Prana-Bindu

I've gone from cool to crazy... Never cool, always a newbie. Curiosity: my 100th post identified me as a "member". What's up with that? Heh... heh... I said "member".... ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

JDM: I think what you identified plays a huge role in the perceived difference. There are less cars driving by, birds shut the *&^% up, the AC doesn't kick in as much, neighbors get quieter, and the live-in isn't practicing piano or talking on the phone, or inefficiently supervising her pets! Sorry about the rant.... Someone (other than me) should record background noise levels over a period of a couple of weeks during the day and during the late evening. I wonder what kind of results we'd find.... I assume that the quieter background would contribute to a perceived difference in dynamics and a lot of low-level detail. Did you notice? No longer a "cool newbie".... ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

It is rumored, in the more obscure regions of audiophilia, that a glass of Cabernet, the rug, and the ice cream ARE indeed better at night if dryer, toasty and Persian, and enjoyed with Claudia Schiffer, respectively. mmmmmm... toasty.... ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

Don't forget the invaluable cable stretcher, Ray.... ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

FireWire is still faster than USB 2.0 will be. Why hasn't it made it into mainstream computing? ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

You can purchase bi-wire cable that has two terminals at one end and four at the other. Most cable manufacturers offer this option. Otherwise, will your posts on your amp accept two sets of flat spade terminals? ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

As I understand the matter, the current going into your home is fed interference (radio frequency and electromagnetic?) as it is used by other households. All those appliances (computers, tv's, etc.) apparently feed a lot of interference into the AC dirtying it up quite a bit. At night, the number of appliances being used and simply the amount of electricity being consumed are reduced, making the AC cleaner than during the day. I've noticed this difference myself, and I'm not very pleased about it, as it encourages late-night listening and bad next days at work. My Chang Lightspeed power conditioner brought the daytime sound quality a lot closer to those night-time blooms, but there is still somewhat of a noticeable difference. There are some power conditioners that are supposed to totally fix the problem by converting the AC to DC and the DC back to totally clean AC to go out to the components. These are not cheap, but may be the best purchase you make for your system if your power is particularly dirty. Mmmmmm.... dirty.... If you do a search under "power conditioners" in this BB, you'll find at least one thread that makes many suggestions. ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

Maxg: That is truly disheartening. This digital nonsense is a big enough hassle.... Anyway, I was always under the impression that vinyl was on a quick and certain path towards obsolescence. What will vinyl be able to offer that a recording made at 24-bit/96(or 192)khz and played back with proper jitter correction will offer? Everything I've read indicates that that level of digital resolution is not distinguishable by the human ear from the original analog waveform. Or is it...? ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/flexye.html ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

Soundog: Have you tried the P-1A's speaker correction software? Are your speakers supported yet? I'd really like to try putting one of those things together on my computer, especially since I really don't think "psychoacoustic principles" would make that much of a difference in the interpolation algorithm. The units being interpolated are so small, that a geometric approach seems more than adequate. I found an interpolating application put together by some UC Berkley people. It uses fixed-point processing, and the P-1A is touted to use floating-point processing, but I'm not sure what difference that would make, if any. Time to learn UNIX.... Spider seems to be telling us that the biggest problem of such a project is to eliminate digital jitter. So, Spider, how did you manage to get jitter down so low on your PC's output to your DAC? Is your software that separates that data from the clock information into a I2S signal proprietary? You mentioned that you use FLAC compression prior to conversion. Does that mean that you have to have a full file for your application to convert to I2S, or can you pipe the info in and out as the CD transport plays? I'd hate to have to encode all my music to do this.... There can't be THAT much of a benefit to encoding it, though: isn't the highest level of compression available in a lossless format about 2:1? What degree of compression does FLAC offer? Maybe it would just be easier to purchase the P-1A.... The room correction software will be available in a few months, but a salesdude I e-mailed responded that the $700 add-on would give you three room calculations. That seems a bit greedy. Why not have the room software available for unlimited use? $700 is a pretty big premium for a software license.... The speaker correction software is intriguing, but they currently support a limited number of speakers. Thanks for any help y'all can break off!! ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

