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audiophile capacitor replacement

L

Laurence Taylor

Jan 1, 1970
0
4s00th said:
Careful what you say ... before you know it, bo0by&crawler & jimbo0b
riske will be accusing you of molesting CD's and old record albums,
maybe you started off with a cassette or 8-track ....

Nah. NAB carts.

--

rgds
LAurence

...."Bother, not done yet" said Pooh, as he turned Piglet on the spit.
---*TagZilla 0.059* http://tagzilla.mozdev.org
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
The real dispute is whether two point or four point barbed wire is best
for speakers. Full discussion at http://www.tinaja.com/glib/marcia.pdf

At high currents, ballpark 100 amps for the wire sizes here, you can
get some very strange effects from using ferrous wires. They can
magnetize and saturate, and create a lot of crossover-type distortion.

Is barbed wire available in beryllium copper? Stainless? Gold plated?

John
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
Because they figure that some other people will be dumb enough to be
impressed?

Well, I can't really argue this, because the only #30 WW wire I've seen
(tefzel, kynar, whatever) is touted as "OFHC Copper". I guess the question
boils down to, if it's just wire-wrap wire, who cares?

Like, Audiophools don't wire-wrap, and wire-wrappers are more concerned
with strays, so why even bother?
Do you think these boutique 5-nines, OFHC cable people really refine
their own copper?

Oh, of course not. They just buy it from a copper refiner that can
come up with a paper trail. I'm just wondering why, if I want to buy
some 12/3 Romex, they don't specify "OFHC", but when I buy #30 WW
wire, they do.

Oh, well. Who knows what's in the headbone of the marketing types? ;-)
Some, but not enough to hear.


Of course, John! None of these differences is enough to hear! I'm just
jumping on the "bash the audiophools" bandwagon. ;-)

I wonder how much audiophools would pay for #9AWG Litz wire. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
The real dispute is whether two point or four point barbed wire is best
for speakers. Full discussion at http://www.tinaja.com/glib/marcia.pdf

At high currents, ballpark 100 amps for the wire sizes here, you can
get some very strange effects from using ferrous wires. They can
magnetize and saturate, and create a lot of crossover-type distortion.

Is barbed wire available in beryllium copper? Stainless? Gold plated?
[/QUOTE]

Oh, come on! Everybody knows the barbs form corona discharges! Most people
feel that that really imparts a harsh sound, although some might like the
side effects. ;-)

Cheers
Rich
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Jan 1, 1970
0
D said:
The Low Oxygen Monster Cable guy is probably in the sun right now
sipping on sambuca and getting a back massage from some DD bikini
babe.. :)
D from BC


They need "Low oxygen listening rooms". Maybe 1%.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Jan 1, 1970
0
Low oxygen copper is supposed to be extremely flexible. That's about
it. Better sound? Hardly.

Monster just had a layoff. I think they are off-shoring more product.

I don't bash Monster too much since their claims were never as
outlandish as the rest of the wire bandits. Also, the basic Monster
cables (i.e. bottom of the line) are a notch above the cheap-o stuff.
The Monster phono plugs are much tighter than the schlock stuff. The
Monster strain reliefs are better too.

The worse ripoff had to be that Tice power line tweaker. I think it was
just a digital clock. However, it made the electrons sound better. ;-)


I NEVER buy wire that doesn't have the gauge marked on the wire, and
on the spool.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
H

Homer J Simpson

Jan 1, 1970
0
AUDIO UPDATE



Testing the testers: Another exceptional paper from the 91st AES convention



By LARRY KLEIN in Radio Electronics June 1992.



Conventional listening tests have always been problematical for dedicated
audiophiles. By "conventional," I mean tests posing as scientific with such
methods as double-blind techniques, careful controls, statistical analysis,
and instant switching with precise level equalization. The editors of The
Absolute Sound, Stereophile, and other non-mainstream audio publications
believe that those techniques obscure the sound quality differences that
they hear so easily when listening under relaxed conditions, i.e., where an
audio component is listened to for hours, days, or even weeks to evaluate
its sound quality, and then its sound is compared to that of a reference
component under similar listening conditions. If quality differences heard
during this long term audiophile testing fail to appear under the tightly
controlled "quick-switch" procedures, then, in their view, the purportedly
rigorous scientific procedures (espoused by people such as myself) must be
somehow flawed and thus terribly misleading.



Incidentally, it's worth pointing out that the contention between the two
opposing camps seldom is reduced to determining which of two amplifiers
sounds better Instead, the argument is usually about whether properly
operating modern amplifiers sound alike or different. If, as claimed by most
audiophiles, carefully performed switching tests based on double blind
techniques (in which neither the tester nor the listener know the identity
of the components being compared) are of dubious value, it's important that
those involved in new-product and new-technology evaluations know that their
tools are flawed. David L. Clark, of ABX fame, discusses these matters and
more in the Audio Engineering Society preprint.



