Toledo's system

Hi Toledo

No your accurate the PZC's use to be made out of cherry, then I had to stick my big ears in the middle of things and found Brazilian Pine. Harold, said we will look into a different shade of cherry-ish stain though because he as well thought that the stain I got was a little on the rosewood-ish side of things. I thought because of the pine it would come out different but I was incorrect and so a more cherry-ish stain is something we will try.

Listening to xrcd version of Jazz at the Pawn shop.

Haven't touched the system all weekend and let settle.

It is amazing the way the system will settle itself down around a new cd.

System says: so you has me playing hard driving rock and now ya want to play intimate club setting instrumental jazz. No problem. Let me do a few laps around the track and I'll be right wit cha.

This cd has never sounded this good before in this room ( or others ) ... simply enthralling.

Tonight even with no warm up cd cycles and cold speakers, sound is ... You get the picture.

Back to listening to some tunes.  

Been out shooting some pesky critters.  

You shot Geoff  


  


Now what will we do   

Got ELO on myself, always an interesting one to tune.

Well at least we have Geoff contained to one thread. Feels more like a day care center, though.

       

Michael,

As I mentioned on your thread I have a piece of alder that keeps talking to me ... Put me to work.

It is 2.5" x.75" x 36".

I pick it up every so often and was thinking about cutting into blocks.

But, as I played with its tone, I realized it acts much like a fretboard on a guitar and will change its pitch when acoustically shortened and lengthened like a capo does on strings on a true fretboard.

So I am wondering if this variability can be put to use in tuning for quick changes using a capo like clamp on either end of a board.

Have you ever played with this or is your tuning bolt a much more elegant implementation of this.

How about for top tuning?

Hmmm... so many things to do.    Well, how is your setup right now? Do you have the sherwood and the player side by side. Maybe a pic is in order as we thick about the use. Yes, the fret is exactly how I come up with design sizes, have you been spying   

Naw, same setup as before. Just theorizing.
Once you start tuning, things you never paid much attention to become possible tuning opportunities

Tonight at dinner I was the butt of jokes from the family as they mimicked me walking around with my 'fretboard' making tones.

You should see the way they look at me in the lumberyards   

People walk up to me and say "here's that guy I was telling you about".

I will go through a whole bunk, sometimes two or three hunting for a piece of wood. I will hear a sound while listening then head over in the morning to find that tone. One reason I don't show a lot of pictures is so people don't see all that I try here, and the stages I try them in.

It was fun having Harold at the yards cause I would hand him something to listen to and the stacks of fair, good, better, best and different started to form. Then we would come home and I would do a little sand or something and he would go WOW!. He is at home now drying the same piece of Western Red Ceder that he got a while back. Here we all are walking around with wood pieces that we put away in our guitar cases when we are done playing them.

I love the tune   

Yes, I am really enjoying tuning. It is so much more fullfilling than the old endless tweaks that never went anywhere.

I finally got back to some simple system changes. I reduced the mass on the speaker cables which increased the soundstage stage size by a nice margin.
I have to let system settle for further observations and also let amp get back into fighting shape...it hated being turned off.

The weight of the cable was previously pulling on the speaker terminal and since I made the change, I notice the subwoofer driven by Speaker B has lower and tighter more defined bass.

It still amazes me how sensitive the Sherwood is to the slightest change. Way cool.
You can just look at it and if you see tension somewhere and can relieve it, you get the desired change.

This is the kimber cable I am using until I get the bare essence.

It used to have 4 strands per +/- leg all bundled together in their proprietary weave. I am now using only 2 per leg and made 2 twisted pairs for each channel. I figure it is now around 18gauge.

yep, that Sherwood is an animal! Really close to a perfect design in my book.

Doesn't "proprietary weave" sound like a hair salon to you? I love these guys but...it should be up to the end user to choose his or her on fields in the twisting of cable. Of course for me I strive for type 1 when I can. When I get the signal simple enough that I can use type 1 watchout. Sometimes making the fields are nice to shape things but type 1 is so darn simple. But most of the world uses crossovers and that means a field to fight (or get along with) a field a lot of times.

