re: Audiophile/Vinyl Thread - Post Pics, Advice, Questions, Setups, etc.

I'd wait to see if Marco would chime in on some suggestions for you.

I picked up the quad vena integrated amp so I could do the digital deal, but it may not have enough power to push what you have. Think he recommended the peach tree to me as an alternative if I were going with a less efficient speaker (buying vandersteens). Which in that price range you could get from music direct.

Try looking on stereophile.com for reviews and such. Musicdirect has good prices and deals on stuff. They are super fast on their orders as well. Also, read through the thread. It has tons of information. If you go back to page 70 I think you can see all the stuff he suggested for me. I'm saying this b/c it sounds like your looking at an integrated amp and speakers in the same price range. The vandersteen 1Ci speakers are $1249 and the quad is $899. Not sure how that ranks with the yammy though.

I have a vpi nomad and the quad vena sitting in the closet. Just need to get the vandersteens and I'll be golden.

quote:

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as501. It's got great reviews and is reasonably priced at $900 at a local shop...

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Here is Yamaha's site for that integrated---it only retails for $549...

Where is the disconnect? Am I looking at the wrong thing?

And with that budget of around $1000, you can do better.

Do you need a receiver or an integrated amp?

If the drivers went under, they are shot. There is a crossover in the cabinet as well, and that will be shot as well.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but when any electronic device gets fully submerged in water, it is ruined.

All the dry-out time in the world will not be sufficient due to the materials that were soaked.


Let us know if we can help in any way...

Damn that sucks that you lost that vintage gear. I was out of town when my house started getting water and the first thing I told my wife was to put my speakers on the couch, and they are just some Polks.

Still interested in hearing Marco's rant on cables and wires. Like I said earlier I don't think my setup is good enough to benefit from anything high end but I love reading about this stuff and I'm constantly building a 2 channel rig in my mind. There appears to be a lot of passion on both sides and even to the point where there are cable companies that are "anti cables" aka anticables.com.

Exactly like those! I have his jumpers that I replaced my cheapo brass jumpers with.

Actually, Paul Speltz is more known for his stand alone Auto-formers than his cables. If you don't know what an auto former is, look it up--it's what made McIntosh audio solid state amps the beasts they were in the late 1960's.

For around $900, you can add his autoformers between your amp and a difficult-to-drive speaker (4 to 1 ohm loads), and the auto former will present the amp with a predetermined load that is consistent. They are often used with Magneplanars by audiophiles.

Most McIntosh solid state amplifiers still use auto-formers rather than standard transformers.

THE CABLE CONUNDRUM



When it comes to high end audio, no other topic draws as much debate, arguments, venom, and angst among audiophiles as that of high end cabling.

I will try to make a few analogies in the following explanation of my ideas regarding cables--they may work, they may not (I was never the best at analogies--but I try!)

I have come to this conclusion (my conclusion--you may disagree) as to why there is so much arguing about cables...

Back in the early days of audio, you had a mono console all in one system that sounded, well, bad. In the 1950's, we began to see the beginning of using separates--amps, pre amps, speakers, and turntables. Their sound was, in comparison to the earlier console units, on an entirely different level.

These early separates weren't cheap--about the equivalent of $10-15k in today's money, but they absolutely blew away what preceded them. But there was still much room for improvement. Every year, the audio manufacturers would get their new models a little bit quieter, a little bit more powerful, and a little bit more dynamic. Every generation was a big and noticeable jump in audio quality. This pattern held true for the next 30 or so years.

As with any material object that evolves over time, audio gear had gotten to the point where designers were all fighting to get that last 10-5% of audio magic. The gear, I believe, had all gotten so good, that manufacturers were looking to other parts of the signal chain to improve upon--and in come connections amongst the gear.

For the first 30 years of audio, the common connect was a piece of lamp cord for speakers and a length of lamp cord with cheap RCA connectors for interconnects.
My belief is that this was just fine to everyone because their new high end gear sounded sooo much better than what they previously used, why, there was no reason to look to get better--they already achieved nirvana!

But along came 1990, and high end audio gear all sounded, for the most part, fairly good (compared to what was offered in the 1940's and 1950's). Audio gurus began to look for ways to get better...and cabling was the obvious "weak link".


Continued below...

So, when do cables become important, what do I look for in a cable, and how much should I spend on them?


Not an easy answer, but here goes...


Cables have become a HUGE part of high end audio marketing, and there are huge profits to be made in their sales. Is there a bunch of crap out there regarding cables? Sure--as is with any industry. But there is also some solid science, white papers, and bench tests showing the benefit of a quality cable as well.

In systems under the $4k mark, I usually tell people to use a decent AudioQuest or entry level Nordost cable. They are made of purified copper and have specific winding patterns geared to carry low voltages with little resistance and cased in wraps that allow for decent protection from outside signal interference and signal leakage.

