Audioquest noise stoppers

[Reid Malenfant]

Inputs only for male chassis sockets by the look of them

Nice find by the way!

[Chops]

Thanks Mark. Looks like the tape will stay. At least I can use the male plugs for the inputs on the DAC, pre and power amps.

T'was MartinT what pointed us in their direction (earlier in this thread). They look remarkably like the Telos Audio Design caps and they just happen to be based in Taiwan as well. They sell a variety of caps (http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Vintage-Aud...=p4634.c0.m322). These are made of "brass copper" whereas Telos quote copper. Not sure whether it would make a difference.

Chris

[realysm42]

They're for the male parts of the stereo/dac/whatever, so they'll work on that part of it.

[Chops]

They're for the male parts of the stereo/dac/whatever, so they'll work on that part of it.

Sorry Martin. Just to be clear, my input sockets all seem to be female therefore requiring male plugs.

Chris

[MartinT]

Confirmed, XLR outputs are male, inputs are female.

[Griffy]

I fancy trying these, but need 20 of the little buggers!

[Chops]

Well, I've placed 3 separate orders now for one lot (20 caps) of RCA caps and two lots of XLRs (2 caps each) at just a bit over £10 per order including carriage. Hope this will avoid any issues with import as mentioned above. Still waiting for the first order to arrive but I'll post some impressions when they arrive.

Chris

[Griffy]

Got mine today, 20 of them from Taiwan. No import duties or hassles, nice and cheap!

[Chops]

Got mine today, 20 of them from Taiwan. No import duties or hassles, nice and cheap!

Got mine last week plus 2 pairs of XLRs. Just got round to a short comparison. The QBD76 DAC has 2 AES balanced XLR inputs, a spare BNC SPDIF input and a BNC word clock input. You can see a pic of all the sockets here http://www.chordelectronics.co.uk/fi...6%20manual.pdf if you're interested. Anyways, I capped the lot using cheap BNC to RCA converters from Maplins. I also capped all spare RCA inputs on the EAR 868 pre-amp and the XLR inputs.

I didn't have too much time to see what the differences were so I've only tried with and without on the DAC. Result was a small but clear lowering of the good 'ol noise floor. The guitar work on the left channel of Nick Drake's Three Hours (from Five Leaves Left) sounded more detailed with more texture and a possibly a little more prominent with the caps. Bass was slightly more recessed in the balance. Didn't detect any other changes particularly.

For what they cost, I would wholeheartedly recommend them. Don't expect night and day changes. And they keep the dust off.

Off to check out improvements to pre-amp.

Chris

[Reid Malenfant]

No idea why but this thread just triggered either the most insane or sane idea I have ever come up with

I just don't know why it never occured to me previously


Mark is going to find out how much blue "fridge" paint he has left & if it's still usable