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Power cords improve audio performance!

jeh said:
Funnily enough, they never proposed using balanced I/O in the place it was needed most: From the phono cartridge to the preamp!
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That has left me stumped too...
jeh said:
Fact is that in most home a/v installations the unbalanced connections don't really do much audible harm, and balanced I/O does increase costs, and of course the low end of this market is very price- and margin-sensitive and RCA/Cinch connectors are really really cheap. But on those rare occasions where they do cause problems, you're just sort of stuck.
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I would not count $7k CD players and preamps as cost-sensitive...
jeh said:
It gets really bad when home gear gets dragged into the pro or semipro environment and expected to work well with long cable runs, ungrounded plugs plugged into multiple circuits' outlets, connections to pro gear, etc.
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I've found whole mastering studios done using unbalanced wiring :( for reasons of "signal path minimalism".
 
A friend of mine does not understand that copper has the same properties of silver when it comes to electricity, it only has little more resistance, and increasing the gage by 1 will more then offset that different.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
Bruno Putzeys said:
If Paulhoff wants to kill every audio woowooist, I merely want to butcher that unspeakable idiot who got it into his head to use one conductor for signal reference, to equalise chassis potentials and to shield the other conductor. Reall, coax for low frequencies!!! The resistance of the shield is THE way for ground currents (such as mains leakage currents coupling through the transformer) to break into your audio.
There's only one right way of interconnecting analogue audio equipment and that's balanced I/O per AES48. Anything else is creating a market for mains conditioners and fancy cables.
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Couldn't agree more. And if equipment manufacturers would get it through their heads that a cable shield is an extension of the equipment enclosure and not something you want connected to your input or output circuit's internal 0V reference, life would be so much more pleasant for the poor downtrodden audio techie.

Of course, even in pro audio, which is where I work, it took the majority of manufacturers something like thirty years to realize that there is a formal industrial standard for wiring XLR-type connectors (pin 2 is signal +, @#$%it!) and start conforming to it.
 
Dog Boots said:
All attempts at getting the people who claim they can hear a difference to actually prove it (in a blind test f.inst.) have been futile. Go figure. They "don't wanna" do it - "can't be bothered". "Go listen for your selves, and you will easily hear the difference", they tell us, and nobody has been able to provide any arguments, whatsoever, as to why they should not have been influenced by the, very real and widely acknowledged, placebo effect (I'm an audio engineer by profession, so believe me, I know the placebo effect! :))
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lol. And such has been the case with stereo systems for decades - ie as technology improved, the NOTICEABLE diff's between systems has shrunk. I would bet my entire net worth that I could put a Yahmaha, Sony, Denon, Pioneer, Sherwood, heck maybe even some goofy Emerson BS next to each other and play each and in most cases few if any people could tell the diff...never mind the alleged diff's from one model to the other.
 
The weakest link in the audio system can be said in three words,

SPEAKERS SPEAKERS SPEADERS

Paul

:) :) :)
 
Paulhoff said:
The weakest link in the audio system can be said in three words,

SPEAKERS SPEAKERS SPEADERS

Paul

:) :) :)
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I couldn't agree more. If you go listen to various speakers it becomes obvious that they are the easiest piece of audio equipment to tell the differences between.

When it comes to other audio equipment the differences are less. However I have heard differences between amplifiers but only entry level pieces compared to much better pieces and then only when the speakers are good enough to reveal those differences. I would sum up the differences as distortion. When you compare an entry level amp that is rated 100 w/ch 1000hz at 10% THD to a more expensive amp that is rated 100 w/ch 20 - 20000hz at .01% THD there is a difference. The sound is less harsh and at high volumes the better amp sounds quieter to most people. I still think many people correlate distortion with volume and if they've never heard clean loud music they don't realise it. I'm also pretty sure that poor power supplies in cheaper equipment can effect high volume listening when it is unable to deliver adequate current for the job.

Almost as subtle as amps is signal processing. The cheapest most basic DACs don't do as good a job as the best. I'm not sure why and the differences can be similar to CD vs MP3 but I suspect distortion and artifacts come into play.

At the bottom of the list for effecting sound is interconnects and speaker wire. I have never heard a difference between the cheapest interconnects and some very high end ones unless something is broken. The expensive interconnects are better made and more durable but I've never heard a sound difference. I've never heard a difference in wire guage for speakers although it is easy to see that wire that is too small could have problems with high power. The wire is either capable of conducting the current or it isn't.

Of course this is all subjective and I could be crazy but even not considering speakers, to think that all audio equipment sounds the same is like saying all beer tastes the same.

