[danvprod]

Experimenting with running my equipment rack on the side of the Super Vs to keep the source equipment out from between the speakers. Unfortunately, I am dealing with some pretty bad foot-fall issues with my new suspended turntable, and mounting the rack to the side of the speakers works better, plus it opens up the option for wall-mounting the turntable should it come to that.

My question is, does anyone see any downsides to running a pair of line-level RCAs for the sub amps and speaker cables for the co-axs of the Super Vs in a techflex sleeve together to minimize the cabling clutter? I want to run the bundle along the baseboards, behind my corner bass traps and to the two speakers.

My plan is to still plug in the two sub amps to my P.I. Audio Mini Buss, but move my integrated tube amp (Decware, shown in the picture below) to the rack on the side, for easier volume control and also to attach my two sources to the inputs of the amp (DAC/turntable).

Suspended flooring in my listening room is causing me a whole bunch of angst...

Wall mounting the turntable between the speakers is out of the question due to a large window between the speakers.

Here you can see the current setup. I am planning on moving the Decware amp over to the side rack, and also moving the BPT 2.5+ (seen in back of first picture) to my source rack:


New maple rack, which I got to deal with the footfall issues of the AR-XA TT. Nice rack, not helpful at all between the Vs in my room. You can see the cheap 10' interconnects that I have wired up temporarily to experiment.

[corndog71]

Wall-mounting your turntable should help a lot.

[Shakeydeal]

I long ago wall mounted my turntable so I highly suggest that. But it looks as though you have enough room on either side of the window if you want to keep it on that wall.

Shakey

[Speedskater]

If the RCA interconnects are a coax with a heavy braided shield, then no problems.

[Keithh]

Suspended flooring in my listening room is causing me a whole bunch of angst...

Herbies Big Fat Dots under the speakers solved the same problem for me.

My turntable is on a maple rack between the speakers. The Herbies took care
of about 80% of the problem with my  Project TT and then I bought a VPI TT
and have had zero problems with it.

Major improvements in overall sound too, especially with imaging and soundstage.

[danvprod]

Thanks, folks. I'll add some additional pictures tonight.

@Speedskater -- Thanks for the thoughts on the RCA ICs. I ended up picking up 22' AudioQuest RG6U RCAs, which are coaxial 75ohm cords and double shielded for the long RCA runs. I'm probably going to order some Blue Jeans Cables for the long speaker runs (the Canare 4S11 versions as they may reject more noise due to the star-quad configuration). Right now I just picked up a roll of Monster XP from Amazon to test this out and to get the cable lengths I need before ordering something custom.

@Keithh -- thanks for the suggestions on the Herbies. It's actually not the speakers that are causing the issues, the table will happily play skip-free when I am sitting in my chair. It's when I walk up to the rack to change sides, try to lift the needle or breathe near the turntable.

The more massive rack has helped. Moving the rack to the side of the room has helped more, but I can still make it skip. At least now I can enjoy spinning LPs without the fear of damaging my records. I still need to be careful though.

@Corndog71, @Shakey -- Wall mounting is something that I may have to do soon. @Shakey, I see you have you table wall mounted, mounted on a spring platform and then some additional massive platform under the table. Do you mind PM'ing me some additional details about how you built that shelf? I am assuming you mostly DIY'd it?

[rollo]

Plug everything into the Minibuss. A non issue at lengths you require. We are big fans of shorter speaker cable longer IC to a point.


charles

[Speedskater]

BJC makes some of the best long RCA interconnects available.
For speaker cables there are countless good options.

[danvprod]

Thanks, @Speedskater --

The AudioQuest RCAs were the length I needed, and a really good price on eBay. I love all of my other BJCs, which I use for the rest of my analog sources.

I would definitely appreciate some suggestions on speaker cables.

