[BrianM]

Upon further clarification, the conclusion I'm led to draw is that the difference from the cable swap was clearly audible but not paradigm-shifting.

[ted_b]

BrianM,
Paradigm shifting?  Nope.  If anything, the paradigm of what we are used to hearing from speakers has not changed for some time, IMO.  It's evolutionary, not paradigm-shifting.  I mean, the SP Tech Revelations are great speakers, and will likely do, for me, a combination of what I've loved from 4 or 5 other speaker designs, all under one roof.  That's my win!!!   This art of listening always involves compromises, and I've bet, with my $$, that the compromises I need to deal with while listening to the Revs are much less and much different than my other great speaker choices of the past...in my room.

To me, the paradigm shift in audio is in room acoustic treatments and software, and in general, understanding the relationship among the hi-fi, the eardrums and the room.  That, to me, is a huge shift in problem solving.  And the result is that you get to hear great speakers like the SP Tech's throw out incompatible cable designs like they were viruses.

[Big Red Machine]

Looks super Ted.  Next time I'm at headquarters I'll need to swing by.  I'll bet they are suweeeeet!!

[AB]

So Ted, The IC swap was from XLR to XLR, correct? Not single ended to XLR.
Just curious...

[ted_b]

So Ted, The IC swap was from XLR to XLR, correct? Not single ended to XLR.
Just curious...

Correct,both cables pairs were XLR balanced

[2bigears]

  hi Ted,hope the tuning is working out,breakin in is a PITA.I hope i do not need to change ic's as the money tree is dryin' up a bit.I hope my Gabriel golds work on the ic part of my upcoming Rev ended system cause i ain't buyin' no more.Man,this concerns me?? I was lookin for plug and play to a certain degree.Happy New Year

[bhobba]

Thanks....but I'm not sure what you are getting at; why you call my cable switch a criticism?   I mean, this is an audio forum.  I'm very sure a lot of us on this forum can hear cable differences.  Jason and Bob heard it immediately.  It was not difficult.  It's all about synergy, but that's not new news.   Thanks again for the nice comments.

Bob thought cables were probably 'hooey' as well.  I always thought, (I have never been able to hear any difference), based on what I had read, and backed up by blind listening tests conducted by knowledgeable people (eg engineers), it was audible, but, in the words of Dave Ellis - you get more bang for your buck with better diodes.  Now experience has made Bob a believer - and he has a theory to back it up - a theory he will be using to design his own cables.  It will be very interesting to see how they sound when fed to his 'shockingly naked' speakers.

Thanks
Bill

[ted_b]

Bill,
I'll let you know.  His Zero Resonance cable theories will be put to good use as my speaker cables, both amp-to-crossover, and crossover-to-speaker.  Silver/gold to the tweets, copper to the woofs.  I just need to give him my final lengths as I've moved my amp.

[ted_b]

hi Ted,hope the tuning is working out,breakin in is a PITA.I hope i do not need to change ic's as the money tree is dryin' up a bit.I hope my Gabriel golds work on the ic part of my upcoming Rev ended system cause i ain't buyin' no more.Man,this concerns me?? I was lookin for plug and play to a certain degree.Happy New Year

No worries.   My BlueJean XLR's (Belden 1800F) are $80 for a 5M pair!!  The point is: it's not the $$, it's the synergy/combination of parts and tones/textures that make the recipe work or not.  Could have easily been a $2k cable replaced by $50 cable.....IOW, this could work to your favor.

[2bigears]

  thks Ted,how are those puppies sounding ???? Ear candy    Pat

[ted_b]

thks Ted,how are those puppies sounding ???? Ear candy    Pat

Ya mean compared to my 10am comments this morning??   

You guys are nuts!

[BrianM]

ted, my use of "paradigm shift" wasn't meant to be taken literally, just an expression, wasn't looking for a lecture on Audio Paradigms.  I just meant that the different cable must not have transformed these speakers from "okay" to "amazing" - a "night and day" difference if you will.  If they did, well, they're curious speakers to be sure.

[BrianM]

Bob thought cables were probably 'hooey' as well.  I always thought, (I have never been able to hear any difference), based on what I had read, and backed up by blind listening tests conducted by knowledgeable people (eg engineers), it was audible, but, in the words of Dave Ellis - you get more bang for your buck with better diodes.  Now experience has made Bob a believer - and he has a theory to back it up - a theory he will be using to design his own cables.  It will be very interesting to see how they sound when fed to his 'shockingly naked' speakers.

Okay, I mean, what happened here was a Kimber cable was swapped out for a Belden.  I could understand better if the speakers really needed Bob's custom designed cable to perform their best.  I wonder how dissimilar the Kimbers and Beldens are from each other, or how similar either is to Bob's own designs.

[ted_b]

ted, my use of "paradigm shift" wasn't meant to be taken literally, just an expression, wasn't looking for a lecture on Audio Paradigms.  I just meant that the different cable must not have transformed these speakers from "okay" to "amazing" - a "night and day" difference if you will.  If they did, well, they're curious speakers to be sure.

