Jeremy Clarkson once said every petrolhead should own an Alfa Romeo at least once. I would say every audiophile should visit Munich. But, just the once. More is unnecessary; after three days I had definitely had enough.
Best sound of the show
That would be Silbatone and Western Electric.
Clicky
Wow. The dynamics and sense of real weight to piano. Just amazing.
Downsides - smell of stale beer and cigarettes, and very bright, white, unsophisticated room.
Sounds I kept coming back to
That would be some Focal headphones - which were nothing special - plugged into a Naim SuperUniti running some rips from a Unitiserve in the Naim room. I played Abba, Seu Jorge, Shirley Bassey.... and stayed listening for ages, feet tapping furiously at the kitschness of Dancing Queen and Propellerheads remixes. Just great and reiterates the truism that it isn't about the equipment, it's about enjoying the music. I seriously want that system.
Another sound I revisited several times - the REL stand and a demo of Harbeth speakers with or without a middle of the range REL sub. I liked it, just on music; extra depth and richness to the acoustic, more dynamics, and some real promise. Not only that, the system (with Rega electronics) really boogied.
Disappointments
The Cessaro Liszts were absolutely brand new and sounded flat. I'm sorry to say that GT's amps couldn't wake them up - except once, playing Daft Punk's 'Get Lucky', when they really boogied. The room's bright lights and plain dressing didn't help the experience. A shame given the effort involved in setting up.
The Living Voice Vox Olympians probably sound great, but not at low volumes and with nothing but opera playing.
Devialet - with special speaker-matching software and B&W 802s, the sound had unparalleled bass transparency. I heard the shape of the heart beating in Dark Side of the Moon. Sadly, it was flat, hard and unmusical overall. Technically excellent, emotionally disengaging.
Chord - too bright for my taste. Too bling.
Naim statement - the Naim/Focal tie in unfortunately means they're using Focal speakers every time I hear Naim's top end amps. Focals just seem to sound polite and manufactured and don't have real warmth, timbre nor musicality. So the Statement was impressive and felt unencumbered and boundless, and I enjoyed it, but wasn't entirely blown away. Needs to be paired with something else.
Everyone's choice of music - at no point did I go into a room and heard something familiar that I enjoyed and that was being reproduced in a way that enticed me to stay and listen to the magic. From German Techno to strangely random classical pieces, exhibitors seemed intent on showing off their music inventory and avoiding anything familiar to which I might form a bond. Oscar Peterson? Who he? Abba? Get lost! That Daft Punk track in the Cessaro room was ripped from the TW Raven by another exhibitor and replaced by something electronic with sounds popping in and out from extreme right and left as if that is what matters with this shit.
Nooooo!!!! What matters is how you feel. And I don't feel like being shot with ping pong balls of sound. I do feel like dancing to 'get lucky'.
Theme of the show
If there could be a 2014 theme, it'd be 'bling'. Speakers that are curved, wobbly, wavy, covered in drivers, or sporting huge horns. Amplifier after amplifier with hefty metalwork, grab handles and blue LEDs. Innumerable spinning platters on top of a metre thick layer of perspex, aluminium, or a mix of the two.
Tellingly, in one of the downstairs trade halls, a Chinese manufacturer showing off the boxes they will build for you with hefty metalwork, perspex platters and blue LEDs. You just supply the label and the electronics and they give the casework and the style you want for your mayfly brand.
Closing thought
This just reiterated to me how many brands there are in the audiophile world, and the prices they dare to command. Room after room after room after room of boxes with lights, displays, metalwork and knobs, playing some sounds and commanding a price for various 'levels' of kit. Some 'levels' numbered, and some named with evocative names like 'Venom' and 'Cobra' and 'Tiger' and what have you. Hoping to entice the punter into a 'Kitten' model and get them to upgrade later to the 'Tomcat' and finally 'Tiger' - giving the warm sense of self-satisfaction that you know where you are in that brand's pecking order and therefore how good your system should sound....
Tuesday, 10 June 2014
Munich
So, for the first time I took the plunge and travelled to Munich for the show.
I will post on various systems. But first, the joy of cheap air travel that is Easyjet and the thrill I have at being the victim, yet again, of French Air Traffic controllers and their lightning strikes.
This is the queue in the departure lounge at Gatwich South terminal on Thursday evening after our flight was delayed by two hours and then 'contact airline desk' flashed up on the display screens:
Then, after it was cancelled, we were herded through customs and passport control and back to another queue. This is me at the back.
About an hour later, this is me midway along
Another 45 minutes and this is me about to be served. Just two people in front of me.
I was canny. From the back of the queue and with charge failing, I used my iPhone to book a ticket on the Friday early morning flight and then check in. People in front of me couldn't get on the flight because I'd booked a seat online first. Phew! Insurance claim for the loss and we're en route to the bier keller.
Ah, but on the way home Easyjet decide that hand luggage must be squeezed by 10cm in all axes or else go in the hold. Another enjoyable queue.
I will post on various systems. But first, the joy of cheap air travel that is Easyjet and the thrill I have at being the victim, yet again, of French Air Traffic controllers and their lightning strikes.
This is the queue in the departure lounge at Gatwich South terminal on Thursday evening after our flight was delayed by two hours and then 'contact airline desk' flashed up on the display screens:
Then, after it was cancelled, we were herded through customs and passport control and back to another queue. This is me at the back.
About an hour later, this is me midway along
Another 45 minutes and this is me about to be served. Just two people in front of me.
I was canny. From the back of the queue and with charge failing, I used my iPhone to book a ticket on the Friday early morning flight and then check in. People in front of me couldn't get on the flight because I'd booked a seat online first. Phew! Insurance claim for the loss and we're en route to the bier keller.
Ah, but on the way home Easyjet decide that hand luggage must be squeezed by 10cm in all axes or else go in the hold. Another enjoyable queue.
Munch (the show) itself to follow
The new listening room, the new life
Ok so first off, an apology. For various difficult, personal reasons any attempt at creative writing, documenting what I've been up to or any findings about the world of music or hifi have been impossible.
Must....do....better!
One of the more recent and happy outcomes though is a complete house move to a dilapidated mansion in the English countryside. Could it be any more gentlemanly? I even have pigs in my orchard.
The house, however, is a doer-upper, which means a potential money pit, although my wife and I feel fairly strongly that we've carefully budgeted and it holds no real nasty surprises. The pic below is of the new listening room, minus any furniture and in the cold light of February just before we moved in. The house was a pit and needed a deep clean from a team of four for two days before we dared move our furniture - including the hifi - in.
Those cream curtains have been removed, cleaned and redistributed elsewhere, leaving plenty of room for the Duos in what is, unfortunately, a very live and resonant space. It will be carpeted eventually. For now, I have sounds that I can mostly enjoy, even if I'm sat in another, cosier room (we have no central heating and thank God it's June and much warmer).
I was in Munich for the Hi-End show and I'll blog about that soon.
Must....do....better!
One of the more recent and happy outcomes though is a complete house move to a dilapidated mansion in the English countryside. Could it be any more gentlemanly? I even have pigs in my orchard.
The house, however, is a doer-upper, which means a potential money pit, although my wife and I feel fairly strongly that we've carefully budgeted and it holds no real nasty surprises. The pic below is of the new listening room, minus any furniture and in the cold light of February just before we moved in. The house was a pit and needed a deep clean from a team of four for two days before we dared move our furniture - including the hifi - in.
