How Well Do You Know Your System?

[MylesBAstor]

Could you tell by listening if something is off, on its way out or just not sounding right in your system? That is excluding day to day variability.

[Greg Beron]

Good post.

The short answer is YES absolutely.

The long answer is my system has been in place and tweaked over many years now, it also stays powered up 24x7x365 so it is consistently stable.
I run lots of tape decks through my MBL Reference system before they go out to their forever homes.
I can put a deck in the system and hear any / all differences immediately. This has always been a valuable tool in hearing differences in tape deck improvements / changes.

In fact i have everything star grounded in my system and I can easily tell if just one of the many ground wires become disconnected for some reason.

[Kingrex]

Not trying to beat a horse, just trying to understand improvements I can do myself. So you have 3 wires from your panel. A hot, neutral and ground. You then have another ground from the 3 ground rods that also go to the ground on your receptacle??? or do the 3 ground rods go to a plate at the back of your rack and RCA plugs with a ground connection only go to the plate???? Do you use silver wire from the equipment to the dedicated ground? Thanks

[Greg Beron]

Here is the arrangement:
I installed a new Isoclean Zero Ohm power panel for my dedicated audio system.
It has a separate meter from the street.
It has an earth ground with 3 - 6' rods in the ground, that is the ground for my Isoclean power panel.

I have run 3 complete 32A circuits to 3 of the new Furutech NCF duplex wall outlets.
I also ran a dedicated wire off the ground bar on the Isoclean Zero Ohm power panel to a location behind my audio rack.

I ground everything that can be grounded to that one common grounding point.
My Tara Labs Zero interconnects have ground wires as well as my Synergistic Research power cables, all is grounded to that one point.
Everything else is also grounded there, including but not limited to, phono preamp and my demo UHA tape deck with optional external ground post.

[Bodhi]

The Red Beron's senses are well tuned!

[Rust]

My system has been set up in the same room for 23 years, so addition or change of a component can be quickly evaluated. in most cases failures have been obvious, failure of an amplifier channel, failure of a driver and the like. The only one that took awhile to determine was the very slow failing of a cartridge.

On the other hand I have a relatively simple system so things are pretty obvious.

[Hawk]

Definitely notice.. It's like part of the family. With a little time, TLC & cash, it responds with-out talking back.

[1morerecord2clean]

Yes. Ok, let's say 99.9% of the time.

[Joe Pittman]

I am very familiar with my two reference systems. Any change I make I can hear clearly. The upside is that it is fun and awesome. The downside is you can hear every change a cartridge makes during break-in...

[Stringreen]

Its interesting you posted this Miles......a couple of weeks ago I heard something "different" with my system. The first thing I thought of was a resonance, I spent a 1/2 hour or so banging, tapping, moving everything in the room to try to find the gremlin. After awhile I could only hear the "issue"...it appearing on LP, and CD (though my wife couldn't hear it at all). I switched speaker leads, yet the (now Beast) was still on the left side somewhere. I used the sweep tone on the Ayre break-in disc and found the problem sort of kind of like in the midrange speaker of my left Vandersteen 5A. I called Vandersteen who advised me to send in the mid (thankfully not the whole speaker). They rebuilt the speaker for 150 dollars, I got the driver back, soldered it where it belongs, and the sound is as it was. YEAH.....


...and now I just noticed my VPI 3D arm is warped, and has a split in the headshell...... VPI said to send it back for an exchange. Sometimes "support" is even more important than the state of the art sound (whatever that means anyway)

[jcmusic]

I would say that if you can't hear or tell there is something off in your system, you are in the wrong hobby!!!

[Alrainbow]

I think most will say yes and as I tube roll I perform this excersise often. Now as we are humans I also feel while we claim near Super human abilities I think we all are very flawed. There is a true story about paul
of ps audio about the speakers we own. One of his mid /tweeter towers cross overs were failing. He claims he did not notice it. This is a legend in audio who evails his devices on these speakers. I praise his honesty for his commnents as a viisitor said to him the towers sounded very different. This led to tests that lead to new outboard cross overs being designed by mr nudel the maker of them and voiced the new ones. I own a pair of the new cross overs and a few other improvements as well. When I installed them of course there was a notible change that I I liked. Now in sweeping he room Before and after there was little change but as they could be swapped In and out there were profound changes and Improvements. Changing cables and so on do effect the sound but I also feel in myself changes if done by others would be tougher to pick out
I mean no harm or insults in my honest comments

[marty]

Could you tell by listening if something is off, on its way out or just not sounding right in your system? That is excluding day to day variability.

