[ctviggen]

This weekend, I changed a generic 20 Amp outlet to two 20 Amp, silver-plated cryogenically treated outlets.  I also changed my Silver/Copper biwire speaker cable (which, incidentally, was connected incorrectly to my RM40s -- the "high" went to the "low" and vice versa) to cryogenically treated and more expensive single-wired cable.   Lastly, I reversed the phase of my speakers.  The paperwork that came with my amp said that the amp is inverted phase, so I thought that I should reverse the + and - connections on my speakers, which is what I previously did.  However, the amp paperwork makes no mention of phase reversal.  So, when I put my new speaker wire on, I did not reverse phase.

The end result?  I think I can tell a bit of difference, but the difference is tiny.  I had to replace my speaker wire, as I needed more length.  Nonetheless, I changed three things about my system and can honestly barely tell the difference (and I'm going from memory, which could be entirely wrong -- I could be making up what little difference I think I hear).  Conversely, when I added Real Traps, I put them up and could tell an immediate difference as I placed each one in their positions.  I've seen people on here who say that they've gone to different outlets and experienced much better sound.  If that's true, I applaud you, as I can't hear this.

[Wayne1]

Bob,

The Silver Plated Outlets will change in sound over the course of the next month, in my experience. Give them time and keep current flowing through them constantly. You should start hearing changes within the next day or two.

I suggest you play a CD with very obvious singer in the enter. Listen for a bit. Then reverse the phase at the speakers. When the speakers are in phase you should here a very obvious center image. It should be locked into one place. When the speakers are out of phase, the image will be very soft and ill- defined.

Run the speaker cables to the top posts of the RM-40s and use jumpers to the bottom (mids and highs) posts. the speakers will need to be retuned to match the new cables.

[TheChairGuy]

Yep Bob, some upgrades turn out to be nothing more than wallet blood-letting.

I heard not a whit of difference going from the (Lowe's) $9.80 Eagle 20A Hospital Grade Outlet to the vaunted $50 PS Audio one.  Swapping out speaker cable has never been more than a sideways upgrade...taste dependent. Power Cords and IC's, maybe due primaily to shielding effects, have been a better wire path to take.  Once you get well shielded ones, I've found further upgrades to be taste dependent.

I've not gone for the commercial room treatments, but a thick berber rug and window treatments (shades and drapes) were profoundly good upgrades about two years ago.

So, what you found is in line with what I've found and wasted dough on....I'm feeling vindicated now    

[warnerwh]

It's true it's good to have good clean power but acoustic treatments offer substantial sound improvement.  For the money expended I think acoustic treatments are a bargain and are much more effective sonically than new amps, preamps and certainly cables.  My personal opinion is that an quality outlet like a Pass and Seymour commercial grade that grips well is all you need.  Of course the wire to your room should be in good condition and rated for the circuit breaker it's connected to.  Buy some more Realtraps from Ethan and you will hear the difference again.  At least you have quality connections everywhere.  The bottom line is if you can hardly tell if there's a difference that's all you need to know.

[John Ashman]

For every audiophile tweak, there's a Home Depot equivalent for 10¢ on the dollar!

A better move would be a ground isolation tranformer, line conditioner or something like that, IMO.

[sm4r2d2]

Hi  Who is Ethan that sells Realtraps? Thanks--Richard--

[PhilNYC]

Hi  Who is Ethan that sells Realtraps? Thanks--Richard--

Here:

http://www.realtraps.com/contact.htm

[John Casler]

This weekend, I changed a generic 20 Amp outlet to two 20 Amp, silver-plated cryogenically treated outlets.  I also changed my Silver/Copper biwire speaker cable (which, incidentally, was connected incorrectly to my RM40s -- the "high" went to the "low" and vice versa) to cryogenically treated and more expensive single-wired cable.   Lastly, I reversed the phase of my speakers.  The paperwork that came with my amp said that the amp is inverted phase, so I thought that I should reverse the + and - connection ...

Well the thing about room treatments is, they don't have any "burn in" or "break in" time.

If you perform a tweak especially electrical, such as cables, conditioners, and the like, the improvement will be noticable depending on where you started.

I recently took my BPT BP3.5 Sig to a friends house, and dropped it into his system and the difference was really startling.  It went from a very nice sound to a pretty incredible sound overall.

But, if you already have "relatively clean" power, the difference might not be as great.

You bring up a good point about the RM40 and other VMPS tower speakers.  The Woofer posts are "ON TOP" and the Mids/HF are "ON THE BOTTOM".

There are a couple tweaks that I do that will literally "transform" RM40s and may cost less than $100-$150.  In fact they can be mind boggling.  Only problem is the are not permanent, nor are they attractive

[YoungDave]

Well, Bob, I am not surprised to hear your assessment.

An awful lot of the most popular or talked-about tweaks seem to have very little engineering justification - of course, it is always possible that our subjective assessment is a little bit ahead of the engineering state of the art, but not often I think.