Well, words are weird, aren't they, and on these forums no one knows if you are speaking "paradigm", for example, as somewhat literally or not.  It's been discussed a lot in the more literal sense lately.  Thought you were going there.  Didn't think I was lecturing, sorry; I just thought I'd spend two sentences giving my views on paradigm shifts.  I'll try again....  I guess I would characterize that final swap as an ever so slight turn on the focus wheel of a camera; it's a small click but the before view is foggy and out of focus, the final view is much clearer.  To me what made the difference is the almost Hubbell-like resolution capabilities of the Revs.  I expect even more clarity when I bring back the SR Tesla's....however, that assumes what snapped into place with the Sasons as speakers will do the same with the Revs.  We'll see (hear).

Bob or Jason, how would you describe the differences once the BlueJean Belden XLR's were swapped in?  You are the ones who had the epiphanies.....

P.S .  To my knowledge Bob's cable designs are so far limited to speaker cables, not XLR's or IC's per se...at least yet. 

[Double Ugly]

It will be very interesting to see how they sound when fed to his 'shockingly naked' speakers.

From what I could tell, they perform quite well.

I don't have them, but a pair was used during our listening session after Bob replaced the 'old' crossovers in Steve's Revelations.  Though no A/B cable comparisons were performed while we were there, it was patently obvious they weren't hampering the sound. 

'Course, that was the copper version; Ted will have the top-of-the-line silver/gold running to his tweeters, and I'll be using silver/gold throughout (all internal and external connections).  I don't know how much better it'll be, but I'm a wee bit beyond cautiously optimistic. 

[Aether Audio]

Guys,

There's that whole camp of people that may want to fall in love with your words, but could be hesitating in based on the tremendous amount of difference in sound you've achieved from one ic swap.

So these speakers sounded just okay until you swapped out one pair of interconnects?  Seriously?

Upon further clarification, the conclusion I'm led to draw is that the difference from the cable swap was clearly audible but not paradigm-shifting.

This whole issue of cables and their effects opens a real can of worms.  Anyone that has known me for any length of time will tell you that I was one of the audio world’s biggest skeptics – until I heard the differences for myself.  Even then I resisted accepting my own experience until I could put together some kind of rational hypothesis based in solid physics that might explain it all.

In Ted’s case the initial question is… “Well, do the Revelations sound good or not?”  This would be the question regardless of the model or brand of speaker being evaluated.  The initial answer that I would have given as an objective listener that night at Ted’s would have been…”heck yeah!”  But that would have been based on hearing selections of music that Ted played which I was not familiar with.  Not knowing the recordings, I thought everything sounded pretty good.  The one issue I noted immediately was that the micro-dynamics and resolution just weren’t there like they should have been.  Then again, they weren’t there at our shop either when we listened to the system before we packed it up.

This was the second pair of Ultimate crossovers that we have heard since we started building them, and in both cases the effect was the same.  Well…when you look at those monstrous Mundorf capacitors, that’s probably to be expected.  A capacitor of moderate value doesn’t end up being that large because the metallic plates (+/-) used are extra thick.  No, the reason is that the manufacturer is winding one capacitor on top of another in reverse direction in order to cancel out inductance.  Essentially, you have two caps in one.  With all that added dielectric you can figure the things will need a lot of burn-in time before they start sounding right.  In this case, a whole lot of burn-in time, as those things are HUGE!  I figure that owners of these Ultimate crossovers are going to have to “bang” on them for quite some time in order to loosen up all that dielectric.

This pretty much has to be the source of the resolution issue, as the “standard” crossovers sound considerably better “right out of the box.”  Since I went to great lengths to do a board layout that minimized inductance as much as possible, that’s the only explanation left.  Well, that or those expensive Mundorf caps are a rip-off.  I highly doubt that though as Karsten has a very keen sense of hearing for starters and I seriously doubt Mundorf would ever have the reputation that they do if that were the case.

The upshot is that when we first fired up the Revs, the only issue in my mind was as outlined above.  My son Jason, having even a little keener sense of hearing than myself though, suggested that we listen to something we were familiar with.  I had a bit of a nagging doubt too so together we suggested trying a disc we have heard a gazzillion times – Diana Krall’s “Girl In The Other Room.”  Ted had that on 24 bit/96kHz so we were set to go.  Here’s where it gets freaky.  I heard about 3 seconds of that and I lost all sense of etiquette.  “That SUCKS!” popped out of my mouth before I had a moment to think – but it was the truth... as far as I was concerned.

You can believe whatever you want about cables, SP Tech speakers or our sense of hearing  - I really don’t care.  But don’t try to tell Jason or me that we don’t know what our speakers sound like or are capable of sounding like – on source material we know.  We may have yet to hear them to their full potential as a result of limited equipment resources, but we know how good they can sound up to the point we experienced them so far.  In that, I believe only Karsten knows just how far they can go.  Other than that, IMHO they sound pretty darn awesome when they’re fed correctly.  Good enough anyway that nothing at this year’s RMAF had me breaking a sweat – FWIW.

