Bill333's System

Hi Bill333

How are the Quads doing? And how is your tuneable room settling in?

I remember you had some problems of stability with the rack -- is that gone now? Any new gear from Michael delivered to you? Have you tried the new Space Cones?

Sonic

HI Sonic,

The Quads are doing fine. I don't think very much about them- they seem to be completely transparent sonicly. The sound always seems to be determined by what's upstream of them.

As far as I can tell, the room is settling fine. I don't have Michael's ear or his experience in gauging how the sound changes in these rooms, so it's hard for me to tell how it's maturing. Michael will give the full report on it when he comes. I have an arrangement with the pillows and PZCs that seems to work well so I spend most of my time tuning the equipment and power supplies now.

The rack problems are gone, thanks for asking. I got a platform (not rack) from Michael a few months ago and have all my equipment on it now. The fit is a little tight, but the sound is completely stable.

Space cones? What are space cones?

Hi Bill333

Yes Space Cones -- been to Sonic's thread recently? You'll see on pages 37 and 38 my expereince with these devices and the to and fro discussion I had with Michael on how to use them.

They are flat brass cones 1 inch diameter and have a short, not very sharp point. See the Products section of this website, go to cone products, scroll down and there is Michael's ad for these things.

He says they are like antennae that pick up vibrations and add space and warmth to your sound. They can be used on walls, on windows, under furniture, on equipment. Don't know about this explanation but my experience with them is fairly positive. But adopters of Space Cones need to know that when they work, they work well but finding the right spot for the Space Cones is critical. In the wrong place they either don't work at all or give an odd colouration.

It is possible your system could benefit from them and they are priced low so you can get a big handful of them and test them out.

They can be stuck to thin pieces of MW with transparent 3M double sided tape then mounted for more warmth and girth, stuck directly onto the object/wall or more recently with resitone dielectric pieces.

Sonic is finding these to be quite something. I am posting some comments on these resitone pieces on my thread. Have a look.

Sonic

Hi Everyone,

Michael left just a week ago after spending 17 days tuning my system and my room. I don't have the time to recount everything that happened during the visit, but I'll try to cover the basics.

It would be nice if I could say that Michael spent two and a half weeks here tuning my system into the best in the world, but that is not what happened at all. Fifteen and a half of those days were spent trying to get top-level sound out of equipment that just wasn't really making the grade. It wasn't until the last day and a half that we put in the Magnavox DVD player and the Pioneer SX-3400 receiver. And it wasn't until then that the system really produced a balanced full range tonal response, and it was shortly after that when I first heard a truly three dimensional soundstage.

I had heard Michael talk about how a system progresses through stages where the sound images get increasingly larger and larger with more and more harmonics until it reaches a stage where everything snaps into 3D focus. I had never heard this before, and when it finally happened I was not prepared for it. We had just applied a top tune to the DVD player and suddenly the sound was very... different. The images had gotten smaller and at the same time clearer, denser, and farther apart. I left the room and asked Michael if there was something wrong with it. He went in and listened for a minute, then came out laughing and said, "Congratulations, you have a 3D soundstage."

People who've been reading my posts for a while might wonder what I was listening to before when I described the soundstaging of my room and system in the past. Any decent nearfield speaker set up will give deep, three dimensional soundstaging with instruments clearly located in different areas of the stage, but the type of 3D that Michael is referring to is really a level of harmonic structure and focus that only well tuned systems ever achieve. At least I think so. Michael?

In the week that I've been listening to this system I've grown increasingly accustomed to this sound and have gotten used to hearing far more of the original recording venue than I was used to. I've also noticed some soundstaging cues on recordings I use as a reference are different now. I used to hear the cricket chirping on Sun King from the Beatles' Abbey Road album go from right to left in an arc across the front of the room. Now it goes from right to left, but in a large arc straight overhead. Michael, Sonic, and others- is this what you hear in your systems?

