Lush^2 - Share your configuration experiences

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, luisma said:

do you keep your DAC and source ON at all times?  

Hi Luisma,

 

Good questions.

 

Yes, I leave the entire digital chain powered on at all times including the DAC.

 

And no, the lush cable has not gone back to sounding terrible since originally configured. I have no idea about the underlying physical mechanism and why it took time to stabilize.

[Abtr]

21 hours ago, RickyV said:

Nice but how do they sound?

 

Probably not better than A:W-Y-R, B:W-Y-R (JSSG360 cubed). The shield in each configuration that is unconnected to other shields or ground (the black wire) on one end, and not connected to ground on the other end, may act as a large antenna.

[kurb1980]

I have done it again this configuration is crazy atmosphere the tone and air is outrageous!

Yes the jumper caps need to be in this configuration in order to experience the air, depth, and timbre.

[PeterSt]

@kurb1980, when you are finished with the more common settings, try this:

 

 

See mouse arrow; put that jumper on its other pin(-socket). Not twist 180 degrees, but move towards you so it will stick out at the other side now.

Obviously  this will communicate with the jumper at pin-1. Under way this crosses the White and Yellow shields. Naturally swapping White and Yellow will also do a couple of things. In that case the jumper on pin-1 and the one on pin-4 could be moved to their other pin(-socket) and it could work out the same as with White on pin-2 and Yellow on pin-3 as in the photo.

 

I am not sure how serious I am, but this is only because I am unsure about how serious this is. If this is seriously making differences, I guess my text above is not fully rubbish. It will easily be wrong though. So it is just about bringing forward ideas how to "judge" this. Or, how to make logic out of it, instead of blindly throwing jumpers at it. Or, see how some setting could be heading for the right track.

 

Thank you, kurb.

Peter

[lmitche]

4 hours ago, kurb1980 said:

I have done it again this configuration is crazy atmosphere the tone and air is outrageous!

Yes the jumper caps need to be in this configuration in order to experience the air, depth, and timbre.

Looks like we have come 360 degrees with this familiar configuration.

[xxx1313]

13 hours ago, PeterSt said:

@kurb1980, when you are finished with the more common settings, try this:

 

 

See mouse arrow; put that jumper on its other pin(-socket). Not twist 180 degrees, but move towards you so it will stick out at the other side now.

Obviously  this will communicate with the jumper at pin-1. Under way this crosses the White and Yellow shields. Naturally swapping White and Yellow will also do a couple of things. In that case the jumper on pin-1 and the one on pin-4 could be moved to their other pin(-socket) and it could work out the same as with White on pin-2 and Yellow on pin-3 as in the photo.

 

I am not sure how serious I am, but this is only because I am unsure about how serious this is. If this is seriously making differences, I guess my text above is not fully rubbish. It will easily be wrong though. So it is just about bringing forward ideas how to "judge" this. Or, how to make logic out of it, instead of blindly throwing jumpers at it. Or, see how some setting could be heading for the right track.

 

Thank you, kurb.

Peter

 

The position of the jumper cap seems to matter, it really sounds different. It gets all a bit confusing for me here. Kurb's new configuration (the jumper cap should stick out on the downside in my case), is indeed great, its air is crazy. No glare, sounds both full and airy. Can it get any better? Probably not. Still not sure yet if I prefer it over Kurb's JSSG360cubed in the long run, but I really enjoy it at the moment. I am now on Kurb's new config with all three Lush^2 cables. Definitely worth trying! Big thanks again!

 

Btw, if someone else needs to get additional jumper caps: These are 2.54mm "standard" computer jumper caps.

[elan120]

30 minutes ago, xxx1313 said:

 

The position of the jumper cap seems to matter, it really sounds different. It gets all a bit confusing for me here. Kurb's new configuration (the jumper cap should stick out on the downside in my case), is indeed great, its air is crazy. No glare, sounds both full and airy. Can it get any better? Probably not. Still not sure yet if I prefer it over Kurb's JSSG360cubed in the long run, but I really enjoy it at the moment. I am now on Kurb's new config with all three Lush^2 cables. Definitely worth trying! Big thanks again!

