[Jay S]

Specifically, I'd like to see what other exciting word shortenings you've got up your sleeve besides "comparo" and "+ive"  I can hardly wait!

Really, Nathan, was it necessary to criticize the diction of Kishore, particularly when it was not at all a central point?  

Guys, I'm sure we agree that its fine to disagree on whether a tweak is effective or not, and that there is no need to get mean about it.  At the same time, there is a difference between being straight forward and being offensive.

[Pez]

Guys, I'm sure we agree that its fine to disagree

Quote the Simpsons: "I don't agree to that."

[calsaint]

back to hopefully being not offensive:

Wayne ... I apologize for not recalling, but do you usually include any other dampening, with blutak or otherwise, of the crystal or op amp (or caps?) in your mods for the DI/O?

[EProvenzano]

Good job Nathan!
I'm not suprised to see that this escallated to this level. The name calling is a bit ridiculous, but overall a very good debate.
I certainly wouldn't want this to be lost as "intergalactic waste".
I think it's refreshing for someone to stand up for what they hear especially when it goes against the grain  How dare you Nathan  
Most of the time I think newbies are being railroaded into buying the latest craze because they are overwhelmed by all the positive reviews and the "if you buy anything else, it sucks" attitude. It would be nice to read more posts like this so that we can realize that there is obviously a more realistic balance of great, good, mediocre, and bad audio gear.

IMO, the tube-o-stuff is way over priced and I can think of many other things i'd rather spend my money on. This stuff grates my bones cause someone is getting rich quick on it! Come on $55 for half a ml!!! What is that...3-4 drops?

[Wayne1]

I normally do not add anything to the op-amp. Blu-tack IS NOT suggested because the op-amp is biased into Class A and runs very warm.

The Tube-O-Lator does not change the heat transfer characteristics of the IC.

I have added mortite to the crystals.

[doug s.]

fyi, i have a blu-tac-type substance on my class-a biased lt1362 op amp, & have had no heat-related problems...  as to its effectiveness, i honestly have no idea - i never bothered w/an a-b comparison.  it made a bit of sense to me to do it, so i yust did it & left it at that...  edit: oh ya - i also blu-tac'd the chips on the digital board...

doug s.

[Kishore]

Specifically, I'd like to see what other exciting word shortenings you've got up your sleeve besides "comparo" and "+ive"  I can hardly wait!

I wonder if you ever used SMS for chatting...then you will be exposed to lot more " word shortenings" (if you want to know SMS-you will not hear frm me )

Nathan if you want colorful posts you can always go to pornolize.com though I am sure you do not need them for your posts


Cheers,
Kishore

P.S.- Ok I admit it I hate fingering the Kybd (of all things)  

[Pez]

Man,  Everyone hates everyone else here. Very entertaining.  

[bubba966]

Bubba,

I have replaced the Y-connectored HGA cables with a shielded digital cable but I have not yet bothered to plug the outputs of the DIOs into the exact same set of jacks on the back of the SE-9 because I think that is truly and utterly a non-issue.  But I will try it anyway.  I hope to do a test with other people's input.  I still think it would be 10x more fun to compare speakers than two 99.999% identical DACs!

I totally believe in doing "real world" testing.  The cross the t and dot the i stuff is fine for guys in lab coats, but I am just the customer, ok?  I wanna stick the equipment in the system just the way anyone else would and not be fretting about how thick the plating is on the RCA jacks.  Sheesh!

I will also gladly compare the unshielded to shielded digital cables.  I was not aware that incoming "hash" made such an effect on the sound.  I would think that if said hash was so bad the music would skip or cut out, right?  Well, it does if you rub your feet on the carpet.  Why nobody has addressed this particular issue with the DIO is beyond me.  Where are the faraday cage mods?  Where are the liquid nitrogen immersion mods?  Where are the DIO cable elevator tweaks? A 3 inch long Y-adapter destroys fidelity but static doesn't?  Hmmmm...

Most of the reasons I mentioned for testing would be to cut down on variables. Use only one digital cable, one analog from the DI/O, one input on your SE-9, and one power supply for the DI/O. Listen to an entire track that you're very familiar with how it sounds in your setup. Swap nothing but the DI/O itself and listen to the same track.

I'm not saying you've got to get seriously technical when doing this. But to just make the only variable the DI/O itself.

I'd even be willing to let you borrow one of my Bolder Silver Bullet Cryo'd Digital's to do the testing with if you like. I don't know what digital you're using so I don't know if one of mine would be any improvement or not. But you're welcome to try it out. I just ask that you try testing it as I just described (or however Wayne described as he knows more about testing methods than I do).

