Audiophile Musings: September 2012

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Those Little Tiny Wires

In the mid 1980s, I purchased a brand new Yamaha YP-D8 turntable and fell in love with it. Stylish, dark hardwood base, and sexy, this S-arm direct drive turntable served me well for about 15 years never failing and providing endless hours of magical entertainment. Two things I really enjoyed about this analog input device was its ease of vertical tracking adjustment and its quiet motor.

In the rural high-altitude mountains of Colorado, 7 miles from the nearest highway and 9,800 feet in the air, my listening room was pretty gosh darned quiet. The only noises came from the upstairs refrigerator and the downstairs hot-water-heat circulation pump, both of which were also pretty quiet and intermittent. As a result, I was able to hear nuances in things that in most listening environments was just not possible.

Once you remove the grunge of everyday background noise and settle into the stillness, you begin to notice things like the blood pulsing in your ears, faint rustling of the trees in the slightest breeze from within closed doors and windows, and of course details deep within the noise floor of your stereo. It was a wishful-sinful push-pull listening room where any decent audiophile becomes restless once an anomaly in the playback chain is noticed.

There was nothing worse than listening to a crescendo in such a quiet place and having the sound stage collapse into the center of the room so the search was on for a reasonable replacement phono cartridge. Not having the funds to toss at the best of the best, I purchased a Monster Alpha One cartridge, my first moving coil.

It was a remarkable step up in inner detailing, especially at the low level down into the noise floor, but it too had its issues. Checking the alignment dozens of times and trying different weight headshells, tonearm modifications, and the like, the only ting left were the headshell wires. Not to overlook anything, I decided to take the plunge and invest in the newly touted linear crystal oxygen free high conductivity version thinking to myself that spending about half as much on four one-inch long pieces of tiny wire as I did on my phono cartridge was about as much of absurd lunacy as one could expect from any audio purist.

I remember the day i changed these wires quite clearly since I immediately noticed a massive improvement in the system's sound. It was as if a veil had been lifted, as if I had taken off my ear muffs after coming in from the cold, and the resolution of inner detailing once laid back and subtle stood out and beat your ears over your head subliminally saying "Pay Attention - This is Important!" I was impressed and it takes a lot for me to be impressed.

What impressed me is that once the level of a playback system is sufficiently refined, even changes in wires as short as one inch long can make an audible difference in the level of performance. Much like formula one race cars pay attention to aerodynamic drag, weight-to-horsepower ratios, centers of gravity, moments of mass, and the like taking excruciating pains to identify and correct issues to provide optimum performance characteristics, so does attention to this level of minute detail in audio playback systems provide similar positive results. When you rise to the level of a lunatic fringe audiophile, you graduate to that level of attention to detail searching for and eliminating whatever you can in the pursuit of realism.

This morning, I changed out the headshell wires in my Pioneer PL-L1000a to some hand-made versions cobbled together from some small wire-wrap wire I had lying around. The stock wires that came with the Audio Technica headshell, although very nice, were lacking in that same low-level detail I remembered the ones I used with the Yamaha. I installed the little buggers and flipped on the switch. Putting on a familiar piece, I sat back ready to evaluate if I had just trashed a nice set of wires or found a suitable substitute for the L-C OFHC wires of my distant memory.

The cartridge is a Sumiko LMS and I patiently waited about 20 minutes for the system to thermally stabilize by cobbling together this blog. After the warmup period, I spun one of my newer disks and - although not as "hit me over the head" difference - there were more subtle background and inner details that before had not been present. Relieved to find that I had not trashed my system (sometimes this happens when I tweak my system as I am certain with which many of you can relate), I continued to enjoy the Reiner performance of Shubert's Unfinished Symphony No. 5. I have grown to appreciate the Reiner sound for its execution and dynamics and enjoy listening to any of the performances in this fluid-sounding series.

After turning over the album and playing the second side, I began to hear more from the timbre of the instruments that previously perceived and I am now grateful for a nicely tweaked system. There is something in an analog system despite its pops, ticks, and clicks that draws you into the recording and makes you feel like you are there rather than recreating the notes of an orchestra. I still cling to this sound comparing it regularly to the digital world I have grown used to over the years and have hope that it too will one day provide the realism that antiquated but well groomed technology is still capable of trouncing. Without going "digitally deaf," the ambiance and reverberations of the concert hall are all well preserved.

So when you think for a moment that the subtle details to which you pay attention as an audiophile do not make a difference in your musical appreciation, when you feel criticized by intellects who listen to music with their eyes and not their ears, remember that there are those of us who do and truly enjoy the music for all of its essence, not just figures, charts, and numbers. Give everything a try but remember that not everything works. Keep an open mind and by all means trust your ears as the final test.

Yours for higher fidelity,

Philip Rastocny

I do not use ads in this blog to help support my efforts. If you like what you are reading, please remember to reciprocate, My newest title is called Where, oh Where did the Star of Bethlehem Go? It’s an astronomer’s look at what this celestial object may have been, who the "Wise Men" were, and where they came from. Written in an investigative journalism style, it targets one star that has never been considered before and builds a solid case for its candidacy.

