Forum menu
As for why bi-wiring works... I understood that there's a difference between a crossover and a filter... by removing that little link between the two sets of speaker terminals you're converting the crossover into two filters, one high pass and one low pass.. no?
I can go with that, but that's what the gold plates do, simultaneously feed the input into 2 separate filters.
I should probably admit that my main speakers are biwired, but only because I got them second hand complete with cables. The cable is QED silver anniversary, £10/m stuff, yet he had them connected to a crappy mp3 player through a naff amp. It didn't sound good. When I think about biwiring I just can't see that it can do any good at all and I certainly wouldn't pay big money for speaker cable. Interconnects are a slightly different argument, but not much.
I went to the Manchester hifi show last year. There was a good range of stuff, but only 2 things really impressed me. One was a Bryston PMC combo, £14ks worth apparently, the other was a £350 Harman Kardon all in one thingy. There was plenty of nice stuff with differences in sound, but it was very difficult to put a price on any of it. Some systems costing a few hundred pounds sounded better to me than some costing thousands.
USE YOUR EARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At the end of the day it's about how much YOU enjoy listening to the music and it's all about how it's presneted to you and how it makes you feel! Naim amps really do throw the music at you, a very forward sound that doesn't suit some people and I'd definitely say it's not accurate but it's exceptionally enjoyable. And some cables have an effect on the sound - just don't take in Russ Andrews utter utter crap that he spouts and just use your ears, demo in your own room and see what best suits you - as I've always done! If a dealer wants me spend money in his/her shop then I will always always listen to the stuff in the room it's going be used in - just like when you buy a bike and you demo it over the stuff your going use it on day in day out. Simples.
With regard to suspended wood flooring - yes, it's not as good for music playback as concrete, but it can be improved by de-coupling the equipment from the floor as much as possible.
I have granite "worktop savers" from Sainsburys under each speaker column. A properly-spiked equipment stand coupling the spikes to substantial cross-headed screws in the floor is mandatory, IMO.
Suspending the cabling from the floor is also good - my cheap option is running the NACA5 cabling along the room edge through expanded polystyrene pipe lagging.
Speaker cables should not be coiled, BTW. The best option is to arrange the spare length so that it loops back-and-forth on itself, secured in position with zip ties. This can be a bit fiddly with NACA5 because it's fairly stiff.
The best zip ties for sound quality are usually those plastic ones you find in hardware shops... 😉
http://www.audiodestination.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=160&products_id=1518
Sorry - the link doesn't work but it's worth cutting & pasting to get more details of the amazing Artkustik Audio Animator ULTRA that "[i]uses the regularities of physics to reduce material stress.
It transfers the structural order of crystals to each object, in its proximity. Regardless of which material it is made of plastic, wood or metal.
The Artkustik Audio Animator is designed to optimise the sound from CD,LP,DVD,DAT.MD.analogue tape and video-cassette and also all hi-fi system components as well as all connecting cables.
It uses quartz technology and requires no power supply.
All that needs to done is to pass the AUDIO ANIMATOR just over the surface of both sides of the CD.
It is supplied with full operating instructions and comes with a 10 year guarantee.
[/i]"
Hmm, lots of things for me to comment on.
GT1972, I like the Qute, but you won't get impartial advice from me! Go and have a listen, see what you think. And the factory tour is well worth it if you can get to Salisbury.
Hadge, I would agree that our stuff does have a fast, forward sound which polarises opinion. To say it's not accurate doesn't really tally with the measurements that I make though. Low THD, very flat response, low channel balance etc. I think it's the fast transient response which gives that characteristic. Which leads me to:
Turner Guy, when I get back from town 🙂
Hello is that Curry's? I'd like to place an order for two supplementary, auxiliary speakers, to go with my Alba Midi Hi-Fi system, apropos achieving surround sound.
Well, I guess no-one here can explain why the cables make a difference, and certainly not the big changes some people seem to claim.
