Step by step surgery

[pkane2001]

9 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Well, no NBN magic happened ... the technician who came was a touch nervous, and has now gone AWOL ... no-one, including NBN knows where he is!

 

What did you do to this nice man, Frank? Did you have him listen to your well-sorted rig by any chance? 😱 He probably ran home to re-solder all his speaker terminals and to bypass all switches and volume pots.🙃

[fas42]

38 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

What did you do to this nice man, Frank? Did you have him listen to your well-sorted rig by any chance? 😱 He probably ran home to re-solder all his speaker terminals and to bypass all switches and volume pots.🙃

 

Probably infected him with our new bottle of hand sanitiser, 🙂 ... everything appeared to hook up OK, two new boxes in the house - no soldering required! - the magic first box needed to show 3 blue lights, to say all was well, but it stubbornly fell short, only doing 2 ... "box on the pole outside has to download firmware, or whatever it needs - can take forever ... ring me when it comes good" ... "OK ..." ... but 2 only blue lights just kept glaring at me. A bit of phone runaround going nowhere ... and then the ISP said, "Installation rescheduled for over a week from now" ... "Whaaa ?!!"

 

[fas42]

Just noted this post,

 

The "more natural" subjective flag is where the money is - this is what one works toward. There is always a battle I have found, to eliminate the electrical, noise gremlins that extinguish this quality in the presentation - in this case, eliminating the conductive link by inserting an optical connection did the trick; but there are never any guarantees that a particular something done will flick the switch, in one direction or the other.

 

Sometimes, the difference made can bowl one over - this of course is what happened to me, in the over 3 decades ago 'epiphany'. The huge advantage that event gave me was the understanding that achieving realistic playback was not a slow, steady movement up a gentle incline, but rather hitting a sharp turning point into a near vertical "takeoff".

 

[fas42]

Well, 2nd attempt at NBN happening as I type ... and success!! What was the problem ... umm, er, the wrong pole was being worked on! Sort of made sense - there is a pole at the top of our driveway, had to be the one for our house, right? ... Well, it wasn't - ours was the one quite a way down the road ... bummer!

 

The tech this time was completely on the ball - even though the paperwork he had on him said it was the pole in front; which the earlier chap would have also worked from ... that's not how the wiring was done. Turns out that theoretically he should have reset us back to using the phone exchange, and scheduled the proper underground cabling done, to provide us with a link - another 6 months without fast Internet!... But we live in Oz 😉 ... "I looped in wires from one pole to the the next, to get you going ... some months down the track they will come and do the link properly ..." he says with a smile ... 👍.

[fas42]

NBN working a treat, true 45 Mbps performance - a download of a 300 Meg software update taking only seconds ... nice!

 

Audio friend up the road wants another round of listening to happen - big improvements on the digital side by severely simplifying the old Quad CDP he uses; disabling the transport, since he only uses the DAC in it - and, by reorganising the grounding arrangements for the amplifier, to better suit the various inputs to that. The sound from CD now has the same magic qualities that the vinyl had, the last time I heard the latter, he says - should be an interesting session!

 

Good point he mentioned when I was talking to him - when a thought occurs to him, he plays with it for quite a few days, thinking through the various possible impacts it may have, both positive and negative, before he touches the soldering iron - avoids a lot of unnecessary moves which only lead to backwards progress.

[fas42]

And, a good listening session, up the road at N.'s ...

 

Overall, a very good digital standard ... some highlights were that a very high standard of depth, and space was presented; this was quite consistent over the whole session. But, there was some unevenness, which led me to suggest where there was room for improvement.

 

To make it a "fair fight", I brought over a selection of the CDs I'm currently using to sort out what to do with my new budget active speakers; the CD side for him uses a standard DVD player similar to mine, which feeds optical into the now quite highly, internally, optimised DAC of the Quad player. And the value of what had been done showed through ... on many discs quite superior in the presentation to what my current rig does at this point - as it should be! 🙂 This was in the area of detail retrieval, depth as mentioned above, and spatial richness of the soundstage. Classical and jazz was of a very high order; tonality of some tough, 'roughly mastered' test tracks of mine were spot on.

