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"Audiophile grade" is getting out of hand.
Here is a 20A 120V duplex receptacle:
http://www.parts-express.com/images/.../110-439_L.jpg Here is the description: If you are building your own audiophile power cord to improve component performance, you need the WattGate 381 receptacle. Why build a performance power cable only to plug it into the same receptacle that's been in use for almost 100 years? WattGate's 381 is a no compromise solution for the demanding AV enthusiast. Construction of the 381 is top-notch and features glass-filled, nylon front and rear housings. Mounting strap, rivets and grounding strip are gold plated, solid brass for the ultimate in corrosion resistance and power transfer. Installation of the 381 is simple and efficient due to rear wiring and large, #10 brass terminal screws. Terminal clamps are gold plated, solid brass and shaped to better grip the conductors. Like the 330 and 350, the 381 leaves the competition behind with its contacts. Configured in a triple-wiper design allows the plug blades to be gripped at three separate points. Additionally, the heavy-duty contacts maximize the clamping spring-rate and ensure conductivity. A three-layer plating process is also completed on the 381: Oxygen free copper plating, electrolysis nickel, and finally 24k gold plating. Receptacle is cryogenically treated and rated at 125 VAC, 20A. Here is the price:
$147.72 No, this isn't a joke: Parts-Express.com:*Wattgate 381 Audio Grade Duplex Socket |
jesus fucking christ
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I buy the .88 cent outlets.
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Group buy?
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A Nobel Prize to the person who can listen and tell the difference.
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i bet that thing has the smoothest sinusoids evar
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Ever heard of Isolated Ground outlets?
Most of my customers stores are spec'd for IG outlets to run their computer systems. Basically there is a completely separate electrical panel in the store for nothing but the POS/IT equipment. The cabling used for it has 4 conductors in it even though its standard 110 volt wiring. Basically what they do is run the common and hot into the outlet, with the third as a ground. The fourth one gets hooked up to the electrical box the outlet is attached to, which is also part of the flex conduit the cabling is installed inside. Both those grounds go back to the panel where they're attached to the ground bus, which is attached to the main ground bus, and the buildings grounding system. I think thats completely pointless, but it does at least keep anything with an induction motor off the circuitry for the computer systems.. Then again, so do the outlets.. http://images.marketworks.com/hi/58/...0-064-EA-2.jpg |
One of these days I am going to swallow my scruples and start selling overpriced snake oil like this to stupid people. Then, I'll be rich.
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ya i want to slap people that buy $100 hdmi cables because they make the quaity better. my $2 radio shack one works the same if not better.
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That's the only outlets I have in my house, and they are the only ones you should have in yours if you had any respect.
>^..^< |
Originally Posted by Trent
(Post 448058)
That's the only outlets I have in my house, and they are the only ones you should have in yours if you had any respect.
>^..^< |
Originally Posted by Trent
(Post 448058)
That's the only outlets I have in my house, and they are the only ones you should have in yours if you had any respect.
>^..^< |
Originally Posted by Trent
(Post 448058)
That's the only outlets I have in my house, and they are the only ones you should have in yours if you had any respect.
>^..^< |
Cryogenically treated. WTF?
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For your audiophile listening pleasure, I present:
Denon USA | AK-DL1 Why pay $500 for a cat5 patch cable? Well.. hmmm... the bits are cleaner when they go through a really expensive cable. No dirty bits with this kit in your rack. No sir. Cleanest bits ever. |
At first I was thinking it might have some sort of conditioning circuit built in, but that's just stupid. It doesn't matter how good your contacts are - shitty power is shitty power. That's why they make power conditioning systems. Anyone that buys an outlet like that deserves to be ripped off. They should also pay me $100 to smack them in the face.
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Originally Posted by trent
(Post 448058)
that's the only outlets i have in my house, and they are the only ones you should have in yours if you had any respect.
>^..^< |
Originally Posted by elesjuan
(Post 448025)
Ever heard of Isolated Ground outlets?
Honestly, even the recording studio guys know better than to fall for this sort of shit. Yes, they do spend money on balanced AC power systems (which create a virtual neutral that's not connected to ground) but when it comes to the distribution infrastructure, it's regular ole' contractor-grade outlets, with the IEC cables that came with the gear plugged into 'em
Originally Posted by ZX-Tex
(Post 448032)
One of these days I am going to swallow my scruples and start selling overpriced snake oil like this to stupid people. Then, I'll be rich.
