Lush^2 - Share your configuration experiences

[jabbr]

53 minutes ago, rickca said:

What does AISG mean?

 

Im thinking the “Artificial Intelligence Shield Generator” which will quickly listen to the track and select the best shield pattern for your listening pleasure 😂

[lmitche]

On 6/30/2019 at 7:47 PM, kurb1980 said:

Back at it again..,okay this one sounds very nice, best I have heard so far.  The smooth treble response and timbre I feel like I can hear a distinctness and even hidden details I didn’t notice before.  Vocals sound especially pleasing and the breathe “air” is refined.  This one sounds darn good with my hd800’s!  See my picture to get the configuration?

This is very close to the original JSSG360 USB cable. Take off the black wire and you have the same thing.

[TheAttorney]

On 7/2/2019 at 1:25 AM, lmitche said:

This is very close to the original JSSG360 USB cable. Take off the black wire and you have the same thing.

 

Er... No. The photos don't make clear that the Red cables are not connected to any pin, but that isn't the main point of my post...

 

I've recently completed a rapid-fire test of around a dozen configurations on my Blaxius^2D's between HMS and DAVE and was about to share my findings when I decided to give the @kurb1980 recommendation a go. I tried to keep to the exact pin/black tab connections as for kurb's Lush, but of course there is no white cable with the Blaxius^2D, so it can't be exactly the same.

 

Well, in terms of detail/focus/impact, this setting went straight to the top, but with a slight reservation that the presence region might be a touch overhyped. I haven't yet decided if this presence thing is because the extra clarity is faithfully showing up the recording techniques of close-miked female vocals, or if this is a real issue. I'll live with it for a few days, then compare against my previous best and report back.

 

In the meantime, I think kurb's recommendation is very worthwhile a try. In Blaxius terms it would be...

    A:[W]BY, B:[W]BY

 

PS. I'm restarting the "Ditch-The-Dash" campaign, as all thoses dashes just gave me dyslexia (and I know I'm not the only one). We could simplify it further to

    [W]BY  [W]BY   (with more than 1 space in between). It's never too late to inprove something.   

[lmitche]

2 hours ago, TheAttorney said:

 

Er... No. The photos don't make clear that the Red cables are not connected to any pin, but that isn't the main point of my post...

 

I've recently completed a rapid-fire test of around a dozen configurations on my Blaxius^2D's between HMS and DAVE and was about to share my findings when I decided to give the @kurb1980 recommendation a go. I tried to keep to the exact pin/black tab connections as for kurb's Lush, but of course there is no white cable with the Blaxius^2D, so it can't be exactly the same.

 

Well, in terms of detail/focus/impact, this setting went straight to the top, but with a slight reservation that the presence region might be a touch overhyped. I haven't yet decided if this presence thing is because the extra clarity is faithfully showing up the recording techniques of close-miked female vocals, or if this is a real issue. I'll live with it for a few days, then compare against my previous best and report back.

 

In the meantime, I think kurb's recommendation is very worthwhile a try. In Blaxius terms it would be...

    A:[W]BY, B:[W]BY

 

PS. I'm restarting the "Ditch-The-Dash" campaign, as all thoses dashes just gave me dyslexia (and I know I'm not the only one). We could simplify it further to

    [W]BY  [W]BY   (with more than 1 space in between). It's never too late to inprove something.   

TheAttorney,

 

Your response to my post reinforces the need for a new notation for the LUSH cables configurations, one that is unambiguous and covers not only the cables connections but the placement of the two connectors. I propose the following for the Lush USB cable. I don't know enough about the Blaxius cable to know if this would work for that cable as well.

 

At it's simplest, the state of each pin in the six pin connector can be one of the following:

 

B = Black wire
W = White wire
Y = Yellow
R = Red
X = Not connected
1 = Jumper one
2 = Jumper two

 

Each connector can be oriented with the DOT on the right or left. the period symbol "." is used to represent the orientation.

 

Additionally each end of the cable should represented using the existing A: and B: notation.

 

RULE: There should always be 6 letters or numbers describing the configuration of the 6 pins per side.

