The sound of DIP sockets?
I was a little disappointed with the sound of my new Burson V5 opamps. Yes, they were better than the ones they replaced, but not much. And the fully discrete V5s were not really better than the hybrid V5i. Then I discovered, that for some reason there was an extra gold plated DIP socket mounted on the V5s. I removed the extra "gold" socket and mounted the V5 directly in the cheap nickel plated socket, that I had soldered into the PCB (the cheap nickel plated socket was actually bought by mistake).
Surprise, the sound was completely changed. Sound stage had opened up, the finest tremble was there and so on. It was a completely different experience. So do check, that you do not have double sockets on your discrete opamps.
I wonder if the phenomenon is the same, as what you hear when you add gold to a silver cable (Mundorf)? The gold seems to dampen the tremble. Maybe the guilding of the premium sockets does the same to the opamp sound. I don't know, but try to listen for yourself. For me, it is the cheap nickel plated sockets in the future.
I was a little disappointed with the sound of my new Burson V5 opamps. Yes, they were better than the ones they replaced, but not much. And the fully discrete V5s were not really better than the hybrid V5i. Then I discovered, that for some reason there was an extra gold plated DIP socket mounted on the V5s. I removed the extra "gold" socket and mounted the V5 directly in the cheap nickel plated socket, that I had soldered into the PCB (the cheap nickel plated socket was actually bought by mistake).
Surprise, the sound was completely changed. Sound stage had opened up, the finest tremble was there and so on. It was a completely different experience. So do check, that you do not have double sockets on your discrete opamps.
I wonder if the phenomenon is the same, as what you hear when you add gold to a silver cable (Mundorf)? The gold seems to dampen the tremble. Maybe the guilding of the premium sockets does the same to the opamp sound. I don't know, but try to listen for yourself. For me, it is the cheap nickel plated sockets in the future.