Ron's Speaker, Turntable, Power and Room Treatment Upgrades

[Ron Resnick]

Thank you, Phil!

The symmetry point makes sense to me too.

As there will be no extension of the back wall onto my deck, I likely will cover the entire back wall, including the offending column, with 4' X 8' sound-absorbing ASC-type panels, and move the listening couch further away from the back wall.

 

[Folsom]

Symmetry at the front will define proper imaging left/right, primarily the distances from the walls to the speakers; especially behind the speakers. Treating the areas can obviously correct it, and if the walls are not very close then it's a non-issue. As far as symmetry near you, I'm sure others have a little more experience, but I doubt it'll actually be a problem compared to the potentials near the speakers. IIRC however you have a decent amount of room, especially if you're not using very wide speakers.

 

[DaveC]

I'm not a fan of symmetrical listening rooms unless they were very carefully designed, as most of the time they have bass issues due to the symmetry. Many folks have switched to asym setups at audio shows, some that resisted for years have changed to asym and the improvements were enormous. There could be potential problems with it if the speakers are near reflective surfaces that are asym, but this is easily avoided. FWIW, Andrew Jones always does his setups asym and they usually sound very good. Even if they look symmetrical, they are shifted off to one side at least a few inches. Others like Daedalus struggled with bass issues for years and went diagonal to great effect the last 2 years at RMAF. Before that the speakers seemed to have potential but the bass ruined it.

 

[DaveC]

Thank you, Phil!

The symmetry point makes sense to me too.

As there will be no extension of the back wall onto my deck, I likely will cover the entire back wall, including the offending column, with 4' X 8' sound-absorbing ASC-type panels, and move the listening couch further away from the back wall.

Listening position close to the back wall kills the soundstage, flattens it to 2-D... definitely give it at least a few feet.

 

[Folsom]

That makes sense to me how for bass it would be preferable, but still the conditions of distances from the speakers behind them, and to a degree the side, no matter the shape of the room can change the sound-stage balance unless they are far enough away. It was said by someone that the most common mistake is people measure their speakers off of the wall behind them, and can't get a correct left/right balance but it's only because the wall behind the speakers is the same distance for each speaker since rooms are not perfect, and that distance controls the situation. I've found that to be entirely true.

 

[FrantzM]

Listening position close to the back wall kills the soundstage, flattens it to 2-D... definitely give it at least a few feet.

Thank You so very much DaveC!!!. I am always dumbfounded when people seat at the wall and this from often serious systems.

I have repeated this too often,perhaps I am not able to correctly convey what I mean: In cars to get from point A to B in the fastest fashion, say a race, there are many ways to achieve the results. Some of these depends of course on the driver of the race cars but some dependson the engineers and technicians. Take the example of Formula 1, different Race cars "stables" take different technical paths to win the race. All of these are not equally valid but some are very good as demonstrated by drivers jumping from one "ecurie" to another say from Ferrari to Mercedes and winning the race anyway. Same with Acoustics. There are different paths and methods. Different Acousticians use different methods and are of different philosophies. There are some constant but on a whole there is not a great deal of consensus. Yet the better acousticians provide results that would satisfy the great majority of audiophiles. Still Audiophile "A" may prefer the work of Acoustician "T" to that of Acoustician "W", that does not invalidate the works of any those acousticians.
What I am trying to convey, for the sake of what it seems Ron is after, that is a great room where he would enjoy in some kind of definitive fashion his chosen speakers ( I am not too sure Ron has fully decided what these would be), rather than expect to get the results from a Forum, it would be a much better idea to hire an acoustician who has worked with people in ears in which he, Ron, believes, some of those people are on this boards as are some of the Acousticians. He, Ron, would then tweak his room in the way he find most appealing. That is the path MikeL has taken.

