This is my first response to you and I also extend a welcome to you joining the Stereophile Forum.
Might I suggest you try a free tweak before experimenting with bought AC power cables.
If you happen to have a spare AC power cord for one of your items of audio equipment, place it in a plain plastic bag and place it in your domestic deep freezer for (say) 48 hours. The important thing is that when you lift it out of the deep freezer, you allow the cable to return to room temperature very, very slowly. The easiest way is to wrap it in a towel or blanket for a day. Then listen to one of your favourite pieces of music using the power cable which has been ‘frozen’ for a short time (to get used to that sound) then change over to a non treated power cable and see if you can listen with the same enjoyment !!!!
Welcome! to the wild-world of after market cables/power cords. This is my fave niche' of our wonderful hobby.
To the skeptics out there- try listening to your system w/o cables & power cords.
Once you have understood this simple, factual concept, you are ready to move forward.
Regarding your query- change the power cord (PC) 1st and foremost.
Depending upon where you live (location) you may not need any power-conditioning.
Keep me posted and Happy Listening!
I am going to try May's test, but I am also leaning towards getting a Shunyata Venom-3 or Venom-HC power cord for my Creek Evolution 50A Integrated.The thing is fairly lightweight as far as amps go, but it can get into 200Watt bursts easily.
So, is Venom-3 a good first step in this esoteric world? Or what would you recommend for under $500 as a starting point? Also, I am ASSUMING upgrading the power cable to my amp is the best first component? Or should it be to the PS Audio NuWave DAC; a very sensitive piece of gear?
Cables absoulutely can change the way a system sounds. But, "change" is the operative word. Change can be either for the better or for the worse and the same goes for power conditioners. You made some good decisions with the Audioquest cables.
You had expressed serious scepticism regarding AC power cords – i.e.
>>> “I am VERY skeptical about my next upgrade” <<<
So, I suggested you try a ‘free tweak’. Because IF you hear an improvement in your sound by ‘treating’ an existing AC power cord, then you will be able to progress further with (slightly) less scepticism.
I was not suggesting the “free tweak” instead of a proprietary (bought) cable – my suggestion was more to give you more experience before making a definite purchase.
The freezing/slow defrost technique is an excellent technique to experiment with in many areas of audio.
To echo Catch, watchout for the word change. Everything makes a change but it's very easy to head in one direction only to find that you have built a listening trap for yourself. I personally wouldn't do perminant tweaks unless I have done my listening home work for myself.
Let me give you an example. You have mentioned getting a bigger soundstage than you have now. In that case be careful when it comes to dampening as this may sound cool on a few recordings at first, until one day you realize how small your soundstage is getting or how there are holes developing in the stage, or the sound is becoming squeezed.
More times than not listeners jump in with both wallets before doing a good job of exploring the possibilities.
first thing first
Look at where you want to go with your listening, and then get with the right group of successful listeners who can guide you through in a way that doesn't present a lot of regrettable twisting and turning.
In the case freezing. What if you freeze things and two months down the road you can't play half of your music without it running into your speakers, or holes in the stage half way between your speaker and center stage? You, in that case might just spend a fortune on trying to work around the problem you just created and all the time it was because of putting stuff in the freezer.
For myself, freezing has been not so good, mainly because I like a big open stage that flows as evenly front to back as it does side to side, as well a stage that can go behind my listening position.
What I'm saying is this. Everyone you run into wants to be right and are going to push their bias as if it is the right answer for you as well. Nothing wrong with that if you want the sound you have to be like their's. But with a few turns of some pages you can find all kinds of camps of listeners and you might be surprised at how far you can go with your sound with a few experiments.
My suggestion is take your time and do things that you can undo. The more complicated you make your system the harder it is to shape the sound, and that's what tweaking is. Time after time you'll read people come up here saying what they want in their sound and you'll read these answers that have nothing to do with your sound but theirs. Almost everyone in this hobby has made their own audio bed, good or bad, and usually the ones you read are doing their pushing based on what they have found to work for them or they believe in it from a theory that sounds good to them, but there is one very important part to look at with this hobby. Change does not mean better necessarily. Most tweaks as you do them have what I call "the different factor". You hear something in the music that sounds different or better in one area to you and because of how your brain works you focus on that one area, thinking the over all sound must have improved as well. Reviewers do this all the time for example cause their systems are in constant change mode and never really get a chance to settle. But the truth of it is, once you learn how to let your system burn in and settle correctly the quick fixes are only just a moment of change. The real deal comes in when you become master of your own setup and keep working toward your own listening goals. My goal is to make everything simple, open it up, then tune it to where I want. Someone in the next room may want to dampen everything, or freeze, or go with all heavy equipment and so on, but the main thing to focus on is "what is your version of success" and finding that group of people who know how to get you where you want to go. Usually these people are more listening and method based and not so much brand based.
good luck, and if you ever want to follow our plan you know where to find us
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
I no longer use power cords. I can certainly understand all the angst and frustration out there regarding them. Been there done that. The cable and power cord debate is what thirty five years old? I'll tell you, it's nice to be off that Merry Go Round. Lol
Before I reply, geoffkait, I am confused by your statement regarding this topic.. are you inferring to portable devices? If so, I find that to be highly entertaining as well and a wonderful venue for Hi-Fi... I use a modern approach of an Apple Macbook Air with DragonFly and Bowers & Wilkins P5 headphones...no heavy AC cords here!
I truly enjoy a bizarrely deep and 3D soundstage with this portable rig that in fact rivals my $4,000 home setup!
Now back to the topic at hand:
I took the challenge and froze the power cord to my Creek amp for 3 days... then "unfroze it" for a day... and tried it out this morning. To give more merit and weight with this test, I also gave it its own power plug, with the rest of the equipment running from am outlet strip from the other plug. I don't view this as "cheating"; rather just adding another positive dynamic to the whole power cord debate...
The results:
Believe it or not, I could discern what I would call a quieter noise floor... it was audible (or should I say pleasantly inaudible) to my newly tuned ears....(just started getting serious about audio about 6 months ago). I also noted somewhat of an increase in separation of the instruments; could be strictly due to less noise; allowing instruments to be heard.
I used Pink Floyd - Wish You were Here (88.2/24), Miles Davis - So What (192/24), and Abbey Road Track 10 (44.1 CD Rip) as my digital references.
I may be tempted to move forward when budget permits and at the very least try a Shunyata Venom-3 power cord.
"Before I reply, geoffkait, I am confused by your statement regarding this topic.. are you inferring to portable devices? If so, I find that to be highly entertaining as well and a wonderful venue for Hi-Fi... I use a modern approach of an Apple Macbook Air with DragonFly and Bowers & Wilkins P5 headphones...no heavy AC cords here!
I truly enjoy a bizarrely deep and 3D soundstage with this portable rig that in fact rivals my $4,000 home setup!"
Yes, I am using portable cassette player, portable CD player and portable AM/FM radio, all battery powered. You might have missed my recent thread in which I describe my results with freezing stuff. Heavy cords suck. So does home AC for that matter. I'm out there and loving it.
Believe it or not, I could discern what I would call a quieter noise floor... it was audible (or should I say pleasantly inaudible) to my newly tuned ears....(just started getting serious about audio about 6 months ago). I also noted somewhat of an increase in separation of the instruments; could be strictly due to less noise; allowing instruments to be heard."
"Be careful you just lost part of the signal, Ron" would be our take on your experiment.
If you like it great, no problem. But, if you start hearing holes in the soundstage this is why. In a recording, any recording, there is no such thing as blank space. This is a result of blockage in the system or loosing signal. When you lose frequency responses you will hear the sound as if someone cleaned it with windex, but when you go back and do the original state you will notice that along with that cleaning is actually part of the halo space in the recording missing. Some people like this but many times they start noticing their systems becoming less musical.
Not telling you what to do, but also recommend that you look into things in detail before taking perminant jumps. If you were into this for 10 years I wouldn't give this type of warning, but with you doing this for such a short time and with so much vigor, it would be a shame if you got down the road with regrets that you can no longer do anything about.
have fun
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
Kinda makes me laugh when you or someone else refers to things in such "fixed" terms. I don't see music as quite so stuck. The more experienced someone becomes with the art of listening the more they realize how big of a soundscape we have to play with and in.
When someone paints music in either good or bad terms only able to go as far as audiophile terms, it marginalizes the vastness and depth of the musical experience. Playing back music is a variable event that goes way beyond his or hers "results". Results are good for a guide and measurement for where someone has been, but the moment of listening to any particular recording goes far beyond fixed terms, like it was better. Happy as I am about any audio journey, it's more exciting to me when someone learns how a variable system is able to take them anywhere within the signal.
As far as Ron is concerned, I'm nothing but thrilled that he is discovery audiophile listening. My input as well as I'm sure anyones up here is to see him go as far as he wishes to, and us as onlookers offer what we have learned about this great hobby.
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
The way I read what you wrote it does actually seem a little bit like you're attempting to discredit Ron's results with freezing. You know, like you usually do when someone reports results that are in variance with yours. Lol
If you would like to find out what the real results of freezing are one need look not further than the thread I started here on this very forum titled, "Fun with cryogenics, well freezing anyway.
You wrote,
""Be careful you just lost part of the signal, Ron" would be our take on your experiment.
If you like it great, no problem. But, if you start hearing holes in the soundstage this is why. In a recording, any recording, there is no such thing as blank space. This is a result of blockage in the system or loosing signal. When you lose frequency responses you will hear the sound as if someone cleaned it with windex, but when you go back and do the original state you will notice that along with that cleaning is actually part of the halo space in the recording missing. Some people like this but many times they start noticing their systems becoming less musical."
"The way I read what you wrote it does actually seem a little bit like you're attempting to discredit Ron's results with freezing. You know, like you usually do when someone reports results that are in variance with yours. Lol"
mg
No not at all, and I'm sorry if you, he or anyone would walk away thinking this, not my intent. My intent is to give a heads up for people doing "fixed & permanent" tweaks. The same results can be made with variable tuning, with the plus ability to make any other variable change when desired.
For example
Let's say I'm listening to "Wish You Were Here" at my friends house a week ago, and while sitting there, heard a rush of effects start from behind, come pass, and appear in the front stage (true story BTW except for dates), and I wanted to have the recording do this with my system?
The more "fixed" a system is the less chances we will be able to tune in the special effects that are in most recordings. As Ron posted on the reference thread, about his love of soundstaging, I've been looking out for his journey is all. Always good to hear from different points of view in a compulsive hobby such as the audiophile one.
Ron openly ask for different points of view and I represent a variable one.
Why is this important?
I as well went down the cryo route at several different levels of freezing. Speaking for the results, I found that each level of the cryo treatment gave a different result. Freezer treatment is not the same as cryo treatment and as I asked the cryo labs there are perhaps many different levels to performance that can happen to the audio signal as it relates the 20-20,000 cycles. So to make any claim of the sound being "better" the question needs to be asked, to what level of better are we talking, and has anyone in this industry takin the time (we have) to explore the different sonic levels?
Saying stick your stuff in your freezer in the same breath as my cables are cryo-ed, is not only a huge difference, but also a technical falsehood. I understand that many in this hobby try to create and jump on trends, but when this is done with such generalities and in the name of science, this is when I have to raise my flag. Of course in doing so I'm sure to be flamed on this forum, so I then point to Tuneland, where there is none of this behavior.
