An Edifying Journey ...

[fas42]

7 hours ago, bluesman said:

This begs the question of whether and how branch circuit wiring affects SQ.  The outlet is getting power from long, convoluted wires that are generally held in place along studs and joists inside the walls with metal staples, and run by / across / against many things.  The wires are clamped by plastic or metal when they enter and leave junction boxes, switch boxes etc.  They’re joined by wire nuts and connected to breakers and other devices by push-contact fittings, screw terminals etc.  They run through magnetic fields generated by multiple devices on the other side of those walls.

 

If you’re correct about the audible effects of any of these, we should be running dedicated mains feeds from pole or trench directly to our audio components.  Forgive me for being a bit skeptical, but the magnitude of these interactions seems like it should be rather small.  If it’s not, we’re all fooling ourselves.

 

Yes, that's the obvious rejoinder. But the key difference is that the parts have been in place for many years, decades most times. Everything has settled into physical equilibrium with its surroundings - and this reduces the static behaviours below being audibly significant, for the most part - IME. "Burn in" is a major part of audiophile's vocabulary, and my take on this is that this is the traditional way of dealing with, in part, static charge noise.

 

My goal is that a system is assembled from components that have been shipped or moved from another location; everything is plugged in using supplied cables, with no special care taken in doing this. And, it works. That is, a high standard of sound emerges within 5 minutes or so; which only gets better, the longer you listen. But, the reality has been very far from that ... 🙂.

 

Unfortunately, the interactions are of the type that are critical to long term listening satisfaction - if they are not controlled well enough, they introduce electrical noise which is enough to impact the playback chain; the normal symptom is a lack of ease, or general unpleasantness to the sound, which means you lose interest in what you're listening to. ... We've all heard playback from rigs which should be brilliantly good; but which tire us, and make us glad when the track finally finishes - that's what's being resolved by the fussiness I go to.

 

Direct mains feed from the pole could work - but is silly 😉. My approach is to assume that the mains waveform is full of rubbish, which I can't do anything about, before the wall socket. Therefore, what needs to be done, after the plug, to isolate that noise from the gear is what I work on - if I get that right, then my setup can be used anywhere, without concerns for loss of quality because the mains is below par.

[fas42]

Well, I was noting that even with the distancing I had in place, that there was still an impact from other circuits in the house. So, improved the isolation yet again by adding even more distancing extension cable - and, it appears to still be helping ... first day trying it, and the subjective impression was a thumbs up; at no time did I feel a need to try adjusting loads on other circuits, to improve things.

 

Will just mention again that these speakers do an excellent job from dead cold - from a reasonable listening distance, the sound floats quite free of the cabinets; even on a very unpromising recording ... the fact that I don't have to wait for the SQ to stabilise is a huge plus, for me 🙂.

[MarkusBarkus]

Have you considered running an extension cord to neighbor up the road and testing? May have to calculate current loss and up-gauge your extension cord. 
 

Also worth considering: how your ears perform "from dead cold." I suggest logging all listening sessions to include time of day, humidity/temp, and solar flare activity. 
 

Ideally, one would petition local  officials for a "Dedicated Hi-Fi Day." All non-essential current drawing devices would be required to be off your grid for a specified duration TBD. 
 

Man, now you're testing! Let me know if you need any international letters of support. Happy to help!

[fas42]

Noting you pursue the usual audiophilia fascination with "snake oil" solutions to improving sound - I'll do it my way, which is trying to understand what underlies changes in SQ, thank you ...

[MarkusBarkus]

I indulge in all manifestations of the black audiophile arts and am open to all manner of phenomenon and odd investigation, including...drum roll please: listening to music.
 

For a fella who admonished the readership for critiquing grounding boxes having never tried them, your reply to me about snake oil is interesting.

 

As is your mains "filtering" stuff, but never-mind, nirvana.

 

BTW: I had to put the grounding box "project" on the back burner, possibly forever, ...apologies to the readers of this/that thread...as after extensive research and reading, I conclude it would be a waste of (my) time. Although I did make some inroads on that wine box.😉
 

I'm not sure if that is in accord with your critique or contrary to same. I'll pour a little rum and puzzle that out later.
 

BTW2: presumably your comments about my particular brand of snake oil is based on a view of my system specs. I would be happy to describe my sonic take on any particular bit, with a flagon of reptilian oil, should that spirit move you.

 

Actually, I love the term "snake oil." It makes me think of being on the train to Hanoi, drinking cobra hooch and singing war songs with Vietnamese soldiers. Now *that* was some snake oil music, my friend. Cheers, fella...

