Well, since I made a perfectly reasonable post, and he responded out of the blue with a rant, it is hard to take him seriously.
Tweaking spend
- Thread starter Rodney Gold
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Well, since I made a perfectly reasonable post, and he responded out of the blue with a rant, it is hard to take him seriously.
Thanks. I also believe vibration control is another foundation, but we were talking about power. Get the power and vibration under control, and all gear will work at its optimum.
Dude, where are you coming from? You are absotively posalutely 100% correct!!! Only extreme electrical mgmt efforts and ensuing benefits, as excellent as they can be, will pale in comparison to extreme vibration mgmt efforts and ensuing benefits.
This is why I don't hesitate to say all improvements boil down to improved efficiencies (i.e. vibration mgmt) and/or lowered resistance (i.e. electrical mgmt).
FWIW, nearly 65% of my entire system costs are spent just on those two categories.
What is the thing attached to wall?
How much capacitance is across hit to neutral, neutral to ground, and ground to neutral?
Depending on the answers to that you may be causing massive ringing inside certain appliances. It can reduce the current capabilities in some equipment to the point of incorrect operation.
This all came from reading forums, thinking about what I read, and trying things for myself. Before I bought the Pass gear I had a Cambridge Audio preamp, and two CA amps in bridged mono mode. Over time I started experimenting with power cables, and was amazed at the improvement I got from putting Shunyata Venom power cables on my amps. That led to a multi-year upgrade which ended with my sig.
Around the same time, I added some Mapleshade brass footers under the preamp, and since that too improved the sound, I added them everywhere. Then I got rid of the entertainment center I was using for a rack, and replaced it with a 500 pound solid maple rack. Now the system has very little vibration in it, even when I play loud.
It sounds so good now I have not thought of making any changes for at least 3-4 months.
Its going a bit off track here.. but its quite telling that the 2 tweaks being discussed ..power and vibration control are the 2 which I had doubts that they did anything
My power solution has far more to do with bad voltages , brownouts , surges and rolling blackouts .. however it must be said I have nothing at all fancy after the power outlets
and the whole thing has its own DB board....I can't say it improved SQ but certainly improves the rest
As to vibration control..I make isolation tables for a few of my scientific customers .. for laser and probe measuring
I tried to sashay this into a hifi product .. .. have never sold an item despite getting a great review in our local rag ad being stupidly cheap..Its totally a was and dormant but have a look
http://www.u-tunez.co.za
They worked real well with my TT and valves .. but I have tables and my footers under my SS stuff and that makes no audible difference...
they make a huge difference with laser measuring and so on.
My power solution has far more to do with bad voltages , brownouts , surges and rolling blackouts .. however it must be said I have nothing at all fancy after the power outlets
and the whole thing has its own DB board....I can't say it improved SQ but certainly improves the rest
As to vibration control..I make isolation tables for a few of my scientific customers .. for laser and probe measuring
I tried to sashay this into a hifi product .. .. have never sold an item despite getting a great review in our local rag ad being stupidly cheap..Its totally a was and dormant but have a look
http://www.u-tunez.co.za
They worked real well with my TT and valves .. but I have tables and my footers under my SS stuff and that makes no audible difference...
they make a huge difference with laser measuring and so on.
I am concerned about clean power, and, professionally done, it can do no harm. When I moved into my current home (pun, ha ha), I did not even think about it. I just instinctively had 4 new 20A circuits carefully installed to the main panel 30 ft. away. They are all of equal cable length and terminated at adjacent breakers all on the same AC phase. The grounds are connected to adjacent lugs on the ground bus bar. I supervised and inspected this project myself. I use shielded power cords - inexpensive ones by Pangea. I am about 1 mile from the closest power substation. Ear to the speaker, my XLR interconnected system is absolutely dead silent.
I do use a PS Audio Powerplant for everything but my amps and PC. Interestingly, my old Powerplant failed. So, for awhile, I was listening without it. PS offered me their latest P5 at a substantial discount, so I bought it. But, when I got the P5, did it sound at all different vs. straight to the wall? Nope, no difference whatsoever. But, hell, it does not hurt and it provides spike protection and 12V trigger remote control turn on for some components. So, it is still there.
Aha, you might say, but if I had only done this or that, Shunyata or whatever, it would have made all the difference. Forgive me, but I have better things to invest my time and money on. I have yet to hear myself any discernible difference made by audiophile power products on my own or any other system. I am not convinced by marketing, such as Shunyata's, or audiophile anecdotes and testimonials. In fact, they raise my skepticism, if anything.
Of course, in my hit-the-lottery home, I would have a balanced power system installed for my music room without even thinking about it. It can't hurt, but I am unlikely to spend any time trying to listen for the sonic difference it makes. I will just do it because the money will not matter and it offers at least a theoretical advantage based on sound technical analysis, even if it makes no discernible sonic difference.
