The Top 10


Stop Looking At the Amp


This is usually the first thing I ask when you call me for Amplifier Help. I will then ask the size of your room. I am obviously trying to match an amplifier, price point to your speaker room. Overpowering and/or over damping a speaker will make it sound cold. Under powering a speaker will make it sound thin and closed. Yes, there is an amp for every speaker / room combination.

Stop Paying Attention To The DAC Chip


I know that you have heard me say this time and time again. Any designer can make a good chip sound bad and a bad chip sound good. The most important part of a DAC that effect sound quality are in order 1) the filtering that designer chooses to use, 2) the Analogue output stage and finally the DAC Chip.

Don’t go Crazy with Sampling


I get this all the time. The other day I was talking to some poor sole that ripped all his vinyl (some 300 albums) into 192K files and placed them on his PC. He called me up and said that the 192K DAC did not good with these samples. As a matter of fact, it sounds the same as a 44.1K sample. That’s because, and I keep saying this, USB cannot handle 192K without USB driver replacements. The only way to get 192K USB out of computer is the use the M2Tech, Musiland Monitor 02 or the Musiland MD 11. Better yet, place it on a CyberServer and you will eliminate most of the noise that a PC produces. Again, a PC is not a good playback device; it’s a computing device.

Stop using your CD Player as a Transport


Your CD player was not really meant to properly output digital S/PDIF. Quality transports have correct buffering, error correcting and buffer management that make sound good. When your CD player plays a CD, most of this circuitry is next to the converter chip, so it does not have to worry about error correction. When you use it as a transport, your CD player runs the digital output naked to the DAC without any significant error correction. In other words, it comes out with errors galore. Ouch!

Stop Paying Too Much Money for Digital Cables


The best USB cable is the shortest USB cable. The best coax cable is the one that “Larry the Cable Guy” uses. It’s always shielded, 75 ohms and has BNC connectors. Coax cable has 10 times more jitter than BNC, and Optical cable has 30- 50 times more jitter than Coax. No serious audiophile uses optical.

Stop Paying Too Much For Mods


The best mod you can do to tube equipment is to change the tubes. Period. Do this, before investing in any modifications.

Stop Paying Too Much For Audio


I had someone call me up the other day and say that the problem with our stuff (and I was not aware that there was a problem) is that it is too low cost, so nobody believes it’s that good. Look, spending $4000 for preamp, really? Ok, let’s do the math, how much, do you think, the individual components in the preamp cost? Let’s say they are using some really excellent caps, transistors / tubes, resistors and switches. But all that can’t be more than $800 right? After, all they are commodity components available from a supply store like Digi-Key. Then there is the case, another say $300 bucks or so? Now, I would add another say 2-3K for intellectual property, but I cannot. The reason is that the secrets are all out, and audio is not rocket science, it’s not even introductory college science, its prep school science. Sampling, Push-Pull, Inductance – all make audio work, this was discovered years ago. There are not any “New” or “Revolutionary” discoveries are there? So, I cannot pay the 2-3K for IP. What I will pay, however are the marketing, sales and profit costs. Say, another $400. There, that’s a fair price for a solid state high end preamp, $1500. For a tube preamp, I am apt to pay a little more for tubes, say $1500 - $2000.