Invisible speakers?
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Oh, another reason why my system excels as the invisible man. They are great line sources. Their impact does not appreciably lessen with distance. That is why, using line sources, the biggest rooms are the best. I can enjoy the music 20' away, or even in adjoining rooms.
You're amazing, Robert, you took the words right out of my mouth (gee, is there some song or something, hmm ...)
Just before sitting down to the laptop, I thought, wonder if it would be worthwhile copying that list from Audiogon across, whether anyone would be interested, and, lo and behold ...
Yes, about a month or so I set down exactly such a list on Audiogon, in threads called "Words From the Wise" (no comment) and "How does one get off the merry-go-round?". I got, one, maybe two responses. I thought and said at the time, obviously people aren't REALLY interested in better sound, so lost interest in that place ...
So, to make things easy, for me and you, I'll do a copy and paste of the 3 posts there:
12-19-10: Fas42
What I would say is markedly different from what most here have said ...
* Your system with its current set of components can be made absolutely magical or "real" if you eliminate all the weaknesses in it: that is, it has minimal unpleasant distortion
* Every recording you have or obtain will be totally enjoyable as a musical experience, if the system has minimal distortion, yes, even those appalling, recorded in the worst possible way horrors
* Contrary to what many have said, the room setup and size is NOT the way to getting good sound. Yes, fiddling with room bit and pieces can help to compensate for weaknesses, but if the sound emerging from the speaker drivers has too much distortion in it, then you have to work very hard with all that room stuff to try and compensate
* Get the treble right and everything else falls into place. Trouble is, it can be hard, very hard, to get rid of the treble distortion
* The Listening In Another Room (LIAR) method is an excellent test. Your aim should be to get to the point, where you can put on a string quartet recording, say, at close to maximum clean volume (for your system), go to the furthest point of your house, say, "yes, that sounds convincing, sounds like the real thing", then proceed back to the system, to stand a foot away from a speaker, and still be able to say the same thing. The tonal quality and sense of what is going on musically shouldn't change as you make that little trip
12-16-10: Fas42
Drubin, this is where it gets tricky ...
Things that are part of the mix:
* Everything I have tried or fiddled with has already been mentioned by someone already, and usually many others have to some degree taken them up. The hints are there already in websites, in forums, in lists of tweaking tips.
* A lot of it has to do with the mental approach. Mine is that the system, as is, is fully capable of achieving that quality of sound that I mentioned before -- the reason that it is not, is because there are weaknesses in the components and setup; there may be only a few or there may be myriads, but the technique is that you have to find each one, and knock it over, that is, eliminate the weakness.
To quote a very old cliche, a chain is only as strong as the weakest link, and that is very, very relevant in audio systems. If you have eliminated every single weakness but one; that is, there is still one problem area remaining, then the system will still not sound right, in fact at this point it may sound considerably worse than when you started the whole exercise! Why, because at each step up to this point you have improved, shall we call it, the "transparency" of the system, so that now this one last defect is brilliantly highlighted by the rest of the system working correctly!
* You're going to have to get your hands dirty, that is, dive inside the system components. Unless you are very lucky, weakness are there under the covers and you are going to have to sort them out, or get someone else to do it for you. A classic is speakers; people obsess about the cables to them and the connectors at each end; now look on the other side of the binding post inside the box, say, and you may find a miserable, loose, push on connector -- a tempered steel link of that chain mentioned above goes to one made out of elastic!
* I don't replace parts with expensive, "designer" ones, only good quality conventional ones where it makes good engineering sense, e.g. Panasonic FC caps. It's fine if you want to use fancy stuff, but I haven't found them to be necessary.
* What I focus on is getting the treble right, if that's right everything else falls into place. A good test, amongst many, is a typical, studio mixed rock recording where the drummer is giving the cymbals a good workout. I'm sure a lot of you will have a good laugh at this, but a perfect test CD is Status Quo's greatest hits. In my early days I took this around to dealers, etc, and every system made a complete dog's breakfast of it. When a sytem IS working decently the crash cymbals being struck virtually constantly through some songs should shimmer out with perfect clarity, delicacy and sweetness, just like a real one, no matter how loud the system goes. Frequently, if things are not good, you can barely make out that the cymbals are being struck at all!
Anyway, that's enough for now; depending upon the feedback and reactions, I will add more if it makes sense to ...