Before I get too distracted, I should mention how much the basic setup has changed. Along with MIchael's visit came a couple of items I've been looking forward to for months: the big 3'x4' equipment platform and the Music Ply 60 speakers. The equipment platform is an awesome sounding component that Michael has been finishing to perfection for more than a year. Even more important, it allows me to finally get my equipment out of the room. I can't tell you what a relief it is to have all that stuff out of the middle of my listening space. The room is so much more beautiful and open without the equipment rack cluttering up half the open space in there. And of course the sound is better with the equipment outside, too.

My original pair of MG speakers were Classic 60s, but I bought a pair of Music Ply 60s about 10 months ago on the hunch that it might be useful for Michael to have two pair to work with while he was evaluating components for me. I really lucked out on this one: it turned out that they had been hand voiced by Michael years ago and had paper drivers which were unavailable during most of the period when 60s were being produced. Since Michael took them apart and hand voiced the interiors again a few months ago, they are a true reference. They handily beat the Quad electrostatics in every area of performance. Whatever else may happen with my room and my system in the future, I think the Music Plys will be staying right where they are.

So the equipment rack is now outside and I'm back to using 60s as my main speakers. My reference system at the time was music NAS -> Logitech Duet -> PaceCar -> Altmann Dac -> Altmann amp. We tried and tried to get this system to perform, and we made many improvements to it, but ultimately could not get the music out of it. Just too many parts in the path. Next up was the audio PC replacing the NAS -> Duet -> PaceCar portion of the stack. Same story again: there were nice things about some particular areas of the sound, but we could not get a balanced full range response with the enlarged harmonic envelope that Michael was looking for. The audio PC situation was complicated by power supply and cabling issues, but when we substituted the Magnavox DVD player, Michael got where he wanted to go very quickly. Replacing the Altmann amp with the Pioneer receiver was more straightforward: the Pioneer is a true high fidelity component which is capable of weight and girth in the lower midrange that we could not get out of the Altmann amp no matter how we tuned it.

I may revisit the audio PC and Altmann DAC in my system, if only to finally settle the issue in my mind. If you've read my earlier posts, you know that I haven't cared much for the Magnavox DVD player, but I never got this kind of sound out of it when I first started using it. If I had, I would have been much happier with it. I still do think that the DAC technology used in the Altmann is superior to the oversampling DAC used in the Magnavox, but there are many other influences on the sound than just the DAC. It'll be a little while before I can set up a listening test, but I'll post the results when I do.

Now that neither Drewster nor I are using PC based systems, you might think that this would be the end of the road for PC audio in reference level tunable systems. I don't think that's the case. Michael is very conscious of the fact that audio is moving away from media like CDs and towards purely digital music files. I think in the future we will discover PC based source components that will do the job, but the ones we've tried so far have not made it.

In any case, a note to Tunees: save yourself a ton of money, time and trouble and just get the Magnavox MDV2100 DVD player, a pair of 60s and a used Pioneer SX-3400. Tuning will improve the performance of any component, but these are the components that will get you to reference level sound faster and for far less money than you would ever have thought possible.

There's so much to say about this system that it's hard to gather the words.

The Tunable Room
Tunable Fuse Box
Electrical Transformer (right outside the house)
Custom Bare Essence Power Cables
Mod Power Strip
Magnavox 2100
Picasso Interconnects
Stripped Pioneer SX 3400
Tuning Platform
Bare Essence Type 2 Speaker Cable
Music Ply 60's
60's Speaker Platform
PZCs
BassTune (behind seat)
MGA Spikes & Cones
MGA Tuning Boards
Canopies

Deep breath, sigh!

A note to Michael:

I've been thinking of doing some work on the Pioneer receiver. I know
when I asked you if we should clean the RCAs, you said 'No, we like them
dirty!', but is there really any reason not to clean them? I was
thinking of cleaning them with Caig Deoxit and then polishing them with
Flitz. I'm also planning to remove the strain relief with needle nose
pliers and a Dremel moto-tool with a cutting attachment. What do you
think?

