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While these are clearly snake oil, there’s a chance the increase in noise by the filters is from the filters themselves radiating rf in the audible frequency range, which is getting picked up. If these devices were shielded it could improve the performance. Highly doubt it will be better than no filters but it could explain some things. You also would want to instal the actual memory sticks in the “2/4 stick configuration” to ensure the memory is at the end of the transmission line for the digital data. The memory filters should really omit the gold fingers on the digital signal paths to ensure it does not affect those digital transmission line impedance. All the filtering should be with respect to the power and ground pins only. Get your EEs in the lab to better evaluate these modules to get the full story :)
After shopping for for a decent pair of headphones + amp/dac, I've decided that "audiophiles" are full of shit. It's 10% objective, 85% subjective to listener, 5% creative bs.
@@vasocreta haha what did you search for/get? ive found headphone reviews are usually good but i only really care about the quality so I just check the graphs to decide and ignore the crap they say
I'd say putting rocks on top of an amp to improve sound quality is next level audiophoolery. If they were using genuine parts I could maybe be convinced that they are trying to make a product that actually works, but have little understanding of how to achieve their goal, as it is however, it's just a low effort, small time scam.
@@vasocreta Oh yea, I was shopping for audio too. Got fed up with marketing BS. Gone into professional studio market mostly. Got a nice pair of active 7'' sound monitors and am really happy with those. At least pro audio tend to publish some datasheets and reviews are more reasonable.
Please keep covering audiophile scams! I am an avid audiophile but I love seeing the science behind scam products (of which there are sooo many in this space)
If you have to explicitly and unironically in any situation ever say that you're an audiophile, it is pretty clear you don't know about any audio technology any better than any random chap asked about it in the streets.
@@anteshell you’re wrongly conflating “being an audiophile” (someone who enjoys collecting well-engineered recordings, high quality speakers and headphones and DAC/amps) with someone who buys $200 6-foot cables (pointless). They are not the same thing. Certainly you can be an audiophile who also falls for scams, but being an audiophile doesn’t NECESSITATE that you are the kind of person who falls for a scam. There IS a line, and MOST people who buy quality dac/amp setups never cross it. I’ve also noticed that many “anti-audiophiles” are just people who are struck with some kind of weird envy that they can’t afford one set of decent headphones much less several for different types of music or media sources (not all headphones perform the same on all sources or types of music). If you actually understood how different amps and headphones can be from each other (especially for different types of sources) you’d never have even made your comment.
@@martuuk8964 Eh, SOME $200 6-ft cables are not entirely pointless, imo. That's in the range of quality balanced XLR cables (which are admittedly way more expensive than most cable types for some reason). I'm not implying it's the only thing that can deliver "pristine sound quality" or whatever but you do get durability, flexibility, lack of microphonics, etc. and depending on your setup, even ground hum elimination (speaking from experience). Now, a $500 6-ft cable, on the other hand... :P
@@anteshell If you have to make stereotypical blanket statements based on memes about audiophiles, it's pretty clear you don't know about any audio technology any better than any random chap either, while also showcasing the same level of ignorance as the stereotypical audiophool you project onto an audiophile you want to make fun of. It's no different falling for the memes that invalidate the whole audiophile culture as snake oil than it is falling for everything marketed at audiophiles; both extremes lack critical thinking.
For this topic, I would like to see Alex whip out the old whiteboard and explain: 1) How would one isolate the electrical noise sources from the audio interface 2) How the motherboard/DAC manufacturers are doing it 3) If adding these devices has anything in common with these tested and proven solutions 4) Show not only the sound/noise waveforms, but also the electrical signal traces from an oscilloscope.
YES!! I feel like LTT has been failing to explain the problems further enough. I don't know why capacitors, rectifiers, and inductors would make the sound signal any better. I don't know why/how a standard PC would disturb to the signal. I think this much context would make a good job explaining how the scammers tried to act legit, what to look like in an actual solution, etc.
Computer power supplies already filter the power in the AC/DC conversion step. RAM and CPUs don't like dirty, spiky power either! If noise is being added by the motherboard, the DAC would need an isolated power supply - this is how guitar pedals avoid adding noise to the signal on higher end boards. Each pedal has it's own isolated power supply.
You're pointing out the fears I have with the whole Lab thing: The Data is here and the knowledge aswell, but the writers don't know how to incorporate it at a level that is technically deep and still entertaining for those that are not as deep into the topic.
Generally star grounding is used, basically the grounds from the audio jacks are exclusively run back the audio DAC. It's then up to the audio DAC to reject power supply noise. Highly effective RC filters are employed on the supply rails to help the DAC
0:33 I love how they just put a bunch of SMD capacitors in rows in series to make a staircase design, thinking to themselves "yep, this is what cool electronics look like."
The other train of thought is probably what's going on with those "traditional" capacitors. I would bet that they only included these because they thought something like "Hey, these are the things that are always visible on high quality stereo amplifier boards, so this is what people subconsciously connect to better audio. So let's add them, the more, the better, and let's make them as bulgy and colourful as possible!!!".
Unfortunatly, some in the Audiophile sphere will claim that the improvements can't be measured by machine, and they can "Hear" the differences. For some in the space "More money spent = Better"
Shit's everywhere, same in the guitar sphere where since the beginning people think wood type matter for electric guitars, which ofcourse since been disproved many times since when you think about it logically, free-floating string+pick-up=sound. Yet people will jump up and down screaming it does matter instead of just saying: I like the fact it's made of this fancy wood.
@@thecountrox its a small, but vocal and extremely stupid part of the community. There's plenty of people calling this out, but they will always try to justify it
Debunking scams is fun and all, but now that Labs is spinning up, you should start reviewing low to mid range DAC's using your usual "for streaming and gaming" framework. That'd be excellent. Testing things like noise floor, pre-amps, routing options (external & internal), driver quality. I'm often get asked by newcomers to the audio space what to get, and I can't be like "get this $2000 audio interface, it's sick". Usually they come asking with a budget around $100-200.
I’d love to see a video where they debunk all of the ‘audiophile’ bs so many people are selling like power cable lifts so they don’t touch the ground. Or overemgineered power and speaker cabling
@@TheTastefulThickness the "wire" is a DAC einstein. It's not an AMP but I am sure you must have enough braincells to figure out a Digital to analog converter has no relation to an Amplifier
@@TheTastefulThicknessthe focusrite scarlet does not have a good amp / dac. It isn‘t designed for that in the first place, it is an audio interface. Good dac/amps for cheap are the ifi ZEN, the schiit magni, fiio k3 etc.
I think the price to cost ratio is for their benefit not the customer, it costs them significantly less to make than the price they sell them for. Thats where this ratio comes in.
More capacitors make it worse because the regulators in the motherboard are calibrated for a specific total capacitance, and adding too much moves them from their optimal operation region, and could even make them unstable
Also, the lesser is the equivalent series resistance (ESR) of the capacitor, the lesser is the maximum capacitance that a power supply can handle at his output. Increasing the output capacitance of a power supply can help to reduce the noise.... but only if the power supply is crappy designed with something near the least output capacitance possible.... definitely cannot helps too much if the power supply is well designed and also can decrease the voltage stability if the total capacitance is excessive (or if the ESR is too low). A very good decoupling strategy requires very small high quality capacitors (extremely low ESR and ESL but also very low capacity SLCC or MLCC ceramic capacitors) placed as closest as possible to the power supply and closest as possible to the load, slightly bigger but lesser quality capacitors (very low ESR and ESL but bigger capacity MLCC ceramic capacitors) placed close to the source and the load, even bigger high quality polarized capacitors (low ESR tantalum or small electrolytic capacitors) placed nearby the source and the load and finally some big but not super high quality electrolytic capacitors scattered around the power rail (the goal is adding as much capacity as possible that the power supply can handle without instability, so higher ESR can help to increase the capacitance). BTW, this is the job of the hardware designer..... nothing to do with aftermarket components!
If you're talking about the ram thingimabobs, they shouldn't affect anything since they don't share anything with the audio output except maybe ground. The other stuff is not connected to the motherboard so your motherboard regulators don't factor in. I haven't seen the layout of what pins on the memory socket the caps are connected to but I'm going to guess nothing other than VCC and some of the GND, or between various GND or some such. Not much in the socket to connect to unless you want to bork signal pins and disable the RAM channel.
Next time, use FFT (Fourier transform) to show the noise characteristics. We could see the frequency of the noise, and its intensity between the samples.
@@HelenaOfDetroitIt's pretty basic knowledge for signal analysis. The real scam here is in the idea that you can properly isolate your audio with filters attached by the DIMM socket. Even if the filters reduce noise, they don't recover any information lost due to a noisy board. Noise at the sound card itself is where you lose audio quality. Anything other than a dedicated sound card or external hardware like a DAC isn't going to do any more good than a free software filter for even the most avid audiophile. This specific product, of course, actually has worse SNR than the motherboard itself.
Bro, I am also sitting here wondering what exactly they proved by this. I am actually getting a little frustrated by the attitude on display, just for them to not giving any solid evidence of anything. All we got was wav-files claimed to be recorded audio output from the motherboard, which they then boosted the audio levels with software. There is ZERO way for us to actually know if they screwed up the test. Linus don't even seems to understand that their method of "proving" their claims, could might as well be picking up noise from something that wasn't turned on at every "test". I mean, they are located in an industrial park. of all things. Can we at this point even be sure the recorded noise isn't a ground-loop between other devices? Do they even know what a ground-loop is? We don't even know how their test-setup is constructed, and the video mentions that they could have made another test, but didn't have time.... What a scientific test this was....
The good snake oil sellers sell good snake oil which does nothing and leaves people thinking it works. The bad sellers sell bad oil which makes you sick.
It's not that unsurprising or strange. Any inductivities WILL genererate some RF noise on the frequency of the power goin through it. So it's likely fan filters that work like little jammers. Normally, inductivities on motherboard are either shielded or compensated (by spacing etc) but throwing some shady chinese PCBs into a PC will break the balance.
A follow-up idea: desolder all the capacitors from those devices and measure their actual performance using an LCR meter: cheap content and it answers the burning question of are they actually fake caps??
Thanks for going into this WAY deeper, and cool to see the results from The Lab (TM)! I wasn't surprised that they didn't fix the noise, but I was surprised that they made it that much worse. On a personal note, I've always hated onboard audio. No matter the brand, or model tier of board, I always had noise issues, like what you recorded, gaming was really bad, depending on where I looked, it made a different kind of noise, could almost play puzzle games blind folded it was so bad the noise type was dependant on the direction I faced. Best thing I bought for my PC is an Asus Xonar STX soundcard, and surprise surprise, no noise. On board audio is crap at best, and I've had boards that do the whole "better audio than everyone else" thing, but it's still garbage. Would be good to see The Lab do a full comparison of low end onboard vs "high" end onboard audio, low vs high end sound cards, and then cheap vs expensive DACs. That would be a cool episode.
best thing I ever did for my PC was purchase the Creative SoundBlaster recon3D Sound card, PCIe 1x version. ever since I started using that sound card for my audio output, I realized how terrible every devices onboard audio seems to be, including my tablet.. I actually looked into how to plug a sound processor into my tablet. I'm absolutely convinced that no normal onboard solution aside from absolute high-end is anywhere close to the quality of a proper, dedicated sound card. Right now, I'm even thinking of upgrading to the Creative AE-5 Plus, my recon3D is getting old and driver issues are annoying. Really though, a dedicated sound card can make even cheap analog headsets sound good, its impressive honestly. Unfortunately audio is overlooked when people build their PC's, a cheap sound card can make a pretty big difference.
Sounds like you have a shitty audio setup or unsheilded lines. If you are buying a good board with proper isolated circuits and you plug into them directly vs the ports in front of your case you should not get any digital noise whatsoever from the pc side of things. Better yet you can avoid all of this and connect to a dac/receiver using digital coax out.
@@zeroa69 ATH m50X headphones plugged into the back of the motherboard directly, and the noise is still there, so no, it's not a shitty setup, on board audio is just shit. It will never be good. It's been 20 years of me building PCs, and getting the same shitty results with on board audio, yet never once having noise issues with the soundcards I have used. I've only ever owned 2, and that's only thanks to PCI making way for PCIe.
As someone who has worked in the highest-end of audio, its so bizarre to me how much snake-oil there is. But you'd be surprised how some seemingly dumb stuff can make a difference.
@1betterthanyou1 It's not really that. We had people dropping over 200k on an audiosetup. They would come up to me and ask if we sell "audiophile network switches" because they'd reckon that for a few hundred it is not that much all considering. Very weird.
Can you tell me what works? Ive see some test with usb cables but thats about it. Tested myself, but other than power (was suprised about that) and headphone cable (could just be sennheisers are dogshit), interconnects between DAC and AMP and digital cables had no impact at all.
I can’t think of another area of tech where there’s more snake oil. Especially with audio production plugins. It’s apparently quite easy to convince folks to hear things that just aren’t there.
@@mauriceelet6376 I'm more into speakers than headphones I must say. But for digital cables there's not really a point to get expensive stuff. As long as it can properly carry a signal according to spec, it's fine
I would love a follow up video where you guys would show and test some audiophile products which are actually worth it ! Like for example some cheap, budget and expensive dac's :)
I was about the type the same thing, I'm using a amp that came with my headphones but I'm not satisfied with the sound I get in my headphones and in my speakers but I don't want to spend money on useless stuff that I don't really understand how it works I really hope they do a follow up
@@brunogomes6874 schiit make some cheaper dac/amp combos like the Hel. I think you can also use it as a pre-amp for your speakers using a 3.5mm adapter. It's twice the cost of the Fulla but worth it for the features and sound imo.
@@SubjectE57 Funny you mention Schiit since Linus had covered them before in 2014. Would be nice to see him cover their other range of products like the Fulla.
Well, you can't really go wrong with a Focusrite Scarlett or M-Audio AIR. They're pretty cheap and really good. They also have XLR with Phantom power for mics
This would certainly be a reason to do another collaboration with ElectroBoom. Definitely have him come check out your lab and talk about the analog side of the digital gear.
One important tip, audiophiles may hate it but if your problem is noise and interference on the onboard audio (which is definitely a thing) then even a little $20 USB DAC, or a slightly pricier optical one if you have SPDIF out, will almost certainly remove the noise and sound pretty similar. (Audio Technica makes one, though I think it's only USBC now, so might need an adapter if you don't want to take up a faster port)
Honestly I'd like a follow up about that audio motherboard, you could compare against whatever that board is based on since I doubt they fully custom built it and see if it too makes it worse lol
honesty the motherboard is the only one that made mild sense but a fan silencer? the fan has ZERO to do with audio it has completely seperate routing on the board now the ram is semi believable since the audio files are loaded onto ram before they are played to you expect... ram does load onto ram stick lets say 4 and get transfered onto ram stick lets say 2 so audio thats loadd onto a seperate stick wouldnt get affected the only way it would "work" is if audio was specifically on the audio ram stick surely audiophiles would know how to search up the basic and know this is a scam right?
