Rebuilding system

[No BS advocate]

Hi to you all

Read with great interest your articles on speaker cables and the industry BS that prevails.

I have started taking a great interest in obatining the best sound performance from my system....the objective to get lost in the music and recharge the soul.....

REBUILDING:
Recently purchased a Panasonic BDT500 Blu Ray player and seems to perform better) than my 12 year old Arcam 7SE CD player via Coaxial to my Yamaha DSP A2. Also have 7.1 analogue outs from Panasonic so can use latest HD sound direct to amp.

Just secured a Quad 520f professional power amp want to use the pre-out from my Yamaha via this and power main Monitor Audio Silver 7i speakers. Any comments welcome!

SPEAKER CABLE UPGRADES:
I have purchased this silver coated cable off ebay (enough to bi-wire my 3 front speakers)
GSI Silver Coated Copper 120" Woven Wire / Cable Assembly - Robotics / Aerospace | eBay
Seemed very cheap and reading up suggests I should untie the cable strands and braid the cable using cloackwise and counter clockwise twists. Alternatively I have seen DNM flat speaker cable whch suggests keeping the strands flat? advice welcome.

ULTRA LOW MASS:
bypassing Binding posts: want to by pass my big goldplated brass binding posts on the MA 7i's and looking at the crossover connections I could crimp (effectively cold welding hence better than solder?) a 6.3mm sleaved silver plated female spade to each of the the 4 internal connections and fit my speaker cable (silver coated) with crimped male spade. This will bypass the post completely (would make decabling my speakers a little more delicate but once wired I doubt I'll change for some time. Advice welcome.

Interconnector Plugs: Read much about Eichman Bullet, and 47 Labs ultra low mass RCA plugs and terminals. I have sketched out a DIY solution which should be achiveable for about £2 per plug....will post later. Any comments on the 'ultra low mass thing would be welcome.

RFI Sheilding necessary?
I have ordered some DNM interconnector wires (read independent reviews to say these were best) DNM Products - Details of Solid Core Cables for only £10.50 per 2x 500mm lenths. They dont have any sheilding, like coaxial cables, is this a problem?

I could buy some copper adhesive tape (used to insulate guitar pickups from RFI) which could be wrapped arround the interconnectors and speaker cable and grounded to the casework on the amp independent of the RCA ground. This tape is very cheap. Is it worth sheilding my cables ?

Sorry for this long one but your advice is welcome!

 

[ARES24]

I understand why this is posted in this section, I just found it funny to be classified in the beginner section.

I am still a noob but this seems like more work then it would be worth.

 

[ahblaza]

The Panny BDT500 sounds very good indeed from the two channel stereo analog outs, very good CD quality player.

 

[No BS advocate]

I understand why this is posted in this section, I just found it funny to be classified in the beginner section.

Other than 12 years ago, when i first baught my AV/music system, I have done nothing (save keeping it after my divorce).
I have read a lot on the intraweb (including this outstading site) over the past 6 months and have started making decisions. This is the first audio forum I have ever posted, and do rely on all you guys knowledge to prevent me making mistakes.

History suggests, one can build a giant killer for modest money, the Pioneer A400 was a case in point. The one area mere mortals (without a degree in electronics) can improve their system is changing the interconnectors, speaker cables, power cords, speaker mounting, mains conditioner and of course room acoustic treatment.......hence (as far as I can see) the industry millks these components for every penny. An analogy is the aftermarket 'car exhaust' and 'air filter' industry....many claims are unfounded based on part science part 'snake oil' but punters are sucked in and promptly relieved of their hard erned. The psycology of these industries would be an engaging socio/physcological Docterate.