I ordered a bunch of CD tweaks which should arrive next week or so.
I'll post my results on the forum. For whatever reasons, the music just
isn't grabbing me so I'm going to experiment around and see what I can
do about it. Now that I'm used to listening to full-range and 3D, I
have a reference I can judge other changes by. In the past, I've been
willing to sacrifice frequency response, soundstage and warm tonality to
get the kind of intensely vivid and solid sound I like, but now that I'm
used to a balanced sound I won't be giving that up again. I need to
figure out how to do both.

When I have you visit again, tuning the sound in will probably be the
priority. I don't see the tuning bolts fixing any of this, so that
project will be on hold until I get where I want to go with the sound.

I've had a bit of an audio revelation over the past week regarding
absolute polarity. In tracking down tweaks I ended up speaking to a man
named George Louis at Digital Systems & Solutions. Turns out he is the
father of the polarity dispute in digital music. After hearing about it
from him, I went down and tried listening to various pieces of music in
and out of polarity by switching the cables at the speaker terminals.
Huge difference. Most music is almost unlistenable if the polarity is
wrong. By Louis' estimation, about 92% of digital recordings are in the
wrong polarity. The good news is that the Magnavox seems to reverse the
polarity, so 92% of recordings sound fine in the system. But that still
leaves the other 8%. In the long run I'm going to need some way to
switch polarity more convenient than changing the speaker cables. Have
you run into this?

Cleaning

Cleaning is obviously a great thing. I joke about it because I'm such a settling freak. I think most probably let things settle for about two or three days max (most times not even that) and to be honest this is not near enough time for harmonics to truly develop. Just remember not to add too many chemicals to the mix as they all, like finish, need curing time. I have seen cleaning things go both ways. One they make things sound very clear at first but then they seem thin (coated) till the solutions settle. Sometimes after settling the chemical sound sticks out like a sore thumb for months till the signal has a chance to develop a good oxidation level. Remember your entire sound is going through these points of connection and so every time you add a chemical to the mix that chemical becomes the sound good or bad for a long time. Also remember we have talked about cleaning Cd's before? I have ruined entire collections by cleaning them as the film build up made some things sound good at the expense of the rest of the music. Same with connector cleaning products.

Cleaning parts: I have found that the best cleaning has been done with a sophisticated oxygen air blow gun with adjustable pressure. Cleaning Cd's: be sure to stay away from anything that can cause a film.

So glad you have heard 3d!!! It is truly a life changer and a reference that stays with you forever. If you are at a place where you know you are getting 3d great. If you are at a place where you are not sure do what it takes to get you back to that place then make notes of what you heard so you can go back and find this first before moving off track.

People get lost because they do not have a good sense of how to achieve 3d or falling inside of the envelop.

Tuning bolts and the mechanical part of the room in general

This level of tweaking is overwhelming and when you reach this place you will find that you have the best tool in the world. I am quite sure you will be putting in the in wall tuners. When will be the question. Yesterday when I put my SAM tuning wall in I was transported to that magical place. Even with this one small wall I have passed up basic sound in many ways. I think when you are done with some of the tweaking toys you will turn your eyes toward what this thing you sit in really does and the musical journey of the life time will begin. It's far different from anything you have done up to this point. If you look at my diagram on the forum you will see my setup. Something we have not yet started on your system is the room voicing.

Polarity

To be quite honest this was one of the biggest problems that I was having with the computer setup both here at my place and at yours. Absolute polarity is a major pain in the butt if a system is still fighting the fight of full range or even then is easy to hear. I have no idea what the percentages are nor do I care but your system as a whole leans usually to one side or the other as far as which way has the most out of polarity correct pieces of music. I do know that if your system is at a very full range setup up it doesn't bother the ears as much and is something that can be tolerated. However this is another reason I think A/B audiophile testing is up the creek or taking ones CD to someone Else's system and judging it, koo koo. At one time I had my whole collection marked. When I was listening to your NAS and PC setup this was driving me a little nuts but in my mind I was trying to find an easy to live with compromise cause I figured in the long run you were never going to except the Mag as being real. Once you reach a certain level of tuning bliss though it doesn't bother you as much cause there is so much more to look at in the music and you have to weigh do I want to unsettle my system vs living through it till I get to the next piece of music. So that you know greatest hits CDs have this problem a lot song by song. The good news to this is that you are getting educated about recording music playback storage along with your new knowledge of mechanics. In our one system at the factory we had a polarity switcher but it always sounded worse than the setups that were more broken in and settled.

