By David Ponce
The Neuhaus T-2 amplifier is designed to work with a variety of inputs, most notably your PC. It features USB as well as optical SPDIF inputs and the spiel on the product page makes a point of pitting the T-2 against regular PC speakers that “simply won’t sound good, because computers are not meant to deliver superior sound quality. The sound cards on most computers are terrible.” Right, so the T-2 entirely bypasses your sound card by connecting through USB and processing the data itself. Here’s where things get screwy for me. From the page:
The T-2 Amplifier has a built in Digital to Analog Converter (DAC). A digital-to-analog converter, or DAC, converts digital information — 0’s and 1’s — into analog music signals.
In other words, it does exactly what a sound card does, except that it does it with vacuum tubes…
No offense here, but I find that audiophiles are an odd bunch. Perhaps because I’ve never felt the eargasms they clearly experience daily, I can’t grasp why anyone would spend the obscene sums this little clique feels justified in dropping on a regular basis. In this particular case, Neuhaus wants you to part with $800 for what is essentially a 20W amplifier with tubes that performs part time sound card duty.
Heck, maybe it’s worth it. Any audiophiles out there who can convince us muffle-eared mortals?
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Garbage in = garbage out fully applies here. Audiophiles prefer to purify at each step to ensure as pure a sound hits their multi thousand dollar speakers as possible. If the stuff isnt pure before it hits your nice amps logically its going to amplify the trash too. The more you deviate from analog the more trash you add each step of the way with no decent ways to remove it.
No one makes vinyl records anymore and theyre one of the last sources of pure analog uncompressed sound [ besides live recording to something like FLAC. ] Once the sound is recoded and compressed/trashed to CD and worse yet to an MP3 its musical purity has suffered greatly. If your setup is nice and you start with good source material by the time it hits your expensive speakers the difference is like watching 1080 HDTV over low res standard TV.
Last I checked, quite a number of companies still press fresh vinyl records. Another even more “pure” source of sound would be a reel to reel tape deck.
So many companies that every music store is full of new artists vinyl records.
Now please pass me some of whatever youre smoking.
Every sound card converts digital to analog and analog to digital. The difference is how well they do it. If this wasn't important then anyone would be able to record/hear pure and perfect sound like the greatest studios in the world do with they're $10.000 soundcard, amplifier, etc.
Every sound card converts digital to analog and analog to digital. The difference is how well they do it. If this wasn't important then anyone would be able to record/hear pure and perfect sound like the greatest studios in the world do with they're $10.000 soundcard, amplifier, etc.