening to music rather than listening to yourself laugh. I started learning analog design before I even got out of High School and was one of those "by the numbers know-it-alls" - until one day I listened to a preamp that had been removed of all ceramic caps. Thirty years ago Jung and Marsh published several scientifically sound articles on this subject even providing robust test for mechanisms that contribute to sound quality. Today many of these tests are standard part of most capacitor manufacturer's QA program.
One thing that surprised me is that he didn't mention the possibility of using a different kind of capacitor to achieve higher capacitance, where he was talking about "fit in the highest valued capacitor in the space provided." The last few years have given us all kinds of interesting high-valued capacitors, like tantalum caps, aerogel caps, etc.
Aerogel caps have their own limitations - like transient current handling. Tantalum caps have been around since about the damn of electronics and they REALLY have issues, most notable being typically high DA and DF numbers. A capacitor with high delectric absorption and high ESR and/or inductance is meaningless - it's a "numbers race" and the futility of that path was (thankfully) well proven in the eighties.
- 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.If you're going to build speakers, might as well build your own DIY cat5 speaker cables...
http://www.venhaus1.com/diycatfivecables.html
Reminds me of the Matrix bastardization on detonate.net.
"How can you void my warranty just because I know who Kyle Bennett is?"
-Tim
lol, thanks. It's not my first language, and my first attempt had three hits on google. 13 was more, so I stopped looking for a better way to spell... Your suggestion upped it to 41,000.
When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
some cheap players to beat the quality of some expensive "audiophile" *cough* *cough* units.
I remember a $75 Marantz CD player having MUCH better specs than a $25,000 Meridian.
The Meridian looked cheap and nasty to the eye and the price tag held NOTHING but an empty reputation.
Lots of audiophile targetted equipment is severely over priced and yet audiophile mags give them wonderful reviews, but with nothing but subjective opinion and meaningless remarks like "fluid" and "warm".
On a side note, I wonder if the days of truely high quality gear, like the Pioneer M-91 power amp, are over? Because I don't see the sorts of numbers it offered.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
On the producer side, there are proven, standard, engineering-based ways to get good quality sound: balanced audio; XLR jacks; good but not exotic components; reference speakers under-driven by high-power amps. All the really difficult stuff is done on the producer side - think of a large audio mixer where you must avoid cross-talk between many signals, avoid hum, etc, etc. And that's without mentioning all the work that's done in the digital domain. Mostly, the environments are setup with clarity and objectivity in mind.
On the consumer side, all you have to do is decode the CD, amplify the signal, and reproduce it through speakers. As someone who's spent a lot of time in studios and making music, I know good quality sound and I've heard many audiophiles demo their tweaked systems and frankly they were often very expensive ways to achieve 'pleasing' or 'musical' third harmonic distortion. Fine, if that's what you like but it's clearly subjective.
The article referenced exemplifies the voodoo approach as the difference between a cheapo CD and a well-engineered (but not voodoo-exotic) unit will be apparent in things like attention to ground planes, circuit routing to minimise crosstalk, etc. Swapping a few components isn't going to rectify any shortcomings of poor engineering.
There's an anecdote about the Quad company (who have always held good engineering principles to be paramount) attending a hi-fi show and receiving many queries about their 'exotic' speaker inter-connects. This amused them as it was nothing more than orange exterior mains cable from the local DIY store. A little common sense goes a long way in the world of audio!
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
Most "cheap" consumer UPSs that I've come in contact with don't provide line conditioning. All they do is quickly switch on if the voltage gets too high or too low, but they don't run constantly providing a "clean" source of power.
This is the funniest thing I've ever read on Slashdot. Why isn't this +5?
... Its batteries all the way for me. Yea you have to recharge them but its power is super silky smooth.
As a guy who designs SMPS for living, I call bullshit.
No reasonable SMPS feedback loop exists that goes up to 1MHz. In fact things work usually quite fine on 2-5kHz range, assuming you have a current-controlled design. Voltage controlled designs need more bandwith to deliver worse results, but these also rarely go beyond more than 50kHz or so.
At the base level, you cannot approach switching frequency without suffering. Old rule of thumb used to be 1/5th of the switching frequency but with modern SMPS capable of 1MHz operation it would become 200kHz which is, to put it mildly, problematic.
You're asking for a lot of trouble (instability) for little or nonexistent gain on step load response. Output capacitor and the chip-level bypass caps are responsible for smoothing out digital spikes, it's not a job for the feedback loop which is responsible for keeping the output voltage level steady on a given load level.
Actually it doesn't. Unless you have a nice FFT software to go with it to analyze various parasitic noise peaks etc. And you're performing the measurement in a Faraday cage.
The Panasonic FC series caps are good, but beetter is the FM line, much tighter in specs and handles much higher ripple current while producing less heat.
Almost all the same values are available in the FM line except for 2700uF and a couple others.
I use them to re-build motherboards that have blown caps due to using that bogus electrolyte formula from a while back.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.