 

Here are some examples taken from the pictures (which can also be surprisingly ambiguous).

 

Default = A:.BWYR12 B:.BWR112

PNF = A:.BW11YR B:.BW1122

JSSG360 = A:.WY1122 B:.WY1122

KURB1980 = A:.BWY112 B:.BWY112

 

I hope there are some good ideas here. Perhaps I missed something important. Let me know if you like this notation. I have tried to make it simple and unambiguous at the same time.

 

Larry
 

[TheAttorney]

2 hours ago, lmitche said:

JSSG360 = A:.WY1122 B:.WY1122

 

Your post may well have been in jest, but I just want to bring up a disconnect in the understanding of how JSSG360 translates to Lush:

 

I think it is BW & YR at both ends. And I think this is how Peter sees it too. It's in his diagram in the first post in this thread.

You describe it as WY at both ends, which is completely different, but at least now explains your earlier comment on kurb's photo.

[lmitche]

2 hours ago, TheAttorney said:

 

Your post may well have been in jest, but I just want to bring up a disconnect in the understanding of how JSSG360 translates to Lush:

 

I think it is BW & YR at both ends. And I think this is how Peter sees it too. It's in his diagram in the first post in this thread.

You describe it as WY at both ends, which is completely different, but at least now explains your earlier comment on kurb's photo.

@PeterSt does the original lush connect the usb shells? If do, with a wire or shield?

 

Thanks,

 

Larry

[PeterSt]

@lmitche, it does. With a drain wire... 

[PeterSt]

10 hours ago, lmitche said:

Each connector can be oriented with the DOT on the right or left.

 

Come on now, please... 

[PeterSt]

10 hours ago, lmitche said:

have tried to make it simple and unambiguous at the same time.

 

 

Larry, are you giving me a cigar from my own box here? 

So again, please... 

[lmitche]

3 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Larry, are you giving me a cigar from my own box here? 

So again, please... 

Hey Peter, you used to share your cigars, now you have none left.

So sad.

[lmitche]

14 hours ago, PeterSt said:

@lmitche, it does. With a drain wire... 

And does the lush 2 have the same drain wire, or does the black wire serve the same purpose?

[lmitche]

34 minutes ago, lmitche said:

And does the lush 2 have the same drain wire, or does the black wire serve the same purpose?

Sorry, I looked at the first post and answered this myself.

With this in mind I would revise the jssg360 configuration from:

 

JSSG360 = A:.WY1122 B : .WY11 22

 

To

 

JSSG360 = A:.BW12YR B : .BW12YR

 

So I stand corrected. The latter is what @TheAttorney suggested was the correct Jssg360 configuration. That makes sense to me now. Sorry to take so long to get there. Thanks for your help.

 

 

@PeterSt You should know I don't smoke cigars. 😁

[Superdad]

45 minutes ago, lmitche said:

JSSG360 = A:.WY1122 B : .WY11 22

 

I wish my favorite Linux geek would stop foisting his weird LUSH cable configuration syntax upon us! 

I’ve owned a Lush^2 for over a year and it was only a couple of months ago that I fully grocked the popular nomenclature for the jumpers. 

 

 

[sig8]

8 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

I wish my favorite Linux geek would stop foisting his weird LUSH cable configuration syntax upon us! 

I’ve owned a Lush^2 for over a year and it was only a couple of months ago that I fully grocked the popular nomenclature for the jumpers. 

 

 

I still don't understand. Someone please with a picture.

[lmitche]

5 hours ago, sig8 said:

I still don't understand. Someone please with a picture.

Nevermind.

[ray-dude]

7 hours ago, lmitche said:

Sorry, I looked at the first post and answered this myself.

With this in mind I would revise the jssg360 configuration from:

 

JSSG360 = A:.WY1122 B : .WY11 22

 

To

 

JSSG360 = A:.BW12YR B : .BW12YR

 

So I stand corrected. The latter is what @TheAttorney suggested was the correct Jssg360 configuration. That makes sense to me now. Sorry to take so long to get there. Thanks for your help.

