Wat HiFi?
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“Generally speaking, glass shelves tend to encourage kit to sound forward, while wooden supports tend to result in a warmer and more rounded balance.” -
“Some nice things happened in the upper octaves. Everything, even overbright recordings, had a top end that was more liquid and silky – not like classic tube sound, where the highs are actually colored to sound more sweet than real life, but the upper octaves were relieved of a little bit of dryness.”
A chunk of acrylic which you balance your Mac Mini on. Yours for a surprisingly cheap $349.
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“ [T]he problem with computers is that they were never designed with audio in mind. While there are improvements for USB-based playback available, the network controller part of a PC remains noisy.
JCAT puts an end to imperfections of network playback with NET Card FEMTO – the ultimate network interface designed specifically for transferring high-quality audio over LAN.
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“Dark Matter Cable Elevators protect audio cables from the harmful effects of floor-borne vibrations and static interference. Our newest Dark Matter ESD XL Cable Isolators are made from the finest grade Electro-Static-Dissipative (ESD) Polyurethane. This unique design offers superb isolation from vibrations and enables a direct path to dissipate any static imbalance.“
I have to admit, they do look rather pretty.
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“We gave the sturdy Supra LoRad MD06-BS/SP Otis Redding’s emotive and rich-sounding A Change Is Gonna Come to handle, and the Supra’s effect on the sound became noticeable. Vocal clarity increased and became more transparent, but the sound also became leaner, losing some of the depth and the characteristic punchiness of a good soul recording.” — Spoiler: It’s a power strip -
“Found that a function called memcpy was the culprit, most memory players use memcpy and this is one of the reasons why memory play sounds worse ie digital sounding. Fortunately there is an optimised version of memcpy from [x], using this version removes the hard edge produced by memcpy.” -
“ Due to the increasing amount of data and information being processed through music servers and hard-drive storage systems, as well as the rising popularity of high-resolution audio downloads, the use of hifi, audio-specific USB cables is critical to the fidelity of sound reproduction.
[…]
For the first time, Nordost is introducing a flat, twin-axial geometry to its USB cables. This innovative layout allows the two signal wires to run parallel, compared to the standard twisted-pair configuration, shortening the signal path and drastically increasing transfer speeds.
”— Nordost Valhalla 2. Yours for a paltry $3,499 for the first meter, $1,200 per additional meter. -
“Normal electricity just wouldn’t do anymore. To tap into what Mr. Morita calls “pure” power, he paid $10,000 to plant a 40-foot-tall concrete pole in his front yard. On it perches his own personal transformer…” -
“How can it be that physical objects, just by being in proximity to your gear’s circuitry, influence audio reproduction? How can the mere presence of a component’s lid, footers, or stand and the like, audibly color the sound—especially if it never touches the circuitry?” — How indeed. -
“In my experience, TosLink softens the bass, adds treble hardness, and congeals the soundstage.”