12-22-10: Fas42
Macrojack, thanks for your positive response. Sorry I didn't get back earlier, and I note that other people are obviously not REALLY interested in getting better sound; strange addiction, this hobby, where a lot of people believe they are condemned to be forever on the merry-go-round, and that there is nothing that can be done about it, eh?? Obviously I'm new here, but I've been fooling around with this "madness" for 40+ years, so at least a couple of lessons have been learnt along the way. Also, being curious, I looked at one or two of your other postings and it appears you're coming from a very similar direction as myself. As an example, mentioning the high efficiency Zu speaker -- straightaway you're going to make life easier for yourself using a speaker like that; an early (in years back) foray for me was a DIY effort using Goodmans Axiom 301's, driven by an absolutely miserable nothing of an amplifier!
Anyway, on with the show, so a few more thoughts:
* Pretty obviously, getting digital right is hard, the ferocious arguments STILL continue, but it certainly can be done. With vinyl, you can be sloppy and get away with it, the result will still be very pleasant and musical to listen to. Digital is a hard taskmaster, you might be 99.9% there and the sound will be excrutiatingly unpleasant and fatiguing to listen to, but persevere! If you can just get that last 0.1% to fall into place, then you have magic. Think of it like very high power binoculars, if the focus is not perfectly right the result will be a messy blur; then just one little extra small twist and everything snaps into beautiful view.
* Also with digital, just because you get it right for a while does not mean it will stay right during a listening session. A classic behaviour trait is that the sound may sound reasonable but not special at first, then build up to a peak of quality, and then go off, sound worse and worse the more you listen. What this means is that you still have weaknesses that haven't been sorted out.
* Even nothing DAC chips can sound good but you have to warm them up, condition them thoroughly first -- this is not news for many people. What I find works fast is a test track of maximum level high frequency sine wave, say 18kHz, set on repeat for an hour or so, sort of like belting the living daylights out of the chip! Obviously, don't have the amp on, or have it at very low level; the latter does a nice job of starting to warm up the tweeter and its crossover bits.
* To see where your power amp is at: put on some fairly driving rock where the drummer is having a good time on the cymbals fairly constantly through the song, at a very LOW level. If your system is half reasonable you should be able to hear the shimmer of those cymbals beautifully captured ( if you can't, go directly to Jail, do not pass Go, ...). Then slowly wind up the volume. At some point, for many/most systems, that good cymbal sound will disappear. If you can get to maximum volume with no change of the cymbal sound, congratulations!
Otherwise, you have another (set of) weakness(es). No, this is not the speaker, I repeat, not the speaker that's the problem! I have heard absolutely rubbishy bits of speaker having no trouble at all peforming excellently; no, typically it's the power amp's power supply starting to collapse, behave badly, spray plenty of nasty interference into the rest of the system, etc
Okay, there's a bit more to play with; so is any of this making sense to more than one person?
-----------
That's it!! Hope it can be helpful ...
Frank
Just before sitting down to the laptop, I thought, wonder if it would be worthwhile copying that list from Audiogon across, whether anyone would be interested, and, lo and behold ...
Yes, about a month or so I set down exactly such a list on Audiogon, in threads called "Words From the Wise" (no comment) and "How does one get off the merry-go-round?". I got, one, maybe two responses. I thought and said at the time, obviously people aren't REALLY interested in better sound, so lost interest in that place ...
So, to make things easy, for me and you, I'll do a copy and paste of the 3 posts there:
12-19-10: Fas42
What I would say is markedly different from what most here have said ...
* Your system with its current set of components can be made absolutely magical or "real" if you eliminate all the weaknesses in it: that is, it has minimal unpleasant distortion
* Every recording you have or obtain will be totally enjoyable as a musical experience, if the system has minimal distortion, yes, even those appalling, recorded in the worst possible way horrors
* Contrary to what many have said, the room setup and size is NOT the way to getting good sound. Yes, fiddling with room bit and pieces can help to compensate for weaknesses, but if the sound emerging from the speaker drivers has too much distortion in it, then you have to work very hard with all that room stuff to try and compensate
* Get the treble right and everything else falls into place. Trouble is, it can be hard, very hard, to get rid of the treble distortion
* The Listening In Another Room (LIAR) method is an excellent test. Your aim should be to get to the point, where you can put on a string quartet recording, say, at close to maximum clean volume (for your system), go to the furthest point of your house, say, "yes, that sounds convincing, sounds like the real thing", then proceed back to the system, to stand a foot away from a speaker, and still be able to say the same thing. The tonal quality and sense of what is going on musically shouldn't change as you make that little trip
12-16-10: Fas42
Drubin, this is where it gets tricky ...
