John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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It is important to note than many of us have heard differences between cables, and we cannot precisely say why these differences exist. I 'reset' to cheap cables, over 20 years ago, and gradually upgraded. There is a difference, but I cannot tell you which cables are truly best. There may be many successful candidates.

You hear a difference yet don't do any testing to find out if it's subjective sighted bias or anything real. You have only yourself to blame if you are too lazy to do so. Please feel free to spend more and more of your money on useless "upgrades".;)
 
Okey dokey , err another way, is there a correct way to connect two amplifiers to a pre, is there a ratio to input imp/drive to avoid ........ :snail:

I read your posts several times but couldn't get what you meant. Grossly assuming that you missed the basic (sorry), if parallel amps is an issue, it could be the driver performs worse driving lower impedance, so needs a buffer or design a new driver?
 
There are repeat threads and mentions of this cable going back to 2003, 2008, 2008, 2010 and 2014 that I found with a simple search, the same search where I found his revelation that came to him regarding the cable, even though he has no electronics engineering experience.
I will now be awaiting my cable revelation...
 
I don't know why you guys go out of your way to make fun of this guy. It was his money in the patent that he invested, you should leave him to his cable, and in peace.
Perhaps you are attacking him in lieu of others on this thread, who you might have to face down if confronted so directly.
I have been around cables since 1978, when I got my first all silver connecting cable in Japan, as a souvenir of my visit there. It was all silver wire, with 'Tiffany' connectors, and it cost the high price of $30.00. It was the most expensive cable that I had ever seen, but what the heck. Taking it home and listening to it was a disappointment. It was 'edgy' sounding. My associate took it to a noted hi fi store in the area, where she worked, and they found the same thing. Sort of REVERSE BIAS, huh? I looked at the physical construction of the cable and measured its capacitance, nothing out of the ordinary here. In any case, I could only use the cable in special circumstances where I DID want to brighten the overall sound quality.
Then, a few years later, I was approached by some researchers in Minnesota who wanted me to evaluate a Litz wire that incorporated teflon tubing to separate the hot and return with an overall mesh shield over everything. These cables were a lot of work to make, obviously, but they did sound very clear, almost too clear, like over-etched and we used those interconnect cables for a number of years. HP (the man) got a set, and he liked them too. However, differences between the researchers and us over money, killed this project, from going forward.
That is pretty much all my involvement in cables. I just use what others design, hoping to avoid any real 'dogs'.
 
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What SY said. I stumbled upon this forum and joined while researching on this one. :mad:

Actually, to be totally honest, it happened to me too. I filed a Dutch patent in 1996 or so, then got myself into an AES convention with a presentation. A very humbling experience. My 'patent' was sound, no question about it. But the earliest reference someone came up with (I think it was Professor Cherry) was Welwynn 1938 or thereabouts. I completely missed it....

Jan
 
I don't know why you guys go out of your way to make fun of this guy. It was his money in the patent that he invested, you should leave him to his cable, and in peace.
Read what he has said on other forums and read his patent, all we have done is link the information, the rest is self afflicted. At the end of the day, describing or attributing transducer phenomena to a cable is the equivalent of holding a target in front of your chest:p
 
JC, and other's on the cable bandwagon, it seems to me, what ever you are hearing in these cables you have no way of measuring to make any sense of it. A listening test as a form of cable QA certification = wow. I wonder if there is a MIL spec for this :) Lump cables together with speakers/mics, I guess, if that is the case. (Sounding)
I have made/repaired a few cables in my life, both metal and optical. RF/optical cables are a fair bit more involved than say a audio/DC cable.
At the Motorola factory, one task was to make and measure test cables to determine, insertion/return loss using a Wiltron setup, sweeping the RF. The Wiltron setup was used for tuning the RF front ends consisting of a patented helical coil/coupled stage setup. Most of the flexible RF test cables were using RG-400/U, (Double shielded silver plated Cu with teflon insulation) cable and Amphenol N type silver plated RF connectors. This was so that we could have accurate/repeatable RF power measurement and uV sensitivity, for test station correlation.
Once had to build our own Etherrnet AUI cables for an optical AUI link design (more shielding). In order to pass emissions, not one commercial cable (as supplied by Sun or HP etc) would allow a pass!! Not sure how they got their stuff to pass using their own cables?
So you used cables as tone controls?
Maybe if you do a few tight turns you can strip off some high order modes and improve the SQ. We used this trick to get better jitter specs and open up the eye pattern.

Have a good one.
 
Wiring + grounding ==> loop currents, shield currents. In case you do not speak about some exotic valve amp that would distort even at 10k load.

PMA, no exotic valve amp , any suggestions on wiring ? is a buffer necessary?

I read your posts several times but couldn't get what you meant. Grossly assuming that you missed the basic (sorry), if parallel amps is an issue, it could be the driver performs worse driving lower impedance, so needs a buffer or design a new driver?

Take any two amps and drive them with your pre, disconnect one and hear the change

He claims to be a retired champion arm wrestler, are you ready?:p

weapons grade ready ..... :D


Ask a.wayne, who brought it up.

Yeah shoot the messenger ..... :rolleyes:

Same criticism of some really well built SS amps in the day. One of my MET7's fell off the shelf yesterday, good thing I didn't remove the metal grill to improve the sound.

So you used cables as tone controls?

All cables are rlc circuits, tone control ..? :snail:
 
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