 

But bass full, dense, driving rock tracks weren't fairing as well ... what might be the issue? My guess was that vibration was suspect, and so it turned out to be - I suggested damping, stabilising the TOSLINK cable; an immediate improvement - and he added further damping to again improve the SQ. I queried what had been done to stabilise the DVD player, and we agreed that the platform it was on could be made more rigid - a quick kludge to stiffen this, and again improvements heard ... Black Sabbath's Paranoid went up quite a few notches. But ... later on, some Hendrix Blues just wasn't firing like it should ... my feeling is that the whole DVD player side needed to be worked on more, to match the now much improved DAC area - hopefully this might be done before the next get together.

 

Finished the main listening with some vinyl Janis Joplin ... vocals, tonality of instruments, all nicely in place; the standard shown in the last couple of sessions still fully holding up.

[fas42]

Oh, forgot to mention ... he has a new DAP, which he suggested sounded better when it internally first upsampled, an option when playing; then showed me the process - but I was hearing something different ... it always sounded better after he changed that option, irrespective of whether it was toggling the upsampling on, or off ... what was going on!!? Then the penny dropped ... it was him handling the device to make the change that mattered! ... What was happening was that it was picking up a static charge while playing on the surface it was placed on, which his touch disrupted.

 

The lesson? That the mechanism in play, affecting SQ, may be very different from what one thinks - it's worthwhile sometimes going over things several times, trying all sort of variations, to get a better handle on things ... the knowledge gained can be exceedingly useful down the track, eliminating lots of wasted time and money.

[fas42]

Got some solid confirmation, today, that the Edifier speakers don't need much tinkering, internally, to deliver capable SQ - but, I still have mains quality issues; the sound was in a zone where it was trivially easy to hear the losses, in quality, when the 'wrong' devices were plugged in, at quite some electrical distance from the system; in spite of the filtering so far applied.

 

This area of finessing has always been a pain in the bum ... so far, I don't have solid solutions which will always guarantee complete isolation - usually, a combination of filtering and simply unplugging various electrical parts of the house when doing serious listening will give me the quality I'm after - but I shouldn't have to do the latter. So, definitely much more experimenting is necessary, to see if I can fully knock this over ...

[Rexp]

16 hours ago, fas42 said:

Got some solid confirmation, today, that the Edifier speakers don't need much tinkering, internally, to deliver capable SQ - but, I still have mains quality issues; the sound was in a zone where it was trivially easy to hear the losses, in quality, when the 'wrong' devices were plugged in, at quite some electrical distance from the system; in spite of the filtering so far applied.

 

This area of finessing has always been a pain in the bum ... so far, I don't have solid solutions which will always guarantee complete isolation - usually, a combination of filtering and simply unplugging various electrical parts of the house when doing serious listening will give me the quality I'm after - but I shouldn't have to do the latter. So, definitely much more experimenting is necessary, to see if I can fully knock this over ...

I got these Edifier speakers to hook up to my tv and for bluetooth audio via my phone (super convenient). Going from my laptop via HDMI to tv, tv to speakers, so far, I prefer the rca input to both the bluetooth and the optical inputs. The SQ is determined by the source/source material. 

[fas42]

2 hours ago, Rexp said:

I got these Edifier speakers to hook up to my tv and for bluetooth audio via my phone (super convenient). Going from my laptop via HDMI to tv, tv to speakers, so far, I prefer the rca input to both the bluetooth and the optical inputs. The SQ is determined by the source/source material. 

 

Nice one! I haven't even bothered to try RCA so far - first time playing with digital optical, so curious how far this would take me ...overall, what do you think of them, so far?

[Rexp]

32 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Nice one! I haven't even bothered to try RCA so far - first time playing with digital optical, so curious how far this would take me ...overall, what do you think of them, so far?

They're not bad, transparent enough to reveal the sound of different sources. 

[fas42]

20 minutes ago, Rexp said:

They're not bad, transparent enough to reveal the sound of different sources. 

 

What did you find lacking with the optical input, if I may ask?

[Rexp]

15 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

What did you find lacking with the optical input, if I may ask?

Was tiring after a while, I've got another gizmo with optical out coming, will try that. 

[fas42]

What sort of tweaking, if any, have you tried with these speakers? For example, have you done anything to condition, or filter the mains feed to them - I've found they are very sensitive to that, at least where I am; the more I improve that, the better they sound ....

[Rexp]

No tweaking to the speakers, have now attached a Chromecast Audio device to the optical input. I'm happy with the tv sound, want to improve music playback. 

