An Edifying Journey ...

[fas42]

Don't know why I do this ... 😆

 

Yesterday, for some reason and just for the heck of it, I used my really cheap phone to record a bit of a CD of Ashkenazy playing ... it's just a snapshot, don't take it seriously; but gives a bit of an idea of the current status that I'm wrestling with - the TV is running between the speakers at the same time, to give some context ...

EdifiersTidbit.wav

[fas42]

A good day ... it started well, and was humming along nicely; but then the dreaded drop off in SQ started to rear its ugly head, just a touch ... investigation of all the mains cable "mess" showed up one, little thing; which seemed to help - but, there was still a lacking ... what was it?

 

A suspicion I had was that a couple of surge protectors that were part of the mix were not helping - they put capacitance across the lines, and depending upon everything, they can help or hinder - a resonance can occur, and make things worse - many times in experimenting I have had such items in, and then taken them out - because they were clearly making things worse. The trouble is, they do help because they attenuate some spikes from other electrical stuff operating in the house.

 

This was in evidence here ... took them out of the circuit, and some parts of the SQ were better - but their absence now allowed the television to interfere; clearly heard by switching the latter off. Was I caught on the horns of a dilemma? 😉 ... Moved the surge protectors to a different point of the cable to the telly, and this was the 'solution', 🙂.

 

But, this is not really a solution - the goal, with this setup, is to have the electrically dirtiest stuff also running off the same mains line, and not have a SQ impact - cheating by cleaning the current draw by some device, in its mains cable, means that the audio setup is being allowed to get away with still being vulnerable to outside interference - and that's one of the key things I want to solve, here.

[fas42]

New config of the filtering is working nicely ... this, on a compilation CD,

 

 

delivers all the live vibe, with a great acoustic, and very good clarity of all the instruments.

 

I think I may start to get better organised, to record the playback, to give a better impression of what the setup is now doing - up to now I've been hesitant, because there were still bits I wasn't happy enough with - the zone of adequate integrity seems very close to being stable enough to risk it ... 🤪.

[fas42]

On 9/10/2021 at 3:58 PM, fas42 said:

 

A suspicion I had was that a couple of surge protectors that were part of the mix were not helping - they put capacitance across the lines, and depending upon everything, they can help or hinder - a resonance can occur, and make things worse - many times in experimenting I have had such items in, and then taken them out - because they were clearly making things worse. The trouble is, they do help because they attenuate some spikes from other electrical stuff operating in the house.

 

 

Refined this situation ... a case of, if one is good, then two are better, NOT working 😁 - eliminated the extra, and that took away an edge to the SQ; there was some resonance getting on board ... why there were two is historical; the extra filtering helped earlier in the piece - but with the latest config it wasn't an optimum ...

 

The overall mains filtering setup is almost certain to change - there will be a lot experimenting with adding, subtracting, moving things - until a peak performance occurs; and that can't be simplified any more, without degrading the SQ.

[fas42]

Very pleasing improvement, resulting from that last tweak - that is, removing a surge protector. It does indeed appear that the pairing was adding some noise, and so a lot of the recent experimenting was in fact attempting to counter that factor; without me realising what the situation was.

 

What was gained? An obvious one, subjectively an increase of heft - when a symphonic work hits a big moment in a piece, the sense of the space that the performance was in responding in a more intense, longer lasting manner; with no hint of anything you would call distortion - this is now significantly closer to the sensation of the listening room being attached to the performance space, which can be any size it wants to be ... plenty of related markers working better, like massed strings conveying a sweet richness in immersive volumes of space. This is a result of the lowest levels of detail in the recording now being more clearly reproduced, and making better sense to the ear/brain.

[fas42]

However, this has led to deciding that connections between the extension leads for the DVD player power were now too prominent a weak point - so, one pair were just hardwired together ... so far, this appears to be a definite gain - the Schubert quartet CD that is a good metric is showing promise so far; will give it a day or so to stabilise ...

[fas42]

And hardwired another connection this morning - using a very old extension lead here, with the strands not particularly well secured in the plug - which is not going to do the SQ any favours, 🙂. And again, another step in a good direction - the Schubert album showing less edge from cold start.

 

Ultimately this will all be rationalised - it stays a physical mess until the right, necessary electrical conditions are confirmed; and then the overall configuration will be simplified, and bundled up tidily.

