XXHighEnd

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of visiting Paul (Scroobius) and listening to his system. I'd like to thank him for his hospitality - a real gentleman. He's a great conversationalist and has some very interesting ideas on how to improve sound quality with very little financial outlay. A lot of these ideas are mentioned on this forum in various places, but Paul's actually gone ahead and implemented them... and boy, with what results!

I LOVED the sound of his system. Very, very dynamic - I mean, a very credible attempt at reproducing the dynamics of live music... from a pair of 2-way speakers! And incredibly detailed too. I was thinking as I listened to his system that I really could live with this sound forever, it was that good.

But nothing's perfect. My feeling was that there was a bit of edginess and a bit of boxiness. My strong advice to Paul was to keep things exactly as they are (not touching a thing) for a few months at least, to let the new mid/bass drivers settle in. This might well improve the edginess that I heard. My only concern is that the edginess may well be an intrinsic property of the crossovers used in his speakers. (Having spent an inordinate amount of time with my Pass XVR1 crossovers, I've learned how various crossover settings fundamentally change the sound.) And there might well be a reason why his speaker manufacturer offers some seriously expensive crossover options for his model...

All in all a great visit. Next on the list, PeterSt!

Mani.

I'll go with you! :biglol:

Johan

If you live near Amsterdam anyway ...

haha

Hi Mani - It was great to see you again and I loved the NSX its a great shame that we did not have time for a quick spin - maybe next time.

Glad you liked the sound it has taken a huge effort to get to where it is now (actually most of that effort is probably Peter's with the NOS1). I agree with your comments about the boxiness which I think an unavoidable compromise in the speaker design. I think overall though that the design is a good compromise because unlike most box speakers the boxiness is not that big and most important it is above that critical area in the bass where all the timing information is. An OK compromise for me and I still think better than all other box speakers I have heard. Of course that boxiness is going to be more noticeable to a Quad listener!!. What I do like about these speakers though is that they are designed to get reflections out of the box as soon as possible and so keep the sound alive and dynamic in a way that other box speakers just do not do in my experience.

As far as a slight edginess - well you should have heard it a couple of weeks ago when the background (mains) hum was higher (but not *that* high). Changing the grounding arrangement in the amp reduced hum to almost inaudible levels and radically improved the sound - the biggest area was reducing the "edginess". It is hugely better than it was. Now that fundamental change has been made I will be looking to improve mains supply by using a balanced transformer with separate spiked earth (but of course mine will be the cheapskate approach!!).

The Hemp drivers are still pretty new with only about 100 hours at decent volume and I have been told that they really need about 500 hours on the clock before they properly start to bed in apparently they do have a bit of a "hard" sound until they are bedded in.  

I think you are absolutely correct that the system needs to run for a few months before I touch anything. I may install a balanced mains supply transformer though as that is a fundamental thing outside outside the system and is very simple to do in my case.

But don't the AN/E HE's sound good with the GainClones? given that the GC's cost so little to make and the speaker wire (two lots for bi amp) only cost £30 (including delivery  :)) and the speakers are the bottom of the range AN/HE's - long live cheapskate hi-fi.

I look forward to our next get together - my goodness haven't our systems progressed since we last met - mostly thanks to Peter and NOS1 USB.

At some time I would love to hear a good set of horns I have listened to horns before and found myself loving some aspects of the sound but not others - but there again I have never heard the Duo's.

Hey, thank you for the implied kindness towards me ! :)

:offtopic:

Talking about GainClones, transformers and horns ...

For quite some weeks now I have this transformer wire laying around. 0.8mm in diameter and 22m of it. The diameter may be wrong in the first place ...

Now, I have a woofer (15") and mid/high and the GainClone amps drive each section (thus, 2 separately per ch). The question :

With my described transformer wire as a given "fact" for now, how many wires do you think I should twist to obtain something like possibly better sound ?
And will it be plus and minus twisted together ? And when you tell me to twist 4 wires, will that be plus and minus mixed ? or first twist 2 plus next twist 2 minus and lastly twist those both ?

Supposed I have some wire left afterwards, and I want to connect my subwoofers too (they are parasited from the woofer's high output on the GC) ... how many twists there ?

If you feel that my 0.8mm diameter is really a lousy nothing for woofer etc., please tell me.

