As usual I always s learn something about how to make my system better and neat tweak ideas listening to him. Here he reveals a tweak of hooking up one RCA to ground between components if you use XLR as ICs.
He also talks about Analog digital and why their noise is similar and why old recordings are so good
If you don’t no Garth. He designed Dragon Power cables and Niagara power conditioners for Audio Quest and lots of Furman pro stuff. At the end he hints at new design grounding boxes he has coming out and states basically that is the Niagara’s function.
Plus everything about power and why if you buy the best equipment you still have to work even harder to make it sound best.
What Garth said about noise effect is great. I mentioned before that MK2 has made the vocal more appropriately sized in compared to DS, and he described how lower noise floor would do that too.
I am happy to learn that my system has a much lower noise floor than before.
Yes. He says lots of great stuff that correlates to what I have found in this hobby. There is no one magic box that resolves all the problems and if someone tries to sell you that beware. His podcast speaks a lot of truths and explains the noise challenges that systems see due to RF noise spectrum and how difficult it is to get perfection out of our systems.
I hate to be the curmudgeon here, but what did he say that we don’t all regularly discuss here on this forum?:
audiophile bombast is just that; there are no magic boxes
The room is important
Address your cable placements
Position your speakers
A good earth ground is essential
Maybe my take is biased because the only time I had a hum issue was when I bought a Niagara 5000 which hummed like crazy and went back for a refund.
You are right! When you’ll be at Axpona try and visit CAD booth. I’m so curious to know how 1.1 version works compared to 1.0. Let me know if/when you purchase it.
I emailed Scott to inform him that a few members from PS Audio might visit him there.
And I just asked him suggestions to deal with router/ethernet stuff, if he has new ideas or products to fight noise in that area.
I just ordered his brand new USB filter (like a dongle) but my router doesn’t sport a USB port (I’m feeling an idiot for that!). So I can use just a RJ11 unused port with some adapter RJ to USB, which doesn’t convince me at all.
Awaiting answers to my emails from him, soon.
Interesting interview! He sure had a lot of information that he presented without hesitation, in other words he wasn’t pausing and thinking about it, it just came to him immediately. Very impressive!
The most interesting thing to me was his explanation for why vinyl sounds better than digital (with limitations). It’s not that vinyl is warmer, the real difference is vinyl excels at low level information (and conversely not so good at high level). This is very advantageous to well recorded acoustic instruments, think classical and jazz, not so good for loud music like rock. Digital is the opposite, does well with loud music but not so good for the low level details. He said it had to do with dynamic range and essentially only one bit being used for those very quiet sounds. Can’t say I can confirm that, but would explain why some are so fond of the sound of vinyl. I include myself in that but it is such a pain in the ass …
One thing I was disappointed he didn’t cover is mechanical hum. I’ve got a P10 that occasionally has a very noticeable hum, presumably the transformer. I’ve heard this is due to DC on the line, not sure if this is coming from within the house or from outside. I’m in a residential neighborhood so I don’t think there is an industrial source for what that’s worth.
I sure wish I had 48 hours in a day, then I could finally listen to all these podcasts and keep up with this forum!
Couldn’t agree more. Even if I confess it’s harder IME listening to 1 hour podcast, not in my native language. I find more pleasant a text written I can read while I’m listening to music, I’d love if they (the podcasters) were able to provide a transcription.
Otherwise I like more videos vs podcasts, making me less prone to fall asleep!
Elk, I share your assessment! I rarely listen to them. I did find the Hi-Fi podcast with Darren an Duncan amusing, but … it was still hard to maintain concentration for well over an hour. The voices in my head tell me to do something productive!
Since I have what may be a ground hum, I listened to this podcast hopefully. Unfortunately, the podcaster doesn’t prompt Garth to go into depth about troubleshooting hum, giving a very few minutes to the title of the podcast, and instead allows him to move onto other issues, mainly studio oriented ones.