Rodney, your power solution dealing with bad voltages, brownouts, surges, etc, are problems a bit more unique to you and some others. However, those problems are outside of and separate from the universal problem of noisy AC. At least here in the states anyway. AC by its very nature is noisy coming in from the street and it matters not how close the nearest power sub-station is.
Proper electrical management includes a number of sectors of the vineyard, e.g. electricity coming in from the street, speaker cables, ic's, power cables, fuses, inlets, outlets, plugs, breakers, service panels, house wiring, dimmers, appliances, bi-directional noise induced by digital products, along with perhaps a few other items.
By far and away the single greatest improvement one can make toward superior electrical management is superior AC filtering / line conditioning. The problem with superior line conditioners, perhaps far more than any other product type, is that finding a brand that actually works is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Most line conditioners simply are not worth owning in that they do nothing or worse, they induce their own sonic harm. I speculate there are only a handful of manufacturers who produce superior line conditioners actually worth owning. In my case, I've used various versions of Foundation Research's line conditioners since 2001. These are small, dedicated, passive, and bi-directional filtering. Moreover, they actually cleanse/purify the noisy AC coming in from the street.
It's usually best is to steer clear from the mainstream brand names as these are the ones that seem to actually induce their own sonic harm on the untrained ear. For example, I've been in a friend's home who owned about $5000 worth of line conditioners (brand name mentioned elsewhere in this thread) where after about 10-15 minutes I couldn't take it any more and asked if we could try just plugging the gear straight into the wall (and by-pass the popular name brand line conditioners). We both noticed a significant difference. Went home and brought back my FR line conditioners and noticed an improvement and my friend bought 3 or 4 FR LC's shortly thereafter and sold the crappy one's that were actually inducing harm into the presentation.
As for proper vibration management or superior / extreme forms of vibration control, I'm gonna take a pass on delving into this topic for my own sanity since people are all over the map on this most basic energy / topic.
But let me say this about both proper electrical mgmt and proper vibration mgmt:
My position is that electrical and mechanical (vibrational) energies are a basic requirement for any playback system to function at all. Yet when under controlled or under managed, these same two energies will utterly cripple our sensitive components’ precision and accuracy so that they can only perform at a small percentage of their real potential. Thus leaving a majority of the music information embedded in a given recording (regardless of format) so distorted that even though processed, it remained inaudible due to a much raised noise floor. A performance-limiting governor if you will. And just as in perhaps every other industry, it is the foundation that ultimately determines the performance levels of everything built on top of it.
Looking at managing these two energies from another perspective, think of your playback system as a vineyard where every component has its place or area of responsibility within the vineyard and with little or no potential overlap into other parts of the vineyard. That is except for electrical mgmt and vibration mgmt which actually spans perhaps the entire vineyard. So if chance one were to stumble upon a superior electrical mgmt strategy and/or a superior vibration mgmt strategy, the entire vineyard is impacted, not just one area. In other words, the performance gains can become so great that it's as though every component in the playback system has just received a significant upgrade, not just one component.
Regardless, I hope it becomes a bit more obvious why at least theoretically, proper electrical and proper vibration mgmt could and should be considered foundational to every last playback system. Because they are. Just like every last architectural building structure is built on a foundation, whether inferior or superior and ultimately it is the quality of the foundation that determines the performance of whatever is built on top of it.
And since electricity and vibration span the entire vineyard and thus potentially impact the entire vineyard, it stands to reason that electrical mgmt and vibration mgmt are the foundation for which every last system is built. Whether inferior or superior.
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There is no capacitance across "hit" to ground.
I don't have any appliances in my listening room.
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You don't have amplifiers, DAC's, CD players, streamers, preamps, etc?
That's good there is not capacitance hot to ground. But depending on how much you have from hot to neutral you might be stressing, say, a DAC or such.
That's good there is not capacitance hot to ground. But depending on how much you have from hot to neutral you might be stressing, say, a DAC or such.
Well to some extent my electricity solution did dictate my equipment choices .. considering I only have 5kw on tap .. I chose to use class D amps in my subs (most are anyway) and use a Devialet...
Looking at the big krells etc.. they would have sapped the PS
Looking at the big krells etc.. they would have sapped the PS
That is an interesting scenario to have. How was your sound before the 5kw setup was put in?
(btw for Dan it's not a question of power consumption, that I'm bugging him about, at least not how you'd usually think of it)
It depends which way(s) you go as usually you have a number of optional configurations. But once purchased, if it ain't a superior configuration, some people may be strapped with owing it for a time having to dealing with its potential shortcomings for that duration.