Eh, thanks ?
Peter

Paul, Mani,

Its good to hear that your visit and listening went so well, what posertive comments, congratulations Paul.  It sounds like the NOS1, gain clone, AN Es are quite a combination. I have only heard AN Es once but the dynamic presentation is one of the main impressions At the time.

Let's get a trip to mine arranged if you would like to hear some Duos. My listening environment is less than optimal let's say (you will see) but it's fun to hear different set ups.

Regards,

Nick.




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Hey Nick, good idea. I've heard the Trios over at GT's place, but never the Duos.

Where abouts in the UK are you? Do you have a dedicated parking space for my car... haha?

Mani.

Peter this is the mail GerardA send me.

Sorry guy's it is in Dutch.

Grtz

Hoi Gerard,

Het is heel simpel, een klosje lakdraad, voor trafo's en spoelen, van de gewenste diameter bijv. 0,35 mm voor hoog en 1 mm voor laag, kopen.
Een aantal keer de lengte die je nodig hebt eraf rollen en naast elkaar leggen, na ze in stukken geknipt te hebben. Dan neem je bijvoorbeeld 4 stukken en die ga je in elkaar twisten, gewoon draaien dus. Dan nog een keer 4 stukken hetzelfde. Dan heb je daarmee een plus en een min-ader. Van de ene geef je met gekleurd plakband aan de uiteinden aan of het de plus of min is. Dan twist je die twee weer in elkaar en heb je één luidsprekerkabel. Voor stereo nog een keer en voor biamping nog twee keer extra.
Nu komt het leuke karwei om de uiteinden schoon te maken.
Met een scherp mes kun je de lak op de laatste 2 cm er af krabben en daarna met een soldeerbout de uiteinden vertinnen waarbij de laatste lakresten verbranden.
Met een multimeter kun je dan kontroleren of alle kontakten echt goed zijn.
Dan alles weer netjes samendraaien en uitproberen.
Check nog wel even dat plus en min geen kortsluiting maken!


Gr Gerard

Yes, that's how I did it.
But maybe it's nice to try some alternatives and compare them.
I'm happy with the way it's now but if somebody can find an improvement then that would be nice too!
BTW, all speakers/amps are different so everyone is a little bit on his own. I tried thinner and thicker wire and they sounded different. Also it did not sound good with a too low number of wires. The combination I made is a bit based on intuition so ...

And then it would be best to connect directly to the woofer/tweeter. I did not do this because inside the speakers it's not so easy for the stiff wire, but maybe one day...

Hey Peter,

Wire size? phew where to start?. From what I have heard I think that most speaker wire manufacturers never listened to the wire they sell and don't do any rigorous critical listening. Maybe they are all "fashion" accessories. Anyway I hope the following helps but I would have a lot of work to do to come up with a proper definitive answer.

In my pre NOS1 life I had copper speaker cable 48 strand full litzendraht plaited. That worked out at about 2 x 4mm squared.  It was a "cylinder" of litzendraht plaited wire (very pretty it has to be said) and it had cotton in the middle of the tube. According to the text books it is just about the "ideal" construction with minimal inductance and low (but not that low) capacitance. Most manufacturers do not produce full litzendraht plaiting (they go for cheaper "hyper litz"). Resistance was very low because overall area of 4 sq mm. But the point is from a engineering view this was about as good as it gets.  It was trounced by bare copper wire and I can only think it was the PTFE coating on the individual strands that was the key difference.

Anyway because I bi-amped my GainClones (thanks Nick!!!!) I simply could not afford to duplicate the speaker wire so just for a laugh I tried 2 x 2 strands of bare 1.5mm square copper wire (stereo test first against old cables).  So in effect 2 x 3mm square of bare copper wire which I stripped out of electrical cable (cost nothing it was in the garage). So imagine my total surprise - it sounded hugely better than my old cable - I mean there was just no comparison. Jaw on floor time. It is important to note that this was with 2 x 3mm square (i.e. lower x section) bass (and everything else improved). So then I tried 2 x 2mm square bar copper wire - result not much different.

I then tried lacquer coated wire and it did not sound significantly different to my ears than bare copper - but I would have to do much more rigorous testing. Also and this was really interesting it did not need burning in whereas my original plastic coated wire did. Mmmmm

I ended up with the following (thanks to Gerard):-

Tweeters - 2 x 8 strand (@ 0.5 mm dia per strand) lacquer coated which equals 2 x 1.57 sq mm area.

