I always re-do sound cards anyway...so this might be promising.

I put in my own clocks, I redo the PS for the A/D and D/A chips.and the opamp power supplies, I re-do the PS on the MOBO bus, I redo the processor PS and also re-do the actual power supply.

My current PC power supply has about 100f of polypropylene caps on it. Not just average (solen, etc) ones, either but premium caps.

The case is also custom damped for mechanical and acoustic noise. I can never tell (aurally) if it is on or off.

Those appear to be Nichicon 'thru-hole' full size can capacitors which are specifically designed for the audio business and audio reproduction. They contain no magnetic materials within the capacitor or it's leads,and are not brass type. All copper leads. To some, this makes them sound 'soft'.

To others, the sound of Panasonic brand capacitors sound 'better', ie more 'life' and 'sparkle'. But, it turns out that the leads on the favored Panasonic capacitors are magnetic,and highly so! This brings a phase smear to the high frequencies, that separates them from the main body of the given note structures ..and emphasizes the high frequencies at the same time it obscures detail. This, some feel is 'high end' sound. It sparkles and exaggerates spacial cues. But it kills the body of the subtle bits, harmonics, tails, overtones, blended transients, etc. All killed. It simplifies the note structure for illiterate listeners who simply don't know any better.

Just like ABX and 'blind test' advocates. Shit for brains. They really don't know any better. I'd like to be more kind and 'fair' with their ignorance, but after a while you just get a big hammer out and let them know that their illiterate advances and tirades really need to be tamed down and they should try to put more into hearing subtle differences (when compared to the original signal) and figuring these things out -instead of maintaining their aural illiteracy and continually shoving that shite upon us.

What I'm trying to say without getting too tangential, is that it appears, on first glance, that whomever designed the board and specified the parts--that person knows something about real audio reproduction. Not just another studio and engineering hack, but someone who gives a damn about how things ~REALLY~ sound.

KBK

It simplifies the note structure for illiterate listeners who simply don't know any better.

I used to think Jan was the biggest hifi snob on here, youve eclipsed him by far.

If you are seriously claiming that you can hear a difference between the leads on the caps of a PSU on a PC sound card you are either just joking ( in which case fine ) or you are a seriously disturbed individual !!

Alan

Quote:
KBK

It simplifies the note structure for illiterate listeners who simply don't know any better.

I used to think Jan was the biggest hifi snob on here, youve eclipsed him by far.

I believe he was talking about you, when he mentioned "illiterate listeners". And I know exactly what he's talking about. Those who are impressed by the wrong things, because they don't know what the right things should sound like. I guess you don't realize that by your reactionary (not to mention rude) response, you're only serving to illustrate his point.

Quote:
If you are seriously claiming that you can hear a difference between the leads on the caps of a PSU on a PC sound card you are either just joking ( in which case fine ) or you are a seriously disturbed individual !!

I'm quite sure he's not joking. And that changing the metal used in the leads would probably be bleeding obvious to me, because I can hear a difference just bending the leads of a cap to a degree so minute, you're not really sure you moved anything. The only reason you're reacting this way is because as an "illiterate listener", you haven't evolved to experience anything like this. I think it's safe to say you've never actually tried KBK's experiment, and never would anyway. So to call someone "seriously disturbed" simply because they're far more evolved than you in audio research, is, well, "seriously disturbed".

No doubt the best leads also happen to be the most expensive because they have acoustically correct molecular alignment of the little known atomic partical called " hifibullshitium "

This particle hifibullshitium appears to be only identifiable by people who are involved in the industry and is not noticeable to people who only like music, it only seems to be people who have Krypton like hearing in that they can hear a cap lead change several stages removed from the signal source.

I fully accept that a capacitor in the signal path can have an effect on the audio signal, i can even believe that the leads on said cap could possibly have an effect. However saying that the leads on a PSU cap having an effect is just to far fetched, you have to seperate hifibullsitium from the real world.

Alan

Quote:
No doubt the best leads also happen to be the most expensive because they have acoustically correct molecular alignment of the little known atomic partical called " hifibullshitium "

This particle hifibullshitium appears to be only identifiable by people who are involved in the industry and is not noticeable to people who only like music, it only seems to be people who have Krypton like hearing in that they can hear a cap lead change several stages removed from the signal source.