Doug: I share your skepticism in the actual savings involved in making the FleXy®. $10 per rod, $15 to have them cut and machined to a point, $30 for the MDF, $30 for rubber washers that fit (!!), and I don't remember how much for paint and nuts/steel washers. This project is taking me a long time. The woodwork took several hours, I'm on my third coat of primer, and I'll probably slap 5 coats of paint by the time it's ready to assemble. Not only that, but I also have to find a way to protect the wooden floors; granite is not cheap.... I also built an audio isolation sandbox some time ago for the CD player, Mace. However, it was mainly to solve a horrible problem with my wooden floors: the CD would skip if I tiptoed 10 feet away. After the sandbox, I can do jumping-jacks right next to the machine and it doesn't miss a beat. The actual sonic benefits of the box, however, were not as drastic. I did notice a slightly tighter sound. Transients were less muddied/smeared, but this very slight improvement may have been due to other tweaks applied at the time. You can check out the design here: http://www.mindspring.com/~prcarter/sandbox.html By the way, dado cuts with a power hand saw are not fun.... And be sure to carefully calibrate whatever tool you use to make the bevel cuts, so you won't have to screw the sides into place like I did. I know that people indeed do use vibration treatment for amps, as well as just about any component in the system. It appears that cones are very popular to isolate amps (SS or tubes), but I don't quite understand the difference between isolation provided by a cushion and that provided by a solid form like cones or graphite blocks, etc. Perhaps someone out there has some experience/knowledge with different kinds of vibration reduction? I think the most important form of vibration control has to be built into an amp; whereas a CD-player has more squirming room. I am under the impression that a particular component in an amp is especially prone to vibrations (power supply?), but the only solution to this is to make it as stiff as possible, instead of absorbing its vibrations. Not sure, still learning.... If you don't want to go through the trouble of building or buying an air/sand isolation unit, try this: place a flat sandbag underneath the cd player and one on top; the sand should take the vibrations in the chassis and magically (friction) turn them into small amounts of heat! If you notice an improvement, let us know. ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

Not just ripped off, Ray, but, as Mr. Twain would likely tell you, powerful ripped off; especially after being convinced out of $230!! I am not as forgiving as you, though. The first part of the quote with which you provided us makes a dubious move: "EMI appears to be the culprit here." Where's the part about WHY EMI is to blame? If I was EMI, I'd be screaming about a little something called Due Process.... Has anyone out there smashed a shakti stone into its secret little pieces? O.K., who'll sacrifice $230 (plus shipping) to backwards-engineer these things? Don't be shy.... While we're on the subject of tweakings, I'll admit to being predesposed to falling for every freaky audio tweak suggested by anyone. I know, it's a sickness -- a disease beyond measure.... As such, I am currently exercising that naiveté by building a TNT FleXy Table®. See http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/flexye.html It's a neat idea, and I have this theory that the location of my television and a large flat section of the table upon which the tele sits are causing somewhat of an emphasis of the right channel. No, I'm not going to go through the trouble of swapping speakers. Yes, I will go through the trouble of building a FleXy Table®. It's not about reason, it's about Snake Oil, brothers and sisters. ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

Holy #%$&!! ... and I thought I was just getting old.... Thanks, Ray! I'll dump the prescription to my little blue friend and immediately put the shakti stones where they belong. $230 dollars for those things?! Geeeeeezzzz!!! Be honest, Ray: have you tried the stones? Did they make a difference? I'm totally curious now (having read their "white paper"), but not $230-curious. Be honest.... ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

Rowoo: Audioquest -- $216 for 6ft pair (not bi-wired) and $272 for an 8ft pair. Well worth it, but it doesn't seem right to pay that much for #@$%ing speaker wire. Let me guess: you got the transparent at Sound Environment? I've heard nothing but wonderful things about Transparent, but I've never had the opportunity to audition in my system. Audioquest's 30-day audition period is a nice deal. Good luck, and welcome to the Snake Oil brotherhood.... ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

Perhaps... But if we did, we smoked the same stuff while A/B-ing the two cable configurations, while sitting in the same spot, wearing the same clothes, and with shakti stones in our pockets. The tricky part is remembering which cable was which and avoiding the dreaded Pink-Floyd-catatonia.... Mmmmmmm.... kind cable.... ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

Generally, for multi-tasking a P-4 would run somewhat faster than the currently available AMD CPU's. Only the P-4 is currently compatible with SSE2 stuff, but, despite that, I believe the AMD CPU is your best choice at this time. RAM is the reason. First of all, the Pentium motherboards are only compatible with Rambus memory (I think -- it's been a while for me); that stuff is expensive and it will likely be punted by Intel in the near future. The AMD motherboards support DDR SDRAM (cheap, fast and with a bright future). Pentium rigs will be going through many severe changes in the near future, so I'd let that settle without getting yourself involved in the obsolescence game. Also, AMD will be coming out with support for SSE in the coming Palomino model. RAM will be more important for performance, anyway; or your hard drive speed if you're doing something memory-intensive (audio, video, graphics editing); of if you enjoy 3D games, your video card will play a bigger role than your CPU (unless you're running below 800mhz). Good luck with your decision. By the way, I also recommend building your own rig. Much cheaper (much) and you can limit your budget on components unimportant to your regular computing and use most of it for the components that are relevant to your use. Don't worry: no soldering involved, just a few screws and connectors to hook up. The hardest part of building your own system is figuring out what components are compatible with each other, especially the CPU-motherboard-RAM combo. All that can be accomplished before you buy with some diligent research. Peace!! ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