Bass Units - 2 x 4 strand (@ 1.07 mm dia per strand) lacquer coated which equals 2 x 3.6mm sq mm area.

Construction: for the bass units: -

+ ve : 4 strands simple twist together to form a chord
- ve : 4 strands simple twist together to form a chord

+ ve and - ve chords then simply twisted together to form one chord for each bass unit.

The same for the tweeters.

Tweeter chord and bass chord then twisted together. So I ended up with one chord with +ve and -ve for tweeters and +ve and -ve for bass units.

I need to do more tests (when I have the time) but what I do know is that whilst I am sure I do not have the perfect construction it sounds far superior to the 48 strand "super" cable with my GainClones. The construction is far less than ideal so plastic has to be the bad boy. There has to be scope for improvement from where I am now.

But then there are exotic materials silver gold platinum etc etc. So many variables to be tested wire diameter number of strands etc. I am sure that a thorough test would be enough to drive a sane man mad.

BUT I was discussing with Mani about speaker cable and I have read that Bybee quantum purifiers dramatically reduce the difference between cables - so maybe that is the fundamental first place to start by getting the flow of electrons right (but they do not flow very fast as it is rather a wave propagation) i.e. to compare different cable constructions with quantum purifiers to straighten out the flow down the cable and see if there is a difference in sound (don't laugh Bybee's were created by a scientist hired by NASA in nuclear submarines to reduce background electrical noise so that super sensitive sonar could work at a lower noise floor). A definitive test of speaker cable would be very interesting indeed - are quantum purifiers the fundamental answer?

More questions than answers for sure - I am sure that does not answer the question maybe just raises more questions but hopefully some pointers.

All the best

Paul

Hey Nick - a trip to yours would be great - Mani if you have some dates let me know we could meet there.

Could this be the first annual "Nossers Convention - UK Division"?

P

Interesting, I was triggered by the remark on 'boxy' sound...

One could switch to a dipole speaker solution. Had a pair of Quad 63's but those seem to lack some detail and dynamics compared to (top) 'normal' speaker or horn solutions. Also, there is always a bit of the 'electrostat' sound, a somewhat artificial, plastic-like timbre.

So what's the ideal speaker?  Reading at this link: http://www.high-endaudio.com/RC-Speakers.html (http://www.high-endaudio.com/RC-Speakers.html)
one would conclude that conventional very well designed speakers and horn setups seem to be the best (at least of what Mr. Salvatore has heard).  However there is an interesting letter of a different approach:

"Some friends and I recently bit the bullett and built a set of Open Baffle designed speakers (see pics). The dimensions are 45"h x 20" wide with side "wings" measuring 5" at the top scalloped out to about 16" at the bottom to assist in bass wave launch and cancelation. We went with a narrower profile than usually found in OBs because we're incorporating a bass driver into the OB and thus not trying to maximize the bass from the mid driver.

We used the new high excursion form of the Supravox 215 Exc. OB midrange driver and their 15" 400 Exc bass field coil drivers with a pair of horizontally positioned Fountek Pro 5.1 tweeters. Expensive drivers but well worth the cost! The field coil in each Supravox driver is powered by its own small dc power supply. The tweeters have 2.2 uF Mundorf gold/silver caps on them (11 khz) and the bass drivers have a high pass filter using Solen 16 ga. Hepta-litz 17 mH inductors (75 hz).

Despite the somewhat pedestrian look, the sound of these open baffles is absolutely breath taking and a SUBSTANTIAL improvement over my Oris 150 horns with AER MD III drivers and Altec Lansing 16" bass drivers. We compared them side by side to a set of Avant Garde Duos and simply unplugged the Duos after about 25 minutes.

We're knocking around the idea of refining the shape of the ob frames (rounding off edges, perhaps a little narrower) and then making the OB frames available in "flat packs" with 2-3 grades of matched drivers (Chinese import, Visaton, Supravox). Kind of an "Ikea-like" approach to absolute world class sound for less than the sales tax on a pair of Avante Garde duos!"