I'm very much wondering how much impact (if any) this stuff has. I've got 6 years of fine woodworking & finishing schooling as well as 7+ years of working as a coatings applicator. I find the idea that this particular coating does such amazing things that some other similar type of coating must not do (which it must be doing something that nothing else does, hence the high cost/volume it's got).

If you're interested PM me with your address & if you need a .75M or 1.25M to use as I've got both lengths. I'd have it out in the mail in the morning

[nathanm]

Okay folks, I have performed a highly technical and controlled test using two  listeners; myself and my friend Steve who is an accomplished singer who has performed in many choirs over the years as well as my friend Mark, an electrical engineer who designs and programs digital components at his day job. Mark acted as the switcher of the components while Steve and I sat in the sweet spot and listened to the music. (Steve's spot was sweeter than mine, but we at least sat aligned between the speakers.)

We compared the stock and tube-o-lator DIOs using shielded digital cable and swapping the analog output cables.  We listened to the same exact 1:00 long sections of music from two different CDs in two different sessions using the Shanling's A-B loop function.  I told them the audiophiles would yell at me if we didn't listen to the WHOLE song all the way through each time, but in the spirit of saving time Steve made the argument that wine tasters don't need to drink the whole bottle. Fair enough!    

The first song was Pentangle "I've Got A Feeling" and the second was Simon & Garfunkle "Bleeker Street".  44.1KHz sampling rate was used on both tests.

The entire system had warmed up by playing Morbid Angel "Altars Of Madness" for 10 hours straight before the test.  Only Mark knew which unit was which and wether or not he switched the DIOs during the changeover.  We listened to the loop about six times for each different band and then gave our opinions.  I felt one DIO sounded a bit smoother and the vocal was slighty more centered in the stage.  Steve felt he heard a difference in "brightness" between the two.

We both failed to correctly identify the DIO we thought sounded different than the other. The loop I felt sounded smoother than the other was in fact the same DIO and had NOT been switched.  Therefore it is safe to conclude that I was not hearing what I thought I was and that the brain was 'making stuff up' as it were.  Towards the end of the test Steve said he could no longer tell which was which and that any difference was "negligible".  We both heard underlying distortions in the Pentangle recording as the singer's voice got louder.  There were also some small clips and perhaps a tape dropout that we both heard.  Neither of us felt either one was any better than the other in the end.

The second test used the Tube-O-Lator DIO only.  The only change performed was the switching between the Homegrown Audio Silver Lace interconnect and a shielded 75-ohm digital cable.  The decision was unamimous on this test; we were both unable to tell a difference after repeated loops of the exact same sections of music.

What was agreed however was that the system sounded excellent. Steve, who has absolutely no knowledge of hifi audio, commented without prior provocation that he could pinpoint where the instruments and singer was in the soundstage.  Mark was sitting next to the rack the whole time behind the speakers and he did not comment too much on the sound.  He did however, have much to say about the issues surrounding the design of the DIO's circuits.  He asked me to post any future comments about this for him.

I will post some pictures of the testing circumstances in the near future hopefully.

[Jay S]

Nathan,

It was very good of you to repeat the test and to invite your friends over.  

We'd love to hear your friend Mark's views on the design of the DI/O's circuit.  Do let us know!

[JoshK]

Man,  Everyone hates everyone else here. Very entertaining.  

No Jason, we just all hate you!  

[audiojerry]

I've been too busy to notice all the posts that have been made here, and haven't read anything past the first page yet. So I'm sure I missed a lot of comments, but I want to respond to Nathan's reply to my post on page one:

Jerry - What you are talking about has nothing to do with electronics and everything to do with personal, subjective opinion and emotional response to music.

What are you talking about? Of course it is personal, subjective, and emotional. How can you evaluate the way music sounds without them? Are you trying to turn yourself into a piece of measuring tool and listen as an entirely objective instrument? That would be stupid anyways, because electronic measuring instruments do a crap ass job of determining what something sounds like.
 

You cannot logically claim to hear auidible minutia on some CDs and not others.

Yes, I do claim that the cd used for evaluating a component is critical. Some cd's are simply much better than others for evaluating differences in the way a component sounds.  

It simply makes no sense at all. We're not doing record reviews here, it's an evaluation of how one set of circuits decodes digital bits verses another one. Nothing more.

Ok, Mr. listening machine. Keep listening to decoded digital bits. Knock yourself out. I will continue to evaluate a component by listening to the music and how I am effected on a subjective, emotional level.  

Also, Nathan, I'm not sure what prompted your remark in the first place. Looking back on my post, I fail to see what was there that caused it.

Based on what you have been saying in much of your posts, I get the sense that you are on a mission to prove that most of what the rest of us  hold to be true regarding high-end audio is myth and lacking substance.
While it is healthy to challenge those beliefs,  I think your position may be just as biased in the other direction. This bias may color your expectations when you review components because maybe you want to support your theory going into an evaluation that there can't be any significant differences. Wire is wire. caps are caps. transistors are transistors.