The board is heavily subjective and that is fine to a point. We must not forget that there is an objective reality to the reproduction of sound via electronics in our room. No one here (with one, lone exception ) would advocate Bose HTPCs as the best sound they have ever heard. however much we would like to negate the room, I have seen countless posts on the subject. The room is the Final decision-maker on the quality of reproduction. A professional acoustician is IMHO the best bet especially considering the cost of the components. In a world of $50K speaker cables, hiring a professional acoustician is the wisest choice IMHO.

 

[SCAudiophile]

I am glad you are enjoying the journey, too!

The project is dead in the water until I am able to make some progress repairing the listening room.

I am not familiar with Viscoustics.

Ron,...all the best in getting through the repairs and getting your room and system back! Pulling for you!

 

[Steve williams]

Thank You so very much DaveC!!!. I am always dumbfounded when people seat at the wall and this from often serious systems.

I have repeated this too often,perhaps I am not able to correctly convey what I mean: In cars to get from point A to B in the fastest fashion, say a race, there are many ways to achieve the results. Some of these depends of course on the driver of the race cars but some dependson the engineers and technicians. Take the example of Formula 1, different Race cars "stables" take different technical paths to win the race. All of these are not equally valid but some are very good as demonstrated by drivers jumping from one "ecurie" to another say from Ferrari to Mercedes and winning the race anyway. Same with Acoustics. There are different paths and methods. Different Acousticians use different methods and are of different philosophies. There are some constant but on a whole there is not a great deal of consensus. Yet the better acousticians provide results that would satisfy the great majority of audiophiles. Still Audiophile "A" may prefer the work of Acoustician "T" to that of Acoustician "W", that does not invalidate the works of any those acousticians.
What I am trying to convey, for the sake of what it seems Ron is after, that is a great room where he would enjoy in some kind of definitive fashion his chosen speakers ( I am not too sure Ron has fully decided what these would be), rather than expect to get the results from a Forum, it would be a much better idea to hire an acoustician who has worked with people in ears in which he, Ron, believes, some of those people are on this boards as are some of the Acousticians. He, Ron, would then tweak his room in the way he find most appealing. That is the path MikeL has taken.

The board is heavily subjective and that is fine to a point. We must not forget that there is an objective reality to the reproduction of sound via electronics in our room. No one here (with one, lone exception ) would advocate Bose HTPCs as the best sound they have ever heard. however much we would like to negate the room, I have seen countless posts on the subject. The room is the Final decision-maker on the quality of reproduction. A professional acoustician is IMHO the best bet especially considering the cost of the components. In a world of $50K speaker cables, hiring a professional acoustician is the wisest choice IMHO.

Ron is using an acoustician

 

[Ron Resnick]

After almost a year of intermittent research, inquiry and thought I have decided (as of today, and most certainly subject to change) that I am not going to install a Torus Power balanced power/isolation transformer wall mount unit after all. (I still think Torus makes excellent products.) The original plan was to install a big Torus device on the outside of the front side wall of the listening room. Wires from the Torus would distribute power to outlets on the front wall about 15 to 20 feet away for high current amplifiers, and to outlets in the adjacent equipment room about 60 to 75 feet away for the analog front-end components.

I have never had grounding problems or hum issues, but since my state of mind last year (before the crash in energy stocks) was to sweat every detail no matter the cost I had a specialist grounding firm install a horizontal chemical ground rod array. When ddk expressed great concern about that horizontal array attracting EMI, I had the grounding firm install a simpler, vertical chemical ground rod as well. So now I have two independent chemical grounds: the horizontal ground rod array achieves a potential to ground below 5 ohms, and the vertical ground rod achieves a potential to ground below 10 ohms. I have no idea which ground to use, and there will be no speedy way to switch between them for A/B testing.

While I believe in general in the balanced power/isolation transformer devices, I have decided not to install the Torus wall mount out of concern about the 15 to 20 foot distance to the outlets for the high current amplifiers. If I'm not going to use the Torus wall mount to power the high current amplifiers, then there is no reason to have the Torus powering the front-end components from 60 to 75 feet away.

