As my other thread may intimate, I’m looking to improve the performance of my main stereo somewhat. It’s decent if oldish kit (Arcam, Mission 741), but seems a bit muddy in the low end, and I’d like a bit more clarity. Never having been more than an amused onlooker of the audiophile world they are as bonkers as ever, with their 200 quid a foot speaker cable etc. There are glimmers of sanity though…here are my conclusions…..
1. Speaker positioning makes far more difference than the cable, especially distance from walls
2. Bi wiring makes a theoretical difference, but in the words of the scientific paper I read on the subject, moving your head slightly whilst listening would probably make more difference than biwiring
3. Budget but decent speaker cable is noticably better than cheap, and almost indistinguishable from super expensive
4. The T&E electrical cable they use for your ring main in the house is better than most speaker cable (solid copper, 12 AGW!!!)
5. The position you sit in makes a massive difference, as does the room layout, furniture etc. As most of these things are unavoidable constraints, beyond a certain point most further refinement can be ignored.
Any other sensible improvements recommended? Or hilarious stories involving freezing CDs, attaching tin foil with crocodile clips etc?
Would certainly agree with 1, 3 and 5.
This is a good read on “audio woo”, with a few practical steps for improving one’s sound at the bottom.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Audio_woo
Excellent article Baldy, and supports my conclusions which is nice!
Back in the 80s there were loads of bonkers theories – like painting the outside edge of your cd green, attaching bits of foil and stuff to your water pipes. Best of all as I recall there was a serious article about ensuring that there were only an odd number of books on your bookshelf (or was it an even number) and that taking one shoe off when you listened would make a difference.
I did once spend £800 on a cartridge for my beloved Linn Sondek – and that was back in the late 80s so not sure what the equivalent value would be to today (don’t tell me). But it did make a difference – honest !
Using anything more than a “normal” 44Khz/16 bit CD setup is lunacy because (deep breath) you.. physically… can’t… hear…. any…. more…. detail.
http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html#toc_1bv2b
*retires to safe distance*
A good cartridge is essential …but not,if you only have a CD player 😉
Regular cut and strip back a new bit of speaker cable and re tightening everything has improved things in the past but maybe they were just loose and others won’t be.
Facing speakers opposite a curtain is sensible.
Yes to curtains – behind the speakers, on the side walls, behind you, on the ceiling above your listening position. Ideally you have diffusers (those foam sheets like egg-boxes), but curtains are a cheap second-best.
Thick carpet on the floor. Or a large heavy rug if a bare floor.
Google “Live End Dead End” for the acoustics theory.
I think the room is almost as important as the kit and the softer the furnishings the better the sound. Hard floors and bare walls make everything splashy and echoes. Never been able to justify posh expensive cables but perhaps there is a minimum threshold that you should go to – but certainly not the HIFI shop rule of thumb that says 10% of your total equipment budget!
Have given the Hi Def 24bit stuff a go but honestly cant tell much difference. I do think a ripped cd can sound better than a cd played on a cd player.
Half your budget on speakers
“5. The position you sit in makes a massive difference, as does the room layout, furniture etc.”
So you finally discovered stereo?
Me again ,my speakers are now smaller and up on the wall in sturdy brackets with a sub woofer is better than my big floor standers. More direct line of sound for more people and less clutter
Speakers! Recently auditioned some with a friend and they can be amazingly different. My B&Ws have a nice ‘tight’ bass sound – believe me, we heard some awful ones (to my ears), and my mate opted for the same make…and they were the cheapest! I’m assuming by Arcam you mean your CD player – I have an Arcam CD192 and it is superb with the B&Ws, played through an Audiolab pre and power amp setup. Decent interconnects and cable used but nothing stupid. I know someone who supports all his ridiculously expensive speaker cable off the floor on little pyramids….yes really….and has a separate mains power supply for his kit (Naim). How does it sound..? Good…but I still prefer mine!!
Arcam amp and CD player.
Wish I had a living room where I could put speakers in listenable positions! It’s a small room with a big window and window seat, opposite that is the piano, then on the other walls are doors and a raised platform thingy in one corner over the stairs and – anyway it’s fucked for stereo. Them I have my studio downstairs with near field monitors but literally nowhere for the LS 3/5As except above them which just FEELS weird, even though they sound good.
When we were young ( yes, a long time ago) we used to have parties with a really crappy tecnics music centre thing but wired out to our guitar amplifiers – Now that was proper
As an aside, I am presently having something of a crisis of confidence about why I continue to buy CDs. Would it be more sensible just to pay a subscription to Spotify, or now iTunes or Amazon to download what I want to hear rather than hang on to my collection of shiny plastic? Let’s face it CDs do not have the emotional heft of vinyl anyway and man!, do they clutter up the place.
