An Edifying Journey ...

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Turned out, too messy!! The link went bad when tidying up - duhhh!! So, will have another round today, and make sure the soldering is better done ...

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Right, sorted - put back together, and firing nicely. A good sign, I have some old Brendel playing sonatas material - running at near live levels - and Bev is sitting about four feet directly in front of the right speaker ... and is completely comfortable with the sound, 🙂.

 

The thing is to see now whether the SQ holds up over an extended period - as compared to the pre-hardwiring behaviour ...

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The John Rowles link from an earlier post,

 

now fails - this is the album

 

 

A sample from that,

 

 

 

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Well, it didn't hold up ... 🤒. The SQ went through the normal end 2nd CD, start 3rd CD dip; so the tweak hasn't helped there - and appeared to coming up again. But a lacklustre sense to the sound started to build - and got worse, steadily. Finally, on some solo violin the instrument was horrible - scratchy, so unpleasant - hit the volume down, hard.

 

What's happening? ... Many people have gone through this - make a major change, initially sounds fine, but then goes through a "sounds like shit !!" period; and then rises out of this mire, to settle into a final, highly acceptable quality level.

 

So, what really happened, in my case? Well, I had to be pretty rough at times with what I was doing, because the space I was working in was so confined- tugging hard on wires, bending them and plastic bits severely; stressing all the materials quite substantially, in physical ways. This leaves residual stresses in all those parts, and then being inside the speaker cabinet with its vibration, this is a recipe for static buildup to occur - solution is to let time do its thing, and the materials "settle down". Of course, people call this "breaking in" the component; but normally I don't have such a clear example of it happening, in the things I do.

 

Turned out dropping the volume managed to ease the issue; the SQ stabilised, and then I was able up the level again, without major deterioration - at this very moment running pretty loud, and SQ still holding... may have to go through a few cycles of this, until the standard fully stabilises.

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Next day, starting well ...

 

These Edifiers can pull off the mono soundstage shifting trick at the moment, which is an excellent sign. That is, put on some true mono material, I'm currently using some 30's swing orchestra tracks, and the soundstage image shifts sideway, as you do. Example, at some distance while in front of the left speaker, move slightly to the right of that speaker, and the sound then shifts the same amount to the right of the speaker - the presentation is completely "outside the box".

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So far, holding up - male operatic voice, accompanied by piano, doing nicely; seems to be in better shape than what it was yesterday, at this same stage of number of CDs played ... sweetness of tone with massed strings is one of the things I'll be  monitoring as the day progresses.

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Okay, the takeaway of yesterday was, it's better, than the first day - no raw unpleasantness to the sound at any point - but no cigar. The sense of ease was not properly in place - and there was still a strong whiff of the SQ going off slightly when the speaker were driving harder - this was almost noticeable on a track by track basis; the circuits would "catch their breath" as the gap of silence occurred, start the next track cleanly, but start to lose clarity as the energy of the music allowed excess electrical noise to make an impact.

 

I'll give it two more days of solid playing to see if it settles down more - if it doesn't do this satisfactorily, then I'll pull the back off again, and do a better job of stabilising all the areas I disturbed while doing the bypassing ...

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Hah ... first thing this morning, a real no-no in the audiophile world, a digital recording, of the overture of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, Philips, 1979!! - oh, the horror!! 😁

 

Bev says, "Wow!! ... this is sounding so good" - and indeed it was .. full, rich, inviting sound - I shakes me head, 😆.

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But, again there was a build up of static, somewhere - seemed to take longer to manifest, as compared to yesterday - and this time I inspected everything external. One of the mains filters, which regularly gets knocked, was a bit suspect - the spacing between the parts within wasn't optimum; so I redid that. Of course, the speakers were powered down while I fiddled with the filter; for a reasonable time - and when switched on again, the orchestral piece that was really highlighting the degradation came up all sparkly and big, this time ... I had been playing the same track, over and over 🙂. The charge had fully dissipated, so things were back to tors ...

 

So, was it the filter, or is the issue still inside the speaker? It may take hours to fully manifest the SQ loss - run out of puff to investigate so carefully again, today; will see how it goes tomorrow.

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Another run ... same thing still happening - almost certain now that it's internal to the speaker. But I'll give it the benefit of the doubt one more day - and then dive in.