[fas42]

These 2 posts,

 

 and

 

talking of noise coupling, and ground loops, is where a lot of what loses SQ occurs. Either use a very simple setup, or go to great lengths to ensure that this interference is not causing problems, are what's needed - doesn't matter how it is done, it's the "not doing anything about it" that will make the job of getting optimum sound so, so much harder.

[fas42]

Interesting throwback here, on ASR - talking of old power amps that do everything right, measurement wise, https://www.audio “science” review/forum/index.php?threads/vintage-amplifiers-that-could-challenge-or-approach-current-state-of-the-art-amplifiers.14257/. The OP then mentions a favourite brand, and guess what? My first good rig scores ... https://www.audio “science” review/forum/index.php?threads/vintage-amplifiers-that-could-challenge-or-approach-current-state-of-the-art-amplifiers.14257/page-2

 😁.

 

Flawless? Not quite - the noise didn't bother me - man, that transformer got scorching hot ... but the weakness was the smoothing caps used - they had to be sorted for best performance...

[fas42]

As a means of diagnosing system issues, I've got a freebie CD here that's very useful - came with a Sunday newspaper in the 2000's - with techno tracks - supposedly layback in style. Not that one would think so - very intense synthesized sound elements as part of the mix. But that's balanced with very 'organic' sounds - soft voices, and other acoustic contributions as part of the whole. When a rig is working well the contrast between the two "feels" provides a tremendous sense of a dynamic in what one hears - the ear delights in the balance between the two qualities. The better the SQ of the playback, the more powerful is the subjective impact of the very strong contrast ... the current Edifiers do a pretty reasonable job of conveying this when working well; another excellent means of getting feedback when trying changes.

[fas42]

Just came across these being mentioned, http://gr-research.com/electracabletubeconnectors.aspx.

 

If one wanted the speakers to be able to be disconnected, rather than use hardwiring as I do, than something like these is what I would use.

 

[fas42]

Thought I would put this note here, rather than on the Edifying thread - because it emphasizes always being aware that the SQ can go backwards; this is something that can happen very easily, because a tweak becomes 'undone' ...

 

Couple of days ago I ran the active speakers after a break of some days - and I wasn't happy. Nominally OK, but there was a 'lacking' - and the more I listened the more I felt that there was a loss of ease and expansiveness of the sound. Now, there's an umbilical cord that connects the right, active speaker, to the passive, left speaker - and its route between the speakers has been very carefully organised. But ... I'm using Blu Tack as a temporary means of stabilising its path - and that goo has been "letting go" a bit recently ... was the constant flopping down of the cord, and hence necessary manipulation to put back into place causing too many stresses to build in the structure of the cable - and hence static noise being the problem?

 

The cable hasn't moved now in a couple of days - and running just now with the same source CDs as last time, everything feels back in place, with the SQ. So, can I be sure that the cable settling down, or "burning in" to use audiophile terminology, was the reason that the quality was restored? Not really ... it's a dance of far too many variables, and plenty of times one is just relying on a best "guestimate". But my gut feeling is that I'm right - I could do lots of experiments to explore this, but too many other things to sort at the moment ... to be left to another time ...

 

So, just because one is on top of the game one day, is no guarantee that everything is always going to be on the up and up - if you feel that "something is not quite right" then most likely you are correct. Trick is not to panic, and do major changes - again, step by step go through all the tweaks, make sure they're fully 'functional' - and think carefully about anything untoward that may have happened in the meantime - like my cable dropping off its perch 😁.

[fas42]

Noting this thread,

 

with a comment that such a device in the home means that a SMPS is always running - unless you pull the fuse, etc, in the supply box. Now, this may or may not be significant if after the best sound, and depending upon how effective all the noise killers are that are attached to your audio system.

 

I mention this here, because an experiment a couple of days ago with my ultra cheap active speaker setup showed how sensitive gear is to electrical noise originating anywhere in the home - just having things on a separate circuit is absolutely not a guarantee that you're home free, 😉.

 

I'm increasing mass loading of those speakers, which improves detail resolution - and noted that a string quartet CD, that I often use for this very purpose, could do with better tone. Long story short, I needed to add a benign load to every circuit in the home, say a low powered incandescent bulb, at the end of the run of that circuit to get the tonality in better shape. IOW, just a bit of idle mains conductor was generating noise, most likely because it was showing antenna behaviour, which affected the sound.

