[cryotweaks]

Hello Everyone,

I will be hosting a small get together this Saturday for the purpose of comparing some modded Squeezeboxes, taking a preview glimpse of the new Olive Music Server, and more (I am sure).

PM me for details.  This is a small space, so I have to limit the attendees somewhat.

Cheers!

Mike

[PeteG]

PM sent.

[sunshinedawg]

It will be good to see everyone again and to meet Mike.  I've kinda been out of the loop.  Looking forward to this one.

Sean

[mgalusha]

PM sent as well.

[Wayne1]

I'l be there  

I can bring some power supplies to compare.

For the ultimate in TweekGeekiness, I have five different "audiophile" fuses we can listen to to see what, if any, difference we can hear.

[Turk]

Sorry I won't be able to make it on Saturday.  Be sure to provide complete coverage for those of us with visiting relatives.

[cryotweaks]

Thanks everyone!  This session is full, but there will be many more in the weeks to come.  Stay tuned!

Mike
TweekGeek.com

[mgalusha]

A big thanks to Mike and his lovely wife Myra (sp?) for having us over today. Good sounds, good folks and some great food made for a nice afternoon. Thanks again for inviting us into your home.

It was nice to finally see and hear one of the Olive music servers. I can see why many folks are interested in this.

As usual Wayne brought lots of toys as well. We descended into ultimate tweekieness and swapped in/out some "audiophile" fuses. Logic and common sense tell me this cannot possibly have an effect. Interestingly enough they did have an effect (don't ask me why) and it was easy to hear. Some were better than others (there were 5 varieties) and each of us picked the same one as "better" than the rest. Why a 1.25" long fuse would make a bit of difference in front of a transformer with hundreds of feet of wire is beyond me but they did and all present liked the effect.  

Mike

[yo2tup]

so which was the "better than the rest" fuse?

[sunshinedawg]

I would also like to thank Mike and his wife for their hospitality.  I wasn't expecting such a great spread of food and then cake to top it off.        

The stock Olive had a better sound then a stock squeezebox.  The sound of the Olive was compressed compared to the modded SB's.  I'm sure Wayne will be able to work his magic with them  

We tried a bunch of fuses at the end.  We all liked the silver ceramic the best .  Things really got interesting when Wayne powered the Cyberlites (sp?) with  one of his trademark powersupplies and put the second best fuse in it (the best fuse was in the 'best" ps powering the SB.  This was easily the best sound of the day.  Detail was amazing with this combo.  We were listening to "Anna Lee' by Buddy Guy mostly and at this point I thought somebody had  replaced the piano in the recording with a REAL grand piano in the room.

If you can afford it, I highly recommend the Bolder best ps with the silver dc cable.  After Wayne mods the digital on my SB, I'm gonna have to figure how I'm gonna scrape enough together for it. Thanks to Wayne for bringing all his toys.

Again, thanks to Mike for a great afternoon of listening that I sorely needed.

Sean

[cryotweaks]

Thanks to everyone for showing up and lending their ears for this session.  I am looking forward to many more sessions over the coming months as there will be many new "toys" to audition.

For the most part this session was dedicated to Power Supplies and modded Squeezeboxes.  We did delve into the fringe towards the end trying out various fuses that Wayne had brought.  All in all it was a very educational experience.

The System
- SP Technology Continuum 2.5 Loudspeakers
- Nuforce Reference 9.02 Amplifiers
- Cerious Technologies loudspeaker cables, 2 pair for biwire
  configuration

- Harmonic Technology Cyberlight interconnects- Highly modified Brick Wall MOVless surge protecter/RFI filter. Mods
  consist of: Bybee filters on thet hot and neutral legs, Star wiring with
  continuous cast silver wire, Oyaide receptacles (1 - SWO DX, 1 SWO
  GX, 2 SWO XXX), and finally heavy use of Stillpoints ERS.

Music
- Buddy Guy "Anna Lee" from Blues Singer
- Occasionally Sarah McLachlan's "Train Wreck" from Afterglow would be
  used to reveal any midrange nasties.

PS Listening Impressions
We started our power supply comparisons listening to the ELPAC wall wart style linear power supply.  Quite a bargain for $50. You got quite an improvement in the Bass, and the overall noise floor was lowered, brining with it all of the benefits of a quieter background.

We then moved to Wayne's basic (?) power supply.  Another level of refinement was achieved here.  Especially noticeable in the detail revealed in the guitar solos of Buddy Guy's "Anna Lee"

We then moved to the Middle of the line PS with a copper DC cable.  The guitar section became increasingly detailed, bass was loading the room now, and in sections of "Anna Lee" you could hear Buddy Guy talking in the wayy background.  Wow!  We then switched out the DC cable to a silver one, and the highs opened up more, but I detected a slight hint of glare in my system at that point.  This would probably not happen in a tube based system. I don't think anyone else heard this, but I am extremely sensitive to this and my threshold for detecting glare is way lower than most, especially in my own system.

We then tried Waynes top of the line model.  The silver DC cable remained in the system.  This was the best sound so far.  Exceptional detail retrieval really drew everyone into the music.  Then he replaced the power cord we were using for the previous comparisons with a Bybee'd power cord with Oyaide terminations.  Wow!    You could hear everything!  At one point in "Anna Lee", the drummer accidentally hits a cymbal, that stood out.  The two guitars were now more distinct, the guitars became "alive" in the room.  The music was totally engaging and enjoyable.  Believe me, that is a feat because this was probably the 12th time we had listened to the same song.

