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.