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Sunday, September 9, 2012

Picking out a TV

A friend of mine is wanting to buy a new TV set but doesn't know what to really look for when judging picture clarity differences. Most people jump into a car and drive over to their favorite big box store or electronics salon and compare images from the myriad number of sets hanging prominently from the wall. Such sales displays are all driven from a video distribution system with little or no chance to evaluate anything since manufacturers push the color levels to unreasonable limits to create the best possible WOW-effect. So how can you tell? Here are a few tips that with even such limited test signals you can see visual differences.

Unless you have a trained eye, it is difficult to see more than color balance differences in sets. Hooking up a dedicated BluRay player, a good HDMI cable, and a good movie source is the best way to evaluate a set, but most showrooms cannot accommodate such a request. So you must look for differences in the signals simultaneously delivered through their video signal distribution system that CAN tell you something about the set.

Most people are familiar with what is called JPG noise in digital pictures, an artifact of a compression and decompression process that leaves speckles in a picture. In HDTV, this video noise appears along the outer perimeter of objects. More easily seen in slow moving things like people walking against high-contrasts backgrounds, a video noise appears highly visible on cheap sets and less to invisible on better sets. Look for this noise and you will quickly sift out the sheep from the goats. Lower speckles means a clearer picture.

Look at the hair clarity on the RH dancer or belly speckles on the LH dancer to see the effects of video noise

If you like action and motion, you must look for fast screen refresh rates of at least 240Hz in LCD TVs (the Sony Bravia KDL-46HX929 has a 900Hz refresh rate). While most taped broadcasts are 60Hz, live events will produce more life-like realism with less motion blurring. An NFL football pass or a golf ball soaring through the air is a good test for motion blurring. If you buy a 3-D TV, buy at least a 240Hz model since in 3-D mode the refresh rate is actually 1/2 that specified (one frame scan for your left eye and one for your right means half the specified rate).

Black (or contrast level) is another test you can see pretty easily in such an environment although it is best detected in a darker room. When the picture drops out such as a moment between commercials or in a really dark night scene, marginal black representations appear gray. Overly black situations will not show enough detail in darker images or even create weird colors in the shadow or black areas. The center image below shows good black levels while the L image shows too little and the R image is overly black.

Do not be too quick to judge color accuracy and black levels since all sets are calibrated from the manufacturer to give the most wow but not the best color and black level. Buy a test DVD, such as the Digital Video Essentials "HD Basics," and once you narrow down a set, ask the salesperson if you can reset the display settings from its instructions. It takes a few minutes but the results may surprise you as to what a well-respected brand name set can and cannot do.

All sets are compromises but as mentioned Plasma sets tend to find their ways into more demanding homes. The only issue with Plasma is that such sets run pretty hot compared to the others (LCD/LED) and will put an additional load on your home A/C. I have measured as much as s 20 degree F screen temperature difference between models using a hand-held infrared thermometer. This is a parasitic cost of operation that like a tube amp and preamp you just live with if you like what you see.

Whatever TV set you end up getting, use good interconnect cables just as you would for your audio system. Plug the TV into the same power conditioner as your system to minimize noise and ground-loop effects.

Yours for higher fidelity,

Philip Rastocny

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Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Evolution of the High End Part 6

Early on in audio, speaker connections used off-the-shelf terminal connection strips to make easily removable speaker wire-to-amplifier and speaker wire-to-speaker terminations. Simple screw strips offered a low cost way to permit interchangeable connections. Little was understood about wire or terminations at the time believing that DC resistance was the primary issue. While correct on that point, other issues were present before a fuller understanding of the function of an amplifier or speaker terminal involved.

Bakelite Terminal Strip

While fully functional, this technology is outdated being replaced by terminals that accept larger wires. Early attempts used the 5-way binding post to allow flexible termination styles and a more positive connection.

5-Way Binding Post

Improved versions of this terminal still appear in equipment today. Improved banana plugs and jacks assure good connections and high-current carrying ability.

But above this lower-resistance and higher-current connectivity came an understanding of the conductivity of different metals, oxidation and corrosive effects of aging, and parasitic losses. Ferrous materials "stole" some of this energy to create a magnetic field so non-ferrous materials like gold and silver became very popular. While silver is a better conductor than gold, the corrosive effects require regular maintenance and so gold fell into favoritism for construction of terminals. Other materials such as high purity solid copper, oxygen free processing, and linear crystal composition all help improve these large connections.

The truth to a connection lies not only in the materials but also in the cross-section area of the termination. When the area of the termination is smaller than the area of the speaker wire, there lies the bottleneck. If the area of the termination is significantly smaller than the speaker wire, there will be an appreciable insertion loss into the amplifier-speaker electrical circuit.

For example, if you use a 10AWG speaker wire, the cross sectional area translates to 5.26 square millimeters (0.0082 sq. in.). This means that the total surface area of the terminals must be at least this big.