 

 

@PeterSt You should know I don't smoke cigars. 😁

 

Larry, when you have shared your listening impressions vs the various other configurations, were you using A:.WY1122 B : .WY1122? (LMSG360

 

 

 

[89reksal]

It's getting even more confusing trying to follow the different configurations with the recent attempt to introduce a new nomenclature. Why the need to have an entirely different way to describe something that's already been decided on by the manufacturer of the cables himself? Are the people pushing for this going to mail out new paperwork to replace the paperwork describing the configurations that was included with the cables at time of purchase?

[TheAttorney]

16 hours ago, lasker98 said:

Why the need to have an entirely different way to describe something that's already been decided on by the manufacturer of the cables himself?

 

If you're talking about my simplification proposal, then Peter's original notations made logical sense, but in practice have often been confusing to follow, especially when several configurations are being discussed in the same post. No need to change the original paperwork because I haven't changed the fundamental logic - just removed the unnecessary clutter of dashes and punctuation - so that you can more easily "see the wood for the trees". Hopefully this will become obvious when I shortly post over a dozen different configurations. Newbie's will still need the original to spell it out, but from then on, they should find the shorthand version quicker and easier.

 

If you're talking about lmitche's complicated version, well, I'm still not sure if it's all just a joke, but even if it is, at least he has thought about it to unambiguously describe the full picture of every possible combination. But he hasn't changed Peter's original style, he has extended it to include impact of the jumpers - whether or not this will be necessary remains to be seen, but at least one person reckons the exact jumper positioning is important.  I very much hope that it isn't, but will keep an open mind.

[TheAttorney]

I’ve now finished my first, and hopefully last, set of Blaxius^2D configuration tests. My objective was to find, as quickly as possible, if the default (shipped from Feb 2019) could be improved upon. So it was a rapid-fire A/B kind of test, which may not have done justice to some of the settings and I’ve probably made some errors of judgement. In which case tough, I don’t have the time or patience to spend hours/days on this. If any setting didn’t WOW me, it got immediately dropped. So as always, YMMV.

 

I tested around 14 variants, particularly those that others have liked. So there may be a label like PNF, or another users name if they’ve liked that setting before (these typically are Lush users because there are so many more of them). What works on Lush doesn’t necessarily work on Blaxius. I sometimes give a brief comment of what I noticed about a particular setting. No comment means nothing struck me as being remarkable, or I was just getting bored.

 

Regarding my simplified notation, I’ve kept the square brackets for Blaxius^2D, but other users just need to ignore the brackets and it all still works.

 

[W]BR      [W]BR         Blax def Sep 2018.  Noticeably worse than the later default.

[W]BRY    [W]B&RY    Blax def Feb 2019. Really, really good.  

[W]BRY    [W]B            lmitche fave. Ok, but thin, where’s the bass?

[W]B         [W]BR         lasker98 fave. A touch bright.

[W]BRY    [W]BR         Lush def. A touch splashy, unfocused.

[W]B&RY  [W]B           PNF. Good, worth a retry

[W]B&RY  [W]B&RY   JSSG360. Smooth, but flat, boring. Retry for bright systems?

[W]B&RY  [W]BR        Sort of Ok?

[W]B&RY  [W]BRY

[W]BR      [W]BR         Boom & tizz

[W]BR      [W]B           Smooth, but unfocused  

 

Out of these, I retried the Blax Feb 2019, PNF and JSSG360, and of these The Blax Feb 2019 won quite easily in the end. Which was kinda disappointing because that was the one I started with, so the pin configurability has proved to be redundant for me. I was just about to publish my findings when Kurb1980 came out with his new recommendation, so I tried that plus a couple of close variants:

 

[W]BY  [W]BY            kurb1980 Jul 2019.  WOW, but too much presence/lower treble? 

[W]BY  [W]B              kurb1980 Jan 2019. Good, but less WOW than latest.      

[W]BY  [W]B&RY       Good, but less WOW than latest. Getting bored, so stop now.     