Anyway, after hearing Diana, we suggested trying our own front-end gear hooked up to Ted’s DNA 500.  Mind you, we were still using those Kimber XLR cables the whole time.  Well, 3 seconds into that I said, “There’s the Diana I know.”  The sound was just a little “edgy” – probably due to jitter from the cheap $50.00 portable DVD player we were using (being fed via SPDIF into a top quality Orpheus DAC) – but the resolution and detail were a lot closer to what we expected.  Even more than that, the soundstage was back where Diana sounded 8 to 10 feet away instead of 20 to 30 feet as it had been before the switch in equipment.

Well, at that point Ted (correctly I might add) felt that the sound was a bit too “digital” so he burned a copy of the disc and fed it through his Modwright modified Transporter and Modwright preamp.  That was definitely better than the original DVD player he was using when Diana “sucked,” but still not quite up to par.  We were all scratching our heads when Ted had the stroke of genius to try swapping out those Kimber XLRs for the Blue Jean ones.  BAM!!! – There it was – the sound we were looking for.  Still not as good as I’ve heard from the standard crossovers…but darn close.  Close enough that we felt we could go home feeling pretty good about what we had delivered to our ever-so-patient customer.

As I said, the resolution and detail wasn’t quite there yet, but that’s going to take time.  Other than that, everything was sounding really great.  You can believe it or not – that’s your prerogative.  All I know is that one set of cables made one heck of a difference.  A new “paradigm” difference?  No, but enough to take a really, REALLY “good” sounding speaker into the realm of absolutely “GREAT” sounding.  But then that's just my opinion.

So what about cables?  Let’s put it this way.  Take your favorite female model or movie star and plant a big red pimple on the end of her nose.  Does that make her “ugly?” No.  She’s still 99% beautiful but you just can’t get past the pimple.  Now what happens when you remove that pimple?  Ahhh… true love consumes you once again!  Do you really care if she used Clearasil, Oxy pads or plastic surgery?  No.  If you’re a dermatologist you may have your opinions about what should or shouldn’t work best, or even what products you consider a “rip off.”  Unless you are nigh unto God in knowledge and understanding regarding the matter, the point is that regardless of your opinion, you might be right but you could be wrong.  I know I have been - once or twice.   For all we know the Pope may have sprinkled Holy Water on Catherine Zeta-Jones’ nose and now its all better.  Whatever works.  Who cares “why” or “how?”

-Bob

PS.  I will “blow my own horn” and say this much.  For me it’s a testimony as to just how accurate and revealing our speakers are.  When a cable swap can make that much difference it does tend to leave one scratching their head in amazement.
 

[BrianM]

Bob, I think cables can make a difference, too, no doubt more so on more revealing speakers.  Your story and pimple analogy clear up the confusion (my confusion anyway) about the original anecdote.  There were a few steps between "sucks and "almost there" I wasn't privy to.

[bhobba]

The sound was just a little “edgy” – probably due to jitter from the cheap $50.00 portable DVD player we were using (being fed via SPDIF into a top quality Orpheus DAC) – but the resolution and detail were a lot closer to what we expected.  Even more than that, the soundstage was back where Diana sounded 8 to 10 feet away instead of 20 to 30 feet as it had been before the switch in equipment.

Intertesting if true Bob.  If it is the top of the line Orpheus then it uses Anagram technology.  I have read stories of engineers who tried every which way to spoof that technology, from using the the crappiest transport they could find, to directly injecting jitter into it.  The result was always the same - no effect - the jitter was the same as the on-board clock.  My suspicion is something else may be going on.  Interesting what Karsten's investigations show what laptops are not as good feeding an Anagram dac.  He suspects jitter as well.  If true how it escaped the engineers who tried to spoof it will be interesting.

BTW - as usual an excellet post Bob.

Happy new year to Bob and all.

Thanks
Bill

[Bill Baker]

 Hi Guys,
 In my opinion, Ted's Revalations are far from showing their true potential with that crossover. Having used these same components I know how long they take to open up. The Mundorf caps are 800-1200V rated which means they will take much longer to come into their own as compared to most other 200V "crossover" capacitors.

 These particular capacitors are also the most honest capacitors I have yet to hear. Knowing how accurate Bob's speaker are and how truthful these capacitors are, they will bring out information on recordings you never thought was there.  Throw in the right cables and your done but I won't go down the cable road here.

[bhobba]

In my opinion, Ted's Revalations are far from showing their true potential with that crossover. Having used these same components I know how long they take to open up. The Mundorf caps are 800-1200V rated which means they will take much longer to come into their own as compared to most other 200V "crossover" capacitors.

That's the most logical explanation I have heard so far.  Thanks for the tip Bill.

Thanks
Bill