As I'm in the midst of researching and designing a new Home Theatre room for my house I've discovered that the room itself may rival speakers for it's effect on sound. Probably the second weakest link in a sound system.
 
jimlintott said:
At the bottom of the list for effecting sound is interconnects and speaker wire. I have never heard a difference between the cheapest interconnects and some very high end ones unless something is broken. The expensive interconnects are better made and more durable but I've never heard a sound difference. I've never heard a difference in wire guage for speakers although it is easy to see that wire that is too small could have problems with high power. The wire is either capable of conducting the current or it isn't.
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I agree with this. I no problem paying more for and RCA connection that is better made, but only to a point. As for speaker connection 12 AWG is more then enough.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
OK, so here's my story: I have a stereo guitar amp and happened to blow the output push-pull pair of one channel (the power amp is a Lin topology amplifier) on a very hot day while playing far too loudly. I got lucky and didn't blow any speakers. So I decide I'm gonna fix it up- I lay hands on the correct transistors, and then start asking questions on an audiophile design site about the power supply (which is an unregulated piece of crap whose buzzing is irritating me- might as well make it go away while I've got the chassis open, right?)

You never heard so much woo in your life. It was unbelievable. I actually had people telling me that regulation of the power supply was a waste of time, that I should be using these enormous capacitors to do the job instead, and that removing the ripple any other way would cause more hum. Gah.

After going through several design iterations, what I wound up with is a capacitive multiplier- essentially, what you do is use a transistor to amplify the value of a capacitor and get a nice smooth signal; the regulation is crap, but who cares on the rails of a Lin amp? While I was at it, I replaced the EI core transformer with a toroid to which I had added a couple of extra windings to get the voltage I wanted, and did a better job of decoupling the main heatsink, not to mention adding a fan to improve the heat handling. The amp now runs far cooler, has more power output (the transistors I chose are the same series, but the next higher power and amperage rating), and the hum is essentially GONE. To top it all off, the toroid is 2 pounds lighter than the EI transformer it originally came with, and because a toroid keeps the magnetic flux inside the transformer instead of spewing it out everywhere, it's both more efficient and some annoying hum from the reverb coil has also been improved because it's subject to less EMI.

But boy did I ever have to suppress my anti-woo instincts to find out what I needed to know from those folks! And the woo on that site was so thick you could cut it with a knife- right on up to the 0-gauge speaker cables we have discussed here before.
 
bjb said:
Fortunately, I haven't run across engineers like this here in Southern California.
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The cynic in me wants to scream that this means you havent met ANY audio engineers in Southern California then :)

That is the audio woo woo capital of the world

Summing test after summing test notwithstanding, the majority from my little unofficial poll believe one brand of software has magic summing properties, though i is shown to null exactly with any other working audio software on a summ
 
is the link to the mercury filled speaker cables still in this thread? That one still makes me laugh...
 
To people who don't understand how electronics really work, it seems like magic. Ditto software. So they invoke magical laws on it and expect it to work- and the placebo response tells them it has. Go hang out with some photographers sometime.

Personally, when I buy audio equipment, I make them hook up the candidate components, and then I play carefully chosen test material through it. You should hear the sneering I get from the salesmen who want to sell me the big expensive one that sounds worse. They usually shut up when I tell them I'm a musician. And they always shut up when I make their big fancy amps and speakers drop out frequencies by playing material that has high impulse at multiple frequencies simultaneously- and then hook up the $300 one and it works fine.

Not that you don't get better quality for more money- just that a great deal of the really fancy stuff is built by people who subscribe to some of this woo and wind up compromising the actual performance with their obesiances to the woo gods. I've found some brands that I like, and in general I'll take solid design practices and good electronic component sourcing over gold contacts and outrageously overdone capacitive filtering and outrageously expensive A-class operation any day.
 
Schneibster said:
To people who don't understand how electronics really work, it seems like magic. Ditto software. So they invoke magical laws on it and expect it to work- and the placebo response tells them it has. Go hang out with some photographers sometime.

Personally, when I buy audio equipment, I make them hook up the candidate components, and then I play carefully chosen test material through it. You should hear the sneering I get from the salesmen who want to sell me the big expensive one that sounds worse. They usually shut up when I tell them I'm a musician. And they always shut up when I make their big fancy amps and speakers drop out frequencies by playing material that has high impulse at multiple frequencies simultaneously- and then hook up the $300 one and it works fine.

Not that you don't get better quality for more money- just that a great deal of the really fancy stuff is built by people who subscribe to some of this woo and wind up compromising the actual performance with their obesiances to the woo gods. I've found some brands that I like, and in general I'll take solid design practices and good electronic component sourcing over gold contacts and outrageously overdone capacitive filtering and outrageously expensive A-class operation any day.
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What test material do you use?

I generally use a set of test tones I generated and recorded in specific orders. Is yours a home creation, or is it a purchased test cd?
 
Oh, the ONE AND ONLY reason for using gold plated contacts? They take longer to corrode. So I use them on equipment that's inconvenient to hook up, so I don't have to climb back there and fiddle with the connectors as often.
 
If they are real gold plated contacts, they should never corroded, get dirty yes, corroded never.

I have a friend who believes in wire brake-in and we have had big arguments about it. He even has new companies sending him power wires etc to test and evaluate. When I was at his house and he read me that there should be a 40 hour break in period for a silver power cable, I just lost it.