Those cream curtains have been removed, cleaned and redistributed elsewhere, leaving plenty of room for the Duos in what is, unfortunately, a very live and resonant space. It will be carpeted eventually. For now, I have sounds that I can mostly enjoy, even if I'm sat in another, cosier room (we have no central heating and thank God it's June and much warmer).
I was in Munich for the Hi-End show and I'll blog about that soon.
Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Power update
Just a quick note to record an observation.
Last night the sun was setting late as spring progressed, I managed to escape to the living room early enough to sit and listen to a couple of excellent albums, zoning out as light disappeared and just enjoying the wonderful soft play of music.
At some point I realised there was almost no light left in the room and got up to switch on a stand lamp from Ikea with three small energy-saving bulbs inside, plus a couple of decorative lamps in the corners of the listening room, one of which also has an energy-saving bulb in it.
Sitting back down again, I tried to zone out and couldn't. The magic had somehow also leaked out together with the darkness.
Hmm... could be just the fact that I roused myself to get up and switch on some lights; could be a psychological effect from listening in the dark; could be the power to the system being corrupted by the hum from those pesky lightbulbs.... I wonder if it is the latter, because the effect was in fact quite pronounced.
The question here is one of filtering versus 'better mains' overall; by which I mean, filter type solutions can - allegedly - affect power delivery and somehow constrict dynamics. I have heard this myself. Non-filtering solutions, such as just a new, thick mains cable (one that isn't necessarily designed to filter out noise like those from Lessloss) might improve the mains by having lower impedance or more free electrons or whatever, but don't necessarily constrain dynamics.
I'll elaborate more later; more testing to conduct. The snag is I think I have to consider a filtering type solution if the problem is indeed those light bulbs or other sources of grunge. How interesting...
Last night the sun was setting late as spring progressed, I managed to escape to the living room early enough to sit and listen to a couple of excellent albums, zoning out as light disappeared and just enjoying the wonderful soft play of music.
At some point I realised there was almost no light left in the room and got up to switch on a stand lamp from Ikea with three small energy-saving bulbs inside, plus a couple of decorative lamps in the corners of the listening room, one of which also has an energy-saving bulb in it.
Sitting back down again, I tried to zone out and couldn't. The magic had somehow also leaked out together with the darkness.
Hmm... could be just the fact that I roused myself to get up and switch on some lights; could be a psychological effect from listening in the dark; could be the power to the system being corrupted by the hum from those pesky lightbulbs.... I wonder if it is the latter, because the effect was in fact quite pronounced.
The question here is one of filtering versus 'better mains' overall; by which I mean, filter type solutions can - allegedly - affect power delivery and somehow constrict dynamics. I have heard this myself. Non-filtering solutions, such as just a new, thick mains cable (one that isn't necessarily designed to filter out noise like those from Lessloss) might improve the mains by having lower impedance or more free electrons or whatever, but don't necessarily constrain dynamics.
I'll elaborate more later; more testing to conduct. The snag is I think I have to consider a filtering type solution if the problem is indeed those light bulbs or other sources of grunge. How interesting...
Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Christian McBride "Conversations with Christian" and Gwyneth Herbert "All the Ghosts" are just great...
Album recommendations for times when you just want to lie back and let them flow over you :)
Wednesday, 3 April 2013
April 2013 update
I will start with a small apology for a total lack of
updates to this blog and to the podcast.
There were two main reasons for this – just too much
pressure on my personal life most importantly, but also some kind of system
failure for podcast #6 which resulted in the whole thing becoming corrupted and
me throwing my hands up in frustration and walking away for a short while.
Which became a long while of course!
By way of update, not much has changed; I am still using the
Tron DAC and a Macbook/Audiophilleo2 front end, but I will describe one
interesting event which caused me to once again re-evaluate the reality of
expectation bias.
I had advertised my DacMagic for sale on the Pink Fish Media
internet forum some time ago and, out of the blue, had an enquiry from someone
who worked locally to me and wanted to come over to hear it prior to buying. He
had an old Meridian 203 ‘bitstream’ DAC that only accepted 16 bit 44.1 kHz
data, and was looking to supplant it with the 24/96 capable DacMagic for a computer
based systems.
So he came over one evening after work with this Mediain 203
in a bag, plus his modified Logitech Squeezebox front end and some ripped files
on memory stick, and two special SPDIF cables plus one special mains cable for
the Meridian. I’d had the DacMagic plugged in and warming up for most of the
day so he could compare and contrast the two.
Much to my surprise and regret (since I didn’t make the
sale), the Meridian 203 simply blew the DacMagic away. It wasn’t a subtle difference – the thinner, nasal and bright
DacMagic was simply outclassed by something that managed to sound extremely
real and tonally rich in comparison.
This was a surprise to both of us, since the 203 had also
been over to my pal IWC’s system for a trial against other DACs including the
Naim DAC, a Weiss and a Bryston (I think) and failed to sound anything other
than bland in his system. But in mine… very good indeed. And, clearly, only
performaing that well with the custom mains cable and custom SPDIF cable that
my potential customer had carefully crafted for it.
We also had a go at comparing it with the Tron DAC and I
was, at that point , almost embarrassed to have to admit the 203 actually
sounded slightly better than it.
What was going on? The Tron sounded bland in comparison.
Later that week I unplugged the Tron and took it back to GT
for inspection. He tested it, pronounced it measuring fine, with valves well
within parameters, and handed it back; I plugged it in, switched it on and was
amazed at how much better it suddenly sounded than before.
I don’t know what happened here. The act of unplugging,
moving and re-plugging in the component made such a difference. Who knows?
What I do know is that I am paying much more attention to my
systems’ performance now, and taking careful note of when it sounds bland;
which seems to be related to mains power supply and certain times of day. The
effect is subtle but manifests as a
feeling as if the music has leeched out of the system and it is just making
sounds rather than evoking a desire to sing along..
I need to spend more time working with power cables, funds
permitting; what I have done is swap in a Nordost Shiva power cable I
previously had plugged in to one of the subs in the Avantgarde Duo loudspeakers
with the PHY power cable I had on the DAC, and by switching them over I seem to
have improved the DACs performance enough to reduce the likelihood that the
system underperforms like this.
There is also this nagging feeling that the underperformance
of the system aligns to what has been going on for me personally, with the
result that I can now further confirm that listener participation in the
audiophile experience is critical. Put another way, unless you are receptive to
the quality of the sound (for example, by introducing a sexy new piece of kit)
you can end up enjoying it less.
Cue the normal solution – wine!
Friday, 6 July 2012
The Tron DAC is just amazing
Spoiler – this is a gush piece
Caveat – in the interests of full disclosure, I must set out at the start that I have, since buying so much kit from him, become friends with GT and am inevitably biased. Please read with that in mind.
Story – I am now the lucky owner of a Tron DAC and have been running it in for the past fortnight and a half. This is a very difficult to obtain item since GT primarily makes amps – pre, power and phono – and seems reluctant to jump onto the digital bandwagon since he is adamant he gets a better sound from vinyl. My counter argument has always been that just because vinyl sounds better than digital doesn’t mean digital doesn’t sound good too! I’m a massive fan of digital - it gives me access to music, frequently music I didn’t know I owned. Vinyl sounds great but I get more enjoyment, overall, through my computer and feed into a DAC.
