Randy Bey Posted August 29, 2001 Share Posted August 29, 2001 This one is self-explanatory. Here's the stereo rack, a FlexyRack DIY job. Top box is the Theta Data Basic. Next down is the MSB Link III. Then there's the Creek OBH-12 passive preamp, followed by the pair of Welborne Labs Laurel II amps, and at the bottom is the power supply for the MSB DAC. My "HT". My wire mess, with the DIY AC filter showing. My bass traps, taking away bass to make more bass. The HF acoustic panels are partially visible there too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J M O N Posted August 30, 2001 Share Posted August 30, 2001 Very Nice! I've got the same transport. So how does it sound? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Bey Posted August 30, 2001 Author Share Posted August 30, 2001 Better than sex. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djk Posted August 30, 2001 Share Posted August 30, 2001 "Better than sex."Are you sure you're doin' it right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Bey Posted August 30, 2001 Author Share Posted August 30, 2001 I take it you haven't been married for twenty years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prana-Bindu Posted August 30, 2001 Share Posted August 30, 2001 Randy: Rock on with the Flexy!! Have you considered bass traps on top of the Khorns? I'll post my Flexy when I get my hands on a digital camera. Oh yeah, what's under your Theta? Isolation? Coupling? ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Posted August 30, 2001 Share Posted August 30, 2001 nice! clean, simple, elegant and probably very natural and effortless sounding too ------------------ Cornwalls, Bottlehead 2A3 Paramours, Dynaco II, Rotel, KSW200 & LF10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Bey Posted August 30, 2001 Author Share Posted August 30, 2001 The Theta is sitting on top of three Darumas, these are cups with a ball bearing between them. I didn't point out the cat5 speaker cable, but it's visible there too, along with the little towers that hold it off the floor ($0.11 apiece at Menards) which are really rebar spacers. Or that everything has Belden's highest grade detachable power cords, 14AWG, shielded. And the AC filter has P&S outlets, and the wall outlet is a Hubbel Hospital grade. I've thought about bass traps for over the speakers, but first I need to replace the ceiling tiles with better acoustical tiles, and stuff the rafters with fibreglass (ugh) first. Those pesky tiles keep shaking in their frames, making a vibrating noise... And yes, the sound is as clean and effortless as it can get. Very sweet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Phillips Posted August 30, 2001 Share Posted August 30, 2001 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fini Posted August 31, 2001 Share Posted August 31, 2001 Randy, Sounds like you need to upgrade your "equipment." fini Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunnysal Posted August 31, 2001 Share Posted August 31, 2001 Randy, Congrats! looks cozy...the sound must be great!...what are the room dimensions? the cat5 cables are held off the ground by rebar spacers? what benefits are expected/realized by this? The k-horns were refinished right? they look great!...if you get bored and want to knit another pair of CAT5's let me know, tony ------------------ *1993 K-Horns w/ ALK x-overs*Marantz 7T preamp*Dynaco MkIV monoblocks (modded to triode)*Sony CDP-CX350 and CX-230 CD changers*MSB link DACIII (96k upsampling)*MSB silver digital director (for switching and jitter reduction)*Technics M-85 professional Cassette Deck*SAE MK VIII tuner*Luxman PD-272 turntable, Grado Red cartridge*Cardas Crosslink speaker cable*Monster M550i for all interconnects*Monster HTS3500 Reference Powercenter Conditioner Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prana-Bindu Posted August 31, 2001 Share Posted August 31, 2001 I assume that you're lifting the cable off the ground to minimize floor vibrations traveling into the cable? My cables are rather stiff (Kimber biwired 8tc), and they are currently suspended in the air between the speaker posts and one of the higher shelves on my Flexy. I've noticed that when the speakers are playing loud (read: vibrating), the cables vibrate like mad. I would think that running the cables along the floor would help absorb most of those vibrations. Aren't we (you and I, Randy) giving the cables room to vibrate more by lifting them off the ground? Wouldn't something like carpet or foam cable wraps do a better job of isolating the cables? ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Bey Posted August 31, 2001 Author Share Posted August 31, 2001 The Khorns were bought unfinished back in 1979, and I stained and sealed them then. Since then they've had nothing but an occasional -- OK, almost weekly -- furniture oiling. The reasoning behind the rebar spacers holding the cable off the floor is to reduce the interactions between the cement (more specifically the water content of the cement) and the cable. I don't really think it helps anything but it looks cool. Others have mentioned a concept related to mechanical vibration in the cables -- haven't addressed that at all, but basically the stiffer and heavier they are supposedly the better. The cat5s are pretty darn stiff. In fact, they pretty much assume a life of their own, being all solid conductors. And I would probably replace the cat5 with 8TC if I had the ready cash. Or at least see how the 8TC compares to them. And sorry Tony, but building the cat5s is like growing your own dope. It gets you highest if you grew it yourself. Think of it as getting your own field into the speaker cables. Make you a part of your stereo. Odd no one has mentioned the Folger's can. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Bey Posted August 31, 2001 Author Share Posted August 31, 2001 Oh, I just finished the most recent (and probably last) frequency response plot for my stereo: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunnysal Posted August 31, 2001 Share Posted August 31, 2001 randy, I want to be one with my equipment BUT I will save up for 8TC me´thinks....the rebar lifts certainly look cool! I think you´ve managed a pretty darn good response curve there...the bass has filled in quite well since "the incident" has it not?...I still am totall ylost below 50hz and strangely I seem to roll off less abruptly at 16, 18 20khz, could that be room stuff still? Those amps sure look yummy... ------------------ *1993 K-Horns w/ ALK x-overs*Marantz 7T preamp*Dynaco MkIV monoblocks (modded to triode)*Sony CDP-CX350 and CX-230 CD changers*MSB link DACIII (96k upsampling)*MSB silver digital director (for switching and jitter reduction)*Technics M-85 professional Cassette Deck*SAE MK VIII tuner*Luxman PD-272 turntable, Grado Red cartridge*Cardas Crosslink speaker cable*Monster M550i for all interconnects*Monster HTS3500 Reference Powercenter Conditioner Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TBrennan Posted September 1, 2001 Share Posted September 1, 2001 Prana---What in the Sam Hill ?!? You're worried about wires vibrating? How could that effect the sound? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Klappenberger Posted September 1, 2001 Share Posted September 1, 2001 Randy, Your latest response curve looks real and pretty good considering the point-to-point measurements. Warble tones would make it look better since those "points" could fall anywhere one the small jaged peeks and dips that exist all over the curve. You just can't see them because there isn't enough points. A warble tone averages them out just like your brain does when you listen. I made full curves using a swept warble tone on my modified Belles. (Click on the little house icon below). This is probably what yours would look like too if you had the stuff to do it. What happened to the 5 Khz peak you used to have? Did you do something to get rid of it? Al K. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Bey Posted September 1, 2001 Author Share Posted September 1, 2001 I have djk to thank for the loss of the 5-6K peak. He recommended changing the 2.2uf cap on the tweeter to 6uf, so I took two 2uf Hovlands I had and paralleled them with the existing pio cap. Djk also mentioned something about the 500hz dip but I don't remember what it was. The improved bass I attribute to a) bass traps, and the stuffing of the rear bass chamber. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Garrison Posted September 1, 2001 Share Posted September 1, 2001 TBrennan, The "vibrating cables" thing turns out to be one of those seeming ludicrous claims that's actually pretty easy to verify. Some cables will generate noise when they stike, or are stricken by, a hard object. Some don't. It doesn't appeat to have anything to do with cost, design, materials or anything else I can consistently point at. I could suppose it has something to do with the way the dielectic and conductors are assembled, or the sheild, or something, but I honestly don't know why. If you turn the gain way up on your system with no signal present, and give your speaker cables a sharp whack, or pick them up and drop them on a hard floor, you'd be surprised at how much low frequency grundge this can generate. And no, I'm not talking about noise due to moving the speaker connectors or amp connectors - pick up the cable where there's some slack, and whack it with the handle of a screwdriver or something. My current cables don't make a sound when I do this (Straightwire Duet BiWire). I was once using some Romex I picked up at Home Depot as an experiment (sounded just awful, by the way, but that's another story), and I accidentally discovered that dropping something hard on the cable (corner leg of a coffee table, in this case) resulted in a weird sounding "poompfsh" noise coming out of the speaker (La Scalas). Whether you can extrapolate that sound produced by whacking speaker cable with screwdriver handle implies that sound would be produced by cables vibrating might be an interesting argument, but I think it's at least plausible given by experiences. Ray ------------------ Music is art Audio is engineering Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prana-Bindu Posted September 4, 2001 Share Posted September 4, 2001 TBrennan: Ray answered your question for both of us.... I never worried about vibrating cables until I noticed that mine were vibrating vigorously when my RF-3's were going loud. The cables happen to be suspended between the rack and the speaker posts, because I placed the amp high up on the rack (lack of foresight). I'm planning on lowering the amp, but then I'd have to buy long interconnects for other components (hassle factor). Nevertheless, I think it's valid to eliminate as much vibration in the whole system as possible. Most of the process of music playback is an effort to direct vibrations in a certain fashion; a waveform is essentially a kind of vibration, isn't it? I assume that any unintended vibration affects the character of the system's output. Whether any one source of outside vibration is audible is a different issue than whether all the sources of vibration in the system combined make an audible difference. Here's a good example of why such obsessive concern over minutiae is worth it in the long run: Let's pretend you're a professional mountain biker. The heavier your bike is, the more you have to work to get to the finishing line. Let's say you start out with a Huffy bike from K-Mart; a heavy bike compared to something like a Slingshot (cable downtube instead of actual tubing). Any change in components is only going to shave off at most a couple of ounces. Replacing the fram and the tires will take of many ounces, but any other replacement will lighten the bike by totally unnoticeable fractions. Nevertheless, you can start out with a 35 lb. bike and end up with a less than 20 lb. bike by replacing each component with the lightest parts out there -- quite a noticeable difference when you're halfway up the mountain. This is why I tweak. This is why I kept the improvised cones between my cd-player and the isolation sand box (built by yours truly...), even though I didn't notice a difference in the sound. By the way, a cheap way to experiment with cones is to use 4-sided dice made for those of us who used to geek out playing Dungeons & Dragons. O.K., Randy: what in the world is the Folger's can for? Ray: I'll take your word for it -- I don't have the heart to whack at my Kimbers. Ain't this neurosis great? When do we stop having fun? ------------------ May the bridges we burn light our way.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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