 

Btw, if someone else needs to get additional jumper caps: These are 2.54mm "standard" computer jumper caps.

Thanks for the note.  That sounds very interesting indeed.  Just ordered some jumper caps and will do some experiment when they are delivered.

 

 

[PeterSt]

All Lush^2 leaving from of Monday will be accompanied with extra jumpers.

I am thinking of a coupon code for free psychiatric help. I will try out some of the codes myself, first. 

[rickca]

7 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

I am thinking of a coupon code for free psychiatric help.

I need one of those.  It's for a friend. 🙄

[kurb1980]

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

All Lush^2 leaving from of Monday will be accompanied with extra jumpers.

I am thinking of a coupon code for free psychiatric help. I will try out some of the codes myself, first. 

 

I'm glad that others are trying these configurations and chiming in on their experiences! Now I don't have to be evaluated because I can now confirm that I'm not the only clinical one.

[xxx1313]

Call me crazy, but I am sure that Peter's original pin caps "sound" better than other pin caps which I bought, when used on pin no. 5 and 6 together (like shown in Kurb's new config).🙄

[PeterSt]

7 hours ago, xxx1313 said:

Call me crazy

 

All right.

[TheAttorney]

 An update on my 3-way USB cable comparison – from the point that I had replaced my TQ cable with Lush^2 placed before my ISORegen. On first day, the Lush was a couple of steps behind the TQ. By the second day, Lush had improved, particularly when changing the default config to JSSG360cubed.

 

After 5 days, I put the TQ back. So how would they compare now? Did Lush now match TQ? No it did not. It actually surpassed TQ rather comfortably! Not bad for almost 1/3 of the price.

 

So the Lush stays. I then replaced the USPCB with TQ, placed after the IR. Surprisingly, I preferred the USPCB – despite there being about a trillion $ price difference. The sharper sounding USPCB seemed to be letting more of Lush’s considerable detail through than the more analogue sounding TQ.

 

My conclusion from this mini test is that..

 

1.       The USPCB is fantastic VFM

2.       The Lush^2 is simply fantastic in JSSG360cubed mode

3.        I’m glad I didn’t pay full list price for the TQ, else I would have been really miffed about that

 

I’m now wondering if I should get a 2cnd Lush to replace the USPCB? Thoughts on this anyone?

 

Somewhere along the line, I also briefly tried Kurb’s latest config (WY  WY, with jumpers positioned as per photo, and jumpers on pins 1 and 4 offset towards me). This possibly was passing through even more musical information, but at the time I felt it was too much information that was diverting me away from enjoying the musical performance. So my final best config is...

 

    Lush with WYR  WYR (and no jumpers) and

    Blaxius with [W]BY  [W]BY  (and still no jumpers).

 

I’ve stopped experimenting now, in order to get a consistent reference point and just listen to music.

[austinpop]

40 minutes ago, TheAttorney said:

 

I’m now wondering if I should get a 2cnd Lush to replace the USPCB? Thoughts on this anyone?

 

I did this - got a 2nd Lush^2 - and it sounds  very good.

 

But a word of caution. Both my Lush^2’s are 1m length. On 2 of 3 DACs I tried, including the Chord HMS,  placing the 2nd Lush^2 before the DAC prevented a proper USB handshake. Replacing with my previous JSSG360 Lush solved the issue every time.

 

It gets weirder. I could get it to work with WYR, WYR configuration, but not the original shipping configuration.

 

Maybe I could avoid this with a shorter cable, I don’t know. 

 

 

 

 

[rando]

There was some concerted thought being placed towards how Lush failed to meet USB spec at one point in time.  That is the original version (believe JSSG360 was mod to it?). 

 

Very possible I missed the announcement on what changed in Lush^2.  Interesting that the first completes the handshake while second fails to in some/most configurations.  As usual (uh oh, here comes his standard complaint about my posts being indecipherable 😶) Peter appears to be on to something nobody else is.  