These topics for us are not attacks on Cryo, or Laser reflection, Schumann resonance or Isolation, or any of the tweak topics and products that appear here and get named as a list on almost every forum thread. It's not our goal to say good or bad, but to say and ask, how can we make these things variable so listeners can get the results they wish to have as individuals.
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
Well, first of all I never said freezing is the same as cryogenic treatment. Geez, you have an annoying habit of mischarcaterizing people's statements. This is a perfect example. What I have been saying all along is that freezing improves the sound, is inexpensive compared to cryo and doesn't require shipping things off to the cryo lab and waiting around until they return. I went through all this freezing business recently here mainly because you had posted that you experienced such a big letdown with freezing (and cryo). So I spent a couple of weeks recently going through some freezing of various things, mostly CDs, just to see if maybe all those years I could have been wrong. So, long story short, the more things are frozen the better the sound. And the more CDs that are frozen the better the sound. There can be no doubt at least in my mind about that freezing and cryo are good things for the sound. Now, it wouldn't be quite so weird if you only had negative or null results with cryo and freezing, but as you yourself have stated many times you don't have any luck at all with ANY of the audiophile type things that the rest of the world has blessed. From Schumann devices to constrained layer damping to isolation to Cream Electret.
As all of us have talked about before, in our testing of the frozen CD's, we did our playback on in-room stereos. You did your testing with portable systems with headphones, which you have said don't produce as good of a soundstage. Don't know how you can make any in-room system reports without you having an in-room system of your own for 8 years. I don't have a problem with Ron's findings, but comparing his findings or my findings to yours are two different camps of listening.
Please don't misunderstand me though. I don't really care about the sound people choose to listen to. What I care about is having and creating systems that are variable.
allow me to repeat
"These topics for us are not attacks on Cryo, or Laser reflection, Schumann resonance or Isolation, or any of the tweak topics and products that appear here and get named as a list on almost every forum thread. It's not our goal to say good or bad, but to say and ask, how can we make these things variable so listeners can get the results they wish to have as individuals."
As I have always said, all of the things you, May or anyone mention are sound choices. I haven't a problem with them, why would I? I'm here to promote variable tuning, and it really doesn't matter how many side tracks come up or misunderstandings or someone getting annoyed. Our view is, we don't care, if someone choices to freeze or do any of these things. At the same time we believe they deserve to know that the audio signal can be tuned.
You can freeze till the cows come home, or do any of your tweaks and I would be just as happy for any of these guys. But geoff your missing and have missed our point from the beginning, and no matter how much you complain about it, this doesn't change my agenda. All I can do is weather your flames until you finally get to the understanding that I'm not downing your products or ideas. All I'm saying is there is another more flexible way of doing things.
Example
You freeze a CD at your place and I freeze the same CD at my place and they will sound different. I've done this test now with a few people and the results were the same, all 5 CD's with the same issue numbers done at different places sounded different from each other. The same goes for different cryo deals.
On the issue of cryo, I bring this up because you were the one who recommended it, and even gave the name of your cryo place, which I called.
On the issue of me talking about things that you say, I try to repeat you, or even quote you the best I can. If your having a problem with my interpretation, maybe you should go back a read your posts on threads to try to figure out why people mis-interpret you. I'm not the first by a long shot, and I'm sorry that you keep seeing me as someone trying to pick something with you, trust me I'm not.
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
“The way I read what you wrote it does actually seem a little bit like you're attempting to discredit Ron's results with freezing. You know, like you usually do when someone reports results that are in variance with yours. Lol"
Mg, said :-
No not at all, and I'm sorry if you, he or anyone would walk away thinking this, not my intent. My intent is to give a heads up for people doing "fixed & permanent" tweaks. The same results can be made with variable tuning, with the plus ability to make any other variable change when desired. “ <<<
Michael, from what I have read from all your previous postings, you have NOT given ‘heads up for people doing “fixed & permanent” tweaks. Your intent has NOT been to ‘give a heads up for people doing “fixed & permanent” tweaks, irrespective of what you have just claimed. You have repeatedly discouraged people from doing “fixed and permanent” tweaks saying that they are not ‘variable’ tuning (which is the course you actively encourage people to take). I, on the other hand have repeatedly stated that BOTH ‘fixed’ AND ‘variable’ tweaks are the very best options.
You have just stated that “The same results can be made with variable tuning”. One cannot obtain the SAME results by ignoring some ‘fixed’ tweaks dealing with some problems and relying solely on ’variable tuning’. And I have given many examples. As Geoff has pointed out somewhere else. He and I refer to other peoples proprietary devices and techniques as “examples of things affecting and improving the sound” – not as a promotion and advertising technique on their behalf !!!
For example. If there can be problems with many vinyl discs (and CDs) and one can obtain improvements in the sound by applying a demagnetiser to them, then logically there must have been a problem with those discs in the first place – before applying the demagnetiser !! So, one cannot recommend (as you do) that people do not do that “fixed” tweak of applying a demagnetiser but that instead some time, further on in the system (or in the listening room,) one carries out one of your ‘variable tweaks’ to correct that original problem. You will, most likely, yes, gain an improvement in the sound with your ‘variable tweak’ (that I do not doubt) but it is NOT the SAME result – it is different result – albeit another improvement in the sound.
Another example. Applying a chemical to the label side of CDs and gaining an improvement in the sound. Again showing that if one can gain an improvement by doing such things, then there must have been a basic problem with the CD in the first place. Hence my “example” of applying either the UltraBit Platinum-Plus liquid or such as Nordosts ECO 3 liquid to CDs. One should not recommend that people leave such problems untreated but instead attempt to get the same improvement by doing something else (a variable treatment) elsewhere in the audio system.
Another example. If empty (unused) sockets both on audio equipment and empty (unused) AC power sockets present a problem to gaining good sound and therefore treating them would be a “fixed” tweak, one cannot (should not) recommend that they are left untreated – because some improvement in the sound might be achieved, later in the audio system or the listening room by doing a “variable tweak”.
I have said repeatedly that BOTH “fixed” AND “variable” tweaks should be considered ‘hand in hand’.
You, Michael, have not said this. Instead you have, in the past, claimed that your “variable tweaks” are THE method, THE truth and THE answer.
Regarding the ‘freezing’ tweaks using a domestic deep freezer.
You said, Michael :-
>>> “Freezer treatment is not the same as cryo treatment” <<<
No one has ever said it was the same !!!!!!!!!! We are all intelligent people and KNOW the difference between domestic deep freezer temperatures and cryogenic temperatures !!!
>>> “Saying stick your stuff in your freezer in the same breath as my cables are cryo-ed, is not only a huge difference, but also a technical falsehood. I understand that many in this hobby try to create and jump on trends, but when this is done with such generalities and in the name of science, this is when I have to raise my flag.” <<<
Freezing things using the domestic deep freezer is a free technique which people can try for themselves to give them a taste of what is possible – which then enables them to make more informed decisions as to whether to explore, more fully, the companies who are offering the cryogenic technique. Please do not insinuate again that we are attempting falsehoods with our home freezing suggestions !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I repeat again your comment, Michael.
>>> “My intent is to give a heads up for people doing "fixed & permanent" tweaks.” <<<
Your intent has always been to discourage, to actively dissuade people doing any “fixed & permanent” tweaks and to rely instead on your “variable tuning” recommendations. Of course your “variable tuning” tweaks can give many and varied improvements in the sound but they cannot ‘deal’ with inherent problems within or on vinyl discs, within or on CDs, within the different chemical mixtures in the insulation material of cabling etc. etc. Those have to be dealt with at source !! If you leave them untreated, then they are untreated – full stop. You cannot cure such problems later in the system or later in the room with different ‘variable tweaks’ !! In exactly the same way that you cannot cure any inherent problems caused by the presence of transformers in audio equipment by leaving them where they are ‘untreated’ and then use some later ‘variable’ tweak elsewhere!!
When certain journalists using the demagnetising technique and report ‘hearing better soundstage’, then they are hearing ‘better soundstage’, they are not fools. Ditto journalists who report hearing ‘better soundstage’ from applying chemicals to CDs etc, they are not fools. Ditto journalists who report hearing ‘better soundstage’ from applying certain colours to the edge of CDs. Ditto journalists who report hearing ‘better soundstage’ after introducing the Schumann Resonance Device into the listening environment. Ditto journalists who report ‘better soundstage’ after introducing Ted Denney’s tiny “Synergistic Research ART devices’ into the listening environment.
“Variable tuning” is not the ONLY technique which can give people ‘better soundstage’.
And, this is where I have challenged you each time you have attempted to claim such.
“Variable tuning” is in addition to ‘fixed & permanent’ tweaks – not instead of !!
I do not challenge your tuning techniques, I do not challenge what you say you hear. I challenge your claims that your ‘variable tuning’ is THE method, THE truth and THE answer.
You said, Michael :-
>>> “As I have always said, all of the things you, May or anyone mention are sound choices. I haven't a problem with them, why would I? I'm here to promote variable tuning, and it really doesn't matter how many side tracks come up or misunderstandings or someone getting annoyed. Our view is, we don't care, if someone choices to freeze or do any of these things. At the same time we believe they deserve to know that the audio signal can be tuned.” <<<
Of course people deserve to know many things, including that one can improve the audio (musical information) in many ways. But you have taken your ‘people deserve to know’ to the extremes of stating that your ‘variable tuning’ is THE method, is THE truth and is THE answer and to the extremes of taking every opportunity to ‘question’ (at best) and rubbish (at worst) so many other people’s listening experiences – as though they haven’t the intelligence to know when their sound has actually improved !!
"You can freeze till the cows come home, or do any of your tweaks and I would be just as happy for any of these guys. But geoff your missing and have missed our point from the beginning, and no matter how much you complain about it, this doesn't change my agenda. All I can do is weather your flames until you finally get to the understanding that I'm not downing your products or ideas. All I'm saying is there is another more flexible way of doing things."
Unfortunately for your argument, there isn't another way, a more flexible way, a substitute for cryogenic treatment or for freezing. Or for Cream Electret, or for the Intelligent Chip, the Schumann frequency, the Mpingo discs, mu metal for absorbing magnetic fields, better home AC power, or as in my current case NO HOME AC POWER, tiny little bowl resonators, vibration isolation, constrained layer damping, addressing wire directionality in fuses, wires and cables, dealing with scattered background laser light, clever little clock and silver holographic foils, to name a few. There are no substitutes for these things. Nor are they substitutes for each other. As I am fond of saying, the whole of audio is the discovery of new problems and subsequent development of solutions for those problems. You have apparently conveniently swept the problems under the rug. There is NO LIMIT TO IMPROVING THE SYSTEM. THERE IS NO FINISH LINE THAT YOU SUDDENLY CROSS. THERE IS NO MYTHICAL ABSOLUTE SOUND. Hel-loo! Now, you may have convinced yourself that you have discovered the complete solution. I am not so naive.
Sorry guys, but we've invited the both of you to come experience this for yourselves, and you've both declined. All we can do is invite, and if people refuse to experience tuning, we can do little about it.
We appreciate your views, but without puting views into action the spins continue, on all sides till the experience is had.
We will continue to have these demonstrations for the technical/science/engineering comunities and you of course are again invited to join in with any of your theories and or products. But let me add this if I may. This forum has expressed that the fighting stop, so as these threads end up in fights, I must say we are not, and do not wish to be a part of these fights, name calling or trolling. We don't see anything new in the posts the both of you are making. There's just repeated spins that come up when ever someone from another view comes into the picture. As with any debate, the truth and proof comes out in the end through doing together, and we have been enjoying the amount of listeners turning to tuning as their answer for great sound.
