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

[Lagonda]

Although I understand the message, I think we should reserve the word "equalizer" to devices that change in a measurable way the frequency response. IMHO cables do not act as equalizers and no equalizer can reproduce the action of a cable in a system - they act in very different ways.
The same for room acoustics.

Curiously my system is using all Mogami signal cabling for today - 2791 and 3103. What types are you using now?

Well maybe "sound signature adjustment" instead of equalization ? As far as i know the different treble, midrange and bass adjustment on my speakers are done by leading the signal trough 3 different type cable paths with a jumper.

 

[leyenda]

I have tried a whole lot of mogami cables. For single end connection, I like 2803 and 2497. 2549 is quite far behind in my experience. While not perfect, 2803 and 2497 are very acceptable (tried double run of 2803, which did not work out as well as a normal single run of 2803 so I rest my case). For balance connection, I have yet to find a promising solution from Mogami - tried 2534 and even a double run of 2803 connected as balanced, both of which did not work out as well as a basic Cardas (Crosslink?). I prefer Canare to Mogami for balanced application. For speaker connection (cones) I like 2804 the most. It bettered 3103 and some other models (model numbers escape from my memory). If you use electrostatic speakers, Mogami coax (again the model number escapes my memory) is the best speaker cable have tried, and I have tried a lot. As the Mogami is inexpensive compared to other “audiophile” cables, you can buy the whole range and see what works in your system. Over the years I have tried the whole range with many systems and the conclusion has been the same. Would be interested to hear others’ findings as well.

 

[Lagonda]

I have tried a whole lot of mogami cables. For single end connection, I like 2803 and 2497. 2549 is quite far behind in my experience. While not perfect, 2803 and 2497 are very acceptable (tried double run of 2803, which did not work out as well as a normal single run of 2803 so I rest my case). For balance connection, I have yet to find a promising solution from Mogami - tried 2534 and even a double run of 2803 connected as balanced, both of which did not work out as well as a basic Cardas (Crosslink?). I prefer Canare to Mogami for balanced application. For speaker connection (cones) I like 2804 the most. It bettered 3103 and some other models (model numbers escape from my memory). If you use electrostatic speakers, Mogami coax (again the model number escapes my memory) is the best speaker cable have tried, and I have tried a lot. As the Mogami is inexpensive compared to other “audiophile” cables, you can buy the whole range and see what works in your system. Over the years I have tried the whole range with many systems and the conclusion has been the same. Would be interested to hear others’ findings as well.

What equipment are you using ?

 

[Ron Resnick]

Well maybe "sound signature adjustment" instead of equalization ? As far as i know the different treble, midrange and bass adjustment on my speakers are done by leading the signal trough 3 different type cable paths with a jumper.

Yes, I am familiar with this. I spent several hours during each of two visits to an acquaintance of mine listening to MBL 101E Mk. IIs and all Aesthetix electronics.

Unfortunately, the owner was unwilling to allow me to experiment with those different cable paths to see how they affect the sound. (Maybe the tool chest of soldering irons, mallets and pruning shears I arrived with made him nervous?)

I certainly find that wire selection facility to be a very curious tone control!

Can you hear clear differences among the three options?

 

[Lagonda]

Yes, I am familiar with this. I spent several hours during each of two visits to an acquaintance of mine listening to MBL 101E Mk. IIs and all Aesthetix electronics.

Unfortunately, the owner was unwilling to allow me to experiment with those different cable paths to see how they affect the sound. I certainly find it to be a very curious tone control.

Can you hear clear differences among the three options?

Definitely, it is like changing cables, i personal prefer the neutral setting, witch apparently is done with stranded copper. I think the high treble settings is with silver, and the darker more rounded bass settings are done with solid core copper. Don't kill me if i am wrong , it's been many years since i read the manual It is a curious tone control, but simple and effective.
P.S I must have read it in a review, this is what the manual says :

 

[Ron Resnick]

I listened last night on YouTube to some covers by a Dutch singer. (No, I do not like listening to songs on YouTube.) I kept thinking how amazing the voice would sound on ribbon speakers (on Pendragon or Genesis Prime or Alsyvox or Magnepan or Analysis Audio, etc.).

It is a controversial hypothesis, but I continue to believe there is a statistically significant correlation between musical genre preference and loudspeaker preference. Peter A is skeptical, but this line of thinking is something I will continue to pursue. I like boy with guitar and girl with guitar vocals best on planars.

