psg
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Posts posted by psg
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Where are you getting yours from?
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How thick and how big?
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My bottleneck is room treatments, but it's hard to chose what to get and where to put it.
I am happy with the system, a mix of Heritage and Cinema, THT sub EQ'ed via miniDSP, projector and AT screen in a 18x20' room without windows. But I spent years without a real ceiling, just 6 inches of Roxul between joists and a thin sheet of plastic underneath. It sounded great! Then I put in a ceiling with painted 2x2' tiles and had an echo! It has diminished quite a lot with the addition of the big HT furniture, but I know I need panels on the walls to bring it back.
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Rimouski.
Hey not to far .
Yeah, what's a 6-hour drive between friends, right?
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He was in Montreal; I am pretty sure of that.
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Rimouski.
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Looks great!
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I hope to get to listen to them later on... busy with Sunday housework!
(I also can't access the last page of the other thread, just FYI).
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hmmm....50ft for $19 or $11 doesn't sound like enough cooper thickness when you consider skin effect, distance, and intended frequency coverage...so how many watts of juice are you pumping to the sub.....in simplier terms....if you need a 10 guage extension cord but can only afford a 14 guage one....can we hope that it will perform like a 12 guage one. probally not.
Huh?
This isn't speaker level voltage and current, it's an RCA terminated low-level cable.
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Mark, I will say up front that I do not understand most of the technical aspects of this discussion, nor do I understand the argument you put forward as regards testing methods(AB/X). Hopefully this will not void me from being allowed to ask a question of you. You seem (to me) to dismiss such testing because of the failings of the humans mind, and I get that, you say that you can discern these differences in your own system, and I will take your word on that. Now I hope this isn't to simplistic approach, but if those same cables that you say made an audible difference to you were removed from the system would you immediately realise it, or would it dawn on you only over time? I hope this makes sense to you, not trying to be argumentative, I just had a thought flash through my simple mind and wanted it answered in a simple way, please answer so as this layman can understand, but don't spare on the details. Thanks.
I think it takes a lot of time. And, not just listening while you vacuum the carpets, but deep focused listening in the perfect environment. Which means quiet, rested, relaxed, interested, and so on.
Only gross changes are immediate, and even then you might be surprised at how bad people are at hearing. I don't like to tell too many anecdotes, but since you asked a question where I can use one instructively, I will do do.
We had a big amplifier shoot out a few years ago at a fellows house. He had Khorns. There were maybe 3 pairs of monoblocks to listen to. I had my pCATS, and there were two other brands. It was informal. We played A then B then A and so on. Now, I am VERY familiar with the sound of pCATS. So, we played pCATS then the other amp, then back to pCATS and people were being asked what kind of differences they heard. I let anyone talk who wanted to talk. Most of the comments were a bit vague "I heard better detail" or "Smoother" and so on. When the comments were over, I asked the owner of the house to please check the phase of his Khorns. They were out of phase. Now, because I know the sound of my amps through a deep and long learning curve, it was instantly apparent to me that the speakers were out of phase. And maybe you can say others should have known too, but you know, you're in a group, and there is pressure and so on.
So, phase was corrected, and we proceeded. That's an example of a big difference being instantly identified. But, if someone had swapped out my NOS telefunken in the driver stage and put something else in, I would never catch it in that environment. Never. Later, after putting many of my well known recording on, I would hear something that ought not be there and then go hunting it down.
Listening for small stuff takes time. Improving a system to get clarity and space and effortless sound takes a lot of effort and time.
If I invert phase on one speaker, imaging completely disappears. No imaging at all would be a huge issue and I wouldn't be commenting on better detail or smoother, I'd be asking about the lack of any imaging!
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im aware of that, the big def techs are only temporary,
What big def techs? You mean the speakers dwarfed by the KHorn?
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The wire and other tweaks crowd don't have an exclusive on seeking audio bliss. I resent it when you imply it.
We're not going to agree here. And your resentment mentioned above is sufficient information for me at this point. Resentfulness is not something to be engaged. I like the general argument about wire for it's scientific and it's subjective aspects. Its a fun, fascinating and interesting argument to me. When people say they are resentful however, that's my cue not to engage in argument because the resentment only builds. Thanks for offering your opinion.
I can see that we are not going to agree. You could have stop at that. Invoking my resentment to justify discontinuing the discussion paints me as the bad guy. Not cool, considering what I resented was you mis-appropriating the seeking of good sound for yourself, and painting some of us as merely on an insignificantly quest for flat frequency response. And please don't claim the side of science here as well. As you said in your next post, your criteria are subjective, not objective.
