Gainclone heaven ?

[PeterSt]

Hi Paul,

More thinner wires for tweeters should be better but then winding them becomes even more of a pain.

I guess it will be obvious somewhere, but ... why ?
(don't forget the drill and to charge the batteries)

Peter

[CoenP]

This is about the skin effect, electrons repel eachother and go to the outside of the conductor. That is with a perfect conductor, imperfect -real- ones with resistance, also conduct within the conductor depending on frequency. If the conductor is too thick, group delay can occur within the conductor. This is why it is recommended to use conductors less than 0.6 mm diameter in audio, at least for the audible spectrum. If you want a large conducting surface, use a lot of isolated strands.

(source Allan Wrights cable cookbook. A very good read).

Regards, Coen

[PeterSt]

Haha, thanks.

More thinner wires for tweeters should be better but then winding them becomes even more of a pain.

That's what I meant ...

[Scroobius]

Well replace "should" with "maybe" or "perhaps". But I just checked some notes I made originally and skin depth at 20kz in copper is around .5mm so that "should" or "maybe" is an ok size for the tweeter wires. On the other hand "maybe" we need to be able pass higher frequencies without skin effects in which case "maybe" or "perhaps" the wires if thinner "might" or "maybe" "could" possibly sound better. The only way to test it would be to try it "maybe". I will not be doing so because I spend my time listening to music nowadays ha ha.

Cheers

Paul

[Nick]

Well replace "should" with "maybe" or "perhaps". But I just checked some notes I made originally and skin depth at 20kz in copper is around .5mm so that "should" or "maybe" is an ok size for the tweeter wires. On the other hand "maybe" we need to be able pass higher frequencies without skin effects in which case "maybe" or "perhaps" the wires if thinner "might" or "maybe" "could" possibly sound better. The only way to test it would be to try it "maybe". I will not be doing so because I spend my time listening to music nowadays ha ha.

Cheers

Paul

Paul,

Thanks for doing the checks on the wire sizes for me, I will go ahead and order the wire in the confident certainty that all of the theory is well and truly nailed  and my sore hands will not be in vain 

As Peter says the drill is charging and ready to go.

Current cable is this http://www.vandenhul.com/p_c05.aspx

Best,

Nick.

[Scroobius]

Interesting looking speaker cable - especially the carbon surrounding the conductor. So the carbon turns the radiated magnetic field back into electrical signal? - which could infer the carbon has magnetic properties mmm a thought worth pondering further. Also interesting that the cable effectively has a single central conductor - assuming the silver coating of the strands prevents any significant boundary effects between the strands.

My old speaker cable http://www.vhaudio.com/speakercables.html had PTFE coated 48 strands of wire. A lot of plastic which I suspected was why they did not perform as well as the lacquer coated home wound replacement. Electrically (R, C and L) the cable was up there with the best but they just did not match the lacquer cables.

Interesting that Van den Hul speaker cables do not seem to address skin effect - so he obviously does not consider it significantly problematic compared with other factors.

I suspect your VdH cables will not suffer so much from "plastic" problems and so maybe there will not be so much difference in your case. It will be interesting to see how you get on.

Maybe we ought to get Peter to pop round the corner and ask VdH about his cable theories?

P

[CoenP]

Interesting that Van den Hul speaker cables do not seem to address skin effect - so he obviously does not consider it significantly problematic compared with other factors.

Why not? They are made of many many strands of very thin carbonfibre. I have some stiff vdh internal speaker wire which is made of 5 conductors of silvered 0.6mm copper wire. Most metal vdh wire is quite flexible and made of multiple thin strands and silvered on the outside (better conductivity on the surface of the conductor). Flexibility is obviously important but I skin effect must have been taken into consideration.

If you take the trouble of asking this to him personally I am shure he will reply!

Well i agree with Scroobius that we can debate about the effect of the skin effect. My favourite Spica TC-50 cables where 2mm+ thick copper conductors (originally the core of a high power radar signal cable). Those don't fare well on my Altecs though.

Regards, Coen

[PeterSt]

If you take the trouble of asking this to him personally I am shure he will reply!

I'm not sure whether you know, but the other day you practically ran over him. That's what Paul meant ...

[Nick]

Paul, Coen hi,

I am ashamed to say that the selection process for these cables amounted to seeing them in the corner of a hifi shop in Norwich at an exdemo knock down price. That was in about 1994 so it's taken a while to part me with any more money for replacement cables ( i just spent a truly cheapfi worthy £25 last nick on enamelled wire      )

In fairness the vdh cables give a detailed and well balanced presentation, i can see why they got good reviews back in the day.