Things that are part of the mix:
* Everything I have tried or fiddled with has already been mentioned by someone already, and usually many others have to some degree taken them up. The hints are there already in websites, in forums, in lists of tweaking tips.
* A lot of it has to do with the mental approach. Mine is that the system, as is, is fully capable of achieving that quality of sound that I mentioned before -- the reason that it is not, is because there are weaknesses in the components and setup; there may be only a few or there may be myriads, but the technique is that you have to find each one, and knock it over, that is, eliminate the weakness.
To quote a very old cliche, a chain is only as strong as the weakest link, and that is very, very relevant in audio systems. If you have eliminated every single weakness but one; that is, there is still one problem area remaining, then the system will still not sound right, in fact at this point it may sound considerably worse than when you started the whole exercise! Why, because at each step up to this point you have improved, shall we call it, the "transparency" of the system, so that now this one last defect is brilliantly highlighted by the rest of the system working correctly!
* You're going to have to get your hands dirty, that is, dive inside the system components. Unless you are very lucky, weakness are there under the covers and you are going to have to sort them out, or get someone else to do it for you. A classic is speakers; people obsess about the cables to them and the connectors at each end; now look on the other side of the binding post inside the box, say, and you may find a miserable, loose, push on connector -- a tempered steel link of that chain mentioned above goes to one made out of elastic!
* I don't replace parts with expensive, "designer" ones, only good quality conventional ones where it makes good engineering sense, e.g. Panasonic FC caps. It's fine if you want to use fancy stuff, but I haven't found them to be necessary.
* What I focus on is getting the treble right, if that's right everything else falls into place. A good test, amongst many, is a typical, studio mixed rock recording where the drummer is giving the cymbals a good workout. I'm sure a lot of you will have a good laugh at this, but a perfect test CD is Status Quo's greatest hits. In my early days I took this around to dealers, etc, and every system made a complete dog's breakfast of it. When a sytem IS working decently the crash cymbals being struck virtually constantly through some songs should shimmer out with perfect clarity, delicacy and sweetness, just like a real one, no matter how loud the system goes. Frequently, if things are not good, you can barely make out that the cymbals are being struck at all!
Anyway, that's enough for now; depending upon the feedback and reactions, I will add more if it makes sense to ...
12-22-10: Fas42
Macrojack, thanks for your positive response. Sorry I didn't get back earlier, and I note that other people are obviously not REALLY interested in getting better sound; strange addiction, this hobby, where a lot of people believe they are condemned to be forever on the merry-go-round, and that there is nothing that can be done about it, eh?? Obviously I'm new here, but I've been fooling around with this "madness" for 40+ years, so at least a couple of lessons have been learnt along the way. Also, being curious, I looked at one or two of your other postings and it appears you're coming from a very similar direction as myself. As an example, mentioning the high efficiency Zu speaker -- straightaway you're going to make life easier for yourself using a speaker like that; an early (in years back) foray for me was a DIY effort using Goodmans Axiom 301's, driven by an absolutely miserable nothing of an amplifier!
Anyway, on with the show, so a few more thoughts:
* Pretty obviously, getting digital right is hard, the ferocious arguments STILL continue, but it certainly can be done. With vinyl, you can be sloppy and get away with it, the result will still be very pleasant and musical to listen to. Digital is a hard taskmaster, you might be 99.9% there and the sound will be excrutiatingly unpleasant and fatiguing to listen to, but persevere! If you can just get that last 0.1% to fall into place, then you have magic. Think of it like very high power binoculars, if the focus is not perfectly right the result will be a messy blur; then just one little extra small twist and everything snaps into beautiful view.
* Also with digital, just because you get it right for a while does not mean it will stay right during a listening session. A classic behaviour trait is that the sound may sound reasonable but not special at first, then build up to a peak of quality, and then go off, sound worse and worse the more you listen. What this means is that you still have weaknesses that haven't been sorted out.