A couple that I were looking at were as follows:

BJC Canare 4S11:
https://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/speaker/index.htm

Audioquest Star-Quad 4:
http://www.audioquest.com/star-quad-speaker-cables/type-4

Could also do Electra Cable B-4s, but it would have to be custom as they only offer up to 12' on their website:
http://electracable.com/speakercables.htm

Anti-Cables 2.1 are also an option:
http://anticables.com/speaker-wires/2-channel#!/IMPROVED-Level-2-1-Performance-Series-Speaker-Wires/p/14618506/category=3449817

As are Mapleshades:
http://shop.mapleshadestore.com/Golden-Parallel-Speaker-Cables/productinfo/PARALLEL%2DS/

I think for the longer, 20', speaker runs, a solid copper cable is going to be a better bet.

[Danny Richie]

I thought you were using short speaker cables and long RCA's?

[danvprod]

I thought you were using short speaker cables and long RCA's?

I need to use both long ICs and speaker cables, since I want to locate my power amp on the rack by my turntable and CD player.

Here is how the rack looks. You can see how the speaker cables and ICs follow the baseboard now:


Detail:


How the GR Super Vs look now with nothing in between them:

[corndog71]

I would keep power cords away from your interconnects.  If you really want to run them along the walls then try to separate them by an inch or two.

Also, my go to speaker cables are Kimber 4VS, 8VS on the cheap side or for a little better clarity 4TC, 8TC.

[Early B.]

The downside to long cables is the use of lower quality cables due to cost considerations. My component rack is on the side wall, too, so I reluctantly put out some decent money for custom 12 ft. speaker cables. With the high quality of gear you have, the cable quality should match it.

[Keithh]

If you are into DIY, I use a 4-wire braid of the wire Danny sells with male tube connectors with
my Wedgies. Also my favorite cable for the X-statiks. I don't know if it is the wire or the tube
connectors but I like it better than the other cables I have, Kimber 4TC and Morrow SP4. But I could
easily live with both those too. But DIY'ing with the wire Danny sells is about 1/5 the cost of those cables.

I've tried Canare 4S11 and BJC Twelve from my HT system with the Wedgies. About 30 minutes was all
I could take, a muffled lifeless sound compared to the others.

[Danny Richie]

The downside to long cables is the use of lower quality cables due to cost considerations. My component rack is on the side wall, too, so I reluctantly put out some decent money for custom 12 ft. speaker cables. With the high quality of gear you have, the cable quality should match it.

You hit that one right on the head. Some really good cables in short lengths won't be that expensive. But really long lengths get pricey in a hurry.

My favorite pair of speaker cables is about 38" long.

It really might be worth considering moving the gear to the front of the room.

[danvprod]

Right. I'd move the rack back to between the speaker if getting anywhere close to the turntable didn't cause it to skip because of the floor bounce. Having the rack back between the speaker means much shorter ICs and speaker cables. Plus I'd only need one power conditioner have a more compact, cleaner look etc.

So that has me back to considering trying to lag the rack to the structural wall behind it (under the window). Lagging the rack ought to help with some of the seismic issues.

This would then let me go back to considering the Electra cables for my speaker cables, since I'll only need 6' runs.

[Early B.]

Right. I'd move the rack back to between the speaker if getting anywhere close to the turntable didn't cause it to skip because of the floor bounce. Having the rack back between the speaker means much shorter ICs and speaker cables. Plus I'd only need one power conditioner have a more compact, cleaner look etc.

So that has me back to considering trying to lag the rack to the structural wall behind it (under the window). Lagging the rack ought to help with some of the seismic issues.

This would then let me go back to considering the Electra cables for my speaker cables, since I'll only need 6' runs.

Yeah, take this approach. Selling the BPT is a good move, too. Once you deal with the vibration issues and get some good cables, you'll be surprised at how much better your system will sound.

I wish I could put my components in the middle of the floor like your original setup to minimize cable lengths, but my wife wouldn't allow it, and the kids who visit occasionally would probably be a bit too curious. 