Could you imagine if I brought that up on Stereophile. The Radio Shack engineers would come out of the woodwork. But I have found that even the smallest of twisting and wire placement create a certain type of field that need many times to be offset by creating other fields. Inductors (even simple cross fields) feed off of each other and can affect each other in different places along the chain. They become antennas attracking other fields. It's very sensitive but if you play around things will open up like you never thought possible.

This is what totally shocks me about designers. How can they be so far behind not to know this and use it?

Kimber are the good guys, I just wish they had stayed with their loose weave on the interconnects. The newer ones I have are too tight.

Shiny, bulky and proprietary are the highend Industry's  main selling point. Just like the latest sequel to a film, they will continue to rollout the next release until the revenue dries up.

Me thinks the sequels are running out .. I certainly won't be shelling out for tickets anymore plus all the snacks apparently needed to try and make the movie more enjoyable. A B movie is still a B movie no matter how the reviews come in.

I say bring it up on Sterophile ... I want to see some heads explode   

I have some extra cable left over and will try a single strand next week.

All in good time. I would like to get some of them to crack a screw first. If we go too fast people will get in defend mode. It's remarkable how deep an audiophile can dig their heels in.

Tuning turns their hobby up-side-down, so it's a hard road for some. All their listening life there has been the industry saying make it complicated, then comes this group of guys that they really can't compete against (as if this was a competition) who get where they are and much further, and until they do start to tune themselves this is something they can't buy. But somewhere out there in stereophile land there are guys trying, and going holy smokes this really works. And one by one these guys turn the page in the book of listening.

Let system settle overnight and the lower mass speaker cabling has improved the over all clarity, layering and richness of tone. Back of soundstage is clear as a bell and deep and most everything exists in its own space.

I think I am starting to get a slight wrapping effect on left and right walls. I notice this on battle of epping forest with final chorus verse of 'picnic' which reaches out from left and right speakers and makes its way towards listening position.

Previous splashy hints of cymbals in middle layers have fleshed out with nice tone, resonance and distinctiveness. Keyboards and the layers they exist in are very evident and the nuance of the notes are entrancing.

Air intake on flute is much more evident and realistic.

The immediacy of Gabriel's vocals have improved considerably and if I am not mistaken I can hear the echo of the booth he may have been in when recorded.

With good comes some bad. There is an increase in vocal sibilance and a slight hardening on complex passages.

Michael, do you think this is from new fields I am creating due to cable twists or have I opened up things and possibly hearing blockage elsewhere .. Or both ?

I know it's hard to tell from afar and I probably did not provide enough info. Any suggestions on how I can isolate the cause and go after it. Maybe I should wait until this weekend and try single strand instead of twisted pair and work from there.

hi Toledo

The single strand will be interesting, but long term the new mechanics of the system will get rid of most of the HF sound.

We should for the fun of it reference "selling" on Stereophile together. Maybe if these guys will start seeing us talking about music back and forth they will start actually listening.

I'm about ready to put something else on my system cause I can see these guys are brain dead up there   . I was thinking "amused to death" with Hiend001 or I could do Selling with you.

I hate to break away from Abbey Road cause it has gotten so darn good, but because they on the phile are so slow I'm itching for something else. Maybe I'll just write from memory in stead of real time up there. This will give them time to freeze their CD's   OMG I'm taking them way too serious   

but it's satisfying an evil side of me  , Oh no I'm an evil listener now   

Yes, definitely time to change the CD michael   

Did you do anything with the wood yet? It might be nice to see some changes in the highs by playing with it. It sounds to me like you might just need a little flavor adjustment. If the maple is still at play the highs could easily give a weird tizz type sound.

I have been messin with placement of blocks under Sherwood. I am currently at 2 in back and 1 in front as you and hiend are and sitting on the block edges with around 1/3" wood under the amp.

With this placement, the mids have warmed up considerably and bass response has increased from original placement of 2 front corner block and 1 in back. The sibilance and hardening is still present.

The combo is maple shelf then myrtle blocks then amp.

I am thinking maybe a wood, metal, wood combo using zinc washers? What do you think?

That's funny, I just went back to 3 blocks tonight (see my post on stereophile)  one in the front and two in the back.

I think we need to get rid of that maple sound.

Zinc is a good sound but those highs bug me with I think it's the maple. Is the maple sitting on the rack supports, or what is it sitting on?