That RAM stick with NEC capacitors is actually probably useful, you can use it as a part source for old PS3s that have broken GPU capacitors and preserve/revive those retro consoles.
Awesome to see the lab allowing for these kinds of video's now! The objectiveness for audio products like this really adds another dimension to the video's that no other mainstream tech channels offer.
Just to clarify a couple of things: Capacitors are actually used to reduce noise and there is noise in the system, however motherboard manufacturers figured that out ages ago and that is why on the bottom left of most motherboard you will usually find some capacitors (usually golden). That section of the motherboard takes care of the internal audio and those capacitors filter the noise from the system before the audio gets to your headphones (no point filtering every component when you can just filter the output). Also audio interfaces are not too expensive and they really do make a big difference...
I also wonder how you would "reduce noise" from your RAM. The data going over that bus basically sounds like noise anyway, so if you try to filter that out, you'd be filtering out the very data that's being transmitted between the CPU and RAM. Actual noise on your memory transmissions would basically crash your system because the voltage margins are so low already.
Also the data lines that produce lots of electromagnetic interference are often surrounded with layers of copper connected to ground in the PCB to absorb the noise. That's why older computers were much more susceptible to EMI because manufacturing wasn't very capable of adding shielding to components and we also didn't discover clever design tricks to minimize it. Capacitors don't even have large effect in preventing EMI, they mostly just filter the power supply and they are already within the motherboard and audio DAC. That said, motherboard audio will always be a compromise compared to an external one because not everything can be filtered out and manufactures are less willing to pour lots into research and development for only 5% improvement.
In terms of just listening to game audio etc. audio interfaces don't really make as much of a difference, aside from when they are necessary to use higher impedance headsets. Unless you are actually running much higher bitrates etc. and even then its pretty minimal. If you want more control over volume, Drivers for EQ, getting rid of noise etc. then yeah dacs can be a great improvement, but other than that its really not necessary by any means. I've been using a DAC for a very long time, but thats only because I use it for a digital guitar setup, and swapping my lower impedance headphones between onboard audio and the DAC is an imperceptible difference. It isn't like a DAC somehow makes the audio better, it just converts between digital to analog, its a rather unimportant aspect of what contributes to audio quality.
The world of audiophile gear is truly something else, for most general people a quality audio interface and nice cans are really all they're going to need but I can see how it can be really confusing when you first dip your toes in
@@Mp57navy I try to sing the praise of open backs ever since I tried out the hifiman x's and a few of the seinheisser lineups, and even then the medium tiers of Sen and audio technica are still way above the mark of most consumer headphones
audiophiles are the definition of sunk cost fallacy. They do not want to admit they've been scammed, so they double down again and again. even in this thread with pure scientific PROOF you can see them freaking out cause they won't admit they've been scammed.
This makes me want to make in-between connector passthrough boards with colorful capacitors and an LED, where _ONLY_ the LED would be connected, and sell them as "electronic art/decoration" to make your computer more aesthetically pleasing and nothing more, sell them in a variety of board and component colors, and sell them at like, a 200% markup. I think they would actually sell!
the labs is going to be amazing. I mean with the half dozen major reviewers that get 90% of the views about these products yours will literally be the only one that is truly objective as well as subjective. Super exciting future ahead.
It's real cool getting into the audiophile stuff! Now I'll forever dreak of an LTT x Dankpods crossover episode covering entry and mid-range headphones and earbuds
I’ve been manifesting and commenting for this for so long! Ol’ mate Senny six-hungoes & the freakish ears x Mr Drops Everything collaboration is needed!
12:57 Thanks for mentioning possible issues with your testing! It's great to have some idea of the scope of things that could be investigated further, even if that isn't actually worth doing.
I actually think that was kinda pointless to mention. Even if their power supply was "too good", this shit just makes your audio worse. If there was any actual real product here that did something, the worst it should do is nothing.
Seen something similar to these in a cheap electronics store near me, even the sales assistant thought they look like a quick way to potentially destroy a computer.
I love when you all do videos about this stuff it makes me laugh! And I also love as Linus said the goal of educating others that may not know what they may be wasting money on! As a “prosumer” audio engineer, I tell my audio file friends all the time, if you want good audio don’t buy branded audio file equipment, get prosumer or professional grade audio engineer equipment because they actually do what’s printed on the label! Great video I love it!
Damn right, Eminence and QSC are the bulk of my home setup. I use dual Ampeg 8x10s for the low range and old tower speakers for the treble. Way more watts than I need here, but holy hell this system puts all the other ones I've heard to shame. The headroom on this system is wicked. I never want to listen to any other sound system cause it just sounds flat to me now. XD
For the viewers, on your Windows PC (and android for that matter) go to your sound setting and adjust the sample rate and bits per sample to match your source material (usually 44.1/16) and you will be amazed at the difference. Especially on Android and LDAC (Sony WH-1000 line for example) it changes the sound enough that you don't even need "audiophile hearing" to notice the difference.
@@BronzeDragon133 it actually might. Sample rate conversion is essentially completely inaudible when done right, but when done badly (e.g. windows does it badly, to save on cpu cycles - I imagine it's similar on Android), it can kind of smear or put a veil on the sound. If you can tell the difference between a wav and a 128mp3, I'd say you might be able to tell this.
This series BEGS for a 'Real Solutions for Audiophiles' series. Where you review products that actually work and actually make a noticeable difference for a decent % of discerning people!
@@Gatitasecsii Tell that for the people who don't care about audio quality and a $5 pair of earphones are enough for anything and everything, or the TV speakers are enough because you can hear it. I mean in the sense of the people who actually care about sound quality, surround, etc, not the buzzword and nonsense "audiophile" bs. Same could be said for video quality, some care about it and pay thousands of dollars for OLED, 8K, expensive projectors, monitors. etc, some don't give a fvck and buy the cheapest thing that can generate images. So the only hilarious thing here is you believing that you hold the truth of the world and know what is best for everyone. lol
@@RusticRonnie I don't know - they always seemed kind of gimmicky to me too. They're far more expensive than regular DACs or even some audio interfaces, and claim things like '7.1 surround sound profile'. Which is really meaningless, considering they only have aux outputs, which don't support 7.1 or even 5.1 surround sound. Plus anything _gamer-y_ like EPOS usually has a massive mark-up...
I actually LOVE this test. It showcases resonance PERFECTLY. Resonance in electrical circuits, just like mechanical resonance (like in a bell or a bridge) makes the system oscillate. Filters, like the once used here are usually comprised of capacitors and inductors, and those are the needed components for a resonator circuits (I'm not going to go to in depth into the physics). Sometimes you want that, for example when you are making an oscillator. For power filters its un unwanted effect and a lot of care and attention needs to be given to a filter to make sure it doesn't add more noise than it filters. Now here is the best part that I absolutely wanted to talk about. Most of those boards don't even have inductors on them, so why are they oscillating? Cables and parasitic inductance! Every single piece of wire or copper trace on a board has parasitic inductance! So just by adding capacitance you are more lightly to make it worse, since the system will oscillate with a lower frequency for the same parasitic cables! Its a really shitty phenomenon to discover while you are developing a product that that is sensitive to noise.
Just a quick addition to what you are pointing out. It's 100% true that traces on a PCB and wires in a cable are just tiny inductors. It's why manufacturers will bypass things where you need a balanced line and cannot have large inductive spikes as the system rapidly changes load. The CPU for example, it has a ton of bypass caps under the socket because the high frequency the processor is operating at can actually cause inductive spiking on the traces based on a TON of factors. So the manufacturer calculates exactly the capacitance needed to fix that issue (or mostly mitigate it) and carefully select capacitors with the proper specs. Just throwing in 20 more capacitors in random points in the system can actually throw off the balance of the system and make everything worse.
If I may, all wires are coupled not just as inductors but as caps too. And when dealing with circuits at that size, everything is coupled. Ground plans are a no, multiple grounds are a no, parallel traces are a no. Loops become current loop antennas and straight traces become voltage dipole / monopole antennas. From an electrical engineering point of view, I’m a bit disappointed that they didn’t just plot a bode plot with exit over source. Then you could claim if they acted as filter or not. I’m guessing that there’s some phase shifting which results in what they found.
I love when you guys do this stuff! Would love a follow up with more technical information like following the traces and seeing in data what they are actually doing. wouldn't be surprised if some of the components are completely fake and only bridging trace connections.
Well basically a great price to cost ratio in my understanding describes a great margin for the vendor. They have very low cost to produce the product, and the customer is paying a much higher price. So basically this review is telling you directly that those things are a ripoff.
As an audio professional the only solution to noise is isolation: Keep the analog signals out of the computer. In the beginning ProTools used proprietary hardware with external units containing the D/ACs and internal cards containing DSP, so the only signals going in or out of the computer case is digital. Of course, as you mentioned, nowadays just use a USB interface. Even cheap ones will be cleaner than almost anything in the case.
If you're (really) having interference problems on your audio devices, just buy a cheap pack of ferrite chokes off of Amazon. Put a few of them on your audio cable and you'll have a *much* better time. Message to the audiophiles, from your frenemies.. the ham radio community
I see people constantly complaining about interference and weird noises like this, and nobody realizes you can spend less than 10$ and fix the problem, I dont know why they hate us ham guys
I had to go the isolator route on the line side to get rid of that annoying sound when the GPU gets loaded. (PCIE Soundcard) Was only like 25 bucks total for two. Besides true isolators, all those audiofoolery things are scam and do nothing at best. It pisses me off that the whole audio industry is spoiled with fake specs, scam products and some of the most morronic voodoo people on earth.
Just buy good quality cables that have layers of interference layer protection. I have great audio cables they cost more ,but you only need to buy a cable once.
Best thing you can do is just go right to the source: check your PSU cable, try switching to a different socket, or just get a breakout audio solution (such as USB DAC). Look up "main hum" if you're having issues with hearing 'noise' through your speakers or headphones, especially if it seems to alert as you move your mouse.
I remember a few years ago, when an "audio engineer" told me, i'd need power filters for most parts of my PC (which he conveniently sold), because of Background noises. When i told him, i'd use an external DAC anyway, so my PC only Outputs digital signals to begin with, he went on about how noise would still be there on any electrical conductor. Than i told him, that i'm connected via toslink, an optical Connection. No electrical Connection. His answer than was that optical Audio wouldn't exist
Good work guys! I'm sure many of us out here, that have ever even thought about these components as a "Hmm good or scam?", are now up to speed with the reality of them. Thanks for all the time and research that goes on behind the scenes, some of which doesn't make it to print, but still consumed LTT time and $
No difference at all. How can anyone few meters of good cable compensate for miles of poor studio cable or power company cables. The only one who hear a difference are the sponsored reviews and the gut who bought it wanting to hear a difference. His subconscious will never allow him to se he was duped.
@@chrislambe400 I used to be like you once. I had the cheapest chinese RCA cables ever. Like 4 dollars cheap. I had to change one after many years, I bought something like 25 dollars and the sound improved a lot. The problem was the connectors I believe, I don t know really, but I have made on off testing and the difference is there and repetable. With the new cables is even louder.
@@MihaiMihai-fw7do the impedance from the audio source, the connectors, the cables, and the audio system needs to be the same, otherwise part of the EM field will bounce back into the cable resulting in noise and degradation of the signal, for sensitive electronic devices that might be an issue (hdmi, ethernet, coaxial) resulting in errors and slower speed than maximum theoretical, error correction fixes most issues, for audio cables the noise might be negligible in most cases, depends on the strength on the signal and how much you amplify the noisy signal, also depends on how sensitive are your ears. TL;DR mismatch impedance in your connectors/audio cables might degrade your experience
@@bluesirius1 I still believe there is snake oil in cable industry... Now I am in the phase I believe my 25 dollar cables are the pinacle of technology. Maybe someday my dog will destroy them and a rich dude will give me an expensive cable and I will be amazed again.
@@MihaiMihai-fw7do There's definitely a benefit to quality cables for analog audio but you hit diminishing returns quickly. And there's no need to spend $100 on digital cables like HDMI or optical. Makes ZERO difference.
As an electronics designer I can tell you that throwing some random capacitors on and high speed line, even a DC power lines dose not improve noise if the system is well balanced (you can destabilize the DC to DC power supplies, causing them to create more noise or even fail to start, entering in protection due to very high capacitance on the load side...and so on) .......you can not throw a capacitor in a well calculated impedance DC power line and assume it will improve the quality of the line.
If you want to hear those noises without software boosting, try some active speakers connected to the 3.5 mm connector. My current PC had A LOT of gpu whine through active studio monitors and what got rid of it was an RCA ground loop isolator in the signal chain. An external DAC is supposed to give the same effect with better performance, but the ground loop isolator was only ~13 €.
Yeah, it's a shame Linus didn't mention ground loop isolators, it's certainly worth trying one before you start replacing your PSU or doing any of the other suggestions he mentions at the end of the video.
The first book I read on building a PC was published in 1997, though I bought it in 1998. I didn't seriously look into building one until 20 years later, things changed in that time. One of the things it suggested was to either buy or have a friend with an oscilloscope so you can check for noise interference in your cable runs if you weren't getting your expected performance. If you found anything, the only thing you had to do was slap a ferrite core filter onto the line to reduce external interference. Back in 97/98, I was going to school for electronics engineering (I didn't complete the course, never got a degree). I remember us going over how capacitors could be used to filter out noise in a signal, but it was mostly used for tuning an AC to DC power conversion. Even if the caps on that board were real, I don't see how they could be discreet enough to filter external noise in an audio signal without introducing extra noise, which was shown here today. What a waste.
It's the power factor correction thing. Power Factor correction is a real thing that large appliances and machines (particularly those with inductive loads like motors and/or transformers) do by using a large capacitor across the incoming AC lines. There's also a snake oil device that has a tiny little capacitor that supposedly does power factor correction for a whole house (it actually consumes more power than it could save and most residential power customers only pay for real power anyway).
@@nickryan3417 From my understanding it can help with sudden power draws by evening out the current (which is also how it reduces non-real power). Not sure about feedback current, I think that's generally handled by pushing through the ground pin though I'm not entirely sure how that works (pretty sure I've seen an explanation somewhere but can't seem to remember the details).
You may need a filter at the wall to stop any ground loops if you have any, but that's only if you are experiencing them/there is a defect in the wiring in the house. That's a simple specialized surge protector/outlet strip that everyone should have already. I recommend the APC AV C series. Aside from that, any dedicated sound card will suffice as they have all of this factored in as well. If you can't use a dedicated sound card, then a simple USB interface/mixing board should suffice for streaming.