Originally Posted by jbresee
(Post 448142)
For your audiophile listening pleasure, I present:
Denon USA | AK-DL1 I mean, I can see spending $20 vs. $5 on a piece of photon hose to get something that's not going to fall apart or break the first time you tug on it, but CAT5? I'll bet my whole life savings that at 1.5 meters, the recovered audio at the far end of that thing is 100% identical to if it has passed through this $3.50 cable. BTW, anybody know what happened to eHDMI.com? They seem to have vanished! |
Originally Posted by jbresee
(Post 448142)
For your audiophile listening pleasure, I present:
Denon USA | AK-DL1 100X markup. That makes Monster Cable's products look frugal in comparison. I am in the wrong business. I wonder how many of those they have sold? :facepalm: |
BTW, WTF is with this catman shit? I assume we're not paying homage to Peter Criss.
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I chuckle endlessly about audiophile grade digital cables. A bit either gets there or it doesn't.
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Originally Posted by ZX-Tex
(Post 448528)
I could see some 'audiophile' internet con-man trying to pass off something like this, but Denon? Wow...
100X markup. That makes Monster Cable's products look frugal in comparison. I am in the wrong business. I wonder how many of those they have sold? :facepalm: I use a $25 HDMI cable and I fail to believe a $100+ cable would look or sound any better over 3ft. Even over 20ft it wouldn't be noticeable if there was a difference at all. |
I have a business idea. Lets sell audiophile grade air. Laboratory developed and mixed assortment of gasses for optimal sound dispersion and distortion damping properties. A couple hundred bucks for a compressed tank (enough to fill a whole room, of course). It may smell a little poo, but that's due to the phenominal accoustic properties of the included blended gasses, methane, but hey, hardcore audiophile sound requires hardcore comprimise, and sometimes, a clothespin on your nose.
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Originally Posted by Joe Perez
(Post 448530)
BTW, WTF is with this catman shit? I assume we're not paying homage to Peter Criss.
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He is like the Hustler equivalent, just not quite as funny and good at what he does.
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Originally Posted by ZX-Tex
(Post 448550)
Seriously? You know who Catman is on m.n right?
Just searched on his username, and it looks like he posts mostly in Politics, Water Cooler, A&E, Int/Ext, etc., but avoids the Power Forum. That would pretty much explain why I've never heard of him. Pseudo-sig makes sense now. Gotta say, 11,500 posts without doing anything useful has gotta be close to some kind of record. What's Hustler's postcount again? edit: damn, NA6C beat me to the Hustler joke. |
The joke is he is an excessive audiophile purist, while who has the right ideas sometimes, is one of those self-righteous types who thinks the only worthy car stereos are made by Nakamichi and McIntosh. He treats anyone who disagrees with him in a very condescending (thinly veiled) manner. He seems to live to 'rule' the Audio forum, and a lot of people take whatever he says as gospel. He is infamous IMO. Not famous, infamous.
In fact, the reason I have my sig image is because I called him an elitist penis; I got some m.n love for that. Hustler is much more amusing. And unlike Hustler, I'll bet Catman is a douche in person. I would not be surprised if he has some of those plugs in his house. |
He's not a purist, he's a snobby zealot that only believes in his own ideas and his own methodology.
