... and it is not mine, sort of ...
What you are going to read into now, is so impactive for our Audio, it is beyond comprehension. And first point is : it really is. Also mine (read and not to forget : I don't know what is going on for real). Try not to be confused by the
two fully separated subjects and appliances this is about.
Let's dive in ...
No two weeks ago, by a kind of accident, I set a 16/32 processor to utilize 10/20 cores only. N.b.: This can easily be done in the BIOS. Now it has become a 10/20 for everything that sees and uses it, thus also our playback software.
I did it because something drew too much power and with less cores active, less power is consumed. All nothing strange and all so good so far.
At the moment I had to do this, it was already in my mind to apply this to the 14/28 I was again listening to, noticing that this had its own goodies in the Highs I knew from the 16/32 (the both sound very similar if not the same anyway) but it lacked the specialty Mid I knew from the genuine 10/20.
And thus at the same day I was fiddling with that power consumption (in a customer's new Mach III system) I applied the utilization of the 10/20 cores to the 14/28 which was assembled in my own Mach III.
And right out of that box I received the best - most "genuine" sound ever. Really so.
Maybe I must stop describing SQ as such, because superlatives rolling over previous superlatives at some stage fail to work out, so let's say I stick to "genuine" for now, as if it would be a "so-so" improvemend, but for the better anyway. No. Nothing of that kind. It was by far the largest - and foremost
unexpected improvement ever. What I mean is, I expected to maybe now the 14/28 in 10/20 mode to sound similar to the original 10/20, but nothing of that order was in place and instead a new magnitude of SQ occurred. So huh ?
While I was contemplating how this could be, and was thinking of matter like the overhead of the processor, normally used to serve 14/28 cores, now could be applied to 10/20 cores and thus more "attention" per core, so to speak, the next tweak was luring around the corner already : a prototype of the
Lush^2.
OK, cool. A Lush^2. Must be a Mark II or so, right ?
Wrong. The power-of-two implies a multitude of Lush but in a way you maybe won't expect : in its possibilities.
The Lush^2 has so many possibilities that I would need to write software to explore them all, but on rough estimate it could be 10000 at least. So the Luch^2 is 10000 Lush cables.
Now what.
All right, we'll see later about that.
My prototype Lush only exhibited (I think) 5 "situations", so luckily I could only
try 5 as well. That would be easy enough.
The first one ? dead sound.
The second one ? strange sound.
The third one ? Bingo !!
... and just as I expected I could find "a best" Lush within that prototype Lush^2. And I had yet better sound again from the newly formed 10/20 which is a 14/28. OK, what I could notice perhaps was now so much bass that for the first time since using the Orelo MKII speakers I had to idea to maybe tune down the bass a bit (DSP) because I heard a slight coloring coming from it. But otherwise the properties were so much of "generosity" in all frequencies, that I took it for granted and meanwhile thought that maybe I got too old to try the 4th and 5th Lush^2 proto setup. So I just did not do that and instead listened to it for about a week.
Until three days ago, because then a real Lush^2 was ready.
I suppose the time has come to explain a bit about the possibilities of the Lush^2, or actually what they comprise for its elements.
There we go. In the right top corner we see three silverly colored hatched shields denoted W, Y and R. The White is the original shield and the purple under that in the drawing is the isolation as we have it in the original Lush (let's call that Lush^1 for today). Looking upwards in the drawing, the purple isolation, the Yellow shield, the again purple isolation and the Red shield and a last purple isolation, are all new to the Lush^2. The braid (hatched yellow) is the same as we know it from the Lush^1.
Now try to imagine that the Lush^1 is all about (or at least foremost) the dielectric and how that forms the imdedance and further properties. This was explicitly thought over, or at least the best to my knowledge. With this, let's keep in mind that I trief to make a USB cable not with USB specs but with Audio specs. And say that this worked about because almost without exception people perceive the analogues sound of it (I never counted really, but we sold I think close to 2000 of them).
Now the Lush^2. Well, I can honestly tell you that I would not be able to tell the properties of it with these now 3 shields. Of course, we could say that 3 shields are better than 1 or something like that, but point is : I already have the empirical knownledge that this won't bring us far.
So read on ...
JSSG 360I can't avoid explaining what the base of the ^2 part is because it isn't my invention in full. So credit where credit is due, although nothing is new there too - but say this is about the particular application for the Lush cable.
What is known (or at least I knew it) is how "grounding" as such works out differently for a shielded cable when in parallel "over" the shield an other wire is drawn. Thus, solder a normal wire to both ends of the shield and now we have in parallel the shield and that wire. Can't do much, you'd say.
But it does. It changes the shielding properties wildly.
Actually this is the "JSSG" part; It stands for John Swenson Shielding Guidelines and it was brought forward in a Lush-tweaking communicty (over at CA).
Because people are creative, people like lmitsche/Larry & austinpop/Rajiv, thought to make a "360 degrees" version of his potentially JSSG'd Lush. This is how the the JSSG 360 emerged as a general shielding application to cables in general.
From elsewhere the topology of 3 shields were taken, and form there things got mad because of the confusion of what people connected to which. Should the shields be connected ? be connected at one end only ? should there be isolation between them anyway ?
