Alright
Does this qualify as a passive stereo preamp ? :-)
- Thread starter Amarendra
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Noted but which products do you admire ? I am just curious to know. Honestly I always thought that Schiit was a company run by technically strong ppl.My point is, boutique companies, audiophiles & $pon$ored reviewers alike , often use floral language to describe sound reproduction as dark , veiled, laid back, warm, etc.. If someone claims to see the proverbial "Emperors new clothes", then who am I to disagree?
Qualiities that I look for in any good equipment is proper published specifications / datasheets which can be verified by any 3rd party reviewer (Like Amir from ASR or MIA NwAvGuy). Last but not least, my understanding of that particular equipment design, listening impressions and my budget.
e.g. Similar to Schitt Audio, there is one more company named B*S* who are (in)famous for not publishing full specs of their B*S* products, as such I totally avoid buying products from these companies.
Disclaimer: For my own personal safety and sanity , lets not discuss anything more about that B*S* company
Back to our topic of discussion, I can make buffer circuit for you and then you can compare the same with your passive preamp and decide yourself what is best suited for your purpose
availlyrics
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I like Benchmark Audio products( https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes ), never heard them and definitely can't afford them, so I settled for NAD.
Another good company is SMSL, I was planning to buy their DAC (after my Asus Xonar D2X got kaput) but got Allo Boss DAC as a gift from a freind, @mbhangui patiently helped me to set it up
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I'm not a big fan of vinyl, bluetooth, streaming services or hi-res audio, just simple CDA or FLAC @16 bit/44KHz is good enough for me.
For my next DIY tri-amp build I will be using speaker drivers sourced from Daytona Audio (The engineers at TI use it as a reference for their active crossover designs). I have a Koss studio grade headphones driven by NwAvGuy O2 headphones amp for critical listening.
No fancy interconnects and CAT-5 lan cables for speaker wires.
Another good company is SMSL, I was planning to buy their DAC (after my Asus Xonar D2X got kaput) but got Allo Boss DAC as a gift from a freind, @mbhangui patiently helped me to set it up
.I'm not a big fan of vinyl, bluetooth, streaming services or hi-res audio, just simple CDA or FLAC @16 bit/44KHz is good enough for me.
For my next DIY tri-amp build I will be using speaker drivers sourced from Daytona Audio (The engineers at TI use it as a reference for their active crossover designs). I have a Koss studio grade headphones driven by NwAvGuy O2 headphones amp for critical listening.
No fancy interconnects and CAT-5 lan cables for speaker wires.
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Looks like we have travelled the same road. I try very hard not to get swayed by subjective impressions made by my own brain let alone glowing reviews by the paid british, canadian, indian audiophile guy on some equipment.I like Benchmark Audio products( https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes ), never heard them and definitely can't afford them, so I settled for NAD.
Another good company is SMSL, I was planning to buy their DAC (after my Asus Xonar D2X got kaput) but got Allo Boss DAC as a gift from a freind, @mbhangui patiently helped me to set it up
I'm not a big fan of vinyl, bluetooth, streaming services or hi-res audio, just simple CDA or FLAC @16 bit/44KHz is good enough for me.
For my next DIY tri-amp build I will be using speaker drivers sourced from Daytona Audio (The engineers at TI use it as a reference for their active crossover designs). I have a Koss studio grade headphones driven by NwAvGuy O2 headphones amp for critical listening.
No fancy interconnects and CAT-5 lan cables for speaker wires.
1. I too use the O2 headphone amp designed by NwAvGuy. Tried multiple headphone amps and keep on falling back to the O2 amp. It was designed by an engineer and not by paul, peter or mary.
2. Replaced most of my interconnects with twisted pairs taken out from CAT-5 ethernet cables. They are the best when it comes to not loosing the HF.
3. For volume control I use Nelson Pass B1 buffer. Sure there are better buffers. Now that @Amarendra has tasted blood with a simple volume control, that is the next he could try.
