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Olympic Mathlete
Feb 25, 2011

:h:

If I lived far away from neighbours to avoid noise complaints my livingroom would be a temple to the cone.

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Zemyla
Aug 6, 2008

I'll take her off your hands. Pleasure doing business with you!
I use $1 earbuds. The cord wears out in about a month, maybe two, but it was $1.

Palladium
May 8, 2012

Very Good
✔️✔️✔️✔️
Last time, It's clearly unfair that $350 DAC lost, because it's pitted against the evil, soulless Behringer $80 Chinesium-made crap when far more worthy and painstakingly handcrafted products exist. Which is why the $2000 DAC is here, to bring you far worse distortion artifacts than the $350 "entry-level" model to unleash the fullness of your Diana Krall/test tones and your hard-earned money to the sucker economy.

And something tells me that particular reviewer will find it pretty hard to source gear for testing soon.

Palladium fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Aug 5, 2017

A Lone Girl Flier
Sep 29, 2009

This post is dedicated to all those who fell by the forums, for nothing is wasted, and every apparent failure is but a challenge to others.
People often ask me what's the cheapest way to improve their stereo's sound. I tell them to clean it and listen. The psychology of sound is pretty powerful.

And if that doesn't work just turn it up.

Pile Of Garbage
May 28, 2007



Zemyla posted:

I use $1 earbuds. The cord wears out in about a month, maybe two, but it was $1.

:same:

Panty Saluter
Jan 17, 2004

Making learning fun!

Waldo P Barnstormer posted:

People often ask me what's the cheapest way to improve their stereo's sound. I tell them to clean it and listen. The psychology of sound is pretty powerful.

And if that doesn't work just turn it up.

That's the best advice. Turn up the volume until you hear static, then back it off slightly :v:

DancingShade
Jul 26, 2007

by Fluffdaddy

(and can't post for 25 days!)

Obviously the best way to improve your stereo sound is to use this special cable massage oil I'll sell you to gently massage into the RCA cables that smooths out the harshness and lets the pureness of the music come forth.

*pours bottle of diluted hand wash into expensive looking glass bottle with fancy label, adds a couple drops of cheap perfume from the two dollar store*

That'll be five hundred dollars.

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

According to one caller on the legendary Meriradio (:rip:) you can improve the sound of your radio by sticking the aerial up your bum.

It might be true :shrug:

ColdPie
Jun 9, 2006

Goon project: convince an audiophile to try that and post a review.

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


Palladium posted:

Last time, It's clearly unfair that $350 DAC lost, because it's pitted against the evil, soulless Behringer $80 Chinesium-made crap when far more worthy and painstakingly handcrafted products exist. Which is why the $2000 DAC is here, to bring you far worse distortion artifacts than the $350 "entry-level" model to unleash the fullness of your Diana Krall/test tones and your hard-earned money to the sucker economy.

And something tells me that particular reviewer will find it pretty hard to source gear for testing soon.

These people, while good intententioned, have a poor grasp of math and it's bothering me.

DancingShade
Jul 26, 2007

by Fluffdaddy

(and can't post for 25 days!)

ColdPie posted:

Goon project: convince an audiophile to try that and post a review.

I like this idea.

You could talk about core body temperature being anally measured for absolute accuracy, therefore the lower intestine is the perfect place to park your blue tooth antenna for your wireless headphones using your skin as a natural filter to remove harmonic disturbances.

Speleothing
May 6, 2008

Spare batteries are pretty key.

Jerry Cotton posted:

I'm pulling this number out of my bum but I will be very surprised if someone can prove I'm wrong: about 100% of people are very happy with sub-30€ speakers/headphones for their computer (there's a lot of people with computers and speakers, and the models that seem to run out the quickest are the 29,90€ sets on sale).

30-60 freedom dollars is probably the top selling price point for new 2.0 & 2.1 speakers by several orders of magnitude. But people seem to be willing to drop more on headphones so I left that a little more open.

qirex
Feb 15, 2001

The Absolute Sound remains a primo source of audiophile entertainment


"The control consoles are 45-pound enclosures housing the network along with unique adjustments that allow you to tune the cable to your system. This tuning has nothing to do with tonal balance, but rather with a dynamic verve in different parts of the frequency range. Beyond esoteric and justifiable in only the highest of high-end systems, the ACC268 delivers a sound quality that is unmatched"

It's an $80,000 cable

Mr. Funny Pants
Apr 9, 2001

Ridicule audiophiles: Our Verve is Dynamic

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!

quote:

Rather, the articulation control seemed to increase the textural density through the particular frequency band affected by the control (one control each for bass, midrange, and treble). That is, increasing the articulation rendered tone color with a greater timbral richness and solidity. Concomitantly, the sound had a greater dynamic verve and alacrity that made whatever speaker I was listening through sound faster and more “horn-like.”
What the gently caress.

