Visit to Marc C.'s (SpiritOfMusic's) House in England

[Mike Lavigne]

Given the same medium or large rec room in the suburbs for the typical American audio file, a high-efficiency horn system, and SET amplifiers fit that generalization just as well as monster, solid-state amps, and inefficient tower speakers do. And in such a house, you can work on your power delivery and might not need the Shunyata filters that Rex describes he sees in many places.

the odds of throwing a horn into a room and coming up anywhere close to aces, compared to the soft landing of more plug and play options, make this not real world for typical dealers. lots of ways to cut this, of course.

SET's, tube rolling, as mainstream? would be chaos.

and integrating lower/lowest octaves with horns is challenging. beyond most dealers.

the right horn, the right dealer....sure. as the typical experience? unlikely. horns and SET's are an end game for the seasoned person.

 

[PeterA]

the odds of throwing a horn into a room and coming up anywhere close to aces, compared to the soft landing of more plug and play options, make this not real world for typical dealers. lots of ways to cut this, of course.

SET's, tube rolling, as mainstream? would be chaos.

and integrating lower/lowest octaves with horns is challenging. beyond most dealers.

the right horn, the right dealer....sure. as the typical experience? unlikely. horns and SET's are an end game for the seasoned person.

Mike, I thought you were making the argument that the typical American suburban rec room audio file condition lends itself to monster, solid state amps and large inefficient speaker towers. Now you’re changing the argument about what dealers are able to do and the difficulty of integrating subwoofers.

To your first argument, I suggest that horns or efficient speakers and low watt tube amps or low watt solid-state amps work fine in typical suburban American rec room audio file condition. Your argument seemed to be telling us that the American condition leads to the big amps and inefficient towers. If you say that typical dealers in America sell only that type of gear, that might be a stronger argument, but I don’t think that is even the case. It gets the attention because it’s expensive and the big companies advertise a lot. It might be changing a bit.

 

[bonzo75]

i think the generalizations about system 'heft' has more to do with living density/economics and home and room size than location/country/hemisphere. USA audiophiles tend to live in houses in suburbs, with rec rooms over multiple car garages or basements, more than Europe or Asia. and to 'some' degree have more disposable income, and have less time off and retire later.....maybe have/had a home theater.....and stay at home for off time.

there are many exceptions to the generalization....but certainly many more that do fit.

maybe new generations in the USA might have a slightly different circumstance.....yet to play out.

hifi dealers and manufacturers tend to cater to their customer situation with products that fit (fill the space/budget).

The Asian billionaires have vintage horns, starting with WEs. So I don't think it is a size and disposable income issue. On this forum, the guys with big budgets had non-horns till Tango, General, David, Stephane (Euronor and top of the line Kondo with Continuum), Audioquattr (Cessaro Zeta), came along. Unfortunately, a wrong reason for people to sit up and take notice of horns.

Guys (Guy?) who have (has?) heard expensive set ups and likes to play likes dual FLH horns on all out budgets, and below that, Devore Orangutan O96, Audionec EVO2, hORNs Universum.

It is about getting analog recordings through, rather than mating boom boom speakers with bam bam amps. The loudness, dynamic swings, and headrooms come from low watt amps with simple circuits driving easy to drive high sensitivity speakers. The soundstage comes from the record.

Hifi dealers and manufactures drive the demand, this a push industry, not pull. They sell what has high margins, can look good, is easy to fit in, and their demo tracks and testing caters to an audiophile community that I keep going away from.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Mike, I thought you were making the argument that the typical American suburban rec room audio file condition lends itself to monster, solid state amps and large inefficient speaker towers.

true. although i don't subscribe to the terms you use. but a case can be made.

Now you’re changing the argument about what dealers are able to do in the difficulty of integrating subwoofers.

so you select one point of the three or four i made. it's not one thing, it's a bunch of things. bass integration and extension is one of them. very low floor/high ceiling of performance is another......when they are bad they are unlistenable. tube amplification and tube rolling is another. overall set-up challenges is another. and no products until recently in dealers hands is another. so no market penetration and upgrade opportunities to fuel higher usage.

lots of hifi dealers here were big with home theater. so their product lines tended to cross over between those two uses. which fit larger amps, dynamic box speakers in larger spaces.

