Nevermind the sound, the build quality and soldering is disgustingly shoddy. There are more bad solder joints than I care to count with blobs of solder all over the place, cold solder joints, and joints without enough solder. $50 DVD players have better solder joint quality than this piece of...

Quote: Originally Posted by bluemeteor Have you ever "heard" a MHZS product? And please do not mention the PCM1743KE as this chip, like the other *cheap* Phillips TDA1543 are also very find sounding chips. Yes. I have. It's crap. The soldering and construction quality is crap...

SinglePower Extreme, on the basis that the Woo 4 uses 12AU7 input tubes. 12AU7s were never designed for linearity and they can't be made to run linearly, they belong in guitar amps and have no place in hi-fi. Even a run of the mill 6SN7 such as the GE 6SN7GTA/B will handily outperform the best...

Quote: Originally Posted by Ampersand edit: Maybe I should just eliminate the film altogether if I'm using Blackgates. But I was soooo looking forward to a nice big round film cap edit: I did find a 4uF Dynamicap that isn't too large. Could just use that and no electrolytics in...

Quote: Originally Posted by recstar24 For that kind of dough I would probably look at getting something custom made. Personally, I would get a DHT 45 Tube amp with the absolute best iron I could afford. Try the Emission Labs AD1, everything you love in a good 45 but with more...

Quote: Originally Posted by Uncle Erik If you're going to spend $5k-$6k, get the best. Don't settle for 12AU7 and 12AX7 tubes. Those were originally engineered for inexpensive consumer products - not high-end audio. You want meaty triodes, at least octal tubes. And insist on...

Quote: Originally Posted by Kees Why would this not be accurate? And why do you call it a load of crock instead of explaining why this could not be accurate according to you? Johnson noise, also known as thermal noise. It's dependant on bandwidth, resistance, and temperature...

-113dB noise floor with a bandwidth of DC to over 100kHz? What a load of crock.

Quote: Originally Posted by Stephonovich My initial thought is that I might want to buy a house in a year or so, after the market has maybe settled down a little. Not so sure about that anymore. The economy seems shaky at best, and the sub-prime foreclosurers haven't seem to hit CT yet...

Quote: Originally Posted by braillediver "A transformer will break ground loops which reduces or eliminates hum & noise. Those problems can be resolved for next to nothing without buying that piece of gear. Usually, but not always. Sometimes one can run into a stubborn ground...

A transformer will break ground loops which reduces or eliminates hum & noise. Assuming the transformer is of decent quality, this will improve the sound.

Quote: Originally Posted by gyrodec They are great, assuming you never want to go past 16bits. It become impossible to laser trim the DAC resistors accurately enough, and you end up with very servere destortions creaping in in the low levels under 16bit. Even at 16 bit the non-linearity...

Quote: Originally Posted by 883dave Have a listen to Sim Audio Andromeda For one thing it's a two-box player, and it's also big and heavy. Worth every penny I spent on it though, I find it's better in every respect than my Audio Aero Capitole.

Some tubes you can probably identify by their structure, a tube with "mouse ears" is almost certainly a Tung-Sol 6SN7. If you're lucky you should be able to recognize a few tubes this way. With VR tubes it should be pretty straightforward, put together a simple PSU and use an inline resistor...

Find a 60W lightbulb and the socket to go with it, they're readily available at any hardware store. Wire the speaker cables to the socket and adjust the volume until the lightbulb glows nicely. With the right music, you can even watch the bulbs flash in synch with the beat.