 

Of course, this should be solved by adding more filtering to the audio system leads - which is something I still need to get onto, 🤪. But the purpose of this post is to point out that just because you think you've done enough to counter interference factors, is no guarantee that in fact that such is the case ...

[fas42]

Just got a call from N. - he had been fighting the bad connection problem for years, with the media players, in the outside rig - and bought a cheap HD Bluetooth unit which he could hack, to try getting around this. Much savage tweaking later, including disabling major chunks of the, digital, circuitry inside, he's quite pleased with what he's getting - so will be heading across shortly to hear how it sounds ...

[fas42]

I'm impressed !!! ... Just returned from up the road, at the audio friend's place - and his new toy is now in the zone, well and truly ...

 

Unit was a well reviewed device on ebay, costing just under $AU100 - he has it hard wired to inside the Naim amp, and of course within the large cigarette sized case of the Blutooth receiver, and DAC - the latter is a Burr Brown unit. And then, had a very large auxiliary battery pack external, of his own making; also, fixed output level - which meant, unfortunately, that he had to re-instate the Alps volume pot, in the Naim.

 

First impressions weren't so good - some things okay, but detail and sweetness were missing. My first thoughts - does the distance between the media player and receiver matter, with the Bluetooth connection. He had had previous experience with a Bluetooth link playing up, when send and receive too close - so kept them apart, intially. Well, turned out that it was critical - the closer the player was to the receive antenna, the better the sound ... why? Most likely, the greater the distance, the more current draw needed to ensure good reception - meaning less amps to get the SQ right.

 

Which brought up the next issue ... the SQ was now easily good enough to make one acutely aware of the damage being done by the Alps pot; a regular wriggle was needed to keep the quality in the right zone. Until towards the end of the listening, when the SQ seemed to stabilise - what was going on here? A little inspiration then struck - perhaps the mechanicals of the pot's working parts favoured one direction of motion over another? And this seemed to bear out - if you adjust the pot, or give it a wriggle to refresh the connect area, always finish with an anti-clockwise movement; that is, dropping the gain.

 

How good was the quality? The best I've heard from his backyard shed rig ... Big Sound, effortlessly; no matter what style of track he threw at it, they all worked, from huge orchestral workouts, to one hit wonders from the 60's - it never missed a beat. Speakers so close to being invisible it didn't matter ... it even, * gasp *, made Diana Krall sound good! That is, her voice, which I have always found completely uninspiring, came good - very natural, highly appealing 🙂.

 

[fas42]

Controlling static effects - electrical activity due to mechanical interaction and movement of materials - are a key part of getting best sound, IME - they are on the borderline of being undetectable, both in the measurement sense and being audible to listeners who are focused on other aspects of the sound. However, it has been almost impossible to find any research delving into understanding what's going on - until very recently, when the interest in TENGs (TriboElectric NanoGenerators) has exploded ... the desire to exploit the buildup of charge from movement, etc, into storable electrical energy, for use in say, on body electrical devices. And the last couple of years the research into understanding this stuff better has gone gangbusters - a good sense of how far things have gone is in this paper, https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0020961.

 

Okay, why this is relevant is that audio manages to create situations all the time where the electrical noise from these mechanisms has an impact, an audible effect - but it's not being managed. Which usually means it's luck of the draw whether the SQ is as good as it could be, for the capability of the components - and explains a lot of the craziness with cables, etc. If one is aware, then one can consciously do things to mitigate any possible impact, and if done consistently and carefully, get good results.

 

The fact that heavy duty efforts are going into better understanding of these physical behaviours, with papers coming out at a high rate of knots, right now, is a good sign for future audio design, which will have better understanding and techniques available for making sure that unwanted electrical generation is not degrading the SQ.

 

 

 

[fas42]

Noting this discussion, 

 

People mention the importance of setting the position of the speakers, precisely so ... IME, the huge plus of optimising the electronics, and stabilising the platform that the drivers are mounted on, is that the SQ evolves to the point where none of this is necessary - the quality of the presentation is uniform throughout the listening area, and the need to have drivers at certain heights, pointing in a precise direction, etc, becomes completely irrelevant - if the aim is to just immerse yourself in the sound experience, 🙂.