Noise, The Audiophile's Bane

03/17/21 • 134 min

Noise, noise noise. It's all noise. To the serious audiophile, reducing noise at every point of a stereo system is job #1. Compression artifacts keep us from touching MP3s with a ten foot pole. Digital streams must contain vanishing amounts of jitter. Conversion to analog requires careful filtering. Interconnects should reject RF and EMI, and hold their own in the vicinity of power cables. Power cables shield the system from the outside world. Mechanical isolation disconnects components from vibration noise. Power supply ripple is smoothed out.

This audiophile hobby is completely obsessed with noise, and for good reason. When the noise is removed, the music flows and the magic happens. It's the recipe for success with audio, and in this episode of The Hifi Podcast, hosts Darren and Duncan go around the signal chain to discuss many different types of noise.

More listener questions are also tackled, as usual, with this week's questions centering around speaker spikes and philosophical arguments for and against separates versus integrated.

This week's album recommendation is a real mind bender. An instrumental work from a session and touring legend on the bass guitar goes in serious audiophile directions while remaining fairly genre-ambivalent. It may be hard to nail down, but this record will prove a real challenge for the subs, and a delight for the ears.

This podcast is powered by CommonGround Cables Whisper power cable. Read customer reviews and order your own at www.commongroundcables.com.

Find all of our album recommendations in one place, at www.thehifipodcast.net.

More listener questions are also tackled, as usual, with this week's questions centering around speaker spikes and philosophical arguments for and against separates versus integrated.

This podcast is powered by CommonGround Cables Whisper power cable. Read customer reviews and order your own at www.commongroundcables.com.

Find all of our album recommendations in one place, at www.thehifipodcast.net.

Previous Episode

Future-Fi: What May Lie Ahead For Audio

What would it be like if the deleterious effects of room boundaries and interaction were a thing of the past? In the future, will audiophiles have the same problems we do now, or will we be arguing about the best-sounding audio software for our brain implants?

Audiophiles tend to get bogged down in debate over our here-and-now problems like whether to bi-amp or what speaker cabinets are more inert than others. It can be a fun exercise to imagine the future possibilities with an audio buddy, and Darren and Duncan give it a go.

Also in this episode, a listener asks about his 12-watt EL-84-based tube amp and whether it's a good match for his Harbeth P3 speakers. Another listener asks which turntable setup is recommended to sound better than his DAC -- a trickier challenge than it first seems.

This week's album recommendation comes from one of the guys' favorite world music singers, and features tunes in French, Spanish and English. Apparently the artist crafted the record while traveling on the road with a circus. As you do.

This podcast is powered by CommonGround Cables Whisper power cable. Read customer reviews and order your own at www.commongroundcables.com.

Find all of our album recommendations in one place, at www.thehifipodcast.net.

Next Episode

Truth, Or Buffered Reality? What Audiophiles Want

“You can’t handle the truth!” is a phrase that comes to mind on the topic of the revealing nature of a hifi system. Sometimes, we don’t want the actual reality of a crash cymbal in our listening rooms. Have you ever heard a crash cymbal from the “business end,” i.e. away from the drummer?

In hifi audio, many paths lead to the same place, and many tweaks and changes can get you there in a unique way. There’s no reason a system must have all distortions completely neutralized, laying bare only the remaining distortions which can’t be controlled... unless that’s exactly what you want.

Hifi audio is supposed to be fun, after all. In this week’s episode of The Hifi Podcast, Darren and Duncan look at both sides of the coin when it comes to audio truth.

A listener also asks a question about vintage Yamaha NS-1000 speakers, and this week’s album recommendation is a new release from a brilliant artist who is one of Darren’s favorites.

This podcast is powered by CommonGround Cables Whisper power cable. Read customer reviews and order your own at www.commongroundcables.com.

Find all of our album recommendations in one place, at www.thehifipodcast.net.