And now I have replaced the eponymous DacMagic (with tweaks) with a Tron DAC. In some respects it is a backwards step – fewer glowing blue lights, only two inputs, valves that eventually go off, and a maximum 16-bit, 44.1KHz capability. It doesn’t oversample, upsample or even graze.
Yet this is unquestionably the best DAC I have ever heard – in some respects the best bit of equipment I’ve ever bought, including the other Tron kit I have. I’ve owned the dCS Elgar, Lindemann d680, Audio Synthesis DAX, Sony SCD1, and heard DACs or CD players from Naim, Weiss, Audio Note, Esoteric, Audio Research, CJ and Meitner (albeit not in my system with the occasional exception) and I’m just bowled over. And it’s not even the top model.
The most confusing thing about this DAC is how difficult it has been to pin down exactly what makes it so much better. I’m still struggling to get that feeling that the performer is in the room, that further dissolving of veils between the original event and its reproduction, although I’m now much closer than ever with its’ introduction. I’m going to change speaker cables & interconnects and upgrade my mains power eventually (have run out of money now).
But, every other DAC or CD/SACD player I’ve owned has sounded artificial in comparison. Not necessarily in terms of basic tonality, but something ineffable that makes everything that went before sound like a recording, and a fairly hard and clinical one. The interplay between performers, the sense of dynamic tension, the flow of the music, the unexpected extra notes and noises I had never noticed yet made perfect sense – these are all things I associate with the best vinyl/analogue reproduction. There seems to be no loss of detail, treble and bass extension, yet somehow it is completely easy to enjoy – like a record.
I’m smitten. I suspect products like the top Audio Note, Meitner and similar DACs may match (or, who knows, exceed?) what the Tron can do, but they can be much more expensive – the Tron isn’t cheap, starting at £3.5k IIRC, but it is cheap-er! I mention those two brands because they seem to have produced a sound that most closely aligns to what the Tron can do, to my ears. Naim, Weiss, Esoteric etc – all just better examples of ‘everything else’ to my ears, they still fundamentally miss what makes music sound like music.
I urge anyone in the market for a DAC to go and listen to one. It should sound great in any system, but the more transparent and dynamic your system, the more you’ll appreciate the benefit of natural, unforced and realistic dynamics that come out of this unprepossessing box.
I remain naively confident that true audiophiles won’t be swayed by sexy blue lights, hefty metalwork and willy-waving numbers, and will judge on sound quality grounds. With that in mind, it’s just a mystery to me why GT’s kit doesn’t get huge attention. Word of mouth seems to keep his order books more than full, but it’s a major shame that more publicity doesn’t follow automatically. Why? I have the evidence in my living room. Others should listen and follow suit.
Caveat – in the interests of full disclosure, I must set out at the start that I have, since buying so much kit from him, become friends with GT and am inevitably biased. Please read with that in mind.
Story – I am now the lucky owner of a Tron DAC and have been running it in for the past fortnight and a half. This is a very difficult to obtain item since GT primarily makes amps – pre, power and phono – and seems reluctant to jump onto the digital bandwagon since he is adamant he gets a better sound from vinyl. My counter argument has always been that just because vinyl sounds better than digital doesn’t mean digital doesn’t sound good too! I’m a massive fan of digital - it gives me access to music, frequently music I didn’t know I owned. Vinyl sounds great but I get more enjoyment, overall, through my computer and feed into a DAC.
And now I have replaced the eponymous DacMagic (with tweaks) with a Tron DAC. In some respects it is a backwards step – fewer glowing blue lights, only two inputs, valves that eventually go off, and a maximum 16-bit, 44.1KHz capability. It doesn’t oversample, upsample or even graze.
Yet this is unquestionably the best DAC I have ever heard – in some respects the best bit of equipment I’ve ever bought, including the other Tron kit I have. I’ve owned the dCS Elgar, Lindemann d680, Audio Synthesis DAX, Sony SCD1, and heard DACs or CD players from Naim, Weiss, Audio Note, Esoteric, Audio Research, CJ and Meitner (albeit not in my system with the occasional exception) and I’m just bowled over. And it’s not even the top model.
The most confusing thing about this DAC is how difficult it has been to pin down exactly what makes it so much better. I’m still struggling to get that feeling that the performer is in the room, that further dissolving of veils between the original event and its reproduction, although I’m now much closer than ever with its’ introduction. I’m going to change speaker cables & interconnects and upgrade my mains power eventually (have run out of money now).
But, every other DAC or CD/SACD player I’ve owned has sounded artificial in comparison. Not necessarily in terms of basic tonality, but something ineffable that makes everything that went before sound like a recording, and a fairly hard and clinical one. The interplay between performers, the sense of dynamic tension, the flow of the music, the unexpected extra notes and noises I had never noticed yet made perfect sense – these are all things I associate with the best vinyl/analogue reproduction. There seems to be no loss of detail, treble and bass extension, yet somehow it is completely easy to enjoy – like a record.
I’m smitten. I suspect products like the top Audio Note, Meitner and similar DACs may match (or, who knows, exceed?) what the Tron can do, but they can be much more expensive – the Tron isn’t cheap, starting at £3.5k IIRC, but it is cheap-er! I mention those two brands because they seem to have produced a sound that most closely aligns to what the Tron can do, to my ears. Naim, Weiss, Esoteric etc – all just better examples of ‘everything else’ to my ears, they still fundamentally miss what makes music sound like music.
I urge anyone in the market for a DAC to go and listen to one. It should sound great in any system, but the more transparent and dynamic your system, the more you’ll appreciate the benefit of natural, unforced and realistic dynamics that come out of this unprepossessing box.
I remain naively confident that true audiophiles won’t be swayed by sexy blue lights, hefty metalwork and willy-waving numbers, and will judge on sound quality grounds. With that in mind, it’s just a mystery to me why GT’s kit doesn’t get huge attention. Word of mouth seems to keep his order books more than full, but it’s a major shame that more publicity doesn’t follow automatically. Why? I have the evidence in my living room. Others should listen and follow suit.
Friday, 29 June 2012
Delay!
Sorry for the delay in posting. I've been extremely busy at work and in home life and just didn't find the time or energy to post.
I have a recording in progress for podcast #6 so that should be released very shortly.
In summary, my pal IWC and I had a god at blind testing digital transports, CD versus CA. An interesting result!
I have also been fortunate enough to get my own Tron DAC and I'm very happy indeed. It's just so superior to any DAC I've heard to date - OK, I've not listened to the Audio Note 4 or 5, or the latest Meitner, but this is cheaper than both - still expensive, but cheaper - and has some very special qualities. I'll say more in a later blog post and in the podcast, because I've only had it a few days and it is brand new and still running in.
I have a recording in progress for podcast #6 so that should be released very shortly.
In summary, my pal IWC and I had a god at blind testing digital transports, CD versus CA. An interesting result!
I have also been fortunate enough to get my own Tron DAC and I'm very happy indeed. It's just so superior to any DAC I've heard to date - OK, I've not listened to the Audio Note 4 or 5, or the latest Meitner, but this is cheaper than both - still expensive, but cheaper - and has some very special qualities. I'll say more in a later blog post and in the podcast, because I've only had it a few days and it is brand new and still running in.