We also appreciate everyone who has been using your products and applied your theories with success. Our goal is for listeners to be happy at what ever level of listening or sound they decide to call home. If this has for whatever reason been turned into something different than our intent, we want listeners to know how excited we are as fellow listeners that you are at a happy place. Our designs and methods are of course for those who have tried other ways and still left with the quest of going even further. further meaning making your systems into variable music reproducers. For those who don't tune their systems we understand the defending that takes place, and again appreciate these particular levels of listening, however we have found that because every recording has it's own code, and system must be able to be flexible enough to tune to that code, and this is where the line is drawn and the reason others involve in more "fixed" solutions have a hard time with us. We truly do wish them all the best, but believe in yet a deeper chapter in the hobby of being an audiophile.
So Geoff and May we wish to thank you for your point of view, and even though ours is somewhat different we wish to honor those readers on this forum who would like these threads to be more friendly with the hopes of when others read in the future they can see a hobby of joined desires and not fights of the un-settled.
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
You still don't get it. I am not accusing you of having bad or ineffective products. I'm just saying that whatever it is that you sell and promote cannot possibly be the entire story. For the reasons I have repeated until I'm blue in the face. I suspect this is just a bad case of none so blind that will not see. And a dollop of It's not Invented Here thrown in for good measure. And when you say your products are for those folks who have tried other methods without success that's the same old song and dance we used to get from that other room tuning expert, Ethan Winer.
On a lighter note, anybody heard any good expensive power cord jokes?
Do you understand what a spin is Geoff? It's a conversation that never ends. This particular one is something I can do nothing about. If I say that I have had positive results with these fixed approaches I would be lying. I have no problem with you and May making your claims and references, but I can only do what I can in order to be honest to the people who intrust me to do so, and invite others to experience it. If either of you think we are not being complete enough, that's fine, it's your opinion. We have no problem with anyone sharing their approaches, why would we?
How can we as a design team get rid of this thought "you are the only one with an effective product" in your minds? What can we do for you and May to move on from this? Is there something you would like us to try again? If so we'll try it. When the talking was happening with the freezing, what did we do? We did exactly what you and May asked, and gave our results. We did the C37 tests as well and gave our results. We did the same thing with several Schumann Resonance Devices and again gave our results. This goes on and on and the topics just continue to spin. Got to stop sometime I would think. You guys keep saying we're not doing, then we do and give our results, then you start the whole thing all over again as if we haven't gone through this before.
If you and May are going to say we haven't done, then lets do and get it over with. Tell us again geoff and May, what is it you would like us to test? Lets be adults and put to end any spining and do the things you are saying we aren't. Please give us a list, not a bunch of talk but a list of products you say we haven't tried.
These topics for the good of the hobby need to stop spining, don't you and May agree? With this in mind, what products do you have for us to test out? To help out let me give a list of ones we did just recently, within the last 3 months.
C37
Freezing
Cryo
Schumann resonance devices
CD colors
CD mats
keep in mind that we get samples all the time
The only one we have not talked about recently were the mats. The others we gave descriptions on what we did and found out. Are there any ones that you guys didn't see my response to?
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
Michael, nice to hear you're still trying new stuff. One assumes you're still not having much luck. Oh, well, what can II say. Actually, and I know right off the bat you're probably not going to like this but what about all the other things that we have used as examples of the point which we were attempting to make, which by the way, just to show you why these threads seem so incredibly slow. It's because some people and I'm not mentioning any names here are either intentionally dense or in fact actually dense. I throw manhandle up in the air because I still can't tell. Be that as it may, I digress, the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all, but the ones at are the unmentionables, the ones that go bump in the night, the ones that out the fear of God in you Pro Audio dudes and dudettes and audiophiles alike, especially the overly educated ones and the guys that have been slaving away at this hobby for most of their adult life. OK, you probably ask at this point, what in tarnation are you talking about. Me well, for starters, you apparently completely missed my thread on Freezing stuff because in that thread there is a BIG REVEAL as to what it is that May has been yanking your chain about for quite some time. That big reveal is that freezing (or cryoing, if you insist on the whole lower temperatures are better routine) just about ANYTHING IMPROVES THE SOUND. And the way I demonstrated this, I really wish you'd pay closer attention to what's been happening, was to freeze my entire CD collection in STAGES, checking SQ after each stage. In other words, freezing a bunch of CDs improves the sound of a CD whether it's been frozen itself or not. Follow? Then I froze cassettes. And guess what? Freezing cassettes improves the sound when playing CDs.Hel-loo!
So, to reiterate for the umpteenth time some of the other things that go bump in the night or at least have objectionable explanations. Here we go , the Intelligent Chip, Silver Rainbow Foil, the Red X Pen, the Teleportation Tweak, the Clever Little Clock, Dark Matter CD treatment, Green and Blue Meanies for walls and ceilings, Flying Saucers for windows and Flying Saucers for unused wall outlets, the Quantum Temple Bell, even the tiny little bowl acoustic resonators ( the ones I make are ceramic) usually get a pretty good rise out of Pro Audio dudes as well as audiophiles, although truth be known I actually don't put them (tiny little bowls) in the same category as the ones preceding, oh, yeah, Green Cream, Cream Electret and not last but certainly not least, Brilliant Pebbles, the only comprehensive set of crystal based products for room tuning. See, I can use the word tuning in a sentence, too. I actually don't put C-37 lacquer in the same category, either, as it's a little too mundane. See if you can put it all together now and figure out just what ties most of these things I just listed (for the umpteenth time) together.
To give my own feedback further, I welcome any and all viewpoints and in my opinion Michael was not a bit out of line giving me/us HIS opinion; as I am indeed new to this hobby. And for that matter, at least to ME :), nobody was out of line at all.
On the other hand, I do welcome the spirited debate and the more responses and views the better; provided the original point doesn't get lost in abstraction.
Just again try not to get personal or heated, and this will be an even cooler and more enjoyable place to talk than it already is.
I understand from the Corporate and Academic worlds all too well that egos can clash...and often do...usually it's the most intelligent people who are arguing.
Take that any way you want... I mean it as a compliment to always again welcome spirited debate without any personal stuff getting in the way.
A person I know, let's call him customer, just put one of those new fangled High Fidelity power cords in his system recently, you know the company that's producing cables that operate ostensibly by magnetic conduction as opposed to electric conduction. His previous power cord, the one he replaced with the High Fidelity cord, was an Audioquest power cord. But not just any old Audioquest power cord, it was the top of the line signature power cord, the WEL signature power cord, you know, the one everyone was going ga ga over a few years ago. As I recall my friend's word on the High Fidelity power cord was TRANSFORMATIONAL. Now, his theory is that the only way to "get there" - and he's not the only one - is to put ALL OF YOUR MONEY INTO CABLES AND CORDS. There is much discussion on these new High Fidelity cords and cables over on Audiogon, one thread in particular has been ongoing. There are quite a few avid owners of these cords and cables posting on that thread. Would you believe the conductor used in the High Fidelity cords and cables is neither copper nor silver?
>>> “I actually don't put C-37 lacquer in the same category, either, as it's a little too mundane. See if you can put it all together now and figure out just what ties most of these things I just listed (for the umpteenth time) together.” <<<
I would challenge you on your description of the C-37 lacquer as “a little too mundane” !!
I think the C-37 lacquer is quite significant and actually comes within “what ties most of the things you listed”. As far as I understand it, Dieter Ennemoser adds crushed animal bones to his C-37 lacquer (he describes it simplistically as “matching human beings”)
I took a quick look....it actually looks legit.... though it would be interesting to learn of price and try the things out...I think at a high level their tech mirrors Audioquests tech in their high end cables with battery assist to polarize the shielding in the hopes of "widening the pipe" and making it "easier" for music signals/sound signals to propagate. They are just swapping out magnetic materials instead of a long wire and battery used by Audioquest. Only skeptical remark: how much change will one hear versus an intro-level cable vs price?
They received patents so must not totally be off their respective rockers:
"Magnetic Innovations LLC has now been granted U.S. Pat. No. 8,272,876 and 8,403,680."
>>> “I actually don't put C-37 lacquer in the same category, either, as it's a little too mundane. See if you can put it all together now and figure out just what ties most of these things I just listed (for the umpteenth time) together.” <<<
I would challenge you on your description of the C-37 lacquer as “a little too mundane” !!
I think the C-37 lacquer is quite significant and actually comes within “what ties most of the things you listed”. As far as I understand it, Dieter Ennemoser adds crushed animal bones to his C-37 lacquer (he describes it simplistically as “matching human beings”)
Regards,
May Belt,
PWB Electronics.
Hi, May, Ooops a daisy, I did not mean that C-37 lacquer was not effective. Certainly not in my experience, although I must say the very long cure time for C-37 lacquer - on the order of six weeks, during which time the sound quality can vary considerably, or so Dieter says - makes the lacquer a little bit of a problem to be able to evaluate easily. Actually in my case I did not listen to my system after applying C-37 lacquer to a number of things, speaker diaphragms, circuit boards, capacitors mostly as I recall, I.e., things that vibrate, until the six week cure time was completed. In the meantime, I'm pretty sure I continued on my merry way as usual, tweaking and so forth and product development. So, I'm not sure I'd be the right person to be able to say emphatically yes, this C-37 lacquer is really the cat's meow. It may very well be. I seem to recall the human bone thing too, but overall what I was trying to do when I called C-37 mundane was separate things like Mpingo disc which is also a little mysterious and exotic, and C-37 lacquer from things like silver rainbow foil and the clock which are much more mysterious. The way I interpreted Deiter's comment about human bone material was that it was more non resonant or inert or had a certain resonance like maybe Mpingo wood but I could be completely off base about that.
Addendum: I just pulled this off of dieter's web site,
"In mechanical systems like a turntables, loudspeakers, or violins, performance will improve
considerably when the spectrum of mechanical resonance is shifted toward that of the human ear.
C37 lacquer was developed for this purpose.
In a high fidelity system resonance causing distortion may be dampened, but never eliminated.
However, the spectrum of those resonance can be tuned to match those of the ear,
thus enhancing small signal information. Distortion equal to that of the ear will be eliminated
by the brain.
For this reason, our intent was to create a special lacquer that shifts the mechanical resonance of the
system towards those of the ear. C37 lacquer works much like the lacquer on a violin."
More details regarding the C-37 lacquer can be found at:
I as well have had a lifetime of experiences where something is used and then there is no return back to the original, and this is a problem that has haunted tweakers for a long time especially when using certain liquids with unpredictable curing times and styles. It serves listeners well to do studies on finishes and not looking for again that one sizes fits all. It doesn't exist! I know that it makes it easier for marketing a point of view to say "here it is, done" but this is never going to happen in this hobby. Magic creams and C37's and all of these products that are to be said absolute fixes are nothing more than a choice among millions of choices.
If it works for you good, but also pay attention to the guy next to you that it didn't work so good for. If you do your homework on wood and curing your not going to run out and throw down the plastic so easily. Point being, if your going to take the time to consider C37 or any other finish why not take the time to learn curing and develope a method of curing.