KozmoNaut
Apr 23, 2008

Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle


It's a super expensive tone control.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


That is the silliest word salad I've seen in quite some time.

coolskull
Nov 11, 2007

you know it's the good poo poo when they lead their promo blurb with weight.

qirex
Feb 15, 2001

MIT is up there at the pinnacle of bullshit, from their name so people associate it with the school to the guy's carefully selected word salad

I challenge anyone to attempt to extract any meaning from this

quote:

As with any passive network, cables contain both resistive and reactive components. This creates resonances and anti-resonances in the cable. A series resonance is when the reactive components cancel each other. At the resonant frequency the complex impedance will be quite low. This series resonance doesn’t impede the signal flow in a cable. An anti-resonance, however, is formed when the reactive components add together to form a highly complex impedance. This “parallel resonance” does impede signal flow in the cable.

It’s generally assumed that the electrical bandwidth of an audio system should be ten times greater than the audio bandwidth. That is, the electronic components should operate out to at least 200kHz. So, what are the first issues that cause distortion when a cable doesn’t work well within that band of frequencies? Cables suffer from a parasitic series resonance at frequencies below about 1.5kHz and from parallel resonances at higher frequencies, determined by the values of the inductance and capacitance. The cable doesn’t function as an ideal inductor. All audio products act as low-pass filters. Cables without networked terminations function as a lossy low-pass filter because of this parasitic capacitance as well as shunt capacitance. The vector seen at the input terminals of an audio signal-carrying cable should be an inductive vector at all frequencies and at all power levels.

We can correct for the parasitic and shunt capacitance by adding reactive components in the network that will offset these effects.

A conventional [non-networked] cable will also operate in a “bi-stable” state. State analysis shows that a system can work in three states—stable, astable, and bi-stable. A cable carrying a low signal level will function in a bi-stable state because of the parasitic capacitance within and between the individual conductors, which when twisted or coiled together form the inductor of the cable. The low-level signal must overcome this parasitic capacitance before it can pass current (the audio signal). So the cable shifts between a capacitive element and an inductive element many times per second because of the audio signal’s varying amplitude. The cable must carry sufficient current to overcome the parasitic capacitance. That makes the cable bi-stable.

During the time it takes for the cable to shift from being astable to stable, the low-level signal carried by the cable is turned into noise. We call this “analog jitter.” Removing analog jitter is one of the reasons why MIT cables have such a black background and have such good low-level detail. The result is proper timbre, transparency, soundstage size, and point-point location of images. No jitter equals no noise component.

Think of a cable carrying two tones of the same frequency, but one is very high in level and the other very low in level. With MIT cable the low-level signals remain intact and are not converted into noise, and are sent in-phase with the high-level signal. Also, the harmonics of the low-level tone are transported in time within the complex tone’s envelope.

All of this describes the technologies I’ve developed over the years: “2C3D,” “JFA” and “JFA-2” (“Jiiter-Free Analog”), and “SIT” (“Stable Image Technology”). SIT means that the image of the instrument or voice won’t move within the soundstage.

The circuit elements in our networks are “time invariant.” That means the relationship between the input and output signals doesn’t change over time. The system should not respond differently to the same input signal at different times.

We have a whole range of impedance analyzers that we’ve bought over the years. We can increase or decrease the applied voltage and measure the impedance with varying power levels at any frequency. This allows us to fully characterize any capacitive or inductive component we use in any given cable. MIT is the only cable manufacturer that quantifies the performance of the products.
"Analog jitter" :psypop:

pzy
Feb 20, 2004

Da Boom!
parasitic series resonance ruined music for me

metallicaeg
Nov 28, 2005

Evil Red Wings Owner Wario Lemieux Steals Stanley Cup
It wasn't until these $80k cables that I realized what I was missing out on. All this time my low level frequencies were just noise until now.

Thanks, MIT

bigman.50grand
Mar 31, 2007
no
Stick a fork in that power outlet. Feel that? That's the analog jitter.

Lowness 72
Jul 19, 2006
BUTTS LOL

Jade Ear Joe

bigman.50grand posted:

Stick a fork in that power outlet. Feel that? That's the analog jitter.

You can smooth out that jitter you feel with some vanadium plated ultra fork tines. I sell them on my website. $20k each.

qirex
Feb 15, 2001

Someone should sell LSD as an "audio enhancement supplement" for like $200 a pop.

grack
Jan 10, 2012

COACH TOTORO SAY REFEREE CAN BANISH WHISTLE TO LAND OF WIND AND GHOSTS!

qirex posted:

MIT is up there at the pinnacle of bullshit, from their name so people associate it with the school to the guy's carefully selected word salad

I challenge anyone to attempt to extract any meaning from this

"Analog jitter" :psypop:

Good loving christ that's.... interesting.

Panty Saluter
Jan 17, 2004

Making learning fun!

qirex posted:

MIT is up there at the pinnacle of bullshit, from their name so people associate it with the school to the guy's carefully selected word salad

I challenge anyone to attempt to extract any meaning from this

"Analog jitter" :psypop:

Well in the old days of analog phone service you would get echoes on long distance. So if your analog interconnects are several miles long I guess you might call that jitter of a sort :v:

KozmoNaut
Apr 23, 2008

Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle


LOVE LOVE SKELETON posted:

you know it's the good poo poo when they lead their promo blurb with weight.