I agree. Better imaging, darker background, deeper soundstage, maybe a little faster paced.... ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

Well, which cables did your dealer lend you? Did you notice a difference? I certainly did, going from that stranded copper, pinkish Monster cable (separate lengths bi-wired to RF-3's) to bi-wire-braided Kimber 8TC. ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

how far from the back and side walls did you place the speakers? Did you try toeing them in so they point to a spot in front of the listening position? ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way.... This message has been edited by Prana-Bindu on 07-20-2001 at 01:07 AM

I am under the impression that sheetrock resonates at 70hz... far from the high's.... ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

Dude, if the dealer won't let you audition the machine at home, don't reward him with your business. Is he bound by warranties implied by law in your neck of the world? ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

I auditioned the VTL IT-85 with my RF-3's, and I fell in love. It's not perfect, but the improvement was dramatic. I suspect the majority of the remaining inadequacies are to be found in the remainder of the system (digital system, room and placement issues, and -- dare I say -- speakers?). I do believe the IT-85 is a push-pull amp, Spider. I certainly recommend an audition with your system. ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

Soundog, you must be woolgathering: I believe you were actually referring to the Perpetual Technologies P-1A and P-3A Digital Correction Engine and DAC (respectively). I am under the distinct impression that the P-1A does not accept an optical signal; I believe the P-3A accepts a toslink cable, but not the P-1A (I wonder why... especially in light of the fact that my cd-player only has an optical out). Nevertheless, I looked into the PT products and the P-1A is looking more and more appealing. All very positive reviews and every problems reported was resolved (ultimately) with PT warranty commitment. As soundog indicated, the P-1A upsamples to 96khz (192 when available) and extends the 16-bit samples to 24-bit samples (not by only using dither -- some is used) by applying a software algorithm which interpolates calculated bits between and within the 24-bit versions of the 16-bit words read off the cd. The calculations that determine the value of a new bit or new 24-bit word are, allegedly, both strictly geometrical AND guided by certain psychoacoustic principles. What intrigues me are the formulae that express these psychoacoustic principles in the interpolation functions. Are they simple? They HAVE to be mathematical (it's a computer using 32-bit floating-point processing). Apparently, these formulae also use the information provied in the five samples prior to and the five samples following the sample being interpolated. The literature did not address whether this "window" of 10 samples overlooks already upsampled samples or whether it sees only the 16-bit samples as found on the CD. Anyway, I wonder how important these psychoacoustic principles are to the effectiveness off the algorithm. Do the formulae they inspire present a statistically relevant part of the total algorithm? Will I be able to hear and distinguish thereby the differences between upsampling with just the geometric aspect of the interpolation at work and upsampling with both the geometric and psychoacoustic functions at work? I'm determined to find out. Spider: CD's have the market in a stranglehold that will not let go for quite some time (maybe) And, besides, do you really want to see all those cd's just collect dust when you start building your SACD or DVD-A or G.I.-Joe-Kung-Fu-Grip-CD collection (whoever wins the fight)? Have you considered upsampling and interpolating new data into your digital signal with your computer? I really wonder how important those psychoacoustic principles are to what the P-1A does.... After all, doesn't Shannon's Theory state that the complete and original analog signal can indeed be derived from its quatisized digital derivative? I doubt that Shannon's theory refers at all to a map of the relevant cortex or to whether we enjoy one kind of expression of a particular frequency more than another. First of all, can a computer upsample a digital signal to 95khz? Or is that definitely a hardware-specific function? Why would it have to be? This is where I need to hit the books.... One more question I was hoping y'all would help with before I go grumble about this on my own: how is the dynamic position within the range of a particular format (CD, DVD-A, SACD, etc.) stored on the CD, DVD-A, or SACD? In other words, how does the DAC play a particular sample at 73db in the range vs. 23db? Is the dynamic extension of a particular sample derived from information within the sample? Thanks for the help, y'all. I'm fixin' to figure this digital nonsense out.... ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

Trendkill: I've noticed that much of the newer digital gear does not support optical connections. It appears the the coaxial connection is far better supported. As such, if you intend to add a separate DAC, digital jitter filter, or signal processor, you'll have a bigger selection if you go with the coaxial. In other words, if you get the coaxial now, if you ever add such separate components, you'll already have the cable. Not that big of a benefit, but everything makes a difference.... ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....

It sounds like you got some rest, Spider. Thanks for your thoroughness. Are there any resources out there that list and explain these upgrades to those of us without the engineering education or a Holiday Inn Express at hand? I AM willing to tweak and upgrade the CD player, but I suspect the learning curve is steep. Thanks again. ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way....