Sunday, December 29, 2002
Tubes in Your PC?
Posted by Janak Parekh in "OFF-TOPIC" @ 03:41 PM
This isn't all that new, but I haven't seen a good article on the situation until this week. AOpen (an OEM manufacturer owned by Acer) sells a mainboard with a vacuum tube-based amplifier. They claim that the sound quality improvement has been noticeable. Debate has been ensuing as to whether they're brilliant or absolutely nuts. :)
More importantly, this might be the beginning of an evolution of PC's into the consumer audio and media markets. We've been seeing the evolution of the PC as a PVR/TV tuner culminating with XP Media Center Edition, so this can be viewed as another step further. Do you think that PC's will continue integration with consumer electronics, going higher-end? Could we see tubes in a Pocket PC specially geared to high-end audiophiles?
(For more info on the tube-based technology, see AOpen's page on the subject.)
More importantly, this might be the beginning of an evolution of PC's into the consumer audio and media markets. We've been seeing the evolution of the PC as a PVR/TV tuner culminating with XP Media Center Edition, so this can be viewed as another step further. Do you think that PC's will continue integration with consumer electronics, going higher-end? Could we see tubes in a Pocket PC specially geared to high-end audiophiles?
(For more info on the tube-based technology, see AOpen's page on the subject.)
