I did something interesting yesterday and went one step further today to verify and check the extent of the issue...
I have for years used custom music players - either Intel or ARM based, and galvanic isolation of the USB 2.0 etc..
With custom music players it is completely rebuilt PSUs with 100.000uF pluss added capacity, high quality capacitors etc..
Linux and MPD I have modified and compiled and tweaked.
Yesterday I connected up a completely standard hardware linux system, but with my own tweaked linux and MPD - also without galvanic isolation of USB 2.0.
Very much of the 3D, depth and bass was gone...
And it sounded more harsh and really uninteresting.
I had to turn up volume by at least 6dB to be able to get a slight feeling of how it should sound.
I then let it play during the night and checked again today.
No changes.
Then I took the tuning advices from one of the popular linux / mpd distros - reconfigured and rebooted.
The first issue was that it took 10 times as long time to index the music library.
When I started playing I did not believe what I heard first and I had to check with dB SPL measurements.
What happened was that even more of the 3D, depth and bass was gone...
And it now sounded so harsh and "digital" I nearly cannot remember my setup have sounded so bad.
Now I had to turn up the volume another 6dB to get the very slightest feeling how it should sound, but then the dB level was simply to high and my 1 Watt amplifiers would have needed 100 Watt or more to be able to play so loud over time..
One thing is certain:
With a standard PC and standard tweaked software I could have used steel cables with PVC insulation as I would not have heard any differences..
Tomorrow I will start changing the linux and MPD settings back to my own tweaked setup for minimum CPU usage and minimum IRQ usage etc..
Then I will change the PSU to a linear PSU with JFET regulators, and of course add galvanic isolation again.
However I now understand those
that claims that there is no differences 😱
Ray, gotta be careful - others may end up also on that slippery slide of discovering that things matter, if too many people mention 'dangerous concepts' ... 😉
I don't subscribe to most audiophool beliefs these days, such as digital always being harsh, silver cables sound bright etc. so I am immune from these things, protected by the spirits of Oliver Heaviside, Isaac newton and a few others, plus I have tamed a herd of Maxwell's demons that form an invisible barrier around my sanity to ward of the voices in my head saying cables do matter, buy a green felt tip pen, power cords have more influence on sound than do speakers, throw out your physics books it all a myth. so I am protected from your attempts at mind control.
Good write up Ray, this is the snake oil thread after all🙂
Good write up Ray, this is the snake oil thread after all🙂
Marce, you have earned eternal damnation for your heritical ideas and will never reach audio nirvana. Enjoy the music!
I know "things" matter, but it was a frightening experience to (re)discover the importance of the source. **** in = **** out are true.
The fun part of this was when I tweaked the settings in a way that are called "tuning" by the linux MPD tweakers.
Tuning it was alright - but to a sterile and completely uninteresting sound quality that totally destroys the enjoyment.
I am now resetting the software settings back to my own settings and expect that the sound quality then will be partly restored again.
Tomorrow the new an improved PSU will be ready.
Then it will be time for the gold USB cables etc.. 😀
Seems that you may well have made yourself vunerable to the ooooso smoooth no-snakeoil, only measured results officially accepted, DDBDT brigade.😉
Only direct to ear will do that. (-:
99% of all "audiophile" recordings have been artistically/electronically tampered, sullied, raped, violated and thrashed at the microphones and at the mixing board in ways you can't imagine long before they ever find their way to a mechanical cutting lathe, which is unfortunally and most certainly the most audibly degrading step of all. Besides the other audibly degrading part which is variation in individual pressings of course, not to mention that each stamping degrades the master. Ahhh the pure analog quality and limited dynamics of vinyl how I miss thee. 😱
My major gripe about so called audiophile recordings is the often poor choice of music, players, etc. Too often they sound somewhat false / unauthentic when compared with better recordings from the 60s through 70s.
I have recordings made - back in those decades - of choral music which used a single C24 mike suspended above the choir. The music is still palpable and very authentic.... I was present at the recording session of one of these records.
