The highest flat part is determined by the input impedance rating of the device it's connected to. So the lower the input impedance, the flatter curve you will get. The same would occur with a normal interconnect. This is why I suspect that the reason mc phono catridges normally sound better than mm.
This is true. But as in any technology sector, we always have this step call Verification and Validation. In aircraft design, you can have all the theory you want, but if the pilot says it's not good enough to accomplish a mission, then heads really need to get together to figure out whether it's the habit of the pilot or the system. In any large audio design sector, I'm sure there is also listening evaluations to a certain degree.
I'm quite interested though, what do you think about the "ground side electrons" concept. Have you tried it?
I've heard the "ground side electrons" concept from Bud's "Electron Pools" to the finished product, which our Audio Club uses in it's reference system. Seems to increase the clarity of the music, or at least our members think so. Interesting application, that is, if we're talking about the same thing!
Best Regards,
TerryO
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Yes Audioprisim Ground Control, what is on the Genesis speakers at the audio club, is an outgrowth of the electron pool thread. The original design has had a couple of features added, one to retain back half of the wave form dynamic color and another to retain back half of the waveform information that helps with tonal vividness. These are in addition to the original three dimensional illusion support.
Does not work for fully differential systems, unless SY has new thoughts he hasn't shared. Does appear to work in most other cases, according to our customers and the on line reviewers, who are using the various Ground Control devices. All backed by a 30 day money back guarantee.
Bud
Does not work for fully differential systems, unless SY has new thoughts he hasn't shared. Does appear to work in most other cases, according to our customers and the on line reviewers, who are using the various Ground Control devices. All backed by a 30 day money back guarantee.
Bud
Soongsc, I think you are great! You are one of the few around who brings graphs to the table when they talk ideas and I respect that fully. However,
you can be difficult to get little tidbits from at times. Will you let us know how much space is between the lines? Orders of magnitude are important. If we're talking fractions of a Ohm, several, or several thousand is important.....I do honestly appreciate what you have shared, but I'm not sure why you are
around the bush here.No hostile intent.
Thanks,
Dan
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The real skill is what criteria you tune it to. There is a very narrow band of optimum performance. If I told you the space between the lines, it would be almost giving the whole know-how away. My intent is to inspire more data than just talk.Soongsc, I think you are great! You are one of the few around who brings graphs to the table when they talk ideas and I respect that fully. However,
I do honestly appreciate what you have shared, but I'm not sure why you are
No hostile intent.
Thanks,
Dan
Just this evening, we were testing interconnects on a friend's system that has an [FONT=新細明體]Pass Labs Aleph 0 connected to a Focal-JMlab Micro Utopia Be, to make it short, I never hear this combination so good. My friend was asking to keep the prototype to play around with more, but I could not leave it out of my sight. So I promised once I had everything in place and the samples in, I'd let him borrow the samples.[/FONT]
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Yes, I was just wondering whether Lynn has tried it or not, and what he feels.
Lynn,
I think I provided you with a pair of early electron pools, back when I sent you the Litz wire speaker cables, the ones with the twist lock banana plugs. These would be 5 inch long pieces of cotton tube, with a small length of tinned wire sticking out of one end, just beyond some shrink tubing.
Bud
I think I provided you with a pair of early electron pools, back when I sent you the Litz wire speaker cables, the ones with the twist lock banana plugs. These would be 5 inch long pieces of cotton tube, with a small length of tinned wire sticking out of one end, just beyond some shrink tubing.
Bud
I'm a little embarrassed to say that the big 2-channel rig still remains disconnected, while the Marantz AV8003/MM8003 5-channel setup is up and running - but with pretty mundane Blue Jeans XLR interconnects and speaker wire (Belden & Mogami twisted-pair wiring). Sound quality is listenable, which is more than I can say of the Denon 2905 I had previously, but not what I'd call high-end.
No reason I can't try the Electron Pools right away, letting it dangle from the speaker inputs of the Ariels. The resolution of the Marantz is so much lower than the all-triode 2-channel system, I wonder if it will be audible. No harm in trying.
