pmr@drutx.UUCP (Rastocny) (04/14/85)
<?> Subject: The Evolution of an Esoteric Audio System or How I Spent the Last Twenty Years of my Life Learning to Love a Soldering Iron :-) A while back, someone explained how their system evolved to its current state. I was intrigued by the idea and decided to do the same. Here it is. --------3--------2--------1--------zero I started out in 1964 playing bass guitar for a rock and roll band at the impressionable age of 16 and took this gear into the Air Force with me at the terrified age of 19. (For those of you who don't remember, 1967 was the time of the draft and the Vietnam war.) I traded all of the R&R gear for a Sansui 250 tube receiver, a pair of Fisher XP-55b speakers, and a Garrard Lab-80 turntable with Shure cartridge (the olde M-45 if I'm not mistaken). This is where the hi-fi madness began. It was a terrible system, and I knew it. I formulated strategy based on reviews in Stereo Review, High Fidelity, Audio, etc., and proceeded to execute my plan. ----------------------- PART 1 - BUYING WITH MY EYES ----------------------- I then traded the 250 for a Sansui integrated tube amplifier. The other person needed a tuner and I thought (read read) what I needed was more power. This made things louder but not better. Next, I replaced the turntable with the AR (Shure type II cartridge) and the speakers with AR-5s. Both of these were bought from a spec sheet. I literally never listened to any of it before it arrived UPS at my front door. There was an immediate obvious improvement in the sound. I was happy. But I then married my first (and only) wife who wanted to listen to music VERY loud. This was something new to me. Enter the McIntosh MX-110 tuner preamp (a tube) followed by a McIntosh MC-2100 power amp (class AB solid state). Again, this equipment was bought for the same reason: specs. I really didn't listen to them all that critically while evaluating my purchase but my wife made the final decision based on Watts. (She almost traded our car for the MC-2300!) This system stayed with me for many weeks until my wife started blowing out the ARs. Being in college at the time, I thought to myself, "Building speakers from scratch can't be that hard! And after all, I have the library and college computer as resources so it should be a piece of cake!" (Famous last words.) I managed to make a speaker that was harder to blow out AND sounded better. I was only a little more than stuffing drivers into boxes at this point. This started me on a career of building loudspeakers for friends and eventually into a small business that went under (anyone out there still own a pair of those great but short-lived PR Audio speakers?). The next change came with a new turntable and cartridge: the Thorens TD-160C with a Shure (you guessed it) type III, still bought on specs alone. I also built another, larger, pair of speakers, called the model F-4b (Phillips AD-12100 woofer, Altec 405A midrange, and Phillips AD160C tweeter, first order network). The next thing to go was the MX-110. It had a noisy phono section that I just didn't want to redesign, so I sold it and bought a JC Penny 3250 receiver, using the tuner-preamp section out of it. It was an even exchange and the phono section was quieter, but not better (specs again). I then set out to modify the pants off of the stock phono circuit. This proved to be futile (the thing made a good boat anchor but a bad stereo), so I then purchased a Technics SU-8055 integrated amp for its good specs and its closeout price ($120). ----------------------- PART 2 - BUYING WITH MY EARS ----------------------- My F-4 series speakers remained basically unchanged for a total of 8 years. I then decided to venture into a new line of more contemporary looking loudspeakers and came out with the model 21. It used new drivers (a Becker 912A139 12" woofer, a Dynaudio D-54 2.5" dome midrange, a Panasonic EAS-10TH-400A leaf tweeter), and a second order network. I then started listening to things and reading underground magazines. I replaced the Thorens with a Yamaha YP-D8 and Acutex M-315III STR cartridge. Thinking that this system was the ultimate (I had a lot to learn at this point), I tried to hear the things described in these underground rags and frankly just couldn't. I thought that they were putting me on so I made several trips to local audio salons to see if there was something wrong with MY system (ego inflated, of course). Well, to make a long story short, I heard things at these stores I never heard before from records that I had become intimately familiar with. What to do? And, what a crush to the ego! The things the underground rags had truth to them and my ultimate system was a dog :-(. I began with the power amp, adding large capacitors to the power supply and removing ground loops that McIntosh conveniently built in at no extra charge. Things began to get better. I could hear details now and things seemed very promising. Next, I tore down the SU-8055 and replaced the RIAA network with matched metal film resistors and polystyrene capacitors, also removing any ground loops I could find. Wow, was I happy then. Next was the purchase of esoteric interconnect cables, based on, you guessed it, listening tests from other people's equipment. I bought a few hundred feet with a group of friends and basically got the cable for cost (the connectors were another thing). Again, things improved. Not a whole lot but I was learning how to listen along the way. The amp was torn down more times than I care to admit and the same for the preamp, but in the end, and after several years worth of modifications, I was again happy with the way that they both sound. The speakers in the meantime were subject to more changes