The Decware Pills make things sound more analogue! How do they work?

[Westsounds]

Any ideas what the magic is explained

PILLS | DECWARE

The Decware Pills - a perscription for that dry digital sound. Just insert these in the signal path between your DAC and preamp or amplifier.

www.decwareproducts.com

 

[Mr Swing King]

“As long as there is digital, there will be "digititus" rearing it's ugly head in some form or another. You may be familiar with it if you're old enough to come from an analogue background, or be oblivious to it if you're not.

Either way, the less of it you have the better your music is going to sound. It comes from both the digital mastering process and associated software, meaning it is embedded into many recordings. It also comes from hardware like DAC's and computers in many forms not the least of which is - jitter.

It causes the music to loose lots of liquidity, a fair amount of density and some dimensionality. I would say it is the number one cause of listening fatigue and for most audiophiles a familiar source of frustration.

Without going back in time and fixing it at it's source, all we can do is try to recover the intent of the music by fixing what's there. We only know of three reliable ways to accomplish this result. Drugs, Alcohol or a passive filter... the later being by far the most reliable since it doesn't involve humans, computers, software, or moving parts.

The Pills can put musicality back into much of your digital music library and can also have game changing results with many of today's new LP's.”

What a load of nonsense!

 

[kemmler3D]

I read the user manual. It doesn't actually say how it works, it's just a lot of hand waving based on the familiar stair-step sine wave graphic and then a complete avoidance of acknowledging nyquist or how DACs actually work.

"It comes from both the digital mastering process and associated software, meaning it is embedded into many recordings. "

Funny enough, these guys never caught on to the MoFi digital switcheroo... hmm.

 

[aedagnino]

What a load of audiophoolery! But I guess for every scam there is someone who'll fall for it.

 

[DVDdoug]

Audiophile snake oil.

If they make a difference, they can only degrade the sound.

There is nothing wrong with digital audio. It's used because analog is inferior.

(Almost*) all DACs have a "smoothing filter". The output from a digital-to-analog converter is true-continuous analog.

It also comes from hardware like DAC's and computers in many forms not the least of which is - jitter...

Jitter is not audible unless something is terribly wrong. And you can't fix it with filtering. It has to be re-clocked.

It causes the music to loose lots of liquidity, a fair amount of density and some dimensionality....

The Pills can put musicality back i

Can I get 3dB more liquidity, density, dimensionality, or musicality? Nonsense "audiophile terminology."

Audiophoolery



* I once had a soundcard with no filter. I had never noticed anything wrong but when I was doing some experiments with an oscilloscope I saw "clean" stair-stepped waves. I was shocked! Then I realized that the harmonics are above the audible range. Plus, the amplifier in the "computer speakers" I was using may have had some filtering and the speakers WILL "mechanically" filter the ultrasonic harmonics.

 

[threni]

“As long as there is digital, there will be "digititus" rearing it's ugly head in some form or another. You may be familiar with it if you're old enough to come from an analogue background, or be oblivious to it if you're not.

Either way, the less of it you have the better your music is going to sound. It comes from both the digital mastering process and associated software, meaning it is embedded into many recordings. It also comes from hardware like DAC's and computers in many forms not the least of which is - jitter.

It causes the music to loose lots of liquidity, a fair amount of density and some dimensionality. I would say it is the number one cause of listening fatigue and for most audiophiles a familiar source of frustration.

Without going back in time and fixing it at it's source, all we can do is try to recover the intent of the music by fixing what's there. We only know of three reliable ways to accomplish this result. Drugs, Alcohol or a passive filter... the later being by far the most reliable since it doesn't involve humans, computers, software, or moving parts.

The Pills can put musicality back into much of your digital music library and can also have game changing results with many of today's new LP's.”

What a load of nonsense!

Quite apart from the BS it's impressive how many grammar and spelling mistakes they've packed into that text.

 

[Mr Swing King]

Quite apart from the BS it's impressive how many grammar and spelling mistakes they've packed into that text.

I noticed the same and I’m from Denmark.

 

[Blumlein 88]

A similar product was around for a long time. Don't remember what was the name. It was basically a notch filter for the 44.1 khz sampling rate. No idea if this is the same, but it's making the same exact claims. Plus that it improves transients and stopped digital ringing from the reconstruction filter.

 

[Bob from Florida]

Any ideas what the magic is explained

PILLS | DECWARE

The Decware Pills - a perscription for that dry digital sound. Just insert these in the signal path between your DAC and preamp or amplifier.

www.decwareproducts.com

Read the "Pill" manual. It's a series capacitor!

https://www.decwareproducts.com/_files/ugd/f1f204_25649a5d07aa4bc9b3c1020f1f441561.pdf

 

[mhardy6647]

I have offered my assessment of Steve Deckert's prose many times in many places over many years (closin' in on three decades?!).
But, I've gotta tell ya, this example is for the ages.