Since the front end components are not terribly high current devices there is no reason to use the elaborate, heavy and high capacity Torus wall mount device. Initially, I am not going to install any balanced power/isolation transformer device at all. If, in the future, I want to experiment with balanced power on the front-end I will install a floor mounted Torus device in the equipment room close to the Aesthetix Io Eclipse power supplies. (I will run a 240VAC outlet to the equipment room for a possible future Torus device.)

While there is the potential for a ground loop between the components connected to a future Torus on the equipment room side, and the high current amplifiers which are not connected to a future Torus on the listening room side, since I've never had a ground problem before, I'm not terribly concerned about it. I would rather have a future Torus device close to the analog front end components.

If I want to do something with the power going to the front-end components what I really would like to do is get some battery powered box, such as a smaller and less expensive version of the Stromtank.

I still am going to use JPS in-wall power cable and Furutech outlets and covers.

Does WA Benjamin Electric make the highest quality circuit breaker box? (I know about the Isoclean Zero Ohm box from Hong Kong, and it looks great, and Greg Beron loves his Zero Ohm circuit breaker box, but I don’t like that the box does not have any mounting holes, and I think it is not UL listed.)

 

[Folsom]

Do the WA-BE's have copper plated bus bars? Square D QO series does, so it's a good one as well as opposed to the junky "Homeline" series. I have doubts about the benefits of the Zero Ohm being related to the gold; at least entirely. Gold is good for contact to contact, because it doesn't become carbonized. It's higher resistance than copper however. In a breaker box ideally you have more than enough compression that you can't get dirty contacts because they never move. Compression is the best thing there is besides forging the metals together. The breakers contacts that connect to the bus bar are the weak link, and gold contact specifically on them does make since, given that the compression is only spring tight. What I'm getting at is you probably aren't missing much by using WA-BE or Square D QO.

Balanced transformers main function has nothing to do with ground. They work like balanced interconnects, in order to reject more noise. Essentially you've got two 60v lines instead of one 120v line and a common. The idea is any noise introduced to one line is introduced equally to the other since they're both now the same, so it will cancel.

The reality is that ground loops can form with balanced and isolation transformers, if the loop is on safety ground; which does not connect to the transformer but bypasses it. There's ways to stop it at the equipment that are safe. In general good equipment shouldn't be subject to the loop, but that depends on whether the designer builds for audio quality, or RF transmission. The problem with RF designs is they often link the ground of the DC circuit to the safety ground on the chassis which can make a loop to another piece of equipment doing the same. It's done in order to avoid parasitic capacitance from the chassis coupling to your signal. There's a place for it, but it's problematic in playback audio unless we're talking balanced connections that won't exhibit the problem when used correctly. It's important for designers to think about what's down wind of the grounded noise path!

There's less benefit to using balanced power close to the equipment. An isolation transformer will do the same thing at close distance because your high grade power cords will already reject noise, and won't be subject to picking up nearly as much in their short run of a few feet. The benefits you can see locally at the amplifiers and the source appliances will be reductions in noise. Power conditioners will work, but given your tastes I fear there's many you would not like since they are not that fantastic. You can PM me if you'd like to discuss them because I'll give you opinions, information, etc, that I won't post publicly. I'd like to tell you that batteries is a good idea, but I don't believe it at all.

All in all the JPS wire is such a nice upgrade, you're going to really appreciate what it does. I've never not noticed the audible benefits of twisted wire over parallel.

 

[Calle_jr]

After almost a year of intermittent research...

The "problem" at least in the Nordic countries is that the "electrical installation business" is directed to safety only.
Performance is secondary: "Follow regulations at a minimum cost".
Electricians and electrical designers generally don't even understand when you talk about performance.

It is usually very efficient to:
- Minimize the pre impedance by making the cable short and direct powerstrip - central, with big area (3x7awg), good power plugs and connectors. Star earthed topology powerstrip etc.
- Minimize the number of "bad consumers" in the home, they create overtone current (disturbance). Low energy lamps, computers, cell phone chargers, TVs, LED drivers, dimmers, washing machines, hvac etc.