Fun is : the tweaks can be applied around the original cable (sleeve/braid) - or at least that is how people are able to do it in practice. This won't work out 100% equal to a "native" situation, but that is OK as long as the sound improves.
Back to the Lush^2 possibilities, let's look here for an example of a few, out of 1000s'. Thus mind you, these are only examples, with the remainder to your imagination, because really everything is possble. Everything for any combination you can think of. So just digest somewhat :
White is still the inner shield, Yellow the middle one and Red the outer one.
Now try to envision how the first configuration on the top row will work out completelt different from the last one on the first row - there the middle shield floating but still contributing to the dielectric. Or what about the 2nd on the second row where all is connected in parallel, but floats (and do note that this is just legal and works bit-error free).
So, ready now for the big blast ? then here we go with the results.
There I was with my set Lush^2 real production cable. I had connected all like the very first config above. Btw, with that I anticipate some "crossed" shieling, with no real clue of how it would work out (maybe such a thing has ever been done before). So notice with this config that current might flow over the shield to begin with (thus also with Lush^1 which would only contain the White shield) and that currents now run into each other but separated by isolation. Some kind of "balanced" mode, but different. And FYI, would we want the "return path" not to be in the middle but outside ? no problem, because the Lush^2 can be onfigured for that too (again, really all countless combinations are possible).
As said, there I was. I listened to the 14/28 set as a 10/20 with this config and noticed this very explicit clean undistorted highs. And on a side note I asked around over here what was perceived according to them, but all what came from that over and over again was "clear". Thus not per se undistorted, what I wanted to hear from them (because that was my own perception). OK, fine.
Next up was the 10/20 processor with unchanged Lush^2.
Wow !! that did not last for 30-40 minutes because I got crazy of too much bass and too less/uninteresting highs. What a louzy USB cable that suddenly was !
I recalled the 10/20 processor to sound very very different so I thought to make it sound the same again as I was used to. I only connected the White shield, just as how the original Lush^ is set up. And bingo. The very same sound as far as I can recall it.
This is really wonderful because I really hoped for that (the least people can enjoy is the native Lush).
The sound in generalWell, what to say.
From the few combinations I applied, I already know that
a. the Sound Quality can improve massively from the original Lush;
b. you can tweak the sound to all directions which is about the balance.
Ad a.
This is what everybody reports who applied it - though they applied mainly one situation : all connected in parallel at both ends.
Ad b.
In an in fact crazily good sounding situation / config, I could easily show how a walking lower keyed (bass) line missed 6dB or so on the upper note. This normally goes unnoticed, but once you have the focus on this it may/will occur.
As a bonus, I can tell you what I actually hunted for :
After having heard the 10/20 (say from a few weeks ago the last time), the 14/28 could not satisfy me for 100% any more because it lacked the specialty the 10/20 has in an other area (it is much more mid emphasized). For this reason I found the 14/28 sound too thin (all is relative and I should not have listened to the 10/20). This in itself was thus solved by the kind of accidental setting the 14/28 to 10/20 cores with a for me perfect balance, but the Lush^2 showed that it could go all directions after all. It is only that I don't know how yet, and also that it will be about too many combinations to ever try in my life time. Thus, a typical community thing, perhaps.
How this is able to emphasize frequencies is technically beyond me yet, but all will be related to RF/EMI stuff which may be unmeasurable. Also, whether it is the environment hammering on the cable (and audio bits) or whether it is the cable hammering on the environment (like the D/A process) ... I can't tell. Fact will be that possibly even either situation is now massively prevented by the shielding but depending on how we do it. I myself am as far that of the original Lush^1 would coincidentally have sounded the best for these matters, the chance of that will have been 1:10000 (or whatever the number of possibilities).
One last remark about the sound, just because I noticed it;
It is the supermost easy to create a more umpf than what you were used to (that too is reported by others). This in itself is very interesting because "important". It is key to the more genuine sound (I'd say), never mind we got quite far already regarding this with the B'ASS amplifier in one's NOS1a/G3. While this too is an "emphasis" to frequency it does *not* work out like a shift towards an other emphasis. It just seems to work on its own. And for that matter, it is relatively easy to put the emphasis on two or even more frequencies. And in addition (or it's the same ?) what Cisks here repeatedly says is that "all is so separate". On its own. N.b.: This is not really how I observe it, but - or because what I hear is that all becomes so undistorted. Make that "not mixed up with the other sounds" and we have Ciska's judgment.
For
prices,
see here.
I think we managed nicely with the price and also we now allow for a shorter cable of 40cm, just because I'm confident that the configuration can allow for every possible anomaly-attack.
Anyway, people already owning a Lush^1 will receive a 50 euros discount per ordered Lush^2 (credited to the PayPal account).
The 300cm was removed from the gamma because we feel it just will take too long to make and will be too expensive for that reason. Apologies to those who wanted to opt for 300cm.
I sincerely hope that without exception now everyone can find a very best sound which is also ultimately better than what they were used to.
High Resolution link Lush^2 USB Audio CablePeter
PS: You won't be able to make the connections without a guide how to to it. This guide will be obtained for you on paper for each of the examples you see in above diagrams. From there you will easily be able to make any connection you like.