I did try some audioquest cables years ago that really allowed the music to detach from the speakes (quad esl 63s at the time). I have a feeling that it would not be too hard to get this again, hopefully these enamelled wire cables will do just that.

Coen, I tried vdh first carbon interconnects again a long time ago. They had a really smooth (in the best sense) presentation as I remember.

Best,

Nick

[CoenP]

If you take the trouble of asking this to him personally I am shure he will reply!

I'm not sure whether you know, but the other day you practically ran over him. That's what Paul meant ...

Nope! Any othe (audio) celebreties in the neighbourhood? I inquired about a retipped phono catridge once with the vdh company. To my surprise he was on the phone personally with an elaborate anwswer the same evening!

Regards, Coen

[PeterSt]

Out from my driveway to the right, 80 meters on the left side.
I only found out after a couple of years living there.

[Scroobius]

Peter - maybe you could arrange to have a music evening with VdH and compare systems?

P

[manisandher]

A recent post by Paul in the "PC electrical isolation from DAC" thread reminded me that I really should get the 'super gainclones' that Bert built for me up and running again. I need to replace their transformers with a new pair that Bert sent me, as the current ones tend to hum too loudly (nothing else in my system hums at all). Humming aside, they sounded amazing with my Quads when they were connected. I'll report back once the new trannies are installed (probably next week once I have a bit of downtime from travelling).

Once everything is up and running, I'll also do a comparison between the super-gainclone monos and the Sauermann monos - should be interesting...

Mani.

[Scroobius]

Hi Mani - I think that would be very interesting but I have to say that for me I would want to start with a comparison between simple GC's i.e. single chip GC's (if I remember yours are paralleled and bridged) and Sauermann and with simple speakers lets say AN/E's for example then move on to Bert's amp with both sets of speakers.

Really this is just a thinly disguised excuse for another round of boy's with their toy's I would be very interested to hear the Sauermann.
 
P

[manisandher]

Really this is just a thinly disguised excuse for another round of boy's with their toy's I would be very interested to hear the Sauermann.

Paul, I'm happy to bring the Sauermann monos and/or my 'super gainclone' monos over to your place if you're interested. Let's discuss over PM.

Meanwhile...

I mustered enough motivation to get the soldering iron out yesterday with the intention of changing the trannies in the gainclone power supplies to reduce the humming I'm currently getting. And then I remembered that I have a 'PurePower 2000' AC regenerator sitting gathering dust in my basement. This has a built in adjustment to reduce humming in trannies. So I thought I'd give this a go before powering up the soldering iron. And lo and behold, I found by using this adjustment I could reduce the humming to a level that was simply not audible a few centimeters away from the trannies (and in the dead of night too).

So, I replaced the Magtech in my home study/office system with the gainclones being fed off the PurePower and started listening. The sound was nice, but a bit bright and thin. Although the PurePower was being fed off the same circuit as the rest of the system, I thought I'd try powering the NOS1 off the PurePower too. There wasn't an improvement in sound though. I then thought I'd disconnect the PurePower totally from the wall socket and power the gainclones and NOS1 from the PurePower's internal battery. The brightness in the sound vanished immediately, replaced by a gorgeous 'organic' sound. But the PurePower had been sitting idle and unplugged for over a year and the battery was dissipating quickly.

Having replugged the PurePower into the wall socket, the brightness/thinness returned. So I thought hell, I'll try the PC off the PurePower too (with an isolation transformer between the PurePower and PC). And...

... WOW! I hit jackpot. With the PC, NOS1 and gainclones all powered off the PurePower, I'm finally getting a sound that is pretty much identical to that from the PurePower's battery. And I love it. I know this because I sat in my study/office just listening to music into the early hours of the morning - the first time in a year or so I've done this.

I'm getting a balance of microscopic detail and total smoothness that is just beautiful.

So in a nutshell, maybe I should in some way be thankful that my gainclones had buzzing trannies (here at least - they didn't buzz at Bert's place). I would never have tried the PurePower otherwise - I had decided that I would never use it for music duties but as a UPS for my work PC because I thought it just made the sound too bright when powered off the mains (I always loved its sound off battery). BUT, I never used it to power the whole system before, including the PC. I don't know, but maybe this inadvertently creates ground loops or something.

I'll post more thoughts of the gainclones once I've listened to and compared things in more depth. But for now I have to say that they're sounding very, very nice being fed directly from the NOS1 and powering my 'small' Quad 2805 speakers.

Mani.