To your first argument, I suggest that horns or efficient speakers and low watt tube amps or low watt solid-state amps work fine in typical suburban American rec room audio file condition. Your argument seemed to be telling us that the American condition leads to the big amps and inefficient towers. If you say that typical dealers in America sell only that type of gear, that might be a stronger argument, but I don’t think that is even the case. It gets the attention because it’s expensive and the big companies advertise a lot. It might be changing a bit.

they have their foot in the door. but actual brand new horn speakers sold in the USA are still quite a small piece of the pie. few at brick and mortar dealers. it's more variations of DYI and vintage where the energy is.....pulling variations of new horn speakers and SET's along. it will be a long road to go to get much share.

if today we could re-boot the last 50 years in the USA for home music reproduction and had an array of horns with SET's and also large amps and dynamic box speakers i'm not sure how it might go. probably the path of least resistance. where could a sustainable business case happen. unlikely with horns.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Hifi dealers and manufactures drive the demand, this a push industry, not pull. They sell what has high margins, can look good, is easy to fit in, and their demo tracks and testing caters to an audiophile community that I keep going away from.

hifi dealers ride waves, they don't create waves. too risky to try and change the market when you have to pay the bills.

outside product buzz can drive demand, which might be anything. then dealers might jump on. so manufacturers can effect that. but hifi dealers are scaredy-cats to take risks on big changes not knowing the result. horns and SET's are in that category. it's something unknown.

 

[DaveC]

Thanks for the input. I've gone with six lines and not sure if I have the willpower to strip five out at this late stage.

Never said anything about removing lines, you simply don't need to use them.

I like multiple circuits. Amps of any size seriously distort the sine wave. Its the caps in the power supply demand power NOW, then slam shut when full. Easy to see on a scope. They drag down the leading edge of the sine wave when transients hit. You want as much metal as possible to reduce reactions between front end gear and amps. Thats the bus in the panel. #10 branch wire or 2/0 bus.

And there is 0 difference between a star distributed power strip and star distribution in a panel. People F their panels up all the time. And mistakes in a loadcenter with Aluminum neutrals and grounds only exacerbate the issue. And a screw tbrough the neutral into the can to bond the ground bar to the neutral bar through a steel enclosure is such a joke. But its the NEC way.

I agree with most else that Dave says. I hear a lot of people like the Rhodium NCF. I have noticed Rhodium hardly tarnishes at all. Its a horrible conductor. Not sure why people say its so good. I have one I have not installed yet. I still use Hubbell 5362 cryo treated. Also had a oyaide for a while. It was a little less of something annoying than the Hubbell.

How does running multiple lines mitigate what you think an amp does to the AC power? Multiple lines are not necessarily isolated from one another. If multiple lines are being fed by the same phase then the only "isolation" is the resistance of the wires and breaker in between the lines, which is negligible. If this is such a big issue then you need a separate phase just for amps, but this will lead to issues as all phases will not have exactly the same ground potential, which will cause noise.

Further, code doesn't allow for combining grounds of different lines/circuits outside the service entrance. So if you DO run multiple lines you must plug a distributor into each line and then use a heavy gauge ground strap to connect the distributors together. Othwewise, you need a subpanel just for the audio system placed as close to the audio system as possible, and by adding a whole nother panel and breakers, you're adding complexity and expense and potantially making the sound worse vs running one simple line from the service entrance to the one receptacle near the audio system that has one distributor plugged into it. Simpler is better unless you really need the complexity to achieve a goal. For a simple 2ch audio system there is no need. For a big HT system, sure, you need the capacity to run a ton of high powered amps.

There certainly is a difference between grounding at a panel vs at a distributor, and the longer the distance in between the distributor and audio system subpanel or service entrance, the larger the difference. Noise voltage is directly dependent on resistance by ohm's law, V=IR. You want your grond connection to be as low in resistance as possible, that's why some people and almost all recording studios use heavy gauge grounding or even a copper buss bar to ground their equipment. This is especially true in a single ended system where components IEC inlet grounds are not isolated from chassis/signal grounds.

Bottom line, lower ground resistance is better than higher and you can achieve that while avoiding other potential issues by not going nuts with running multiple lines in a a system that doesn't draw much power.

 

[PeterA]

The Asian billionaires have vintage horns, starting with WEs. So I don't think it is a size and disposable income issue. On this forum, the guys with big budgets had non-horns till Tango, General, David, Stephane (Euronor and top of the line Kondo with Continuum), Audioquattr (Cessaro Zeta), came along. Unfortunately, a wrong reason for people to sit up and take notice of horns.

Bonzo, and all this time I thought you were the influence.

 

[bonzo75]

Bonzo, and all this time I thought you were the influence.

Only for Ron, Mike, Al M, Marty, and Lagonda and micro

 

[PeterA]

Only for Ron, Mike, Al M, Marty, and Lagonda and micro

yeah, I heard that a bunch of them are driving up the prices of altecs.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Mike, I thought you were making the argument that the typical American suburban rec room audio file condition lends itself to monster, solid state amps and large inefficient speaker towers. Now you’re changing the argument about what dealers are able to do and the difficulty of integrating subwoofers.