I have only found one sure method to this topic, and that is become hands on. Don't talk about the sound of things experience them in a meaningful way.
example
Use C37 on a piece of select pine @ 5% and compare it to C37 on white board @ 7% and tell me which is more open sounding and has the timbre you like? There is a huge sonic difference between what I just gave you.
next example
How does C37 respond to a piece of Redwood 4% rough cut @ 6 months vs redwood first sand 80 grit @ 6% 1 year? Again two completely different sounds and uses in music.
If someone says to you apply this, any finish, as a general statement they are "marketing you" not sharing with you proper voicing of wood or any material.
It's totally up to the audiophile what he or she may buy into, and you might be a client of such marketing, or you may be a victim of buying into change instead of timbre truth.
What I look for when judging if someone is legit or not, is their personal recording or playback system and setting. Let me give you yet another example. If you come to one of our listening properties, you will notice that you are not far away from a voicing workshop. You will find lots of jars and cans of finishes and mixing jars. You will also find a lot of different wood laying around at many different stages of curing. More than likely you will find more than one listening room and music playing 24/7. For myself if someone is talking finish, curing, voicing or almost any tweak and they do not have their lab on some type of display, I right off the batt know what I'm dealing with.
In the world of voicing anything there are tricks and treats that only a well experienced master understands.
Yesterday, we moved some wood over to the final station of curing. While there we took some samples and I spent time showing the one guy how to sand these particular pieces of wood and then applying the finish. I did it using two different tools the same way. This morning got a call "you gotta be sh****g me" on the other end of the phone. Same wood, same finish, same grit, different technique. The difference between smooth and extented sounding and dead flat.
So when I read or see people talking up their storm in these broard general sweeps, it honestly makes me a little sad for the people who are hunting for that perfect sound for them.
so much more to the art of audio than we many times give it
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
"I as well have had a lifetime of experiences where something is used and then there is no return back to the original, and this is a problem that has haunted tweakers for a long time especially when using certain liquids with unpredictable curing times and styles. It serves listeners well to do studies on finishes and not looking for again that one sizes fits all. It doesn't exist! I know that it makes it easier for marketing a point of view to say "here it is, done" but this is never going to happen in this hobby. Magic creams and C37's and all of these products that are to be said absolute fixes are nothing more than a choice among millions of choices."
Spoken like someone with no experience with either product. Well done! A play right out of the Ethan Winer play book.
Actually geoff, while you have no lab, and have never built an iso-lab to test your products, I would think you attempting to push buttons would only lead to a backfire once again on these threads. I don't know what your dealing with Mr. Winer or James Randi (rip off report) or your little Dayton or Pro spin do to help your cause, but if you wish to play in the mudd please clean off before coming in OK.
TuneLand has several workshops and labs in which we do our testing and would be happy to have Mr. Kait send us any of his product for evaluation just as other designers do. We could add it to the list Behlen, Mohawk, General, Robson, Cardinal, C37....as well as the water based lines.
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
Thank you for your reply; as well as affirmation I am doing something right!.... I am putting power conditioning on hold due to personal financial constraints.. but I have not read or been advised of any incompatibilities between Shunyata (AC cords and their power strip) as being incompatible with Creek? If I am unaware of some studies or articles or your own observation, definitely let me know!
The AudioQuest is from my own listening experiences. The Shunyata information comes from Gale Carol in San Antonio TX. He has been a dealer/retailer for Shunyata for 10+ years.
Yes Yes Yes....Unbelievable difference what it did to change the quality of my marantz sr6003 Canton Chrono speaker set up. I just got the Furman yesterday and won't be looking to upgrade my amp any time soon. The detail separation imaging and layering of music just improved 10 fold. Bass extension is amazing ans surround sound finally sounding like it was suppose to. One word of caution though, my amp didnt like being powered off it took 2 hours after restart to restore sound quality. So leave the conditioner switch on at all times.
The info may exist, but after years of power cable debate and promotion, I've yet to read WHY "upgrade" power cables are superior. The only explanation I can think of, using my incomplete electrical knowledge, is they act as six foot long filters for some AC garbage. I've read no explanation why the hundreds of feet of wire feeding our receptacles "improved" by only a few feet of expensive stuff. Also, some respectable manufactures include rather ordinary power cables with their equipment and recommend NOT replacing them.
High-end speaker wires make more sense in that we don't want them to become filters of the musical spectrum of AC. So much cable advertising is so over-the-top claiming HUGE differences when, at very best, any changes are quite small. My feeling is that cables provide a convenient manufacturing bandwagon.
The info may exist, but after years of power cable debate and promotion, I've yet to read WHY "upgrade" power cables are superior. The only explanation I can think of, using my incomplete electrical knowledge, is they act as six foot long filters for some AC garbage. I've read no explanation why the hundreds of feet of wire feeding our receptacles "improved" by only a few feet of expensive stuff. Also, some respectable manufactures include rather ordinary power cables with their equipment and recommend NOT replacing them.
High-end speaker wires make more sense in that we don't want them to become filters of the musical spectrum of AC. So much cable advertising is so over-the-top claiming HUGE differences when, at very best, any changes are quite small. My feeling is that cables provide a convenient manufacturing bandwagon.
I actually find cable manufacturers' claims to be rather tame, while there are many customers and reviewers whose testimony might be considered rave reviews or even over the top. Especially High Fidelity Cables, Taralabs cables, Purist Audio cables, even the upper tiers of Audioquest cables. Now, you could say well, NO POWER CORD COULD POSSIBLY BE WORTH $15,000. And you might be right, for you. But apparently there are quite a few folks out there who strongly disagree. Gone are those days of yesteryear when we could come up with a budget for our system of 50% for speakers, 40% for electonics and 10% for cabling. On the other hand, having said all that, I don't use power cords OR cables. So, color me embarrassed. From my experience all power cords inherently distort the sound due to the magnetic field the current running through them induces. For that reason I'm out. I severed ties with my house AC last year and never looked back.
Yes Yes Yes....Unbelievable difference what it did to change the quality of my marantz sr6003 Canton Chrono speaker set up. I just got the Furman yesterday and won't be looking to upgrade my amp any time soon. The detail separation imaging and layering of music just improved 10 fold. Bass extension is amazing ans surround sound finally sounding like it was suppose to. One word of caution though, my amp didnt like being powered off it took 2 hours after restart to restore sound quality. So leave the conditioner switch on at all times.
Power conditioners probably act as beneficial filters, getting rid of noise and distorted AC. The better units may keep the voltage from sagging too much.
It should probably be mentioned that the new line of cables and power cords that everyone is talking about, the ones from High Fidelity Cables, apparently don't operate like the ones we're used to using. The cables an cords from High Fidelity Cables employ a lot of high powered magnets in the design and uses mu metal for the conductor. Yes, I said mu metal. You know, the high permeability nickel iron alloy used for wrapping transformers among other things. Now, I wouldn't even mention these High Fidelity Cables except for the fact they are being touted by customers as being light years ahead of conventional cables, even such high end warhorses as Tara Labs, Purist Audio, Audioquest and Shunyata. What's up with that? As for myself you know not having to contend with power cords, speaker cables, interconnects, or even transformers for that matter, I'm fairly content thinking that ALL power cords, power conditioners, cables, and interconnects, and yes, transformers are BAD FOR THE SOUND. There, I said it.
I tried to find an excellent expose of power conditioners by Peter Aczel which I read some time ago, but I can't locate it.
Aczel has a way with words that never fails to amuse. He thinks they are nonsense. And he makes an excellent argument as to why. I'll see if I can find it.
I tried to find an excellent expose of power conditioners by Peter Aczel which I read some time ago, but I can't locate it.
Aczel has a way with words that never fails to amuse. He thinks they are nonsense. And he makes an excellent argument as to why. I'll see if I can find it.
Ahem, you need to stop reading Aczel immediately and start reading Magnan Audio, especially his whole page or two on how to make your own power conditioning system.
I consider myself a cable skeptic, but that said I do invest in good cabling. I believe in
1. Good connectors for a secure long-term fit
2. Good conductivity. Silver is better than copper by 5%, whether or not you can hear (I couldn't) is up to you.
3. Some isolation to prevent other signals to intrude.
I have auditioned to extremely expensive cables that indeed changed the sound but not once has the change been for the better. My basic belief is that if a cable makes me listen to change, then probably it's not doing the job of being transparent.
As to power cables, I do upgrade them to a cable that has some isolation and offers better optics. :-)
But I totally, definitely believe in power conditioning and filtering. Again, I think some designs go overboard, but my power filtering/conditioning gear is around $1.2k, and the Powerwedge 112 is a heavy little critter.
"I have auditioned to extremely expensive cables that indeed changed the sound but not once has the change been for the better. My basic belief is that if a cable makes me listen to change, then probably it's not doing the job of being transparent."
It's possible that comparisons of cables go awry and that expensive cables can lose in DIRECT COMPARISONS to inexpensive cables for several reasons other than they are actually inferior sounding cables. These reasons are (1) the expensive cables are BRAND NEW and not broken in for at least several hundred hours with signal applied, whereas the inexpensive cables are broken in and (2) the mechanical/electrical interface where the cable is connected to the electronics, the RCA connector or whatever, is distrusted when the expensive cables are inserted into the system; that disruption of the mechanical/electrical interface degrades the sound for at least a day or two until the interface is Re-broken in. Ditto for power cords and the wall outlet. Brand new cables, even expensive ones, until they are properly broken in, will generally sound pinched, rolled off, bass shy, thin, undynamic - you might even consider the more elaborate and thorough break in device such as AudioDharma's Cable Cooker to assure cables are completely broken in PRIOR TO TESTING.
Caveate, I do not use power cords as I'm using battery powered portable CD and cassette players and am enjoying the lack of noise and distortion that naturally accompanies having to use power cords, wall outlets, wall outlet covers, the house AC, large honking transformers, large honking capacitors, fuses, fuse holders, interconnects, speaker cables, or digital cable. But I digress.
I would like to throw up OK, so maybe that's a bad choice of words, some ides regarding power cords and why they are so debatable and also why I believe they are just plain bad news for the sound. There are certain things I'm not crazy about about power cords. One is the connector, most seem cheap and flimsy and the screws that hood the actual conductors and ground and shielding appear inadequate even on expensive connectors. Two, the use if stranded copper or even stranded silver conductors seems rather unfortunate given our experience with stranded vs solid core for all other types of cabling. I would prefer solid core even if the power cord had to be super stiff. The power cord could be shaped at the factory or maybe even at home into an ESS shape or whatever to better suit the lay of the land. Maybe super stiffness would actually be helpful in suspending the power cord and isolating it from vibration and static electrical fields.
I am also not very happy about the electromagnetic reflections that occur in power cords during normal operation and recommend that ALL power cords come with either a Shun Mook Original Cable Jacket or High Wire Power Cord Wrap attached. Going further, i am also not too keen on the magnetic field induced by current flowing through the power cord conductors. Yes, I know the AC conductors are twisted but that's not entirely satisfactory in terms of eliminating the magnetic fields and their highly toxic effects on the AC signal. Please note I'm NOT referring to external EMI/RFI electromagnetic fields here. Now, I don't know preceisely WHAT the induced magnetic field is doing to the AC signal that would affect the sound upstream but I imagine it distorts it.
Experiments with absorbing the induced magnetic field in power cords does in fact produce better sound. The induced magnetic field can easily be reduced in power cords, interconnects, HDMI cables and large honking transformers great strides can be made in the overall reduction of noise and distortion in the audio signal that is provided to the speakers or headphones.
Hello rrstesiak,
This is my first response to you and I also extend a welcome to you joining the Stereophile Forum.
