What if this whole conversation was about some speaker wire? Poster 1 "Wow, company X's modification of Logitech's speaker wire has totally transformed the sound! Everything's become so real!!!"
Poster 2 "If a mod on a speaker wire makes that much difference, and the original speaker wire pretty much doesn't add any distortion, that means the modded speaker wire is distorted." Poster 1 "Whatever. You haven't heard the mod so what are you talking about. I know it sounds better." I believe that the end result of every system is not perfect. In the majority of cases even the most basic aspect of frequency response is not very neutral. Personally I correct for this with room treatments and DSP. Even so, there are clearly many other aspects to sound such dynamic range, noise, harmonic distortion and no doubt others known and others yet to be discovered, and every set up lacks in some aspects in terms of the end result the listener hears. This means that adding a component which distorts the signal always has a possibility of making the end result better. Some distortions cancel each other out - e.g. DSP is really in fact a distortion...one intended to counteract "bad distortions" in the end sound. The point is this - I don't think a digital source is an appropriate place to design distortions even if the result happens to be good for some set ups. I like my sources, volume controls, cables etc to be as neutral and transparent as possible. I think speakers and rooms are where you can really mix to taste, because this is where so many compromises have to made anyway due to the physics of it. However, components where only an electric signal exists should just sound as if they are not there. Playing your system at 100% volume should sound the same as playing your system without the preamp, for example. If your system sounds magically better WITH the preamp, it could be it is correcting some "bad distortion" in the setup but it doesn't mean it is a "better" preamp in some absolute sense. Darren -- darrenyeats SB3 / Inguz -> Krell KAV-300i (pre bypass) -> PMC AB-1 Dell laptop -> JVC UX-C30 mini system ------------------------------------------------------------------------ darrenyeats's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10799 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=43269 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