External DAC via toslink is the way to go, if you want to get rid of noise from your system. Tbf, the inside of a PC case is a very noisy environment for audio, but you cant use filters everywhere to make it better, because most of the noise propagates through radiation and capacitive coupling, not galvanically through the power rails. Besides that, PSU are already pretty good at filtering the power rails. The only thing, i think could help, would be a filter in the USB power supply for an external DAC, because USB can carry some of the noise from the inside of the case to the outside.
The null test would have been very interesting to see EDIT: love the cap detective work. There's a whole cottage industry in china/india relabeling capacitors from e-waste and reselling them as new
Interesting! A comparison between "normal/proper" motherboards would also be great. What's the audio difference between basic boards, and the expensive ones marketed towards audio?
I thought they talked about this years ago so maybe thibgs have changed but back then it wasn't worth it, your better of getting a motherboard that fits your non audio needs and a seperate sound card.
I doubt that there will be much difference, it's jitter in the USB and noise from the fans that seems to be a problem. There's for instance re-clocker to fit between the computer and DAC that will solve most of these issues (not cheap though). Software and software setup can also make a difference.
I got some iFi usb filter for my DAC and powering it with a descent non switching power supply and it is so clear to hear. But I think you need a really good amplifier and speakers so you can hear it. In my setup I tried it blind folded with a friend of mine who is not an audiophile and even he could hear the positive difference.
The majority of Ifi's products are at least removing real things that can actually be measured, like noise in the power delivered over USB. Whether or not it effects your listening experience is debatable, but it IS doing SOMETHING.
@@TechnoBabble The data can't possibly be interfered with before it hits the decoder by any amount of noise, because that would be AN ELECTRICAL SHORT. Digital audio works nothing like analogue audio does, you disgusting phoney.
@@TechnoBabble Yeah iFi is weird one. Their dacs and amps are decent from what I've been told and even somewhat reasonably priced, but what on earth is going on with their more niche products. AC and DC filters 130€(for each), weird usb-b 3.0 to double mini splitter 390€, galvanic usb power supply 459€.
Best way to clean up audio is to disconnect the frontpanel audio cable.. It kinda works like an antenna, going past all the noisy parts inside your case, usually from bottom left corner to top right corner.
Imo the best way is have external audio. Like a USB soundcard or DAC. But its really only needed if you have problems like GPU coil whine, excessive hissing or otherwise unclear sound. If your on board audio sounds fine then it IS fine.
Honestly you could be on to something, like avoid plugging your headphones into, the front panel, controller outputs, your monitor, keyboard or anything else that has a headphone out that isn't intented to make them sound better. I could explain in more detail, but I'm lazy. Basically get a headphone extension and plug into the back of your computer if you don't have anything better or go to your local e-waste or something and get a 20 year old creative sound card, they are generally free or around $10 and as long as you still have PCI slots on your motherboard you should be good
@@NuffMan_ it's not ideal. but I kinda agree, cheap $7 dongle DAC could make a difference than common motherboard onboard audio. on my motherboard it uses Realtek ALC892/897, on cheap $7 dongle DAC it uses Realtek ALC5686. same from Realtek but different results. the background noise is simply gone. yes you got dangling bit in usb port but it's cheap solution.
I think the reason the amount of noise actually goes UP when all the filters are attached is because it allows the (probably unshielded) cables to be much longer, thus adding more "surface area" where electrical noise can leak in. (also any filter capacitors that filter out undesired audible noise will also filter out desired audio)
I think a error on LTT's part is more likely, the filters are all on Power Traces, or on really high frequency traces, which produce almost no noise in the audible frequencies.
@@jjjannes if the noise being filtered out isn't in the audible frequencies then it's effectively doing nothing, also what you actually NEED to filter is the power and signal planes around the DAC/ADC, which you can't actually do anything about, since the circuitry feeding those is integrated into the motherboard
These products are like if you wanted to filter the water in your home, and instead of installing a filter where your main or well comes into your house, or even at your faucet or simply keeping a Brita in your fridge, but instead went over to your neighbors house and installed a water filter on his HVAC system and then proceeded to go around telling everyone you know how life changing your new filtered water is.
Idea for more objective measurements: hook the inputs and outputs of the devices up to an oscilloscope and function generator. Apply a sinusoidal frequency sweep to the input and measure the output. That data can then be used to calculate the frequency response and transfer function of the device, showing exactly what it's doing (or not doing).
I have a fairly new gaming rig. ( i7-12700k/3080/32gb 3733 ram/2tb NVMe SSD ) and no audio products other than the mobo. The sound is dead quiet. My last rig ( i7-6700k/2080 ) was similarly quiet. My system - PC>Emotiva xda-2 balanced preamp/DAC>NAD 208thx balanced power amp>aDs 910 studio mains>Hsu Research 12" & SVS PB-2000 12" subs. Best sounding system I've ever heard.
As someone who works with sound professionally, this just made me sad. Honestly the best thing you could do is just buy a focusrite scarlet solo and run your audio through that. They’re pretty inexpensive and have great sound for an interface at that price point.
Personally I can hear the line power on onboard audio for my relatively new Lenovo ThinkCenter at work when my mini-fridge compressor kicks on. I ended up getting a USB DAC from FiiO to fix it.
my thoughts exactly, only way to improve sound is to give it to an external device like a dac that will improve it, bought one for my phone because i was disgusted by the quality of its internal dac, now im running a usb c to 3.5 dac from aliexpress and its getting used everyday, really good stuff for 8€
My favorite videos are the ones that debunk audiophile gear. I'm a musician who has spent way too much money on bad audio gear. Took me until my 30's to learn these guys were lying.
like my dad always says when talking shop (he's a sound engineer) "less is more". in general, those noises go away once the system is properly grounded. the excess current goes through the path of least resistance, and a solid connection to the ground will always be that.
I remember I bought the Asus Essence STX a long time ago so I could drive 80 ohm headphones (and back than on-board was still kinda crap), a friend of mine bought some ''filtered DAC'' from Aliexpress and I should totally buy it as well. My Asus Essence STX is still running along my Asus 4080 being the only part from my old PC that went with the new one, while the DAC of his died in like 2 years. Still longer than I expected.
I still use an ASUS Essence STX on my main system and some ASUS Xonars on other systems I use. Every motherboard I've ever used produces noise on the audio output -- the type of noise can vary but it almost always includes noise from just moving the mouse around which is really annoying. Because of this I've always ended up going back to a sound card and never hear any noise afterwards. I've tried USB DAC's but those seem to have their own issues, sound cards just work.
To Linus and the Lab, you should make an "LTT Lab Certified Certificate" to test if Products being sold by companies really do meet their advertised performances and specs. Would be fun lol, as a little bonus if Companies wanna pay you that little bit more money for you to test their products at the lab and certify it as a (spec-wise) as advertised product. though it should still stay completey truthfull and transparent (If a product sucks, it sucks, like it always has been before).
Using a stereo Di-box (with a 1:1 matching transformer) generally will fix that EMI noise. I was blown away plugging a super noisey iMac my friend brought over into my PA .... once through the DI-box, the line was totally silent and clear. That's the real and true galvanic isolation. I use it to cleanup the sound on my Linuxbox ahead of the stereo works great.
If you want to do more audio products Thavillaman had a video recently on trinnov audio processors and how they are basically custom pcs at that point. I'd love to see a tear down of one and see what it shares with regular pcs especially considering the price.
I'd love to see you test how on-board PC audio compares with cheap USB to headphone jack dongles. In my experience even really cheap dongles way outperform even high end shielded onboard audio. There's just way less EMI to deal with. It's especially noticeable with microphones, like the Mod Mic 4, because the noise floor matters more.
@@LightCloak barely enough to matter. It's a digital to analog converter. Something like a R2R DAC is just using resistors which would barely ever effect latency (not what humans can detect) other more fancy ones might add couple milliseconds but it doesn't matter really
Whilst I would love to see LTT cover the various audio interfaces, no one on LMG’s writing team is qualified enough to actually go over any of that in my opinion. Especially since other UA-camrs do a much better job, like Podcastage, who actually understands audio. And the fact is, LTT’s core audience really doesn’t care about the technical aspects of audio, unless it’s “haha, audiophiles are dumb”, or really expensive stuff the average consumer is expected to buy.
audio interfaces like DACs and AMPs? unless you are using headphones that need it, no it won't make any real differences besides a Placebo. And even on higher end DACs and stuff the difference in general is beyond negligible even with the highest end stuff if it has enough power to drive it
Your recommendations for better products to address the problems was good, but I'd also add a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) as well, especially if someone is experiencing issues with supply line stability (aka lights dim when an appliance turns on, brown outs, etc). Everyone should have one for basic safety, but they also eliminate other issues too.
At a surface level the ideas they present seem like they could be sound and really mirror what you see on motherboard marketing and audio products, even if it falls apart once you start looking at them critically.. I'm sure that's exactly what they're relying on and why people end up buying them.
"At a surface level the ideas they present seem like they could be sound". Considering the signal is digital until it reaches the motherboard's DAC, I doubt putting a filter on your RAM, storage or PCIe slot is going to make a difference. The chances of a bitflip or bitrot happening are low too I'm assuming, and if something does happen I doubt you're going to hear it, since the data would be streamed again. Now if we're talking about doing something AFTER the DAC, once the signal is analog, then you'll probably be able to filter something. (I'm no expert in the matter btw)
@@mttkl I didn't mean once you start thinking about whether or not it actually works it holds up at all, obviously it doesn't. More that clean power is good and motherboards are already marketing their audio isolation and power filtering and things that sound really similar to how they're selling these things (and may be nearly as questionable). Someone who's around tech stuff enough to pick up those phrases or see that sort of marketing but might not know enough to look at it more critically beyond that.
@@cinnabarsin4288 Ah, fair enough, I understand now what you meant. So at the end of the day it all boils down into marketing vs. technical knowledge (or lack of it, which is fine too, as we can't expect everyone to be experts on everything).
Reminds me of the old Car Stereo "Spark Arrestor Module" people would buy to eliminate the high pitched whine thru the speakers during acceleration. ....When all you really had to do was make sure the ground wire had a clean connection. Lol
I'm a dedicated sound card user - I think we're a rare bunch! I would like to see the same lab test for noise floor to be conducted with dedicated sound cards! I think that would be neat. Interested to see if going through the trouble of having a sound card provides any real benefit over onboard sound these days.
You're not going to find many "sound card" users anymore because they're called "audio interfaces" now. Sound cards make no sense anymore since you're sticking something that's supposed to be isolated from all the interference of the PC as close as possible to the source of all the interference. Even in 2005 most "sound cards" would have breakout boxes that would do most of the ADC so it wouldn't be anywhere near the massive EMI generated inside. Also USB 2.0 has enough bandwidth for basically any amount of channels at ridiculous data rates so there is absolutely no point in using a PCI(-E) slot for something that objectively performs better if its outside the case. Also all those USB microphones and USB/bluetooth headsets technically have their own DA/ADCs which technically count as soundcards, so they might be more numerous than you think.
You should try those filters in really old motherboards that don't have shielded audio, a lot of them had noticeable background noise so maybe they would do something in that situation, tho it really seems like a scam.
yeah the reviews all seemed to be from places that can have pretty spotty electric grids, which makes me think there could possibly be a reason for using some of these. I'm not saying they work or not, but the logic might be at least somewhat reasonable. Now, your power supply should take care of all this but if you're going cheap on the PSU and then buying a bunch of noise filters to help...well...idk but that's what could be happening.
No , its just a scam. Adding an extra thing between 2 things always ADD points of potential failure/problems/noise. Even worse connecting extra things in empty slots (the fake RAM)
@@AndersHaalandverby That's absolutely not true. Power filters are absolutely a thing. I'm not saying _these particular things_ do anything, but that doesn't mean that you can't buy something that doesn't clean up the power coming from your wall. (Which also wouldn't matter in this case because the power is going through the computers power supply). But on analog equipment, like class A amps and vinyl, you can absolutely make it sound better with a filter. Especially if you live in a place that has shitty power.
the only workable solution for a situation like that is to add physical shielding to the audio card itself, not something between your other components and their cables.
I've seen a lot of this audiophile BS pop up lately in the PC market, and just like sound cards, will always be not needed. These will almost always in most cases do nothing to stop any EMI generated from having any sound equipment near your PC, just gotta seperate them physically
sadly, in my situation I may actually need a sounds card. Something on my mobo is not isolating the electronics properly, so depending on the window I'm looking at (90% of windows) I'll get a bunch of static on the audio jack. Didn't have this issue on the last mobo. Maybe related to the GPU since it's specifically bad in games. I dunno.
@@ferinzz You can just get a cheap usb DAC, no need for an expensive sound card. Any static created by your computer won't be audible with an external usb DAC. It's what I did because of the same issue.
" and just like sound cards, will always be not needed" - I have yet to find a MB that sounds as good as a mid range sound card, like a Soundblaster AE-5. Not even mentioning the software solution for virtual surround.
the only possibility i could see these helping is in countries with poor electrical grid infrastructure and limited access to new power supplies. 2:45 to be fair, 4+ layer pcb's exist. a shunt capacitor could be routed from the passthrough trace to the cap to ground, on layers not visible from the outside. they could even share the vias, which would make traces... untraceable(?) without a multimeter and access to the cap leads. in countries with unstable electrical grids, i could see some shunt caps being useful to smooth out the power fluctuations, but that seems like something that should go on or into a power supply only. a quality power supply should make the rest of those problems negligible unless your power cables are crazy long. 5:00, if you have access to the same power bus from different slots, maybe its a decent non-invasive way to filter power, but also probably useless for the power draw the other memory takes. on top of that, the memory sticks would have their own components specifically chosen for their purpose. if adding a bunch of extra caps would help, they wouldve done that themselves. surface mounted caps are fractions of a penny. if you can power your system from a shotty generator, and give the computer an old power supply, there might be a tiny improvement on the tests. but like you said, only so many bones you can throw. these are definitely a waste for anyone who doesnt actively see power issues, and likely a waste for anyone who does.
Nice video! I'm guessing what they're attempting (and failing) is some sort of combination of low pass and high pass filters. Think of it as an inverse band pass. A basic RC filter consists of just a resistor and a capacitor and the type of filter depends on the order in which they are placed in series. When adding them together in the same circuit they can form pretty complex filters. Only other way I can think of reducing noise like this would be to eliminate it at the source similar to a balanced circuit... which leads me to: I'd love to see a video on a similar note about the scam of balanced cables. It's another scam in the audio industry that almost no one knows about but manufacturers are able to charge extra for... well nothing.
Balanced cables do reject interference but over the length of a normal headphone/IEM cable it is negligible. But on stage with hundreds of feet of cable a balanced XLR cable does reject signal interference. Balanced signals don't change audio quality inherently.
@@MooseStuff also, because some dac/amp in balanced output have their dedicated dac and amp in each channel, the power is more higher.. and many people will associates more volume = is good, which is not necessarily.