Although the unit used here are quite expensive (I checked with current prices of these units and it will be approx. 5.5 - 6 thousend Euro's for 2 speakers, which, for me, is a bit much for an experiment), this (mostly filterless) open baffle approach can be used with many (somewhat cheaper) high quality broadband speaker units, like PHY-HP (especially the KM30), the above mentioned Supravox 215,  EAR MD1-3, Fostex F200A, Visaton B200 and many (often vintage) speakers. Additional advantage is that many of these units are very suitable to drive with low power amplifiers...

I build a pair of these.

2700,- incl wood and paint.

 :)

Hi Gerard,

that looks very nice indeed!  :goodjob:

What units did you use?

Cheers,
       Quint

Hey Quint,

Thanx

I used this:

4 Scanspeak 22W/8851T00 woofer
2 ESL-0001 4 SU-130 step-up transformer
2 ESL-0002 4 SP-3017 Electrostatic ring radiator
2 ESL-0003 4 ESL-HF-HV-PWM hoogsp. Unit
2 ESL-0005 4 230 Volt adapter
2 ACC-0004 4 Teflon silver wiring meter
2 ACC-0005 4 mini XLR connector
2 ACC-0003 4 Vergulde luidsprekerterminals
2 ACC-0002 4 Luidsprekerdoek zwart meter

I use no filter. That is done in the amp. Price i mentioned is with filter!!

But the manufacturer removed his site. Very busy with something else.

This is a dutch test with a smaller and cheaper ESL of his. Sadly in Dutch
http://www.hifi.nl/recensies/3636/Metrum-Acoustics-Syncope.html


 :)

 

Mani, Paul hi,

LoL, that's exactly the sort of question I ask before travelling  :)
 Plenty of safe parking here.

I need a couple of weeks to sort out a couple of points before the system is ready for listening. My Duos are old models but still 103db sensitivity and a fun listen. I will pm you and Paul when I know went all will be ready and we can set up a date.

Best,

Nick.

Hey Gerard  - I love the look of your speakers very nice. At some point I could be interested to make a pair of speakers and I do hanker after some open baffle. The only problem for me is that in the past when I have experimented with open baffle I just could not get the bass right. Did you have any problems getting the bass to work? I would be really interested in that aspect and if you had to do anything to mitigate the effect of rear reflections.

The design I have been thinking about is Dick Olsher's BassZilla DIY project which is basically a big box for the bass driver and then a tweeter and super tweeter on open baffle. I would be really interested - does anyone have experience of this speaker? has anyone heard it?

http://store.hifiauthority.com/olsherkits.html

http://www.blackdahlia.com/html/tip_60.html

P

Mani you were right!!! - no changes but I have been playing lots recently - and then yesterday right there in front of my very ears the sound changed - much more relaxed much better bass - the tightness in the bass has gone and the whole sound is much more relaxed to listen to. I was told by a Hemp Driver user (another AN/E user who changed his drivers to hemp) that they would suddenly change and oh boy was he right (I have to say I did not believe him).

And the "just above the upper bass" "boxy" sound - naaah its still there but who cares this is rocking good.

But as a seasoned listener I know that I need another second opinion at some time - after all lets face it we are all capable of fooling ourselves aren't we chap's?.

I still cannot get used to the fact that my speaker cable only cost £30 (including post and packing) he he - thanks Gerard you beauty!!.

Oh and I was also told that there is another step improvement around 500 hrs - no surely not!!!!

Must get on with listening

Paul

Hey Paul,

Maybe self made was a bit enthusiastic  ;)

Fact is that the design is from the manufacturer of the drivers ed.

www.metrum-acoustics.nl

As said he is busy with something else but i am sure he can help you a bit. I think the bass is ok but i really have not listened enough to other speakers to say something about it. I am satisfied.

Good luck!!

 :)

You know what? I reckon, "Don't change a thing for a while" might be good advice for 99% of us audiophiles.

Mani.

Btw i heard from Metrum that 2 drivers each side is really necessary to optain a good bass.

 :)

Hey Gerard - I guess that my speaker project is going to be a longer term thing so I will keep these details thanks. But really interesting is the Metrum DAC's - something I have been looking for, for a while. An inexpensive NOS DAC for my study system (I thought I was going to have to make one!!). I already have a very good USB/SPDIF converter and a reclocker for low jitter - so a NOS DAC and a GainClone will provide a very satisfactory study system driven by XXhigh.

Thanks

Paul

Yes that is his new project especially the Octave could be nice i think. That is the new one. But remember only 16/176.4 if i remember correctly.