Good amplifiers used to be very heavy, due to heatsinks and such.

Audiophiles are cargo culting that onto everything else.

Speleothing
May 6, 2008

Spare batteries are pretty key.

qirex posted:

Someone should sell LSD as an "audio enhancement supplement" for like $200 a pop.

Hey now, that might actually work.
And if it the product actually works, then the user might gently caress up and make his set sound worse instead of feeling that sweet sweet placebo.


quote:

1 out of 5 stars
Started great, very rich tones and perfect base, laughed at the lyrics like it was the first time listening. But then I got stuck in a time loop and watched myself grow old.

Speleothing fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Aug 18, 2017

GonadTheBallbarian
Jul 23, 2007


poo poo you just know someone is going to make an audiophile :420: strain

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

GonadTheBallbarian posted:

poo poo you just know someone is going to make an audiophile :420: strain

Bong feel.

Olympic Mathlete
Feb 25, 2011

:h:

GonadTheBallbarian posted:

poo poo you just know someone is going to make an audiophile :420: strain

I'd be amazed if it's not already a thing seeing as there's a whole lot of people who feel the need to use drugs to listen to music at festivals and such.

Also if someone bought your product and gave it a middling review you could just tell them it's because they weren't baked enough and they'd buy more of it...

Palladium
May 8, 2012

Very Good
✔️✔️✔️✔️

KozmoNaut posted:

Good amplifiers used to be very heavy, due to heatsinks and such.

Audiophiles are cargo culting that onto everything else.

The same cargo cult are still fellating over bulky linear power supplies for their DACs even after Benchmark themselves outright said and proved switch-mode PSUs is flat-out superior because the huge expensive transformer in LPSes leak large amounts of magnetic flux that affects the surrounding circuits. All of which is a moot point anyway because who the gently caress is able to hear power supply noise at =< -120dB levels, of course except that Golden Ear aka aging baby boomer guy with HF hearing loss.

EL BROMANCE
Jun 10, 2006

COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬



3 year old review, but this went up on Wat Hifi? yesterday, and has some lovely nonsense inside.

http://www.soundstagexperience.com/index.php/equipment-menu/435-atomic-audio-labs-mac-platform

GonadTheBallbarian
Jul 23, 2007


EL BROMANCE posted:

3 year old review, but this went up on Wat Hifi? yesterday, and has some lovely nonsense inside.

http://www.soundstagexperience.com/index.php/equipment-menu/435-atomic-audio-labs-mac-platform

Thank you for sharing this, I needed an example of this crap to show my younger writers in what NOT to do when you're searching for words to fill content.

metallicaeg
Nov 28, 2005

Evil Red Wings Owner Wario Lemieux Steals Stanley Cup

EL BROMANCE posted:

3 year old review, but this went up on Wat Hifi? yesterday, and has some lovely nonsense inside.

http://www.soundstagexperience.com/index.php/equipment-menu/435-atomic-audio-labs-mac-platform

This in particular is a gem:

I tried heavy mass-loading top weights made of lead shot mixed with RTV (silicone rubber, similar to silicone caulk), solid brass, and lignum vitae (a type of wood so dense it sinks in water). Each changed the sound to some extent. I can’t say that any of them made the sound worse, but they didn’t improve it.

e: I’ve upgraded the Mini’s RAM to 8GB, which should make zero difference, but somehow music sounds just a bit better with the RAM maxed out.

EL BROMANCE
Jun 10, 2006

COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬



Yeah, that RAM line was my favorite too. Incredible. The music just has more room to breathe! :D

Palladium
May 8, 2012

Very Good
✔️✔️✔️✔️

EL BROMANCE posted:

Yeah, that RAM line was my favorite too. Incredible. The music just has more room to breathe! :D

Have you tried the silver SATA cable yet

Alan_Shore
Dec 2, 2004

Does this thread have an open on the Zuper DAC, or anything similar? USB sized DAC a that are reasonably priced that work with phones too?

metallicaeg
Nov 28, 2005

Evil Red Wings Owner Wario Lemieux Steals Stanley Cup

Alan_Shore posted:

Does this thread have an open on the Zuper DAC, or anything similar? USB sized DAC a that are reasonably priced that work with phones too?

For what it's worth, I believe I have the same ESS Sabre chips of the DAC and amp in my laptop, and I quite like the results with 300Ohm Sennheiser headphones.

For $50 or so I don't see why not

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Alan_Shore
Dec 2, 2004

Thanks, that's really helpful! I also just saw on MassDrop that for $15 more they have the Topping TP30 Mark2 https://www.amazon.com/Topping-TP30-MARK2-Headphone-Amplifier/dp/B00J2P9I2A

Any thoughts on which is better? Or something better for the price?

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