[gooberdude]

Its become fairly apparent that my roost in the sky is bathed in RF...   

Way back when I replaced the stock RCA's on my TT with eichman bullet plugs.   Should i replace these with an all metal RCA that provides addt'l shielding??

[TheChairGuy]

Yeah, city digs are like that, Matt. I used all shielded power cords to great measure in Washington DC some 5 years ago.....but now, 6 miles from San Francisco, they are not needed.

Make sure all your IC's are shielded...you may even want to look at shielded speaker cable (it's often the longest length of wire in your system, outside of your cartridge coil windings, that aren't shielded).  I don't know a lot of brands that do this...one known by me is LAT International. 

Twisted for RFI rejection, or CAT5/CAT6-type cables, might help you out at moderate cost, too.

I think shielding, or some level of RF rejection,  several feet of wire will pay greater dividends for you than stressing over a 2" piece of rca jack currently unshielded     

[gooberdude]

I found out about the issue due to my IC's.     I made up a pair of shielded cables from Blue Jeans LC-1 cabling with the RCA's from an old pair of Mapleshade interconnects for the auggies.   Just to make sure my soldering was OK i plugged the LC-1's in between my amp & TVC, and kaboom....   egg & bass splatted all over my face.     

The Anti-IC's w/bullet plugs are just not meant for where I live.   

With this revelation i've ordered some lengths of chris venhaus' Pulsar wire and plan to get some nice RCA's.  I need a cable inbetween amp/preamp and 1 between phono stage and tvc.     

I've been asking around to see which cables of mine should be replaced...so far its just the IC's.   According to C. Venhaus, my power cords reject RF and speaker cables are immune to RF due to their low level signal duties.

After the new IC's are done, i might opt for a pair of cryo'd XShadow RCA's from cryo-parts to install on my TT.    I hope to try the new filament RCA's from Furutech on the IC's.



With this revelation and the new caps & resistors in the Silver iris x-overs...my system is darn near complete.   Kinda funny that i'm realizing just how detrimental RF can be - at this late in the game.

One tweak that's worked crazy so far is taping a few thin strips of ERS paper over the RCA inputs on my sub amp.   A load of deep & tight bass popped out.      I think the RF issues are pretty bad where i am.

[WEEZ]

Help me understand...is "egg and bass" good or bad?

WEEZ

[gooberdude]

well, i felt dumb for using unshielded cables all these years...that's the egg part.     

Embarrassment was soon overcome by waves of deep bass eminating from my speakers though.

I had to put 1 anti-IC to one channel of the amp and the LC-1 to another for comparison.   again, more egg on face.   

the results are wild - RF infiltration kills bass, imaging, emotion and blackness and all the goodies we want our systems to produce.

[TheChairGuy]

GooberMatt - I used the LAT cables for a long time in Washington DC (living 200 yards from the main radio and TV towers in that region you can say I had the RF blues, too  ).

The shielding on the speaker cables removed a lot of noise (ie, RF) from the picture.  Lower level signals (phono being the lowest of course) need the most attention, but I can speak from experience that higher levels signals in very RF-rich areas benefit, too.

At the very least make sure you have cables that are at least twisted for RF rejection...the CAT5 and CAT6's work well.

These PowerWraps are very effective, too, without changing the basic merits of the cable (as shielding can often do): http://www.highwireaudio.com/

[Jampot]

Mat

If you have unused input sockets (most likely on the pre I guess) on any of the items in the chain they will pick up RF like crazy.

Fit shortening plugs.

They can be bought cheaply but if you have spare plugs you can easily make them up yourself.

Just make sure you don't put them in any outputs by mistake

Jim

[WEEZ]

goober,

Thanks for 'splainin' the jargon to me.

There is a school of thinkers out there that say that shielded cables are somehow 'un-pure' and muck up the sound. My experience has been the opposite. Shielding and low capacitance are necessary characteristics of IC cables, IMO.

But, before I am accused of something here...I will be trying some unshielded high quality IC's in a few weeks at the maker's request and will give them a go.

WEEZ

[TheChairGuy]

WEEZ - unshielded IC's and the Power Wraps are a very, very convincing argument that shielding mucks up the sound (I've done an A vs. B).  The All Clears Power Wraps don't seem to muck anything up (for $25 or so) and you can use garden variety cheapest-of-the-cheap IC's (unshielded) and enjoy them.

Much has to do where you are located...ie, how far from severe RF issues. Some sort of RF rejection today is generally needed today...proliferation of cell sites, cordless phones, wireless routers didn't exist 20 years ago.  So, no matter living in city or country, some RF rejection is generally better than none nowadays. 

I happen to have all shielded IC's here now (I try to concentrate on larger issues in my audio chain - wires made me nutz swapping them out)...but use a Power Wrap on my captive TT leads to good measure.   I'm happy with my Revelation Audio Labs and Monster Cables...probably do to the higher purity copper and silver than their shielding properties.  The anti-IC's or some DIY brew might well be a fantastic candidate for the Power Wraps.

I use them on my captive power cords on my preamp and mono amps now to very good effect 

http://www.needledoctor.com/Highwire-Audio-Powerwrap-56-Diameter?sc=2&category=1271

[WEEZ]

TCG,

I hate messing with cables too. It can and has driven me crazy The truth is, that sometimes one might not know if they have an RF problem. Until it's gone

[gooberdude]

Weez, i've been turned off by shielding and thick dielectric ever since getting into this journey....       the real gist of why i have egg on my face.


I keep having flashbacks to a lot of posts at the Asylum about this topic, and about every 10 posts would be one from the voice of reason stating "Don't hate shielding, it can be your friend."


I might try one of those Wraps.   Musicdirect sells them locally, but i spoke with a salesman yesterday who said they aren't the perfect solution for people in my environment.  But, for $25 versus $120 for 4 new RCA's...i'm gonna try 1.

[TheChairGuy]

Yeah, I bought my few pairs I think from Music Direct...I think they're all priced rather similarly on the PowerWraps.

Yeah, your environment may necessitate shielding of some sort on everything...I think City-folk are just stuck that way