4. Have used A/B switches with split sec switching to see that cables, DACs and even AMPS to some extent are a solved problem. It is a waste of time listening to user reviews on how fantastic a super expensive dacs are compared to dacs from SMSL/Toppings
5. Take it with a pinch of salt when people hear magic with some cable, valve or some $$ equipment. Sure they are hearing it. But then remember people have heard a mysterious voice telling them to lead people and draft new religions. And there are laws to prevent you from countering that because they are the majority. Also livelyhood of many depends on propagating those fairy tales. It creates a law & order problem just mentioning the word. Just say cables in any audiophile forum, hell will break loose.
6. Allo did some good engineering thanks to a good designer Johan from France. It was good till it lasted. The employees have formed a new company Rabas, but I doubt they will come with Johan out of the loop.
7. So much snake oil in the industry and it is not so different than what you see with the murderous religious and political fanatics running wild nowdays. Imagine the turmoil one undergoes when they mention that their cable is undergoing break-in, as if it some automobile where the piston and cylinder are getting smoothened after a 10,000 km drive?
8. The Chinese are really are on to something. But they still cannot beat the cutting edge innovations that happens only in US/Europe. At some point of time they will have to build world class universities that attract young people towards STEM away from vodoo.
9. Nothing beats DIY if you have the chops.
10. Speakers are still not a solved problem. It is complicated because you are trying to reproduce sound that comes from different physical sound source with just a coil, magnet and a paper cone (or equivalent) inside a room that nowhere near the actual surrounding where the sound was recorded. Our ear can easily detect that cheating that is happening. My guess it will always remain unsolved till someone comes with something that totally is different from a traditional speaker.
11. Nothing can violate the 3 laws of thermodynamics and if someone tells you science is not perfect and cannot measure audio, just smile and tell them 'whatever rocks your boat' and move on.
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Interconnects with cat 5 cable sounds very interesting
What is important is that the cables are weak and break easily at the soldered points. So what I do is pour molten wax inside the RCA plug after the soldering job is done. These are good for most purpose, except for turntables where you actually require the cable to be of particular capacitance.
This is one of the longer cables I made. Most of my interconnect are just long enough to go from point a to point b (custom lenghts). The RCA plugs I got it from Amrinder's site (aucharm make)
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availlyrics
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CAT 5 are meant to work in gigabit range with digital signals having fast rise and fall , so carrying analog signals in KHz ranges is a cakewalk. Multi stranded LAN cables are also available, the only condition is that the conducting material should be copper. Nowadays cheap cables use ferrous material
Can you share a snap of the cat5 converted to RCA
I am using telephone cables as my IC wires. They sre more suited for audio frequency and prevents any RF interference compared to CAT5 cables. I am not sure if both use the same wires though as they look pretty much the same.
Haha this keeps getting interesting
First one is the inside. One of the leads of the twisted pair is soldered to the body of the RCA. For the other lead, a longish portion of insulation was removed, the exposed portion folded and then tinned. After tinning the tip, the lead was inserted in centre pin and the screw tightened.
The second photo shows the RCA Plug filled with molten wax which was filled using a glue gune
Wow thanks so you can pick up any 2 wires in cat 5 cable twist them and connect them to RCA plugs ? Aren’t these too thin for the audio signal as compared to let’s say a Belden or Mogami ?
They are usually manufactured by the same companies. The difference is just the number of pairs. Telephone cable will have 2 pairs, while the lan cable will have 4 pairs. A telephone cable can also be used to make a 10/100 mbps lan.
The key difference is the twist rate. Cat5e cables typically have a twist rate of 4–5 twists per inch, while Cat6 cables have a twist rate of 5 or more twists per inch. Phone cables have lesser twist rates. The twist rate will change the effective dielectric constant between the 2 conductors which does impact impedance and dielectric losses vs frequency.
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My wire geometry is completely different than this. I have measured a capacitance of 22pF with my cables for a length of 1.45 meters.
The cables inside the lan cable are in twisted pairs. They are already twisted around 4 twists per inch. With the default twist you get around 20 pF per meter for cat5. If you twist it more (like I have done), the capacitance will increase, but it makes the cable firm. For cat6 you will get even lower capacitance. The wire are copper. These twisted pairs do not carry high current. The dc resistance is less than an ohm for few cms. For interconnects, this will have no audible effect. You can't use just one pair to connect your speaker for example. But theoretically you can solder many of these twisted pairs at the end to make a thick cable for speakers. Never tried it. But there is something called a star quad design that can achieve very low inductance and these I think can be good for speaker wires.