[fas42]

52 minutes ago, MarkusBarkus said:

 

For a fella who admonished the readership for critiquing grounding boxes having never tried them, your reply to me about snake oil is interesting.

 

The point is, that the grounding boxes change the electrical environment in some manner, enough to cause the SQ to audibly alter for some people. Hence, "there's something going on" - which doesn't mean that everyone should run out and buy one; which is the snake oil thinking reaction - the much more useful reaction is to consider what may in fact may be happening; and try various methods that mimic that effect, or attempt to resolve the issues that the grounding box is impacting.

 

52 minutes ago, MarkusBarkus said:

 

As is your mains "filtering" stuff, but never-mind, nirvana.

 

I've had a problem completely eliminating mains issues with all my systems - success is when no matter how nasty some electrical device is that's plugged in nearby, and operating, that it doesn't cause the sound to degrade. Otherwise, I'm always at the mercy of what other people decide to do, at any particular moment, in their electrical lives - I prefer to have a bit more control over things ... 🙂.

 

52 minutes ago, MarkusBarkus said:

BTW2: presumably your comments about my particular brand of snake oil is based on a view of my system specs. I would be happy to describe my sonic take on any particular bit, with a flagon of reptilian oil, should that spirit move you.

 

Actually, I love the term "snake oil." It makes me think of being on the train to Hanoi, drinking cobra hooch and singing war songs with Vietnamese soldiers. Now *that* was some snake oil music, my friend. Cheers, fella...

 

More in regard to your playing with items like fuses and cables - which I have zero interest in.

 

In the spirit of this thread, I suggest we move on ... 😉

[fas42]

Okay, 3 days of repeating the start up routine of the day - and this confirms a general improvement in the ability of the system to reveal low level detail. This CD,

 

 

which throws up vast sound spaces, is doing well, right now - as the first album of the day. Fully synthesizer compositions tend to make shortfalls in replay capability very obvious, and the fact that close to zero warm up was required is a good sign - this definitely is a step up, resulting from doing that last extra round of isolation.

 

Still not sure whether the good behaviour is maintained, or improves, over a full day of playback - there was always an interruption, from "other things"; hope to determine this, today ...

 

 

[fas42]

So far, so good. Just using electrical distance as a means of isolating mains noise has shown only benefits over a number of days - no matter what recording I throw at it, they all do well; main gain is that low level detail is coming through more clearly, without extra grunge from any interference making this unpleasant to listen to. A CD of popular songs from the 1930's,

 

 

came up well ... this is full of recording limitations of those times, and can be very edgy to listen to, if the playback adds the wrong type of distortion. But no such issues ... plenty of depth, space and tonality of brass and big band backing was good ...

[fas42]

Right, I'm quite comfortable now with having reduced the impact of mains noise, to the point that plugging and unplugging 'nasty' devices elsewhere has zero or negligible impact ... does this mean that the sound is "perfect"? Of course not!! Playing one of my test, chamber music CDs at a higher volume showed a lack of sweetness that was possible for that recording - so, a bit of detective work on the dressing, and connections of all the bits and pieces making up the currently high convoluted mains filtering showed up a couple of less than ideal aspects - which helped lift the standard a touch.

 

What I'm going to do now is aim to tweak other areas apart from the mains lead menagerie, to try and evolve the integrity in those parts - the point is to enable greater potential SQ; and then see if the mains isolation done to date is "as good as it gets" - having greater 'transparency' will make it easier to pick whether there is any bleed through of mains interference, still ... the integrity of all the areas of the system have to be in balance, for the best value for effort results.

 

Once I have the filtering of noise working as well as I feel it needs to, then I'll start undoing the "mess" that it's in - a step at a time. Reason being is that some parts of the filtering, that I've thrown at it, are now unnecessary - and can be removed without lowering the level of isolation ... the goal is to see precisely what's doing the work, and what is now purely cosmetic; and then create the 'most intelligent', simplest filtering solution.

[fas42]

Just for fun, tried the album, Five Live Yardbirds,

 

 

Very good! A real roughie of a recording, done in 1964 - but the atmosphere of the smokey club, the vibe of being in the crowd comes across so well - nothing disturbs, in the quality of the capture.

 

This is a key reason for aiming for super clean sound - it allows something like this to have all the magic, to be fully at one with the event.