Consumers both on the hifi fuse, other fuses and the neighbors affect your hifi (in that order).
With low pre impedance the risk is smaller that they disturb the hifi.

I sometimes actually think it would be better to put power conditioners on the other fuses in my home...

 

[Ron Resnick]

Do the WA-BE's have copper plated bus bars? . . .

Balanced transformers main function has nothing to do with ground. They work like balanced interconnects, in order to reject more noise. Essentially you've got two 60v lines instead of one 120v line and a common. The idea is any noise introduced to one line is introduced equally to the other since they're both now the same, so it will cancel.

The reality is that ground loops can form with balanced and isolation transformers, if the loop is on safety ground; which does not connect to the transformer but bypasses it. There's ways to stop it at the equipment that are safe. In general good equipment shouldn't be subject to the loop, but that depends on whether the designer builds for audio quality, or RF transmission. The problem with RF designs is they often link the ground of the DC circuit to the safety ground on the chassis which can make a loop to another piece of equipment doing the same. It's done in order to avoid parasitic capacitance from the chassis coupling to your signal. There's a place for it, but it's problematic in playback audio unless we're talking balanced connections that won't exhibit the problem when used correctly. It's important for designers to think about what's down wind of the grounded noise path!

There's less benefit to using balanced power close to the equipment. An isolation transformer will do the same thing at close distance because your high grade power cords will already reject noise, and won't be subject to picking up nearly as much in their short run of a few feet. . . .

All in all the JPS wire is such a nice upgrade, you're going to really appreciate what it does. I've never not noticed the audible benefits of twisted wire over parallel.

Thank you, Folsom!

Yes, my electrician tells me that the WA Benjamin Electric panels have copper bus bars.

I appreciate that balanced power has nothing, directly, to do with grounding. I meant that if the Torus Power unit is properly grounded and if all components are on circuits connected directly to the Torus, then the probability of ground and hum problems should be minimized (versus having some components connected to the Torus, and other components not connected to the Torus and having a different ground run).

There is a school of thought (and am I am reporting here, not opining) which suggests that low frequency response can be adversely affected if a high current amplifier is located too far in physical distance from the isolation transformer.

I am glad you have had good experience with the JPS in-wall wire.

 

[Ron Resnick]

The "problem" at least in the Nordic countries is that the "electrical installation business" is directed to safety only.
Performance is secondary: "Follow regulations at a minimum cost".
Electricians and electrical designers generally don't even understand when you talk about performance. . . .

Yes, I understand. That is why I am working with an electrician and contractor who specialize in audiophile installations and who understand and are sensitive to audiophile concerns (and that is why I have been willing to pay more than average for their services).

 

[Ron Resnick]

For a conventional subpanel circuit breaker box dedicated to audio is it still correct conventional wisdom that all circuits should be on the same leg of positive phase?

 

[DaveC]

For a conventional subpanel circuit breaker box dedicated to audio is it still correct conventional wisdom that all circuits should be on the same leg of positive phase?

Yes, I'd run only one leg/phase to the audio breaker box.

Are you really going to run 75 ft long circuits from the subpanel? That sounds like a really bad idea. I'd place the subpanel as close to the system as possible.

I also agree balanced power benefits are overblown/overhyped and don't meet their ideal noise reduction IRL. However, EMI/RFI filtration is hugely beneficial. I'd consider using a SurgeX breaker box that will have both surge and EMI/RFI features. I've tested my modified SurgeX power distributors in many systems and they always make for an improvement and never restrict dynamics or have any other drawbacks. They were used in rooms that won best of show in cost-no-object category 2 years in a row RMAF + other awards.

 

[Calle_jr]

Here's how I would do it: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?18184-Moment-Of-Truth&p=403778#post403778
I don't want to spam Ron's thread with my images etc, and also, I think it has to be slightly differently made in the US compared to Sweden because of national regulations.

I totally agree with Dave to make the cable from the subpanel as short as possible.
10-15 feet and use 3x7 awg cable. It makes your system less sensitive to thd.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Yes, I'd run only one leg/phase to the audio breaker box.