Anyway, back to 'no BS basics'! which is why I'm on this forum..... looking for advice. I bought the Panasonic BDT500 based on many expert reviews and my own audition and am very pleased. My rebuilding budget (inc Panny) is no more than £500 say $700 US so I have to be very cautious what I buy / invest in and can't afford any mistakes...hence your advice is welcome

 

[Swerd]

REBUILDING:
Recently purchased a Panasonic BDT500 Blu Ray player and seems to perform better) than my 12 year old Arcam 7SE CD player via Coaxial to my Yamaha DSP A2. Also have 7.1 analogue outs from Panasonic so can use latest HD sound direct to amp.

Just secured a Quad 520f professional power amp want to use the pre-out from my Yamaha via this and power main Monitor Audio Silver 7i speakers. Any comments welcome!

No BS – Welcome to the forum!

Your recently purchased Panasonic Blue Ray disc player and Quad amplifier are without question good additions. Put them to good use and enjoy them.

I would avoid all those other suggestions for speaker cables, interconnect cables or terminals plugs, bypassing the speaker binding posts, or adding RFI shielding. They are highly likely to provide no audible benefit, and they might do harm, especially the effort to bypass your speaker binding posts. I never heard of that idea before, and wonder if it would void any warranty you have on your speakers. Even if you think these tweaks are relatively inexpensive, I see no reason to do any of them.

History suggests, one can build a giant killer for modest money, the Pioneer A400 was a case in point. The one area mere mortals (without a degree in electronics) can improve their system is changing the interconnectors, speaker cables, power cords, speaker mounting, mains conditioner and of course room acoustic treatment.......hence (as far as I can see) the industry millks these components for every penny. An analogy is the aftermarket 'car exhaust' and 'air filter' industry....many claims are unfounded based on part science part 'snake oil' but punters are sucked in and promptly relieved of their hard erned. The psycology of these industries would be an engaging socio/physcological Docterate.

I completely agree with your thinking .

I might quibble with your choice of words "can improve" because you clearly mean to say it seems like a fool's errand. If you inserted the words "believe they can improve", perhaps that would be a better fit.

There is some benefit available from room acoustic treatment, but all the other aftermarket treatments you mention do fit the description of snake oil.

 

[KEW]

I would avoid all those other suggestions for speaker cables, interconnect cables or terminals plugs, bypassing the speaker binding posts, or adding RFI shielding. They are highly likely to provide no audible benefit, and they might do harm, especially the effort to bypass your speaker binding posts. I never heard of that idea before, and wonder if it would void any warranty you have on your speakers. Even if you think these tweaks are relatively inexpensive, I see no reason to do any of them.

What he said!

 

[No BS advocate]

Thanks very much Swerd and Kew!!

Speakers are 12 years old so well out of warranty but there seems to be a lot of potential connections (the weak links?) in the signal path...i.e. binding post to bolterd connector to soldered wire connection.

Does anyone have an opinion on ths 'ultra low mass' thing which is seeing cables like DNM and Eichmann Bullet plugs being praised so highly (cleaner audio paths, less eddy currents and other tech which I would only beleive if tesed by you guys)

I have wired the speakers with the silver coated wire (only $19) and sounds good. Not sure if there is any iprovement over the QED copper but when I get my Quad 520 hooked up (next week, Easter, hopefully) this will probably be a better test.

As a point of interest I live only 20 miles from Huntingdon England the home of Quad and DNM.

 

[Swerd]

Speakers are 12 years old so well out of warranty but there seems to be a lot of potential connections (the weak links?) in the signal path...i.e. binding post to bolterd connector to soldered wire connection.

Does anyone have an opinion on ths 'ultra low mass' thing which is seeing cables like DNM and Eichmann Bullet plugs being praised so highly (cleaner audio paths, less eddy currents and other tech which I would only beleive if tesed by you guys)

I don't believe there is any validity to the arguments for using ultra low mass connectors, cleaner audio paths, less eddy currents, etc. I certainly have not gone as far as testing them, so my dismissal of those ideas comes at a simple level of wondering how could they make any difference?

Do your speakers look like this?