 

[PeterA]

Ron, I only expressed skepticism to you because there are many examples of people who prefer a type of speaker/amp over others and the reason that it is for genre is really expressed as such.

much more common in my experience is people expressing preferences because of the sound of the speaker typology or room considerations etc.

I understand they are not mutually exclusive.

 

[PeterA]

Ron, I will also make the observation that you really like the Wilson XVX as well as the Tannoy Westministers And might even prefer them on your chosen genre of girl with guitar over some of those other planer speakers you listed. I don’t know if you would, but if you did what would that tell you? Perhaps implementation is more important than typology for genre. There are surely exceptions to the rules.

 

[leyenda]

What equipment are you using ?

Keeping Mogami at the center, rotating gears around them throughout the years were: speakers - esl57, innersound 3.5, goodmans axiom, magico, wilson, sf, yamaha, vandersteen. amps/preamp - custom all jfets, cat, airtight, shindo, ml, arc, sanders, luxman, pbn. Basically throughout my audio journey I keep a bunch of Mogamis as a benchmark to keep me sane when I try high dollar cables. Much more expensive kimber, purist, transparent, nordost etc come and go but the Mogamis stay. I should add that i may have price prejudice - i tend to like much cheaper stuff =) the only “high end” cable i have in my system is the transparent reference digital - the factory terminated 75ohm mogami is not bad, but the transparent makes digital sound less digital. I apologize @Ron for this long talk in your system thread and shall stop talking Mogami now. For long xlr connection, i would add canare to the mix and see how it compares. They go for little dollar as well, paired with most basic neutrik connector.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Thank you for explaining. What equipment are you using now in your current system?

 

[leyenda]

Thank you for explaining. What equipment are you using now in your current system?

Currently, stat: esl57 with vintage luxman/sanders magtech. Full range: goodmans w 2a3/45 amp. Dynamic: vandersteen 7 with pbn amp.

 

[tima]

Careful Lagonda about using that word "fancy" to describe anything in this hobby. I was reprimanded quite harshly for my use of that term to describe cables and connectors.

No Peter, the problem was not the word, it was the context. And my sincere apologies if you considered my past comment as an harsh reprimand - I considered it a "natural" comment in a forum discussion where people have different opinions.

Folks this schtick is legendary. Just a few of many examples:

If I were a dealer, I would not sell fancy audiophile cables.

Fransisco, do you consider acoustic room treatments, fancy power cords, and isolation devices to be tweaks?

You insist on calling "fancy" power cables to engineered power cables developed by experts who spent a lifetime developing them - we have some of them in this forum and I use such types of cable. I can't see a sign of an open mind on such nomenclature.

No worries, Fransisco, I am not easily stressed out. Here is a quote from later in the same post in which I must have forgotten to use the word "fancy". I'll try to describe them as audiophile power cords, or similar, in the future.

I once made the mistake of referring to such cables and cords as "fancy".

Once, Peter? As far as I remember it is your favorite epithet for audiophiles cables ...

If you want to call stock power cords or even industrial grade inexpensive Chinese Ching Cheng power cords, tweaks, that is fine. I do think of them as a kind of baseline specifically because the seem to do less harm than the fancy cords I tried in my system.

I replaced all transparent cabling and power cords. I replaced my fancy phono cable with the stock SME phono cable.

A less serious question is whether or not exchanging my KL Audio Ultrasonic cleaner's stock power cord with a fancy audiophile brand will change the frequencies of the cleaning machine and improve performance.

I am open minded and did try three different fancy power cords and lived with one of them for years. They all imparted the same coloration.

My speaker cables are four strands of NOS Western Electric 10 AWG copper in a proprietary weave with non-fancy spade connectors. They do not seem nearly as colored as other speaker cables I have tried in my system.

What I can say is that my system, like David's, is not about accessories, fancy cables and cords, audiophile room treatments.

Al, this made me chuckle because I was criticized for daring to use that very word, "FANCY", to describe very nice, expensive connectors and other aspects of some audiophile power cords. I think some found the word offensive. I explained my use of the term in another thread somewhere on WBF. It's funny that Mike Moffat, or whoever wrote that Schiit Yggdrasil DAC manual, used the very same term, probably for the same reasons

Given their effect in my system, I started researching Vibraplane platforms and started talking to a guy on Audiogon about how he had one under his fancy Micro Seiki turntable [!!!] and another two under his heavy Lamm mono block tube amps

 

[Folsom]

Damn, Tima....