Might I suggest you try a free tweak before experimenting with bought AC power cables.
If you happen to have a spare AC power cord for one of your items of audio equipment, place it in a plain plastic bag and place it in your domestic deep freezer for (say) 48 hours. The important thing is that when you lift it out of the deep freezer, you allow the cable to return to room temperature very, very slowly. The easiest way is to wrap it in a towel or blanket for a day. Then listen to one of your favourite pieces of music using the power cable which has been ‘frozen’ for a short time (to get used to that sound) then change over to a non treated power cable and see if you can listen with the same enjoyment !!!!
Regard,
May Belt,
PWB Electronics.
May:
That is an *awesome* reply and free suggestion!
This is this exact kind of discussion I love on here. I will definitely take you up on the offer.
In the mean time, can others chime in with their experiences in any noticeable sonic improvement with power cables and/or power conditioning?
Kind Regards,
Ron
ps. decent gauge AC cable in freezer in plastic bag as I write this. Being a scientist, I am especially enjoying this true experiment!
Welcome! to the wild-world of after market cables/power cords. This is my fave niche' of our wonderful hobby.
To the skeptics out there- try listening to your system w/o cables & power cords.
Once you have understood this simple, factual concept, you are ready to move forward.
Regarding your query- change the power cord (PC) 1st and foremost.
Depending upon where you live (location) you may not need any power-conditioning.
Keep me posted and Happy Listening!
All:
I am going to try May's test, but I am also leaning towards getting a Shunyata Venom-3 or Venom-HC power cord for my Creek Evolution 50A Integrated.The thing is fairly lightweight as far as amps go, but it can get into 200Watt bursts easily.
So, is Venom-3 a good first step in this esoteric world? Or what would you recommend for under $500 as a starting point? Also, I am ASSUMING upgrading the power cable to my amp is the best first component? Or should it be to the PS Audio NuWave DAC; a very sensitive piece of gear?
Kind Regards,
Ron
Cables absoulutely can change the way a system sounds. But, "change" is the operative word. Change can be either for the better or for the worse and the same goes for power conditioners. You made some good decisions with the Audioquest cables.
Hello again rrstesiak,
Just to clarify my reply to you further.
You had expressed serious scepticism regarding AC power cords – i.e.
>>> “I am VERY skeptical about my next upgrade” <<<
So, I suggested you try a ‘free tweak’. Because IF you hear an improvement in your sound by ‘treating’ an existing AC power cord, then you will be able to progress further with (slightly) less scepticism.
I was not suggesting the “free tweak” instead of a proprietary (bought) cable – my suggestion was more to give you more experience before making a definite purchase.
The freezing/slow defrost technique is an excellent technique to experiment with in many areas of audio.
Regards,
May Belt,
PWB Electronics.
To echo Catch, watchout for the word change. Everything makes a change but it's very easy to head in one direction only to find that you have built a listening trap for yourself. I personally wouldn't do perminant tweaks unless I have done my listening home work for myself.
Let me give you an example. You have mentioned getting a bigger soundstage than you have now. In that case be careful when it comes to dampening as this may sound cool on a few recordings at first, until one day you realize how small your soundstage is getting or how there are holes developing in the stage, or the sound is becoming squeezed.
More times than not listeners jump in with both wallets before doing a good job of exploring the possibilities.
first thing first
Look at where you want to go with your listening, and then get with the right group of successful listeners who can guide you through in a way that doesn't present a lot of regrettable twisting and turning.
In the case freezing. What if you freeze things and two months down the road you can't play half of your music without it running into your speakers, or holes in the stage half way between your speaker and center stage? You, in that case might just spend a fortune on trying to work around the problem you just created and all the time it was because of putting stuff in the freezer.
For myself, freezing has been not so good, mainly because I like a big open stage that flows as evenly front to back as it does side to side, as well a stage that can go behind my listening position.
What I'm saying is this. Everyone you run into wants to be right and are going to push their bias as if it is the right answer for you as well. Nothing wrong with that if you want the sound you have to be like their's. But with a few turns of some pages you can find all kinds of camps of listeners and you might be surprised at how far you can go with your sound with a few experiments.
My suggestion is take your time and do things that you can undo. The more complicated you make your system the harder it is to shape the sound, and that's what tweaking is. Time after time you'll read people come up here saying what they want in their sound and you'll read these answers that have nothing to do with your sound but theirs. Almost everyone in this hobby has made their own audio bed, good or bad, and usually the ones you read are doing their pushing based on what they have found to work for them or they believe in it from a theory that sounds good to them, but there is one very important part to look at with this hobby. Change does not mean better necessarily. Most tweaks as you do them have what I call "the different factor". You hear something in the music that sounds different or better in one area to you and because of how your brain works you focus on that one area, thinking the over all sound must have improved as well. Reviewers do this all the time for example cause their systems are in constant change mode and never really get a chance to settle. But the truth of it is, once you learn how to let your system burn in and settle correctly the quick fixes are only just a moment of change. The real deal comes in when you become master of your own setup and keep working toward your own listening goals. My goal is to make everything simple, open it up, then tune it to where I want. Someone in the next room may want to dampen everything, or freeze, or go with all heavy equipment and so on, but the main thing to focus on is "what is your version of success" and finding that group of people who know how to get you where you want to go. Usually these people are more listening and method based and not so much brand based.
good luck, and if you ever want to follow our plan you know where to find us
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
I no longer use power cords. I can certainly understand all the angst and frustration out there regarding them. Been there done that. The cable and power cord debate is what thirty five years old? I'll tell you, it's nice to be off that Merry Go Round. Lol
Geoff Kait
Machinadyabolical.com
All:
Before I reply, geoffkait, I am confused by your statement regarding this topic.. are you inferring to portable devices? If so, I find that to be highly entertaining as well and a wonderful venue for Hi-Fi... I use a modern approach of an Apple Macbook Air with DragonFly and Bowers & Wilkins P5 headphones...no heavy AC cords here!
I truly enjoy a bizarrely deep and 3D soundstage with this portable rig that in fact rivals my $4,000 home setup!
Now back to the topic at hand:
I took the challenge and froze the power cord to my Creek amp for 3 days... then "unfroze it" for a day... and tried it out this morning. To give more merit and weight with this test, I also gave it its own power plug, with the rest of the equipment running from am outlet strip from the other plug. I don't view this as "cheating"; rather just adding another positive dynamic to the whole power cord debate...
The results:
Believe it or not, I could discern what I would call a quieter noise floor... it was audible (or should I say pleasantly inaudible) to my newly tuned ears....(just started getting serious about audio about 6 months ago). I also noted somewhat of an increase in separation of the instruments; could be strictly due to less noise; allowing instruments to be heard.
I used Pink Floyd - Wish You were Here (88.2/24), Miles Davis - So What (192/24), and Abbey Road Track 10 (44.1 CD Rip) as my digital references.
I may be tempted to move forward when budget permits and at the very least try a Shunyata Venom-3 power cord.
Any comments either pro or against?
Ron
Ron wrote,
"Before I reply, geoffkait, I am confused by your statement regarding this topic.. are you inferring to portable devices? If so, I find that to be highly entertaining as well and a wonderful venue for Hi-Fi... I use a modern approach of an Apple Macbook Air with DragonFly and Bowers & Wilkins P5 headphones...no heavy AC cords here!
I truly enjoy a bizarrely deep and 3D soundstage with this portable rig that in fact rivals my $4,000 home setup!"
Yes, I am using portable cassette player, portable CD player and portable AM/FM radio, all battery powered. You might have missed my recent thread in which I describe my results with freezing stuff. Heavy cords suck. So does home AC for that matter. I'm out there and loving it.
Freezing thread at:
http://www.stereophile.com/content/fun-cryogenics-well-freezing-anyway
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
Hi Ron
"The results:
Believe it or not, I could discern what I would call a quieter noise floor... it was audible (or should I say pleasantly inaudible) to my newly tuned ears....(just started getting serious about audio about 6 months ago). I also noted somewhat of an increase in separation of the instruments; could be strictly due to less noise; allowing instruments to be heard."
recommended reading http://www.stereophile.com/content/freeze-those-babies
"Be careful you just lost part of the signal, Ron" would be our take on your experiment.
If you like it great, no problem. But, if you start hearing holes in the soundstage this is why. In a recording, any recording, there is no such thing as blank space. This is a result of blockage in the system or loosing signal. When you lose frequency responses you will hear the sound as if someone cleaned it with windex, but when you go back and do the original state you will notice that along with that cleaning is actually part of the halo space in the recording missing. Some people like this but many times they start noticing their systems becoming less musical.
Not telling you what to do, but also recommend that you look into things in detail before taking perminant jumps. If you were into this for 10 years I wouldn't give this type of warning, but with you doing this for such a short time and with so much vigor, it would be a shame if you got down the road with regrets that you can no longer do anything about.
have fun
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
Oh, no, this can't be happening. Someone is getting different results from Michael Green? Say it ain't so!
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
Different results?
Kinda makes me laugh when you or someone else refers to things in such "fixed" terms. I don't see music as quite so stuck. The more experienced someone becomes with the art of listening the more they realize how big of a soundscape we have to play with and in.
When someone paints music in either good or bad terms only able to go as far as audiophile terms, it marginalizes the vastness and depth of the musical experience. Playing back music is a variable event that goes way beyond his or hers "results". Results are good for a guide and measurement for where someone has been, but the moment of listening to any particular recording goes far beyond fixed terms, like it was better. Happy as I am about any audio journey, it's more exciting to me when someone learns how a variable system is able to take them anywhere within the signal.
As far as Ron is concerned, I'm nothing but thrilled that he is discovery audiophile listening. My input as well as I'm sure anyones up here is to see him go as far as he wishes to, and us as onlookers offer what we have learned about this great hobby.
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
The way I read what you wrote it does actually seem a little bit like you're attempting to discredit Ron's results with freezing. You know, like you usually do when someone reports results that are in variance with yours. Lol
If you would like to find out what the real results of freezing are one need look not further than the thread I started here on this very forum titled, "Fun with cryogenics, well freezing anyway.
You wrote,
""Be careful you just lost part of the signal, Ron" would be our take on your experiment.
If you like it great, no problem. But, if you start hearing holes in the soundstage this is why. In a recording, any recording, there is no such thing as blank space. This is a result of blockage in the system or loosing signal. When you lose frequency responses you will hear the sound as if someone cleaned it with windex, but when you go back and do the original state you will notice that along with that cleaning is actually part of the halo space in the recording missing. Some people like this but many times they start noticing their systems becoming less musical."
Geoff Kait
Machina Dramatica
geoff said
"The way I read what you wrote it does actually seem a little bit like you're attempting to discredit Ron's results with freezing. You know, like you usually do when someone reports results that are in variance with yours. Lol"
mg
No not at all, and I'm sorry if you, he or anyone would walk away thinking this, not my intent. My intent is to give a heads up for people doing "fixed & permanent" tweaks. The same results can be made with variable tuning, with the plus ability to make any other variable change when desired.
For example
Let's say I'm listening to "Wish You Were Here" at my friends house a week ago, and while sitting there, heard a rush of effects start from behind, come pass, and appear in the front stage (true story BTW except for dates), and I wanted to have the recording do this with my system?
The more "fixed" a system is the less chances we will be able to tune in the special effects that are in most recordings. As Ron posted on the reference thread, about his love of soundstaging, I've been looking out for his journey is all. Always good to hear from different points of view in a compulsive hobby such as the audiophile one.