So, how come so many people stand up for this claim, yet on another thread anyone who states that a hologram can make them perform better gets shouted down?
It seems that placebo is a perfectly good explanation for one, but not the other.
Neither seem to have any effective basis in science beyond that.
Of course, if someone can explain the effects... I'm all ears...
I have a decent mid-range AV system (Yamaha HD amp / Kef eggs & sub).
It sounds awesome watching a Blu Ray with Dolby, or DTS HD sound, with every little detail revealed in crisp clarity and thundering effects.
The amp & speakers are around £1300's of kit, but (and I knew this would be the case) it sounds poor with music. You'd imagine it would be able to recreate the range and detail required, but it doesn't.
My point being, you can tell the difference between a system that is right for the source material and one that isn't - how far this goes back to cables and interconnects is a moot point, but I'd certainly be able to tell the difference between my set up and a reasonable one box hi-fi in a blind test. My old Technics sounded way better for music - with crap cables.
I understand that some systems are apparently better than others for music or films....
OK So what's the best hifi for listening to nature recordings?
Are you a naturist ooOOoo?
USE YOUR EARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I do! Rather than listening to other people with very limited knowledge of electronics but apparently boundless cynicism telling me how stupid I am.
Anyway, +1 for movies being different to music. My problem is that I want one system for both, thereby doing away with two sets of speakers, kit and wires. My home cinema stuff is cheap and sounds pretty good for films but beyond terrible for music. Film soundtracks are a lot about effects, which need tons of bass and punch; my music and listening taste requires colour, clarity and finess.
I think my best option is the Arcam Muso 5.1 but it's not cheap. Well, it is by hifi standards, but it's enough to get a pretty decent bike!
I have watched DVD's on a friend's AV system (Yamaha) with all the whistles and bells effects mentioned above and was astonished at just how horrible a music CD sounded on it.
I watch DVD's at home with the sound directed through my (mostly) NAIM stereo system.
It doesn't make me feel that I need a surround-sound AV to watch them...
Films will sound better through a good hi-fi set up than music will sound through a good AV set-up for sure.
Obviously a good AV set-up will have the ability to decode the HD sound codecs, so for pure AV a dedicated system is the way to go.
there can be a compromise of course and if you will be using it heavily for both, put the bias toward hi-fi
Turner Guy, there ae different schools of thought when it comes to PSU design. Some people have lots of filtering on the incoming mains to try and remove incoming interference and better isolate the equipment from mains borne noise and loading. Occasionally people wis go as far as regenerating a clean sinusoidal mains signal. Others prefer to have little or no filtering as it complicates matters electronically. A commonly used analogy is that the PSU is like a tap supplying the amplifier with energy. Any plumbed in filtration unit will obviously be detrimental to the flow of water.
Rather than listening to other people with very limited knowledge of electronics but apparently boundless cynicism telling me how stupid I am.
Aaaah, of course, everyone who is at all cynical about this has only a limited knowledge about electronics.
Does anyone who is cynical about those power balance things only have a limited knowledge about how they work too?
;o)
RichPenny, with bad analogies like that please tell me that you didn't design the power supplies!
😀
Funkynick, there is a minimum amount of speaker cable recommended, I think it's 3m. My understanding is exactly what my post states, that this length of cable is compensated for in the design. The reason being that running the amp on the edge of its operational envelope sounds better. Sorry, I don't know how that transpires into measurements as I'm not a design engineer and don't experiment with those kind of differences.
Why is it a bad analogy? It isn't mine, I think it's attributed to Julian Vereker. If you want to stack your PSU designs up against his, be my guest 😉
It's bad because you make power supply input filters up with energy storage elements, which both absorb and release energy as required. They just don't work like a filter on a tap do.
The thing is, if you design a power supply with very little filtering then you need a clean supply for it. Where do you get this clean supply from?