@@MooseStuff absolutely! Just to add to that - as cable length increases there will also be some high frequency loss as the cable effectively starts to act as a capacitor and therefore starts to filter
@@MooseStuff also yes you’re right about it mattering for very long industrial cables but for simple meter long cables being sold at the local music store it is just a cheeky way of making more money
Came here to say the same thing... The thing is these MAY be rejecting some noise/sound/something but accepting most the noise in the range of human hearing, making them utterly useless as analog filters (or to the same effect crossovers) are tuned to specific frequencies. It would be interesting to see what frequencies these LC circuits or LRC circuits are tuned to and see if they make any sort of sense for the expected frequencies on those traces... but all aside, I agree with Linus and you they will do nothing no matter how they're tuned or how they're implemented. The best way to remove noise is to improve the ground. And unfortunately you're pretty much stuck with the designed ground on a MOBO regardless of what crap you plug into it. The ONLY logical and cost effective way to remove noise from audio is to either (as you said) reduce/eliminate it from the source - or - remove the analog audio from the digital noise source via an external device. Budget strapped people should look for second hand audio interfaces (for podcasting/recording) - I've seen plenty of these on second hand markets like facebook market place. Or a second hand DAC. If those aren't sexy enough or you have more money to spend, then a entry level interface/dac will still perform better than most PCI or similar cards.
Get a DAC, USB into the DAC and analog out. The digital signals of USB aren't affected by the noise inside the system so, so long as the DAC properly isolates both sides, the analog end of your headphones won't be affected by interference inside your PC. Of course not all DACs are created equal and there is the possibility of interference in the air (especially with open case designs) so you should make sure your headphones have good insulation as well (this can be harder to check since most people don't know the different between a crap pair of cams and a good pair of cams with crappy filtering). One simple trick for the analog wire is to use ferrite beads. Another option is to use bluetooth or a radio headset. Radio headsets can have higher quality but tend to cost more and require a dongle, bluetooth has gotten to the point where a good pair of bluetooth headphones can sound really good. I used SoundCore Life Q30's before (they have a few different names depending on where you buy them) and recently switched to Sony WH-1000XM4's which have better noise canceling and sound (imo) but worst battery life (I typically put them on charge every night to be safe). I personally prefer closed back headphones for privacy reasons as well as better noise isolation (I live in a 'condo' which is basically an apartment) but open ear can technically be superior from a sound quality perspective (I think it has something to do with canceling the noise created when the drivers move backwards).
honestly, the motherboard for audio could make sense, cause there are trace isolation and shielding implementations that they can do to improve the audio quality
But if an audiphile uses computer for the audio... They already use some quality USB dac that does the filtering. If I wanted even better audio quality, I would go for even better dac with great noise filtering or PC/Mac that is almost silent (Mac mini, Raspery Pi, or similar).
@@Monsux yea. Goldensound has a great video about jitter. while you can run galvanic isolation or a DDC with femto clocks, the best was ether a custom Raspery Pi without any usb in the chain or, guess what, a really high quallity DAC (Holo Audio May).
Back in the days when I had my desktop computer, my sound was coming from Toslink optical SPDIF cable straight into my Denon AVR. I was bypassing the soundcard for better audio quality and it was successful. Optical cable connections have the benefit of being galvanic isolated therefore no RF interference was pushed through the AVR.
I think something worth mentioning is that you don't even need to save up for a desktop DAC/AMP, for vast majority of earphones/headphones just get the Apple USB-C dongle and it works flawlessly. The audiophile community approves it and its what i exclusively use
Hi Linus, great vid! LOVE it. As an electrical engineer I agree with you. These are bogus products. Please be aware that databusses are not to be filtered since that would 'short circuit' the dataflow. Hence, no data will go through. Further, motherboards are designed to obtain intra electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). Lots of noises, hisses and unexpected HW problems may be caused by EMC problems. Adding extra components (capacitors, resistors and/or coils) where the designer didn't anticipated, these components could well ruin the EMC and that might be the case of your observation that the performance got worse. Bad idea these products, I would say. Too pitty people fall for this scam. Job well done for exposing them! Thumbs up for you and your crew!
I’m impressed that you weighed the noise with LUFS, but I’m disappointed that you didn’t do a phase test with a music file, as that would have arguably given you a broader data range. I mean correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the reason for building the new lab so you could be more objective in your reviews and collect more data? Obviously audio doesn’t need as much as a keyboard, but it always hurts when phase tests are ignored.
I believe the product claims were only noise, not phase shift (although filtering would lead to phase shift). Tbh, for the intent of this video I believe only amplitude of the boosted signal is sufficient to prove scam vs. no scam.
@@danilolattaro That’s not what I mean. If I was to take a lossless wav file, and convert it to a lower quality mp3, and play both files back simultaneously, with one of them phase inverted, you wouldn’t hear the file louder, you’d hear the difference between the two files, specifically what is missing from the mp3. If they were to perform a phase test with the product(s) demonstrated, it would have given a rough estimate to how much difference there is in noise. For audio engineers such as myself, it’s something I’d like to see. Especially since LMG is trying to be more objective and have more data, yet they skip over the most basic of audio tests
@@minecraftWithDanielD now I understood what you meant by phase test. I thought you were talking about signal phase as taken from control theory/signal processing point of view
@@datketh1556 What I am saying, is that LLT didn't provide any data, and didn't provide any display of understand as to how you actually test and prove the noise is from the module. The sound could come from something else, but LTT didn't isolate the signals, so they didn't know what made the noise.
Again another superb upload from LTT,love these kind of vids testing out this junk,I instantly knew those Rubycons had to be fake,they simply wouldn't be able to make any money back let alone any profit if those were genuine Rubys.
It's sad to think that these products might actually work if they weren't made of counterfeit noisy components. Potentially spreading disinformation. Ironically the History of the phrase Snakeoil is related to counterfeiting snake-oil with cheaper vegetable oils. Real snake oil is like cod-liver oil, which is well documented for it's health benefits. Snake oil is actually legit! It makes sense that an animal that's just a string of joints would have adapted to produce joint healthy oils. A seed on the other hand, far less mobile lol
Yeah I think they are fake. Contrary to what the guys found, Rubycon actually does make a cap that looks exactly like the ones in the video, at the advertised specs of 400V / 2.7uF. Part number would be 400RX302R7. !But! the real caps are rated 130C and the one in the video says 125. So yeah. Fake.
It’s worth noting that even well heeled brands get their high end parts jacked and replaced by their manufacturer without them knowing. It’s a really negative cultural trend to see whole industries and regions embracing counterfeiting, and scam call centers etc. People should only buy parts direct from the source, as anything on the second hand market is probably supporting companies who swapped out parts to turn a profit selling the real ones on the black market. All in all a good reason to keep your manufacturing close enough to where you can keep an eye on it, and litigate it without cross border immunity.
If you hear noises in your pc sound, just buy a $20 spdif dac to plug on your mobo/sound card. The signal is digital, so power spike & other typical analog interferences don't apply. Plus they supports 24bit/192khz (personally I can't tell the difference, but I don't own an hifi headset). Mine is powered by usb from the pc, but it doesn't seem to suffer from electric interference like the onboard audio did. E.g. I no longer hear a pop whenever my refrigerator pump switches on/off.
My first gaming PC had a horrendous noise floor, so when I was choosing parts for this system, I picked a Gigabyte motherboard that was designed for better audio. The Gigabyte G1.SNIPER H6. I have no idea if the motherboard actually made a difference, or if the vast improvement in audio quality was just going from a 2009 prebuilt to a completely new 2015 custom build. Be interesting to know if it actually, like, does things. I have no way to test it, though, so it shall remain a mystery.
In audio engineering as you mentioned at the beginning the goal is to capture audio with the least amount of interference as possible. That audio has to then be converted from an analogue signal into a digital signal to be processed on a computer. These products are marketed as helping with the latter half of the processing chain when in reality all they do is interfere with the former half. The input itself as apposed to the processing. Adding cheap capacitors to your signal loop that aren't responsible for the processing at all but rather the clean input signal will always lead to severe sound degradation. Not shocked at all that if you were to input a clean SIN wave through a bunch of unnecessary physical hardware would mess it up before and during its processing into a digital waveform. Less is always more in Audio.
Would maybe be interesting to see this tested on a much (much) cheaper system or older hardware that might not have good onboard filtering. Also I would like to hear more about your proccess within the lab as I would trust a null test much more then just recording a output and boosting it (especially since I've seen that you guys use a focusrite scarlett interface)
No. The scam is obvious. The SATA filter is a direct passtru. The RAM does nothing as it "works" when used in the same dual channel pair... The fan filter can be replace by changing your settings and making the fan go at a fixed speed. The filter would affect anything that happens after the filter, not before, since it's just a bunch of capacitors...
@@arakwar I know the scam is obvious. The sata filter could (and this is a very massive could) make capacitance noise of a ssd or hdd get better. That is a non issue on modern hardware but might make a difference on some older hardware. Now the best way too avoid noise is to use non onboard audio and use a balanced interface but that’s a different thing. I also just want to see what the testing process is as I am a nerdy audio technician and would trust the labs audio department a lot more by seeing how they do stuff (maybe another channel)
Lots of people dedicate half of their budget to audio for their setups. And then there are people like me who use $15 EarPods for basically anything and everything.
I play online games with a group of guys that are constantly dropping hundreds on the latest and greatest headphones. Meanwhile I have had the same 30 dollar off brand headset since like 2018 and I have better stats than most of them...
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I miss the intro.
You forgot to tie it to the top of the comment thread 😂😂
I brought nice thick RCA cables. Just because those look good. It's like rgb in computers! 😎
While these are clearly snake oil, there’s a chance the increase in noise by the filters is from the filters themselves radiating rf in the audible frequency range, which is getting picked up. If these devices were shielded it could improve the performance. Highly doubt it will be better than no filters but it could explain some things.
You also would want to instal the actual memory sticks in the “2/4 stick configuration” to ensure the memory is at the end of the transmission line for the digital data. The memory filters should really omit the gold fingers on the digital signal paths to ensure it does not affect those digital transmission line impedance. All the filtering should be with respect to the power and ground pins only.
Get your EEs in the lab to better evaluate these modules to get the full story :)
Oh you want that motherboard "thing" you know you do. lol
This is some next level audiophoolery
Lol
After shopping for for a decent pair of headphones + amp/dac, I've decided that "audiophiles" are full of shit.
It's 10% objective, 85% subjective to listener, 5% creative bs.
@@vasocreta haha what did you search for/get? ive found headphone reviews are usually good but i only really care about the quality so I just check the graphs to decide and ignore the crap they say
I'd say putting rocks on top of an amp to improve sound quality is next level audiophoolery.
If they were using genuine parts I could maybe be convinced that they are trying to make a product that actually works, but have little understanding of how to achieve their goal, as it is however, it's just a low effort, small time scam.
@@vasocreta Oh yea, I was shopping for audio too. Got fed up with marketing BS. Gone into professional studio market mostly. Got a nice pair of active 7'' sound monitors and am really happy with those. At least pro audio tend to publish some datasheets and reviews are more reasonable.
Please keep covering audiophile scams! I am an avid audiophile but I love seeing the science behind scam products (of which there are sooo many in this space)
If you want to hear about all of them? Look up Audio Science review.
If you have to explicitly and unironically in any situation ever say that you're an audiophile, it is pretty clear you don't know about any audio technology any better than any random chap asked about it in the streets.
@@anteshell you’re wrongly conflating “being an audiophile” (someone who enjoys collecting well-engineered recordings, high quality speakers and headphones and DAC/amps) with someone who buys $200 6-foot cables (pointless). They are not the same thing. Certainly you can be an audiophile who also falls for scams, but being an audiophile doesn’t NECESSITATE that you are the kind of person who falls for a scam. There IS a line, and MOST people who buy quality dac/amp setups never cross it. I’ve also noticed that many “anti-audiophiles” are just people who are struck with some kind of weird envy that they can’t afford one set of decent headphones much less several for different types of music or media sources (not all headphones perform the same on all sources or types of music). If you actually understood how different amps and headphones can be from each other (especially for different types of sources) you’d never have even made your comment.
@@martuuk8964 Eh, SOME $200 6-ft cables are not entirely pointless, imo. That's in the range of quality balanced XLR cables (which are admittedly way more expensive than most cable types for some reason). I'm not implying it's the only thing that can deliver "pristine sound quality" or whatever but you do get durability, flexibility, lack of microphonics, etc. and depending on your setup, even ground hum elimination (speaking from experience).
Now, a $500 6-ft cable, on the other hand... :P
@@anteshell If you have to make stereotypical blanket statements based on memes about audiophiles, it's pretty clear you don't know about any audio technology any better than any random chap either, while also showcasing the same level of ignorance as the stereotypical audiophool you project onto an audiophile you want to make fun of. It's no different falling for the memes that invalidate the whole audiophile culture as snake oil than it is falling for everything marketed at audiophiles; both extremes lack critical thinking.
For this topic, I would like to see Alex whip out the old whiteboard and explain:
1) How would one isolate the electrical noise sources from the audio interface
2) How the motherboard/DAC manufacturers are doing it
3) If adding these devices has anything in common with these tested and proven solutions
4) Show not only the sound/noise waveforms, but also the electrical signal traces from an oscilloscope.
YES!! I feel like LTT has been failing to explain the problems further enough. I don't know why capacitors, rectifiers, and inductors would make the sound signal any better. I don't know why/how a standard PC would disturb to the signal. I think this much context would make a good job explaining how the scammers tried to act legit, what to look like in an actual solution, etc.
Computer power supplies already filter the power in the AC/DC conversion step. RAM and CPUs don't like dirty, spiky power either!
If noise is being added by the motherboard, the DAC would need an isolated power supply - this is how guitar pedals avoid adding noise to the signal on higher end boards. Each pedal has it's own isolated power supply.
You're pointing out the fears I have with the whole Lab thing: The Data is here and the knowledge aswell, but the writers don't know how to incorporate it at a level that is technically deep and still entertaining for those that are not as deep into the topic.
Generally star grounding is used, basically the grounds from the audio jacks are exclusively run back the audio DAC. It's then up to the audio DAC to reject power supply noise. Highly effective RC filters are employed on the supply rails to help the DAC
Use a USB audio adapter powered by a USB battery bank. The tricky bit here is there still might be some switching present.
0:33 I love how they just put a bunch of SMD capacitors in rows in series to make a staircase design, thinking to themselves "yep, this is what cool electronics look like."
I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if all of those are just for show.
@@yjk_ch they are,i bet they are!
The best part is, capacitors in series drops the capacitance amount down.. so the more they add, the less capacitance they have -__-
The other train of thought is probably what's going on with those "traditional" capacitors. I would bet that they only included these because they thought something like "Hey, these are the things that are always visible on high quality stereo amplifier boards, so this is what people subconsciously connect to better audio. So let's add them, the more, the better, and let's make them as bulgy and colourful as possible!!!".