I have never had good luck with maple. Always this tizz sound to me. Sharp edges on stuff but edgy.

Shelves are on herbies big fat squares cut in half. These are 2 per support crossmember. There are 3 crossmembers per shelf.

http://herbiesaudiolab.net/spkrfeet.htm#bigfat

These are carry overs from old highend setup.

Need dem dar platforms.

Are you using three on player or amp.

  yes you do   

Can you bypass the herbies with wood?

3 on player and amp

Herbies bypassed on amp shelf on three points. I found some square wood in the garage that I hacked up. Not sure what wood it is, but is fairly dense.

Any idea what wood this is?

Initial listen after 30 mins of play time is the tizz is diminished somewhat and notes have more roundness to them. Definitely moving in right direction.
Maple has to go. I am going to use this more for experimentation and learning and not worry too much about it. You cant put lipstick on a ...

Will let the amp shelf settle and then apply to cd shelf. I dig hearing the changes as they go in ...

Thanks Michael.

I bypassed the herbies on CD player shelf and the change was more pronounced than amp shelf.

Here we go with standard statement of bigger soundstage, more fleshed out instruments and more 3d, instrument sizes and halos are bigger, soundstage reaches further into room, more life like presentation.

I am hearing new things in soundstage that I did not notice before as the delineation is better among instruments and effects and the layering.

The sibilance on Gabriel's vocals is less .. I think part of this may be him and how he sometimes draws his ss's out. This is combination with the tizzy which is still present and the upper mid glare I refer to below.

I think I am hearing the room with some upper midrange glare I have always had.

I have moved speakers a bit in the past to help out with this but this has gotten much harder with speaker stands elevated on rack platforms. This will easier once I  get the new floors as I can just shove them around.

The glare is apparent on some high piano notes, high acoustic guitar notes,  some high synth notes that zing across room and other areas which escape me right now.

The room may also be the cause with hardening on complex passages and vocals that get shouty. The hardening became more pronounced when I did the cable mod to twisted pair, though.

Tracks like more fool me are much better with great vocals and beautiful strummed guitar.

I don't think any of this can be cleared up till I get my care package and new floors and further room treatment.

What do you think Michael? A lot to digest, sorry.

This is fantastic, a big step  

The pictures say tons. As we get into this we'll get things dialed in but the major thing that I wanted to point out for all to notice is when the rubber-ish stuff was taken away the harmonics started to open.

This is the biggie  "Initial listen after 30 mins of play time is the tizz is diminished somewhat and notes have more roundness to them."

Heading toward that spherical sound for each piece and part is the step toward "real". If listeners had any idea what these over absorbent materials do to the signal trying to keep shape they would freak. Rubber type products collapse the outer harmonics. This is the difference between 2D and 3D. Once this is learned then we can go through our systems and see where there might be some rubber or rubber-ish plastic-y stuff stopping our units from being free resonant.

When I hung out in the studios as a kid I learned a lot about harmonics. You might know who Mick Ronson is. He was the first one to show me how capos could collapse harmonics. I ended up making one out of wood instead of rubber "major" diference. The rubber ones shut down the harmonics around the 2nd to 3rd. It puts focus on the sting but you loose a lot of the interaction between the neck and body. If you listen close to a badly designed capo you will hear the guitar go pitchy on you. Same thing happens with rubber in components. Those harmonics disappear or go out of balance, and with something as full range as audio signal that can really mess things up.

I'm guessing that the wood pieces are red oak.

As far as long stories, I think that's exactly what the industry needs. We need people like you to share the experiences as they happen. Cause I guarantee someone is sitting out there thinking about why things aren't quite right and then they read you and the others and start to explore.   

I've never been a fan of rubber, butyl rubber can have it's place but never under a component.

As are host will attest, wood can work wonders but the thickness, type of wood and implementation is a true science .

Hey TM,

Funny thing about the rubber vs wood is that I did not hear that much of a difference between them using a cursory knuckle rap on the shelves.

There is something involved in the transfer (even through thick maple) that is well beyond my pay grade

I look forward to using the correct woods and approaches.

I certainly welcome and appreciate that Michael has done the heavy lifting instead of the endless trial and error I would have to go through.

Believe me, I have had my fill of trial and error over the years