 

@austinpop What do you conceptually believe would change by using a shorter cable?

[PeterSt]

23 minutes ago, rando said:

@austinpop What do you conceptually believe would change by using a shorter cable?

 

Hi Rando - I am not Rajiv and I don't want to put words in his mouth, but ... nothing.

I'd say this starts with him / his situation being the only one where this happens.

 

And no real need to talk about specs. Everybody knows that this cable is all but compliant to USB specs. 

 

33 minutes ago, rando said:

Very possible I missed the announcement on what changed in Lush^2

 

I noticed you have been on a break. Haha. But "original JSSG360 Lush" is by no means the same as the Lush^2, no matter the original Lush is encapsulated in both. Let me try to summarize it by saying that the shielding of all Lush^2 out there is / should be 100% the same, while what people did to the Lush^1 + JSSG360 is different for everybody, plus it can not be the same because of the different construction of the inner shield.

Anyway, the mere direct answer to your implied question: The shielding.

 

Maybe good to know: Rajiv was "advised" not to try other configs to solve his issue, because it would imply a denigrated cable (less versatile) so it would be best to send it back. By sheer accident kurb1980 comes up with his latest, which Rajiv tried and which not only sounds good but worked as well because Rajiv tried after all, against all odds and consequences.

The story is a little longer, but the conclusion should be that when everybody is happy, everybody just is. And I really like what everybody tries for further improvement. Nobody can do this alone. OK, maybe @kurb1980 ...

 

[austinpop]

50 minutes ago, rando said:

 

@austinpop What do you conceptually believe would change by using a shorter cable?

 

Purely empirical. I have had experience in the past where a shorter sample of the same USB cable worked where the longer one didn't.

 

You want to take digs at @PeterSt or Lush cables, then do it and own it.

 

Don't use my post as an excuse. I've had nothing but good experiences with both.

 

2 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

Hi Rando - I am not Rajiv and I don't want to put words in his mouth, but ... nothing.

I'd say this starts with him / his situation being the only one where this happens.

 

 

For the record, Peter was immediately prepared to give me a full refund, and it's just sheer laziness on my part that led me to still have the cable when kurb1980's WYR,WYR suggestion came out. Now the cable stays.

 

 

[TheAttorney]

2 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

But a word of caution. Both my Lush^2’s are 1m length. On 2 of 3 DACs I tried, including the Chord HMS,  placing the 2nd Lush^2 before the DAC prevented a proper USB handshake. Replacing with my previous JSSG360 Lush solved the issue every time.

 

It gets weirder. I could get it to work with WYR, WYR configuration, but not the original shipping configuration.

 

Thank you Rajiv for that timely warning. It prompted me to do one more test in my DTS objective - to miss out the IR altogether - by connecting my NUC server directly to HMS via my 0.8M Lush^2 (and Blaxius between HMS and DAVE). And I'm glad I did this test because...

 

DAVE's display showed "No Data" despite HMS seemingly working fine (i.e. it's light showed incoming data from USB, and Euphony was happily playing the music file out to HMS (Euphony stops playing if it has a problem with the device it's connected to).

 

I tried 3 Lush variants WYR, BWYR, BWY at both ends, and same failure each time 🙁.

 

Many of us already know that DAVE is extremely sensitive at its BNC inputs, but at this point my consideration of a 2nd Lush^2 has taken a step back. Prior to this, with IR in the path, every single Blaxius and Lush configs had worked fine with DAVE.

 

Edit: the problem persisted irrespective of DAVE's tap setting, from pass through to 1M taps

 

 

[austinpop]

11 minutes ago, TheAttorney said:

 

Thank you Rajiv for that timely warning. It prompted me to do one more test in my DTS objective - to miss out the IR altogether - by connecting my NUC server directly to HMS via my 0.8M Lush^2 (and Blaxius between HMS and DAVE). And I'm glad I did this test because...

 

DAVE's display showed "No Data" despite HMS seemingly working fine (i.e. it's light showed incoming data from USB, and Euphony was happily playing the music file out to HMS (Euphony stops playing if it has a problem with the device it's connected to).

