Slim.a
That was a very well thought out, measured and completely honest response, frankly with all the disclaimers and IMHO's you sprinkle throughout anything you comment on I'm a little mystified by the negative responses. The last impression I get from your excellent reviews is a feeling like your way is the only way, in fact you take great pains to qualify your beliefs as strictly your own but I do subscribe to what you are saying in general because I've spent a lot of time doing the exact same things. The funny thing is, I didn't read it about most of these tweaks elsewhere (30 years ago there were precious few resources for such things let alone decent cables) I just starting experimenting with no foreign preconceived viewpoints (or as you call it an open mind). I think the industry itself (accessories that make wild claims) are mostly to blame here what with the sheer variety of what I would call, way over the line claims/devices as being the largest source of healthy skepticism these days...but that doesn't mean you lump
all tweaks in with the dubious ones, that is as silly (IMO) as it is to dismiss all tweaks as quackery or go the opposite direction and claim all as gospel. The truth generally lies in the middle with a lot of this stuff, common sense and science will help with some of them, your ears for the rest (I rely mainly on experience, experiments and long term testing,) Short term evaluation is not reliable enough I have found (especially so with some of the mods I've been perusing the last 2 years).....but there really is no substitute for trying something in house (no substitute for that at all). I urge others to experiment as much as their hearts desire (within their skill set with any and all ideas, especially the ones you formulate on your own) it's an utterly rewarding, sometimes tragic (we all have our expensive failures) but ultimately illuminating pursuit. Again this is just my opinion folks. Vibration control however,
is crucial and based solidly in physics...how this one gets labeled snaky is truly astonishing even if you have nothing but a HS knowledge of physics. Go figure.
I suppose it's human nature of a sort to want tear a strip off ideas that don't jibe with the so called mainstream (what exactly is such a thing, the mainstream, in audio or music for that matter ?).
Your comment about the AD OPA's vs the Earth HDAM reminded me of the lengthy and exhaustive experiments Penchum,Sennsay and I went through using various size film caps directly across the + and - pins of the HDAM itself. A tweak recommended by Burson BTW. Some of that speed can be regained by adding a 1uf PIO across the 4 and 8 pins of the HDAM as closely as you can get the cap to them. I know Kingwa uses the box caps tied to ground but I found (as Pench and Sennsay did) that coonecting directly across the 4 & 8 pins with the box caps snipped off works better. It's a subtle but useful mod. It also boosts dynamics a smidgen. Of course the quality of cap doesn't play a crucial role in this application but a cheap high quality film cap will be effective.
Give it a try with either a Russian PIO or a Vishay/Roderstein MKP1837 (1uf is best).
Peete.
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