Not to mention, why the hell would anyone invest in audio for a miata, if you have the top down you cant hear shit as it is. |
Yeah, I kinda figured all that out just by looking at his "About Catman" blurb:
High end audio. TATTOO's, Hard core HEDONIST,Swinger,whips/chains/leather And his listed homepage: which, when clicked on, takes you straight to this: http://www.catmanisgod.com/kittyc.jpg There's a reason I confine myself just to the Power forum at Miata.net. (Frak. Now I gotta change my avatar after seeing that.) |
TMDS (The signaling used over HDMI):
The transmitter incorporates an advanced coding algorithm which has reduced electromagnetic interference over copper cables and enables robust clock recovery at the receiver to achieve high skew tolerance for driving longer cable lengths as well as shorter low cost cables. So basically, HDMI was designed for short $2 cables. The audio portion is a little more susceptible to error, but it depends on what transport you're using. I would assume most use LPCM which can get errors more easily. It may have slight artifacts on cheap cables. Passing TrueHD to your receiver to decode is probably better (assuming the decoder and DAC are good). CAT5 is extremely tolerant. People actually use CAT5 (or 6) for a cheap audio cable. Twisted pair is great at reducing noise. I'm not sure how their transport system works, but I would guess it's in UDP packets which are not usually retransmitted. If you lose one, it can be a problem, but as long as a cable is built properly, it's usually the hardware that screws up a packet from what I've seen; not the cable. Especially of a short length like 5ft. You could coil that into a ball and it'd still be flawless. A decent CAT6 shielded cable with quality connectors ($10 max) is all you need. For power, you really need a conditioning box. If you can get a perfect 60Hz sine wave and do phase matching with all your hardware, and have enough grounding to keep the devices happy, you're set. Is even the best ear in the world going to notice slight power issues? Probably not. Most interference comes from inside the actual device producing sound. I know with our RF test equipment, they cannot get rid of every little interference, so they actually incorporate an out of phase signal to cancel the internal interferences out. An audiophile system would probably do the same. |
super media store . com
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No, eHDMI was more than just a name- they had everything. Super-cheap component cables, VGA cables, SVHS cables, audio cables, network cables, along with unusual switches and adapters.
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you guys are all talking old news.
SDI. 3GB/s over a single wire. |
Originally Posted by Saml01
(Post 448623)
He's not a purist, he's a snobby zealot that only believes in his own ideas and his own methodology.
Not to mention, why the hell would anyone invest in audio for a miata, if you have the top down you cant hear shit as it is. Absolutely disagree on the second part, but I wouldn't require a brand name to do it. Except maybe Audyssey (and therefore Alpine... but that's another story). |
Originally Posted by y8s
(Post 448691)
Agree on the first part
Absolutely disagree on the second part, but I wouldn't require a brand name to do it. Except maybe Audyssey (and therefore Alpine... but that's another story). |
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Originally Posted by y8s
(Post 448689)
SDI.
3GB/s over a single wire. SDI is good stuff. Pretty tolerant of long runs, no equalizing or timing corrections needed, uncompressed, uses standard connectors. We typically don't embed the audio as it makes routing and switching in mixed-signal plants a pain in the ass.
Originally Posted by TrickerZ
(Post 448667)
CAT5 is extremely tolerant. People actually use CAT5 (or 6) for a cheap audio cable. Twisted pair is great at reducing noise.
Back in '00 when we first started, there was a lot of concern from old-timers in the industry about the cables' resistance to external common-mode interference. I got a couple 300' lengths of various CAT5 cables, along with a 300' length of Belden 8451 (the "standard" shielded audio cable for decades), and took them all to my apartment, which was a couple miles from the WLW transmitter site (50,000 watts at 700kHz). We threw all the cables over the roof of the building, and then ran a full set of performance tests on each one (S/N, freq. response, THD, etc). The conventional untwisted shielded cable performed the worst of all of 'em. Since then, it's been UTP all the way. The stuff is just friggin' awesome.
Originally Posted by Trent
(Post 448715)
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monoprice is the shit! Great products and awesome customer service.
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Originally Posted by Joe Perez
(Post 448740)
The stuff is just friggin' awesome.
How much power can you pump through the CAT5? |
Originally Posted by TrickerZ
(Post 449081)
How much power can you pump through the CAT5?
The simple answer, however, is that you can pump as much power through it as you want until it starts getting hot enough to either melt or set something on fire. There are no absolute cutoffs when it comes to "acceptable" power loss in a transmission line for the sort of application you're talking about. Any absolute figure that someone quotes you (unless it is referenced to either a specific rise in temperature or a specific voltage drop) will be purely arbitrary. We don't use it for speaker cable, just for line-level signals. The most power we'd transmit down one would be an AES/EBU (AES3) signal, which is ~5 volts RMS into a 110Ω load, so ~45 milliamps, or ~230 milliwatts. (Wow, I never really did the math and realized how much power there really is going through an AES3 transformer!) |
thought joe might get a little blood flow in his groin from knowing that we have a company in-house today that is showing us a system that transmits SDI wirelessly with almost no latency or quality loss.