* Even nothing DAC chips can sound good but you have to warm them up, condition them thoroughly first -- this is not news for many people. What I find works fast is a test track of maximum level high frequency sine wave, say 18kHz, set on repeat for an hour or so, sort of like belting the living daylights out of the chip! Obviously, don't have the amp on, or have it at very low level; the latter does a nice job of starting to warm up the tweeter and its crossover bits.
* To see where your power amp is at: put on some fairly driving rock where the drummer is having a good time on the cymbals fairly constantly through the song, at a very LOW level. If your system is half reasonable you should be able to hear the shimmer of those cymbals beautifully captured ( if you can't, go directly to Jail, do not pass Go, ...). Then slowly wind up the volume. At some point, for many/most systems, that good cymbal sound will disappear. If you can get to maximum volume with no change of the cymbal sound, congratulations!
Otherwise, you have another (set of) weakness(es). No, this is not the speaker, I repeat, not the speaker that's the problem! I have heard absolutely rubbishy bits of speaker having no trouble at all peforming excellently; no, typically it's the power amp's power supply starting to collapse, behave badly, spray plenty of nasty interference into the rest of the system, etc
Okay, there's a bit more to play with; so is any of this making sense to more than one person?
-----------
That's it!! Hope it can be helpful ...
Frank
Frank-Am I missing something here or did you clearly say how you improved all of the components in your system? I'm not getting it. For instance, is the only thing you need to do to your digital playback in order to make it sound great is to "belt the living daylights out of the chip" by feeding it an 18kHz sine wave for an hour before you listen to music?
Tom, yes, that's a very good point. I have wondered about this many times, whether it is just something in my own head only. What makes me say that it is otherwise is that my wife can pick it up now straight away too, she's a bit older than me and her high frequency hearing is nowhere near as good as mine. I have mentioned using an 18kHz test signal, and that's totally invisible
to her. She's also very sensitive to bad violin tone, even the live stuff ("it's so screetchy!!") and when the system is working well I can wind up a "bad" violin recording to max and she's totally comfortable with it. Going back to Status Quo (ha!), when I first put them on she thought the band was the most appalling rubbish ever! Now, when all is good, she grooves totally with the sound ...Yes, like for all audiophiles, the dreaded lurgy strikes, that when he visits the system is often not quite right -- I did say this is hard, very hard -- but he has heard an absolutely miserable nothing of a setup do remarkable things. His own system is getting in better and better shape. He's at the "I can put on old vinyl that was unlistenable to when I first got it from the opportunity shop, and now listen with enjoyment to the end of a whole side" stage. His speakers are not yet at the invisible stage but I am getting him to relate to that as a goal.
Frank
Frank-we all like to hear about how you work your magic. Are you actually modifying all of your gear? If so, how do you know where to start and what parts to upgrade? You have talked a little about going inside speakers and maybe soldering crimped connections. You talked about replacing capacitors but you didn't say where. Are you into the Raul thing where you hotwire all of your components together so there are as few connections as possible? Are you soldering your speaker cables to the inside of the amp and bypassing the binding posts? I would really like to understand what it is you are doing.
Yeah, what Frank said.....
It took me only 6 years..... After I had the amps, preamp, and speakers I have now. 6 years of diligent reading, thinking, then testing. I have been very lucky to have taken only 6 years.
It took me only 6 years..... After I had the amps, preamp, and speakers I have now. 6 years of diligent reading, thinking, then testing. I have been very lucky to have taken only 6 years.
mep, the trouble is with this business is that I can't just give a list of tweaks to do because it's a very big "depends". I could take the easy way out, and say look up and find out every tweak that's ever been tried out there and apply it -- two years from now you'll probably have it! To repeat myself, the problem is weaknesses, but EVERY SYSTEM WILL HAVE A DIFFERENT SET OF WEAKNESSES FROM EVERY OTHER SYSTEM. There, I hope that makes it clearer ...
To give examples: Vince (probably!) doesn't have to worry about conditioning the DAC with 18kHz because he is using a NOS setup. The thing with many DAC's is that they are effectively interacting with lots of little capacitors everywhere, and everyone knows how nasty they are -- you are warming up, stabilising all those little caps everywhere that you can't do much about otherwise. And Tim, almost everything is one box, off the floor, so he doesn't have to worry about cables, connections, interactions with the floor.
