TWEAKS FOR ELECTRONICS

 

There is so much that can be done to electronics to make them sound much better. I would like to share some of these with you.

I don't want to share info on which caps, resistors, diodes, wires, transistors, tubes, circuitry, etc. to use inside electronics. This is way to complex and controversial. Everyone has a different opinion.

 

1. Get rid of those stupid distorted binding posts. All binding posts, including the best ones (Cardas and MusicPosts) distort the sound. I'm sure you would not want to listen to a heavy gauge thick speaker wire made out of solid brass or ordinary copper. It would sound real bad. That is how binding posts sound, even though they are only an inch or so long. The easiest way to eliminate the binding post sound is to bring the wire from inside the amp to the outside and put the bare end of the wire into the hole on the outside of binding post. You put your spade or better yet, bare wire from your speaker cable against this wire and Hosanna, a wire to wire clamp. Hence way better sound! This can be done at the speaker end as well. Some manufacturers of speakers even put tip jacks on their speakers so you can only use the even more distorted banana plugs. Stay away from all adapters and extra connections too.

 

2. Get rid of all LEDs. LEDs add grain and distortion. Tons of it!!! LCD displays on CD/DVD players, etc don't distort the sound. If you need to have an LED for some reason then put a switch on it so it can be turned off when you are playing music.

 

3. Change the steel screw that holds your big diode bridge down to the chassis in your amp to brass. The field around these diode bridges is huge. The magnetic steel screw messes up the sound.

 

4. Try and eliminate vibrations anywhere you can. Constrained layer damping materials can be added to chassis parts, heat sinks, heat sink tabs on transistors, circuit boards (you do not want any damping material put directly on top of signal carrying parts or traces). Doing so would add the sound of the damping material (dialectric absorption) to the signal. Of course, you want to use the best feet and shelving under your equipment.

 

5. Add tons of large transformers and separate power supplies (regulated or not). All power supplies should be as separate as possible. Example: You have a stereo tube amp. It has one power transformer for all power supplies for both channels (real bad). You do not want any of the power supplies to see each other. The high current heater supplies should not see each other nor should they see any of the high voltage supplies. So, just add 9 more transformers!!!!!! For each channel you would have a transformer and power supply for the input stage, the output stage, the bias supply, the heaters for the input stage and a big transformer for the heaters of the output stage. WOW! This is the only way that an all out tube amp should be done. The sound is so transparent and dynamic when this is done. Of course, this is the same with transistor gear. Every power supply should have its own transformer!! I have made a DAC for my friend Michael Danis that has 10 power transformers (5 for digital and 5 for the analog stages. This DAC is clean, mean, clean!

 

6. Get rid of all unneccesary circuitry. I am a no preamp dude and I have been for 20 years. But, let's look at some even more controversial things to remove. The last output buffer and all anti alias filters on most DACs and CD players can be completely removed. The measurers tell us that doing so will send all kinds of ultrasonics into the preamp or amp and cause intermodulation distortion. These same measurers have never actually listened to what these filters do to the sound. If you have filters then you need a buffer following the filters. In my experience the Burr-Brown PCM 63, 1702 and the UltraAnalog DACs do not need any filtering or buffering. They sound much better into any load this way. I first started doing this when I had an amp that had an 800 K bandwidth. Even a single pole of filtering messed up the sound. On one bit DACs it is a little trickier. The ultrasonic noise on some one bit DACs is so close to the audio band that it can fold down into the audio band causing hiss and hum. I have been able to use just 2 poles of filters on the latest Sony's, 1 pole on the latest Crystal DAC chips and no filters on the latest Burr-Brown DACs. Older one bit DAC chips in the Marantz 63 and JVC 1050 required 4 poles of filters to keep the noise out of the audio band. Please don't bother to e-mail me about how crazy this is and that Nyquist is going to come to me in the middle of the night and filter my brain or something. Let's keep a sense of humor. If you have actually done very critical listening tests and come to a different conclusion, I would like to hear about it.

 

7. Use only one side of all dual triode tubes. The amplifiers in a tube are operating in a vacuum. The electrons from one amp can effect the other. It sounds much better to use single triodes or just ground the pins of one of the tube halves. Paralleling the two sides of the same tube sounds much worse than just using one side. Both channels in the same tube? You have got to be kidding!

 

 

 

 products   About EVS  What's New   home  Tweaks  Audio News  Order/Contact Info