"It sounds better when it's worse"

4 posts in a day? I really should stop to preserve readership for tomorrow (like what they do in publications), but this one is so serious it has to be posted immediately.

Okay, it goes like this: Sombody does a comparison of Audio-gd's discrete op-amp here, and here are parts of the result:

OPA-Moon
This one better leave ungrounded.

OPA-Sun v.2
For more precise imaging, leave it ungrounded, for smoother and more airy presentation, connect the ground wire.

If we're talking about changing of capacitors and resistor values, then yes, sometimes it may be beneficial, sometimes it isn't. And the sound signature changes too much for a direct comparison.

But you're talking about having better sound quality by removing the ground cable!?

Ok, so these op-amps have a ground cable, part of Audio-gd's idea. With the two decoupling caps at both the positive and negative supply rails of the op-amp, it makes good sense to use the ground cable. Otherwise, I'm not sure what the ground cable is used for. Lets take a look at the schematics:


I'm not an engineer (yet), but gut feeling tells me that it's there for a reason. (If it's there for no reason, why the heck have it there in the first place? To soak up EMI?) And if it's there for a reason, it's a reason why it should be used.

In short, this can only make the circuit better. Unless you're telling me that somehow a fk-load of EMI can makes its way through the casing and crawl up the silver wire instead of interfering with the output signal, right.

Ok, better sound quality is arguable, because sound signature and preference are super important when deciding if something sounds good or not.

But if it is obviously better mathematically, how the heck would it sound worse? It's like saying something is better than the Benchmark because that something uses a tube! Man.

Then next time I'll unplug the EMI filter, use shit parts in the power supply, pull out the decoupling caps in the digital stage of the DAC (including that for the clock! lalalah) and inject jitter into the SPDIF signal and says it sounds better! ...wait, fk, something similar has already been done before and is still being done now - manipulating raw CD streams and SPDIF signals, noise-shaping properties of 1-bit DACs, TUBE AMPS...

Shit, this talk has lead to something even worse, and way, way bigger.

No wonder Bose sounds good.