Digital playback is hard because it is susceptible to interference, and in turn can interfere with other components -- vinyl playback has it much easier in this regard. A good test, cellphones (or mobiles, as I call them). Bring a cellphone near the system, power it down, listen, then power it up again. With my system, at a certain point, this was chalk and cheese, and still is a problem ...
Frank
To give examples: Vince (probably!) doesn't have to worry about conditioning the DAC with 18kHz because he is using a NOS setup. The thing with many DAC's is that they are effectively interacting with lots of little capacitors everywhere, and everyone knows how nasty they are -- you are warming up, stabilising all those little caps everywhere that you can't do much about otherwise. And Tim, almost everything is one box, off the floor, so he doesn't have to worry about cables, connections, interactions with the floor.
Digital playback is hard because it is susceptible to interference, and in turn can interfere with other components -- vinyl playback has it much easier in this regard. A good test, cellphones (or mobiles, as I call them). Bring a cellphone near the system, power it down, listen, then power it up again. With my system, at a certain point, this was chalk and cheese, and still is a problem ...
Frank
Frank, what is the point of this thread and discussion if it is not to lead to others achieving the same? If you want them to believe without any specifics, it doesn't seem to be working .
As an engineer, hopefully you know that you have to show enough specific data to make a point. Declaring things is not sufficient. Certainly not in an audio forum.
.As an engineer, hopefully you know that you have to show enough specific data to make a point. Declaring things is not sufficient. Certainly not in an audio forum
.Mep, I modified the amps only in what I use as bypass caps across the coke can sized storage caps. I used .1 Sonicap Platinum caps. As I understand, I am yet the only one. B&O revisited the 500A ICE chips utilized in my amps and completely reworked them to perfection. My amps have been upgraded by the builder as well.
The preamp has been improved once by the builder. By improvement, I mean he made the preamp so it is even better than what it does best, pass on the thrilling music the source passes to it. When all the bow magic of Itzhak Perlman is there you just have to tear up.
I sorry, amirm, I HAVE given the forum the specifics, which are that you need to eliminate the weaknesses! The weaknesses in my system are very, very different from those that Vince had originally in his current gear. To make it even harder to describe what to do, when I moved from one house to another, I then had to address a new set of weaknesses!
Luckily, it is definitely not necessary to eliminate every possible weakness to get there. I have heard other people's systems sound quite magical at times, and thought, gee whiz, you are mighty close in some ways. Then they put on another recording which sounds terrible, and think, uh ohh, a fair bit still needs to be done somewhere.
Finally an analogy: 2 planes, not safe to fly. No-one knows where the problem is: one has dodgy landing gear, the other, there is a relay in the instrument panel that's playing up. Do I say to the first lot, fix the landing gear, and the second, check all the electronics, from the other side of the world. No, I say, you're going to have go through every system on those planes and meticulously check that everything everywhere is as it should be ...
So, unfortunately, that IS the answer
Cheers,
Frank
Frank is saying like it is. His method of chasing his holy grail works for his gear. My formula can be copied only by those using the amps and preamp I am using. Still, the speaker has to be really good.
OK, Frank...so it is too complex and variable to just list a set of magic tweaks. How about some examples of the kinds of things you've done to fine tune your systems and how/why they needed to be adjusted (re-tweaked?) when you moved?
Tim
Tim
mep, again it depends; if you had a look at that NZ amp I mentioned earlier, you wouldn't believe it. It looks a complete mess with extra cap's hanging off all over the place, because that is what I was into at the time. Maybe some are necessary, maybe some are not any more, I can't tell without lots of experimentation, and I have moved on. With what I am playing with at the moment I have not touched a single built-in cap so far, because its problems are different!
What is essential is to think of the system as a single box. From my point of view, a miserable TV can sound very clean a lot of the time, the vocals sound quite natural. Why? Because it is incredibly simple in the audio part, it's virtually all hard-wired. So, yes, I do the hotwiring thing because it works for me, but it appears that Vince doesn't need to. He might actually improve his system by doing so, but it is working so well, why should he do so? And makes it easier to sell down the track ...
Frank
I see. You mean if I go my doctor and ask for secret of long life, he can just tell me to "live well" and I should go home happy
.What weakness? And how do we know you fixed it?
What is this supposed to teach me? How am I smarter than I was the day before? Who doesn't know to fix their audio system weaknesses?
So you are just wishing me good life. I get it. Was hoping for something less obvious and more useful
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