To your first argument, I suggest that horns or efficient speakers and low watt tube amps or low watt solid-state amps work fine in typical suburban American rec room audio file condition. Your argument seemed to be telling us that the American condition leads to the big amps and inefficient towers. If you say that typical dealers in America sell only that type of gear, that might be a stronger argument, but I don’t think that is even the case. It gets the attention because it’s expensive and the big companies advertise a lot. It might be changing a bit.

Big speakers being driven by bigger amps also fits the psychology of the post war western world especially the 60’s and through the 70’s and onwards… without even exploring the sonic differences but from a purely muscular visual perspective the answer was big cubic capacity, right back then we were being marketed with muscle cars and muscle amps and it’s easy well developed sexy marketing… it’s just downright sexier traditionally to sell on cubic capacity and big numbers.

Interesting to see the rise of the new mega amp boxes like the super big Piliums and Gryphon amps or see an amada of the ch precision super large boxes… the latest big electronics often now even visually outscale many of their system speakers. Either way it’s all a very different psychology to high efficiency being driven by a few watts.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Never said anything about removing lines, you simply don't need to use them.

You wouldn't even suggest two lines, one for analog, one for digital?
One thing I did learn from my Entreq period is that my CDP really did seem to benefit from being grounded separately from the analog (ie rest of system).
Or more accurately, my analog benefitted by being kept seperate.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Big speakers being driven by bigger amps also fits the psychology of the post war western world especially the 60’s and through the 70’s and onwards… without even exploring the sonic differences but from a purely muscular visual perspective the answer was big cubic capacity, right back then we were being marketed with muscle cars and muscle amps and it’s easy well developed sexy marketing… it’s just downright sexier traditionally to sell on cubic capacity and big numbers.

Interesting to see the rise of the new mega amp boxes like the super big Piliums and Gryphon amps or see an amada of the ch precision super large boxes… the latest big electronics often now even visually outscale many of their system speakers. Either way it’s all a very different psychology to high efficiency being driven by a few watts.

The women were, um, bigger too.

 

[Lagonda]

the odds of throwing a horn into a room and coming up anywhere close to aces, compared to the soft landing of more plug and play options, make this not real world for typical dealers. lots of ways to cut this, of course.

SET's, tube rolling, as mainstream? would be chaos.

and integrating lower/lowest octaves with horns is challenging. beyond most dealers.

the right horn, the right dealer....sure. as the typical experience? unlikely. horns and SET's are an end game for the seasoned person.

And don't forget WAF, most horns are butt ugly and people just don't want them in their living rooms

 

[bonzo75]

And don't forget WAF, most horns are butt ugly and people just don't want the in their living rooms

Best looking are MBL 101e, like curvy ladies

 

[PeterA]

And don't forget WAF, most horns are butt ugly and people just don't want them in their living rooms

That may be true, so some people opt for folding changing screen panels in their living rooms.

These horns look like a lifestyle brand.

 

[spiritofmusic]

How is all of this relevant to what I've been discussing?
There are plenty of other threads to roll out the horns versus the rest "dialogue".

 

[andromedaaudio]

How is all of this relevant to what I've been discussing?
There are plenty of other threads to roll out the horns versus the rest "dialogue".

Its a bit like spreading the gospel .
Everybody needs to be saved whether they want it or not

 

[DaveC]

You wouldn't even suggest two lines, one for analog, one for digital?
One thing I did learn from my Entreq period is that my CDP really did seem to benefit from being grounded separately from the analog (ie rest of system).
Or more accurately, my analog benefitted by being kept seperate.

Sounds like your CDP may be noisy, which isn't unusual. Regulations limit noise, maybe not enough for a high end audio system. Your cdp may benefit from a Furutech in-line filter, it may help isolate the cdp too.

In-Line Power Filter | FURUTECH

Rating: AC 125V 15A / AC 250V 10A 50/60Hz

www.furutech.com

But since you do have multiple lines you can always experiment with it. It could be that grounding the cdp at the panel using a separate line might be better if the cdp puts noise on the ground. Many, even most, cdps are double insulated instead of being grounded.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Its a bit like spreading the gospel .
Everybody needs to be saved whether they want it or not

Ah, there is certainly a tendency for horns guys needing to correct the rest of us.
Like all evangelicals, they're never off duty or off message.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Sounds like your CDP may be noisy, which isn't unusual. Regulations limit noise, maybe not enough for a high end audio system. Your cdp may benefit from a Furutech in-line filter, it may help isolate the cdp too.

In-Line Power Filter | FURUTECH

Rating: AC 125V 15A / AC 250V 10A 50/60Hz

www.furutech.com

But since you do have multiple lines you can always experiment with it. It could be that grounding the cdp at the panel using a separate line might be better if the cdp puts noise on the ground. Many, even most, cdps are double insulated instead of being grounded.

Isn't it more the case that digital is inherently dirty, or produces more noise?
What's the one thing about streaming setups that we all know...that they need extraordinary attention to noise management to sound of their best.