If so, they have a 2-way crossover between the binding posts at the back of the cabinet and individual woofer and tweeter terminals. Without looking inside, I am confident in saying the crossover has at least one inductor coil (maybe more than one) made with a very long length of solid copper wire wound around a bobbin. This length of copper of unknown gauge (18 gauge?) is of significantly greater mass than anything you might bypass or eliminate in an effort of obtaining a cleaner audio path.

Thicker wire in inductor coils is unlikely in commercial speakers in that price range. The DC resistance of the inductor coils is the main source of loss of signal strength, also known as insertion loss. This is unavoidable in a passive crossover, and is certainly much larger than any potential savings made by aftermarket "low mass" connections.

Here is an example of an inductor coil that you might see as a crossover component inside your speaker. It is 1.5 mH (milliHenries) and wound with 18 g solid copper. It weighs nearly half a pound, 0.46 lbs. or 209 g.

Please do not take any of this as a reason to alter your crossovers in an effort to improve the signal path. I do not recommend that unless you have experience in crossover design.

I have wired the speakers with the silver coated wire (only $19) and sounds good. Not sure if there is any iprovement over the QED copper but when I get my Quad 520 hooked up (next week, Easter, hopefully) this will probably be a better test.

Silver coated copper wire has been shown to have little or no benefit. The concept of the "skin effect" is valid at much higher frequencies (1 MHz or higher) than encountered in audio (20 kHz). Even solid silver wire gains nothing except a slight decrease in DC resistance over that of copper. It isn't worth the significantly higher cost.

If signal loss is a concern, you are better off getting a more potent amplifier, as you already have, and using the volume knob to get it louder.

 

[lsiberian]

I smell a troll when the name is NO BS Advocate and then you link esoteric wire and advocate bi-wiring and messing with binding posts.

People that advocate these things typically are selling something or lack experience inside a speaker.

Hookup your speakers via the binding posts and avoid all these esoteric ideas and the websites that promote them.

If you want to improve your speakers.
1. Add Bracing, Improve Lining(use mineral wool for this not esoteric liners), Seal it up better.

If you want to experiment with these speakers you can look at going active(removing the crossover getting a minidsp and a chip amp.)

 

[No BS advocate]

Hi Lsiberian, and Swerd again

Yes Swerd my speakers are those! (save that mine are front ported 7i's so not as critical to rear wall placement) currently bi-amped via the DSP A2.

Very good point re the inductor coils of which there are two in the crossover. The only point being the total mass of binding post will likely be close to the mass of copper in the coils... save the posts don't serve any audio purpose. I will take your advice and leave well alone! Likewise Lsiberian, I have read a few sites on DIY speaker design and may tackle a self build (based on full designs and specs) in the future but wont tinker now. Every little bit of knowledge I gain illustrates the scale of complexity that I simply don't understand!

On speaker cable I came across this site DIY audio cables which advocates 'cheap but effective solutions'. I fancy trying one of these out as the cost is negligable. In the mean time have used the cheap ebay sourced silver plated cable and sounds good for now.

I have made up 8 interconnectors (to connect audio and coaxial from Blu ray to amp and replace bridging bars between pre-main termininals on DSP A2).
Used DNM cable and good quality REAN gold plated RCA plugs using WBT silver (4%) solder. I really enjoyed the process... after dumping the cheap ebay soldering iron for a quality £23 Weller one! The DNM cables do sound good and for a total cost of about £60 say $80 (inc cost of soldering iron) thats £10 each so I was pleased. It appears a pair of DNM cables can cost £300 a pair!? DNM Interconnect-HTFN review from the experts at whathifi.com not sure who pays that

Quad goes to for a service (at Quad's home in Huntington) after Easter and I will replace the old oxidised XLR input with RCA and XLR speaker connections with good binding posts (bearing in mind your advice already given and taken on board). While the Quad was supplied with XLR it does NOT have balanced inputs and outputs (unless specied at the factory).