Ron openly ask for different points of view and I represent a variable one.
Why is this important?
I as well went down the cryo route at several different levels of freezing. Speaking for the results, I found that each level of the cryo treatment gave a different result. Freezer treatment is not the same as cryo treatment and as I asked the cryo labs there are perhaps many different levels to performance that can happen to the audio signal as it relates the 20-20,000 cycles. So to make any claim of the sound being "better" the question needs to be asked, to what level of better are we talking, and has anyone in this industry takin the time (we have) to explore the different sonic levels?
Saying stick your stuff in your freezer in the same breath as my cables are cryo-ed, is not only a huge difference, but also a technical falsehood. I understand that many in this hobby try to create and jump on trends, but when this is done with such generalities and in the name of science, this is when I have to raise my flag. Of course in doing so I'm sure to be flamed on this forum, so I then point to Tuneland, where there is none of this behavior.
These topics for us are not attacks on Cryo, or Laser reflection, Schumann resonance or Isolation, or any of the tweak topics and products that appear here and get named as a list on almost every forum thread. It's not our goal to say good or bad, but to say and ask, how can we make these things variable so listeners can get the results they wish to have as individuals.
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
Well, first of all I never said freezing is the same as cryogenic treatment. Geez, you have an annoying habit of mischarcaterizing people's statements. This is a perfect example. What I have been saying all along is that freezing improves the sound, is inexpensive compared to cryo and doesn't require shipping things off to the cryo lab and waiting around until they return. I went through all this freezing business recently here mainly because you had posted that you experienced such a big letdown with freezing (and cryo). So I spent a couple of weeks recently going through some freezing of various things, mostly CDs, just to see if maybe all those years I could have been wrong. So, long story short, the more things are frozen the better the sound. And the more CDs that are frozen the better the sound. There can be no doubt at least in my mind about that freezing and cryo are good things for the sound. Now, it wouldn't be quite so weird if you only had negative or null results with cryo and freezing, but as you yourself have stated many times you don't have any luck at all with ANY of the audiophile type things that the rest of the world has blessed. From Schumann devices to constrained layer damping to isolation to Cream Electret.
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
Hi Geoff, sorry your annoyed
As all of us have talked about before, in our testing of the frozen CD's, we did our playback on in-room stereos. You did your testing with portable systems with headphones, which you have said don't produce as good of a soundstage. Don't know how you can make any in-room system reports without you having an in-room system of your own for 8 years. I don't have a problem with Ron's findings, but comparing his findings or my findings to yours are two different camps of listening.
Please don't misunderstand me though. I don't really care about the sound people choose to listen to. What I care about is having and creating systems that are variable.
allow me to repeat
"These topics for us are not attacks on Cryo, or Laser reflection, Schumann resonance or Isolation, or any of the tweak topics and products that appear here and get named as a list on almost every forum thread. It's not our goal to say good or bad, but to say and ask, how can we make these things variable so listeners can get the results they wish to have as individuals."
As I have always said, all of the things you, May or anyone mention are sound choices. I haven't a problem with them, why would I? I'm here to promote variable tuning, and it really doesn't matter how many side tracks come up or misunderstandings or someone getting annoyed. Our view is, we don't care, if someone choices to freeze or do any of these things. At the same time we believe they deserve to know that the audio signal can be tuned.
You can freeze till the cows come home, or do any of your tweaks and I would be just as happy for any of these guys. But geoff your missing and have missed our point from the beginning, and no matter how much you complain about it, this doesn't change my agenda. All I can do is weather your flames until you finally get to the understanding that I'm not downing your products or ideas. All I'm saying is there is another more flexible way of doing things.
Example
You freeze a CD at your place and I freeze the same CD at my place and they will sound different. I've done this test now with a few people and the results were the same, all 5 CD's with the same issue numbers done at different places sounded different from each other. The same goes for different cryo deals.
On the issue of cryo, I bring this up because you were the one who recommended it, and even gave the name of your cryo place, which I called.
On the issue of me talking about things that you say, I try to repeat you, or even quote you the best I can. If your having a problem with my interpretation, maybe you should go back a read your posts on threads to try to figure out why people mis-interpret you. I'm not the first by a long shot, and I'm sorry that you keep seeing me as someone trying to pick something with you, trust me I'm not.
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
>>> “Geoff said:
“The way I read what you wrote it does actually seem a little bit like you're attempting to discredit Ron's results with freezing. You know, like you usually do when someone reports results that are in variance with yours. Lol"
Mg, said :-
No not at all, and I'm sorry if you, he or anyone would walk away thinking this, not my intent. My intent is to give a heads up for people doing "fixed & permanent" tweaks. The same results can be made with variable tuning, with the plus ability to make any other variable change when desired. “ <<<
Michael, from what I have read from all your previous postings, you have NOT given ‘heads up for people doing “fixed & permanent” tweaks. Your intent has NOT been to ‘give a heads up for people doing “fixed & permanent” tweaks, irrespective of what you have just claimed. You have repeatedly discouraged people from doing “fixed and permanent” tweaks saying that they are not ‘variable’ tuning (which is the course you actively encourage people to take). I, on the other hand have repeatedly stated that BOTH ‘fixed’ AND ‘variable’ tweaks are the very best options.
You have just stated that “The same results can be made with variable tuning”. One cannot obtain the SAME results by ignoring some ‘fixed’ tweaks dealing with some problems and relying solely on ’variable tuning’. And I have given many examples. As Geoff has pointed out somewhere else. He and I refer to other peoples proprietary devices and techniques as “examples of things affecting and improving the sound” – not as a promotion and advertising technique on their behalf !!!
For example. If there can be problems with many vinyl discs (and CDs) and one can obtain improvements in the sound by applying a demagnetiser to them, then logically there must have been a problem with those discs in the first place – before applying the demagnetiser !! So, one cannot recommend (as you do) that people do not do that “fixed” tweak of applying a demagnetiser but that instead some time, further on in the system (or in the listening room,) one carries out one of your ‘variable tweaks’ to correct that original problem. You will, most likely, yes, gain an improvement in the sound with your ‘variable tweak’ (that I do not doubt) but it is NOT the SAME result – it is different result – albeit another improvement in the sound.
Another example. Applying a chemical to the label side of CDs and gaining an improvement in the sound. Again showing that if one can gain an improvement by doing such things, then there must have been a basic problem with the CD in the first place. Hence my “example” of applying either the UltraBit Platinum-Plus liquid or such as Nordosts ECO 3 liquid to CDs. One should not recommend that people leave such problems untreated but instead attempt to get the same improvement by doing something else (a variable treatment) elsewhere in the audio system.
Another example. If empty (unused) sockets both on audio equipment and empty (unused) AC power sockets present a problem to gaining good sound and therefore treating them would be a “fixed” tweak, one cannot (should not) recommend that they are left untreated – because some improvement in the sound might be achieved, later in the audio system or the listening room by doing a “variable tweak”.
I have said repeatedly that BOTH “fixed” AND “variable” tweaks should be considered ‘hand in hand’.
You, Michael, have not said this. Instead you have, in the past, claimed that your “variable tweaks” are THE method, THE truth and THE answer.
Regarding the ‘freezing’ tweaks using a domestic deep freezer.
You said, Michael :-
>>> “Freezer treatment is not the same as cryo treatment” <<<
No one has ever said it was the same !!!!!!!!!! We are all intelligent people and KNOW the difference between domestic deep freezer temperatures and cryogenic temperatures !!!
>>> “Saying stick your stuff in your freezer in the same breath as my cables are cryo-ed, is not only a huge difference, but also a technical falsehood. I understand that many in this hobby try to create and jump on trends, but when this is done with such generalities and in the name of science, this is when I have to raise my flag.” <<<
Freezing things using the domestic deep freezer is a free technique which people can try for themselves to give them a taste of what is possible – which then enables them to make more informed decisions as to whether to explore, more fully, the companies who are offering the cryogenic technique. Please do not insinuate again that we are attempting falsehoods with our home freezing suggestions !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I repeat again your comment, Michael.
>>> “My intent is to give a heads up for people doing "fixed & permanent" tweaks.” <<<
Your intent has always been to discourage, to actively dissuade people doing any “fixed & permanent” tweaks and to rely instead on your “variable tuning” recommendations. Of course your “variable tuning” tweaks can give many and varied improvements in the sound but they cannot ‘deal’ with inherent problems within or on vinyl discs, within or on CDs, within the different chemical mixtures in the insulation material of cabling etc. etc. Those have to be dealt with at source !! If you leave them untreated, then they are untreated – full stop. You cannot cure such problems later in the system or later in the room with different ‘variable tweaks’ !! In exactly the same way that you cannot cure any inherent problems caused by the presence of transformers in audio equipment by leaving them where they are ‘untreated’ and then use some later ‘variable’ tweak elsewhere!!
When certain journalists using the demagnetising technique and report ‘hearing better soundstage’, then they are hearing ‘better soundstage’, they are not fools. Ditto journalists who report hearing ‘better soundstage’ from applying chemicals to CDs etc, they are not fools. Ditto journalists who report hearing ‘better soundstage’ from applying certain colours to the edge of CDs. Ditto journalists who report hearing ‘better soundstage’ after introducing the Schumann Resonance Device into the listening environment. Ditto journalists who report ‘better soundstage’ after introducing Ted Denney’s tiny “Synergistic Research ART devices’ into the listening environment.
“Variable tuning” is not the ONLY technique which can give people ‘better soundstage’.
And, this is where I have challenged you each time you have attempted to claim such.
“Variable tuning” is in addition to ‘fixed & permanent’ tweaks – not instead of !!
I do not challenge your tuning techniques, I do not challenge what you say you hear. I challenge your claims that your ‘variable tuning’ is THE method, THE truth and THE answer.
You said, Michael :-
>>> “As I have always said, all of the things you, May or anyone mention are sound choices. I haven't a problem with them, why would I? I'm here to promote variable tuning, and it really doesn't matter how many side tracks come up or misunderstandings or someone getting annoyed. Our view is, we don't care, if someone choices to freeze or do any of these things. At the same time we believe they deserve to know that the audio signal can be tuned.” <<<
Of course people deserve to know many things, including that one can improve the audio (musical information) in many ways. But you have taken your ‘people deserve to know’ to the extremes of stating that your ‘variable tuning’ is THE method, is THE truth and is THE answer and to the extremes of taking every opportunity to ‘question’ (at best) and rubbish (at worst) so many other people’s listening experiences – as though they haven’t the intelligence to know when their sound has actually improved !!
Regards,
May Belt,
PWB Electronics.
Michael wrote,
"You can freeze till the cows come home, or do any of your tweaks and I would be just as happy for any of these guys. But geoff your missing and have missed our point from the beginning, and no matter how much you complain about it, this doesn't change my agenda. All I can do is weather your flames until you finally get to the understanding that I'm not downing your products or ideas. All I'm saying is there is another more flexible way of doing things."