Class D amps are the only way to go for me right now. They in particular can be extremely receptive to superior electrical and/or vibrational mgmt.
One of my Foundation Research line conditioners is the LC-100. It is supposedly designed to literally handle 100 amp current capable amplifiers. e.g. the biggest amps in the world, put 2 LC-100 at your 200 amp service panel and supposedly condition the entire house' noisy AC, etc.
Well, Im not really sure how my sound was before .. I had purchased the G1's and the devialet before I did the 5kw power inverter thing..but I also rebuilt my whole room at the same time with extensive treatment and remodeling.
The 4 subs were added recently.
I would have gone for the devialet regardless of all that , It sounds amazing and has all the I/o and configurability I wanted .. and I got it at an amazing price ($5k)
By far the biggest bang for the buck in terms of equipment and its ability to tweak the sound has to be my miniDSP dirac box at $900
The room treatment comes a close 2nd
The improvement in sound from my old setup to the new is astounding.
All the rest of the tweaks have much smaller effects barring one which I didnt think would matter much and that is using AES/EBU vs SPDIF as input to the Devialet
ABing the 2 gave me unexpected results , instantly identifiable
I used many different type of cable and all had the same difference in terms of which input was better (AES/EBU)
Either its a devialet thing or its the dirac box which is influencing it ..I doubt its actually the cable itself
SPDIF has much less decay , less depth in bass , is far more "shrill" and a different mid presentation than the more relaxed and natural sounding AES.. and its not a small difference.
Who knows?
The 4 subs were added recently.
I would have gone for the devialet regardless of all that , It sounds amazing and has all the I/o and configurability I wanted .. and I got it at an amazing price ($5k)
By far the biggest bang for the buck in terms of equipment and its ability to tweak the sound has to be my miniDSP dirac box at $900
The room treatment comes a close 2nd
The improvement in sound from my old setup to the new is astounding.
All the rest of the tweaks have much smaller effects barring one which I didnt think would matter much and that is using AES/EBU vs SPDIF as input to the Devialet
ABing the 2 gave me unexpected results , instantly identifiable
I used many different type of cable and all had the same difference in terms of which input was better (AES/EBU)
Either its a devialet thing or its the dirac box which is influencing it ..I doubt its actually the cable itself
SPDIF has much less decay , less depth in bass , is far more "shrill" and a different mid presentation than the more relaxed and natural sounding AES.. and its not a small difference.
Who knows?
I might as well toss my hat into the ring here since only 35% of my entire system's costs are dedicated to components and speakers.
Electrical Energy Mgmt:
o All cables cryo-ed.
o Superior passive, dedicated, bi-direcitonal filtering line conditioners for each component.
o 4 dedicated circuits / lines
o 4 circuits wired on same phase/leg at service panel
o 4 dedicated lines double-cryo'ed via inferior vapor method.
o All fuses, plugs, connectors, inlets, and outlets cryo'ed.
o All items cryo'ed via the superior full immersion method unless otherwise noted.
Mechanical Energy Mgmt:
o Components mounted to custom rack employing most extreme form of vibration mgmt I'm aware of.
o Line conditioners mounted to another custom mini-rack employing most extreme form of vibration mgmt I'm aware of.
o Speaker cables mounted via custom cable elevators to minimize their ability to vibration when current is passing thru.
General Philosophies, Mindsets, Strategies, etc:
o Simple as possible but no simpler / Lest is more - 2 component system - 3 components if I count both mono-block amps. This implies fewer components and chassis' having to deal with noisy AC and trapped mechanical vibrations via air-borne and internally-generated vibrations.
o Focus time and attention on speaker placement.
o Since "high-end" audio was intended to be a performance-oriented industry, as a "high-end" audio enthusiast I should develop a pedal-to-the-metal, balls-to-the-walls mindset. Perhaps just like Top Fuel drag racing where the horsepower is so off the charts nobody really knows for sure how much horsepower they generate.
o Extreme results can only occur from extreme efforts, never by token or half-assed efforts.
o Always focus on improving efficiencies and lowering resistance. Which I suspect every last distinct audible improvement will fall into one of these 2 categories.
Why such focus on electrical and mechanical energy? My position is that electrical and mechanical (vibrational) energies are a basic requirement for any playback system to function at all, much less function well. And yet when under controlled or poorly managed, these same two energies will utterly destroy our sensitive components’ precision and accuracy so that they can only perform at a small percentage of their real potential. Thus leaving a majority of the music information embedded in a given recording (regardless of format) so distorted that even though processed, it remained inaudible due to a much raised noise floor. A severe performance-limiting governor if you will. And just as in perhaps every other industry, it is the foundation that ultimately determines the performance levels of everything built on top of it.
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