I fully accept that a capacitor in the signal path can have an effect on the audio signal, i can even believe that the leads on said cap could possibly have an effect. However saying that the leads on a PSU cap having an effect is just to far fetched, you have to seperate hifibullsitium from the real world.

Alan

"The real world". LOL! I like that! Speaking of "hifibullshitium", all you're saying here is reality is defined by your extremely limited understanding of science and "the real world". And even if it wasn't, it would only be limited by what has been "officially observed" before. If you sir had any idea of how many different things have been readily and repeatedly observed by audio researchers, observations that never saw the expense and tribulations of official scrutiny but are considered valuable nevertheless by such researchers, you might know the first thing about audio. And science, because this happens all the time in other fields of research. Only a small percentage of observations in studies ever make it through a peer-reviewed process and succeed to become "official science" (until something even more "official" replaces it). These tend to be things that can make enough money to pay for the process, and profit from the research. Needless to say, just to cite one example, no one's about to profit from the idea that the metal used in the legs of capacitors could influence its sound, and even if they could, no one can own it anyway. But regardless of whether it has official backing by the AES, it makes sense to use the idea if it advances the cause of good sound. All this of course leads to the formation of "bullshit skeptics", who have no experience or knowledge of a particular effect, dismissing it on the basis of that.

Your "hifibullshitium" theory is easily refuted. For I'm just "people who only like music", and I've been able to hear any part with legs, throughout any electronic component, change the sound by the slightest manipulation. And yes, anything that affects the voltage coming in, also affects the signal going out. I have a lot of r espect for researchers like KBK who are trying to advance the state of high end audio. Much more so than I do for those who persist on battling to keep it from progressing. And just because someone doesn't have the expertise required to hear these kinds of changes on an individual scale (if not a collective one), doesn't mean no one does.

In catching up on some threads, the amount of emotional energy in the objective v. subjective philosophies escapes me. Why is it so important? To the objectivists, is it that you are upset that people are selling snakeoil? What about it gets your goat so?

I am going to get some fish for the tank at my office, and doing so will lead me to pay more attention to the tank, do a better job of caring for it, and I will enjoy it more. Certainly the same thing happens in our audio hobby. Why is that a bad thing?

Trey

The reason why its a bad thing is that the elitist high end guys persist with developing the latest fad to justify extreme prices therefore driving the whole market price structure higher.

What people like KBK should be working on is building great sounding hifi at reasonable prices so that the hifi world could enjoy the economies of scale that would come from a bigger market. Instead that are worried about what technical spin they can come up with to justify the high prices they have to charge because only a few people can afford their products.

I do believe that a lot of the disputed things make a big difference, speaker cable being an example. What i have not seen in any way however is that the cost of the speaker cable is directly proportional to its sound quality, at the end of the day we are dealing with an electrical signal and that signal does not care how much the cable or the amplifier cost.

In these economic times we should be aiming development at good reasonable products like NAD, Cambridge Audio, Rega etc and not encouraging the snake oil guys to promote $10,000 speaker wires or $100,000 amplifiers with off the shelf commercial public address transformers in them.

Alan

Quote:
"In these economic times we should be aiming development at good reasonable products like NAD, Cambridge Audio, Rega etc"

Thanks Alan, I of course agree with you as my systems are chock full of Rega, NAD and Denon!

I am still not getting why people get so upset and angry that other people persue perfectionist audio. I also agree with you about diminishing returns on very costly items, but I am not upset that other people want that sort of thing.

Can you help me understand the amount of affect that goes along with these disagreements?

Thanks a lot.

Trey

I am all for good sounding kit at accessible prices. In fact, it was a religion to me when I was growing up in the audio world. Budget hi-fi is great as an introduction to what can be acheived in high resolution audio. Your argument however fails to recognize the evolution of audiophiles. Once the budget hi-fi has been well sampled, many audiophiles wish to progress into the next level of quality, and then the next after that, etc. I suspect KBK's products are well beyond the level of quality where you would find the budget NAD, Cambridge and Rega products (and you should understand that these companies also produce products of a higher level of quality and cost for those who have evolved beyond their budget offerings).

