🚀 go-pugleaf

wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu (Bill Mayhew) writes:

>The biggest problem is that there is not very much high quality
>source material available.  Most commercially available recordigns
>are bad enough that they don't sound much better on a multi
>kilobuck stereo than a cheap boombox.

I disagree - if you know where to look there is a large number of excellent
recordings around. Generally I look for the name of the engineer on the
sleeve, as well as the artists, before deciding what to buy.
The Chandos label springs to mind - it is a family-run
label with father and son as producer and engineer respectively, working
with the top orchestras in the UK. I've never bought a duff CD from them. 

However, I know nothing about rock/pop etc - "classical" and jazz for me :-)
 
>The biggest problem I've seen in cheap sound equipment is woefully
>lousy power supplies.  Plenty of improvement can be had without
>resorting fancy polyproylene dielectric capacitors, but with
>properly sized transformers and capacitors.  Active regulation does
>wonders.

I can't agree with this enough - good power supplies are expensive, and tend
to get left out of cheap equipment. Does anyone have experience with
switchmode power supplies for audio power-amps? It seems a good idea on
the surface (low weight, high efficiency, low output impedance up to
several MHz), but I can see problems with interference from the high-energy
switching circuits.

Christopher Hicks
--
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 Christopher Hicks    |    If it doesn't fit...
 cmh@uk.ac.cam.eng    |                        ...you need a bigger hammer.
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