Only if no one has split them before!
I carefully avoided the bold split, because I feared the Klingons would appear. (On the port bow.)
You would think a superior advanced cyborg civilisation would be capable of better cable management.
Just a snag on a door handle of that brain power cable and boom. Gone.
Shame United Federation of Planets fitted handless sliding doors on their ships.
I wonder if this Cyborg had done some massaging on his burndy power cables? Maybe he is not aware of that.
ā¦a little deductive logicā¦or as close as to true deduction as you can getā¦
If you change something, the chance that the change will not change the sound is vanishingly small;
If the resulting change in sound is an improvement, then you might not change back;
If the improvement is heard by many of us, then it becomes mainstream and not a tweak.
Back in the 1980s proper support/ stands became standard.
I do think that manufacturers reccomendations are a good path to followā¦I have tried tweaks in the past and, for me, they are usually reversed. Before you ask, my ears and system do reveal the results of tweaks.
In my experience almost anything you do will change the sound of a hi-fi system.
Yes. Equipment and loudspeaker stands, which we all now take absolutely for granted as being necessary or at least highly desirable, were once firmly in the tweaks category. Back in those days the idea of special mains cables or interconnects simply did not exist.
History has shown us that todayās lunatic fringe tweak may become tomorrowās standard practice.
You may want to look at a record cleaning machine. They work wonders with older records. The larger of the two Pro-ject boxes is very good.
Regardless of some of the answers here Tweaking is MANDATORY - a expensive piece of equipment may not be value for money till you tweak so it works proper!
Q. What would you do if you set your system up maybe some new components and you were not that happy with the sound ??
Not all tweaking requires purchasing an item but if a more expensive Rack works buy it.
Even in the 1980s, dedicated loudspeaker stands & āspecialā cables were obvious to me (from the mechanical/acoustic perspective of loudspeakers, and the electrical perspective in respect of cables, even though I had to experiment to select the cable types and make them myself). It soon became clear that PTFE and cross-linked PE insulation worked best for signal cables. For my amps, they worked particularly well when used in a pseudo balanced wiring configuration (and yes I used a mixture of RCA [to interface to other equipment] DIN and Canon D connectors - for the same reason that NAIM use DIN connectors!).
I was also experimenting with high voltage (i.e. physically large) tightly wound polypropylene (MKP) capacitors in the signal path and multiple PS bypass capacitors on each stage in amplifiers (using Foil/PS and WIMA āRedā MKT capacitors). Used with circuit modification to limit transient driver transistor overload (and hence driver latch-upā¦ a characteristic flaw of almost all amp designs of the time), these made an enormous improvement to the audio performance, particularly when used with early CD players and cartridges with low tip mass cantilevers.
To me these werenāt tweaks: each one was evaluated on theoretical engineering principles before being tested in reality.
Xanthe,
Your experiments clearly go far beyond anything I ever, or would ever, attempt.
As I recall it was during the 80ās that the whole cable phenomenon began to emerge, but before that there was really minimal interest in how cables could affect the performance of a system. And then only from the ālunatic fringeā. Exotic speaker cable in those days was QED 79 strand.
As always, things change.
Or where it isnāt.
Oh for me it definitely is, I never know what the next tweak is going to be or when itās going to come!
Your profile says you have modified Spendor SP2s.
Can you say what the mod is?
Is it the stands and plinths?
Also, did you replace the tweeters?
thanks
Jim
I do
Yes
The plinths are custom the stands are manufactured.
No
OK Iām pretty sure those werenāt the answers you were seekingā¦
I replaced the internal wiring and connectors, the binding posts / 4mm sockets at the back, the crossover PCB (with discrete wiring) and the crossover capacitors (with Mundorf Supreme MKP instead of the ISKRA MKTs), and slightly reduced the internal damping.
The tweeters are Scan 2008s, and havenāt been abused or overheated, so didnāt need replacing (and measurement showed they were still fine). They Scan 2008 is a remarkably good tweeter considering itās age (as is the Spendor 200mm bass mid unit - the biggest weakness in that is limited LF extension due to a rather robust suspension).
Did those mods give the speakers a flatter measured response across the frequency spectrum?
No.
They absorb much lower energy from the signal (e.g. dielectric loss) giving a LOT better resolution and better microdynamics.
Thereās little point in striving for a flatter response, they are +/-3dB from 50Hz to 18kHz, 1/12th octave measurement. The room is FAR worse than that.
Iām too inquisitive to ignore a cheap tweak, and far too tight-fisted to pay for an expensive one.
So, Iāve tried most things up to about Ā£50-100 (cleaning and anti static fluids, various CDs, Russ Andrewās mains cables and extra chassis earthing on non-Naim kit), but never been tempted beyond that.
Mark
I am a tweaker!
I have a self imposed Ā£500ish limit on tweaking.
By far the greatest revelation recently has been upgrading power cables and blocks. Iāve been a convert for interconnects and speaker cables for some time!
Most disappointing was an EE 8 switch, which despite fab press is a bit meh in my system.
I will most likely never build a dedicated listening room or buy super expensive shelves. Although i am tempted by a dedicated mains spur! And i would love to experiment further with room treatment
So i guess for me i will never stop tweaking its a big part of the hobby for me.
Itās not that type of forum