Binding posts are 10mm in diameter for a maximum contact area of 5mm*5mm*3.1416=78.54mm. BUT the center post is 6mm in diameter and this must be subtracted from this contact area. 3mm*3mm*3.1416=28.27mm so the maximum cross sectional area of a spade lug on a binding post is 78.54-28.72*2=100mm. This is totally adequate. BUT spade lugs are not this large and do not use100% of this maximum contact area. Roughly 40% of the available area is not used so 40% of 100mm=60mm, still more than adequate.

Do the banana plugs have the same comfortable relationship? Not even close. Contact area of a banana plug and jack are minuscule (very low cross sectional area) unless advanced self compressing styles are used. Then cross sectional area approaches the 5.26 sq. mm. of the conductor.

This means that the best connections possible for 5-way binding posts is the tried and true spade lug.

What you hear when there is a significant difference in cross-sectional area is flabby bass (damping drops) and low transient response (terminals cannot handle high momentary current surges).

So do yourself a favor and convert your speaker wires to high quality spade lugs and sit back and enjoy the difference.

Yours for higher fidelity,
Philip Rastocny

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Sunday, September 2, 2012

Computers - ARGH! - Lessons for Life

It's been a while since I posted anything on my blog but it's not because I have run out of things to say. I have an older Gateway laptop (circa 2008, the P-7811FX) that has served me well and it developed a serious problem: the display would intermittently stop working.

Computers are an essential part of life for many of us, myself included, and with the passing of this old friend, I have retired its function to that of a streaming video device on my home entertainment system (I watch web videos from it via the HDMI port). It had a very nice 17" display and the Sony Vaio (a VPCSE2EFX) with which I replaced it only has a 15" wide screen.

But as I settle into the new machine, I have learned to adjust as we all do with new technology and devices we add to our habitual collection of stuff. I wanted to revive the gateway but it needed a $200 display and there were a few things I did not like about it: it ran hot and the keyboard was not very good. So...out with the old and in with the new.

I must say that typing speed is greatly improved with this model and my hands stay cooler for a lot longer time. The text is tinier but the full HD display does offer a few nice features that most laptops available today do not.

Shortly after moving into the laptop, my tried and true Network Storage server started giving me a few problems reporting disk errors but recovering from them nicely. While still operating, I have ordered a replacement for this old friend also, so out with the 0.5TB Buffalo Pro Duo (the LS-W1TGL-R1) and in with the 4.0TB Seagate Black Armor (NAS 220) that should arrive Wednesday and occupy yet more of my time in assuring backups.

The lessons here are that everything fails sooner or later and when they do your life gets complicated if nothing else. things that were easy and familiar now become a struggle and changes or special measures are needed during the period of adjustment. The keyboard on the Sony is different from the Gateway and typing although easier requires retraining my brain to where special purpose keys such as the END key are located. (Wonder why they switched the location of the CTRL and FUNC keys?)

I appreciate the newness of change but the transition of adjustment is a drag. It takes a lot of time to get things "the way they were" but what this really means is that I need to rebuild things so that I can use them as I wish. This is what I want to point out about audio: we get used to things the way they are and when we introduce change, we react.

Say for example you buy a new preamp. After listening to your old preamp for ump-de-ump years, you pretty well know its strengths and its weaknesses. When the new piece of gear is inserted to the system, you immediately react to how different it sounds. There is a moment when you realize that things are no longer "the way they were" and part of you wants to go back to the way it was. It is natural for people to do this but what happens from here is an interesting observation of human behavior.

There is a period of adjustment when you scrutinize everything about the new system component and compare it religiously to your acoustic memory of the old component. This process may go on for weeks and finally you begin to notice the big difference: it does this but it no longer does that. So when this realization materializes, you are faced with the really big decision: do you go back or live with the faults of the new component?

The choice is yours but whatever you choose will be another interesting study in your own behavior. Several factors usually tug at such a big decision, such as price, sex appeal (is it better looking than the old component), of course its assets, and other similar reasons. How yo weigh these factors is the interesting part. Watching my mind decide is fascinating to me and puts me in touch with the many different aspects of my humanity. For with this observation and reflection I become a better person who really knows who I am.

One of the things I enjoy - besides listening to new music - is knowing who I really am. I understand a lot and I realize that my mind is what makes most of my choices. But there is another part of my being - a part that hides behind my eyes and observes reality as one would while playing a video game. This is the part with which I am fascinated. This is who I really am and the one that never ceases to amaze me.

Easterners meditate to get in touch with this part of your being but I find that I fall asleep trying to calm my self-talk. So I look for other ways tot do this and such observations - internal reflections and taking pause to analyze my own behavior - is another way of doing so.

My suggestion is this: when you make a change to your system, plan to observe your own behavior and try to understand more about who you really are. There are "eyes" behind the eyes and there are other parts of you that you may not realize. Bringing everyone to the forefront and understanding what roles they play in your consciousness can bring even greater appreciation to this joyous hobby. Listening from all of these part sof your being can change the way you listen to music and allow you to appreciate nuances and details that you never knew were there.

So take a deep breath and slow yourself down. Appreciate the new piece of gear for what it is and then appreciate yourself for who you really are.

Yours for higher fidelity,

Philip Rastocny

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