 

 I’ve lived with [W]BY  [W]BY for a couple of days and, whether cable burn-in or brain burn-in, the low-treble peakiness seems to have disappeared and I find no downsides at all. So, in conclusion, the best SQ in my system is…         

      [W]BY  [W]BY           kurb1980 Jul 2019     

   

And honorable 2^nd place is…

      [W]BRY  [W]B&RY    Blax def Feb 2019

 

 

 

                

 

 

 

 

[lmitche]

Hi All,

 

Like Alex, I haven't had time to get my head around the Lush^2 cable config as Audiolinux enhancements and upgrades have been taking my time.

 

My focus on the JSSG360 config was only to use that as a baseline reference from which further configurations are compared. Thanks to @TheAttorney for recognizing that my "new" notation is really an extension with the X,1,and 2 pin states and the 6 letter rule. Peter may be right, the dot notation is likely overkill, but does remove any possible ambiguity about the orientation of the connector.

 

I am not wedded to any notation and only throw these proposed extensions out there for the community to ponder. Take it as a joke, or a serious proposal, or just ignore it, I don't mind either way. It is hard to take this level or really any level, of audiophile minutiae as important.

 

Until Peters post above, it never occurred to me that the connectors have no impact on the shield configuration and serve as antenna or whatever. I'm not sure they have any impact on SQ. As the current notation doesn't recognize the connectors, I guess it doesn't matter.

My original comment that Kurb1980's config is close to JSSG360 USB stands. The original JSSG posting from John Swenson stated that the shielding was best left disconnected at each endpoint. The original JSSG360 USB cable did the same and therefore it was easy to add two insulated layers of shielding to an existing cable where the two new shields are connected at the endpoints. Kurb1980's innovation is to connect the inner "drain wire" or white "W" shield to the two outside shields "RW". 

 

I did try Kurb's config briefly last week, but quickly moved back to the default. My ears were ringing for some long listening sessions, so I stopped. However, I will try this again later this weekend. The lack of symmetry in the "default" config has always bothered me a bit, so the "aesthetics" of Kurb's config is appealing.

 

 

[austinpop]

2 hours ago, TheAttorney said:

I’ve now finished my first, and hopefully last, set of Blaxius^2D configuration tests. My objective was to find, as quickly as possible, if the default (shipped from Feb 2019) could be improved upon. So it was a rapid-fire A/B kind of test, which may not have done justice to some of the settings and I’ve probably made some errors of judgement. In which case tough, I don’t have the time or patience to spend hours/days on this. If any setting didn’t WOW me, it got immediately dropped. So as always, YMMV.

 

I tested around 14 variants, particularly those that others have liked. So there may be a label like PNF, or another users name if they’ve liked that setting before (these typically are Lush users because there are so many more of them). What works on Lush doesn’t necessarily work on Blaxius. I sometimes give a brief comment of what I noticed about a particular setting. No comment means nothing struck me as being remarkable, or I was just getting bored.

 

Regarding my simplified notation, I’ve kept the square brackets for Blaxius^2D, but other users just need to ignore the brackets and it all still works.

 

[W]BR      [W]BR         Blax def Sep 2018.  Noticeably worse than the later default.

[W]BRY    [W]B&RY    Blax def Feb 2019. Really, really good.  

[W]BRY    [W]B            lmitche fave. Ok, but thin, where’s the bass?

[W]B         [W]BR         lasker98 fave. A touch bright.

[W]BRY    [W]BR         Lush def. A touch splashy, unfocused.

[W]B&RY  [W]B           PNF. Good, worth a retry

[W]B&RY  [W]B&RY   JSSG360. Smooth, but flat, boring. Retry for bright systems?

[W]B&RY  [W]BR        Sort of Ok?

[W]B&RY  [W]BRY

[W]BR      [W]BR         Boom & tizz

[W]BR      [W]B           Smooth, but unfocused  

 

Out of these, I retried the Blax Feb 2019, PNF and JSSG360, and of these The Blax Feb 2019 won quite easily in the end. Which was kinda disappointing because that was the one I started with, so the pin configurability has proved to be redundant for me. I was just about to publish my findings when Kurb1980 came out with his new recommendation, so I tried that plus a couple of close variants:

 

[W]BY  [W]BY            kurb1980 Jul 2019.  WOW, but too much presence/lower treble? 