With that, I end my contribution to this thread.
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I began my argument about wire and cable with a simple premise: They can be audible. That's the premise. I have never even hinted that they are my #1 way, or the best way, or the most valuable way to make improvements in sound. Others, like yourself, have created that position as a straw man you can beat away at. It's patently silly, and transparent. Saying that cables can be heard, is not in the least saying it is the most important thing to do.
I don't recall saying that was your position. Your position is that they matter enough to affect the sound and to worry about. Mine is that they don't unless you go too small or too long.
And finally, you claimed above that my expressly stated goal of "creating the fantasy that a 3D space in front of me really has some musicians in it" is a common goal. If so, I haven't heard it expresses in these forums as such. Mostly what I have heard specifically is the desire to "reproduce whatever is on the CD or LP." That's not the same thing.
You say tomato... It doesn't have to be a different thing. The wire and other tweaks crowd don't have an exclusive on seeking audio bliss. I resent it when you imply it.
I don't think I dismissed room treatments at all. I just tried to differentiate their purpose. In my near field listening, I just haven't found room treatment to be as helpful to my goals as other things. [cut]
In my systems I focus on speakers, then phono cartridges, then amplifiers, then turntable, then digital sources, then wires. That's the usual order of things. That's my typical priority.
You don't dismiss room treatments, but they don't appear in your list that goes down to wires.
Is room treatment the most important aspect of near field listening? Not in my years of experience. The speaker and amp is everything (other than sources).
Did I say it was the most important thing to near field listening? Now who is building a strawman... I said I'll bet the room affects what you hear even near-field.. more so than speaker wires anyway. That is where we disagree. The room isn't even on your list.
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If your premise is that 15 feet of speaker wire can alter the sound signal so much from what it should be, then isn't it a lost cause considering the hundreds of feet of ordinary wire the signal had to go through to get recorded? It must be messed up beyond recognition by then.
Consider a commercial CD. Everything that went into making it is unknown to the guy about to put it in his CD player at home. There may be lots of assumptions at how it was made, but that's all. What you are holding is a container with two AC signals encoded. Nothing else.
Now you want to use it to make sound in the room. The sound you end up with, is directly related to the gears you run that signal through. Are you using a
-Small table radio?
-A massive stereo comprised of 6 amplifiers, massive theater sized speakers, computerized equalizers?
-Modest stereo with a $200 receiver?
Whatever system it is, it can be simulated by an equivalent circuit. Every resistance, every capacitance stray or otherwise, every inductance, every reactance and admittance no matter where it is located - even in wires, no matter how small or large, goes into the final sound. The circuit in total begins with the laser and ends with the speaker. Nothing in that chain can be excluded from the equivalent circuit. Everything contributes to the final sound. The reason the sound is different in each of those systems above is because the electrical properties of the things in the circuit are different. There is no other reason. All sonic differences are the result of changing the electrical properties of things in that circuit. Everything in the circuit therefore can alter the sound produced REGARDLESS OF WHAT WENT ON TO MAKE THE CD IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Most people understand then that all parts of the circuit have influence. That's the physics at work. What they argue about are the small influences and whether or not they can hear them or care about them.
"I think the soup has a pinch too much salt!"
"Really? I never noticed."
Yeah well, it's hard for me to apply theory to the reproduction for very short wire lengths and disregard it for the production stage where much longer ones are used.
You end your circuit at the speakers, because that's where the electrical ends. But the sound still needs to reach your ears. Do you care as much care with room acoustics as you do with speaker wire? Do you measure the room and add treatments?
(WARNING: This next part is not directed specifically at you.) I gotta laugh when I see some pictures of people's setup showing off their new speaker $500 wires and the room is an acoustical nightmare. When I point it out, some say that they can change the speaker wire but have whatever room they have and can't change it. When I ask whether the many feet of ordinary wire inside their speakers or inside their components make the few feet of speaker wire irrelevant, they argue the same as you above that they can't change that or the room but can change the speaker wire. It like pretending that changing speaker wire dramatically alters the sound and that all other wires within the gear must be perfect. Except for the interchangeable power cord of course. Swapping that out for a $500 makes all the difference in the world as well in spite of the hundreds of feet of ROMEX in the house that the power had to go through to get to it. They are looking at that piece of cable or speaker wire as significant in the end sound because it's the only thing that they feel that they can change.
