Not necessarily. In fact, we are in a golden age of well-engineered and less expensive devices, from DACs to amplifiers to headphones and IEMs. Good speakers tend to be a bit pricier simply due to the masses needed to damp out vibration modes, larger magnets, and so on, but there are fantastic speakers at relatively low prices as well. Sites…
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When Compact Discs were invented they encoded analog music using 16 bits of resolution at a sample rate of 44.1 kHz. A rate of 44.1 kHz gives the Nyquist frequency of 22.05 kHz (half the sample rate) and supports unaliased reproduction of frequencies from 0 to the Nyquist frequency. 22.05 kHz covers the hearable frequency range of human beings. As…
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A streamer is a device that gets digital audio streams from an online or local source and passes them on to a DAC. There are many devices that combine the streamer with a built-in DAC and then output just the analog signal for input to an amplifier or pre-amplifier. We will call these streamer-DACs. If they also have a power…
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It’s a very common complaint that sites that focus on measuring the frequency reponses of DACs, amplifiers, speakers, and headphones don’t fully capture the capabilities of human hearing. This goes to the heart of the “subjective vs. objective” debate with subjectivists arguing that only by listening to equipment can audiophiles really understand if it is good or bad for their…
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This is a rather sophisticated topic that is based on a cool research paper from 2013 that examined human hearing. In our cochlea there may be shapes that allow for nonlinear processing of audio. If this is the case, so the hypothesis goes, then linear systems of measurement like Fourier Analysis may not be able to measure audio to the…
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Some audiophiles claim that if one replaces the stock fuses on their audio devices with what are referred to as “slow fuses” that their equipment will better be able to handle the current surges needed due to the dynamics of music. “Fast fuses” pop easily in this line of thinking while slow fuses let short surges of current pass through.…
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Here’s a curious idea: if your device has an unpolarized plug for it, is there any point to turn it over and trying it in the other orientation? It seems unlikely, but some claim it may eliminate interference! Here’s a resource that discusses the issue: https://www.eetimes.com/the-myth-of-the-neutral-wire In other words, there may be some truth to this, though it is not…
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There are many cables that cost tens of thousands of dollars out there. The manufacturers talk about quantum properties of single-crystal copper and other mystifying ideas. It’s almost all poppycock (that’s a technical term, really!) Cables serve important roles in audio reproduction systems, from passing digital data from streamers to DACs, to carrying higher voltage and current audio signals to…
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Many audiophiles fret that the power to their equipment is noisy and distorted. The thinking is that if the power in is of poor quality, the music produced by the equipment is of poor quality too. To remedy this, the ‘phile might buy an expensive power conditioner or regenerator that is essentially a special power supply that modifies the mains…