The one thing if probably is good for, is to use to justify a certain design philosophy to people who don't understand... 😉
And yeah, let me know when he's designed a 10kW PSU and we'll have a go! 😀
At low volumes I admit teh B&O stuff is quite nice
B+O do 'lifestyle' products, which are designed to work in real homes, rather than specially constructed audiophile lairs. What they do works very well, imo. My Beomaster and B+W 601s in my bedroom sound lovely. I can't see the point of having something much more spensive in a room that's far from being acoustically ideal. Besides, I'm too busy enjoying the music, to worry about the subtle nuances of the 'soundstage' or whatever poncy terms hi-fi buffs like to bandy about.
As for cables; a £30 CA interconnect helps produce a clearer, better sound than a cheapo bit of 'string', but I don't concern myself with the science. I'm wondering actually if CAs £10 interconnects are noticeably inferior, as on taking them apart, they seem identical except for the colour of the cable sleeving....
So, can anyone recommend a simple, 'budget' twin power and pre-amp set so's I can bi-amp my speakers up?
Energy storage elements might have an impact on time critical requirements, yes?
Sorry if the analogy is poor, I'm no design engineer.
Which Hi-fi products are your PSU designs in? I have no idea if Julian Vereker ever designed a 10kW supply, they aren't too commonly required in consumer electronics!
Energy storage elements might have an impact on time critical requirements, yes?
What time critical requirements are these?
But essentially no in this situation. Unless you are pulling serious power, in which case you might need to worry about the line inductance a little.
But if it's all this critical, how do you get this perfectly clean supply?
Sorry if the analogy is poor, I'm no design engineer.
Aaaah, so what did you do there?
Which Hi-fi products are your PSU designs in? I have no idea if Julian Vereker ever designed a 10kW supply, they aren't too commonly required in consumer electronics!
No audio kit I'm afraid, but I am a power electronic engineer, but I guess as I don't actually design for audio kit that means I know nothing eh? 😉
What time critical requirements are these?
Is that a joke?
But if it's all this critical, how do you get this perfectly clean supply?
Sorry, I forgot to reference what someone else was saying about having separate spurs from the CU, an other geeky mains stuff. No-ones saying that you need a perfect supply, just that it's better. And that the result from a slightly dirty supply with no filtering can sound better than having the filtering in place.
No audio kit I'm afraid, but I am a power electronic engineer, but I guess as I don't actually design for audio kit that means I know nothing eh?
I'm not saying that at all, although the first quote is a bit worrying!
A lot of the cynics appearing on this thread with professional credentials seem to be from industry backgrounds that would involve finding the most [i]cost effective[/i] solutions to electrical engineering/power transfer/wave routing problems..
In high fidelity audio surely you have to understand that the economics work the other way around with quality being highest priority and cost second..
Perhaps some of the engineering principals being quoted really don't have any relevance or similarity to the hifi industry in the same way that a butcher doesn't know a chefs work or a hairdresser a surgeons..
Rich Penny - can I email you for advice, I think ( as I understand things ) I've got to a brick wall so far as CD quality goes...... unless I go NAIM....
Rich... the question was to you about what these critical time requirements, as in, just how much power do you think you need in how short a time?
Yunki... that's correct as Hi-Fi uses different laws of physics to the rest of us.
At least that would explain things... 😉
Anyway, enough of this... I have a thesis to finish writing, and this isn't helping!
Yunki... that's correct as Hi-Fi uses different laws of physics to the rest of us.
I was just wandering if perhaps the folk developing the technology are working at a more advanced level than some of the cynics are.. it's not impossible or even unlikely.. is it..?
I'm out of here..
too much pompous waffle gives me nervous indigestion
Feel free, email in profile if you think I can help.
Yunki, I'm not sure that's entirely fair. There is a lot of guff around hi-fi, that's undebateable. It stands to reason that a high degree of cynicism exists to balance that out. Equally though, there are a lot of exceptional engineers working in the field, people who've spent decades analysing the possibilities. None of them are on here though!