Acoustic treatment is a huge variable in the sound of any system. And for some attributes of sound it is the largest variable. For instance, when it comes to the frequency response below 200Hz, treatments will have more effect than anything I can think of. But for me, and I know many others, frequency response per se, is farther down the list of problems than other attributes. One reason for this is that there is not much of a reference for frequency response. If you go to a hall or auditorium, every section you sit in will have a different frequency response. Some seats will have boomy bass, others no bass, some will have exaggerated upper midrange, or dips in the midrange. But none of that usually ruins the experience of the performance. I've never left the symphony hall and remarked, "Gee, the bass was a little thin at my seat."
I said earlier to Don (I think) not to look to wires to do anything about peaks and valleys. That's not the dimension they influence. And, that's not the reason most people prefer wire A over B. It's because of those other dimensions, like spatial location and clarity.
I'm a near field listener. I arrange the speakers and sitting position to produce a reasonable FR. I am not in the least concerned with the sound anywhere but where I sit. I am not trying to create a good sonic hall for many listeners, or because I want to walk around and listen. So, my style of listening doesn't require too much room treatment. BUT, I can see how that might be important to others.
Again, we come back to listening objectives. I wonder if everyone realizes how different these objectives can be? We all start talking about this amp and that player, and this wire and that speaker, but we don't often declare our listening style and purpose. Mine is always to create the fantasy that a 3D space in front of me really has some musicians in it. And that illusion doesn't need a flat FR, to name one example. If we begin talking, and you don't know my purpose, and I don't know yours, you can see how we are at cross purposes, right?
Sure the room affects FR, but it affects much more that affects how the sound sounds. The third dimension of time is super important: Echos and reverberation at various frequencies. I'll bet the room affects what you hear even near-field.
Dismissing room treatments as some simple flat frequency-response chase, as opposed to your chasing the fantasy that a 3D space in front of me really has some musicians in it is not fair. I think that creating the fantasy that a 3D space in front of me really has some musicians in it is a common goal, and is better achieved through room treatment than speaker wires.
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This linked document from Rane was brought up on another forum. I think the author rounded a few corners but he agrees with what I said above in the end:
http://www.adx.co.nz/techinfo/audio/note128.pdf -
If your premise is that 15 feet of speaker wire can alter the sound signal so much from what it should be, then isn't it a lost cause considering the hundreds of feet of ordinary wire the signal had to go through to get recorded? It must be messed up beyond recognition by then.
Consider a commercial CD. Everything that went into making it is unknown to the guy about to put it in his CD player at home. There may be lots of assumptions at how it was made, but that's all. What you are holding is a container with two AC signals encoded. Nothing else.
Now you want to use it to make sound in the room. The sound you end up with, is directly related to the gears you run that signal through. Are you using a
-Small table radio?
-A massive stereo comprised of 6 amplifiers, massive theater sized speakers, computerized equalizers?
-Modest stereo with a $200 receiver?
Whatever system it is, it can be simulated by an equivalent circuit. Every resistance, every capacitance stray or otherwise, every inductance, every reactance and admittance no matter where it is located - even in wires, no matter how small or large, goes into the final sound. The circuit in total begins with the laser and ends with the speaker. Nothing in that chain can be excluded from the equivalent circuit. Everything contributes to the final sound. The reason the sound is different in each of those systems above is because the electrical properties of the things in the circuit are different. There is no other reason. All sonic differences are the result of changing the electrical properties of things in that circuit. Everything in the circuit therefore can alter the sound produced REGARDLESS OF WHAT WENT ON TO MAKE THE CD IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Most people understand then that all parts of the circuit have influence. That's the physics at work. What they argue about are the small influences and whether or not they can hear them or care about them.
"I think the soup has a pinch too much salt!"
"Really? I never noticed."
Yeah well, it's hard for me to apply theory to the reproduction for very short wire lengths and disregard it for the production stage where much longer ones are used.
You end your circuit at the speakers, because that's where the electrical ends. But the sound still needs to reach your ears. Do you care as much care with room acoustics as you do with speaker wire? Do you measure the room and add treatments?
(WARNING: This next part is not directed specifically at you.) I gotta laugh when I see some pictures of people's setup showing off their new speaker $500 wires and the room is an acoustical nightmare. When I point it out, some say that they can change the speaker wire but have whatever room they have and can't change it. When I ask whether the many feet of ordinary wire inside their speakers or inside their components make the few feet of speaker wire irrelevant, they argue the same as you above that they can't change that or the room but can change the speaker wire. It like pretending that changing speaker wire dramatically alters the sound and that all other wires within the gear must be perfect. Except for the interchangeable power cord of course. Swapping that out for a $500 makes all the difference in the world as well in spite of the hundreds of feet of ROMEX in the house that the power had to go through to get to it. They are looking at that piece of cable or speaker wire as significant in the end sound because it's the only thing that they feel that they can change.