I still prefer the sound of the Panni' BDT500 through coaxial via unsheilded DNM cable (tried Van Den Hul and other coax' I have but in IMHO DNM is best) and letting DSP A2 Dac's do their thing. IMHO better sound stage, base extension and imaging than panni' audio out. Not to say the audio out is not good but for my tastes coax is best. Also have optical out and that sounds 'smoother' but slightly less dynamic and transparent than coax' out. So in order of my preference: coax, optical, then analogue out from panni'. Seems to suggest the DSP A2's DAC/processing capability is better than the Panni's? This boads well as I hope to connect the Quad from the DSP pre-out to the front speakers (gain can be adjusted and locked on Quad to match my speaker/pre amp combo)

If I like this then, when funds allow, I hope to pick up a second Quad to biamp / dual-mono the fornt speakers for music.

For movie sound I still prefer the optical out from the panni to the DSP A2 (again Yamaha doing the sound processing) but as it does not support HD formats the Panni converts HD down to DTS and DD. It seems likely I will need to look to upgrade the DSP A2 to a later Yamaha that does support HDMI input and HD sound.....or look to a DAC/surround processor that outperforms the DSP A2? This means I wil probably also get room EQ too.

Is there a significant improvement in HD format sound over DTS / DD formats? and is HDMI a significanntly better interface than coax' or optical?



Thanks again!

 

[No BS advocate]

Active crossover:

Reading on from what was said re the large amount of copper (resitance and capacitance) in a passive crosover and some peoples view that passive crossover is the devils spawn: scrol down to DE400TN++ on this link [HiFi letters] TNT Readers' corner - March 2012 and it seems active corssovers are the way to go. Given this, and the fact I have a pre amp out from the DSP A2 and can bi-amp my two-way speakers does this kit Behringer CX3400 Stereo 2-Way/3-Way/Mono 4-Way Crossover allow me to replace the entire passive crossover in my speakers?

Given the above, an active corssover to repace existing passive ones should be achievable at reasonable cost thus make my speakers more efficent? It also looks like I could fine tune the crossover to my tastes/room? I already have a REL active sub which effectively has the ability to tune roll off and gain to LFE and stereo inputs.

Any thoughts?

 

[3db]

I'm beginning to feel skeptical of the validity of No BS advocat's posts. If he's been reading this site, why the reference to all the audiophile tweeks that does absolutely SFA towards improving sound?

​

 

[Steve81]

Any thoughts?

I wouldn't recommend tinkering with your speakers in such a manner. If you opt to ignore that advice, at least make sure you can reverse anything you end up doing to your speakers.

 

[No BS advocate]

Wont be doing any tweaking to the speakers! I have concluded to listen to some open-baffle active speakers.

I continue to read 'off the beaten path' and really like Linkwitz' inovative and active Pluto DIY speaker design. Like the C37 theory but somewhat sceptical of the varnish, snake oil? Also like the concept of the Altman BYOB 12v powered system. Anyway continue to read....and DIY experiment.

Replaced my MA silver 12i centre with a bookshelf 3i and much happier with soundfield across the front. Again reading suggests speaker manufacturers push the centre (horizontally mounted drivers) but this causes unwated horizontal, cancellation and interference which the human ear is sensitive to on the horizontal and why stereo speaker drivers are normally mounted vertically. The individual experimented and used empirical sound measurments: mounting centre's 'vertically', this helped, but best solution was to have a 3rd floor stander or 'bookshelf' speaker in the centre. My experiments mounting my centre vertically helped and then I replaced it with a MA 3i bookshelf, at the same tweeter height as main speakers, worked for me and is far better front sound field....(Cost nil) and bit of fun

Building 4No 'TNT Audio' DIY mains cables (£25 the lot) and some second hand Brittish Telecom mains conditioners (£20 each) over next few weeks (IEC plugs take a couple of weeks to arrive via Ebay).