A good cable also has a large contact area at the barrels. Many will clamp down via a screw method, and some speakers use a banana or Z-plug, which makes complete use of the entire surface of the point of contact.

When getting into the $15k and up systems, the usual audiophile rule of thumb is to spend about 15-20% of the cost of the system on all cables. So, a $50k audio rig would usually see around $7500 of cabling connecting all components (speaker cables and all interconnects--a good split would be 3 or 4 interconnects at $1k each, and speaker cables at $3500/pr.)

Again, a good cable's objective is to deliver the pure unadulterated signal that the upstream component is sending out...nothing else.

Also, keep in mind, that a speaker cable is not a "one way" cable...the amplifier sends a signal to the speaker, while the actual speaker presents a "load" back to the amplifier. We have a 2-way highway here fellas! There is a symbiotic and immediate relationship between the two. It is for this reason why I use Nordost cables for speakers--their specs on signal speed is fantastic (99.3% speed of light transmission)...but that is just my preference. There are many really good speaker cable manufacturers.


As you go up the ladder in cables, the geometry of the cable winding changes (more complex winds), the metals used and the purity of said metals improve, the shielding gets better, the connectors get better, point of contact increases, and solder joints are done by hand.


All that being said, will a Best Buy system wired with $150,000 worth of Nordost Odin cables (not a typo--it can get that crazy!), sound better than with $200 worth of AudioQuest red cables?...well, no. The upstream signal just isn't that pure.

Now, with $500k of MBL gear upstream, changing from lamp cord to any Nordost cable will reveal differences--in the lack of degradation of the signal. Do you need $150k worth of cabling? Probably not, but using a well built and designed cable will help reveal all that the system can deliver.

Also, keep in mind, as with anything and everything else in this world and this life, a good bit of "cable bitching" from the masses comes from the fact that some of the ballers in hifi will throw down $50k on cables and not bat an eye. I have heard comments a few times at shows of people that have saved their entire life for a $25k system, and get irked at the fact that the guy next to them just dropped that on a single interconnect...hey, life ain't fair .


These above manuscript is my impressions from years of playing with countless pieces of audio gear and hundreds of different cables from cheap $10 RCAs to $8000 Nordost speaker cables...

...Your opinion may vary.

Types of cable terminations...which and when do you use?



When connecting components in an audio system (source (phono, CD, DVD, DAC) to pre amp to power amp), there are a few different types of cable terminations that can be used.

Typically, when connecting components carrying an analog signal, the 2 common terminations are RCA (also called "single-ended"), and XLR (also called "balanced").

Typically, but not always, RCA is found on lesser expensive gear, while both options are found on higher priced gear (again, not always). Depending on the design of the amplifier or pre amp, the designer may want the signal to be carried a certain way, thus some gear will have only RCA, or only XLR.

An XLR cable uses 3 pins: a positive, a negative, and a neutral. It takes the sum of the positive and negative signals and averages them--thus the name "balanced". Not all amps and pre amps that have XLR connectors are of a circuit topology that is truly balanced, however. They are there for convenience and to provide a bit of a lower noise floor and a bit of a higher S/N (signal to noise) ratio.

Usually an amp or pre will not have a truly balanced topology until you get in the upper levels. For example, even McIntosh uses XLR connectors for convenience. The c2300 pre amp I used to use had XLR connectors, but the circuit topology was not truly balanced. When I moved to the c500 pre amp, the entire circuit was balanced from beginning to end. So on the c2300, I used RCA cables, while on the c500, I currently use XLR connectors.

Many low powered vacuum tubed power amps (some cam get insanely expensive), will only use RCA, as per their design is not a balanced one.

And there are always exceptions in the price realm--Rotel is fairly inexpensive and is a truly balanced design as is Odyssey and a few others.

Also, try to use the same connection type for the entire chain. If you use RCA from the CD to the Pre amp, use RCA from the pre amp to the power amp. Same for XLR.

Digital connections are Optical (also known as Toslink), RCA (also known as SP/DIF), USB, and BNC (balanced digital cable--equivalent to XLR in analog connectors).

The usual go to is RCA coaxial, as a digital source player that is truly balanced design is quite expensive (BNC connectors). In the early days of digital, optical connections were cheaper, but not as dynamic, so audiophiles veered to RCA (SP/DIF). But optical has come a long way, and currently is also a pretty good way to connect a digital component to a DAC.

Speaker cables are usually terminated in 1 of 4 ways...bare wire, spades, banana plug, and Z-plug.

While I use z-plugs from Nordost cables, the banana and Spades also provide a fine and solid point of contact between the speaker and amplifier. Any of the latter 3 will work just fine.



Questions about cables and terminations???


Fire away!!

On now...





Gary Numan--The Pleasure Principle...180g reissue mastered from Digital 24bit/96k transfers of analogue tapes...1979/2015.