I got some cheap class t amps off ebay and was amazed by the performance, really noticable quality confirmed in certain aspects by the stats. More things to get wrong/right in an amp than cables.
It's the indigestion.. it's making me 'orrible.. 👿
As said above, there's certainly loads of bull talked about hifi. Back when I used to sell it, early to mid Eighties, just when cd was coming in, some of the stuff the 'flat earthers' were advocating was farcical, like removing digital watches and other semiconductor devices from the listening environment because they could adversely affect the sound!
I used to sell B&O, Rotel, Denon, Pioneer, Technics, B&W, Castle, KEF and Wharfdale, among others, and I can confidently say that back then B&O failed every time in a demo against something like a Rotel amp costing around £120, with a pair of B&W's with a Denon cd front end. Pioneer and Technics cd players were very harsh sounding compared to vinyl back then, too. Now I use a Yamaha DSP-AX2 AV amp into Sony Chorus satellites and sub with a Cambridge Audio DVD99 for music with skinny two-core wiring and it sounds just fine to my ears. The DVD99 is a lovely player handling CD/DVD-A/SACD/DVD, and I turn off all effects off for music, which may be why others have issues with music playback through AV amps, any effects processing ruins music. I can clearly hear mastering differences between various CD's, some early ones sound very dull while others are better than much newer discs. Fairground Attraction's [i]First Of A Million Kisses[/i], which I always thought was a good recording sounds very dull now, while Paul Simon's [i]Hearts And Bones[/i], from around the same time, is a stunning recording. If my system can show clear differences in mastering of a recording, then it's good enough for me, even with the skinny wires. 😆
Rather than listening to other people with very limited knowledge of electronics but apparently boundless cynicism telling me how stupid I am.Aaaah, of course, everyone who is at all cynical about this has only a limited knowledge about electronics.
Your comment does not follow from mine at all! Terrible reasoning!
CZ - doesn't take much to be able to tella crap CD from a good one 🙂
Elf - check fleabay for Cambridge Audio C500 and P500 if I were you. Afaik they were the only inexpensive control and power amps ever made.
There is a lot of guff around hi-fi, that's undebateable. It stands to reason that a high degree of cynicism exists to balance that out.
There is an awful lot of hokum in hifi and as long as the people trying to sell me expensive cable are also recommending this:
> http://www.audiodestination.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=160&products_id=1518
I'll ignore them and go with the science.
I am not a cynic but I am trained to be scientifically sceptical.
[url= http://www.audiodestination.co.uk ]http://www.audiodestination.co.uk[/url]
Comedy gold.
SSC Base Classic
£430.00
[img] 
[/img]
The construction of two solid beech wood frames joined to each other by a string construction.
Beside the positve sound effect there also is an improvement in video components: there is more contrast and a calmer picture.
Artkustik Cable Animator ULTRA
£175.00
[img] 
[/img]
The Cables Animator's effect is based on physical phenomena but it does not require conventional energy for its operation...
Artkustik issues a warranty of 10 years on the Cable Animator, provided it is used as intended. If the Cable Animator is opened or used inappropriately, the warranty is void.
Artkustik Room Animator ULTRA
£675.00
[img] 
[/img]
This is one of the most amazing devices we have ever heard!
Just power it up and within 30 seconds, the Room Animator will optimise the sound in your listening environment.
Typical effects of this are:
The musicians have more space around them.
The music becomes clearer and even more dynamic.
The soundstage gains width,height and depth.
You can just sit back,relax and enjoy all your discs.
The Room Animator works purely according to the laws of Physics (the ordered movement of electrons in matter) and depends on the use of natural matter. It contains only naturally-occurring materials...
Whenever we listen to the music from a HiFi system, we need air in our room to transmit the sound. The more evenly arranged is the “sound conductivity” of the air, the better the acoustic behaviour of the room.