A couple of audiophile types who I have visited have no worthwhile knowledge of music and their library is small and comprises their old student days albums and expensive modern recordings of over produced third rate music.
I have recordings made - back in those decades - of choral music which used a single C24 mike suspended above the choir. The music is still palpable and very authentic.... I was present at the recording session of one of these records.
A couple of audiophile types who I have visited have no worthwhile knowledge of music and their library is small and comprises their old student days albums and expensive modern recordings of over produced third rate music.
Some of my best (most authentic and realistic) sounding recordings are recorded 1960 pluss minus 5 years. 1963 was a very good year..
And I can second the fact that way to many of the "audiophiles" often have very limited libraries and ...
I have possibly to much in my libraries and I have CD´s, SACD´s, DVD´s and LP´s that I never have had time to listen to, and some are even not opened, and I have duplicates - specially of LP´s I enjoy so I in 2050 can play my favorite music from a virgin LP and a virgin pickup designed and made nearly 100 years previously..
There is a smooth continuum of cause and effect in play, no singularities apart from those in people's heads. Just because dumb explanations or ways to do things exist, doesn't discredit the behaviour or mechanism - those human reactions are merely a way of dealing with them.
An old car won't start ... the wife goes through a funny ritual every morning in order to get it going - the mechanically inclined husband laughs at the nonsense she performs - yet, in the sequence of steps she uses there is a key combination of actions and timing, which triggers the malignant part of the engine to momentarily work well enough to get the job done -- she can now drive to work ...
😀 You would not know 😀
The 600 kilo "stereo rack" will be placed in a room with over 8000 kilo marble (floors and walls), and the room itself are a over 100.000 kilo construction.
And placed in an area with extremely low noise, no subsonic noise from heavy machinery or airplanes etc.
This is only the new combined office / music room and the building of new real music "room" started two years ago and may be finished in two or three years time...
Last edited:
Fas42,
What on earth does any of that have to do with anything within the bounds of this thread - or site? With a degree of natural reluctance I have to agree with SY when he brands you as a troll.
What on earth does any of that have to do with anything within the bounds of this thread - or site? With a degree of natural reluctance I have to agree with SY when he brands you as a troll.
We're talking about snake oil: expensive, seemingly nonsensical ways of improving audio quality. I agree that the money aspect taints the game badly - but because there is an air of absurdity about the device or method of making an improvement, that shouldn't blind one to the possibility of there being "something in it" - the good engineer, or scientist, stops laughing at "the fools" and says, right, let's try and really understand what's going on here ...
I fall in that category Ray....now if he had simply used those two lines there would not have been so many trees.🙂
I used the car analogy, because the outcome was pretty clear: the engine started ...
All the kerfuffle here is because one lot say, "Prove to us that the engine started! We want oodles and oddles of data documenting precisely in what way, and how going was the engine going, when you claim that the engine was going!!" And the other lot say, "Well, if he heard the engine going, and saw the car disappearing down the street, that's acceptable to me ..."
Now, if I said something like "Well, I changed the midrange driver from plastic to paper construction type - or vice versa - and the sound quality improved considerably ..." - this is very Politically Correct ... and wouldn't have caused the tiniest ripple in the great lake of audio sensibilities ...
All the kerfuffle here is because one lot say, "Prove to us that the engine started! We want oodles and oddles of data documenting precisely in what way, and how going was the engine going, when you claim that the engine was going!!" And the other lot say, "Well, if he heard the engine going, and saw the car disappearing down the street, that's acceptable to me ..."
Now, if I said something like "Well, I changed the midrange driver from plastic to paper construction type - or vice versa - and the sound quality improved considerably ..." - this is very Politically Correct ... and wouldn't have caused the tiniest ripple in the great lake of audio sensibilities ...
Plenty of old analog recordings stand up to sota digital recordings. Around the late 50s analog recording gear was well up to diminishing return land. At the master tape, but not beyond it. We never had a chance to heae how great they were till sucessfuly transferred and distributed digitally. Now
that's a fact Jack (-:
that's a fact Jack (-:
Last edited:
- Status
- Not open for further replies.