Monday, 7 May 2012
Room modes
I've downloaded and played a bit with more free software - in this case, Room EQ Wizard from Home Theatre Shack.
Whatever motivates people to write such excellent free software? That plus Audacity, which I use for podcast production - quite simply, both pieces of software are well written, appear reliable, easy to use and extremely useful. For Room EQ Wizard, all you need is to register with hometheatreshack.com and go to the download link.
Oh, a working knowledge of acoustic theory would be helpful.... it's a steep learning curve!
What I have done is re-read the starter for 10 in Robert Harley's book "The Complete Guide to High-End Audio" and calculated room resonant modes based on the theory that the speed of sound in air is about 1130 feet per second, and so you can calculate resonant modes based on the length, width and height of the room by dividing the number of feet into that number twice (to get half the wavelength) and then multiplying that by 2,3,4, etc for other resonant modes
Confused? Here's a graph:
So my room is 24 foot long, 20 wide and 9 high (more or less). With Harley's calcs, I can see that the primary resonant modes are fairly well spaced apart, with the exception of a small cluster around 190Hz, another around 170Hz and finally a third around 140Hz, all of which are coincidentally not to far away from where the midrange horn of an Avantgarde Duo blends into the sub.
Hmm....
With Room EQ Wizard I can see a bit of a gap -the image below was captured before I decided to raise the crossover frequency on the subs from 140Hz to 170Hz and reduce sub volume and toe the Duos in a bit more. Bit of a gap? I need to measure again, and understand more!
Whatever motivates people to write such excellent free software? That plus Audacity, which I use for podcast production - quite simply, both pieces of software are well written, appear reliable, easy to use and extremely useful. For Room EQ Wizard, all you need is to register with hometheatreshack.com and go to the download link.
Oh, a working knowledge of acoustic theory would be helpful.... it's a steep learning curve!
What I have done is re-read the starter for 10 in Robert Harley's book "The Complete Guide to High-End Audio" and calculated room resonant modes based on the theory that the speed of sound in air is about 1130 feet per second, and so you can calculate resonant modes based on the length, width and height of the room by dividing the number of feet into that number twice (to get half the wavelength) and then multiplying that by 2,3,4, etc for other resonant modes
Confused? Here's a graph:
So my room is 24 foot long, 20 wide and 9 high (more or less). With Harley's calcs, I can see that the primary resonant modes are fairly well spaced apart, with the exception of a small cluster around 190Hz, another around 170Hz and finally a third around 140Hz, all of which are coincidentally not to far away from where the midrange horn of an Avantgarde Duo blends into the sub.
Hmm....
With Room EQ Wizard I can see a bit of a gap -the image below was captured before I decided to raise the crossover frequency on the subs from 140Hz to 170Hz and reduce sub volume and toe the Duos in a bit more. Bit of a gap? I need to measure again, and understand more!
Podcast #4 now live
Here are some scenes from Podcast #4, held at fellow GA Barry's house in north London. My favourite comment of the week being "Sonus Faber Extremas are the 'raison d'être' of difficult-to-drive"... strange what people say when they're sat around a table with a mic trained on them!
The podcast is split into two as we had to take a short break, it was a long discussion, and finally two attendees had other commitments and needed to disappear. I'm working on podcast #5 production now.
Here's some pics...
The podcast is split into two as we had to take a short break, it was a long discussion, and finally two attendees had other commitments and needed to disappear. I'm working on podcast #5 production now.
Here's some pics...
Monday, 30 April 2012
Integer mode is worth a try
In my earlier post I described how I’d discovered that Integer mode mysteriously started to work for no reason I could fathom other than to attribute my success to a choice of iZotope upsampling in Audirvana.
However, on restart of my MacBook yesterday morning… the clicks returned. Very frustrating!
So I investigated further. I discovered that, by looking at the “System Information” button under “About this Macintosh” I could see what devices were connected to the USB bus.
There are two USB sockets on the MacBook and a number of devices – including the keyboard, mouse and iSight camera – internally connected to the USB bus(es) reported in “System Information”
One of the buses is called “High Speed USB bus” and has the iSight camera connected to it, the others are just “USB bus” and host the keyboard and mouse.
Strangely, regardless of which USB port I connect the Audiophilleo to, it appears on the general “USB bus” alongside the keyboard and mouse.
If I select “Integer mode” in Audirvana, the clicking begins.
However, with Audirvana and iTunes shut down, if I move the Wireworld USB cable across from one USB port to the other, the Audiophilleo re-registers onto the “High Speed USB bus” in “System Information”.
If I now restart Audirvana and select Integer mode, I get music without clicking.
Frustrating but worthwhile knowledge because, with music in the background (an eclectic mix of Portishead, Elizaveta and Pat Metheney) I found myself singing along or whistling randomly without realising it. It just seemed more natural yet again, and more enjoyable.
I will persevere with Integer more; the only remaining caveat being that MacBook has crashed, twice, and forced a hardware reset (i.e. holding the power button down) after a couple of hours or so of music playback. Clearly there is more risk that the hardware will let me down, but at least there is life left in this old MacBook before I’m forced to switch to something else!
However, on restart of my MacBook yesterday morning… the clicks returned. Very frustrating!
So I investigated further. I discovered that, by looking at the “System Information” button under “About this Macintosh” I could see what devices were connected to the USB bus.
There are two USB sockets on the MacBook and a number of devices – including the keyboard, mouse and iSight camera – internally connected to the USB bus(es) reported in “System Information”
One of the buses is called “High Speed USB bus” and has the iSight camera connected to it, the others are just “USB bus” and host the keyboard and mouse.
Strangely, regardless of which USB port I connect the Audiophilleo to, it appears on the general “USB bus” alongside the keyboard and mouse.
If I select “Integer mode” in Audirvana, the clicking begins.
However, with Audirvana and iTunes shut down, if I move the Wireworld USB cable across from one USB port to the other, the Audiophilleo re-registers onto the “High Speed USB bus” in “System Information”.
If I now restart Audirvana and select Integer mode, I get music without clicking.
Frustrating but worthwhile knowledge because, with music in the background (an eclectic mix of Portishead, Elizaveta and Pat Metheney) I found myself singing along or whistling randomly without realising it. It just seemed more natural yet again, and more enjoyable.
I will persevere with Integer more; the only remaining caveat being that MacBook has crashed, twice, and forced a hardware reset (i.e. holding the power button down) after a couple of hours or so of music playback. Clearly there is more risk that the hardware will let me down, but at least there is life left in this old MacBook before I’m forced to switch to something else!
Saturday, 28 April 2012
An evening spent fiddling with my wife…
Fnaarrrr!!!! The double entendre is deliberate
I played around for a bit this evening then lined up my
patient wife to listen to some Oscar Peterson about twenty times in different
configurations.
I was inspired to try Integer Mode in Audirvana. To date,
trying Integer mode has resulted in audible clicking from the speakers, which I
understand to be a known issue caused by something in OsX testing the USB bus
for certain USB chipsets. Theoretically, it offers an audible benefit and so I
was keen to try.
My current CA front end is a white MacBook of mid-2009 era,
with 2Gb of RAM, a 60Gb solid state hard drive and Snow Leopard installed as
well as Audirvana, Pure Music and Decibel; I currently prefer Audirvana. Ripped
CDs are in Apples Lossless and stored on an external Firewire drive, which is
actually a cradle into which you can insert any ‘nude’ 2.5” or 3.5” SATA hard
drive, and which offers USB, firewire 400 and 800, and eSATA connections.
