[bhobba]

Hi Hugh and All

I was down at Mike Lenehan's on the Gold Coast a few times over the last couple of weeks checking out his ML1 speakers and cables.  In fact I liked them so much I got a pair.  We were having a chat and talk got around to amps.  He mentioned he had heard the Soraya and thought it was very very good.  But when I mentioned you were working on an amp for about $800 or so that some posted they thought actually beat the Soraya - well he was flabbergasted he can't understand how you can do it for the price.  So Hugh - kudos - well done.

Just as an aside this is the first time I have actually heard differences in cables - I bought some of his top on the line cables.  He did a demo comparing them to some $8000.00 ones (who would pay that for cables?) and his cables totally blew them away - and they were just $600.00.  Got a pair.  Mind you the difference was subtle - but none the less apparent - even my sister heard it. 

As you can see my financial problems have now abated (took my DIY super early and get my full government super in November) so I have a bit of money to splurge with.  Initially got a valve amp to power my new system because I never had one before and wanted to check it out.  Got it from Joe Rasmussen in Sydney who I believe Hugh is acquainted with.  It actually sounds pretty good - in fact its as good as I have ever heard.  It sounds equally as transparent to my ears as Mikes 500w Macintosh's (they evidently do 1.2kw on peaks) with just a touch of what I would call 'honey'.  However, with all due respect to valve aficionados, I look forward to getting a NAKSA as soon as I can tee up someone to help me build it.  I don't like the fact valves blow all the time.  Comparisons to Joe's valve amp will be very interesting and I hope to post it.  In fact I could be persuaded once I get one to leave it down at Mikes for a while for people to check out - but thats a bit in the future.

Also I go a new Wyred For Sound DAC.  Check out:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=83276.0

Hope some of you guys can make it down to Mikes to check it out over the next couple of weeks.

Thanks
Bill

[AKSA]

Small world, Bill.  Craig Connor was down recently from Brisbane, stayed overnight with me, and we had long chats about audio.  He is a good friend of Mike Lenehan, and he brought his cables for me to test.  I passed on buying for the moment, but they were very good.  Craig absolutely raves about the quality of Mike's speakers.

I did not have a NAKSA here for Craig to audition, unfortunately.  It was in Sydney on audition, in fact.  But today I took the same amp to an engineer friend with the Clio Audiomatica test program, and we put it through its paces.

At 25W, 1KHz into 8R:  THD of 0.04%, 92% of it second, third and fourth harmonics, all musical.
At 1W, 1KHz into 8R:  THD of 0.0082%, 93% of it second, third and four harmonics.

These are actual measured results.  They accord almost lineball with my simulations, which staggered me.  Furthermore, as I suspected, they are monotonic decreasing, which Jean Hiraga felt was the best profile to aim for.

I came away from the test session amazed at the agreement between my hunches, the simulations, and the measured test results.  None of these measurements say much about how the amp processes music, but they are the accepted convention of audio, right or wrong, and they are very, very good.

Cheers,

Hugh

[bhobba]

Hi Hugh and All

Yes those cables floored me as well.  First how the hell can they make such a difference - even a subtle one?  It has me beat.  But as you have said even though you have built many different amps over many years you don't fully understand what makes an amp sound good.  There just seems to be so much going on here we don't yet fully understand.

Mikes gear is extremely well built.  For example he lines his speakers with steel to reduce resonances as well as offset bracing that creates slightly different resonances each side of the brace so the resonances are a bit out of phase and tend to cancel.  That and other measures makes them unbelievably dead.  Listening is very interesting - they are extremely neutral and quick and notes don't actually shimmer (unless of course it is in the material) - they stop dead.  Its a little disconcerting initially. They just let go of notes in a way other speakers cant seem to mange.  In fact a good friend of mine listened to them and didn't like them because he enjoys that shimmer.  To me it sounded more real.  He is not the only one.  I know of at least one other person who bought one and had it for quite a while.  But at the end of the day they were simply not 'musical' enough so got rid of them.  Interesting. 

Anyway great figures on your amp.  Well below that .1% some recon is needed for all amps to basically sound the same (not that I agree with that).  I am looking forward to getting one built - as I said I just need to tee up someone to help me with that.  If you have some ideas on that let me know - I have a some ideas as well so I think its doable.  As soon as that is out of the way you have an order.

Oh and I did something fun and interesting.  I ran Mikes speakers off a little tripath job of about 8w into 8 ohms.  It actually didn't sound too bad.  It wouldn't play loud and it was clearly beaten by the other amps he had but seeing this tiny thing running the speakers was a real hoot.  Great for computer speakers which his how I plan top use it.  Its still down at Mikes so if anyone is up that way they might like to pop in for a listen - its a hoot.

