"John A. Weeks III" wrote in message

In article

, TCS wrote:

On Sun, 4 Jan 2004 16:19:54 -0500, Mitchell Ingram
wrote:
I have a Onkyo TX DS595 and would like to know what value
capacitors to use to swap out the factory ones to add whatever
improvement it would make. Also what else do I need to change over
while I'm in there?

You know more than onkyo's engineering staff? Why are you modifying
an onkyo then? Why don't you design your own equipment?

That is a heck of an attitude. You must really limp badly with that
size chip on your shoulder.

IME he's speaking quite factually.

All commercial audio equipment is built with compromises and
trade-offs.

In many cases these have zero audible consequences.

A common trade-off is price versus quality. Another one
is parts count. I can easily see a case where Onkyo would have like
to have used certain higher quality parts, but ended up using
something less to hit some marketing price point. One never knows
what kind of improvement could be made by changing out low quality
capacitors and putting in low noise op-amps.

Actually I do, and I have some bench tests and DBTs to back my claims up
with.

What it comes down to is that replacing defective parts can have immense
audible benefits. OTOH, if its not broke, it probably doesn't need fixing.

How many capacitor upgrade articles have you read that did two very basic
things:

(1) Determined that the parts that were replaced were NOT defective (i.e.,
tested them)

(2) Demonstrated their benefits in a fair and unbiased way? (i.e., a good
DBT or relevant bench testing)

I come up with zero.

Just like an auto
mechanic who puts accessories on his or her car doesn't have to
design their own car, an audio tweaker doesn't have to design their
own amplifiers.

A lot of after-market so-called automotive performance improvements are
questionable as well. However, the percentage of snake oil in automotive is
far less than that of audio.