Hi Bill333

About cleaning -- Sonic tried a variety of cleaners starting in my "hi-end" days with Cramolin. Have used metal polish, Cramolin, stuff like Autosol and all gave the metal a near military spit and polish shine and a change in sound. At first it seemed more detailed, clean and lively. But it soon became noticeable this was a colouration that imposed itself on every record/CD I played. Sonic had to resort to distilled water and isopropyl alcohol to reduce the effect of these chemicals and it took time to wear off.

Now I may use a bit of Autosol for very stained and corroded metal followed up with isopropyl alcohol and then distilled water but most of the time Sonic just leaves it dirty.

Sonic

Sonic

Thank you so much for this post!! I think that cleaning things most of the time leaves months worth of settling and is one of those things that can distort a system to the point of after it is done blaming other parts of the system as being distorted when they are not.

After cleaning listening to things that at first sound "better" many times is nothing more than a shift in frequency response. Always always always include full range in on listening test and not only what appears to be cleaner.

Regarding polarity-

There are some solutions to the problem that don't involve unsettling the system. If you're playing CDs, you can use a CD duplicator that inverts polarity and just copy any offending disk to a CD-R. I've already purchased just such a machine, I'll post a review of the CD-R copies in a week or two.

Computer based audio is another solution. JPlay for Windows is an audiophile music player that allows the user to switch polarity on the fly. Even without a player capable of doing this, you could run a program over your music files to permanently invert them on the disk. I think the problems Michael was having with my audio PC were due to my having sent it to him without all the tools he needed and without having thought through all the issues involved. If the DAC doesn't have a way to switch polarity, then you really need one in the source.

Speaking of Jplay, this is a project worth watching. The JPlay program is developed and sold entirely by a team of two guys who are relentless in their research and pursuit of high end sound. They aren't just developing playback software, but are also researching best possible configurations for audio PCs and best methods for ripping and copying digital audio files. They seem completely unafraid to go where their ears tell them, even when their results defy current scientific understanding. If tunable computer audio ever becomes a reality, I think this project will be responsible for it.

It's been a while since my last post. The truth is that I lost the 3D soundstage about a month ago and only gained it back yesterday. The story of how that happened might be educational.

I had been working with Michael over the phone for an hour or two a day for a couple days and we had been isolating wires - keeping them from touching each other and as few surface contacts as possible. We took some of the cable grounds out from under the speaker cables. They were already suspended above ground on 8 cable grounds, but I removed 3 of them and heard an immediate improvement in the sound. I suspended the interconnects between the DVD player and receiver entirely in the air and also got an immediate opening up of the sound. The wires are 1 meter long, and it's not an easy trick- I had to bend them up so they look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, but I managed to get them to stand up in the air without touching each other or anything else. Just the connections to the RCAs on the Pioneer and the DVD player.

The next step was to shorten the power wires on the Magnavox. Unfortunately, the wires are soft and won't stand up like the interconnects, so they ended up touching the chassis on both the power strip and the Magnavox itself. On this change, I didn't notice so much of a difference in the sound.

By this time the sound had opened up quite a bit and was powerful and dynamic while the images were very large. After I was off the phone with Michael, I noticed a couple pieces of electrical tape that were holding together the bundle of wires that go from the electrical panel to the power strip. The had been put there by the electrician who did the wiring when the room was installed over a year ago. I removed the pieces of tape and went back in to listen, and everything had changed. The images had shrunk down into typical 3D focus and most of the in-your-face brash and dynamic quality had turned into detail and low-level ambiance cues.

I've been letting the system settle and enjoying some music before I make any more changes. The good news is that there is much more optimizing that can be done in this direction, which should bring even greater performance. It's amazing what undampening and unblocking a system will do.