Thanks
Bill

[bhobba]

Hi Hugh and All

Found someone happy to build a NAKSA for me - in fact it piqued his interest.  So Hugh I will be getting one.  How would you like payment?  Can I pay direct to your account to avoid Pay Pal charges?

And once built, as mentioned previously, I will be leaving it down at Mike Lenehans for a while so others can have a listen and check it out.

Will be sending you a PM to firm up details.

Thanks
Bill

[AKSA]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the vote of confidence - I have emailed you!

Hugh

[ginger]

Interesting comments on speaker cables.

I'm one of those folk who would not consider paying hundreds of dollars for speaker cables.
 ... BUT...
Very often when I'm doing the final finessing of an amp and do a mod to one channel only, then listen to see which channel is best, I've found myself picking the channel with the shortest speaker cable rather than the one with or without the latest mod .... so maybe I'm wrong!!!

If you do final amp tweaks this way, swap the speaker connections between channels to make sure you are selecting for the right reasons.

Cheers,
Ian

[AKSA]

Agree, Ian,

cables can be significant, but are usually over-rated.

Hugh

[bhobba]

cables can be significant, but are usually over-rated.

The difference I heard with Mikes cables was subtle but obvious.  Whether the improvement I heard was worth $500-600 only you can decide.  The reason I got them is seeing this 'el cheapo' clobber a pair of $10K cables bought a smile to my face I still can't wipe off. 

Thanks
Bill

[AKSA]

Bill,

I have a MAJOR problem with $10K cables.  I think it is pure snake oil, it angers me - I think it's playing on ignorance, and I hate it.  Many years ago a guy showed me his $12K cables, and with a LF100, we swapped them for my cheapies, and they sounded better.  Turns out his expensive cables were highly capacitive, and designed to destabilise the amp, making it tizzy and bright.  It went a bit too far in this direction, and was fatigueing.

If you want really good cables you should be able to get them for less then $500, that's tops, IN MY VIEW.  Remember, I'm only one guy, so you can treat my opinion with a grain of salt.  But I can can still tell all sorts of subtleties using cheap interconnects and good quality speaker cables of moderate price.

Hugh

[bhobba]

I have a MAJOR problem with $10K cables.  I think it is pure snake oil, it angers me - I think it's playing on ignorance, and I hate it.

IMHO I don't think it is pure snake oil - I know it is. 

Many years ago a guy showed me his $12K cables, and with a LF100, we swapped them for my cheapies, and they sounded better.  Turns out his expensive cables were highly capacitive, and designed to destabilise the amp, making it tizzy and bright.  It went a bit too far in this direction, and was fatigueing.

Rest assured Mikes cables have zero problems of that nature.  Although on his site he says he has not measured them I know he has - his interconnects actually have low capacitance - which is a bit unusual for Ribbon cables.

If you want really good cables you should be able to get them for less then $500, that's tops, IN MY VIEW.  Remember, I'm only one guy, so you can treat my opinion with a grain of salt.  But I can can still tell all sorts of subtleties using cheap interconnects and good quality speaker cables of moderate price.

Look I agree - you should - and that is the maximum I would spend.  But when I was down at Mike's I saw how they were made.  There is genuine engineering going on here Hugh.  Now is the sound improvement worth $500 compared to say Blue Jean Cables which are reputed to be very good value and based on the work of Jon Risch at Cable Asylum who has investigated this stuff a lot.  I have zero idea - but will order some in to find out.  But even if not I was happy to pay up for what I considered was sound engineering.  As far as I can tell Mike's cables don't do the silly and outrageous things that laughable $12k cable did.  My gut feeling is Mike's cable will be a bit better than Blue Jeans - but will it be worth the extra dosh - for me probably since I was really taken with the work that went into them - but for others - maybe not.

I was just speaking to a guy at a Hi Fi store today because he mentioned he wanted to hear my ML1's so I took them along after picking them up from Mikes.  He liked them and thought they were very neutral but thought they obviously needed breaking in - which Mike and my ears thought as well.  He asked if he could hear them in a few months time after break in.  I said - sure.  I mentioned for the first time I had actually heard differences in cables.  He said cables are everything.  I smiled but thought - you turkey.  What I heard was real but subtle, and certainly not everything.

Thanks
Bill

[bhobba]

I have a MAJOR problem with $10K cables.  I think it is pure snake oil, it angers me - I think it's playing on ignorance, and I hate it.  Many years ago a guy showed me his $12K cables, and with a LF100, we swapped them for my cheapies, and they sounded better.  Turns out his expensive cables were highly capacitive, and designed to destabilise the amp, making it tizzy and bright.  It went a bit too far in this direction, and was fatigueing. If you want really good cables you should be able to get them for less then $500, that's tops, IN MY VIEW.  Remember, I'm only one guy, so you can treat my opinion with a grain of salt.  But I can can still tell all sorts of subtleties using cheap interconnects and good quality speaker cables of moderate price.