[W]BY  [W]B              kurb1980 Jan 2019. Good, but less WOW than latest.      

[W]BY  [W]B&RY       Good, but less WOW than latest. Getting bored, so stop now.     

 

 I’ve lived with [W]BY  [W]BY for a couple of days and, whether cable burn-in or brain burn-in, the low-treble peakiness seems to have disappeared and I find no downsides at all. So, in conclusion, the best SQ in my system is…         

      [W]BY  [W]BY           kurb1980 Jul 2019     

   

And honorable 2^nd place is…

      [W]BRY  [W]B&RY    Blax def Feb 2019

                

 

Thanks for posting these results. I just recently got a pair of Blaxius^2D's (Blaxia^2D?) to try between my recently arrived HMS and TT2. I don't know when I'll get to play with these shielding experiments... they're on my backlog, but seem to always get pushed down behind other experiments.

 

I'm curious about 2 things.

 

First, you said:

      [W]BRY  [W]B&RY    Blax def Feb 2019

 

but according to Peter, his "Blax def Feb 2019" is [W]BYR  [W]BYR (all shields connected at both ends). Please see below:

 

On 6/14/2019 at 4:34 AM, PeterSt said:

Now the one from February 2019:

... It should be:

Shipped (for Digital) with : A:[W]B-Y-R, B:[W]B-Y-R

(all shields connected at both ends)

 

And indeed my cables arrived in June 2019 with A:[W]B-Y-R, B:[W]B-Y-R.

 

So before you conclude your experiment, could you please also try what you would call: [W]BRY  [W]BRY? How does it compare to your 1st place and runner-up?

[TheAttorney]

45 minutes ago, austinpop said:

First, you said:

      [W]BRY  [W]B&RY    Blax def Feb 2019

but according to Peter, his "Blax def Feb 2019" is [W]BYR  [W]BYR (all shields connected at both ends). Please see below:

And indeed my cables arrived in June 2019 with A:[W]B-Y-R, B:[W]B-Y-R.

 

So before you conclude your experiment, could you please also try what you would call: [W]BRY  [W]BRY? How does it compare to your 1st place and runner-up?

Okay, I'm going to stick my neck out again and challenge the established expert by saying that I think Peter has got it wrong.

 

I'm pretty sure that my Blaxius had arrived as I had written (i.e. the R and Y wires were connected to B (ground) on the A end, but not connected to ground  on the B end). Unfortunately I didn't take a photo at the time.

 

Anyway, whilst Peter was correcting the [W]B notation, I'm guessing that somehow wires got crossed and he's ended up with a slightly different variation than before. For me it's a moot point because my new fave (TANF 🙂) is clearly better than what arrived. I'm fairly certain I did try the BRY at both ends when I first got the cables and noticed no obvious difference, although everything was new to me at that point and so I was possibly not very receptive to incremental differences.

 

I will try the BRY BRY option, but won't be able to for a couple of days.

[austinpop]

6 minutes ago, TheAttorney said:

Okay, I'm going to stick my neck out again and challenge the established expert by saying that I think Peter has got it wrong.

 

I'm pretty sure that my Blaxius had arrived as I had written (i.e. the R and Y wires were connected to B (ground) on the A end, but not connected to ground  on the B end). Unfortunately I didn't take a photo at the time.

 

I can tell you 100% that my B^2D arrived as follows (sorry, but I prefer Peter's notation):

• A:[W]B-Y-R, B:[W]B-Y-R

Here are the 2 ends of the cable:

    

 

6 minutes ago, TheAttorney said:

I will try the BRY BRY option, but won't be able to for a couple of days.

 

That would be much appreciated. I'd love to know your impressions.

[PeterSt]

@TheAttorney, Invaluable...

Great, great thanks. 

[PeterSt]

Dear people - Reading TheAttorny's post with the Blaxius^2D configs, I see nothing wrong with his notation; more compact, less noise. But what l'm thinking of is the searching back on certain configs. So if we'd all use the same always, we're guaranteed to be able to find back whatever from whomever. And I thought this was crucial.