A New Interconnect Design

[beau2317]

OK I tried with 1kHz tone at -60dB, -20dB and 0dB

All sounded boring, just like a good sine wave.

Back to your microphonic cable. I'm pretty sure that you had an unusual piece of cable. I don't think all teflon/silver cables are microphonic.

Do you think the effect might have been more of a condenser microphone? If the teflon had somehow become slightly "electret-ified" it could easily act as a microphone. Most commercially produced electrets are based on fluoropolymers..

[kboe]

A brief intro to... Me. Hi, I'm Kevin.

Because this is only a few post into my short time here on this forum, and because I’m about to post a review, I’d thought it wise to give a brief intro into my audiophile past and where I’m at now to give context to the review.

First a trip through memory lane. Though a short 4 years or so now, I’ve gone through quite the list of equipment. As you take a gander you’ll notice that I’m a headphone guy only. No speakers for me, no sir. I’ve simply never found speakers to be engaging, much to passive for my liking. Because headphones afford privacy for listening, I always feel more intimate with my music. Of course this makes sharing music with friends more difficult than a speaker system would, but this can be overcome in a verity of ways. A source with two outputs for example, or a amp with two jacks. Anyways, I know that this might inspire a perceived distance between us, but believe me I enjoy my music like nobody’s business, and avoid pesky room acoustics in the process.

Here are some pictures of my rig in various forms over my short history.

My first complete rig consisted of the HeadRoom Micro Stack with the Desktop Power Supply, digital from Kimber, analog with The Cable Pro and later from Cardas and my Headphones of choice were the HD650 with Cardas harness, Sure SE530, Shure e4c, Grado SR80 and Denon D2000s.


I had this for about a year when I sold and upgraded to a beautiful ALO Amphora amp, (number 44 out of 100 in solid Black Walnut). My iPod became my source using a ALO SXC LOD. The Headphones remained the same for a while, then I went through a Grado phase.


Next a Musical Paradise MP-301... just for fun.


My next upgrade was a Eastern Electric MiniMax CD player, solid silver interconnects, and the Grado phase gave way to an Audio Technica phase.


Later the Amphora was replaced by the Ray Samuels Audio XP-7.


Then I changed everything up. Out went the CD player, in came the NuForce uDAC. Out went the XP-7, in came the Meier Audio Opera. The Audio Technicas found themselves for sale and upstaged by the Beyerdynamic DT990s 250ohm edition.



A short lived but fierce fling for a used but non-explosive, (headphone guys will get the reference) SinglePower Extreme Platinum Edition amp. Oh my God could this thing sing! This was the pinnacle of my Amp rotation. New this puppy was $1900.00! Good thing for the second hand market. Source was the HRT Streamer II and all cables by Cardas.


That brings us to today.

A iPod still does the file storing, but the heavy lifting of conversion is done by the internal DAC of the Pure i20 (though not for long!). The Verumecce interconnects transmit to the Schiit Asgard which drive a Cardas re-harnessed AKG-K702 or K-240. I also use a vintage K-130 and Sennheiser HD-598.

(You'll see pictures of the current rig in the review)

My rig as you can see has taken the same journey as my wallet and available funds. Up and down, up and down. Such is the life of a college student. Starving student I should reinforce. Having heard so much I know what I like and what I don’t.

Musical preferences mostly align with classical, the older the better, but also stray to modern movie soundtracks, a tish of electronica, and world music from MA Recordings.

That’s about it for introductions. I hope this provides some useful context for my upcoming review of Bob Prangnell’s Verumecce interconnects.

More to follow soon,

Happy Tunes,
Kevin

[SY]

Just curious- have you designed and built any of your equipment?

[martin clark]

OP - you could save a lot of labour by using tri-axial cable instead (say Belden 1857A but there are various others available) Since tri-ax is mostly of interest for video systems you'll find nice dialectrics and low capacitances come for free.


Or you can just use tri-ax with the inner shield driven from a unity gain signal buffer to make an effective zero capacitance interconnect

[kboe]

Originally Posted by SY

Just curious- have you designed and built any of your equipment?

SY,

Unless you count my many versions of my equipment rack, then no. I have ZERO DIY skills or knowledge. What am I doing on this forum then? Well primarily to post and answer questions about my review of Mr. Bob Prangnell's Verumecce interconnects, (assuming anyone reads it!). Secondly to post anything about headphones or their associated gear in that sub-forum that I have knowledge of.

[DF96]

Originally Posted by beau2317

Recently I pulled these out again and got thinking about how to make a good set of active interconnects. I made the assumption that one way that dielectrics cause problems is due to "dielectric hysteresis" - by this I mean some non-linearity when the dielectric has to change polarity.

This sort of thing is documented here: Dielectric - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The correct term is "dielectric relaxation".

In a normal interconnect, this happens every time the AC music signal crosses zero (i.e. basically all the time). A bit like a class B amplifier suffers bad crossover distortion.

I'm not a solid state physicist, but I think you will find that dielectric relaxation is related to frequency dependence of permittivity, not non-linearity as you appear to say.

Some dielectrics are non-linear, some strongly so. Biasing away from zero voltage will not eliminate this, but will mean that the dominant distortion arising from this effect will be second-order instead of third-order so may sound better. There are other ways of avoiding this effect, but I don't want to hijack your thread.

[beau2317]

but I think you will find that dielectric relaxation is related to frequency dependence of permittivity, not non-linearity as you appear to say.

I was originally thinking about this intuitively, which may or may not be correct. Later on I discovered the term "dielectric relaxation", which seemed to describe the same thing that I had postulated. The description from WP doesn't mention frequency dependence, but I agree that's hardly a definitive source.

Dielectric relaxation is the momentary delay (or lag) in the dielectric constant of a material. This is usually caused by the delay in molecular polarization with respect to a changing electric field in a dielectric medium (e.g. inside capacitors or between two large conducting surfaces). Dielectric relaxation in changing electric fields could be considered analogous to hysteresis in changing magnetic fields (for inductors or transformers).

As a matter of interest, how would you avoid the effect of non-linear dielectrics?

[beau2317]

OP - you could save a lot of labour by using tri-axial cable instead (say Belden 1857A but there are various others available)

I thought triax was like coax but with an extra screen. In which case I don't see how this would work. What I've made is a coax with two conductors between the center and screen.

Couple of other things : 1) It's not easy to get here in New Zealand and 2) It's expensive from the searches I've just done.

[Lo_Tse]

beau2317,

Your new discovery is interesting. I have to confess that I do not fully understand how it works but the concept sounds similar to the DBS cables that Audioquest has been selling for the past few years. Those cables also involves applying an electric field to the dielectric of the cable. I think it goes as high as 72V for some of them. I have never heard these cables before - the prices are way out of my league.

Lo-tse

[beau2317]

Somebody else pointed out the DBS cables. I think they have similarities but are not the same. But these you can make for a few dollars. No need to use fancy wire - there's really not a lot of difference between fairly cheap wire and gold/silver.