So if one wants to get to higher levels of quality, higher levels of cost are going to be involved, that's an inescapable fact, which has always been, and is seen throughout all fields of interest, not just audio. It doesn't mean because a manufacturer has to charge more for a higher standard that the product is "snake oil", as you are suggesting. The signal doesn't care about the cost of the product it's travelling along. True. I don't know where you get the idea that it's supposed to? It's the listener that needs to care about how the signal is being treated, and it is generally given much better conditions when the quality and design is superior to budget hi-fi. I've always found that most people who decry ie. $10k speaker cables have either never auditioned such, and don't have systems that would justify them. In these economic times, should we all just buy Yugos and put Porsche out of business, because the road doesn't care what car you use to drive on it?

You are of course free to buy a Yugo. Despite the high prices charged for such vehicles, I think a lot of owners are quite happy with their Porsches, thank you very much.

Frog

Your argumant is logical from the car analogy.

The problem is that we are not talking about the same ratio or value proposition. I enjoy hifi that to many is considered very expensive yet to the KBK's of the world it is basic uncivilised product designed for people like me who do not really understand how to listen to hifi.

My system consists of

Marantz TT15 with Clearaudio Maestro
PS Audio GCPH
Esoteric SA-10 SCAD
Anthem 225 Integrated
Dynaudio Focus 220's

My cables are a combination of Synergistic and MIT.

There is a reasonable investment in this level of product and if I was comparing my system to the car world i would say its at the executive level, Merc E class, 5 series etc. This is based on it being to me the upper range of product that is still reasonably priced but gives you pretty much everything you need. To a lot of people my system is overkill and overpriced.

My point is that i have approx $15 k worth of kit, if you take the car analogy again to move from where I am now to say a Porsche 911 or BMW M5, ie something at the ultimate end of the market it would cost me double the level of my current 5 series. However in hifi terms if i doubled my $15k i would have no chance of getting a far superior system, yes i could i could tweak it but to really get a leap i would have to spend $10k + on every stage of my system. In other words it would cost me approx $100,000.

It is this poor level of return that is the basis of all my opinions, why in the hifi world does it cost so much for such a small leap in quality ? you cannot make the argument that it is material cost because im not buying that it costs that much more to make the higher end product.

The simple fact is the extreme price jumps result from a lack of volume sales, if any of the super high end products were mass produced their price would come down by a factor of 10 easily. So I am saying lets concentrate on bringing the high end stuff back to the market, not letting the manufacturers and industry spokespeople ( KBK ) take the market to the price point they want to make their lives easier.

Alan

http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=68249

Alan, I was not picking on you, either directly or indirectly. That's not how I do things. I was simply venting about how things work in the world of personal evolution in understanding how components can alter sonic presentation. When you go after small incremental changes single component by single component (I mean individual parts or components within a given finished design), one will end up with a thorough understanding of how important each component can be and is with regards to the final sum total outcome. The more work put into such an effort the greater the sonic reward.

The reason I'm posting a follow up is that it appears as if the numbnuts at Asus accounting department (as in what happened to 99.9999% of GM cars) got ahold of the thing and killed the quality that the engineers had built in.

Speaking of GM, it was communicated to me that GM was JUST SHY of finally dealing with the tail end of the 100 Billion dollar garbage debt that idiot Roger left them with. Just before GM finally goes clear and can afford to finally design and build any proper new chassis..they get screwed.

Quote:
The reason I'm posting a follow up is that it appears as if the numbnuts at **** accounting department (as in what happened to 99.9999% of GM cars) got ahold of the thing and killed the quality that the engineers had built in.

I'm not going to name any one manufacturer, but the battles I've seen in order to get ONE bypass capacitor into an analog circuit (it's got little enough noise for digital, so it's "OK" supposedly, err, no...) design on a computer were just amazing. Fighting over less than a penny, literally.

Now someone ought to explain how that front-panel connector gets wired. (Those of you who do analog engineering will choke. Please don't spew your keyboards when you find out what it's defined as!!!)

And it's "the standard". No, can't change it, it would mean you'd have to spin a circuit board and spend several more cents on a connector. (It's better that words fail me here.)