in the crossover network, internal wiring, a second tweeter, three-point isolated mounts on the woofer, flush-mounted drivers, and a few other goodies resulting in the model 21G. Next I added stands and 4-wire Litz speaker wires made from #26 wire-wrap wire. This, I thought, was truly the ultimate system. So I had a party where several friends brought their amplifiers along and we listened for about 5 hours to seven different amplifiers. The report on these findings is six pages long with several illustrations showing the change of the soundstage's size. I became unhappy again with the way my system sounded. Back to work on the amp and preamp again. New wires, no bandwidth limiting, new regulators, on and on. My wife pointed out to me that I was spending an awful lot of time with the soldering iron and not very much time with her. I was obsessed (possessed?). I had to figure out why other equipment with the same specs sounded better than my stuff. I read everything I could find, talked to everyone who would listen, and tried anything I could think of. The preamp, still the SU-8055, became a selector switch and gain stage (as close to wire with gain as I could make it). The power amp wiring in the McIntosh was changed for the third time to Litz and all capacitors were replaced. RCA jacks were changed out to gold on both the pre and power amps and the wiring in the turntable was also changed out to Interlink. The turntable mat was changed to a Platter Mat glued to the existing metal platter cut so the label and edge did not rest on it. Line filters, better speaker stands, ground loops eliminated in the patch cords, nothing seemed to make a very big contribution to the improvement of the sound, although it was slowly getting better with each dab of solder and each total on the calculator. vvvvvvv And finally, the breakthrough that made everything come together: TIPTOES. ^^^^^^^ Minor rocking was a concern of mine when I placed the new stands on the carpet but this concern was soon forgotten. It seems that sometimes the least little thing can make some enormous changes in the sound. The finale' to the system came when poking around in the turntable again. Rumble was good (-72 dB) but with my system and room being as quiet as it is, this wasn't good enough. I cut out a piece of semi-soft rubber in the shape of a large flat washer and placed it between the platter and the direct drive motor. Resluts: whamo! Rumble was reduced by about 4-5dB and all those annoying motor/platter resonances were decoupled from each other. I then played with the arm by using closed-cell styrofoam at various places (what dramatic changes this makes in the size of the soundstage -- total damping is NOT desired but small loops around the arm at highly-resonant points improved the definition at the far rear corners). I have since phased each piece of equipment for lowest AC chassis leakage, done a lot of live recording, and A LOT of listening. The system sounds pretty good, if I say so myself :-). Each time I listen to a pair of Apogees, I get those urges to tinker with it again, but so far I've managed to control myself. In summary, the stock names of the present equipment are: Cartridge - Acutex M-320III STR Turntable - Yamaha YP-D8 Pre Amp - Technics SU-8055 integrated amp, preamp section used only Power Amp - McIntosh MC-2100 Speakers - PR Audio Model 21G Interconnects - Monster Interlink Speaker Wire - 4-wire Litz Welp, there you have it. The ramblings of a hopelessly hooked audiophile. I hope you've enjoyed it. I'd be interrested in reading other people's experiences while in search of the Audio Grail. Yours for higher fidelity, Phil Rastocny AT&T-ISL ihnp4!drutx!pmr ps - I just listened (double blind) to the Monster Interlink Reference cables ($80 per 1-meter pair) and the new Hitachi cables ($40 per 1-meter pair) through a Monster Alpha 1 cartridge, an Eminent Technology air-bearing linear-tracking tone arm, SOTA Sapphire turntable, Levinson electronics, and Apogee speakers. I found a new interconnect reference. The Hitachis "blew the doors off" the Monster cable! The sound stage was FAR deeper, the focus was more precise, and the bass was less muddy with the Hitachis than with the Monsters. Note that the only cords changed were those between the tone arm and the electronics. (It boggles my mind to think of what this system could sound like totally equipped with Hitachi cable.) It was as if some great veil had been lifted between me and the speakers. I'll get some of these some day soon! I'd urge others to seriously listen to them.
herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong [DCS]) (04/15/85)
for those of you who never have sold audio eqipment for a living, it is
a standing joke (with some truth to it) that high end audio is more
concerned with the insecurities of a high end stereo owner than the
sound of the system itself. there is the image of a guru who marches
to the beat of a completely different drum, who's capable of hearing
things no mere mortal can hear, and whose judgments on the quality of
equipment is to be revered and interpreted endlessly to find the
"Ultimate Sound" or the "Perfect System". listen to the liquid tones
of a kiseki lapis lazuli cartridge on a souther arm and a thorens
reference standard turntable. never mind that to mortals, the three
cost as much as a '85 corvette fully loaded. it's the sound that
counts and the name on the front.
Herb Chong...
I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....
UUCP: {decvax|utzoo|ihnp4|allegra|clyde}!watmath!water!watdcsu!herbie
CSNET: herbie%watdcsu@waterloo.csnet
ARPA: herbie%watdcsu%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
NETNORTH, BITNET, EARN: herbie@watdcs, herbie@watdcsu