 

The unit inside is quite nicely built - but there are many areas I see where I could do something to make the parts less likely to be impacted by vibration ... but, step by step changes 😀. Fix up those bits I disturbed, and tidy just some other, obvious ones, first.

 

The SQ seems better when at a peak now, but worse after some operation at louder volumes - as compared to prior to the hardwiring. The cabling to the on/off switch was very neatly bundled, and had heatshrink plastic over the whole bundle, for quite some distance - this would helped its robustness against vibration, which was lost when I modded ... and perhaps was a tweak by the manufacturer.

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Hmmm, wasn't the best day for testing - I didn't persist the whole day checking out aspects of the SQ, for various reasons - but I was hearing enough to know that I wasn't happy with the status. In particular, I was getting clues that the switch was still impacting, even though it was bypassed - so it looks like what my next move will be to rewire the area, to simplify the path of the wiring as much as possible ... the switch will be completely eliminated, physically. Why did this occur, then? Well, I was trying to make the changes reversible, and this complicated what needed to be done - and made the soldering very difficult. I suspect that the quality of the hardwiring isn't good enough, and this has now created a new issue - so, I'll butcher the area more thoroughly, and ensure the cable run has far greater integrity.

 

Will do it so that the switch can be reinstated, if it really needs to be - what is clear is that the wiring here is critical, so it was worthwhile beginning this exercise ... but this won't happen for a couple of days, now.

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How come nothing here ... ? Loss of enthusiasm, got sidetracked on another interest of mine, computer graphics - still haven't made that crucial change - and too busy fiddling with non audio stuff, in general. Will happen sooner or later - most likely when Bev makes noises about moving things along, 😆.

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Finally !!! Bit the bullet, went in, and did the job - now running again; so far, sounding fine - will see how it settles down over some hours ...

 

So, the mains lead now is a relatively clean run of copper within the cabinet - also, some cables tidied up, secured better ... overall, the manufacturer did a fairly good job, applying a sponge covering over the main runs of conductors that by necessity couldn't be fully secured to something solid.

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Pleasing ... this track from a Truck Drivin' CD, a favourite song from my youth, has definitely improved,

 

 

 

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And at the end of day, good news ... SQ remained at a consistently good level, no apparent drop. Overall, maintained a quality a touch better than the peak standard achieved up to now; with any troughs far less noticeable. Which is the usual outcome of these exercises - another step improvement in the integrity of the replay; no miracle breakthroughs, whatsoever 🤩. 

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So, how has this simplifying of the wiring worked out, longer term - at the moment, it's a bit of a hmmm ...

 

What I've gained is a stability of the sound - flicking the on/off switch now does nothing, as it should, since its terminals are completely out of the circuit. However, these is, currently, a distinct flatness - it's not "singing" as much, as before when at a peak ... why?

 

People who do changes know this all too well - stuff has to, "burn in" ... what I suspect is the most likely cause is that the wires were given a harsh treatment while changing the linkage; twisting, bending, etc. Which creates stresses in the materials, and they have to 'relax' into their new physical positioning - made worse because they are multi-strand, and they are exposed to the direct vibration of the drivers, literally only inches away. So what I'll do is live with this for a couple of weeks, and if there is no improvement after this time, take the back off again, and have another think, about what may have been disturbed when I went in, and that needs to be improved.

 

This is the difficulty of changing things, especially in confined spaces - there may be subtle balances, which one is unaware of - and disrupting that stability can be one step forward, one step back ... for the moment I'll let time do its healing, if that's what's necessary - and then move again, if that's what's needed.

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Well, tripped over two "silly" issues - one mentioned elsewhere, where a mains lead came adrift from how it was positioned - easily rectified - and just before, a filter in the mains lead chain, which relies on a somewhat 3D construction of parts, which was not made more rigid, as it should be, had been disturbed enough so that the lead of a part was touching the surface of a neighbouring part ... trivial, eh? Well, no ... that was enough to add a good chunk of "hmmm" to the SQ - quickly spaced it out; and back up the ladder went the SQ, 😉.

 

Why was it not more stabilised? Well, you prototype, and move on to the next item to deal with - and sometimes you don't go back to finish the job; or at least tidy it up. Lesson learnt, for the millionth time 🙄; will get it out of the way, so that it can't confuse what's going on again, in the future ...