Paul

:) :) :)

A forum he goes to is Audiogon
 
fowlsound said:
What test material do you use?

I generally use a set of test tones I generated and recorded in specific orders. Is yours a home creation, or is it a purchased test cd?
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I have an audio test tone CD that I like, it's a pretty old one out of a magazine, but that's just for starters- eliminates the complete trash. I don't spend much time on it.

Good test material has prominent content at multiple frequencies simultaneously- bass/mid, bass/treble, mid/treble, and/or a combination of all three, with distinctive enough sounds at the prominent frequencies that you can hear any distortion of the waveform, or diminution of the sound level. Particularly good ones have passages where a single instrument plays a theme, and is then joined by instruments in other ranges- the best has various passages where different instruments take the theme solo, then everybody chimes in.

Heavy bass places large current demand on the output transistors, and on the power supply filter caps. It also places the bass speaker elements under the maximum mechanical stress. You want to listen for really crisp response here- any muddiness indicates problems in one of these commonly overlooked areas. When combined with treble or mid, you can listen to see if the other frequency robs volume from the bass- or vice versa. This is a common crossover design fault, present in some surprisingly expensive transducers.

I generally begin with Mannheim Steamroller- Fresh Aire 4 is my usual choice. "Crystal" tests how the system responds to electronic music- "G Major Toccata" is an excellent test of the same sort of thing for acoustic instruments. Look particularly for instruments in the midrange and treble to lose or rob power to or from the bass. Chip Davis insists on impeccable engineering. For ambient and swells, try "Dancing Flames." Listen for distortion. And listen to the triangles at all times- they should always be crisp, never distorted and never too quiet.

I then move on to more rock-oriented material. Yes' Close to the Edge, while rather noisy in the mix, due to some unorthodox engineering practices, has some extremely challenging material in "And You And I," particularly where it moves from the acoustic beginning to the heavily processed middle movement, and in "Siberian Khatru," where you should listen to see if Jon Anderson's voice gets overrun by the heavy guitar riffs, which it does not on the recording but often does on a system with crossover problems.

Next comes Steely Dan's Aja, for the gentle but well-defined bass and tricky-to-reproduce guitar rhythms of "Deacon Blues," and the heavily-processed "Josie," and then on to "Kid Charlemagne" from The Royal Scam. Look for muddiness in the midrange- that mellotron should sound crisp and clear over the vocals and guitars, not distorted and not compressed.

Then fully into modern jazz- try "Etude" from Color Rit, by Lee Ritenour, listen for the bass to lose or rob power to or from the guitar. "Blues for TJ" from Larry Carlton's Friends tests for good response to bluesy stuff.

Last but not least, be sure to try some DVD material. I recommend movies with loud effects and a great deal of movement. You'd be surprised how good a test the "THX" theme that plays at the beginnings of material that conforms to these standards is. I like "Independence Day" for the fact that it has this theme, for the "whoosh" sounds that go to the rear during the title part, and for the explosions when the cities are demolished.

Overall, this takes an hour or more, but I've never been disappointed with a piece of equipment that I subjected to these tests after I got it home and played other material on it.

If you're curious, I own a pair of Polk Audio stereo speakers, use Bose 301s for my rear speakers, a Polk Audio center speaker, and an Infiniti sub. I power them from an Onkyo amp at about 100W/channel for the front three and 35W/channel for the rears, and when the depth charges go off in "Das Boot," the windows rattle. I could no doubt get marginally more performance by spending eight times as much as I did.

My studio rig is an old 35W Kenwood amp driving a pair of JBL Decades and a pair of Fisher 12" three-ways; it stands up OK to my guitar amp when I want to practice along with something, and does a fine job of playing back my recordings with a minimum of change in tone and color. If the Onkyo ever blows up, which I doubt it ever will, I will probably buy another one unless someone has done a better job since I bought it; it's worth noting that the spec sheet gave it better THD specs than several more expensive amps, and my listening tests bore these specs out. I've never had anyone who came over to watch a movie or listen to some music comment on it; to my mind, that's as it should be. It's about the material, not the equipment.
 
Oh, one more note: the material should be stuff you are intimately familiar with, and you should have listened to it previously on a competent amp with a really expensive pair of headphones. This is the most accurate reproduction possible. I particularly like my AKG K270s, I'm not a fan of Sennheisers because they have some trouble reproducing really crisp deep bass, YMMV- but you should be spending in the neighborhood of $200 on them, and they should be professional audio engineer grade. I have never heard speakers that outperform my AKGs, and I've heard a heckuvalot of speakers.
 
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Schneibster said:
Oh, the ONE AND ONLY reason for using gold plated contacts? They take longer to corrode. So I use them on equipment that's inconvenient to hook up, so I don't have to climb back there and fiddle with the connectors as often.
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Oh... and gold doen't corrode.. at least not in the conventional sense.....
 
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