Unfortunately for your argument, there isn't another way, a more flexible way, a substitute for cryogenic treatment or for freezing. Or for Cream Electret, or for the Intelligent Chip, the Schumann frequency, the Mpingo discs, mu metal for absorbing magnetic fields, better home AC power, or as in my current case NO HOME AC POWER, tiny little bowl resonators, vibration isolation, constrained layer damping, addressing wire directionality in fuses, wires and cables, dealing with scattered background laser light, clever little clock and silver holographic foils, to name a few. There are no substitutes for these things. Nor are they substitutes for each other. As I am fond of saying, the whole of audio is the discovery of new problems and subsequent development of solutions for those problems. You have apparently conveniently swept the problems under the rug. There is NO LIMIT TO IMPROVING THE SYSTEM. THERE IS NO FINISH LINE THAT YOU SUDDENLY CROSS. THERE IS NO MYTHICAL ABSOLUTE SOUND. Hel-loo! Now, you may have convinced yourself that you have discovered the complete solution. I am not so naive.
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
Sorry guys, but we've invited the both of you to come experience this for yourselves, and you've both declined. All we can do is invite, and if people refuse to experience tuning, we can do little about it.
We appreciate your views, but without puting views into action the spins continue, on all sides till the experience is had.
We will continue to have these demonstrations for the technical/science/engineering comunities and you of course are again invited to join in with any of your theories and or products. But let me add this if I may. This forum has expressed that the fighting stop, so as these threads end up in fights, I must say we are not, and do not wish to be a part of these fights, name calling or trolling. We don't see anything new in the posts the both of you are making. There's just repeated spins that come up when ever someone from another view comes into the picture. As with any debate, the truth and proof comes out in the end through doing together, and we have been enjoying the amount of listeners turning to tuning as their answer for great sound.
We also appreciate everyone who has been using your products and applied your theories with success. Our goal is for listeners to be happy at what ever level of listening or sound they decide to call home. If this has for whatever reason been turned into something different than our intent, we want listeners to know how excited we are as fellow listeners that you are at a happy place. Our designs and methods are of course for those who have tried other ways and still left with the quest of going even further. further meaning making your systems into variable music reproducers. For those who don't tune their systems we understand the defending that takes place, and again appreciate these particular levels of listening, however we have found that because every recording has it's own code, and system must be able to be flexible enough to tune to that code, and this is where the line is drawn and the reason others involve in more "fixed" solutions have a hard time with us. We truly do wish them all the best, but believe in yet a deeper chapter in the hobby of being an audiophile.
So Geoff and May we wish to thank you for your point of view, and even though ours is somewhat different we wish to honor those readers on this forum who would like these threads to be more friendly with the hopes of when others read in the future they can see a hobby of joined desires and not fights of the un-settled.
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
You still don't get it. I am not accusing you of having bad or ineffective products. I'm just saying that whatever it is that you sell and promote cannot possibly be the entire story. For the reasons I have repeated until I'm blue in the face. I suspect this is just a bad case of none so blind that will not see. And a dollop of It's not Invented Here thrown in for good measure. And when you say your products are for those folks who have tried other methods without success that's the same old song and dance we used to get from that other room tuning expert, Ethan Winer.
On a lighter note, anybody heard any good expensive power cord jokes?
Cheers,
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
Nt
Do you understand what a spin is Geoff? It's a conversation that never ends. This particular one is something I can do nothing about. If I say that I have had positive results with these fixed approaches I would be lying. I have no problem with you and May making your claims and references, but I can only do what I can in order to be honest to the people who intrust me to do so, and invite others to experience it. If either of you think we are not being complete enough, that's fine, it's your opinion. We have no problem with anyone sharing their approaches, why would we?
How can we as a design team get rid of this thought "you are the only one with an effective product" in your minds? What can we do for you and May to move on from this? Is there something you would like us to try again? If so we'll try it. When the talking was happening with the freezing, what did we do? We did exactly what you and May asked, and gave our results. We did the C37 tests as well and gave our results. We did the same thing with several Schumann Resonance Devices and again gave our results. This goes on and on and the topics just continue to spin. Got to stop sometime I would think. You guys keep saying we're not doing, then we do and give our results, then you start the whole thing all over again as if we haven't gone through this before.
If you and May are going to say we haven't done, then lets do and get it over with. Tell us again geoff and May, what is it you would like us to test? Lets be adults and put to end any spining and do the things you are saying we aren't. Please give us a list, not a bunch of talk but a list of products you say we haven't tried.
These topics for the good of the hobby need to stop spining, don't you and May agree? With this in mind, what products do you have for us to test out? To help out let me give a list of ones we did just recently, within the last 3 months.
C37
Freezing
Cryo
Schumann resonance devices
CD colors
CD mats
keep in mind that we get samples all the time
The only one we have not talked about recently were the mats. The others we gave descriptions on what we did and found out. Are there any ones that you guys didn't see my response to?
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
Michael, nice to hear you're still trying new stuff. One assumes you're still not having much luck. Oh, well, what can II say. Actually, and I know right off the bat you're probably not going to like this but what about all the other things that we have used as examples of the point which we were attempting to make, which by the way, just to show you why these threads seem so incredibly slow. It's because some people and I'm not mentioning any names here are either intentionally dense or in fact actually dense. I throw manhandle up in the air because I still can't tell. Be that as it may, I digress, the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all, but the ones at are the unmentionables, the ones that go bump in the night, the ones that out the fear of God in you Pro Audio dudes and dudettes and audiophiles alike, especially the overly educated ones and the guys that have been slaving away at this hobby for most of their adult life. OK, you probably ask at this point, what in tarnation are you talking about. Me well, for starters, you apparently completely missed my thread on Freezing stuff because in that thread there is a BIG REVEAL as to what it is that May has been yanking your chain about for quite some time. That big reveal is that freezing (or cryoing, if you insist on the whole lower temperatures are better routine) just about ANYTHING IMPROVES THE SOUND. And the way I demonstrated this, I really wish you'd pay closer attention to what's been happening, was to freeze my entire CD collection in STAGES, checking SQ after each stage. In other words, freezing a bunch of CDs improves the sound of a CD whether it's been frozen itself or not. Follow? Then I froze cassettes. And guess what? Freezing cassettes improves the sound when playing CDs.Hel-loo!
So, to reiterate for the umpteenth time some of the other things that go bump in the night or at least have objectionable explanations. Here we go , the Intelligent Chip, Silver Rainbow Foil, the Red X Pen, the Teleportation Tweak, the Clever Little Clock, Dark Matter CD treatment, Green and Blue Meanies for walls and ceilings, Flying Saucers for windows and Flying Saucers for unused wall outlets, the Quantum Temple Bell, even the tiny little bowl acoustic resonators ( the ones I make are ceramic) usually get a pretty good rise out of Pro Audio dudes as well as audiophiles, although truth be known I actually don't put them (tiny little bowls) in the same category as the ones preceding, oh, yeah, Green Cream, Cream Electret and not last but certainly not least, Brilliant Pebbles, the only comprehensive set of crystal based products for room tuning. See, I can use the word tuning in a sentence, too. I actually don't put C-37 lacquer in the same category, either, as it's a little too mundane. See if you can put it all together now and figure out just what ties most of these things I just listed (for the umpteenth time) together.
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
All:
To give my own feedback further, I welcome any and all viewpoints and in my opinion Michael was not a bit out of line giving me/us HIS opinion; as I am indeed new to this hobby. And for that matter, at least to ME :), nobody was out of line at all.
On the other hand, I do welcome the spirited debate and the more responses and views the better; provided the original point doesn't get lost in abstraction.
Just again try not to get personal or heated, and this will be an even cooler and more enjoyable place to talk than it already is.
I understand from the Corporate and Academic worlds all too well that egos can clash...and often do...usually it's the most intelligent people who are arguing.
Take that any way you want... I mean it as a compliment to always again welcome spirited debate without any personal stuff getting in the way.
Keep Listening!
Ron
A person I know, let's call him customer, just put one of those new fangled High Fidelity power cords in his system recently, you know the company that's producing cables that operate ostensibly by magnetic conduction as opposed to electric conduction. His previous power cord, the one he replaced with the High Fidelity cord, was an Audioquest power cord. But not just any old Audioquest power cord, it was the top of the line signature power cord, the WEL signature power cord, you know, the one everyone was going ga ga over a few years ago. As I recall my friend's word on the High Fidelity power cord was TRANSFORMATIONAL. Now, his theory is that the only way to "get there" - and he's not the only one - is to put ALL OF YOUR MONEY INTO CABLES AND CORDS. There is much discussion on these new High Fidelity cords and cables over on Audiogon, one thread in particular has been ongoing. There are quite a few avid owners of these cords and cables posting on that thread. Would you believe the conductor used in the High Fidelity cords and cables is neither copper nor silver?
Cheers,
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
Hi Geoff, you said :-
>>> “I actually don't put C-37 lacquer in the same category, either, as it's a little too mundane. See if you can put it all together now and figure out just what ties most of these things I just listed (for the umpteenth time) together.” <<<
I would challenge you on your description of the C-37 lacquer as “a little too mundane” !!
I think the C-37 lacquer is quite significant and actually comes within “what ties most of the things you listed”. As far as I understand it, Dieter Ennemoser adds crushed animal bones to his C-37 lacquer (he describes it simplistically as “matching human beings”)
Regards,
May Belt,
PWB Electronics.
I took a quick look....it actually looks legit.... though it would be interesting to learn of price and try the things out...I think at a high level their tech mirrors Audioquests tech in their high end cables with battery assist to polarize the shielding in the hopes of "widening the pipe" and making it "easier" for music signals/sound signals to propagate. They are just swapping out magnetic materials instead of a long wire and battery used by Audioquest. Only skeptical remark: how much change will one hear versus an intro-level cable vs price?
They received patents so must not totally be off their respective rockers:
"Magnetic Innovations LLC has now been granted U.S. Pat. No. 8,272,876 and 8,403,680."
Hi, May, Ooops a daisy, I did not mean that C-37 lacquer was not effective. Certainly not in my experience, although I must say the very long cure time for C-37 lacquer - on the order of six weeks, during which time the sound quality can vary considerably, or so Dieter says - makes the lacquer a little bit of a problem to be able to evaluate easily. Actually in my case I did not listen to my system after applying C-37 lacquer to a number of things, speaker diaphragms, circuit boards, capacitors mostly as I recall, I.e., things that vibrate, until the six week cure time was completed. In the meantime, I'm pretty sure I continued on my merry way as usual, tweaking and so forth and product development. So, I'm not sure I'd be the right person to be able to say emphatically yes, this C-37 lacquer is really the cat's meow. It may very well be. I seem to recall the human bone thing too, but overall what I was trying to do when I called C-37 mundane was separate things like Mpingo disc which is also a little mysterious and exotic, and C-37 lacquer from things like silver rainbow foil and the clock which are much more mysterious. The way I interpreted Deiter's comment about human bone material was that it was more non resonant or inert or had a certain resonance like maybe Mpingo wood but I could be completely off base about that.
Addendum: I just pulled this off of dieter's web site,
"In mechanical systems like a turntables, loudspeakers, or violins, performance will improve
considerably when the spectrum of mechanical resonance is shifted toward that of the human ear.
C37 lacquer was developed for this purpose.
In a high fidelity system resonance causing distortion may be dampened, but never eliminated.
However, the spectrum of those resonance can be tuned to match those of the ear,
thus enhancing small signal information. Distortion equal to that of the ear will be eliminated
by the brain.
For this reason, our intent was to create a special lacquer that shifts the mechanical resonance of the
system towards those of the ear. C37 lacquer works much like the lacquer on a violin."
