A hifi bargain...

I have done it many times. Try the ABX comparator with the castenets sound files and then tell me you can't pick the difference! :-)

Trevor.

What rubbish, you are about 20 years behind the times with that comment. My USB ADC/DAC can do better than 118dB S/N below DFS on loopback, and less than 0.002% THD. (And for the record, there are internal PCI cards that do just as well also) Easily better than CD is capable of.

Time you bought something better then. Go to a pro audio shop, or look on the net. They are not that expensive for two channels now.

Trevor.

You are generalising (and are correct up to a point) while Trevor Wilson claimed a *very specific* example where bad speaker impedance problems can require suitable low inductance cables to work properly. Either you can't read or simply like arguing at a tangent. Mind you, I think TW was simply confirming the general rule by pointing out a few limited exceptions :-)

Trevor.

"Trevor"

** The AR11 and the original Quad ESL57 are among your "very few".

FYI:

The AR11 dips to 2ohms between 4kHz and 11kHz.

The ESL57 dips to 1.8 ohms around 17kHz.

A friend had stacked ESL57s, using low inductance ( ie 144 strand woven ) cables with them made a HUGE audible difference compared to even 4sq.mm conductor twin cable.

Nope. Your arguments were fine until you trotted this out with ALWAYS. You could have easily gotten away with MOST, but not all are affected.

In any case, age has SFA to do with the argument.

"Trevor Wilson"

*** More than a couple...

*** An audiogram is NOT a response curve !!!!! ---------------------------------------------------

Several posters have made the really dopey error of equating audiograms showing " hearing loss " - as defined by audiologists - with frequency response and refuse to be corrected on the point.

Audiologists concentrate on finding the **faintest sound** a person can hear at a given frequency, which has no relevance to what the same person CAN easily hear when listening to music - live or reproduced at realistic levels.

Take look at the famous equal loudness curves by Fletcher-Munson et alia:

Firstly, it shows that the just audible threshold at 20Hz is 70dB SPL !!

At 10kHz, the threshold is around 10dB SPL, for a young person.

So, if an older person had a measured 40dB loss at 10kHz - all that means is their threshold is now at 50dB SPL.

Such a person would perceive high frequencies perfectly well for reproduced music played above a background level.

.... Phil

Well mine easily made 20kHz when I was 20, (sure wish it did now) and I once had a girlfriend who could do that at 30. I don't think it's all that exceptional.

Trevor.

Pity about all the people reporting that very issue online right now then.

My

Both my PC and laptop introduce a lot of background noise. Mileage may vary I suppose.

Then there's this:

Gotta keep those vibrations and resonances out of one's digital cables.

Sylvia.

Indeed. Your $29 inkjet printer might throw its colour balance out with any lesser cable.

Gotta love the shoddy heatshrink job on the second image (don't they know you have to keep the heat gun moving?), along with the Brother/Dymo labeller-printed sleeves. Did they run out of trained monkeys?

--
Bob Milutinovic 
Cognicom

3m for $1,695 though and what a bargain with the free shipping!

Quantum purified!

But what is inside V1?

In Dutch, but scroll down to see the pics...

(Please tell me nobody is so stupid to buy into this nonsense)

Just what I need for my DAC. I always suspected the USB cable I'm using was affecting the sound quality

Then they are 20 years behind as well, so what? Some of them weren't born at the time so have an excuse.

As I said, time you got a better one then.

Trevor.

If you are selling snake oil after all, you don't spend money on refining the oil to a very high standard!

Trevor.

Unfortunately some are, but far worse is they also vote! That's why we have the politicians we do :-(

Trevor.

Why do I not see this problem crop up very often (if at all) on StereoNet after all these years?

What a bizarre statement that USB DACs are notoriously noisy :) I've owned two and neither were the slightest bit noisy. These people Clocky speaks of must buy absolute crap, I don't have any other explanation for it.

Yes it does. 99.99% of aged people (and a lot of them before age 30) have hearing loss to the point where the cable choices are completely irrelevant as they can no longer hear the frequencies that are affected

- assuming they ever could.

Okay, show me some real numbers and not figures from the nether region.

The real problem is that most people never heard decent speakers to hear good one to hear the detail. Now it is all artificil anyway.

At one stage, every kid was getting a good, but freq detailed, hearing test at school. No idea if that still happens . So there would have been figures to show what percentage.

The problem isn't the USB DAC, it's the ground noise. USB doesn't provide much ground isolation, so the noise level you get depends on a lot of things apart from how good your sound card is.