Star quad cable - Wikipedia
A truly neutral cable will have 0 resistance, 0 inductance and 0 capacitance (all of which are impossible to achieve), but you can try. Someone in this forum who had access to special instrumentation cables at his workplace found the cables to have even lower capacitance than these CAT cables.
Belden, Mogami, shogami will have thicker cables. Because of this the surface area of the conductors increase and that in turn increases capacitance. Hence commercial cables will have much higher capacitance than these DIY cables, but will be physically stronger. Cables with high capacitance will rob you bit of the HF and bad cables will act as tone control. Few may like it causing subjective impressions like this cable is warm, this cable is that and what not. In my testing, the DAC cables I found to be the worst. I have discarded all of them after cannibalizing the RCA plugs. The amazon basic RCA cable too has much lesser capacitance then the DAC make cables. A good cable should be neutral, but the choice of using a bad costly cable and paying $$ for that is reserved for audiophiles
.There is an easy way to make your good neutral cable sound like a costly cable. Solder a capacitor across the rca terminals.
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availlyrics
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LAN wire used as a speaker cable. All coloured wire soldered as positive, all White with coloured stripes as negative resulting in 24AWG X 4 for each polarity. If one wants to make a thicker cable with specific shapes, then more of such wires can be used and woven into braids or flattened by removing the outer sleeves. Each twisted pair is twisted slightly different from other pairs to avoid interference by manufacturing company.
If one claims to hear difference between different cables and their effects on audio signal, then probably the cable capacitance is too high and possibly, its making the amplifier unstable.
If one claims to hear difference between different cables and their effects on audio signal, then probably the cable capacitance is too high and possibly, its making the amplifier unstable.
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Have ordered a cat 6 LAN cable- will solder and share. ThanksThe cables inside the lan cable are in twisted pairs. They are already twisted around 4 twists per inch. With the default twist you get around 20 pF per meter for cat5. If you twist it more (like I have done), the capacitance will increase, but it makes the cable firm. For cat6 you will get even lower capacitance. The wire are copper. These twisted pairs do not carry high current. The dc resistance is less than an ohm for few cms. For interconnects, this will have no audible effect. You can't use just one pair to connect your speaker for example. But theoretically you can solder many of these twisted pairs at the end to make a thick cable for speakers. Never tried it. But there is something called a star quad design that can achieve very low inductance and these I think can be good for speaker wires.
Star quad cable - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
A truly neutral cable will have 0 resistance, 0 inductance and 0 capacitance (all of which are impossible to achieve), but you can try. Someone in this forum who had access to special instrumentation cables at his workplace found the cables to have even lower capacitance than these CAT cables.
Belden, Mogami, shogami will have thicker cables. Because of this the surface area of the conductors increase and that in turn increases capacitance. Hence commercial cables will have much higher capacitance than these DIY cables, but will be physically stronger. Cables with high capacitance will rob you bit of the HF and bad cables will act as tone control. Few may like it causing subjective impressions like this cable is warm, this cable is that and what not. In my testing, the DAC cables I found to be the worst. I have discarded all of them after cannibalizing the RCA plugs. The amazon basic RCA cable too has much lesser capacitance then the DAC make cables. A good cable should be neutral, but the choice of using a bad costly cable and paying $$ for that is reserved for audiophiles
There is an easy way to make your good neutral cable sound like a costly cable. Solder a capacitor across the rca terminals.
Don't understand why you need to order and wait for this cable? It's available with most decent electric shops for 60/- bucks per meter of reputed brands like Finolex, polycab etc. Wondering
More like convenience. Got a Fedus cable from Amazon -10 metre for 250 Rs. Just opened it now- it has 8 wires at each end- 4 coloured and 4 white.Don't understand why you need to order and wait for this cable? It's available with most decent electric shops for 60/- bucks per meter of reputed brands like Finolex, polycab etc. Wondering
OMG can’t imagine I am running the KEF LS50 speakers with LAN cables
that cost RS 25 per metre. The sound is excellent and slightly bass heavy. Thanks to all of you for this wonderful idea- Hari sir, Mbhangui and availlyrics Wharfedale Linton Heritage Speakers in Walnut finish at a Special Offer Price. BUY now before the price increase.
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