Amazon cost was under £60 and I had a spare hard drive, so it worked out very
cost effective!
The USB chipset in this is older and I believe the cause of the clicking.
I also have another MacBook Pro I bought in 2011, which has
8Gb of RAM, a 3GHz CPU and a 1Tb hard drive, albeit not solid state. It is much newer with different USB chips in it, so I thought
I’d try swapping this in for the white MacBook and seeing if Integer mode again
resulted in clicks.
It didn’t.
Encouraged, I called my wife in and spent a good half an
hour flipping back and forth between white MacBook and silver MacBook Pro,
shutting each down in between to enable me to reconnect the external Firewire
drive and plug in the Wireworld USB cable that routes into the
Audiophilleo/DacMagic downstream.
Not ideal – over time I got the changeover to under a
minute, but probably not quick enough.
Quick rewind; prior to this I reconfirmed my own findings
and those of a fellow GA who stayed over a few weeks ago, and used the Arcam
Alpha 5 CD player as transport playing the same Oscar Peterson 'We Get Requests' CD as was ripped on the
MacBook, and got my wife to listen to both and express a preference.
She liked the MacBook (not knowing which was which) saying
it was clearer and more spacious. Nice to have that reconfirmed!
When it came to comparing white MacBook with silver MacBook
pro, the answer was not so clear cut. Both were set to memory play, but the Pro
had 6Gb of allocated memory and the MacBook just 1Gb (both more than enough to
replay a CD rip of course). The Pro had a faster CPU and was in Integer mode,
with no audible clicking. The MacBook had an SSD.
I couldn’t decide between them, although after the sixth or
seventh switch-over I began to detect a small improvement in articulation of
piano strikes and double-bass plucks in the Pro. Alas, well within the realms
of expectation bias and not conclusive. Could Integer Mode and more memory/CPU outweigh the benefits of an SSD?
My wife preferred the white MacBook. She said she 'felt it
inside' more; the silver MacBook Pro was clearer, but the white MacBook nicer to
listen to. On reflection, I think I see what she meant.
So, seeing as she was still game for more investigation, I
tried another experiment, and set up a comparison between Audiophilleo
configurations – no upsampling (as I normally have it) and full upsampling to
96KHz, which is the maximum supported by the DacMagic, although the
Audiophilleo will go further.
We switched back and forth once again between the two
configurations on the white MacBook, and both ended up preferring the
Audiophilleo upsampling mechanism, a finding which contradicts what I’ve
previously concluded.
The DacMagic upsamples internally to 192KHz even if its
maximum input rate is 96KHz, using an algorithm and chipset from a Swiss
company called Anagram technologies (not quite sure, but I think wholly owned
by Cambridge Audio now). Therefore, if you feed it either the 44.1KHz standard
CD signal or one that is separately upsampled to 96KHz, internally it is
upsampled to 192KHz before decoding.
In previous tests I'd preferred to let the DacMagic handle the 44.1KHz data stream. I had assumed that the lower 44.1KHz rate would be better
because it might result in less jitter over USB, and because the Anagram
chipset would be better than the iZotope algorithm used by Audirvana.
Apparently not, although the effect may be subtle.
My wife decided the Audirvana upsampling (noting she
referred to it as “B” where 44.1KHz was “A”; she was listening blind) was more
open and better defined; the DacMagic native upsampling was harder and more
metallic, although still very good.
Personally, I felt there was greater articulation and a more
rich tonality with the Audirvana algorithm – just. I heard the strike of fingers on piano keys with more definition and yet they hung together better in the entire piece. What worried me was the possibility
that it might be technically more correct, but end up musically less satisfying
in the long run, a common problem.
Here’s the rub – if you change something, it may shift the
balance of your system and it takes time to recalibrate. Sometimes a more
compressed, closed-in and ill-defined sound is more accessible and more
enjoyable. A harder-hitting and thumpy sound can be more fun. So I’m going to
stick with this configuration for a few days and switch back again.
Especially since, in a startling, frustrating and yet pleasing twist, I just randomly switched
Integer mode back on again on the white MacBook and…. No clicks. Not one. Nada. Plus, it DOES
sound better, with yet more dynamic tension and a more natural presentation
that is at once more defined and more musical and enjoyable.
Why? Why now? It could be the clicks infest 44.1 only and
not after 96KHz upsampling. I will find out later, but for now I’m enjoying a
glass of wine and some Phantom Limb….
Monday, 23 April 2012
Podcast #2 now live
So now we go downstairs and talk about the system my fellow GA has in his cinema room, all warmly surrounded by strokeably soft black velvet. Some extremely heavy and solid Sonus Faber Extremas driven by a collection of no less than eight Naim 135 power amps (technically, four of which are used for the two drivers per front channel, one per rear, one for centre and one spare).
Sunday, 15 April 2012
Friday, 30 March 2012
A dissertation on charge
There are three types of hifi tweakery that should make no difference and yet have impressed me most: digital data transport, equipment support and mains power changes.
I’ve described changes to the former in other posts and will write about my feelings on the technical reasons why it matters in a later post.
Quickly I’ll also note that I’ve found equipment supports to matter in a subtle way, and have used SAP Relaxa magnetically levitating platforms to good effect in the past; but can’t any more as they are too wide for my AV cabinet. I can clearly understand how vibration might affect a turntable, and for similar reasons also change the sound of a CD player, but electronics?
I saw a YouTube video of an engineer that worked for a major capacitor manufacturer holding up a capacitor wired in such a way that it acted like a small, tinny speaker. As it charged and discharged in time to the music, it vibrated and made sound; by inference, the reverse influx of vibration into the capacitor created electrical charge as well, and they had found that a vibration-damped and clamped capacitor sounded better.
This I can understand!
Now we come to mains power. How is it that such a significant difference can be made when swapping out a mains cable, or fitting an earth spike, or some kind of filter from Isotek or Shunyata or whoever? Surely 240V and 50Hz travelling down miles and miles of cable into the home isn’t going to care about the last m of cable?
But it does.
I have some hypotheses. Bear with me, because I am not a scientific genius and have probably based those hypotheses on some dodgy assumptions.
To my mind, the cables (and some conditioners) make a difference through these parameters:
1. Cable thickness
2. Cable material (Copper, Silver, silver plated copper)
3. The quality of that material (OFC, OCC, 6N and so on)
4. The dielectrics (rubber, plastic, Teflon, air, silk, cotton – although the latter 3 may not be legal for mains)
5. Shielding
6. Geometry (Litz, solid core, stranded, multi-stranded, circle/oval/rectangle cross section, and some combination of all of these)
7. Plugs, plug materials and tightness of contact
8. Cable length
9. Grounding
In theory, for any mains cable having broadly similar values for resistivity and voltage drop, capacitance and inductance, a 240V 50Hz sine(ish) wave will make its way into your equipment pretty much the same regardless of all of the parameters above, and make no difference to the sound.
But it does!
Here comes the hypotheses. Let’s agree that electricity represents a flow of electric charge. Whilst electromotive force travels as near to the speed of light as makes no difference, charge itself travels relatively slowly. The example is a hosepipe that you plug in to a tap some distance away. When you turn the tap on, it takes a short while for water to make its’ way down the pipe and into the eye you had put at the end of the pipe to see where the water was.
