Recent content by johnnyx

Balanced-armature transducers were used in the first telephone handsets, but moving-coil transducers have better performance. To hear YouTube reviewers talk about balanced-armatures in IEMs, you would think they were a great new innovation.

Audiophiles are obsessed with differences, especially regarding which is the best. I have two different systems in two different rooms, and I am struck by how similar they sound

What is the mystery surrounding electrostatic energisers? High voltage power supplies and high voltage amplifiers aren't that mysterious in themselves. Has anyone built their own?

It's 13cm, from the manual, which is still available from the TEAC website.

If your network is used for streaming audio, is another's phone's wifi reception similarly compromised? Does it make a difference that the system is separate from your network?

Disappointing; there's little advantage over Bluetooth. Best to have computers and decent DACs in circuit with the the wireless link.

We have a music collection precisely because our memory for sound is so poor. Otherwise, we would only need to hear a track once, and that would be it.

A case with +/- 32v PSU and neat wiring could be used to house a better amplifier section, and still be cheap. But even so, distortion is still less than 0.1%, which was used as the standard for acceptable distortion for decades.

We know that Class AB amplifiers can demodulate AM RF signals applied to the speaker terminals, but I suspect that Class D amplifiers would not suffer in the same way - they have an output filter with a capacitor directly across the speaker wires.

Years ago, I had an apartment next to a "breaker" with a citizen's band radio set. His conversations could be clearly heard over my stereo. I tried all ways to get rid of this interference, and found that wrapping the speaker cables several times round a ferrite rod placed close to the amplifier...

With DACs, DSP and computer, a ground loop produced a low-level whistle of a few kilohertz in my system. It was cured by separating the mains earth from the DC output of a power supply. Protective earth remains intact, but no longer forms a loop. I use optical interconnects to the DACs, but the...