[EdmontonCanuck]

13 hours ago, fas42 said:

Ultimately this will all be rationalised - it stays a physical mess until the right, necessary electrical conditions are confirmed; and then the overall configuration will be simplified, and bundled up tidily.

 

At which point you realize you moved a cable and have to start the whole process over again 😀

[davide256]

@The Computer Audiophile this for all intents and purposes is a stream of consciousness personal blog by fas42  Shouldn’t it be moved out of the discussion area?

[fas42]

Nothing stopping people discussing what I'm doing - in an intelligent way, which may be the hard bit ... 😄. I'm doing the same sort of things I did 35 years ago, which was to not add expensive, flavour of the month, fairy dust bits and pieces to a rig - but rather to 'debug' the chain, thinking of it as a system ...

 

Which works. Looks like a significant weakness was that last extension lead, which had the copper strands not making ideal contact at one end, in the connector. This would have been a source of noise, impacting the DVD player, and degrading the optical waveform it was passing to the speakers - not a guarantee that such is the the true causal link, but other routes are much less likely.

 

Gains? Bigness of sound is an obvious one ... overall this Edifier chain has nearly always been pleasing, but it has lacked the ability to extract the lowest details cleanly - so has never fully disappeared; many times it has failed to match the NAD combo in certain areas. I needed to identify where this weakness was mainly originating - and noise over the mains feed was clearly a biggy. So, yesterday a major jump in SQ - this is now in the realm of looking through a window into the recording space, which will be as massive as the acoustic recorded, or engineered ... say, huge orchestral staging is now more firmly in place, with the intensity of the real thing happening ...

 

And just remember ... this is a setup with bits costing just a few hundred dollars, 😉.

[fas42]

On 9/20/2021 at 2:23 AM, EdmontonCanuck said:

 

At which point you realize you moved a cable and have to start the whole process over again 😀

 

Well, waddya know ... just discovered that an extension lead being used for isolating had no earth conductor! 🤪 A specialist cord, intended for a double insulated product, saving money by ditching the extra bit of copper ... with no indication that it was so constructed ... indeed, have "to start the whole process over again" 😉.

 

In one sense, it made only a tiny difference - the components are not earthed, in their design; it was only one section of mains filtering that in part had connections to the ground ... but, can't have bits not working as intended! So, that cable was ditched - for the moment - the mains link was 'shortened'.

 

Did it make a difference? At first, seemed to be a loss - but components had cooled down while this was sorted, cables were, indeed, moved  🙂 ... give it some time, OK. And, it picked up - at least as good as before - will see what a day or so of use gives me ...

[fas42]

Another thing ... the extension cords were contacting surfaces at the junction between two areas, which had the door closed, from necessity - was there a static problem there? ... Yes, there was - some anti-static material here took away edginess in the string sound in some chamber music - not the Schubert CD ... another gain.

 

Time for a "kitchen sink" album I hadn't tried yet - that is, everything about this recording makes life difficult, for a playback chain - very dense sound, lots of compression, mastered to suit low quality playback, highly driving arrangements ... this can easily make for "impossible!" listening ... an example,

 

 

Hmmm ... first run, a bit flat ... strange ... so now, this album will be a good guide for further moves - next run, after some slight adjustments, definitely better...

[fas42]

Well, I was hoping that the arrangement of mains filtering I was using so far was good enough ... unfortunately, it is now audible that it's not! The SQ is now at a point where I can hear the effect - removing the neighbouring power cord which runs the other entertainment gear in the lounge takes a slight hardness off the sound, easily heard in solo violin.

 

So is it the power supplies of those items, or something else? With a bit of experimenting, it was clear that that surge protection in the other power feed was a major part of the issue; and the closer that bit of circuitry was to the wall power socket the more it was audible - highly likely that there was some sort of resonance, generating noise. A 'temporary' fix was to add a decent length of extension cord to the other media power cabling, at the socket end.

 

But that's not a proper solution! I need an arrangement which is fully impervious to whatever electrical may be plugged in nearby - which may be some type of filtering or surge protection for non-audio electrical stuff ... what mostly likely is required is some mains rated circuitry which effectively snubs any spurious signals caused by the interaction of two sets of filtering - one known, the audio configuration; and the other unknown, absolutely anything, electrical! ... Which may not be that easy to sort out - thinkin' time needed, 😆.