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Okay, sorted it out - much improved ...

 

Next day, good sign ... Bev just raised the volume to maximum on some Vaughan Williams - I was at the other end of the house, 🙂.

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And next day, very happy with it at the moment - Bev said the word, Smooth ... 1930's recordings takes you to that place; warm and cosy in front of the fire ...

 

Then, a bit of Herb Alpert,

 

 

Huge, rich and smooth ... ticked plenty of boxes, 🙂.

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Not 100% sure I'm on top of stabilising the SQ ... yesterday, which turned out to be a 'bad' day, for other reasons, showed up a track from this quartet not in good shape. Early DG album, with string tone that's a giveaway to system issues - an example, not from the album I have,

 

 

This clip emphasises how "on the edge" the string sound is, especially in the crescendos ... the slightest problem with system replay, and that edge becomes impossible to listen to - a good example of how the 'right' recording is excellent for diagnostics.

 

 

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Where are things at? ... Um, still not comfortable with current status - the general movement of SQ is that it's very acceptable at cold switch on, depending on recording; and reaches a very good standard after 4 or so CDs ... but then there begins a subtle downturn, still. The usual culprit is some mechanism which injects noise, usually derived from an issue with static, somewhere - which slowly tips some part of the working circuit into a non-optimum status. Now, I can live with this if if takes all day to build to this - a power cycling once a day to reset is OK - but at the moment it's still too short.

 

As a way of testing where the problem originates, I rejigged how the extensive mains filtering is organised, in case the buildup is caused by how well the DVD player is isolated, over the mains, from the speakers - to see if the pattern changes.

 

One thing with all this - you get tired of doing all these sort of fine tunings - which is where I am now, 🙂 - but one has to persist with the exercise if one wants answers, I'm afraid.

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So, what's "acceptable" - well, first thing this morning, cold start, this worked a treat, at house filling volume,

 

 

Oodles of PRaT - whatever that means, 😆.

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Well, I was caught out by this factor,

 

Had sort of forgotten this ... and it came back to remind me, yesterday. If I just warm up the system by only playing a sequence of recordings at a moderate, or lowish volume, then the rig never really kicks into high gear - the speaker drivers and/or electronics of the Edifiers need to be driven hard, for a good albums worth, and then they are in a much better zone. This really is a generic characteristic of of dynamic drivers, and probably will remain such until some more ambitious manner of constructing them is used.

 

What is, high gear? All the usual things that audio enthusiasts look for - cleaner, richer, bigger, fuller, more dynamic, more detailed; there is an ease to the sound, which just resonates as being, right. Is it dramatic? No, but if you haven't had it for a while you end up getting used to the somewhat lower level of performance; only to get a kick in the rump when it kicks in, 😉.

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Quality matters 😁 ... it's becoming clearer why these speakers do so well, in raw form ...

 

Decided to pull out one of the treble units, to check how well the connection to the speaker tabs was done - the baffle is solid as a rock; the drivers are inset into the material, the opening which has a subtle curve, is super tight around the driver, and very nicely finished - everything is flush. Screws were 100% tight, needed a major wrench of effort to move them, very long. Even with the screws out, the driver was still solidly lodged on the baffle; it needed a very fine bladed cutter blade to even get a bit of bite onto the narrow gap; and very carefully lever out the beast.

 

Well, it weighed a tonne! 😀 ... for the size of it, that is. Massive magnet assembly; what I would expect on the mid/bass driver, for that sort of box. Beautifully finished, all sleek black curves - puts to shame all the treble units I've looked at in any of my previous speakers, including the original B&Ws 😉. This is what I would expect in a $40,000 speaker, let alone a $4,000 one, and most certainly a $400 one! And, of course, the connections were a neat, soldered effort - no worries there!

 

Everything just felt quality - very, very impressive for the price I paid for them ... it will be worth pushing these to as far as I possibly can, is my gut feeling, right now ...

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Nothing like the majesty of Kitaro to show things up - played this yesterday,,

 

 

and it was showing a lacking. This track, for example, was not exhibiting good 'sparkle',

 

 

Found some issues, a touch more finessing - much better, next day ...