1.  There are so many other voltage drops in the power chain caused by resistance that I cannot believe the outlet will make much difference.  The only thing an outlet can do is allow current to flow into your power cable with as little voltage drop due to resistance as possible.  The quality of power cord, power switch, circuit breaker in the amp, transformer losses, rectifier activity, and state of the reservoir caps & their bypasses are all equally or more important to the function of the whole AC chain - that is, to get the rated power supply DC into the amplifier rails.  Furthermore, even if the rail voltages are not perfectly clean, a well-designed amplifier will have a Power Supply Rejection Ratio (PSRR) that will make a small amount of noise and ripple on the rail irrelevant.   Does that mean we should ignore the outlet?  Well, no, because this is a hobby & we like to make everything perfect.  But the outlet is probably the least important thing - even though it is the easiest target.  No wonder you didn't hear much difference!

2. Sad fact that when you change more than 1 thing at a time, you can't tell what the effect of each change was.

3. Wayne was reffering to having speakers wired out of phase with each other - a very bad thing that anyone can recognize as Wayne pointed out.  I think you were referring to absolute phase, where the speakers are in phase with each other but the phase of both are 180 degrees out from the source.  There is no data to support the assertion that an inverted phase is audible - you can't hear the uninverted low-level signal to make the phase-inversion comparison.  And, of course, we have no way to know whether the phase was inverted during the recording and mastering  process, either.  I never believe anyone when they say they can hear that difference - not because I can't hear it (I'm not the best-trained or most experienced  listener) but because I don't see how it can make a difference from a physics perspective.  If it mattered, audio engineers would not design a phase-inverting amplifier.  I'd sure like to see a proper proof of that whole absolute-phase assertion...

[denverdoc]

I would echo the money would have been better spent elsewhere, but you already know that, so needless to rub salt in the wound.


 I would buy one of those big toriod trannys's with center top and use the +/- 60 volts as a power source for your gear. Power cables and specialty outlets are engineering overkill in my view, but I suspect you know that already.

However, clean AC power makes a world of difference as anyone listening critically late at nite vs mid day summer can attest to. I have dedicated lines and it is my property on which the local transformer sits, so I am pretty happy happy at this point.
John

[speaker]

The end result? I think I can tell a bit of difference, but the difference is tiny.

I'd bet that you would have seen a greater improvement in your listening pleasure, had you spent the same money on new program material to listen to. (FWIW)

speaker

[Mike B.]

Make sure your preamp does not invert phase also. The more detail you are able to hear, the more important phase becomes. The problem is many recordings are out of phase. A balanced output with a phase switch is really the ticket for this IMO. I suggest once you get your setup issues resolved, listen to the system for a month and then reinstall your old replaced stuff. Just a thought

[ctviggen]

I had a CD that had one song with phase on it (1/2 was correct phase and 1/2 was incorrect phase).  Unfortunately, they didn't list which half was which, so I never played it.  I have a very hard time changing speaker cable and any interconnect that goes to an amp.  My system is in a stand that matches my RPTV.  I cannot get to the back of the components.  If I want to replace speaker cable for my RM40s, I have to take out my DVD player, my NHT X-2 crossover, my 5-channel amp, and disconnect everything.  Then I can change the interconnects or speaker cable.  I then put everything back together. It typically takes me several hours to do this.  On the weekend I put the in the speaker cable and the new outlets, it took me all of Saturday (only a few hours, then I had to go to prior commitments) and I took several hours on Sunday to finish putting in the outlets and the cable.  I got to listen to five songs I knew well, then I had to leave for even more commitments.

But how could I really tell the difference between music I hadn't heard for (at least) two days and music I just played?  It's really hard to tell the difference.  These are my third set of speaker cables for this system, and each time, I had a hard time telling what the differences were.  If I could change speaker cable in five minutes, then it would be much easier to tell the differences.

Having said all that, there's definitely a smoothness to the sound that wasn't there before.  I changed speaker cables for the following reasons:  (1) I was at the limit of length and could not modify the position of my speakers; (2) I wanted to be able to route the speaker cables away from all the bazillion wires that are behind my system, which meant more length; and (3) I wanted to see if I could improve the sound.  I had previously found the sound to be fatiguing.  If I listened to a bunch of songs in a row, I would start to not enjoy the sound.  There was a certain harshness there.  Now, the RM40s allow one to dial some of that out, but I had to fix (1) and (2), so I was hoping that I might also fix (3).  The current cables (Border Cables) seem to fix (3).   I now no longer feel the need to adjust the RM40s, whereas before I couldn't listen to my system for that long.  (I am going to adjust the RM40s, though, just because I've not done so yet.)

As for other improvements, I can't tell more without being able to do some comparisons between old and new cables.  But the improvement is substantial from the sense that the sound's no longer fatiguing, which allows me to enjoy the music.  

