Recent content by 0bs3rv3r

If you get 96dB from 1mW from your phones then you don't need many milliwatts for a very loud sound. You are going to get somewhere between 6.7 and 30mW from that amp, so you have plenty.

- and indeed they do. What they have designed in, is sufficient for most cases. It will be the rare situation where someone has power that is so bad that it needs to be reconditioned for use.

Having spent a lot of time listening to and tweaking big idler drives, my comment on wow & flutter is that it only needs to be better than a certain amount. That amount for me is somewhere under 0.2%. By measuring the speed variations directly, rather than the pitch variations in playback...

I don't know if it was real or not. The point was it was different to my expectations

Right, but again, that was not the point. I replied to the statement "If you spend the $ and do all the work to get that amp percolating like new, your expectation bias and (near) human brain is going to make you hear a huge improvement in the sound no matter the reality. ;) Win Win Win."...

Yes, I agree, but my reply was intended to refute that positive expectation bias is always the case. My expectation was for zero change. Instead I not only heard a change, but I liked the change. My expectation, remember, was that it would sound the same. The outcome, probably imagined, was...

How about when I replaced some coupling caps with a different type, hoping to prove it makes no difference, but instead, got a big surprise? The change was quite noticeable. Whether it was an "improvement" only measurement would show (is the response flatter?) or personal preference may dictate.

Maybe there is more data to be added. I don't see my little Fiio E10K, yet it was reviewed/compared here https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-and-measurements-of-jdslabs-odac-rev-b-compared-to-fiio-e10k.2068/

Totally agree. However, this being so, it also indicates that replacing new capacitors with better quality new caps can also make a system sound different, even better. Just as a deteriorated cap will measure and sound different in some instance, so too new caps with different construction and...

You could go for the tube version of an IC. There were tubes with multiple elements. One such had a triode and 2 output pentodes - a power amp in one glass "IC". https://www.radiomuseum.org/tubes/tube_ecll800.html

Wrong term. Tubes just need to warm up, and it only takes a minute or so. Once operating temperature is reached, no further "burn-in" is required for them to sound good. On the other hand, some report a change in character to the sound after some hours use. It's all a bit nebulous as to...

Maybe the AV terminology is now best. 1.0 mono 2.0 two-channel - stereo 2.1 adding a sub 5.1.2 five channel, sub, and two height channels https://www.bigpicturebigsound.com/What-Does-5-1-2-or-7-1-4-Mean-for-Surround-Sound-Speakers-Dolby-Atmos-and-DTS-X.shtml

Yes but like most true magic, you have to mix the ingredients in the potion in the correct proportions. Just measuring how full the bowl is at the end will not guarantee the spell will work. ;)

re: distortion - Pretty much my expectations as well, as I was saying above.

Just reports and impressions I have read, posted by others who have built or bought systems using them. Also, when you consider the small fraction of a high voltage triode's curves you actually use for small signal amplification. and the inherent linearity because it is only a small fraction...