@@Vertigo311922 and what "magic" happens if they are connected in parallel!? 😅
Unfortunatly, some in the Audiophile sphere will claim that the improvements can't be measured by machine, and they can "Hear" the differences. For some in the space "More money spent = Better"
but not all (look up mqa videos by golden sound)
An attempt to justify their buyer's remorse
The whole "It works on MY machine" thing but even MORE pretentious (amazing such a thing is even possible lmao) 😂
Shit's everywhere, same in the guitar sphere where since the beginning people think wood type matter for electric guitars, which ofcourse since been disproved many times since when you think about it logically, free-floating string+pick-up=sound.
Yet people will jump up and down screaming it does matter instead of just saying: I like the fact it's made of this fancy wood.
@@thecountrox its a small, but vocal and extremely stupid part of the community. There's plenty of people calling this out, but they will always try to justify it
Debunking scams is fun and all, but now that Labs is spinning up, you should start reviewing low to mid range DAC's using your usual "for streaming and gaming" framework. That'd be excellent.
Testing things like noise floor, pre-amps, routing options (external & internal), driver quality.
I'm often get asked by newcomers to the audio space what to get, and I can't be like "get this $2000 audio interface, it's sick". Usually they come asking with a budget around $100-200.
@@TheTastefulThickness no way, the apple usb C dac is even better. If you don’t need the XLR input why even go for a focustite
@@TheTastefulThickness ?? Apple usb IS a DAC tho?
I’d love to see a video where they debunk all of the ‘audiophile’ bs so many people are selling like power cable lifts so they don’t touch the ground. Or overemgineered power and speaker cabling
@@TheTastefulThickness the "wire" is a DAC einstein. It's not an AMP but I am sure you must have enough braincells to figure out a Digital to analog converter has no relation to an Amplifier
@@TheTastefulThicknessthe focusrite scarlet does not have a good amp / dac. It isn‘t designed for that in the first place, it is an audio interface. Good dac/amps for cheap are the ifi ZEN, the schiit magni, fiio k3 etc.
I've never seen such a good price-to-cost ratio on all these products
Yea, for just 50$ you get SUCH a BAD audio, this price-to-cost ratio MUST be off the charts!
My brain froze for at least 5 seconds when I heard he said that LMAO.
I think the price to cost ratio is for their benefit not the customer, it costs them significantly less to make than the price they sell them for. Thats where this ratio comes in.
Yup, absolutely. I really loved the frames-per-fps performance graphs as well /s
but what about LTT labs using garbage audio software instead of soundforge, is it a nice cost to price of garbage audio software?
More capacitors make it worse because the regulators in the motherboard are calibrated for a specific total capacitance, and adding too much moves them from their optimal operation region, and could even make them unstable
Who cares, "audiophiles" are gullible enough to buy anything.
Basic electrical theory lol
Very interesting. So you would need to really isolate the input and output for the filter to work properly.
Also, the lesser is the equivalent series resistance (ESR) of the capacitor, the lesser is the maximum capacitance that a power supply can handle at his output.
Increasing the output capacitance of a power supply can help to reduce the noise.... but only if the power supply is crappy designed with something near the least output capacitance possible.... definitely cannot helps too much if the power supply is well designed and also can decrease the voltage stability if the total capacitance is excessive (or if the ESR is too low).
A very good decoupling strategy requires very small high quality capacitors (extremely low ESR and ESL but also very low capacity SLCC or MLCC ceramic capacitors) placed as closest as possible to the power supply and closest as possible to the load, slightly bigger but lesser quality capacitors (very low ESR and ESL but bigger capacity MLCC ceramic capacitors) placed close to the source and the load, even bigger high quality polarized capacitors (low ESR tantalum or small electrolytic capacitors) placed nearby the source and the load and finally some big but not super high quality electrolytic capacitors scattered around the power rail (the goal is adding as much capacity as possible that the power supply can handle without instability, so higher ESR can help to increase the capacitance).
BTW, this is the job of the hardware designer..... nothing to do with aftermarket components!
If you're talking about the ram thingimabobs, they shouldn't affect anything since they don't share anything with the audio output except maybe ground. The other stuff is not connected to the motherboard so your motherboard regulators don't factor in. I haven't seen the layout of what pins on the memory socket the caps are connected to but I'm going to guess nothing other than VCC and some of the GND, or between various GND or some such. Not much in the socket to connect to unless you want to bork signal pins and disable the RAM channel.
Next time, use FFT (Fourier transform) to show the noise characteristics. We could see the frequency of the noise, and its intensity between the samples.
Maybe the labs ppl know how to do a fast Fourier transform, but I doubt the writers even know what that is.
@@HelenaOfDetroitIt's pretty basic knowledge for signal analysis. The real scam here is in the idea that you can properly isolate your audio with filters attached by the DIMM socket. Even if the filters reduce noise, they don't recover any information lost due to a noisy board. Noise at the sound card itself is where you lose audio quality. Anything other than a dedicated sound card or external hardware like a DAC isn't going to do any more good than a free software filter for even the most avid audiophile. This specific product, of course, actually has worse SNR than the motherboard itself.
@@HelenaOfDetroit FFT is pretty basic. Any decent audio software allows You to perform it. Starting with free Audacity.
Yeah but audacity’s is still kind of sussy. I think it’s better than nothing but they might not
Bro, I am also sitting here wondering what exactly they proved by this. I am actually getting a little frustrated by the attitude on display, just for them to not giving any solid evidence of anything. All we got was wav-files claimed to be recorded audio output from the motherboard, which they then boosted the audio levels with software. There is ZERO way for us to actually know if they screwed up the test.
Linus don't even seems to understand that their method of "proving" their claims, could might as well be picking up noise from something that wasn't turned on at every "test". I mean, they are located in an industrial park. of all things. Can we at this point even be sure the recorded noise isn't a ground-loop between other devices? Do they even know what a ground-loop is?
We don't even know how their test-setup is constructed, and the video mentions that they could have made another test, but didn't have time.... What a scientific test this was....
The fact it did "something" is actually surprising. I would also assume it would just do nothing, but the fact it made it worse - dang!
I half expected something to catch on fire with those sketchy fake capacitors lol.
The power of placebo effect 💪😁
The good snake oil sellers sell good snake oil which does nothing and leaves people thinking it works. The bad sellers sell bad oil which makes you sick.
It's not that unsurprising or strange. Any inductivities WILL genererate some RF noise on the frequency of the power goin through it. So it's likely fan filters that work like little jammers. Normally, inductivities on motherboard are either shielded or compensated (by spacing etc) but throwing some shady chinese PCBs into a PC will break the balance.
your username lol
I'd love to see a follow-up where you show how you could actually remove noise from a built in PC audio
Outside of software post-processing... that would be a Faraday cage.
@@twiz66 in short, yes.
You get the audio outside the PC case. Use a USB dac. In fact, they even showed one near the end of the video that costs less than all the filter bs.
A follow-up idea: desolder all the capacitors from those devices and measure their actual performance using an LCR meter: cheap content and it answers the burning question of are they actually fake caps??
@@herranton Yep. Anything from a tiny Fiio BTR5 to a Scarlett Solo will do a tremendously better job at sound.
Thanks for going into this WAY deeper, and cool to see the results from The Lab (TM)! I wasn't surprised that they didn't fix the noise, but I was surprised that they made it that much worse.
On a personal note, I've always hated onboard audio. No matter the brand, or model tier of board, I always had noise issues, like what you recorded, gaming was really bad, depending on where I looked, it made a different kind of noise, could almost play puzzle games blind folded it was so bad the noise type was dependant on the direction I faced. Best thing I bought for my PC is an Asus Xonar STX soundcard, and surprise surprise, no noise. On board audio is crap at best, and I've had boards that do the whole "better audio than everyone else" thing, but it's still garbage.
Would be good to see The Lab do a full comparison of low end onboard vs "high" end onboard audio, low vs high end sound cards, and then cheap vs expensive DACs. That would be a cool episode.
I want surprised that it would make it worse, capacitors serve a few functions, but filtering digital noise is not one of them
best thing I ever did for my PC was purchase the Creative SoundBlaster recon3D Sound card, PCIe 1x version. ever since I started using that sound card for my audio output, I realized how terrible every devices onboard audio seems to be, including my tablet.. I actually looked into how to plug a sound processor into my tablet. I'm absolutely convinced that no normal onboard solution aside from absolute high-end is anywhere close to the quality of a proper, dedicated sound card. Right now, I'm even thinking of upgrading to the Creative AE-5 Plus, my recon3D is getting old and driver issues are annoying. Really though, a dedicated sound card can make even cheap analog headsets sound good, its impressive honestly. Unfortunately audio is overlooked when people build their PC's, a cheap sound card can make a pretty big difference.
Sounds like you have a shitty audio setup or unsheilded lines. If you are buying a good board with proper isolated circuits and you plug into them directly vs the ports in front of your case you should not get any digital noise whatsoever from the pc side of things. Better yet you can avoid all of this and connect to a dac/receiver using digital coax out.
@@zeroa69 ATH m50X headphones plugged into the back of the motherboard directly, and the noise is still there, so no, it's not a shitty setup, on board audio is just shit. It will never be good. It's been 20 years of me building PCs, and getting the same shitty results with on board audio, yet never once having noise issues with the soundcards I have used. I've only ever owned 2, and that's only thanks to PCI making way for PCIe.
you've got REALLY sensitive hearing
As someone who has worked in the highest-end of audio, its so bizarre to me how much snake-oil there is. But you'd be surprised how some seemingly dumb stuff can make a difference.
audiophilidelititty or whatever its called IS snake oil, and the snobby philes just support that, fuck those guys in particular
@1betterthanyou1 It's not really that. We had people dropping over 200k on an audiosetup. They would come up to me and ask if we sell "audiophile network switches" because they'd reckon that for a few hundred it is not that much all considering. Very weird.
Can you tell me what works? Ive see some test with usb cables but thats about it. Tested myself, but other than power (was suprised about that) and headphone cable (could just be sennheisers are dogshit), interconnects between DAC and AMP and digital cables had no impact at all.
I can’t think of another area of tech where there’s more snake oil. Especially with audio production plugins. It’s apparently quite easy to convince folks to hear things that just aren’t there.
@@mauriceelet6376 I'm more into speakers than headphones I must say. But for digital cables there's not really a point to get expensive stuff. As long as it can properly carry a signal according to spec, it's fine
I would love a follow up video where you guys would show and test some audiophile products which are actually worth it ! Like for example some cheap, budget and expensive dac's :)
I was about the type the same thing, I'm using a amp that came with my headphones but I'm not satisfied with the sound I get in my headphones and in my speakers but I don't want to spend money on useless stuff that I don't really understand how it works
I really hope they do a follow up
@@brunogomes6874 schiit make some cheaper dac/amp combos like the Hel. I think you can also use it as a pre-amp for your speakers using a 3.5mm adapter. It's twice the cost of the Fulla but worth it for the features and sound imo.
@@SubjectE57 Funny you mention Schiit since Linus had covered them before in 2014. Would be nice to see him cover their other range of products like the Fulla.
Just check out Amirm on audio science review guys tests a bunch of dac, amps, headphones etc... Also has a UA-cam channel.
Well, you can't really go wrong with a Focusrite Scarlett or M-Audio AIR. They're pretty cheap and really good. They also have XLR with Phantom power for mics
This would certainly be a reason to do another collaboration with ElectroBoom. Definitely have him come check out your lab and talk about the analog side of the digital gear.
Nah, in this case, they need to fly Big Clive out
or exploding any fake capacitors by collabing with electroboom and hacksmith industries whahaahaha
One important tip, audiophiles may hate it but if your problem is noise and interference on the onboard audio (which is definitely a thing) then even a little $20 USB DAC, or a slightly pricier optical one if you have SPDIF out, will almost certainly remove the noise and sound pretty similar. (Audio Technica makes one, though I think it's only USBC now, so might need an adapter if you don't want to take up a faster port)
Honestly I'd like a follow up about that audio motherboard, you could compare against whatever that board is based on since I doubt they fully custom built it and see if it too makes it worse lol
hmm, the more a PCB diverts electronic current the more noise it makes , these silencers are contradictory
Bro, people should like this so that he'll review the motherboard.
honesty the motherboard is the only one that made mild sense
but a fan silencer? the fan has ZERO to do with audio it has completely seperate routing on the board
now the ram is semi believable since the audio files are loaded onto ram before they are played to you expect... ram does load onto ram stick lets say 4 and get transfered onto ram stick lets say 2
so audio thats loadd onto a seperate stick wouldnt get affected the only way it would "work" is if audio was specifically on the audio ram stick
surely audiophiles would know how to search up the basic and know this is a scam right?
...with a cameo of TechJesus
Many years ago AOpen has a motherboard AX4B-533 with vacuum tube output stage. No sure how it compares with a normal motherboard
That RAM stick with NEC capacitors is actually probably useful, you can use it as a part source for old PS3s that have broken GPU capacitors and preserve/revive those retro consoles.
Get a Frankie PS3 and bye bye YLOD (most of the time)
surely it's easier and cheaper to just get them off mouser/digikey
You would actually trust the quality of those capacitors?
Or just buy Super Slim model. It doesn't have problems with capacitors.
The capacitors are fake. Watch the whole video.
Awesome to see the lab allowing for these kinds of video's now! The objectiveness for audio products like this really adds another dimension to the video's that no other mainstream tech channels offer.
Just to clarify a couple of things:
Capacitors are actually used to reduce noise and there is noise in the system, however motherboard manufacturers figured that out ages ago and that is why on the bottom left of most motherboard you will usually find some capacitors (usually golden). That section of the motherboard takes care of the internal audio and those capacitors filter the noise from the system before the audio gets to your headphones (no point filtering every component when you can just filter the output). Also audio interfaces are not too expensive and they really do make a big difference...
I also wonder how you would "reduce noise" from your RAM. The data going over that bus basically sounds like noise anyway, so if you try to filter that out, you'd be filtering out the very data that's being transmitted between the CPU and RAM. Actual noise on your memory transmissions would basically crash your system because the voltage margins are so low already.
Also the data lines that produce lots of electromagnetic interference are often surrounded with layers of copper connected to ground in the PCB to absorb the noise. That's why older computers were much more susceptible to EMI because manufacturing wasn't very capable of adding shielding to components and we also didn't discover clever design tricks to minimize it. Capacitors don't even have large effect in preventing EMI, they mostly just filter the power supply and they are already within the motherboard and audio DAC. That said, motherboard audio will always be a compromise compared to an external one because not everything can be filtered out and manufactures are less willing to pour lots into research and development for only 5% improvement.