Is there any point with all this Gucci kit for home hi-fi when the original recording was most likely made using lesser equipment? Surely you are trying to extract information from the source (cd - record or whatever) that simply wasn't there in the first place?
You'd also expect the recording to have issues with the fact that I would think that they are not using £1k mains leads so all the problems caused by that (according to the people who make them anyhow) will be embedded into the original recording.
When I was a kid I tried swapping between Naim A5,
Mission Solid Core and mains twin and earth speaker cables to see if I could actually tell the difference.
My ears were still working properly back then and I swear I could tell which was which, with Naim being the smoothest, twin & earth being the brightest and the Mission somewhere in between.
I've still got all those cables in the loft, so when I get the time I'll try it again and report back.
However, after years of nightclubs and gigs, along with the inevitable ageing, my hearing ain't what it used to be. I really wish I'd used earplugs ALL the time, as opposed to 'now and then'. 🙁
There are always going to be Snake Oil salesmen in every sphere of life - but we don't decry the whole medical profession just because some idiot is selling slimming pills, do we?
Hi-Fi has had it's share of fools - anyone remember [url= http://www.belt.demon.co.uk/index.html ]Peter Belt[/url] and his little squares of sticky foil?
TBH I gave up reading the Hi-Fi press when some writers supported and eulogised Belt and I've never read a Hi-Fi mag since.
I realise that he's just playing with ideas of perception and the placebo effect, but it all got a bit too quasi religious for me.
Same with some of the Linn and Naim 'flat earthers' too, TBH.
I trust my own ears, no matter how knackered, to tell me what sounds good or not.
I'm really surprised that no one has taken up James Randi's million dollar cable challenge though.
I'm tempted to give it a go myself, if STW'ers chip in for the airfare & costs 😀
Some very interesting background to the Randi challenge [url= http://www.stereophile.com/thinkpieces/021708swiftboat/ ]here. [/url]
Randi's own website is [url= http://www.randi.org/site/ ]here. [/url]
I like and respect James Randi, but I think he's wrong in this case.
I am not a cynic but I am trained to be scientifically sceptical.
Me too. And the results of my experiment were that bi-wiring helped my setup, and bi-amping helped it lots more.
Rockhopper - fair point, but when you have even slightly decent kit you find that some albums are well made and some not. The fancier your stuff, the more you start chasing the perfect recording, I expect.
B+O do 'lifestyle' products
Nail. Head. Hit.
I can't see the point of having something much more spensive in a room that's far from being acoustically ideal.
Bit like noone here really needs anything more than a 300 quid MTB then, unless we're seasoned pros and can use it properly. No point in having a 4K full sus when you're far from being Steve Peat / Liam Killeen etc.
So, can anyone recommend a simple, 'budget' twin power and pre-amp set so's I can bi-amp my speakers up?
Why? No point in spending money on a better system in a room that's far from being acoustically ideal... Ahem 😉
noone here really needs anything more than a 300 quid MTB
Well that's rubbish for a start - maybe £1200 might be a better starting point. Normal XC mtb usage throughout the year will least its way through < XT standard gear, and if you like going downhill instead you will need some reasonable decent forks and a decently strong wheelset.
Even if the room is sub-standard there is a lot you can do with room treatment/furnishings/speaker positioning. Might be more of a problem in a box room.
[img] 
[/img]
Whatever you do, don't forget to get your cables off the floor. Otherwise you might as well not bother.
^^^^
I would love to put something like that in my lounge just to see the reaction on my wife's face 😈
[i]To be serious for a second, I find it very wearing that every time there's a thread like this I and my colleagues are accused of perpetuating some kind of massive fraud on an unsuspecting public.[/i]
[url] http://www.naimaudio.com/hifi-product-range/641 [/url] ?
Torminalis - MemberWhatever you do, don't forget to get your cables off the floor. Otherwise you might as well not bother.
Expanded polystyrene tubing (run along the skirting board) is just as effective and much cheaper. Slightly easier on the eye also, if you worry about that sort of thing.