[Confused]

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

Just for fun, tried the album, Five Live Yardbirds,

 

 

Very good! A real roughie of a recording, done in 1964 - but the atmosphere of the smokey club, the vibe of being in the crowd comes across so well - nothing disturbs, in the quality of the capture.

 

This is a key reason for aiming for super clean sound - it allows something like this to have all the magic, to be fully at one with the event.

This one is completely unlistenable on my system.  Literally! 🙁

[fas42]

26 minutes ago, Confused said:

This one is completely unlistenable on my system.  Literally! 🙁

 

Which is why I posted about it, 🙂. Yes, this one is very borderline, technically ... I only play it, to be listened to 'seriously', when I'm feeling very positive about the standard of the system - to put it into context, the Philips HT setup of some years ago needed to be in a really good zone for it to work; the recent NAD combo was a bit kinder, but still made you very aware of how rough the recording was.

 

Which is why I'm pleased with how well the Edifiers, in the current state of tune, did - you were almost unaware of the roughness of recording quality; the sense of the liveness of the performance in that club atmosphere was very strong, and there was good sense of depth and space ... Bev was watching TV at the same time while the CD was running at a good volume, and had no trouble dealing with the two distinct sources of sound in the room.

[Confused]

24 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Which is why I posted about it, 🙂. Yes, this one is very borderline, technically ... I only play it, to be listened to 'seriously', when I'm feeling very positive about the standard of the system - to put it into context, the Philips HT setup of some years ago needed to be in a really good zone for it to work; the recent NAD combo was a bit kinder, but still made you very aware of how rough the recording was.

 

Which is why I'm pleased with how well the Edifiers, in the current state of tune, did - you were almost unaware of the roughness of recording quality; the sense of the liveness of the performance in that club atmosphere was very strong, and there was good sense of depth and space ... Bev was watching TV at the same time while the CD was running at a good volume, and had no trouble dealing with the two distinct sources of sound in the room.

Ah, you missed the quote of your own post.  I really did mean literally unlistenable ....

 

[fas42]

20 minutes ago, Confused said:

Ah, you missed the quote of your own post.  I really did mean literally unlistenable ....

 

 

Right, I had a funny feeling you meant that, after posting - but the quote mechanism doesn't pass across what you're seeing; I just saw the YT clip as being playable, in your quote. There are other YT clips of these tracks - use "five live yardbirds" to search for ones that you can access; I quoted the particular one in my post because it matched my CD - it's not the quite recent remastering.

[Confused]

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Right, I had a funny feeling you meant that, after posting - but the quote mechanism doesn't pass across what you're seeing; I just saw the YT clip as being playable, in your quote. There are other YT clips of these tracks - use "five live yardbirds" to search for ones that you can access; I quoted the particular one in my post because it matched my CD - it's not the quite recent remastering.

OK, that makes sense, a case of the YouTube geo-fencing displaying differently, even in my reply. 

 

Or maybe it is a YouTube distortion warning feature?  "**DANGER**, this track cannot be played on unsorted UK rigs ...."

 

Joking apart, I'll find a similar version and give it a spin ... 

[fas42]

On 5/16/2020 at 12:58 PM, fas42 said:

Right, it was clear that from trying some early Stones material, and then Dave Edmunds, that that the mains filtering needed to be stepped up ... retrieved one of my DIY efforts from years ago, and inserted it into the power feed to the active speakers ... good, significantly better rejection of mains dirt; evidenced by the driving Edmunds tracks being better focused, from a cold start.

 

This compilation,

 

 

has been very useful over the years ...

 

Just retried this, to see how far the rig has come - very pleasing ... from dead cold, throwing a big soundstage, depth galore; the voice is very clear, over the pounding rhythm section, which is way in the distance - these tracks are all about size; huge acoustics have been engineered into them. Works both in front of the speakers, and from the other end of the house ... this was doing a confidence check ... which was passed, 😉.

[fas42]

Next step ... the quality started to degrade slightly, after about half a dozen disks played - what's causing this? The old bogey, a build up of static somewhere - or what? Confirmed it was in the active speakers - powered down, let the caps drain, switch on again - sounding good again.

 

Also, determined that the TV being on was still causing issues - a compilation pack of country style music, Truck Driving Songs, made this quite obvious - TV on, the sound was dulled; switch off, transient snap was back. Was this via the power cable, or proximity - the TV is literally only inches away; RF doing the damage? Tried an experiment using an extension cord on the TV set only, which didn't give a clear outcome - but noted that the positioning of power leads could be improved further - so reorganised how some of this was done. First impressions, this helped - but ran out of time to really be sure.