[danvprod]

@Early B. That's the situation that I am in too. I enjoy having my kids listen with me, but with everything on the floor (especially the turntable and hot tube amp), I worry...

Doing something like @jeffreybehr in the Super 7 thread: http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=141060.0 is another option, where I get maple blocks and put everything on the floor.

Another option that I was brainstorming today was to make a wider, wall-mounted shelf that is mounted just below the window. Deep enough to put my tube amp, turntable and DAC side by side, but off the floor to limit the floor bounce issue. I'll have to be a bit cautious because there is likely romex running under the window, but it is doable.

 

[mlundy57]

Right. I'd move the rack back to between the speaker if getting anywhere close to the turntable didn't cause it to skip because of the floor bounce. Having the rack back between the speaker means much shorter ICs and speaker cables. Plus I'd only need one power conditioner have a more compact, cleaner look etc.

So that has me back to considering trying to lag the rack to the structural wall behind it (under the window). Lagging the rack ought to help with some of the seismic issues.

This would then let me go back to considering the Electra cables for my speaker cables, since I'll only need 6' runs.

I put together an isolation system for my TT that works really well. It consists of two platforms and three layers of isolation footers. The isoation footers are a combination of Herbie's Big Fat Dots and Decoupling Footers from George Merril.

Decoupling Footers  -  http://www.hifigem.com/60-durometer-feet.html


Big Fat Dots - http://herbiesaudiolab.net/spkrfeet.htm#bigfat




The current set up has Big Fat Dots on top of the equipment rack,
A piece of 3/4" MDF on top of the Fat Dots,
Decoupling Footers on top of the MDF,
A piece of a birch workbench top on the footers,
More fat dots / NoRez damping layer on top of the birch platform,
And the TT on top of that. I needed thinner pieces for the front feet to level the TT.











How well does this work? When I was setting it up I had the equipment rack pulled out from the wall (on magic sliders). Once I had the isolation set up I played a record to see if the things that used to make the arm skip, walking close to the rack, touching another piece of equipment in the rack, etc. was fixed or not. Yep, they were fixed, none of that made the tonearm skip.

Since I was satisfied, I was ready to push the rack back into position. Only thing was I forgot to stop the record first. I just pushed the rack back and it kept on playing without a hitch, No skip, scratch or anything.

Won't try that again, but at least I know my isolation efforts worked. Adding the second isolation platform is what made the difference.

[danvprod]

@mlundy57 -- thanks for the detailed response here, definitely something to consider.

I'm back to the original setup, which sounds quite a bit better to my ears to the two alternatives (rack in middle, and all gear to side).
1. Sold the BPT 2.5 PC, and am back to just the P.I. Audio MiniBuss.
2. Amp is now in the center between the speakers, with my better supra ply speaker cables (short runs connecting the co-axial drivers).
3. Turntable and phono preamp is still on my side rack, since that is the only way I can play records without it skipping. I may still consider the wall mount and sell the rack.
4. DAC is behind the right sub amp connected to my mac for digital audio playback. DAC is now on cutting board.



I still have to do some cable organization work to try and keep some of the power cables away from the signal cables. And I have to get another TWL digital american PC for my DAC, although I have been considering the OPPO sonica DAC, since I can put all my FLAC files on a 1TB drive plugged into the OPPO and not have to deal with the long S/PDIF cable and USB to S/PDIF convertor out of my Mac. It also opens me up for high res playback.

The only compromise I can see right now is needing to run 22' RCAs from my phono preamp to my amp. But its a RG6U solid copper double-shielded cable and I can seem to hear any additional noise vs. the shorter BJC I was previously using.

I also played with carefully placing the speakers and toeing them in so they are firing exactly at the same angle behind my head. I've moved the speakers in about 3" and toed them out by a few degrees. I also moved them out into the room another 2" or so. I'm now at 83% width center to center vs. speaker to listening position. \

Here is the turntable and phono preamp.