Or is it just ridiculous to think sensible when it comes to music?
Tighten the allen bolt thingies on the speakers. Makes a difference (to my ears) and is free.
Steerpike – switch to Spotify, you certainly would hear much of a difference and you can have almost anything you want in any order instantly – and its collaborative, sharing all sorts of playlists here, radio etc
For the cost of one cd a year – happy days
Thanks Mr Gas – I guess you mean for the cost of one cd a month – unless you are talking about a Van Morrison CD.
I have been giving this some thought and I feel the day is coming …
Me too. Spotify plus (some) vinyl from now on. All CDs are ripped to the Sonos and I can’t see me buying many more.
C’mon Twang, don’t take as gospel what people tell you who want to sell you something. Don’t give the gloaters a chance to mock.
Firstly, common sense. Stereos need to be installed on solid, rigid racks or shelves: they rarely like to be plonked on the furniture just because it’s there. Usually makes things sound fat and out of control (bass!). Then, placing loudspeakers. Give them the best possible chance of doing their job! Some are designed to be used hard up against walls, others need half-a-metre of space to breath. I think your Missions fall into the latter category.
I refuse to be drawn on the lunatic aspect of speaker cables, except to say, the more you spend, the smaller the improvements. Jeez, if someone feels they need to spend 4-digit sums, who are any of us to knock it? Anyway, your Arcam/Mission setup deserves some reasonable runs, probably from QED or Mission or similar. Yes, you’ll get away with bell wire, any wire will do the job, but you wouldn’t want to lash your guitar up with just any strings just because they’re dirt cheap.
Common sense installation doesn’t cost much but it’s often the source of disappointing results. Get it right, then you can start deciding which components are good and which are holding you back. Andyo can ditch the hearsay. Good luck.
Forgot to mention spikes, the real way to more clarity. Get those speakers off the carpet and onto spikes. Then everything else.
Got spikes, stands filled with silver sand, got system rack thingy, big solid metal job with heavy glass shelves (also on spikes). Don’t know what the cable is, but it’s pretty heavy bi wired stuff. And nice interconnects. I am going to experiment with a single pair as opposed to bi wired but just about everyone says biwiring is snake oil. I am sure the speakers are too near the wall, and quite probably not equal distances from side walls, which is where I’ll start. I’ll try electrical cable for a laugh. A mate just dropped 200 quid on speaker cables and swears they have transformed the sound. Who am I to disagree – will do an A/B with one of my cables next time we go over.
Doesn’t sound like you’re doing much wrong. I’ve got no experience of bi-wiring, so no opinion. Cheap runs of cable for a laugh? Can I recommend solid core? Tends to be clearer than multi-strand.
At the height of the cable lunacy, Quad used to demo their kit at hifi shows, using orange Black and Decker mains cable from the local garden centre as speaker cable – sounded good to me, so I tried it myself……and I’m still using it……
Used to wind up the £500/m brigade no end….
I did some work for a company that ran their Bose 802s on Black and Decker cable. They sounded exactly like Bose 802s always did but the cable looked terrible.
Yes this T&E ring main cable is solid core 12 gauge apparently. Not tried it, but I have a bit in the garage so when I get back from hols I will do an A/B against what I have now. I’m also going to cut a bit off the current cables and nip into town to the fancy hifi shop and see how it compares to what they have.
Hilariously I found a home cinema blog all worrying about if they tin their speaker wire ends, what solder sounds best….
Pendantry time: ring main T&E is 2.5mm, which is 13 AWG. If you fancy going totally OTT, the stuff for showers & eletcric cookers is 10mm, which is 7 AWG.
Lead-free solder has a higher silver content than 60/40 tin/lead. Silver oxide has the same resistance as silver, so in theory you’d be better silver-plating than gold-plating.
But seriously, strip back the insulation to expose fresh copper and solder on gold-plated connectors (which have the advantage of not going off over time).
Surely vinyl clutters up the place more than CDs?
They’re bigger and weigh more.
Oh – forgot to say as much amplification as the speakers can manage +10%
POWER!!!!!
Do you mean Mission 771 speakers? I always found Mission speakers a bit muddy and Arcam electronics tend towards the smooth.
It might be worth a trip to audition some more modern speakers – build costs are much lower nowadays so you get more speaker for your £200 than you did 15 years ago.
The best thing anyone can do to enhance their sound is to sort out the room acoustics. In 99.9% of cases, this means placing bass traps. Cheapest way is to buy four old (heavy) sofas and place one, upended, in each corner of the room. Or, my FPO’s preference, move into a sound-proofed acoustically-treated garage.
Viz ‘Top Tip’.
I remember reading that drawing radial lines on a CD with a black marker pen helped. Not sure what it helped. Probably helped remembering which CD’s were yours at a party.