Now imagine the hosepipe is already full of water and has a nozzle at the end with a trigger grip – you squeeze it to release water, release it to cut the flow. Because the water pressure is constant all the way along the hose, as soon as you pull the trigger the water is released, but it was water already at the end of the pipe and not water just starting its journey from the tap.
Wire is usually made of metal, which has a very large number of free electrons that like to move around. Apply a voltage and they all start moving the same direction, because electrons at one end of the wire are pushing the ones next to them (like charges repel) which push the ones next to them and so on and so forth. If there is no circuit, they can’t move anywhere and no amount of voltage, within reason, will force electrons to flow.
Stuff that isn’t metal, such as glass or water or a plastic comb, doesn’t have lots of free electrons and it usually takes physical force to brush a few off – like, say, rubbing a nylon jumper or combing your hair. Electrons are broken off and kind of stick around, pushing against each other to distribute themselves as far apart as possible. This is static electricity.
So, charge is now flowing down a wire into your equipment; at least, that’s how it works for Direct Current, which is what happens inside your equipment itself, even if the power cables are carrying Alternating current with packets of charge moving one way and then the other about fifty times a second. Charge moves through your equipment into capacitors, through resistors, around transformers and into transistors, MOSFETs and valves as required, switching back into alternating current of course as soon as the charge leaves the power supply section and starts to carry signal.
What happens inside your equipment is the conversion from mains power AC into lower powered DC, and this usually requires some kind of rectification network. Which means – charge flows forwards into a capacitor, and stops there. On the backwards cycle of the AC, diodes prevent the charge from flowing back down the wire; perhaps a small amount of charge gets pulled down the neutral leg from your equipment. All those free electrons being sucked out of the mains and into a capacitor bank to be used. If they weren’t being replenished from somewhere, eventually you would run out of free electrons. Where do they come from?
Well, from within the lattice of the metal itself, of course, and that from metal further down, and past the consumer unit, and to the transformer locally serving your housing area. Since it is replaced by charge physically flowing from the other end of the cable eventually, you never run out of charge, and the speed of flow of charge is still fairly fast. But, of course, there are peaks in the sine wave, and troughs too, when a bunch of charge is maximally forced into your equipment and held there to be used.
How quickly this charge both flows in and is replenished determines how effectively you get power. It’s the amount of charge – the physical quantity of electrons – that Is driven forwards and into the capacitor with a big push from the wall as the voltage rises on the AC waveform, reaches its peak and maximally transmits charge, and then slowly fades. If the cable is thick, there are more free electrons because there is more metal, and the impedance drops and more charge can flow more quickly.
This seems to me to be a valid reason why a thick power cord lends weight, body and dimension to my system, particularly the power amp, which needs a lot of free electrons available to drive speaker cones – even horns with massive magnets. Even the best power supply can benefit from having its reserves more immediately replenished. Cable material and its quantity matter here as well – silver is more conductive than copper because it carries more free electrons by weight. So there is more free-flowing charge which is replenished more quickly down the wire.
Next, there is the physical action of the electron flow down the power cord on the dielectric, which by design does not conduct and therefore behaves like the comb, balloon or glass rod. There is a quirk of nature called “skin effect” which means an AC waveform tends to push charge towards the outside edges of a conductor as oscillations and voltages increase. This is a known phenomenon, which carries the additional effect of making the charge flowing down the wire travel alongside the dielectric - rubbing against it, in fact. So a static field is created on the insulating dielectric, and interference is the result. Maybe silk and cotton work better than rubber, taking more or less effort to release their charge and therefore adding to or subtracting from the mains waveform in an even-order way, rather than un-harmonically and odd-order? This doesn’t strike me as impossible, and correlates with what I’m hearing with the PHY.
… and then you get the dreaded RFI and the influence of other magnetic and electric fields as you run cables across each other and into the back of your equipment. My house is awash with radiation from the microwave, WiFi, Bluetooth, DECT phones, other equipment, and then of course from mobile phone base stations and television and radio transmissions.
A well-designed power cable may filter out RFI and the effects of static and mechanical/electric/magnetic interaction, leading to an uplift in audio quality. Combining that with a thick cable of the right material and geometry should provide the most free electrons with the fastest flow of charge into your equipment. Ensuring all the contacts are clean and tight stops the fight of electrons rushing forwards from vibrating physically and losing energy which could otherwise fuel your equipment.
All of these things make a difference, and it is all despite the power to your wall socket coming through miles of low-quality, thinner cable; because the hifi’s power supplies are connected to that last few feet of cable, it really isn’t at the end of the supply, but in the middle.
With my system, I’m liking both the harmonic and natural sound from the cotton/silk wrapped PHY and the depth and weight of the homebrew 6mm2 copper, but can’t get the latter without losing the former. On balance, I can’t do that and homebrew would go back – unless I could find another thick cable with the right dielectric (Teflon?) and at the right price. It isn’t rocket science, despite the hype surrounding some very thick cables, so I’m sure it must be possible…..
I’ve described changes to the former in other posts and will write about my feelings on the technical reasons why it matters in a later post.
Quickly I’ll also note that I’ve found equipment supports to matter in a subtle way, and have used SAP Relaxa magnetically levitating platforms to good effect in the past; but can’t any more as they are too wide for my AV cabinet. I can clearly understand how vibration might affect a turntable, and for similar reasons also change the sound of a CD player, but electronics?
I saw a YouTube video of an engineer that worked for a major capacitor manufacturer holding up a capacitor wired in such a way that it acted like a small, tinny speaker. As it charged and discharged in time to the music, it vibrated and made sound; by inference, the reverse influx of vibration into the capacitor created electrical charge as well, and they had found that a vibration-damped and clamped capacitor sounded better.
This I can understand!
Now we come to mains power. How is it that such a significant difference can be made when swapping out a mains cable, or fitting an earth spike, or some kind of filter from Isotek or Shunyata or whoever? Surely 240V and 50Hz travelling down miles and miles of cable into the home isn’t going to care about the last m of cable?
But it does.
I have some hypotheses. Bear with me, because I am not a scientific genius and have probably based those hypotheses on some dodgy assumptions.
To my mind, the cables (and some conditioners) make a difference through these parameters:
1. Cable thickness
2. Cable material (Copper, Silver, silver plated copper)
3. The quality of that material (OFC, OCC, 6N and so on)
4. The dielectrics (rubber, plastic, Teflon, air, silk, cotton – although the latter 3 may not be legal for mains)
5. Shielding
6. Geometry (Litz, solid core, stranded, multi-stranded, circle/oval/rectangle cross section, and some combination of all of these)
7. Plugs, plug materials and tightness of contact
8. Cable length
9. Grounding
In theory, for any mains cable having broadly similar values for resistivity and voltage drop, capacitance and inductance, a 240V 50Hz sine(ish) wave will make its way into your equipment pretty much the same regardless of all of the parameters above, and make no difference to the sound.
But it does!
Here comes the hypotheses. Let’s agree that electricity represents a flow of electric charge. Whilst electromotive force travels as near to the speed of light as makes no difference, charge itself travels relatively slowly. The example is a hosepipe that you plug in to a tap some distance away. When you turn the tap on, it takes a short while for water to make its’ way down the pipe and into the eye you had put at the end of the pipe to see where the water was.