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The first problem is that it is being measured through a microphone, when the premise is, what can be heard?
Not an answer to your reply, but what you wrote reminds me that the music we listen to has always been through microphones and hundreds of feet of wires before it even got recorded. How is 15 feet of speaker wire going to undo all that?
I can't say I know exactly what the question means, or how it relates to the quoted sections above the comment. However, my answer is that 15 feet of speaker wire doesn't undo anything. There are no "undo" functions in any stereo systems.
If your premise is that 15 feet of speaker wire can alter the sound signal so much from what it should be, then isn't it a lost cause considering the hundreds of feet of ordinary wire the signal had to go through to get recorded? It must be messed up beyond recognition by then.
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Mark, you mentioned that we can hear only one slice of music at a time, so using our ears and memory to compare different components, recordings, or accessories is a futile effort right from the start. The analogy of looking at slices of two photos was helpful.
However, what about looking at screen shots of the audio waveforms? With two screens, the waveforms of the two items being compared could be seen at once, and you could scroll back and forth until you see every frequency in the particular piece of music.
A really good-sounding system could be used as the reference, and then other setups could be compared with it visually. That way, the deviation from the ideal, or state of the art, system would be easy to spot, even if the reviewer had clogged ears due to a cold.
Has this been tried? If so, did it work or not work, and why? It has certainly been useful in detecting clipping in recordings.
The ability of an amp to reproduce square waves is often seen as a measure of its performance, with higher slew rate and lower incidence of ringing being better. Is this kind of measurement applicable to other audio components? I seem to recall that speakers don't like square waves. Is that correct?
The first problem is that it is being measured through a microphone, when the premise is, what can be heard? There are numerous instrument tests that show differences in measures that don't correlate to what people hear.
Not an answer to your reply, but what you wrote reminds me that the music we listen to has always been through microphones and hundreds of feet of wires before it even got recorded. How is 15 feet of speaker wire going to undo all that?
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I would think that all AVRs had a mode to bypass EQ, bass management and delays, such that they didn't digitize analog inputs. But it's a moot point if you want to use those.
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I would think that 0 warnings means you haven't received any warnings yet. Mine is still at zero.
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I think getting out is a smart move for you, as I can't see that you have added any value.
Now who is taking personal shots! LOL!
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Boy, you are really getting upset. No, writing something under your post doesn't imply you said anything. It's called trying to have a discussion. I'm out.
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I was generalizing to (1) the video (wrt burn-in) and (2) what some speaker wire manufacturers are actually selling, which isn't gauge; it wasn't my intent to put words in your mouth.
So fine, to reply to you specifically: if I can hear the effect of 26 AWG, it doesn't mean that others can hear the difference between a sufficient gauge and an even larger one.
But it doesn't mean they can't, and that's the actual point I am making. The original challenge I gave SkiBum was for illustration purpose only. To demonstrate that without any doubt, wire can make an audible difference, and that furthermore, just about everyone can hear it if the difference is large enough.
If it's large enough, which it at one point it won't.
Some of the claims made by pro-wire people are just wild. Getting way more bass from their speakers for example. If this were the case, it would be trivial to measure with a microphone and REW, but no-one ever has.
Some claims can't be measured, sure, but some could be.
Once, on another forum, someone was recommending spending a $1500 speaker budget on $1000 speakers and $500 wires to get the best out of them, saying there was no point getting better $1480 speakers to run them on $20 wires from monoprice; that was throwing money away.
Let's move past wire gauge. People can also hear large differences in the cables used to connect their turntable to a preamp. These shielded cables can have a very wide value of capacitance. It's quite easy to hear the difference between capacitance values here, and in this case, there is no such idea as "sufficient," because the best sound might come from a high value, a low value, or a medium value of capacitance, depending on the components at either end. Have you heard this effect of wire or not?
I haven't had a turntable for 25 years. Interconnects and wire wire are different animals anyway.
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I was generalizing to (1) the video (wrt burn-in) and (2) what some speaker wire manufacturers are actually selling, which isn't gauge; it wasn't my intent to put words in your mouth.
So fine, to reply to you specifically: if I can hear the effect of 26 AWG, it doesn't mean that others can hear the difference between a sufficient gauge and an even larger one.
What is your HT bottleneck?
in Home Theater
Posted
True enough!
I wonder... since I have all that Roxul up there, would there be any benefit to me replacing some tiles with stretched fabric to let the sound up into the cavity to disperse there?