[fas42]

Day before yesterday, and day after were a good example of how exasperating this sort of exercise can be, 😁 ...

 

I had made a minor change to the the filtering arrangement, on an impulse, and by the end of the day it was humming!! That is, it had got to a very good place, where I found it hard to fault, I had a good smile on my face 🙂 ... the next day, without changing anything, it started to show some subtle negatives - and I found out that part of the filtering had been disturbed, apparently some days earlier. Fixed this up - but I still wasn't hitting the sweet spot I had the day before - the day wasn't working in other areas as well, so I gave up on trying to move forward ...

 

Was this gain, and then loss, merely an artifact of warming up patterns being disturbed; or because I had accidentally disturbed some part of the circuitry that had stabilised into an optimum operating status? At times one can tear one's hair out, trying to establish what are causal factors in maintaining SQ; this is when one should just shut it down - and sleep on it, 🤪.

 

Today is a new day, or words to that effect 🤩 - will see if I can get it back to that peak behaviour ...

[fas42]

And, the most likely source of the degradation, found - the cables into the plugs and sockets fittings are sometimes not so tight; meaning that the cable can vibrate against its surround. Hot glued the most likely suspects, and - much better! Anywhere plastic of any normal variety can move relatively easily against its surroundings should always be treated with suspicion - so simple normally to damp or lock surfaces together - which gets rid of the possible problems.

 

Gains? Return of the comfortableness, and, much closer to the "transparent window into the recording space" experience. As an example, the system can do justice to tracks like this,

 

 

All the fine subtleties, and dynamic bursts are handled easily; with tonnes of acoustic space fully realised  ...

 

[Summit]

Maybe you should hire a Ghostbusters or exorcist to get rid of those miserable ghosts that seems to be tinkering with your cables all the time 🤭.

[fas42]

Or, the devil/ghosts is in the details 😉 ... it always, always comes back to the weakest link in the chain slugging the potential of what you have, and, yes, cables are one of the biggest bogeys in the game. Otherwise, the madness of an infinite number of manufacturers offering a vast array of cable 'models' wouldn't be part of the snake oil swamp - that which the objectivists justifiably spend lots of time rolling on the floor laughing at ...

 

It depends what your goals are ... if you see your rig as an effects machine, which you spend decades playing with every which way, making your "special" recordings sound ever more special, and making everything else sound more awful, then what I do wouldn't make sense. But if you want accuracy, which means that each recording imposes its own personality on what you hear, with the lowest possible contribution from the parts of the playback system, then the "tinkering" is essential.

 

This very, very cheap setup is in a pretty good place at the moment - it didn't miss a beat yesterday ... I'm optimistic that I've got the major weaknesses reasonably under control; because I could just listen to anything without being distracted by playback misbehaviour ...

[Summit]

11 hours ago, fas42 said:

Or, the devil/ghosts is in the details 😉 ... it always, always comes back to the weakest link in the chain slugging the potential of what you have, and, yes, cables are one of the biggest bogeys in the game. Otherwise, the madness of an infinite number of manufacturers offering a vast array of cable 'models' wouldn't be part of the snake oil swamp - that which the objectivists justifiably spend lots of time rolling on the floor laughing at ...

 

It depends what your goals are ... if you see your rig as an effects machine, which you spend decades playing with every which way, making your "special" recordings sound ever more special, and making everything else sound more awful, then what I do wouldn't make sense. But if you want accuracy, which means that each recording imposes its own personality on what you hear, with the lowest possible contribution from the parts of the playback system, then the "tinkering" is essential.

 

This very, very cheap setup is in a pretty good place at the moment - it didn't miss a beat yesterday ... I'm optimistic that I've got the major weaknesses reasonably under control; because I could just listen to anything without being distracted by playback misbehaviour ...

 

If you need to constantly fix the statics, filters, connections and position of the same 3 cables you have in your audio system you have a  problem that has noting to do with components per se. 

 

May be the weakest link is not part of your system? 

[fas42]

The problem is, that the components are sensitive to electrical noise - to the point where it's easily audible. IME, every rig has this problem, irrespective of the reputation of the maker, or the gear cost. As an example, every time someone says they changed the power cord they used, and that altered the SQ - that's a giveaway that the engineering of the component is not good enough to be impervious to noise factors.