 

I tried 3 Lush variants WYR, BWYR, BWY at both ends, and same failure each time 🙁.

 

Many of us already know that DAVE is extremely sensitive at its BNC inputs, but at this point my consideration of a 2nd Lush^2 has taken a step back. Prior to this, with IR in the path, every single Blaxius and Lush configs had worked fine with DAVE.

 

Edit: the problem persisted irrespective of DAVE's tap setting, from pass through to 1M taps

 

 

 

In contrast, I had no issues whatsoever with the Ayre QX-5 Twenty.

[PeterSt]

13 minutes ago, TheAttorney said:

Thank you Rajiv for that timely warning.

 

And thank you just the same !

But what, do you reckon, is the element which disturbs here ? (with apologies that I can't really know what you guys all are doing)

Is it the NUC ? And if you might agree, is it easy to test for you if another server does not have the issue ?

 

With this I try to put the emphasis on the "power" of USB ports; more than once changing the USB port on the PC/Mac helped issues.

If this is all wrong, then again apologies. It is only that if something does not work, I/we like to know.

[rando]

37 minutes ago, austinpop said:

You want to take digs at @PeterSt or Lush cables, then do it and own it.

 

Don't use my post as an excuse. I've had nothing but good experiences with both.

 

Whoa, who put a burr under your saddle?  Rein in the horses until you're sure we're on track and headed in the same direction.  There isn't a whip in my hand and Peter couldn't possibly have any memory of me beating on him.  Every correspondence does inevitably end with him declaring my English impenetrable though.  

 

I'll offer assurances the question directed at you and everything else I typed was depictive of nothing but polite interest.  For all constructive purposes my position in that war is as a non-entity and occasional observer.  Were one still compelled towards keeping score... encounters have favored truncating the enemy camp's tactic of effecting a crushing impact on discussions. 

[TheAttorney]

Ok, so I've solved the Lush/DAVE connection issue: it was user error!!!

 

Somehow, when pulling out the USPCB, I must have also pulled out one of the BNC cables - not obvious how this could have happened because they are lockable, so this one must not have been previously locked properly. It's all dark at the back of the mid-shelf rack, so not easy to spot.

 

Anyway, when I re-inserted the BNC cable, and this time double checked that it locked, the Lush direct to HMS now works fine, at least with my preferred WYR WYR setting.

 

So apologies for the false alarm, and this evening I will try out how it actually sounds like without the IR in the path.

 

[kurb1980]

Thanks PeterSt for the suggestion on the 4th pin moving it back to forward did make a difference.  It opened up the soundstage more and changed the air.  The biggest thing I notice when playing around is how the air changes on these configurations.  So when I tinker I been putting on pieces that have well recorded drumming to listen to the snap of a snare and cymbal crashes and if these sound distinct or splatter out. So far this configuration is the best I have heard for drums.

[PeterSt]

4 hours ago, kurb1980 said:

Thanks PeterSt for the suggestion on the 4th pin moving it back to forward did make a difference.

 

Well, I was just getting used to your Cubed configuration. 

Otoh, it could be a good moment to switch to your latest with "crossed" jumpers.

 

Everybody will receive 4 extra jumpers from of today. Also good for spares, because at least I myself always seem to loose them.

 

[TheAttorney]

I've now listened to the Lush direct to HMS with 3 different pin configs and all work fine.

 

However, SQ degraded by not having the ISO Regen in the path - for once a result that met expectations, as it's no surprise that the NUC's stock  USB output could be improved upon by a USB regenerator. Maybe one day if I get a directly powered super USB card with super clock etc, then I won't need the IR, but for the forseeable future it's staying.

 

So a second Lush (to replace the USPCB) is still a viable option for me. I don't think cable length has much to do with DAVE/TT2's high sensitivity to BNC connection issues (I think it's more complex than that with many variables), but I'm likely to order a 0.5M Lush because that's all I need, and I've found Lush to be much more flexible than Blaxius.