After we had achieved what we thought was the best sound of the day,
we changed the power supply feeding the Cyberlight cables.  I was presently using Harmonic Technology's battery pack for the Cyberlights.  It gives a much improved sound over the wall wart, but I did not like the inconvenience of limited playing time, and having to remember to switch the thing over to "charge" when finised with listening.  Wayne made a power supply for the cables and brought it over for a comparison.  We learned (for the second time that day) that battery power is not always superior.  Waynes Cyberlight PS kicked the crap out of the Harmonic Tech PS.  The sound was more coherant, much richer and fuller, and the bass much much better.  At this point, I was in disbelief at how well the system was sounding.

Then Wayne busted out the audiophile fuses.  I thought surely we had gone over the edge, and if it weren't for the results we all heard, I wouldn't be writing this.  We would place the fuse to be auditioned in the power supply feeding the Squeezebox. We had the following:

Hi Fi Tuning Gold plated ceramic fuse
Silver plated ceramic fuse
Silver plated glass fuse
Gold plated ceramic fuse
Gold plated glass fuse

The gold and silver plated fuses I believe had the original tinning/plating stripped before plating with gold/silver.  Let me just say that none of us expected to hear a major difference.  I for one was preparing myself for some nit picky, strenuous listening.  Well that was not necessary, as the difference each fuse made was immediate, and in some cases dramatic.  The first fuse was the Hi Fi tuning fuse.  It blew us all away with the amount of improvement it brought.  It was almost as dramatic as adding a Bybee.  Soundstage opened up, the sound was more organic, and detail went up another notch.  The silver ceramic fuse really kicked it up.  Bass was more present, tighter and more tuneful.  The gold ceramic fuse was not as dramatic, and did not perform as well as the Hi Fi tuning fuse.  This may very well be a system matching thing.  The glass fuses overall sounded veiled after listening to the ceramic ones. No need to write further on them.

The winners were (in order):
- Silver plated ceramic fuse
- Hi Fi Tuning gold ceramic fuse
 -Gold plated ceramic fuse
- Silver plated glass fuse
- Gold plated glass fuse

Notice a trend?  The ceramic fuses faired better overall. They were simply not veiled in comparison to the glass fuses.  

After determining the top two fuses, we placed the top performer in the SB power supply, and the 2nd best in the Cyberlight power supply. The final setup of the day, power supplies and fuses, was flat out amazing.  Listening to "Anna Lee' for what seemed like the 25th time was an absolute joy.  Toes were tapping, hands were drumming on knees, everyone was loving it.

At one point in "Anna Lee" where the drummer accidentally strikes the cymbal, you could now hear the drummer stop the cymbal's ring with his hand.  Seriously!

What a day!  Great fun, great listening and a great deal was learned.


For those of you who are asking "what about the RWA modded Sueezebox vs. the Bolder?", we decided that we would not write up the results, as it may give an appearance of bias.  After all, Wayne himself was in my home, and Vinnie wasn't.  Additionally Wayne is performing mods to my Olive music servers that I am selling.  It wouldn't look good on my part to post a comment, and I don't think it would have much credibility in your eyes.

If anyone not affiliated with Bolder Cables or Red Wine audio is interested in setting up a group audition between modded SBs, I would be happy to volunteer my RWA modded Squeezebox if you cannot acquire one otherwise.


Cheers!

Mike

[Wayne1]

Thanks are due to Mike and his wife for opening up their home and for the great eats  

We did listen to the RWA modded SB3 first and then the Olive and then Mike TweekGeek's self modded SB2. I can now understand the excitement about the sound of the Olive product.

Mike went into very good detail about the steps in listening to different power supplies on his modded SB2. The ELPAC is a very nice improvement over the stock SB supply. I am getting another one in to look into modding it. I hope to be able to get a bit more performance out of it for not too much more money. For folks that already have a SB2 or 3 and want a fast, reasonable upgrade, I do highly reccomend the ELPAC WM075-1950-760 from Allied Electronics. The last time I looked they had around 40 in stock. I did hear a rumour that they might be replacing this model with a switcher, so you may want to act fast.

We took a break for lunch (wonderful!) and then went back to listening. This time we used a BOLDER modded SB2 with all the latest and greatest mods and a pair of Gold Bybees in the analog outputs. There was a lot lower noise floor, compared to Mike's SB2 and a bit more "analog" sound.

We then changed out the power supply for the CyberLights. The PS I built is based on the same design I use for the "Good" PS I make for the SB.  Some parts were changed to run it at 12 VDC. The DC cable I used was based on the Nitro design. There was quite a major improvement using the power supply over the battery. The low end realy filled out. As Sean reported, the piano now sounded like a full sized grand while on the battery it was more like an upright.

The fuse comparison was also fun. It was pretty educational to hear a pretty big difference in 1.25" of wire with different platings. The SB power supply was fed by a power cable built with solid core silver wire with Oyaide silver plated connectors. The IEC AND the panel mount fuse holder were both ACME Audio cryo-treated silver. All the internal wiring in the PS was solid core silver. The DC cable to the SB2 was also made of solid core silver.

The four fuses I had were prototypes sent to me by one of my suppliers. I mentioned that I had received the Hi-Fi Tuning fuse and was very impressed with the difference it made from the standard glass fuse I had been using. He had these prototypes made up and sent to me for evaluation. As the others have recounted, the silver plated, ceramic bodied fuse sounded the best in the SB PS.

I hope to be able to offer these fuses as replacements for all the SB PS I have built so far. They will be standard in all PS I will build in the future. My plan is to stock only the one value used in the PS. Estimated price on the fuse will be well under $10.00.

I am not sure of when they will be available. The supplier will have to ramp up for production. I will post on AC when they do come in.

I feel that the HiFi Tuning fuses sound very good. They are currently available in a variety of sizes and values. PartsConnexion does stock them. They retail for between $25.00 and $30.00.

When I first changed the fuse in the PS I asked Mike if he felt the difference was worth $30.00. He said "Absolutely!"