Are you really going to run 75 ft long circuits from the subpanel? That sounds like a really bad idea. I'd place the subpanel as close to the system as possible.

Dear Dave,

So you are recommending single phase service to the sub panel? Does this remain your advice even though we will be distributing from the subpanel to outlets in the listening room and to outlets in the adjacent equipment room both 120 VAC and 240 VAC?

Since the subpanel can only be in one place, one set of components is going to be 60 to 75 feet away from the subpanel. If I put the subpanel near the front-end components then the amplifier outlets will be 60 to 75 feet away. If I put the subpanel near the amplifier outlets then the front-end components will be 60 to 75 feet away.

The distance is nowhere near that far as the crow flies but the wire does not run like the crow flies. So by the time the wire goes up the wall to the ceiling across the ceiling and down the wall and across and up its 60 to 75 feet. (Those ups and downs and acrosses always seem to be greater in distance when you measure them than they look like they should be!)

 

[Ron Resnick]

Here's how I would do it: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?18184-Moment-Of-Truth&p=403778#post403778
I don't want to spam Ron's thread with my images etc, and also, I think it has to be slightly differently made in the US compared to Sweden because of national regulations.

I totally agree with Dave to make the cable from the subpanel as short as possible.
10-15 feet and use 3x7 awg cable. It makes your system less sensitive to thd.

Power/EMI/RFI filters make me nervous in high-current applications.

 

[DaveC]

Dear Dave,

So you are recommending single phase service to the sub panel? Does this remain your advice even though we will be distributing from the subpanel to outlets in the listening room and to outlets in the adjacent equipment room both 120 VAC and 240 VAC?

Since the subpanel can only be in one place, one set of components is going to be 60 to 75 feet away from the subpanel. If I put the subpanel near the front-end components then the amplifier outlets will be 60 to 75 feet away. If I put the subpanel near the amplifier outlets then the front-end components will be 60 to 75 feet away.

The distance is nowhere near that far as the crow flies but the wire does not run like the crow flies. So by the time the wire goes up the wall to the ceiling across the ceiling and down the wall and across and up its 60 to 75 feet. (Those ups and downs and acrosses always seem to be greater in distance when you measure them than they look like they should be!)

Power/EMI/RFI filters make me nervous in high-current applications.

Here's a simple explanation I wrote about power distribution and why you want all your gear grounded together as closely as possible:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=128309.0

IMO, it's a big problem and a seriously flawed design to require 60-75 ft of wire between source and amps. The noise in your system caused by ground currents is directly proportional to the resistance between components. I'd consider finding a different way to do this as there are no good solutions... The only one I can think of is to run two separate subpanels, one as close to the source components and one as close to the amps as you can get and tie them together with extremely heavy gauge ground wire, although this ground wire may not strictly be to code.

If you need 240V then you need both 120V phases.

SurgeX is used in Carnegie Hall, Yankee Stadium, etc and their filter design will not cause any issues when used with amps, even very large amps. I've heard some power conditioners just suck the life out of the music, not so with SurgeX. Given you need power at two locations it might not be a bad idea to just run a single receptacle in the wall and a distribution block that all the components plug into as described in the link, then you'd be depending on the heavy ground between subpanels to reduce the resistance between amps and sources to a reasonable level, but it's still nowhere near as ideal as all components plugging into the same distribution block. If you want more than one circuit for the amps then you need power distirubtion/surge/filtering for every line which is where a SurgeX wall panel might work out well. For the components you really don't need a subpanel at all as all you need is one circuit. For amps I can't imagine ever needing more than 20 amp service, but it's possible especially with some big HT setups.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Thank you, Dave.

I have equipment in two different rooms because I really like the idea of the turntable being completely out of the line of fire of the speakers.

I would rather have the outlets for the amps close to the subpanel.

I agree I need both phases for 240VAC. Is that called, in electrical parlance, "three phase service"? (Or is there something called "two phase" service?)