Hi Hugh and All

Just got off speaking to Eric Hider of dB Audio Labs the makers of the Tranquility DAC arranging to get one out here.  He agrees 100% with you and has even more horror stories like yours.  Such as the guy who had spent more than 1 million smackers on audio gear over a few years - the majority of which went to buy cables - none of which were any better than what he used - and they were much more sanely priced.  Eric is not in the cable business - he is in the computer DAC business but does sell some associated cables - a USB and mac mini power cable at about $150 or so.  But those that want to sell voodoo megabucks stuff are so entrenched he has a fight on his hands convincing people the megabucks stuff is not better and quite possibly worse.

Thanks
Bill

[VYnuhl.Addict]

Hi All,


    Cables are an interesting breed of accessories, and possibly the biggest cause of flame wars on posting groups. I can see them though as a way to voice a system, but I also feel there is much electrical logic often ignored within the rationale of different claims. Ive had the experience of having many different speaker cables, many very very average, cheapy, not so cheapy, but still under 100$ and have been able to dramatically change the sound of them with the same cables by such tricks as adding capacitance to one, one both ends of a speaker cable to simulate a capacitive cable. Series resistance too of low values, I believe its the combination, and ratio of these two that have the biggest effect on sound, a more inductive cable will isolate the speaker better from the feedback loop, capacitive cables will as Hugh says give a brighter sound by altering the stability of the amplifier to give the impression of more definition in the highs.



   Small signal cables are different, and make a huge difference based on output, input impedences, whether a line level is passive, active, low, high Z output. Then of course, balanced or unbalanced, and noise pickup. For a while my favorite IC cables were a homebrew 30awg Copper/Silver Kynar, braided with a single hot and two grounds, but while these worked well with an active output, they were horrible for the output of a passive, but great for the input from the line source, too much hum pickup!. I dont believe there is any cable voodoo out there that makes a better cable. I do believe that, once the transfer functions are right from one end to the other at the component end to not be impeded or affected by whatever is introduced in between on a rolloff standpoint the rest seems to make less and less of a difference and becomes much more subtle and harder to compare. Different configurations and makeups of cables seem to trade a benefit for a downside, Twisted pairs, braided, shielded will often trade noise characteristics for high capacitance, inductance, etc, it comes a matter of which one best interfaces with the sytem to create the desired sonic goal, which is much of why i think cables seem to be such a personal, sometimes stubbornly guarded bone of contention..


Colin

[gaetan8888]

Hello

My cables are diy 25 conductors Litz cables giving a total size of 10 AWG conductor wire, each polarities are braided separately, they sound superbe and very precise and they have no harshness at all. Testing my last amp on scope with a 10khz square show no instability even with a very low cdom cap.

I have try small value resistor in serial with the cable, an ideas from JLH, it isolate a bit more the amp from the load, it give good result depending of which amps and speakers.

I remember that Jean Hiraga did a quite deep analysis of many different types of cables many years ago.

Bye

Gaetan

[Tliner]

Hi All,

I have deliberately kept out of the great cable debate to see where it is going before I put in my two cents worth. I have used most styles and types of speaker cables over the years and have arrived at fairly conclusive results to a point, after which I think goes into the relms of the virtues of "snake oil".

Over fifty years I initally used any sort of wire to connect the amp to the speakers. Power cord wire was available so I used it and the speakers worked and were fairly good sounding for the day. Then that grey coated wire about 18-20 AWG with a black trace was all the rage. That stuff was popular till the late 1970's when better quality OFC 10-12AWG wire came on the market. Now that made a difference by clearning up the top end and generally the sound had more slam and decay. Since then I have detected very slight differences in sound mainly because the twin wires have been too close together in some brands of wire allowing smudging of the sound.  Then the fancy cables came on the market. Some may be slightly better than 10-12AWG cables but after which  the law of deminishing returns sets in IMHO.

Now here is some food for thought and comment. It is impossible to compare apples with onions.  Speakers can have some slight anomolies in the crossover or the drivers may not measure as they should and the crossover had been designed accordingly. I have a sneaking feeling that some of the fancy cables with high capacitance, inductance etc might actually be adjusting deficiencies in the speakers by adding or subtracting to capacitance, inductance or resistance or, to some degree the whole three. If fancy cables improve a system, fair enough. But any good quality cable over $A10.00 per meter is IMHO heading into the land where the law of deminishing returns goes exponential.

Cheers,

Laurie.