 

You have two alternatives: either buy gear which has been debugged enough in the design to fully isolate from noise interference - this is currently almost impossible, no matter how much money you spend; or, add the necessary isolation, with filtering and other means, and attend to every area of the cabling, doing this yourself ... there are a million posts and web documents out there, describing the huge array of 'fixes' that have been tried.

 

Of course, this is not necessary if you're not fussed about achieving high standards of accuracy - but if you are, then it is ...

[Summit]

57 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The problem is, that the components are sensitive to electrical noise - to the point where it's easily audible. IME, every rig has this problem, irrespective of the reputation of the maker, or the gear cost. As an example, every time someone says they changed the power cord they used, and that altered the SQ - that's a giveaway that the engineering of the component is not good enough to be impervious to noise factors.

 

You have two alternatives: either buy gear which has been debugged enough in the design to fully isolate from noise interference - this is currently almost impossible, no matter how much money you spend; or, add the necessary isolation, with filtering and other means, and attend to every area of the cabling, doing this yourself ... there are a million posts and web documents out there, describing the huge array of 'fixes' that have been tried.

 

Of course, this is not necessary if you're not fussed about achieving high standards of accuracy - but if you are, then it is ...

 

That components like cables or filters can make a SQ difference is not what I debated. It is the fact that you need to constantly fix the same problems over and over again. And by chance your weakest link is always the same things (built up statics, lousy filters ,lousy connections and cables), all things that you can fix/diy in a few minutes 🤭.

 

 

[fas42]

17 minutes ago, Summit said:

 

That components like cables or filters can make a SQ difference is not what I debated. It is the fact that you need to constantly fix the same problems over and over again. And by chance your weakest link is always the same things (built up statics, lousy filters ,lousy connections and cables), all things that you can fix/diy in a few minutes 🤭.

 

 

Not quite the "same problems over and over again" - this is a process of exploration, as in, "I don't know all the answers", up front - hence the name of the thread. I'm pressing what I have around me, and what I have used before, into service - to give me answers. And sometimes it's not a trivial exercise to know exactly why a system doesn't sound right - this is a prototyping situation; it's not playing with precisely made, Lego style pieces, that perfectly align, and fit together.

 

If it was so simple to debug system issues, then I'm wondering why nearly all rigs I come across always have SQ issues - I take it your setup is one of the rare ones that has always sounded exquisitely right, because you know exactly what to do to have it fault free, at every moment ... yes? 🙂

[fas42]

First time I've come across the Gryphon Exorcist - as good an example as any of the weirdness of the audio world ... for outsiders 😁. Produced by a highly reputable company; and was given a good working over by a local, https://sound-au.com/madashell10.htm

 

Which just says that no matter how crazy the idea is, someone has probably tried it at some stage - and possibly attempted to sell a product based on it ...

 

The trouble is, even if the Gryphon thing did something for, say, my setup, that if sold new today it would cost as much as the whole system ... "When we sell you a car, sir, it comes without tyres - the ones we supply are very special; and cost as much again as the rest of the car put together - now, you can attempt to use the car without our tyres; or, choose to pay double the price, to get a properly working package ... " 😉

 

 

[fas42]

Should just mention that the earlier tweak addressing that "the cables into the plugs and sockets fittings are sometimes not so tight; meaning that the cable can vibrate against its surround" was specifically done on the mains feed for the DVD player; and not all for the separate run to the Edifiers. The SQ is still holding up, implying that the component that it helped most was the cheap Samsung; that it benefited the speakers via the torturous mains route to that component is always possible, but far less likely. 

 

 

[Summit]

I bought the exorcist, a bottle of holy water and some garlic and have not had any problems with gremlins 👻 since .

[fas42]

The craziness of the audio world is that noise obviously impacts audio systems - otherwise there would be zero market, say, for any sort of mains filtering and conditioning devices, especially the 'proper' ones, which often cost a small fortune - but no-one actually measures any of this ... it's a case of they either subjectively do something, or they don't - a pretty pathetic approach, but typical for how this industry 'works', 🙄.

 

If it was taken seriously, then proper and cost effective methods would be used to mitigate all these effects - failing that, DIY and tweaking has to brought into the picture, and worked at until the performance of the overall system is good enough. Unfortunately, snake oil remedies and ridiculously expensive workarounds will flourish until the importance of considering all the various ways electrical noise can interfere with correct functioning of a recording playback chain is fully realised.