 

What's audible in the sound when making these adjustments? When lacking, as an easy indicator, the vocals have a roughness to them with one's ear near the speakers; when the adjustments are doing good, the vocals retain smoothness, and believability, no matter how close you get - the Edifiers are mighty close to being invisible when using the head next to the drivers test; this is in that fine balance region, when worrying about "everything!" is part of the deal.

[fas42]

One of the Trucker's CDs had this on it ... a very testing track - the reverb is in bad shape, needs absolutely pristine replay,

 

 

[fas42]

Just uncovered a CD "to be sold at gigs", that was made by a band in Brisbane - we knew the lead singer, at the time, of this group very well. And bought a copy, as a keepsake.

 

Now, this recording has always been hard to make sound good - only played it rarely, because it never really shone. For some technical reason it always sounds like it's been taken directly from the back of a small, integrated PA unit, being worked hard at a gig. So, this is probably the closest I have to a true "bad recording" ...

 

The Edifiers didn't do it particularly well - so, I'll be keeping it very handy from now on; for testing ...

 

 

[fas42]

And, this album did its job ... beautifully! There was something wrong - and playing this recording, again, exposed it  - because it motivated me to check everything ... one tiny length of power cable had gradually edged its way along, out of position - and was touching another spot ... static! Simply restoring it as it was meant to lie, immediately brought the SQ up many notches - no, it still had those qualities that made it a particularly 'difficult' CD to get right, but the objectionable quality had dropped off, quite considerably.

[fas42]

A first step in examining whether the extension leads themselves matter, or is it the total length that's key? Remove the lead that was first used, and leave the latest one in place - right, the SQ dropped off considerably. Restored the removed lead to its rightful place, as it has been used for the last weeks or so, and things came back up again. If anything, it was a touch better than say, yesterday; possibly because the contacts in the plugs and sockets were refreshed.

 

Used the just mentioned Bedside Manners album to check this - made it very easy to pick the difference.

[Confused]

On 3/12/2021 at 5:18 AM, fas42 said:

Now, this recording has always been hard to make sound good - only played it rarely, because it never really shone. For some technical reason it always sounds like it's been taken directly from the back of a small, integrated PA unit, being worked hard at a gig. So, this is probably the closest I have to a true "bad recording" ...

This seems strange, because this track sounds fine to me.  I'd place it more in the pretty good recording category, certainly not in the bad or challenging recording category . 

 

Maybe the YouTube version is better than your CD version, for some reason?

[fas42]

10 hours ago, Confused said:

This seems strange, because this track sounds fine to me.  I'd place it more in the pretty good recording category, certainly not in the bad or challenging recording category . 

 

Maybe the YouTube version is better than your CD version, for some reason?

 

I can hear the same issues in the YT clip - there's a PA roughness to the sound, which is intrinsic to the actual mastering. Which seems strange, because the CD insert - which is well produced - states that it was done, at some stage, in a studio. When I first played it, decades ago, I wasn't taken by it - and it always has laid in the only, only when I can't think of anything else, pile.

 

For whatever reason, it requires extreme cleanness in the playback not to have a hard edge to it - Bev found it easy to pick from the other end of the house when I was doing the cable fiddling noted above; and that the final status was acceptable. Which means it's going to be dragged out a lot from now on ... 😁.

[fas42]

By contrast, first track this morning - this very version,

 

 

The hugeness of the staging was handled (🤪) well ... no complaints ...

[fas42]

Now here's an interesting one ...an album I hadn't played yet, on the Edifiers,

 

 

From Columbia ... sounded clean, and big, but my ears weren't happy - there was something not right; a lack of ease about the sound. Finally, had a closer look at the CD notes ... ah-ha!! the CEDAR, noise reduction, process had been applied to it ... and this was showing through ... telltales were that the sweetness, and sparkle of the big, brassy sounds just weren't as they should be.

 

I've had this issue before ... an album that had both CEDAR and non-CEDAR tracks on it; and the latter, though noisy, had far greater integrity. This is a case where the mastering, when trying to be "too clever", ends up leaving a signature - effectively distorting the original; in a not good way ...

 

Can the system be improved to a point where this artifact is not disturbing ... ? A good question - and I'm not sure of the answer ... but it means I have another recording to check how my progress is going.

 

It's a good example of how if damage to the source is done unintentionally, that it's often less of a problem than if it's an underdeveloped mechanism trying to undistort it by some means ... ... did someone say, MQA, 🤣.