Hi Bill333

Fascinating what you've achieved with your system. Are you still using the Altmann DAC?

Sonic

Hi Sonic,

No, I've been using the Magnavox MDV2100. Note that I still can't bring myself to call it the 'Maggie' like Michael does. I really miss what the Altmann brought to the table: denseness, solidity, musicality. Unfortunately we just couldn't get a clear enough signal into it to really get top level performance. Maybe a better digital interconnect or a better audio PC set up would have succeeded.

For better or worse, I'm going to go as far as I can with the Magnavox and then see where things stand. Maybe I'll end up being as fond of it as Michael is. If not, I could always take another run at the audio PC.

Hi Bill333

Strange...what happens when you plug the Magnavox's digital out into the Altmann?

Do you fail to get a "lock"? I had this problem with my V-DAC once when my Sony and the V-DAC couldn't lock. It was due to a weak solder joint where the RCA jack connected to the PCB trace. My pulling on the jack probably caused it and the link was restored after I had the joint resoldered. I am using Michael's Picasso as a digital cable and it works fine.

Like you, I preferred the sound of an outboard DAC to what came with the player. My Sony blu ray's onboard DAC had a thin sound and an overwide soundstage at the edges (typically an artifact of phase problems between channels). Not nice at all.

The V-DAC gave me a quality of sound that your choice of words -- denseness, solidity, musicality -- is very well put.

Sonic

Hi Sonic,

Unfortunately, nothing happens when I plug the Magnavox into the Altmann DAC. The digital out on the Magnavox works on DVD playback only. I had to search the manual a bit to find out why I was getting no sound, but that was it.

This whole conversation has gotten me interested in computer audio again, but I really need to see how far CD tweaks and general system tuning can take me before I go down that road again.

Hi Bill333

Strange device indeed.....the digital out normally carries all signals except SACD/DSD....this obviously gets in the way of satisfying ourselves in a back to back test on how a tuned Magnavox with its onboard DAC sounds vs the capability of a tuned Magnavox plus a tuned Altmann DAC.

Sonic

Hi Guys

Here's the real issue for me. 2 extra components. What does 2 extra components do to the audio signal?

1) the power strip has double the amount of mass added to it's bars and chassis

2) the tuning platform has to share extra vibration

3) another set of interconnect has to be used

4) adding 2 power lines

Basically we would be adding twice the amount of things to be tuned and keep tuned. It would be much easier to have a maggie modded with a new DAC from the point of view of preserving the signal. Now this would be the true test because any gain doing it with more parts will always be a trade off. A big trade off.

Hi Michael

The point you are making about less components is logical. Sonic is looking at the comparison empirically -- I have set up my system using the onboard DAC vs the V-DAC, not using the 3 minute audiophile A-B test but with sufficient musick playing time for settling to occur. For Sonic, this is a minimum of 24 hours of music playback time or more before coming to a conclusion.

In my system, the Sony DAC sounded initially better but as the hours progressed, it sounded more off and the V-DAC pulled ahead in music realism. I have tried this three times at least and taken detailed notes. Each time the path is remarkably similar.

What's your experience Bill333?

Sonic

Hi Sonic,

As far as my experience comparing CD players to outboard DACs driven by same, I don't have any. I've never had a suitable source that I could get a digital feed from. I have had things like the Squeezebox that had both an analog section and a digital out, but no one really expects that device to perform at the levels we're talking about.

I think Michael's right, the way to go is to integrate the DAC into the MDV2100. I've actually been thinking about that for the last couple weeks. The problem is first with finding someone to do it, and second, with developing a good sounding DAC circuit for the application. This will require someone with fairly deep knowledge of digital engineering. I can think of a couple places that might be willing to do it.

It can't hurt to send some emails...