Yes, a good deal of the time. But there are times I will make a change and spend the night thinking this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, only to listen to the system the next day and realize I must be some kind of moron to think the change I made was actually for the better.

[adrianwu]

Unfortunately yes, which is a problem with horns with 110dB sensitivity. This has led to constant checking of bias, hum pot adjustments, changing resistors, transistors, capacitors etc. Always hunting down sources of noise. Some days, I just want to install L-pads and be done with it. On the bright side, one can hear subtle differences between components, recordings etc.

[david k]

Could you tell by listening if something is off, on its way out or just not sounding right in your system? That is excluding day to day variability.

Not really sure what's left if you exclude day to day variability which can be electricity related or in our case tubes aging as well. Most likely everyone can hear if a channel is down, a tube is on it's way out or component changes one makes, did you have anything specific in mind Myles?

david

[Alrainbow]

I love ribbons and horns on sensitivity they are at opposite sides it seems. But I don't feel one is better Ina absolute way. So why do some horns require such scrutiny in obtaining great sound ? Besides what you mentioned how does digital noise effect them ?

[david k]

I love ribbons and horns on sensitivity they are at opposite sides it seems. But I don't feel one is better Ina absolute way. So why do some horns require such scrutiny in obtaining great sound ? Besides what you mentioned how does digital noise effect them ?

With a high sensitivity speaker problems that could be inaudible with lower sensitivity speaker becomes magnified and can be heard across the room. 60hz hum is a good example, I've walked in many rooms that you can easily hear it if you put your ear close to the tweeter yet the owner is totally unaware that there's noise in his system. With tubes there's tube rush, again not a problem with panels or dynamic speakers, even high sensitivity ones buy any electronic noise becomes annoying and distractive with a highly efficient horn speaker. Eliminating noise becomes a necessity with horns rather than a goal with box speakers and panels but I can tell you from experience that eliminating noise pays big dividends with any type of speaker and system.

david

PS. Eliminating noise by filtering or masking with audiophile widgets isn't what I'm talking about, this type of band-aid approach just veils what's wrong and will rob your sound of dynamics, resolution and life while introducing homogenized coloration.

[MylesBAstor]

Not really sure what's left if you exclude day to day variability which can be electricity related or in our case tubes aging as well. Most likely everyone can hear if a channel is down, a tube is on it's way out or component changes one makes, did you have anything specific in mind Myles?

david

Yes more than a few things.

But perhaps then impetus was for the thread was that the table wasn't sounding like it should. Then I discovered while Merrill was over and we were spinning that for some reason the dual pivot wasn't making proper contact. So I did a quick readjustment and neither of could believe the difference in sound.

But back to the original question. We constantly hear about the fallibility of human hearing. Sure we have times like Marty referred to above (why it's always helpful to have honest audiobuddies as part of your listening panel!). Sure it's imperative to reinsert the original component back into the system when listening to and evaluating new components. But then how do you explain situations where you have this gut feeling that something is amiss but the problem may not-say a tube on its way out-come to fruition for weeks? Or cases where the system is sounding brighter than it should? Or where for some reason the system has lost dynamics? Are there some qualities that may be more primitive brain function where we are more sensitive to system's failing? Can we train our brain by focusing on a few songs and recording learn how something should sound? Certainly musicians are able to pick out these tiny things.

Then there are learned listening responses like hearing a distortion in the vocals and knowing it's a tube problem. Or the system not sounding as transparent as it should and knowing it's dirty contacts. The problem is that the ear easily gets used to these issues and it isn't until cleaning the contacts or album that result in one saying, "that's the way the recording should sound!" Changing output tubes and the life returning to the system is another good example.