Now imagine the hosepipe is already full of water and has a nozzle at the end with a trigger grip – you squeeze it to release water, release it to cut the flow. Because the water pressure is constant all the way along the hose, as soon as you pull the trigger the water is released, but it was water already at the end of the pipe and not water just starting its journey from the tap.
Wire is usually made of metal, which has a very large number of free electrons that like to move around. Apply a voltage and they all start moving the same direction, because electrons at one end of the wire are pushing the ones next to them (like charges repel) which push the ones next to them and so on and so forth. If there is no circuit, they can’t move anywhere and no amount of voltage, within reason, will force electrons to flow.
Stuff that isn’t metal, such as glass or water or a plastic comb, doesn’t have lots of free electrons and it usually takes physical force to brush a few off – like, say, rubbing a nylon jumper or combing your hair. Electrons are broken off and kind of stick around, pushing against each other to distribute themselves as far apart as possible. This is static electricity.
So, charge is now flowing down a wire into your equipment; at least, that’s how it works for Direct Current, which is what happens inside your equipment itself, even if the power cables are carrying Alternating current with packets of charge moving one way and then the other about fifty times a second. Charge moves through your equipment into capacitors, through resistors, around transformers and into transistors, MOSFETs and valves as required, switching back into alternating current of course as soon as the charge leaves the power supply section and starts to carry signal.
What happens inside your equipment is the conversion from mains power AC into lower powered DC, and this usually requires some kind of rectification network. Which means – charge flows forwards into a capacitor, and stops there. On the backwards cycle of the AC, diodes prevent the charge from flowing back down the wire; perhaps a small amount of charge gets pulled down the neutral leg from your equipment. All those free electrons being sucked out of the mains and into a capacitor bank to be used. If they weren’t being replenished from somewhere, eventually you would run out of free electrons. Where do they come from?
Well, from within the lattice of the metal itself, of course, and that from metal further down, and past the consumer unit, and to the transformer locally serving your housing area. Since it is replaced by charge physically flowing from the other end of the cable eventually, you never run out of charge, and the speed of flow of charge is still fairly fast. But, of course, there are peaks in the sine wave, and troughs too, when a bunch of charge is maximally forced into your equipment and held there to be used.
How quickly this charge both flows in and is replenished determines how effectively you get power. It’s the amount of charge – the physical quantity of electrons – that Is driven forwards and into the capacitor with a big push from the wall as the voltage rises on the AC waveform, reaches its peak and maximally transmits charge, and then slowly fades. If the cable is thick, there are more free electrons because there is more metal, and the impedance drops and more charge can flow more quickly.
This seems to me to be a valid reason why a thick power cord lends weight, body and dimension to my system, particularly the power amp, which needs a lot of free electrons available to drive speaker cones – even horns with massive magnets. Even the best power supply can benefit from having its reserves more immediately replenished. Cable material and its quantity matter here as well – silver is more conductive than copper because it carries more free electrons by weight. So there is more free-flowing charge which is replenished more quickly down the wire.
Next, there is the physical action of the electron flow down the power cord on the dielectric, which by design does not conduct and therefore behaves like the comb, balloon or glass rod. There is a quirk of nature called “skin effect” which means an AC waveform tends to push charge towards the outside edges of a conductor as oscillations and voltages increase. This is a known phenomenon, which carries the additional effect of making the charge flowing down the wire travel alongside the dielectric - rubbing against it, in fact. So a static field is created on the insulating dielectric, and interference is the result. Maybe silk and cotton work better than rubber, taking more or less effort to release their charge and therefore adding to or subtracting from the mains waveform in an even-order way, rather than un-harmonically and odd-order? This doesn’t strike me as impossible, and correlates with what I’m hearing with the PHY.
… and then you get the dreaded RFI and the influence of other magnetic and electric fields as you run cables across each other and into the back of your equipment. My house is awash with radiation from the microwave, WiFi, Bluetooth, DECT phones, other equipment, and then of course from mobile phone base stations and television and radio transmissions.
A well-designed power cable may filter out RFI and the effects of static and mechanical/electric/magnetic interaction, leading to an uplift in audio quality. Combining that with a thick cable of the right material and geometry should provide the most free electrons with the fastest flow of charge into your equipment. Ensuring all the contacts are clean and tight stops the fight of electrons rushing forwards from vibrating physically and losing energy which could otherwise fuel your equipment.
All of these things make a difference, and it is all despite the power to your wall socket coming through miles of low-quality, thinner cable; because the hifi’s power supplies are connected to that last few feet of cable, it really isn’t at the end of the supply, but in the middle.
With my system, I’m liking both the harmonic and natural sound from the cotton/silk wrapped PHY and the depth and weight of the homebrew 6mm2 copper, but can’t get the latter without losing the former. On balance, I can’t do that and homebrew would go back – unless I could find another thick cable with the right dielectric (Teflon?) and at the right price. It isn’t rocket science, despite the hype surrounding some very thick cables, so I’m sure it must be possible…..
Thursday, 29 March 2012
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
In the 1970s and 80s, powerful forces in the US secret services clashed over whether or not the Russians had submarines capable of travelling completely silently, without propellers and cavitations, and undetectably by sonar. This was an inspiration for the film “The Hunt for Red October”; the US President was lobbied to fund countermeasures against a submarine threat that never existed in practice. Despite there being no evidence of the design, manufacture or physical mechanism behind a totally silent form of propulsion, those pressuring the President to tackle the threat argued that the very fact they could find no evidence, was all the evidence they needed.
When the Soviet bloc collapsed, we found out after the cold war that it was all complete rubbish. There never was any such sub, it was impossible to engineer one, and the naysayers were completely right – but the true believers convinced gullible Pres. How stupid is that? Although not so stupid if the military contracts were juicy and awarded to the lobbyists own companies of course.
And now the hi fi angle.
Many people will argue there are merits in expensive cables. Others will argue that, all things being equal (all measurable things that is, such as inductance and capacitance and resistance), there is no sonic difference in cables that measure equally, and the expenditure required to get, say, a top Nordost or Cardas cable is money down the drain. They don’t sound any different because they can’t.
Somewhat at odds with the anecdote with which I opened this blog entry, I’m in the former camp. In my view, just because you can’t measure it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Trust your ears! That’s the evidence that matters most and is so frequently ignored by the naysayers who refuse to admit their own world view may be wrong.
So it is with equipment supports, and digital transports too. As I gain a more thorough understanding of how digital data is extracted and transmitted, I’m starting to believe it might be possible to provide empirical measurements to back up what I believe I can hear.
I have had a selection of cables in my various hi fi systems and they have all mattered, all sounded different, albeit in many cases the difference was a subtle one. Recently, I’ve tried something even more esoteric, with even more unusual results: new power cables. Yes, not even in the signal path, but somehow affecting my system more profoundly than I expected.
Mains electricity travels through miles and miles of copper cable. Why should the last m of cable make such a difference?
I have been to visit my pal IWC and record an interview for a future podcast, and came away with a spare mains cable he had made up. This is some basic, thick, 6mm2 copper cable wedged into an Oyaide IEC plug at one end, and a strange looking and massive Russ Andrews mains plug at the other; the only size of plug he could find capable of taking the 6mm2 cable he had.