Why are you yourself heading down that path of searching for audio nirvanna if you seem to be so cynical about so many audio idiosyncracies?

[nathanm]

Jerry - What you are talking about has nothing to do with electronics and everything to do with personal, subjective opinion and emotional response to music.
What are you talking about? Of course it is personal, subjective, and emotional. How can you evaluate the way music sounds without them? Are you trying to turn yourself into a piece of measuring tool and listen as an entirely objective instrument? That would be stupid anyways, because electronic measuring instruments do a crap ass job of determining what something sounds like.

 
What I was getting at is that you made such a stink about "my" music based on past experience and I felt that you assumed wrongfully that I listened to the type of direct, digital, non-purist heavy metal recordings that you complained about so vehemently for the test.  (this was not the case)  I am saying that you seem to only to be able to discern these differences in gear when listening to music YOU like, stuff you have a personal emotional response to.  When we are talking about how a piece of equipment renders music I feel a person should be able to put that aside and just evaluate the sound itself.  Therefore I think anyone who claims to hear minutia should be able to hear it on stuff besides what's in their personal collection.

That is what I meant when I said:

You cannot logically claim to hear auidible minutia on some CDs and not others.

Of course a really bad CD will not be the best indicator, but the claims made by many vendors out there would have us believe these tweaks and stuff offer more "musicality". If the stuff is so great I think it is fair to assume that such claims are referring to ALL music and not only certain CDs which have the divine blessing of the vendor.

Based on what you have been saying in much of your posts, I get the sense that you are on a mission to prove that most of what the rest of us hold to be true regarding high-end audio is myth and lacking substance.  While it is healthy to challenge those beliefs,  I think your position may be just as biased in the other direction. This bias may color your expectations when you review components because maybe you want to support your theory going into an evaluation that there can't be any significant differences. Wire is wire. caps are caps. transistors are transistors.

Well, if I were on a "mission" as you say, it would be a mission to distill out the bullshit which flows from this industry like a firehose.  A mission to separate fantasy from reality and get to the stuff which really matters. To try and not scare away people from this particular hobby by continually heaping praise on every little thing out there.  Audiophiles are like transformers; you put a little voltage in one side and out the other comes a huge jolt!  They'll hear little things in the sound, but the way they describe it sounds like a BIG thing to someone reading the description.  I think that kind of thing is counterproductive.  I'm just trying to get an idea of the scale of changes that any piece of gear provides.

Why are you yourself ading down that path of searching for audio nirvanna if you seem to be so cynical about so many audio idiosyncracies?

That is incorrect.  I am NOT searching for "audiophile nirvana" because such a thing does not exist.  I am searching for a bunch of cool looking gear that rocks and makes the sounds I wanna hear and have fun in the process.  I do not believe in any such thing as "the absolute sound", I only believe in "what sounds damn good".  Some mysterious goo that you put on ICs doesn't seem to fall under that category as our tests showed.  That is not to say nobody will hear a difference, all it means is that this stuff does extremely little to the sound in our opinion.  I hope that more technical evidence comes out on this stuff.

Also, I do enjoy razzing the golden ears folks for it's own sake.  Ya bring in some technical people, a little logic and making fun of audiophiles is like shooting fish in a barrel!

I will say though, that my experience is showing that the human brain is responsible for much of these things, and not their actual existence in the physical and\or electrical world.

[Pez]

No Jason, we just all hate you!  

psssst...... Hey Josh........

TAKE A BITE OF THIS!!!!!!!!




and just for safe measure



 

[JoshK]

Don't make me bring out spanky!

[Pez]

question is who's more crazy!!!!!  

[JoshK]

You're the only looney one here, I just got the bigger toys.

[PeteG]

Gotta Luv Free Entertainment  

[witchdoctor]

I owned the Bolder modded ART Di/O DAC and sent it in for the Mensa and Tubolator upgrade. I have never listened to a stock unit. Nor have I listened to a mensa without the tubolator application.

The effect of the mensa/tubolator upgrade on my system provided a more relaxed , natural presentation of the music. Decay of piano notes seem to fade just a little longer. you can hear the quick breath Norah Jones takes between phrases while singing, that little gulp for air.
Big band horns are much more dynamic while you can really hear the taughtness of a bow stroking a string.
There is also a soundstage that seems to extend and wrap around me during excellent recordings.
I would characterize the sound as if you went from watching a film with dim lights on in the theater with the previous version ( much better than a TV)
but now watching in a completely dark room with the mensa/ tubolator version.
How much of the difference is due to the mensa or tubolator I do not know.
I would reccomend getting the upgrade vs. the previous moded version.
Thanks,
Doc