No reason I can't try the Electron Pools right away, letting it dangle from the speaker inputs of the Ariels. The resolution of the Marantz is so much lower than the all-triode 2-channel system, I wonder if it will be audible. No harm in trying.
Hmm - interesting. Back in my Positive Feedback reviewing days, I had a pair of Alephs for review (with the Ariels of course). Unfortunately, I couldn't write a review - those amps were the most sensitive to speaker cables of any amplifier I had ever tried (and by then I'd gone through about 40 different amplifiers with the Ariels). Four different cables, four different amps, and no way to know what the thing was supposed to sound like.
What little I could tell was the Aleph was designed for a speaker very different than the Ariels, so for reasons unknown, the two were not a good match. I passed it on to another member of the PF reviewer group, and they went on to get a writeup in the magazine. (At that time, all of the PF reviewers had very different systems, so what worked in one system would not sound as good in another.)
Maybe the Aleph used lots of feeback? I think the Aleph and the Micro Utopia Be would have sounded even better if the Micro Utopia Be were tuned to a lower frequency, really a pity.
Now that we've done that with the linear supplies, were does that leave us with the SMPS?
Do they have a side that radiates into the chassis more than another?
I've heard lots of good things from Bud's ideas.Sorry, wrong Olson I guess. I won't offer any more opinions.
Best Regards,
TerryO
If Lynn had used them, the next I would ask about is EnABL
Now that we've done that with the linear supplies, were does that leave us with the SMPS?
Now that's a good question. I don't how the transformers in these things work - but they certainly do have transformers, and there's probably a leakage pathway from the incoming AC to the chassis (which is what causes all the trouble).
I haven't even mentioned switching noise, which is common to both linear and switchmode power supplies. It's not generally recognized that the very sharp current pulses radiate energy in several directions: back down the power cord (which then becomes an antenna that affects all nearby linear electronics), the percentage of noise that is not removed by the power supply electronics (no lowpass filter or regulator has 100% removal of noise), and magnetic induction into the space inside the chassis of the electronics. Think of it as a captive AM transmitter and you'll be getting the right idea.
That's why swapping power cords makes a difference - they are antennas that radiate wideband noise into nearby linear electronics, so differences in cable shielding and twisting the wire makes a difference. The power transformer makes a difference too: toroids typically have much more bandwidth (say, 60 to 100 kHz) compared to EI core power transformers (typical rolloff around 5 kHz). By contrast, if the windings are electrostatically shielded (have a foil wrap), that reduces capacitive winding-to-winding coupling substantially (20 to 40 dB reduction).
The "loop area" of the power supply circuit (the area occupied by supply and return wires between the rectifier and first capacitive shunt element) controls the effective size of the "antenna" that is radiating into the rest of chassis - thus, twisting wire and reducing the physical size of the first portion of the PS is a good idea.
The best approach of all is to carefully control the rate of charge between the rectifiers and the first shunt capacitor. The rate of current flow can be very high when a partially discharged capacitor is "topped up" by the next AC peak waveform, so it can be very effective to use a small resistor or even a little inductance between the rectifier and the first shunt capacitor - this can slow down the rate of charge many times, and thus reduce emission of magnetic pulses into the power cord, amplifier chassis, and across the filter elements of the PS filter section.
This is also the reason that mindlessly increasing the size the capacitors in a conventional bridge-cap power supply actually makes the noise worse, not better, since the charging pulses have a faster rise time and greater current flow. Think about it: if the cap were infinitely large and the voltage drop across the rectifier, transformer, and power cords were zero, than the current would be infinite at the moment the rectifier first starts conducting. Is that what you want? Better to control the rate of charge of the capacitor, rather than leave it to value of ESR in the capacitor and voltage drop across the rectifier and power transformer.
P.S. Bud's Ground Control gizmos are on their way, suitable for loudspeakers and electronics-chassis applications. One RCA-format GC "tail" can apparently do its magic on an entire chassis, since it is common practice in a lot of consumer gear to have all grounds in common. The Ariels have fully isolated high and lowpass sections of the crossover, so each driver gets its own GC device, connected to the low-side terminal. I'm kind of curious if this will be audible with upper-mid-fi electronics.
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