chill wrote: > John > > I can't tell if you're just being mischievous, but if not, are you > seriously suggesting that the mere presence of a powered-up computer in > the same house as the hifi will have an audible effect? That's a bit of > a blow for the whole computer-based audio industry. But moreover, and > returning to the OPs point I suppose, are you suggesting that the > changes in EMI and mains noise between a computer that's running > Fidelizer and one that's not will be audible? > > I realise that your post is describing a theoretical possibility only > (hence the capitalised 'COULD'), but what is the likelihood of these > effects being audible in the real world? How bad would your components > have to be for such minuscule things to have an impact? IMO, the > plug-pull test is already convincing enough.
I'm being serious. A computer sitting on the same shelf as your stereo system can have a significant affect on said stereo system from airborne EMI and noise on the power line. If it's three rooms away the effects will be much less. This thread never specified any geometrical arrangement of the components. I know several people who have tried to use their laptop to control an SB, the laptop was across the room from the stereo, they could hear noise on the stero system when they moved the mouse on the laptop. What is going on inside the computer can have an affect on the sound without changing bits. I did some tests on this quite a few years ago testing a bunch of desk tops, laptops, small things such as Mac mini's, embedded devices like FitPCs etc. I did this with my stereo system, and with a few friend's systems. In all these tests it was a computer in the listening room, but NOT right next to the stereo system, usually across the room. Note that the computers being testsed had nothing to do with the audio. The stereo was being fed by an SB conected by wire to a server a long ways away. The computers under test were just doing things like web broswsing etc. The worst by FAR were the laptops, almost everyone was audible in some way, either directly emitting sound (through the stereo) or changing audio that was playing. Desk tops fared quite a bit better, either not audible at all or not as much affect. Small general purpose computers such as Mac minis did a little better, but still could be heard under some situations, embedded devices such as a FitPC were inaudible no matter what we had them doing. The method of "contamination" from the laptops seemed to EMI, they did just as bad when run off batteries. We tried wrapping one in aluminum foil (kind of hard to use in that state!) and it's affect went way down. Whether the screen was up or down also had a significant affect. So yes computers CAN affect sound quality, and something which is changing the underlying behavior of said computer could very well change it's impact on sound quality. I have no knowledge about the program in question here so I'm not making any comment about it, I was primarily refering to the use of the "pull the ethernet cable" test as being definitive, if the server computer is still running there is the possibility that it can still be affecting the sound quality through means other than direct connection to the SB. John S. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JohnSwenson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5974 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=95644 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