Ten Years of ABX Testing [David L. Clark (3167 K-1)]



About ten years ago, David Clark and his associates invented the ABX switch,
a sophisticated component that enables a listener to do double-blind
listening evaluations without the need for a second or third party to handle
the random switching involved. The ABX switch automatically charts a
listener's judgment about whether component A or B is the same as X, which
might be A or B in a given trial series. At the end of the test series, the
number of correct decisions is given.



When it became available, Clark and his associates thought that the ABX
comparator would be a powerful tool for determining, once and for all,
whether small differences in components such as power amplifiers are audible
and commonly heard. However, the debate raged on as though the ABX device
were never invented. When the ABX comparator confirmed that audiophile
listeners consistently fail to identify components on a basis of sounds that
they thought they heard, the audiophiles were not embarrassed. Most
convinced themselves that they heard those differences clearly under normal,
not test, listening conditions.



Audiophiles offered two explanations for their failure to discern acoustic
differences during ABX testing:

(l)The switching relays and connectors used in the ABX switch introduce
artifacts that somehow mask the differences, and

(2) short term, quick-switched listening does not permit differences that
are readily apparent on typical long-term audiophile testing. In other
words, the stress induced by a rigorous test de-sensitizes the listener and
impairs his ability to hear differences that are apparent under more relaxed
circumstances.



Clark set out to test the reality of the explanations and excuses. Two
audiophile societies participated: The Audiophile Society (TAS), consisting
mostly of true believers in high-end audio equipment and Clark's group, the
South-eastern Michigan Woofer and Tweeter Marching Society (SMWTMS) who
tended to be rationalists.



The test consisted of the insertion/non-insertion of a black box non-linear
circuit that injected 2.5% harmonic distortion into the signal path. Two
sets of tests were planned for each group. One employed the ABX switch for
the typical quick-switch procedures preferred by the "scientific" audio
group, while the other called for the long-term listening preferred by the
high-end, everything-sounds-different crowd.



As might have been predicted, the "golden ears" of the TAS group refused to
have the signal passed through the ABX comparator, and instead used a much
slower, manually plugged 16-trial comparison test with a very expensive
high-end system familiar to most of them. The SMWTMS group listened in an
unfamiliar room to an unfamiliar sound system.



Double-blind black boxes



The second part of the test attempted to set up the long-term, relaxed
listening situation favored by high-end audiophiles. Ten sealed black boxes
were distributed double-blind to at least 16 members of each group. Half of
the boxes contained the distortion circuit; the others were simply bypass
circuits. Participants were instructed to patch their black boxes into the
tape loops of their home preamplifiers and listen for as long as necessary
to decide whether or not the black box was neutral.



No one in either group was able to distinguish the distorting box from the
non-distorting box reliably in long-term listening on a home system.
Moreover, no one in the TAS group could identify reliably the distorting
black box in the manually patched series of relatively quick trials.
However, with the ABX comparator, the SMWTMS group was able to differentiate
between the distorting and non-distorting black boxes within 45 minutes. And
they went on to perform just as well with the black box at even lower
distortion levels!



This, to my mind, constitutes an ultimate rebuttal to those who claim that
long-term listening is required for detecting differences, and that instant
switching with boxes such as the ABX comparator somehow masks acoustic
differences. To repeat: the Audiophile Society failed to detect the 2.5%
total harmonic distortion (THD) under its preferred listening conditions. By
contrast, the SMWTMS group, using the ABX switch, detected the distortion
quickly and, later, at even lower levels.



Those who have been involved with ABX testing agree that the reason for the
high sensitivity of the ABX procedure is the ease and speed of the
comparison, which enables one to focus on the detection task. Dependence on
one's memory of what one thinks one heard— interrupted by juggling cables
while switching components—obviously does not make for reliability in
evaluating components, despite audiophile claims to the contrary.



Final note



People I consider to be fuzzy minded, non-technical elitists are not the
only ones who believe that rigorous double-blind testing obscures small
audible differences under non-test conditions. When Clark was chairman of an
AES Workshop on Esoteric Audio in 1988, he asked the audience to indicate by
a show of hands whether they believed that different modern gain-matched
power amplifiers sounded different from each other (it was assumed that all
of the amplifiers would measure up well in conventional testing, and be
operated within their ratings.)



Approximately 70% of the AES audience indicated that they thought the
amplifiers would probably sound different! Along with Clark, I find that
result disheartening, especially in light of all the carefully controlled
tests and studies that have failed to show that such audible differences
exist.



R-E
 
T

Tim Wescott

Jan 1, 1970
0
Homer said:
AUDIO UPDATE
-- rational, scientific bull-hookey snipped --
Tube amplifiers sound better because the Bible says so.

If you don't believe me, give me a few hours of quality time with my New
International Translation -- I'll find some verses that back up my position.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google? See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" came out in April.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html
 
D

D from BC

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ohhh.....David Clark...I actually met that guy...
[Insert slanderous ranting here....]
D from BC
 
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