@@stale2665 If you look at the pictures the Capacitors are connected to the RAM Power Rail.
@@stale2665 by preventing any possible crosstalk?
In terms of just listening to game audio etc. audio interfaces don't really make as much of a difference, aside from when they are necessary to use higher impedance headsets. Unless you are actually running much higher bitrates etc. and even then its pretty minimal. If you want more control over volume, Drivers for EQ, getting rid of noise etc. then yeah dacs can be a great improvement, but other than that its really not necessary by any means.
I've been using a DAC for a very long time, but thats only because I use it for a digital guitar setup, and swapping my lower impedance headphones between onboard audio and the DAC is an imperceptible difference. It isn't like a DAC somehow makes the audio better, it just converts between digital to analog, its a rather unimportant aspect of what contributes to audio quality.
The world of audiophile gear is truly something else, for most general people a quality audio interface and nice cans are really all they're going to need but I can see how it can be really confusing when you first dip your toes in
Agreed, I feel like there is a diminishing returns after you bought your first open-back headphones on how you can improve the sound quality.
@@Mp57navy I try to sing the praise of open backs ever since I tried out the hifiman x's and a few of the seinheisser lineups, and even then the medium tiers of Sen and audio technica are still way above the mark of most consumer headphones
Yep. Plop in some halfway decent nearfields and a power conditioner and you're set.
diminishing returns in a sea of snake oil. that is audiophile gear in a nutshell
audiophiles are the definition of sunk cost fallacy. They do not want to admit they've been scammed, so they double down again and again. even in this thread with pure scientific PROOF you can see them freaking out cause they won't admit they've been scammed.
This makes me want to make in-between connector passthrough boards with colorful capacitors and an LED, where _ONLY_ the LED would be connected, and sell them as "electronic art/decoration" to make your computer more aesthetically pleasing and nothing more, sell them in a variety of board and component colors, and sell them at like, a 200% markup. I think they would actually sell!
Bro you just reinvented rgb lmao
@@orlagh277
Good point.
Put 'filters' on all the LEDs too.
We'll make billions!
90s PC aesthetic Etsy boards
Bro make retro like amp and volt meters for the drives or somethin and have it just flicker between "good and best" or something xD
@@JayFochs1337
You're a genius. We're gonna be so rich!
the labs is going to be amazing. I mean with the half dozen major reviewers that get 90% of the views about these products yours will literally be the only one that is truly objective as well as subjective. Super exciting future ahead.
Love the direction you guys have gone with testing.
The price to cost ratio is so good!
Seeing linus drop things on purpose is so funny to me
"on purpose"
At least he ain't dropping any hard r's
Did someone drop a shaver on his head?
@@lilcheesyfry oof
reminds me of the hard Rs clip
It's real cool getting into the audiophile stuff!
Now I'll forever dreak of an LTT x Dankpods crossover episode covering entry and mid-range headphones and earbuds
Ah The KZ Pros. The Soundliberty 79s. The Mpow M30s. Dankpods is a goat.
@@toolbaggers You are
I’ve been manifesting and commenting for this for so long!
Ol’ mate Senny six-hungoes & the freakish ears x Mr Drops Everything collaboration is needed!
@@toolbaggers stop reposting this
12:57
Thanks for mentioning possible issues with your testing! It's great to have some idea of the scope of things that could be investigated further, even if that isn't actually worth doing.
I actually think that was kinda pointless to mention. Even if their power supply was "too good", this shit just makes your audio worse. If there was any actual real product here that did something, the worst it should do is nothing.
Seen something similar to these in a cheap electronics store near me, even the sales assistant thought they look like a quick way to potentially destroy a computer.
this actually increases the realism and sound stage of your audio because real life doesnt have a perfectly quiet background either /s
I love when you all do videos about this stuff it makes me laugh! And I also love as Linus said the goal of educating others that may not know what they may be wasting money on! As a “prosumer” audio engineer, I tell my audio file friends all the time, if you want good audio don’t buy branded audio file equipment, get prosumer or professional grade audio engineer equipment because they actually do what’s printed on the label! Great video I love it!
Damn right, Eminence and QSC are the bulk of my home setup. I use dual Ampeg 8x10s for the low range and old tower speakers for the treble. Way more watts than I need here, but holy hell this system puts all the other ones I've heard to shame. The headroom on this system is wicked. I never want to listen to any other sound system cause it just sounds flat to me now. XD
For the viewers, on your Windows PC (and android for that matter) go to your sound setting and adjust the sample rate and bits per sample to match your source material (usually 44.1/16) and you will be amazed at the difference. Especially on Android and LDAC (Sony WH-1000 line for example) it changes the sound enough that you don't even need "audiophile hearing" to notice the difference.
Does it make a difference for half-deaf older people?
I don't know about that being amazed part. Resampling in Windows is good enough these days that it's very, very hard to hear a difference.
Does this apply on mac aswell?
@@BronzeDragon133 it actually might. Sample rate conversion is essentially completely inaudible when done right, but when done badly (e.g. windows does it badly, to save on cpu cycles - I imagine it's similar on Android), it can kind of smear or put a veil on the sound. If you can tell the difference between a wav and a 128mp3, I'd say you might be able to tell this.
@@BronzeDragon133 As a half-deaf older person, I can say 'yes.' I could tell the difference.
This series BEGS for a 'Real Solutions for Audiophiles' series. Where you review products that actually work and actually make a noticeable difference for a decent % of discerning people!
Motu M2/M4
This is hilarious. There is no such thing as a food "audiophile" product. Just buy a pair of earphones.
@@Gatitasecsii Tell that for the people who don't care about audio quality and a $5 pair of earphones are enough for anything and everything, or the TV speakers are enough because you can hear it. I mean in the sense of the people who actually care about sound quality, surround, etc, not the buzzword and nonsense "audiophile" bs. Same could be said for video quality, some care about it and pay thousands of dollars for OLED, 8K, expensive projectors, monitors. etc, some don't give a fvck and buy the cheapest thing that can generate images. So the only hilarious thing here is you believing that you hold the truth of the world and know what is best for everyone. lol
External dac, Epos(Sennheiser) has a nice one that is affordable.
@@RusticRonnie I don't know - they always seemed kind of gimmicky to me too. They're far more expensive than regular DACs or even some audio interfaces, and claim things like '7.1 surround sound profile'. Which is really meaningless, considering they only have aux outputs, which don't support 7.1 or even 5.1 surround sound. Plus anything _gamer-y_ like EPOS usually has a massive mark-up...
I actually LOVE this test. It showcases resonance PERFECTLY. Resonance in electrical circuits, just like mechanical resonance (like in a bell or a bridge) makes the system oscillate. Filters, like the once used here are usually comprised of capacitors and inductors, and those are the needed components for a resonator circuits (I'm not going to go to in depth into the physics). Sometimes you want that, for example when you are making an oscillator. For power filters its un unwanted effect and a lot of care and attention needs to be given to a filter to make sure it doesn't add more noise than it filters.
Now here is the best part that I absolutely wanted to talk about. Most of those boards don't even have inductors on them, so why are they oscillating? Cables and parasitic inductance! Every single piece of wire or copper trace on a board has parasitic inductance! So just by adding capacitance you are more lightly to make it worse, since the system will oscillate with a lower frequency for the same parasitic cables!
Its a really shitty phenomenon to discover while you are developing a product that that is sensitive to noise.
Just a quick addition to what you are pointing out. It's 100% true that traces on a PCB and wires in a cable are just tiny inductors. It's why manufacturers will bypass things where you need a balanced line and cannot have large inductive spikes as the system rapidly changes load. The CPU for example, it has a ton of bypass caps under the socket because the high frequency the processor is operating at can actually cause inductive spiking on the traces based on a TON of factors. So the manufacturer calculates exactly the capacitance needed to fix that issue (or mostly mitigate it) and carefully select capacitors with the proper specs. Just throwing in 20 more capacitors in random points in the system can actually throw off the balance of the system and make everything worse.
If I may, all wires are coupled not just as inductors but as caps too. And when dealing with circuits at that size, everything is coupled. Ground plans are a no, multiple grounds are a no, parallel traces are a no. Loops become current loop antennas and straight traces become voltage dipole / monopole antennas.
From an electrical engineering point of view, I’m a bit disappointed that they didn’t just plot a bode plot with exit over source. Then you could claim if they acted as filter or not. I’m guessing that there’s some phase shifting which results in what they found.
@@2009dudeman Exactly. Its a good thing those products cant be easily inserted in to the power delivery system of the CPU.
Yes, the additional traces to the fake components are just more inductors.
I love when you guys do this stuff!
Would love a follow up with more technical information like following the traces and seeing in data what they are actually doing. wouldn't be surprised if some of the components are completely fake and only bridging trace connections.
I expected something to explode. Because putting "unknown" components for imaginative reason is excellent recipe for disaster 👌😬
The 'price to cost ratio' actually made my brain shut off for a second
that's why i like those fake reviews. they are so stupid it becomes funny.
Well basically a great price to cost ratio in my understanding describes a great margin for the vendor. They have very low cost to produce the product, and the customer is paying a much higher price.
So basically this review is telling you directly that those things are a ripoff.
@@Compufreak exactly. It is great ratio for seller.
As an audio professional the only solution to noise is isolation: Keep the analog signals out of the computer. In the beginning ProTools used proprietary hardware with external units containing the D/ACs and internal cards containing DSP, so the only signals going in or out of the computer case is digital. Of course, as you mentioned, nowadays just use a USB interface. Even cheap ones will be cleaner than almost anything in the case.
If you're (really) having interference problems on your audio devices, just buy a cheap pack of ferrite chokes off of Amazon. Put a few of them on your audio cable and you'll have a *much* better time. Message to the audiophiles, from your frenemies.. the ham radio community
that doesnt really help if the interference is in the audible range as it always is
I see people constantly complaining about interference and weird noises like this, and nobody realizes you can spend less than 10$ and fix the problem, I dont know why they hate us ham guys
I had to go the isolator route on the line side to get rid of that annoying sound when the GPU gets loaded. (PCIE Soundcard) Was only like 25 bucks total for two. Besides true isolators, all those audiofoolery things are scam and do nothing at best. It pisses me off that the whole audio industry is spoiled with fake specs, scam products and some of the most morronic voodoo people on earth.
Now that's how you build a speaker crossover not solving the problem
Best regards, HiFi community
Just buy good quality cables that have layers of interference layer protection. I have great audio cables they cost more ,but you only need to buy a cable once.
Elfidelity really couldn't be a better fitting name. Because when you buy their products, you take the L.
Best thing you can do is just go right to the source: check your PSU cable, try switching to a different socket, or just get a breakout audio solution (such as USB DAC). Look up "main hum" if you're having issues with hearing 'noise' through your speakers or headphones, especially if it seems to alert as you move your mouse.
I remember a few years ago, when an "audio engineer" told me, i'd need power filters for most parts of my PC (which he conveniently sold), because of Background noises. When i told him, i'd use an external DAC anyway, so my PC only Outputs digital signals to begin with, he went on about how noise would still be there on any electrical conductor. Than i told him, that i'm connected via toslink, an optical Connection. No electrical Connection. His answer than was that optical Audio wouldn't exist
Good work guys!
I'm sure many of us out here, that have ever even thought about these components as a "Hmm good or scam?", are now up to speed with the reality of them.
Thanks for all the time and research that goes on behind the scenes, some of which doesn't make it to print, but still consumed LTT time and $
More of this please! There is so much snake oil in HiFi audio. I'd love an independent and trusted review of power and speaker cables!
No difference at all. How can anyone few meters of good cable compensate for miles of poor studio cable or power company cables. The only one who hear a difference are the sponsored reviews and the gut who bought it wanting to hear a difference. His subconscious will never allow him to se he was duped.
@@chrislambe400 I used to be like you once. I had the cheapest chinese RCA cables ever. Like 4 dollars cheap. I had to change one after many years, I bought something like 25 dollars and the sound improved a lot. The problem was the connectors I believe, I don t know really, but I have made on off testing and the difference is there and repetable. With the new cables is even louder.
@@MihaiMihai-fw7do the impedance from the audio source, the connectors, the cables, and the audio system needs to be the same, otherwise part of the EM field will bounce back into the cable resulting in noise and degradation of the signal, for sensitive electronic devices that might be an issue (hdmi, ethernet, coaxial) resulting in errors and slower speed than maximum theoretical, error correction fixes most issues, for audio cables the noise might be negligible in most cases, depends on the strength on the signal and how much you amplify the noisy signal, also depends on how sensitive are your ears.
TL;DR mismatch impedance in your connectors/audio cables might degrade your experience
@@bluesirius1 I still believe there is snake oil in cable industry... Now I am in the phase I believe my 25 dollar cables are the pinacle of technology. Maybe someday my dog will destroy them and a rich dude will give me an expensive cable and I will be amazed again.
@@MihaiMihai-fw7do There's definitely a benefit to quality cables for analog audio but you hit diminishing returns quickly. And there's no need to spend $100 on digital cables like HDMI or optical. Makes ZERO difference.
As an electronics designer I can tell you that throwing some random capacitors on and high speed line, even a DC power lines dose not improve noise if the system is well balanced (you can destabilize the DC to DC power supplies, causing them to create more noise or even fail to start, entering in protection due to very high capacitance on the load side...and so on) .......you can not throw a capacitor in a well calculated impedance DC power line and assume it will improve the quality of the line.
If you want to hear those noises without software boosting, try some active speakers connected to the 3.5 mm connector. My current PC had A LOT of gpu whine through active studio monitors and what got rid of it was an RCA ground loop isolator in the signal chain. An external DAC is supposed to give the same effect with better performance, but the ground loop isolator was only ~13 €.
Yeah, it's a shame Linus didn't mention ground loop isolators, it's certainly worth trying one before you start replacing your PSU or doing any of the other suggestions he mentions at the end of the video.
The first book I read on building a PC was published in 1997, though I bought it in 1998. I didn't seriously look into building one until 20 years later, things changed in that time. One of the things it suggested was to either buy or have a friend with an oscilloscope so you can check for noise interference in your cable runs if you weren't getting your expected performance. If you found anything, the only thing you had to do was slap a ferrite core filter onto the line to reduce external interference. Back in 97/98, I was going to school for electronics engineering (I didn't complete the course, never got a degree). I remember us going over how capacitors could be used to filter out noise in a signal, but it was mostly used for tuning an AC to DC power conversion. Even if the caps on that board were real, I don't see how they could be discreet enough to filter external noise in an audio signal without introducing extra noise, which was shown here today. What a waste.
I would think that they were supposed to filter the supply voltage not the actual audio signal, its a fail all the same though.
It's the power factor correction thing. Power Factor correction is a real thing that large appliances and machines (particularly those with inductive loads like motors and/or transformers) do by using a large capacitor across the incoming AC lines. There's also a snake oil device that has a tiny little capacitor that supposedly does power factor correction for a whole house (it actually consumes more power than it could save and most residential power customers only pay for real power anyway).