oh boy! |
Along the same lines one of my favorites Audioholics Home Theater Forums - View Single Post - Speakers; When is good enough, enough
We gathered up a 5 of our audio buddies. We took my "old" Martin Logan SL-3 (not a bad speaker for accurate noise making) and hooked them up with Monster 1000 speaker cables (decent cables according to the audio press). We also rigged up 14 gauge, oxygen free Belden stranded copper wire with a simple PVC jacket. Both were 2 meters long. They were connected to an ABX switch box allowing blind fold testing. Volume levels were set at 75 Db at 1000K Hz. A high quality recording of smooth, trio, easy listening jazz was played (Piano, drums, bass). None of us had heard this group or CD before, therefore eliminating biases. The music was played. Of the 5 blind folded, only 2 guessed correctly which was the monster cable. (I was not one of them). This was done 7 times in a row! Keeping us blind folded, my brother switched out the Belden wire (are you ready for this) with simple coat hanger wire! Unknown to me and our 12 audiophile buddies, prior to the ABX blind test, he took apart four coat hangers, reconnectd them and twisted them into a pair of speaker cables. Connections were soldered. He stashed them in a closet within the testing room so we were not privy to what he was up to. This made for a pair of 2 meter cables, the exact length of the other wires. The test was conducted. After 5 tests, none could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire. Further, when music was played through the coat hanger wire, we were asked if what we heard sounded good to us. All agreed that what was heard sounded excellent, however, when A-B tests occured, it was impossible to determine which sounded best the majority of the time and which wire was in use. Needless to say, after the blind folds came off and we saw what my brother did, we learned he was right...most of what manufactures have to say about their products is pure hype. It seems the more they charge, the more hyped it is. |
Yup. There's a lot of hype about speakers that I don't understand as well. While I will concur that there is a difference between good speakers and bad speakers, it's a lot more to do with build quality than with esoteric materials.
If you open up a set of genuine professional near-field monitors of the sort that people use in actual mastering suites (Yamaha, Genelec, Tannoy, etc) you'll find that most of them are built out of regular ole' MDF, and contain one tweeter and one main driver. No exotic woods, none of this business with sixteen transducers arranged in some proprietary pattern. They just happen to use decent quality electronics, a pair of good drivers, and are assembled with a certain level of attention to fit-n-finish. |
After spending some time in home theater retail and demonstrating an shitty $200 HTIB and then an outstanding component unit for under $1500 and the customer saying "I don't hear a difference, give me the cheap one, but give me that $3000 LED TV" made me realize its all based on the user. Granted I rarely got an audiophile since I worked in "big box" stores, but on occasion they would come and my audio and accessory percentages shot threw the roof!
Theres got to be a thread somewhere for the $2hdmi vs. $100 hdmi. I got my mc1000hd2m for $37($120 retail) and its registered for life and the tip doesn't snap off when I plug or unplug it :-\ |
Originally Posted by Joe Perez
(Post 449173)
Yup. There's a lot of hype about speakers that I don't understand as well. While I will concur that there is a difference between good speakers and bad speakers, it's a lot more to do with build quality than with esoteric materials.
If you open up a set of genuine professional near-field monitors of the sort that people use in actual mastering suites (Yamaha, Genelec, Tannoy, etc) you'll find that most of them are built out of regular ole' MDF, and contain one tweeter and one main driver. No exotic woods, none of this business with sixteen transducers arranged in some proprietary pattern. They just happen to use decent quality electronics, a pair of good drivers, and are assembled with a certain level of attention to fit-n-finish. The single most important part of a speaker is the crossover. The chosen components have the largest impact on the sound and that's the bottom line. If a "by the book" 3000Hz crossover is just thrown in between two random drivers, it'll sound worse than mediocre. If you spend some time properly measuring the drivers and modeling the crossover, you can optimize so-so drivers to sound amazing. The problem is that mass-market manufacturers would rather save $.50 on a capacitor and lose the sound quality to make the money |
Well, these days most of the pro stuff uses internal amps, so passive crossovers are a non-issue.
And they don't have to be profanely expensive, either. You can get Mackie MR5s for $150 each, Yamaha MSP-3s for $165 ea, Alesis M1As for $300 a pair, Fostex PM1-Is for $380 a pair, etc. None 'em are gonna break windows a mile away, but for home theater / audiophile use, they're grrrreat. |
Originally Posted by Joe Perez
(Post 449215)
Well, these days most of the pro stuff uses internal amps, so passive crossovers are a non-issue.