More details regarding the C-37 lacquer can be found at:
http://www.ennemoser.com/eundf.html
Cheers,
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
I as well have had a lifetime of experiences where something is used and then there is no return back to the original, and this is a problem that has haunted tweakers for a long time especially when using certain liquids with unpredictable curing times and styles. It serves listeners well to do studies on finishes and not looking for again that one sizes fits all. It doesn't exist! I know that it makes it easier for marketing a point of view to say "here it is, done" but this is never going to happen in this hobby. Magic creams and C37's and all of these products that are to be said absolute fixes are nothing more than a choice among millions of choices.
If it works for you good, but also pay attention to the guy next to you that it didn't work so good for. If you do your homework on wood and curing your not going to run out and throw down the plastic so easily. Point being, if your going to take the time to consider C37 or any other finish why not take the time to learn curing and develope a method of curing.
I have only found one sure method to this topic, and that is become hands on. Don't talk about the sound of things experience them in a meaningful way.
example
Use C37 on a piece of select pine @ 5% and compare it to C37 on white board @ 7% and tell me which is more open sounding and has the timbre you like? There is a huge sonic difference between what I just gave you.
next example
How does C37 respond to a piece of Redwood 4% rough cut @ 6 months vs redwood first sand 80 grit @ 6% 1 year? Again two completely different sounds and uses in music.
If someone says to you apply this, any finish, as a general statement they are "marketing you" not sharing with you proper voicing of wood or any material.
It's totally up to the audiophile what he or she may buy into, and you might be a client of such marketing, or you may be a victim of buying into change instead of timbre truth.
What I look for when judging if someone is legit or not, is their personal recording or playback system and setting. Let me give you yet another example. If you come to one of our listening properties, you will notice that you are not far away from a voicing workshop. You will find lots of jars and cans of finishes and mixing jars. You will also find a lot of different wood laying around at many different stages of curing. More than likely you will find more than one listening room and music playing 24/7. For myself if someone is talking finish, curing, voicing or almost any tweak and they do not have their lab on some type of display, I right off the batt know what I'm dealing with.
In the world of voicing anything there are tricks and treats that only a well experienced master understands.
Yesterday, we moved some wood over to the final station of curing. While there we took some samples and I spent time showing the one guy how to sand these particular pieces of wood and then applying the finish. I did it using two different tools the same way. This morning got a call "you gotta be sh****g me" on the other end of the phone. Same wood, same finish, same grit, different technique. The difference between smooth and extented sounding and dead flat.
So when I read or see people talking up their storm in these broard general sweeps, it honestly makes me a little sad for the people who are hunting for that perfect sound for them.
so much more to the art of audio than we many times give it
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
Michael wrote,
"I as well have had a lifetime of experiences where something is used and then there is no return back to the original, and this is a problem that has haunted tweakers for a long time especially when using certain liquids with unpredictable curing times and styles. It serves listeners well to do studies on finishes and not looking for again that one sizes fits all. It doesn't exist! I know that it makes it easier for marketing a point of view to say "here it is, done" but this is never going to happen in this hobby. Magic creams and C37's and all of these products that are to be said absolute fixes are nothing more than a choice among millions of choices."
Spoken like someone with no experience with either product. Well done! A play right out of the Ethan Winer play book.
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
Actually geoff, while you have no lab, and have never built an iso-lab to test your products, I would think you attempting to push buttons would only lead to a backfire once again on these threads. I don't know what your dealing with Mr. Winer or James Randi (rip off report) or your little Dayton or Pro spin do to help your cause, but if you wish to play in the mudd please clean off before coming in OK.
TuneLand has several workshops and labs in which we do our testing and would be happy to have Mr. Kait send us any of his product for evaluation just as other designers do. We could add it to the list Behlen, Mohawk, General, Robson, Cardinal, C37....as well as the water based lines.
michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/
As above-
Ron, the Creek is an excellent integrated amp. Audioquest is a sonic match. I do not know if the Shunyata is a sonic match?
Take your time when considering cables/cords for your listening needs.
Keep me posted & Happy Listening!
Allen:
Thank you for your reply; as well as affirmation I am doing something right!.... I am putting power conditioning on hold due to personal financial constraints.. but I have not read or been advised of any incompatibilities between Shunyata (AC cords and their power strip) as being incompatible with Creek? If I am unaware of some studies or articles or your own observation, definitely let me know!
Thanks In Advance,
Ron
Sure Ron-
The AudioQuest is from my own listening experiences. The Shunyata information comes from Gale Carol in San Antonio TX. He has been a dealer/retailer for Shunyata for 10+ years.
Yes Yes Yes....Unbelievable difference what it did to change the quality of my marantz sr6003 Canton Chrono speaker set up. I just got the Furman yesterday and won't be looking to upgrade my amp any time soon. The detail separation imaging and layering of music just improved 10 fold. Bass extension is amazing ans surround sound finally sounding like it was suppose to. One word of caution though, my amp didnt like being powered off it took 2 hours after restart to restore sound quality. So leave the conditioner switch on at all times.
The info may exist, but after years of power cable debate and promotion, I've yet to read WHY "upgrade" power cables are superior. The only explanation I can think of, using my incomplete electrical knowledge, is they act as six foot long filters for some AC garbage. I've read no explanation why the hundreds of feet of wire feeding our receptacles "improved" by only a few feet of expensive stuff. Also, some respectable manufactures include rather ordinary power cables with their equipment and recommend NOT replacing them.
High-end speaker wires make more sense in that we don't want them to become filters of the musical spectrum of AC. So much cable advertising is so over-the-top claiming HUGE differences when, at very best, any changes are quite small. My feeling is that cables provide a convenient manufacturing bandwagon.
I actually find cable manufacturers' claims to be rather tame, while there are many customers and reviewers whose testimony might be considered rave reviews or even over the top. Especially High Fidelity Cables, Taralabs cables, Purist Audio cables, even the upper tiers of Audioquest cables. Now, you could say well, NO POWER CORD COULD POSSIBLY BE WORTH $15,000. And you might be right, for you. But apparently there are quite a few folks out there who strongly disagree. Gone are those days of yesteryear when we could come up with a budget for our system of 50% for speakers, 40% for electonics and 10% for cabling. On the other hand, having said all that, I don't use power cords OR cables. So, color me embarrassed. From my experience all power cords inherently distort the sound due to the magnetic field the current running through them induces. For that reason I'm out. I severed ties with my house AC last year and never looked back.
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
Power conditioners probably act as beneficial filters, getting rid of noise and distorted AC. The better units may keep the voltage from sagging too much.
Agreed-
both, power cords and line/power conditioners act as filters. One would not want to over-filter his system?
It should probably be mentioned that the new line of cables and power cords that everyone is talking about, the ones from High Fidelity Cables, apparently don't operate like the ones we're used to using. The cables an cords from High Fidelity Cables employ a lot of high powered magnets in the design and uses mu metal for the conductor. Yes, I said mu metal. You know, the high permeability nickel iron alloy used for wrapping transformers among other things. Now, I wouldn't even mention these High Fidelity Cables except for the fact they are being touted by customers as being light years ahead of conventional cables, even such high end warhorses as Tara Labs, Purist Audio, Audioquest and Shunyata. What's up with that? As for myself you know not having to contend with power cords, speaker cables, interconnects, or even transformers for that matter, I'm fairly content thinking that ALL power cords, power conditioners, cables, and interconnects, and yes, transformers are BAD FOR THE SOUND. There, I said it.
Geoff Kait
Maraschino Diabolical
I tried to find an excellent expose of power conditioners by Peter Aczel which I read some time ago, but I can't locate it.
Aczel has a way with words that never fails to amuse. He thinks they are nonsense. And he makes an excellent argument as to why. I'll see if I can find it.
Ahem, you need to stop reading Aczel immediately and start reading Magnan Audio, especially his whole page or two on how to make your own power conditioning system.
Geoff Kait
Machina Dramatica
I consider myself a cable skeptic, but that said I do invest in good cabling. I believe in
1. Good connectors for a secure long-term fit
2. Good conductivity. Silver is better than copper by 5%, whether or not you can hear (I couldn't) is up to you.
3. Some isolation to prevent other signals to intrude.
I have auditioned to extremely expensive cables that indeed changed the sound but not once has the change been for the better. My basic belief is that if a cable makes me listen to change, then probably it's not doing the job of being transparent.
As to power cables, I do upgrade them to a cable that has some isolation and offers better optics. :-)
But I totally, definitely believe in power conditioning and filtering. Again, I think some designs go overboard, but my power filtering/conditioning gear is around $1.2k, and the Powerwedge 112 is a heavy little critter.
Pablolie wrote,
"I have auditioned to extremely expensive cables that indeed changed the sound but not once has the change been for the better. My basic belief is that if a cable makes me listen to change, then probably it's not doing the job of being transparent."
It's possible that comparisons of cables go awry and that expensive cables can lose in DIRECT COMPARISONS to inexpensive cables for several reasons other than they are actually inferior sounding cables. These reasons are (1) the expensive cables are BRAND NEW and not broken in for at least several hundred hours with signal applied, whereas the inexpensive cables are broken in and (2) the mechanical/electrical interface where the cable is connected to the electronics, the RCA connector or whatever, is distrusted when the expensive cables are inserted into the system; that disruption of the mechanical/electrical interface degrades the sound for at least a day or two until the interface is Re-broken in. Ditto for power cords and the wall outlet. Brand new cables, even expensive ones, until they are properly broken in, will generally sound pinched, rolled off, bass shy, thin, undynamic - you might even consider the more elaborate and thorough break in device such as AudioDharma's Cable Cooker to assure cables are completely broken in PRIOR TO TESTING.
Happy New Year
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
Caveate, I do not use power cords as I'm using battery powered portable CD and cassette players and am enjoying the lack of noise and distortion that naturally accompanies having to use power cords, wall outlets, wall outlet covers, the house AC, large honking transformers, large honking capacitors, fuses, fuse holders, interconnects, speaker cables, or digital cable. But I digress.
I would like to throw up OK, so maybe that's a bad choice of words, some ides regarding power cords and why they are so debatable and also why I believe they are just plain bad news for the sound. There are certain things I'm not crazy about about power cords. One is the connector, most seem cheap and flimsy and the screws that hood the actual conductors and ground and shielding appear inadequate even on expensive connectors. Two, the use if stranded copper or even stranded silver conductors seems rather unfortunate given our experience with stranded vs solid core for all other types of cabling. I would prefer solid core even if the power cord had to be super stiff. The power cord could be shaped at the factory or maybe even at home into an ESS shape or whatever to better suit the lay of the land. Maybe super stiffness would actually be helpful in suspending the power cord and isolating it from vibration and static electrical fields.
I am also not very happy about the electromagnetic reflections that occur in power cords during normal operation and recommend that ALL power cords come with either a Shun Mook Original Cable Jacket or High Wire Power Cord Wrap attached. Going further, i am also not too keen on the magnetic field induced by current flowing through the power cord conductors. Yes, I know the AC conductors are twisted but that's not entirely satisfactory in terms of eliminating the magnetic fields and their highly toxic effects on the AC signal. Please note I'm NOT referring to external EMI/RFI electromagnetic fields here. Now, I don't know preceisely WHAT the induced magnetic field is doing to the AC signal that would affect the sound upstream but I imagine it distorts it.
Experiments with absorbing the induced magnetic field in power cords does in fact produce better sound. The induced magnetic field can easily be reduced in power cords, interconnects, HDMI cables and large honking transformers great strides can be made in the overall reduction of noise and distortion in the audio signal that is provided to the speakers or headphones.
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica dot Com