Elsewhere in his house, the incomer tail to his distribution board is even bigger. So it is heavy, thick and just wrapped in rubber -as it comes from whatever manufacturer that supplies electricians with >70amp capable cables for cookers or even more demanding equipment. No special coating, dielectric, cable geometry, shielding nor material – just copper, in PVC. But THICK!
Here it is:
Detail of the end pieces:
Compared with my normal PHY mains cable which is solid-core copper, silver plated, and cotton and silk wrapped with IEC and mains plugs either end -no info on cable diameter – which looks much weedier. PHY is a French brand that makes cables and loudspeaker drivers using ‘natural’ materials and the owner, Bernard Salibert, sadly passed away recently. Prices have jumped since I bought mine and I’m not prepared to buy more, even though I like the sound.
Voila la difference:
Side by side:
So I tried the no-name, THICK cable on my Tron Discovery power amp and was rather stunned. I expected a subtle difference, but subtle it wasn’t – immediately more depth, breadth and height to the soundstage, more macro and micro dynamics, and more overall weight to the sound. Exactly like the weight I felt when the cable was held in my hand. Could it be expectation bias? Not with this magnitude of change.
However, all was not rosy. It was also hard and artificial sounding, solid-state electronic and not valve, unsubtle and somewhat unmusical. Of course, this from a spare cable that had been made up, never used, and needed to be run in. So I left it running and have come back to it many times.
It seems to oscillate between poles as it runs in. At one point it carries all those attributes I describe above, both positive and negative in equal measure, and at other times it is capable, but less capable than at its’ peak, yet more musical and less objectionable with it. As it runs it, it seems to swing less and less between these two extremes. I wonder where it will settle? What I want is the musicality of the PHY and the capability of the HEAVY cable. I worry that it will settle at a point where it remains slightly unmusical and doesn’t have quite the deep capability that impressed me from the off. It would be painful to discard it on the basis that it works better, but I enjoy it less; that seems both sensible and stupid in equal measures.
Last night I swapped it out for the PHY and was rewarded by completely what I expected to hear – a musical, natural and pleasing sound that was somehow smaller and less weighty with it. Much smoother and less brash, but something possibly lost with the reduced detail and weight. Having recently invested in some new CDs (inspired by a change from another bit of kit that comes in at around £100-£150, almost all of which is in the connectors) I put the Average White Band on and felt so energised by the boogie I started to dance. PHY still wins, but if *only* I could combine the attributes of both cables.
Next step is to try it on the Tron preamp and DacMagic power supplies. Intuitively I expect the greatest effect to be on the power amp, but stranger things happen at sea.
Speaking of things nautical – despite naysayers telling me there is no known electrical reason why a thick copper mains cable should affect the sound of my system over a thinner solid core silver/copper one, the evidence is that it does, just as the evidence of the non-existence of a silent sub is refuted by those claiming proof through its absence. If that makes sense…?
A podcasting we will go
Yes, dear readers, a Gentleman Audiophile podcast is in the works. The first two episodes worth of material has been recorded and I'm busy preparing it for production.
Be gentle. Who on earth podcasts about hifi with any regularity? This is just a bit of geekery that, I hope, will appeal to an audience of Gentlemen Audiophiles.
Expect episode #1 in a week or so...
Be gentle. Who on earth podcasts about hifi with any regularity? This is just a bit of geekery that, I hope, will appeal to an audience of Gentlemen Audiophiles.
Expect episode #1 in a week or so...
Wednesday, 14 March 2012
DacMagic power supply tests
Last Friday a collection of four other GAs and I assembled at a secret location and listened to a number of things, including a breadboard preamp design known as a 'B4' whose parts cost at ~£50 was totally out of proportion to the transparent, clear and sophisticated sound. But our main aim was to compare three DacMagic power supplies: the Maplin PSU, my 50KVA Custom Hifi Design, and a 200KVA 'transformer in a box' which rocked in at the princely sum of £50.
Conclusive answer was the Maplin was inferior to the other two, although it was foot-tappingly good musically. The others added depth, transparency, weight, tonality... I felt like I had to recalibrate my senses to reconnect to the musical flow, hence the more congested Maplin might actually be more satisfying to some, but overall the other two strode ahead with ease.
Whoever says power supplies make no difference to the DM needs to try these inexpensive options. Technical 'it shouldn't work' answers are pointless when the evidence is that it works really well.
As for which of the two winners was best, I couldn't decide. Mine felt quieter and more composed, the 200KVA tranny may have had more weight and drive. We ran out of time to switch back and forth repeatedly and really confirm.
So, both solutions can be strongly recommended.
Conclusive answer was the Maplin was inferior to the other two, although it was foot-tappingly good musically. The others added depth, transparency, weight, tonality... I felt like I had to recalibrate my senses to reconnect to the musical flow, hence the more congested Maplin might actually be more satisfying to some, but overall the other two strode ahead with ease.
Whoever says power supplies make no difference to the DM needs to try these inexpensive options. Technical 'it shouldn't work' answers are pointless when the evidence is that it works really well.
As for which of the two winners was best, I couldn't decide. Mine felt quieter and more composed, the 200KVA tranny may have had more weight and drive. We ran out of time to switch back and forth repeatedly and really confirm.
So, both solutions can be strongly recommended.
Monday, 12 March 2012
Random valve pics
Just because I am enthused at the unexpected improvements wrought by replacing the Seagate hard drive in my MacBook source with a Kingston solid state device for the paltry sum of £75 delivered... I took some pics. Enjoy.
(BTW the gain in smoothness, detail, dynamics and naturalness was obvious from the first note. All the more amazing since the music is itself stored on a network drive served over powerline Ethernet and not from the SSD at all)
(BTW the gain in smoothness, detail, dynamics and naturalness was obvious from the first note. All the more amazing since the music is itself stored on a network drive served over powerline Ethernet and not from the SSD at all)
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
CA better than CD? Just about....
A fellow GA popped over last night to listen for a while and I tried him on a blind A/B comparison of Arcam Alpha 5 CD against MacBook with Audiophilleo, Audirvana, etc.
By judiciously pressing 'play' on both CD and MacBook I was able to conceal which was A and which B, and flip between them at his request.
My pal expressed a preference for B on all but one track, a Police remaster which was fairly crap and compressed despite the remaster. With Michelle Pfeiffer, William Shatner and Jazz At The Pawnshop spinning, B won for him.
And, for me, B won every time because I knew what to listen for; he's not that familiar with my system.
Of course, B being the MacBook, which was a really pleasing outcome!! Honestly, after all that tweaking I want the MacBook solution to be better, but even if it were 'as good as CD' I should be happy, because a basic CA solution often sounds so much worse.
Next step will be to compare against a pukka digital transport like one from Audio Note, if I can line one up.
By judiciously pressing 'play' on both CD and MacBook I was able to conceal which was A and which B, and flip between them at his request.
My pal expressed a preference for B on all but one track, a Police remaster which was fairly crap and compressed despite the remaster. With Michelle Pfeiffer, William Shatner and Jazz At The Pawnshop spinning, B won for him.
And, for me, B won every time because I knew what to listen for; he's not that familiar with my system.
Of course, B being the MacBook, which was a really pleasing outcome!! Honestly, after all that tweaking I want the MacBook solution to be better, but even if it were 'as good as CD' I should be happy, because a basic CA solution often sounds so much worse.
Next step will be to compare against a pukka digital transport like one from Audio Note, if I can line one up.
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