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."

Comments

5.1 cheapo

[Solder Fumes]

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.

It's 90% crap

[djpenguin808]

Well, as a trained audio engineer, I have to say this article is interesting, but mostly garbage.

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.