Is this for real and people pay for this?

who is this guy?

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

I see him post at other places like Klaus's

good one today at klaus's

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/2091/0

BC transistors causing a "aural excitement"

He clearly knows a lot of stuff - but on the other hand there's little doubt he's way out in the audiophool direction..

I think I better send all of my equipment to him to have all of the BCXXX transistors removed......


"I replace every one I find now, whether it's found in a mic or a console mic pre."

You'd better... Too much "aural excitement" can wear you out! :wink:

Does he know? or are people assuming he knows?

The world is full of lots of BS. The transistor thing sounds out there to me.

I know I go on about caps however I do measure stuff as well a use my ears and I think what one hears in some cases, with caps has real science behind it. Heck even cheap not great meter reading electros can sometimes sound OK if they have a forming voltage. I think a lot of bad electro sound is the caps not being used correctly.

This BC transistor stuff sounds real funny to me. The PNP BJTs in the schoeps are used as EFs. EFs are about the most insensitve to transistor specs to sound, simple BJT circuit there is IMO.

He isn't THE Jim Williams of Linear Technology or is he :?:

Jim Williams is a bandwidth guy...he really believes in in spec sheets, and high speed as a solution to the 'good sound' problem. He routinely uses video op-amps in audio designs...maybe they sound good, maybe they don't, I don't buy it 100% though, there are always tradeoffs.

Jim does know his stuff though....I'm just not 100% on board his philosphy.

Cheers,

K

I'm pretty sure he's not.

I've gotten into some argument over opamps with him... he tends to believe that his (very high-priced for what they are) mods, which almost always involved swapping out proper audio opamps for ultra-high-speed video ones, will ALWAYS cause a benefit. Over at PSW I once suggested to him that there had to be some cases at least where his mods (often not tried previously until someone sends him a particular piece of gear) would simply cause a bit of a sideways-shift in sound rather than up in quality, and perhaps even in some cases make things worse because of the circuit design. He didn't like that one bit.
He also thinks that a person can make a top-notch DAC or ADC using a manufacturer eval board and swapping out opamps. This can't be true because my EM-U 1212m is based rather strictly on the reference design of the top-end Crystal and AD chips, but it doesn't compete with the big boys even though it is clean, and didn't improve much after swapping opamps. He doesn't take into consideration things like clock jitter and analog design... just the parts.

So he is a very knowlegable fellow and can mod stuff way more reliably than a person like me, but like the others here I really believe his philosophy is flawed. I'm not sure how he believed that slew rate is the ultimate performance measurement.

One mod I seem to remember was to a cheap MCA SD microphone (looks like a LD) I forget the number, he posted as being very good IIRC.

I have one I modded it with good caps still a piece of crap the capsule in mine sucks. standard china Schoep type copy circuit. I have heard from other people how they don't like the microphone and they think it is the capsule design used.

With all the work that Jung, Marsh, White,Curl............... etc wrote about in older TAA, Audio etc mags starting in the late 70's it is easy to replace parts the ground work was done years ago. I have TAA from 1970 to the mid 80s with a lot cap and opamp stuff.

I would doubt that the creator of the Monkey Circuit, the 48 baby bottle lighting inverter, and LED camera flash control IC's would also be doing audio IC swaps. My guess is that it's a different Jim Williams.

I'm sure it is a different Jim W.

Also he gives his birth year as 1910!

...

Jim W is trying to run a business

his business is ... what ? .... upgrades ?

of course he talks it up
often with good merit
is it worth the money ?

we have had this discussion before and the end result could be that if the client is happy with the results and has the budget for it, then who are we to criticize.

fast video op-amps can be cool ... yes they need to be stabilised and feedback can cause it own issues ... but that's op-amps.

we give out as much knowledge as we can and people can take it or leave it.

There are times when I like the simple op-amps and can't see the point of over complicating the situation ... I like LM833's. They work for me.

I also like the RC4136 in the opto side chain
as per the LA4 style detector.

I also like the SM57 microphone ... again .. works for me.


Jim also likes to hang at GearSlutz.
he is fun to bait