The secret of the Decware Pill was stumbled upon during the voicing process of one of
our amplifiers quite by accident when an incorrect component type with a value many
hundreds of times larger than specified was used to couple an input stage just to see
what would happen… The intent was in trying to voice a pair of input jacks specifically
for digital sources in an attempt to “glue all the dots together”.
The resulting effect on the sound was immediately evident. Normally something like
this would ruin the sound or at best alter it in some undesirable way or when used
inside an amplifier would ruin the intended frequency response and likely raise
distortion. However this didn’t because by using it outside the amplifier the amplifier is
unaffected while the source component or preamp see’s a drop in output impedance
which improves it’s performance in some cases dramatically.

How is a capacitor "coupl[ing] the input stage" not "used inside an amplifier"?
E.g., if the input stage is part of an integrated amplifier -- if I am reading the above correctly, then this magical capacitor would act differently and "ruin the sound" in the normal and expected fashion? Just by putting it outside the amp chassis instead of inside the amp chassis?!?

This reminds me of other frame-of-reference heresies such as the value of biwiring or the value of multi-digit damping factors.

The online manual states it is a bi-polar decoupling capacitor.

Th-th-th-that's all folks!

The best part about this ostensible product definition is that it is both testable and "discoverable". I.e., is there any L and/or R mixed in with that C?
And of course the value of C should be readily determinable, too.
He does say it's a special audio capacitor, though (of course).

I also wonder if Steve et al. ever considered that the sound waves that are ultimately transduced from an input AC signal by a loudspeaker into the listening space are about as analog as it gets (bearing little resemblance to the original datastream from the 'digital source') and that loudspeaker drivers and their crossover networks append all sorts of filtering and contouring that just might take some of the nasty edge off of those digital stair-steps?

 

[Bob from Florida]

I have offered my assessment of Steve Deckert's prose many times in many places over many years (closin' in on three decades?!).
But, I've gotta tell ya, this example is for the ages.



How is a capacitor "coupl[ing] the input stage" not "used inside an amplifier"?
E.g., if the input stage is part of an integrated amplifier -- if I am reading the above correctly, then this magical capacitor would act differently and "ruin the sound" in the normal and expected fashion? Just by putting it outside the amp chassis instead of inside the amp chassis?!?

This reminds me of other frame-of-reference heresies such as the value of biwiring or the value of multi-digit damping factors.


The best part about this ostensible product definition is that it is both testable and "discoverable". I.e., is there any L and/or R mixed in with that C?
And of course the value of C should be readily determinable, too.
He does say it's a special audio capacitor, though (of course).

I also wonder if Steve et al. ever considered that the sound waves that are ultimately transduced from an input AC signal by a loudspeaker into the listening space are about as analog as it gets (bearing little resemblance to the original datastream from the 'digital source') and that loudspeaker drivers and their crossover networks append all sorts of filtering and contouring that just might take some of the nasty edge off of those digital stair-steps?

It's marketing designed for the subjective crowd. It will do at least one thing - besides reducing your beer money - block any DC coming out of your preamp.

 

[mhardy6647]

Oh, man... atrocious typography notwithstanding this product's manual is the gift that keeps on giving!

While everyones digital music libraries vary, we have found on average 3 out of 4 recordings in our library are improved, as are most of the digital
streams we’ve tried.

Steve Deckert - dude - what was the value of n in your study, was the variation normally distributed, and, if so, what's the sd?

Come to think of it -- Steve Deckert would be at least as much fun to have on this forum as Mikey Fremer was.

 

[Madlop26]

"AN ANTI-DIGITAL PERSCRIPTION"???....."if you're old enough to come from an analogue background...."

They may be bad in grammar, but they know who the potential vict... sorry, customer is. haha

 

[mhardy6647]

Throbbing pulses...

uffda!

 

[mhardy6647]

Oh, lordy...

No matter how well this is manipulated by your DAC or processor or computer software the end result is an overly complex waveform that looks like a fine line from a distance but when magnified is riddled with complex artifacts that can only be interpreted or measured by todays equipment as noise. This can be see in the next photograph where the top line is an analog waveform and the dual wiggly lines are the digital waveform both set to the same frequency of 535Hz. It should be noted that this is why analog plays louder than digital for a given amount of power since trying to reproduce complex artifacts robs power.

all I can think of is the late Charles Rodrigues...

 

[Apesbrain]

Make Audio Great Again!

 

[Westsounds]

The Pills can put musicality back into much of your digital music library and can also have game changing results with many of today's new LP's.”

"What a load of nonsense!"

That's what I thought!

 

[Westsounds]

Here’s a good little tip for the guys who don’t like digititus. Listen to an analogue recorded sound and played back on an analogue medium. Via a good DAC, which most are these days, and you’ll get the analogue sound that sounds so lush. Because it's mainly nice distortion that people are looking for, and an un-digital sound which has less high definition.

Try to aim for pre late 80s recorded material as well. As most of the stuff after that was recorded digitally anyway. Then you can listen to that glorious analogue sound that everyone craves for, but on your digital system Without the hassle and ownership issues

Something like this

 

[Daverz]

This is DEC ware:

I don't know who these other frauds are.

 

[mhardy6647]

This is DEC ware:

I don't know who these other frauds are.

I remember those well.
Put a few series caps on the I/O and she'll run like a Cray.