And they don't have to be profanely expensive, either. You can get Mackie MR5s for $150 each, Yamaha MSP-3s for $165 ea, Alesis M1As for $300 a pair, Fostex PM1-Is for $380 a pair, etc. None 'em are gonna break windows a mile away, but for home theater / audiophile use, they're grrrreat. |
Originally Posted by Joe Perez
(Post 449090)
It's a function of current, not power, and it depends on the length and the load impedance. CAT5 is 24ga (some of it is 23ga) so just find a conversion chart and solve for amperage by finding the square root of (watts / ohms). The nominal resistance of 24ga is between .03 and .05 ohms / ft.
The simple answer, however, is that you can pump as much power through it as you want until it starts getting hot enough to either melt or set something on fire. There are no absolute cutoffs when it comes to "acceptable" power loss in a transmission line for the sort of application you're talking about. Any absolute figure that someone quotes you (unless it is referenced to either a specific rise in temperature or a specific voltage drop) will be purely arbitrary. We don't use it for speaker cable, just for line-level signals. The most power we'd transmit down one would be an AES/EBU (AES3) signal, which is ~5 volts RMS into a 110Ω load, so ~45 milliamps, or ~230 milliwatts. (Wow, I never really did the math and realized how much power there really is going through an AES3 transformer!) slebidia - I've seen that test before. Monster cables suck, so using them was kind of a bad example, but interesting none-the-less. I would think a coat hanger would at least create a slight hiss. Maybe it was too short a distance. I also agree everything is really hyped and it's more about "owning the best" than it making a difference. I have $300 EPOS speakers and they're excellent. The build quality really does make the difference, though I've heard that if you make the cone out of real wood, it can produce a (subjectively) more accurate sound. There are people who make enclosures out of concrete. All the problems I have are with things resonating since I don't have enough sound absorption. Oh, and crossovers...very important. I'm assuming active vs. passive is the same as like active vs. passive PFC? Do active adjust the crossover frequency based on the range of the signal being provided? I'm only really familiar with the passive ones. |
Originally Posted by TrickerZ
(Post 449239)
Oh, and crossovers...very important. I'm assuming active vs. passive is the same as like active vs. passive PFC? Do active adjust the crossover frequency based on the range of the signal being provided? I'm only really familiar with the passive ones.
passive means after the amplifier and unpowered (capacitors, inductors, resistors) active means before the amplifier using the unamplified signals, powered (op amps, sallen-key topology, etc). it's not a control scheme with feedback if that's what you're thinking (though those do exist, it's not meant by "active" here) edit: I take that back... in a sense, it does have feedback at the op amp level. |
Ah, ok. That makes sense. Active as in amplitude adjustment. I was thinking active as in frequency adjustment. I guess it's kinda like an EQ for each driver. Probably easier to get a good cutoff with it before the amp too.
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Originally Posted by TrickerZ
(Post 449318)
I guess it's kinda like an EQ for each driver. Probably easier to get a good cutoff with it before the amp too.
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Originally Posted by Joe Perez
(Post 449325)
They typically have a degree of equalization for each section; basically a high-pass on the main driver, independent level controls for both amps, sometimes a three-band EQ. Basically just enough to neutralize the room. Beyond that, you really don't want any EQ on something that's intended for mastering.
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Originally Posted by y8s
(Post 449356)
well there's EQ that takes something not-flat and makes it flat (ie ideal reference) and EQ that makes it sound different. anything inside a speaker should remove coloration, not add it. leave that to your hi fi or whatever.
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that's what I meant by cheap vs. well designed cheap. having that linearity in something super cheap is not guaranteed.
oh and time-windowed FFT over spectrum analyzer to avoid standing wave resonances :) |
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fourier.jpg
Show me a modern spectrum analyzer that doesn't support FFT. |
Originally Posted by Joe Perez
(Post 449408)
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fourier.jpg
Show me a modern spectrum analyzer that doesn't support FFT. |
Originally Posted by y8s
(Post 449570)
You do realize that I'm talking "under 500 dollars for hardware and software exclusive of an already-owned typical PC" right?
Seriously, check out the Asian scopes that are being sold today. It's getting hard to find one that doesn't natively support all the fancy functions that required $2,000 Tek plugins a decade ago. |
sounds good. the next things we need is a maximum length sequence burst and to play it at a few watts of power and a relatively flat measurement mic....
course reinventing the audio measurement and design software through typical analysis tool channels would be silly. |
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