Michael and I have been learning the hard way as we modify our Pioneer receivers. Here are a few things you DON'T want to do:

• Stripping screws. Most of the screws holding the Pioneer together are brass Philips heads and they are easy to strip if you don't have an exact fit with your screwdriver. This is especially the case with the screws on the transformer. Philips screwdrivers of the same nominal size can differ quite a bit in the shape of the bit. I recommend buying a kit of drill bits of different types and sizes and going through the Philips bits to find one that fits the screws precisely and then use it in a screwdriver handle that takes the hex end of the bit.

• Resting the transformer. When I replaced the stock power cord with Type 1 wire I had to unbolt the transformer from the chassis to get at the terminals. Not knowing what else to do with it, I balanced the transformer between the heat sink (the piece of sheet metal that runs through the center left side of the circuit board) and the two large capacitors just in back of it. Once the work was done, I put the transformer back on the chassis and listened. DISASTER! The sound was hideously bright and nothing else I did to the system could even be heard, much less fix the problem. Fortunately, nudging the big capacitors a little and a couple days of settling fixed the problem, but you don't want to go down this road if you can help it. The thing to do is build a little platform for the transformer to sit on if you need to work on the connections behind it.

• Headphone jack. The headphone jack may seem like a good candidate for stripping, but it is connected to the amplifier in such a way that if its wires are cut, the amplifier will no longer work. Instead, separate the wire ribbon into individual wires for a nice improvement to openness and dynamics.

If you look closely at the Pioneer's circuit board there are dozens of resistors and capacitors mounted above the board, often at crazy angles or bunched together. I spent a few hours tuning the position of these components and achieved big gains in opening the sound, reducing brightness, and increasing bass and lower midrange weight and girth.

This is really something that has to be done by trial and error. Do NOT assume that every component is going to sound best standing up straight and carefully separated from its neighbors. They often sound best leaning over at an angle and sometimes sound best nearer to another component than you would think. But some of them definitely do benefit from rearranging. Just keep track of which component you're working on and what it's original position was if you need to undo a change.

Hi Bill333

Sonic admires your perseverance in angling each resistor and cap for best sound. Got a couple of questions:

a. How do you keep track of what you have done and the improvement (or backward step) given the number of components involved? There is the possibility that oe tweak could negate the effect of another.

b. Also what caused the bright nasty sound after you placed the transformer on the heat sink and the capacitors?

c. Did you tune or remove the mains and speaker fuses in the Pioneers?

d. Sonic also noticed that the Pioneer has those spring clips for speaker wire terminals. What is your and Michael's views on this sort of terminal? The general consensus among audiophiles seems to these are compromised connectors and they should be replaced with binding posts or hard wired whenever possible.

Sonic

Hi Sonic,

a. I didn't keep track, but I should have. If I do it again I will probably take a picture of the circuit board and then label each of the components (C1, C2...) in a graphics program and use it as a guide with notebook entries describing the original position and the change.

As far as one tweak negating the effects of another, I suppose that's true. Basically if a change improves the sound I keep it, if it doesn't I put it back. That's probably not the optimal way to tune such a complex system, but I'm not prepared to do anything more sophisticated.

b. I'm not entirely sure what caused the bad sound, but I think the weight of the transformer induced some kind of tension in the capacitors.

c. I didn't, but Michael was talking about getting rid of the fuses in his Pioneer the last time I spoke to him.

d. I'm also suspicious of the spring clips. It's hard to know for sure without being able to do a comparison, but I think they're responsible for a last bit of residual brightness which I cannot seem to get rid of. Eventually I will pull them out and just solder the speaker wires to the board.

Hey, guys,

Just curious, but if spring clips are a no-no, then why is Mr. Green using them on the mini-mods?

Good point Robert -- the contact area of a spring clip is tiny and there is the spring mechanism. Mr Green, what's the word on this? Why spring clips instead of binding posts?

I don't know about fellow Zonees but when I tear down my equipment Sonic keeps an eye on safety. Even in a dwelling where there are no children or pets, there is still risk of fire (particularly with equipment left on for hours or all the time and the occupants are out) or the Zonee may accidentally touch something when tuning and go ZAPPP!

For me some level of safety like mains fuses and relays should be maintained.