@@grn1 I'm probably wrong, but I thought the large cap was also to help with reducing the feedback current and the impact of sudden power draws?
@@nickryan3417 From my understanding it can help with sudden power draws by evening out the current (which is also how it reduces non-real power). Not sure about feedback current, I think that's generally handled by pushing through the ground pin though I'm not entirely sure how that works (pretty sure I've seen an explanation somewhere but can't seem to remember the details).
You may need a filter at the wall to stop any ground loops if you have any, but that's only if you are experiencing them/there is a defect in the wiring in the house. That's a simple specialized surge protector/outlet strip that everyone should have already. I recommend the APC AV C series.
Aside from that, any dedicated sound card will suffice as they have all of this factored in as well. If you can't use a dedicated sound card, then a simple USB interface/mixing board should suffice for streaming.
Love seeing linus post! Part of my daily things to do at this point:)
External DAC via toslink is the way to go, if you want to get rid of noise from your system.
Tbf, the inside of a PC case is a very noisy environment for audio, but you cant use filters everywhere to make it better, because most of the noise propagates through radiation and capacitive coupling, not galvanically through the power rails. Besides that, PSU are already pretty good at filtering the power rails.
The only thing, i think could help, would be a filter in the USB power supply for an external DAC, because USB can carry some of the noise from the inside of the case to the outside.
I appreciate how you didn't just show how useless those devices are, but also provide an alternative solution i.e. better headphones and DAC/AMPs.
people still use headphoness? but yes better speakers are a simple start.
@@gorkskoal9315 what's wrong with headphones?
@@Amfibios what's wrong with speakers?
@@gorkskoal9315 the fact that unless you have the whole room to yourself, everyone else is after your head
The null test would have been very interesting to see
EDIT: love the cap detective work. There's a whole cottage industry in china/india relabeling capacitors from e-waste and reselling them as new
Should do a FFT on the sound files to make it easier to compare
Plus you can see what noice the filters add
Interesting! A comparison between "normal/proper" motherboards would also be great. What's the audio difference between basic boards, and the expensive ones marketed towards audio?
this please
I thought they talked about this years ago so maybe thibgs have changed but back then it wasn't worth it, your better of getting a motherboard that fits your non audio needs and a seperate sound card.
I doubt that there will be much difference, it's jitter in the USB and noise from the fans that seems to be a problem. There's for instance re-clocker to fit between the computer and DAC that will solve most of these issues (not cheap though). Software and software setup can also make a difference.
do this with iFi audio products please, they are mainstream and they might be trying to pull a lot of bs
I got some iFi usb filter for my DAC and powering it with a descent non switching power supply and it is so clear to hear. But I think you need a really good amplifier and speakers so you can hear it. In my setup I tried it blind folded with a friend of mine who is not an audiophile and even he could hear the positive difference.
The majority of Ifi's products are at least removing real things that can actually be measured, like noise in the power delivered over USB. Whether or not it effects your listening experience is debatable, but it IS doing SOMETHING.
@@TechnoBabble The data can't possibly be interfered with before it hits the decoder by any amount of noise, because that would be AN ELECTRICAL SHORT. Digital audio works nothing like analogue audio does, you disgusting phoney.
@@TechnoBabble Yeah iFi is weird one. Their dacs and amps are decent from what I've been told and even somewhat reasonably priced, but what on earth is going on with their more niche products. AC and DC filters 130€(for each), weird usb-b 3.0 to double mini splitter 390€, galvanic usb power supply 459€.
@@toolbaggers Wow you clearly got hold of a pile of salt
Best way to clean up audio is to disconnect the frontpanel audio cable.. It kinda works like an antenna, going past all the noisy parts inside your case, usually from bottom left corner to top right corner.
Imo the best way is have external audio. Like a USB soundcard or DAC. But its really only needed if you have problems like GPU coil whine, excessive hissing or otherwise unclear sound.
If your on board audio sounds fine then it IS fine.
@@llaeeZ dude your saying like best way to increase FPS is to buy new pc.. when im suggesting to dust off the heatsinks
Honestly you could be on to something, like avoid plugging your headphones into, the front panel, controller outputs, your monitor, keyboard or anything else that has a headphone out that isn't intented to make them sound better. I could explain in more detail, but I'm lazy. Basically get a headphone extension and plug into the back of your computer if you don't have anything better or go to your local e-waste or something and get a 20 year old creative sound card, they are generally free or around $10 and as long as you still have PCI slots on your motherboard you should be good
@@NuffMan_ it's not ideal. but I kinda agree, cheap $7 dongle DAC could make a difference than common motherboard onboard audio.
on my motherboard it uses Realtek ALC892/897, on cheap $7 dongle DAC it uses Realtek ALC5686. same from Realtek but different results.
the background noise is simply gone. yes you got dangling bit in usb port but it's cheap solution.
Or just get a €10 apple usb C dac
I think the reason the amount of noise actually goes UP when all the filters are attached is because it allows the (probably unshielded) cables to be much longer, thus adding more "surface area" where electrical noise can leak in. (also any filter capacitors that filter out undesired audible noise will also filter out desired audio)
all the coils and traces running on top the extra pcb's work as coils and take the signal out of the shielded cables they sit between.
I think a error on LTT's part is more likely, the filters are all on Power Traces, or on really high frequency traces, which produce almost no noise in the audible frequencies.
@@jjjannes if the noise being filtered out isn't in the audible frequencies then it's effectively doing nothing, also what you actually NEED to filter is the power and signal planes around the DAC/ADC, which you can't actually do anything about, since the circuitry feeding those is integrated into the motherboard
@@MizoxNG I'm not believing that this does anything, but I'm also not believing that these devices male the signal noise so much worse.
Always love to see great price to cost ratio!
Clicked on your profile and I like your music :D Got yourself a new follower on Tidal
@@valorix Oh thank you! I appreciate it! ^^
These products are like if you wanted to filter the water in your home, and instead of installing a filter where your main or well comes into your house, or even at your faucet or simply keeping a Brita in your fridge, but instead went over to your neighbors house and installed a water filter on his HVAC system and then proceeded to go around telling everyone you know how life changing your new filtered water is.
Idea for more objective measurements: hook the inputs and outputs of the devices up to an oscilloscope and function generator. Apply a sinusoidal frequency sweep to the input and measure the output. That data can then be used to calculate the frequency response and transfer function of the device, showing exactly what it's doing (or not doing).
or just use REW ..
I have a fairly new gaming rig. ( i7-12700k/3080/32gb 3733 ram/2tb NVMe SSD ) and no audio products other than the mobo. The sound is dead quiet. My last rig ( i7-6700k/2080 ) was similarly quiet. My system - PC>Emotiva xda-2 balanced preamp/DAC>NAD 208thx balanced power amp>aDs 910 studio mains>Hsu Research 12" & SVS PB-2000 12" subs.
Best sounding system I've ever heard.
As someone who works with sound professionally, this just made me sad. Honestly the best thing you could do is just buy a focusrite scarlet solo and run your audio through that. They’re pretty inexpensive and have great sound for an interface at that price point.
Personally I can hear the line power on onboard audio for my relatively new Lenovo ThinkCenter at work when my mini-fridge compressor kicks on. I ended up getting a USB DAC from FiiO to fix it.
my thoughts exactly, only way to improve sound is to give it to an external device like a dac that will improve it, bought one for my phone because i was disgusted by the quality of its internal dac, now im running a usb c to 3.5 dac from aliexpress and its getting used everyday, really good stuff for 8€
My favorite videos are the ones that debunk audiophile gear. I'm a musician who has spent way too much money on bad audio gear. Took me until my 30's to learn these guys were lying.
like my dad always says when talking shop (he's a sound engineer) "less is more". in general, those noises go away once the system is properly grounded. the excess current goes through the path of least resistance, and a solid connection to the ground will always be that.
I remember I bought the Asus Essence STX a long time ago so I could drive 80 ohm headphones (and back than on-board was still kinda crap), a friend of mine bought some ''filtered DAC'' from Aliexpress and I should totally buy it as well.
My Asus Essence STX is still running along my Asus 4080 being the only part from my old PC that went with the new one, while the DAC of his died in like 2 years. Still longer than I expected.
I still use an ASUS Essence STX on my main system and some ASUS Xonars on other systems I use. Every motherboard I've ever used produces noise on the audio output -- the type of noise can vary but it almost always includes noise from just moving the mouse around which is really annoying. Because of this I've always ended up going back to a sound card and never hear any noise afterwards. I've tried USB DAC's but those seem to have their own issues, sound cards just work.
Those things got an amazing price/cost ratio of 1. Really astounding!
To Linus and the Lab, you should make an "LTT Lab Certified Certificate" to test if Products being sold by companies really do meet their advertised performances and specs. Would be fun lol, as a little bonus if Companies wanna pay you that little bit more money for you to test their products at the lab and certify it as a (spec-wise) as advertised product. though it should still stay completey truthfull and transparent (If a product sucks, it sucks, like it always has been before).
Using a stereo Di-box (with a 1:1 matching transformer) generally will fix that EMI noise. I was blown away plugging a super noisey iMac my friend brought over into my PA .... once through the DI-box, the line was totally silent and clear. That's the real and true galvanic isolation. I use it to cleanup the sound on my Linuxbox ahead of the stereo works great.
If you want to do more audio products Thavillaman had a video recently on trinnov audio processors and how they are basically custom pcs at that point.
I'd love to see a tear down of one and see what it shares with regular pcs especially considering the price.
Holy hell! For the prices I saw for some of those trinnovs, you could buy all the stuff audio engineers use to tune PA systems with money left over!
@@Aquatarkus96 Yeah they are one of the top tier home audio equipment. Not many home theaters need 48 speakers lol
I'd love to see you test how on-board PC audio compares with cheap USB to headphone jack dongles. In my experience even really cheap dongles way outperform even high end shielded onboard audio. There's just way less EMI to deal with. It's especially noticeable with microphones, like the Mod Mic 4, because the noise floor matters more.
Do they add any latency?
@@LightCloak they do mostly
@@LightCloak barely enough to matter. It's a digital to analog converter. Something like a R2R DAC is just using resistors which would barely ever effect latency (not what humans can detect) other more fancy ones might add couple milliseconds but it doesn't matter really
those $10 usb audio dongles are great but usually limit you to 16-bit audio
@@parliamentarian6598 got a usb c to 24bit audio adapter for that price
Linus should do a video on audio interfaces! That's exactly what will bring your sound to the next level.
What's the price to cost ratio?
Whilst I would love to see LTT cover the various audio interfaces, no one on LMG’s writing team is qualified enough to actually go over any of that in my opinion. Especially since other UA-camrs do a much better job, like Podcastage, who actually understands audio. And the fact is, LTT’s core audience really doesn’t care about the technical aspects of audio, unless it’s “haha, audiophiles are dumb”, or really expensive stuff the average consumer is expected to buy.
audio interfaces like DACs and AMPs? unless you are using headphones that need it, no it won't make any real differences besides a Placebo. And even on higher end DACs and stuff the difference in general is beyond negligible even with the highest end stuff if it has enough power to drive it
Here's all you need for audio interface: Schiit Magni and Modi stack, anyone tries to claim otherwise is lying/ scammer
@@ttr_coco average Shiit user
Maybe the reason these things are still for sale is because no one is buying them, but it costs them nothing to keep the listings live.
These filters actually put strain on your PSU so more work for all the regulators which may cause worse ripple everywhere
Your recommendations for better products to address the problems was good, but I'd also add a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) as well, especially if someone is experiencing issues with supply line stability (aka lights dim when an appliance turns on, brown outs, etc). Everyone should have one for basic safety, but they also eliminate other issues too.
There many different UPS option. For Audio an active UPS would make sense, the others just switch on when you have powerloss
I mean to be fair he did recommend a power conditioner which I'd essentially a UPs minus battery's
At a surface level the ideas they present seem like they could be sound and really mirror what you see on motherboard marketing and audio products, even if it falls apart once you start looking at them critically.. I'm sure that's exactly what they're relying on and why people end up buying them.
"At a surface level the ideas they present seem like they could be sound". Considering the signal is digital until it reaches the motherboard's DAC, I doubt putting a filter on your RAM, storage or PCIe slot is going to make a difference.
The chances of a bitflip or bitrot happening are low too I'm assuming, and if something does happen I doubt you're going to hear it, since the data would be streamed again.
Now if we're talking about doing something AFTER the DAC, once the signal is analog, then you'll probably be able to filter something. (I'm no expert in the matter btw)
@@mttkl I didn't mean once you start thinking about whether or not it actually works it holds up at all, obviously it doesn't. More that clean power is good and motherboards are already marketing their audio isolation and power filtering and things that sound really similar to how they're selling these things (and may be nearly as questionable). Someone who's around tech stuff enough to pick up those phrases or see that sort of marketing but might not know enough to look at it more critically beyond that.
@@cinnabarsin4288 Ah, fair enough, I understand now what you meant.
So at the end of the day it all boils down into marketing vs. technical knowledge (or lack of it, which is fine too, as we can't expect everyone to be experts on everything).
Reminds me of the old Car Stereo "Spark Arrestor Module" people would buy to eliminate the high pitched whine thru the speakers during acceleration. ....When all you really had to do was make sure the ground wire had a clean connection. Lol
I'm a dedicated sound card user - I think we're a rare bunch! I would like to see the same lab test for noise floor to be conducted with dedicated sound cards! I think that would be neat. Interested to see if going through the trouble of having a sound card provides any real benefit over onboard sound these days.
anybody who makes music will use a dedicated sound interface. Besides sound quality the biggest issue they solve is latency.
You're not going to find many "sound card" users anymore because they're called "audio interfaces" now.
Sound cards make no sense anymore since you're sticking something that's supposed to be isolated from all the interference of the PC as close as possible to the source of all the interference. Even in 2005 most "sound cards" would have breakout boxes that would do most of the ADC so it wouldn't be anywhere near the massive EMI generated inside.
Also USB 2.0 has enough bandwidth for basically any amount of channels at ridiculous data rates so there is absolutely no point in using a PCI(-E) slot for something that objectively performs better if its outside the case.
Also all those USB microphones and USB/bluetooth headsets technically have their own DA/ADCs which technically count as soundcards, so they might be more numerous than you think.
You should try those filters in really old motherboards that don't have shielded audio, a lot of them had noticeable background noise so maybe they would do something in that situation, tho it really seems like a scam.
yeah the reviews all seemed to be from places that can have pretty spotty electric grids, which makes me think there could possibly be a reason for using some of these. I'm not saying they work or not, but the logic might be at least somewhat reasonable.