As for phase, Wayne from Bolder cable is sending me a CD to test the phase.  Without something that you know is correct phase, it's really hard to tell whether you're in phase or out of phase.  I haven't had time yet to switch phase again at the speakers to see if I tell any difference.  I bought a bunch of new music and am listening to that instead.  I do know that if there's a difference in soundstage, I can't tell what it is -- Johnny Cash was in the middle before and he's there now.  

As for the outlets, I don't know how much they helped or didn't help.  I should note that my power runs only about five feet from my breaker box to where I plug my amps (3 of them) in.  I also live in a relatively uncongested part of CT -- I'm on 3.5 acres and really only see two surrounding houses, and they're not close by.  I'm also using an Ack Dack, which runs off of batteries.  I needed to put in two outlets instead of the one I had, so I tried the outlets.  Again, it took a while to put these outlets in and wire them, so it's really hard to test to see if there's any difference.

[eico1]

Don't forget, with multi-mic/track recording few engineers keep track of each channels phase or can even verify all tracks are in phase, pop in a compressor here or eq there and it's a gamble if it is wired in phase or not. Many mic pre-amps even have a phase switch, so who is sorting it all out?

steve

[Ulas]

ctviggen, rather than swapping speaker cable leads, phase reversal can be done at the line-level input to your amp with the flip of a switch. All you need, for each channel, is a DPDT switch and an input transformer.

schematic

Jensen makes the best transformers but they are pricey. Here’s how I did the phase switch in my system using the Jensen JT-11P-1BN, which is mu metal shielded and mounted with an octal socket.

A source of reasonably priced Jensen transformers is the Jensen Iso-Max available from Markertek. Just add a two DPDT switches and a little rewiring and you have a complete stereo phase reversal switch.

I also use the Iso-Max hard-wired into interconnects to provide galvanic isolation between components. This is essential the same as the $575 Q-Audio Interface box.

[Ethan Winer]

Bob,

> Wayne from Bolder cable is sending me a CD to test the phase <

Since you're so close, consider this an open invitation to visit me and see/hear my home studio. I have all the tools needed to demo all of this stuff for you, like absolute polarity - which is not the same as phase even though it's often called that - and different sample rates and bit depths, etc. This invitation goes out to anyone else here too.

--Ethan

[ctviggen]

Thanks, Ethan.  I'll take you up on that, sometime (plus, I'd like to get a few more traps, too, although I realize don't live near the factory).  I'm also going to try a totally blind test with some stuff I'm ordering.  I'm going to be blindfolded, then have a helper randomly select cables to put on, then I'll see if I can tell any difference.  I do think the new speaker wire has made more of a difference than I initially thought -- the music seems "smoother" and is more listenable.

[Ethan Winer]

Bob,

> I'll take you up on that, sometime <

Great, I'd love to meet you in person.

> I'm going to be blindfolded, then have a helper randomly select cables <

I might be able to help you with that too, though I'm not willing to futz with the speaker wires in my studio because they're a nuisance to get to. I can get to the speaker wires in my home theater easily but, well, when you see the receiver and other gear I have in my HT you might not be interested anymore.

--Ethan

[ctviggen]

Yeah, but the guys from which I picked up the last traps were impressed (for those who don't know, I drove to the factory, which isn't far from my house, to pick up the traps).  They said that your system sounded great.   I think that interconnects and the like matter somewhat, but the amount they matter is much less than your products. For speaker wire, interconnects, and even D/A converters, I have a hard time hearing the differences.  For your products (and eighth nerve stuff, too), I heard immediate and much larger improvements.  So, while I have bought expensive wire, I think that given a choice between acoustic products and wire, the former is better than the latter.

[John Casler]

.I'm also going to try a totally blind test with some stuff I'm ordering. I'm going to be blindfolded, then have a helper randomly select cables to put on, then I'll see if I can tell any difference. I do think the new speaker wire has made more of a difference than I initially thought -- the music seems "smoother" and is more listenable...

Hi Bob,

Do be aware that at a certain perception level, that sound pressure and frequncies "can" be sensed by not only the ear/brain, but also other areas of the head and body.

I never wear my reading glasses when listening for example, because they definitely block and change my perceptions

I have to assume that this is due to the sensory neurons in the orbital area of the eyes and same in the sinuses behind the nose.

A blindfold might have a similar blocking/absorbing effect.

So, while I have bought expensive wire, I think that given a choice between acoustic products and wire, the former is better than the latter. ...

Don't worry, I think it will end up being money well spent.

I think you just put the cart before the horse.

Kinda like buying a great work of art before getting the glasses you need.  After you get the glasses, you can truly appreicate the Picasso

I think room treatment should occur early on, and then the "fine tuning" will be more perceptible and meaningful.

I have a highly treated room and hearing differences between wire and components is getting much easier.

Keep us posted