It's obvious nobody takes this clown seriously.
Don't respond to his senseless posts; he'll soon tire of talking to himself.
Hopefully
:-)
Don't respond to his senseless posts; he'll soon tire of talking to himself.
Hopefully
:-)
World's best Pre-amp for $10K and above?
Hmm! I was just using caps as an example. I was referring to everything that goes into a final product. Customers don't just buy a design but a finished product that is built from a group of SELECTED parts. Just the fact you chose solder, wire, transformer, cap, tube socket, fuse ... A over B, you are essentially voicing the final product. I've spoken to many "competent" designers and they prefer point to point wiring in that it's easier to test different parts to archieve the desire sound. |
I always chuckle when I read these posts comparing a smaller system to a healthy one. I suppose a $42k system could out perform a $200K system, but only if the $200K system was not properly setup and synergised. Kind of like saying your Yugo out performed a Porshe on a test track, but forgot to mention the Porshe had a flat tire and was driven by someone who had never operated a motor vehicle before. |
Solder: use a eutectic type to avoid bad solderjoints- pay attention to the alloys as they have different uses depending on the connection. IOW there is no one best solder for all solderjoints, but this is an engineering issue, not a matter of taste. If you find yourself disagreeing, I advise you to take a NASA soldering class or the like. Wire: different types of wire have different applications and of course there is always a quality issue. However if you know what you are doing you can spec the correct wire for the application in such a way that one would be hard pressed to find a better wire. The wire you might use in a hand-wired high impedance application will be very different from a speaker connection. IOW, this is an engineering issue. Transformers: We don't use output transformers so I will limit this to power transformers, but the quality here is important as customers don't like noisy parts and they have to hold up and not get too hot. Not surprisingly if the transformer is under-specked it can affect the sound... This is an engineering issue. Caps: Many audiophiles will be amazed to learn that electrolytics can perform as well as good quality film caps; this has entirely to do with how well the designer understands the characteristics of the part (many don't.). Similarly, such understanding applies to film caps as well, for example what characteristics will work the best in an EQ circuit. A good cap will have good specs- you can see which one will sound better as a result. Certain principles are poorly understood; for example in coupling caps its a super bad idea to bypass a large cap with a smaller one (smearing occurs) but we see this all the time. IOW, this is all engineering. I can go one but I hope that my point was made by the simple use of the word 'competent'. To put this another way, I spec V-Cap Teflons in our designs and did not have to audition them to know they would work fine (it was obvious from the specs), and this was proven in the results. If you know your engineering, you don't have to 'voice' (not saying that you don't verify your results either- that smacks of incompetence as well). Do I make myself clear? Voicing speaks to the designer not understanding the materials, swapping things in hoping for a decent outcome. My recommendation is to pay attention in class when you are at the university, however I hope its not a great shock to find out that a lot of designers didn't go to engineering school. BTW since it was missed by some in a prior post I am only speaking to amps and preamps- definitely not speakers. Speakers can be a bit of an art, and there is the issue of how the amp and speaker interface, and the intentions of the designer. For more on this see: http://www.atma-sphere.com/Resources/Paradigms_in_Amplifier_Design.php |