Now, your power supply should take care of all this but if you're going cheap on the PSU and then buying a bunch of noise filters to help...well...idk but that's what could be happening.
yea, didnt they build an all aliexpress PC a while ago? perfect candidate
No , its just a scam. Adding an extra thing between 2 things always ADD points of potential failure/problems/noise. Even worse connecting extra things in empty slots (the fake RAM)
@@AndersHaalandverby That's absolutely not true. Power filters are absolutely a thing. I'm not saying _these particular things_ do anything, but that doesn't mean that you can't buy something that doesn't clean up the power coming from your wall. (Which also wouldn't matter in this case because the power is going through the computers power supply). But on analog equipment, like class A amps and vinyl, you can absolutely make it sound better with a filter. Especially if you live in a place that has shitty power.
the only workable solution for a situation like that is to add physical shielding to the audio card itself, not something between your other components and their cables.
I've seen a lot of this audiophile BS pop up lately in the PC market, and just like sound cards, will always be not needed. These will almost always in most cases do nothing to stop any EMI generated from having any sound equipment near your PC, just gotta seperate them physically
sadly, in my situation I may actually need a sounds card. Something on my mobo is not isolating the electronics properly, so depending on the window I'm looking at (90% of windows) I'll get a bunch of static on the audio jack. Didn't have this issue on the last mobo.
Maybe related to the GPU since it's specifically bad in games. I dunno.
Sound car was needed for me. Gigabyte included buggy integrated one that stopped receiving updated just after 1 year.
Well, audiophiles spend thousands on cables for digital audio too (which is checksum'd already). So ...
@@ferinzz You can just get a cheap usb DAC, no need for an expensive sound card. Any static created by your computer won't be audible with an external usb DAC. It's what I did because of the same issue.
" and just like sound cards, will always be not needed" - I have yet to find a MB that sounds as good as a mid range sound card, like a Soundblaster AE-5. Not even mentioning the software solution for virtual surround.
the only possibility i could see these helping is in countries with poor electrical grid infrastructure and limited access to new power supplies.
2:45 to be fair, 4+ layer pcb's exist. a shunt capacitor could be routed from the passthrough trace to the cap to ground, on layers not visible from the outside. they could even share the vias, which would make traces... untraceable(?) without a multimeter and access to the cap leads. in countries with unstable electrical grids, i could see some shunt caps being useful to smooth out the power fluctuations, but that seems like something that should go on or into a power supply only. a quality power supply should make the rest of those problems negligible unless your power cables are crazy long. 5:00, if you have access to the same power bus from different slots, maybe its a decent non-invasive way to filter power, but also probably useless for the power draw the other memory takes. on top of that, the memory sticks would have their own components specifically chosen for their purpose. if adding a bunch of extra caps would help, they wouldve done that themselves. surface mounted caps are fractions of a penny. if you can power your system from a shotty generator, and give the computer an old power supply, there might be a tiny improvement on the tests. but like you said, only so many bones you can throw. these are definitely a waste for anyone who doesnt actively see power issues, and likely a waste for anyone who does.
Nice video! I'm guessing what they're attempting (and failing) is some sort of combination of low pass and high pass filters. Think of it as an inverse band pass. A basic RC filter consists of just a resistor and a capacitor and the type of filter depends on the order in which they are placed in series. When adding them together in the same circuit they can form pretty complex filters. Only other way I can think of reducing noise like this would be to eliminate it at the source similar to a balanced circuit... which leads me to: I'd love to see a video on a similar note about the scam of balanced cables. It's another scam in the audio industry that almost no one knows about but manufacturers are able to charge extra for... well nothing.
Balanced cables do reject interference but over the length of a normal headphone/IEM cable it is negligible. But on stage with hundreds of feet of cable a balanced XLR cable does reject signal interference. Balanced signals don't change audio quality inherently.
@@MooseStuff also, because some dac/amp in balanced output have their dedicated dac and amp in each channel, the power is more higher.. and many people will associates more volume = is good, which is not necessarily.
@@MooseStuff absolutely! Just to add to that - as cable length increases there will also be some high frequency loss as the cable effectively starts to act as a capacitor and therefore starts to filter
@@MooseStuff also yes you’re right about it mattering for very long industrial cables but for simple meter long cables being sold at the local music store it is just a cheeky way of making more money
Came here to say the same thing... The thing is these MAY be rejecting some noise/sound/something but accepting most the noise in the range of human hearing, making them utterly useless as analog filters (or to the same effect crossovers) are tuned to specific frequencies. It would be interesting to see what frequencies these LC circuits or LRC circuits are tuned to and see if they make any sort of sense for the expected frequencies on those traces... but all aside, I agree with Linus and you they will do nothing no matter how they're tuned or how they're implemented. The best way to remove noise is to improve the ground. And unfortunately you're pretty much stuck with the designed ground on a MOBO regardless of what crap you plug into it. The ONLY logical and cost effective way to remove noise from audio is to either (as you said) reduce/eliminate it from the source - or - remove the analog audio from the digital noise source via an external device. Budget strapped people should look for second hand audio interfaces (for podcasting/recording) - I've seen plenty of these on second hand markets like facebook market place. Or a second hand DAC. If those aren't sexy enough or you have more money to spend, then a entry level interface/dac will still perform better than most PCI or similar cards.
Would love to see a video on how Labs tests this stuff as well as a video on things that actually help with this problem.
Get a DAC, USB into the DAC and analog out. The digital signals of USB aren't affected by the noise inside the system so, so long as the DAC properly isolates both sides, the analog end of your headphones won't be affected by interference inside your PC. Of course not all DACs are created equal and there is the possibility of interference in the air (especially with open case designs) so you should make sure your headphones have good insulation as well (this can be harder to check since most people don't know the different between a crap pair of cams and a good pair of cams with crappy filtering). One simple trick for the analog wire is to use ferrite beads. Another option is to use bluetooth or a radio headset. Radio headsets can have higher quality but tend to cost more and require a dongle, bluetooth has gotten to the point where a good pair of bluetooth headphones can sound really good. I used SoundCore Life Q30's before (they have a few different names depending on where you buy them) and recently switched to Sony WH-1000XM4's which have better noise canceling and sound (imo) but worst battery life (I typically put them on charge every night to be safe). I personally prefer closed back headphones for privacy reasons as well as better noise isolation (I live in a 'condo' which is basically an apartment) but open ear can technically be superior from a sound quality perspective (I think it has something to do with canceling the noise created when the drivers move backwards).
honestly, the motherboard for audio could make sense, cause there are trace isolation and shielding implementations that they can do to improve the audio quality
But if an audiphile uses computer for the audio... They already use some quality USB dac that does the filtering. If I wanted even better audio quality, I would go for even better dac with great noise filtering or PC/Mac that is almost silent (Mac mini, Raspery Pi, or similar).
Yeah, but _did_ they implement those features?
@@Monsux No, a professional will do that.
An audiophile will not use a USB dac, an audiophile will use magic crystals to improve sound quality.
It's better to separate computer and DAC. If you're VERY concerned about noise coming from the PC, use optical cable and AV receiver.
@@Monsux yea. Goldensound has a great video about jitter. while you can run galvanic isolation or a DDC with femto clocks, the best was ether a custom Raspery Pi without any usb in the chain or, guess what, a really high quallity DAC (Holo Audio May).
Back in the days when I had my desktop computer, my sound was coming from Toslink optical SPDIF cable straight into my Denon AVR. I was bypassing the soundcard for better audio quality and it was successful. Optical cable connections have the benefit of being galvanic isolated therefore no RF interference was pushed through the AVR.
100% of linus's problems with onboard audio are linked to him dropping the motherboards several times while building the PC.
I think something worth mentioning is that you don't even need to save up for a desktop DAC/AMP, for vast majority of earphones/headphones just get the Apple USB-C dongle and it works flawlessly. The audiophile community approves it and its what i exclusively use
Rather than wav files I think you could display input and output on an oscilloscope for really precise comparisons.
It wouldn't make any difference. A wav file is the audio waveform so it's just the same.
Hi Linus, great vid! LOVE it. As an electrical engineer I agree with you. These are bogus products. Please be aware that databusses are not to be filtered since that would 'short circuit' the dataflow. Hence, no data will go through. Further, motherboards are designed to obtain intra electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). Lots of noises, hisses and unexpected HW problems may be caused by EMC problems. Adding extra components (capacitors, resistors and/or coils) where the designer didn't anticipated, these components could well ruin the EMC and that might be the case of your observation that the performance got worse. Bad idea these products, I would say.
Too pitty people fall for this scam. Job well done for exposing them! Thumbs up for you and your crew!
I’m impressed that you weighed the noise with LUFS, but I’m disappointed that you didn’t do a phase test with a music file, as that would have arguably given you a broader data range. I mean correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the reason for building the new lab so you could be more objective in your reviews and collect more data? Obviously audio doesn’t need as much as a keyboard, but it always hurts when phase tests are ignored.
I believe the product claims were only noise, not phase shift (although filtering would lead to phase shift). Tbh, for the intent of this video I believe only amplitude of the boosted signal is sufficient to prove scam vs. no scam.
@@danilolattaro That’s not what I mean. If I was to take a lossless wav file, and convert it to a lower quality mp3, and play both files back simultaneously, with one of them phase inverted, you wouldn’t hear the file louder, you’d hear the difference between the two files, specifically what is missing from the mp3.
If they were to perform a phase test with the product(s) demonstrated, it would have given a rough estimate to how much difference there is in noise. For audio engineers such as myself, it’s something I’d like to see. Especially since LMG is trying to be more objective and have more data, yet they skip over the most basic of audio tests
@@minecraftWithDanielD now I understood what you meant by phase test. I thought you were talking about signal phase as taken from control theory/signal processing point of view
You know you have to do the full audiophile snake oil PC. There's a product for almost every component at this point!
He could start by actually understanding what he is testing for. Because LTT clearly don't understand what they are doing in this case.
@@Mr_Wh1 Not sure that I understand better, frankly. Is the point of the products not to reduce noise by filtering power?
@@datketh1556 What I am saying, is that LLT didn't provide any data, and didn't provide any display of understand as to how you actually test and prove the noise is from the module. The sound could come from something else, but LTT didn't isolate the signals, so they didn't know what made the noise.
Again another superb upload from LTT,love these kind of vids testing out this junk,I instantly knew those Rubycons had to be fake,they simply wouldn't be able to make any money back let alone any profit if those were genuine Rubys.
It's sad to think that these products might actually work if they weren't made of counterfeit noisy components. Potentially spreading disinformation. Ironically the History of the phrase Snakeoil is related to counterfeiting snake-oil with cheaper vegetable oils. Real snake oil is like cod-liver oil, which is well documented for it's health benefits. Snake oil is actually legit! It makes sense that an animal that's just a string of joints would have adapted to produce joint healthy oils. A seed on the other hand, far less mobile lol
Yeah I think they are fake. Contrary to what the guys found, Rubycon actually does make a cap that looks exactly like the ones in the video, at the advertised specs of 400V / 2.7uF. Part number would be 400RX302R7. !But! the real caps are rated 130C and the one in the video says 125. So yeah. Fake.
It’s worth noting that even well heeled brands get their high end parts jacked and replaced by their manufacturer without them knowing. It’s a really negative cultural trend to see whole industries and regions embracing counterfeiting, and scam call centers etc. People should only buy parts direct from the source, as anything on the second hand market is probably supporting companies who swapped out parts to turn a profit selling the real ones on the black market. All in all a good reason to keep your manufacturing close enough to where you can keep an eye on it, and litigate it without cross border immunity.
If you hear noises in your pc sound, just buy a $20 spdif dac to plug on your mobo/sound card. The signal is digital, so power spike & other typical analog interferences don't apply. Plus they supports 24bit/192khz (personally I can't tell the difference, but I don't own an hifi headset).
Mine is powered by usb from the pc, but it doesn't seem to suffer from electric interference like the onboard audio did. E.g. I no longer hear a pop whenever my refrigerator pump switches on/off.
My first gaming PC had a horrendous noise floor, so when I was choosing parts for this system, I picked a Gigabyte motherboard that was designed for better audio. The Gigabyte G1.SNIPER H6. I have no idea if the motherboard actually made a difference, or if the vast improvement in audio quality was just going from a 2009 prebuilt to a completely new 2015 custom build. Be interesting to know if it actually, like, does things. I have no way to test it, though, so it shall remain a mystery.
A motherboard for audio might actually make sense because it could have a built in dac amp or just a better sound chip.
And the noise inside the case would still kill the quality.
I bought a mouse pad that claims to give 25% more XP in mmo games and my keyboard adds 14% more fps in games.... totally legit.... i promise! 😁
In audio engineering as you mentioned at the beginning the goal is to capture audio with the least amount of interference as possible. That audio has to then be converted from an analogue signal into a digital signal to be processed on a computer. These products are marketed as helping with the latter half of the processing chain when in reality all they do is interfere with the former half. The input itself as apposed to the processing. Adding cheap capacitors to your signal loop that aren't responsible for the processing at all but rather the clean input signal will always lead to severe sound degradation. Not shocked at all that if you were to input a clean SIN wave through a bunch of unnecessary physical hardware would mess it up before and during its processing into a digital waveform. Less is always more in Audio.
Please do the motherboard audio it would be hilarious to see if it makes a difference or even does anything at all
Would maybe be interesting to see this tested on a much (much) cheaper system or older hardware that might not have good onboard filtering. Also I would like to hear more about your proccess within the lab as I would trust a null test much more then just recording a output and boosting it (especially since I've seen that you guys use a focusrite scarlett interface)
No. The scam is obvious. The SATA filter is a direct passtru. The RAM does nothing as it "works" when used in the same dual channel pair... The fan filter can be replace by changing your settings and making the fan go at a fixed speed. The filter would affect anything that happens after the filter, not before, since it's just a bunch of capacitors...
@@arakwar I know the scam is obvious. The sata filter could (and this is a very massive could) make capacitance noise of a ssd or hdd get better. That is a non issue on modern hardware but might make a difference on some older hardware. Now the best way too avoid noise is to use non onboard audio and use a balanced interface but that’s a different thing. I also just want to see what the testing process is as I am a nerdy audio technician and would trust the labs audio department a lot more by seeing how they do stuff (maybe another channel)
Linus should also mention a $10 ground loop isolator can also kill most of the noise
Most good power strips have this as well.
Not the noise generated by components of the motherboard, which is what he is hearing.
you can also remove the ground alltogether (if you're using a laptop at least that will solve most ground loop issues)
As someone who prefers the "classic Linus" hair, this new look is the best compromise yet. So much better than the 2020s, haha.
Lots of people dedicate half of their budget to audio for their setups.
And then there are people like me who use $15 EarPods for basically anything and everything.
I play online games with a group of guys that are constantly dropping hundreds on the latest and greatest headphones. Meanwhile I have had the same 30 dollar off brand headset since like 2018 and I have better stats than most of them...