 

[Lagonda]

Folks this schtick is legendary. Just a few of many examples:

Well done Sir, you have almost put together a cartoon, now we only need matchstick men, drawn In SouthPark manner..Don't forget foreigners are drawn with a loose head ! Or maybe that is only Canadians ?

 

[PeterA]

Good one Tim! If I could grant you and Fransisco tenure, I surely would. Ron will not likely mind reading on his room/system thread that I don’t consider his Mogami cables to be fancy.

I know you study how other people use language to describe some audiophile accessories. You should now present a montage of my use of the term “natural” to describe the sound of some systems. Not unlike microstrip, there is a member here who is just as possessed by my use of that term.

Despite the efforts of a few, it seems many still prefer to use HP’s glossary of audiophile terms: perhaps a topic for its own thread.

 

[tima]

Good one Tim! If I could grant you and Fransisco tenure, I surely would. Ron will not likely mind reading on his room/system thread that I don’t consider his Mogami cables to be fancy.

I know you study how other people use language to describe some audiophile accessories. You should now present a montage of my use of the term “natural” to describe the sound of some systems. Not unlike microstrip, there is a member here who is just as possessed by my use of that term.

Despite the efforts of a few, it seems many still prefer to use HP’s glossary of audiophile terms: perhaps a topic for its own thread.

:--)

The more 'fancy' quotes I looked at the more I became convinced that your later use of the word was pointed and not by accident, and ultimately I concluded it was all high humor. Fancy that!

Several people use 'natural'. Those possessed (or is it dispossessed) by use of the term are perhaps more irked by having been led down a path towards something which is not that. And we see no advocacy for 'not that' has risen, just irkedness, although a small handful (no names) in the face of au natural simply don't give a .... I kinda admire them for at least standing up for not that despite myself being an advocate for the sound of live music as my own reference.

HP's vocabulary and its relative acceptance is/was, imo, a function of his primary tenet that we should use our ears rather than measurements for gauging stereos and components. (David somewhat disagrees with me on this.) HP's vocabulary developed from his attempt to phenomenologically describe what he heard and it became more of an on-going dialog with readers rather than being codified as some see it today. I think his acolytes and some who mis-used or over-used his notions did far more damage.

Alas, tenure isn't what is used to be - but thank you!

 

[PeterA]

Tim, I tried to raise my daughters in a way nodding to past traditions and formality. When they were really little, I taught them to curtsey and say thank you when leaving the dinner table, and to always smile and be polite. Manners have always mattered to me. My career oriented wife soon told me I was preparing them for a world that hardly still exists. Curtseying has about as much to do with today's behavior and cultural norms as fancy packaging and expensive finishes on connectors have to do with natural sounding audio systems. Presentation still matters to some, however, and I respect that.

Behavior and decoration are luxuries that demarcate, and they are surely subjective and vary in value. In the end, sonic results leading to emotion are what matter most to me in audio.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Ron, I will also make the observation that you really like the Wilson XVX as well as the Tannoy Westministers And might even prefer them on your chosen genre of girl with guitar over some of those other planer speakers you listed. I don’t know if you would, but if you did what would that tell you? Perhaps implementation is more important than typology for genre. There are surely exceptions to the rules.

All fair points, Peter. For electronics and for sources I feel strongly that implementation trumps theory and that implementation trumps topology.

For loudspeakers I think I feel less strongly that implementation trumps topology, meaning that I think, for example, that the sonic presentation of planars in general are more like each other than a particular planar is going to offer the presentation of a particular dynamic driver system.

 

[microstrip]

Folks this schtick is legendary. Just a few of many examples: (...)

Tim,

For me cables are mysterious entities - I can't understand how they work, as we are not able to correlate the tricky objective aspects with the subjective. I have great admiration for people who are able to control sound properties in an accurate and predictable way just manipulating materials and form. We are fortunate to have great designers and manufacturers in this forum - and some times they have provided us with great information concerning their products. I do not see systematically addressing their best works as "fancy "as a good way of creating enlightening and interesting discussions. As I often say I am more interested in why it is the best than in what is the best.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Dear Francisco,

I'm truly a little puzzled why you find the adjective "fancy" inappropriate. I use the word, and my grandmother used to use the word, and I believe Peter uses the word, as a single word summary simply to distinguish common/simpler/inexpensive from uncommon/exotic/expensive.