- Audio Woo Checklist
- Audiophile Afterlife
- Analog CD
- Bass
- Best or bogus
- Burn-in
- Car stereo
- Ceramic speakers
- Collapsible speakers
- Coat hangers
- Cable riser
- Design
- Digital Cassette
- Digital LP
- DSD
- DVD rewinder
- Engineering 101
- Horns
- Invisible speakers
- LP + CD
- Musical Chair
- My Gear
- Pumps and Purse
- Power cord cats
- Psychology
- Radio
- Ripping the analog way
- Rip to analog
- Sound Icon
- Tape
- Toilet
- Universal Record
- Value for money
- Visible Sound
- Vinyl
- Wood glue
- Woofers
Audio Woo Checklist
(attributed to Sean Adams, founder of SlimDevices)
You claim that an
- audible
- measurable
- hypothetical
improvement in sound quality can be attained by:
- upsampling
- increasing word size
- vibration dampening
- bi-wiring
- replacing the external power supply
- using a different lossless format
- decompressing on the server
- removing bits of metal from skull
- using ethernet instead of wireless
- inverting phase
- installing bigger connectors
- installing Black Gate caps
- installing ByBee filters
- installing hospital-grade AC jacks
- defragmenting the hard disk
- running older firmware
Your idea will not work. Specifically, it fails to account for:
- the placebo effect
- your ears honestly aren't that good
- your idea has already been thoroughly disproved
- modern DACs upsample anyway
- those products are pure snake oil
- lossless formats, by definition, are lossless
- those measurements are bogus
- sound travels much slower than you think
- electric signals travel much faster than you think
- that's not how binary arithmetic works
- that's not how TCP/IP works
- the Nyquist theorem
- the can't polish a turd theorem
- bits are bits
Your subsequent arguments will probably appeal in desperation to such esoterica as:
- jitter
- EMI
- thermal noise
- existentialism
- cosmic rays
And you will then change the subject to:
- theories are not the same as facts
- measurements don't tell everything
- not everyone is subject to the placebo effect
- blind testing is dumb
- you can't prove what I can't hear
- science isn't everything
Rather than engage in this tired discussion, I suggest exploring the following factors which are more likely to improve sound quality in your situation:
- room acoustics
- source material
- type of speakers
- speaker placement
- crossover points
- equalization
- Q-tips