System #166 (Sequel II)

Insulator for SACD player

lugano said:

It looks like he's cleaning a ML panel right now

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Lugano, good point! :rocker:
Beat_Dominator, it's my pleasure.

From 30th May to 2nd Jun, I went to Singapore on business. So I didn't have enough time for sightseeing but could go to Adelphi that is a quite big shopping center just for audio equipments. About 50 shops are inside the building with 5 floors. Of course, I could go to ML dealer, Norman Audio, and listened to a music from a pair of summit for my first time. Though the time was limited, but I had a very good time there. :music:

At one of the shops, I could watch a insulator(isolator) with 3 springs from Solid Tech. The insulator looks simple and good, but is only for light equipments.

http://www.solid-tech.net/isolator.htm

My SACD player is quite heavy, so I decided to make the insulators with 6 springs for heavy equipments by myself.
This insulators can absorb all vibrations to any deirection. I measured the peculiar frequency of these insulators with my SACD player, Marantz SA11-S1. It was about 3 Hz. At first the sound stage was not so good with dull image. I guessed that is because the vibration continued long time without any damping material. Then I put isobutylene-isoprene self bonding rubber tape around the springs as a damping material.

The final result was good. I could get a very good sound atage with them. I think these will work good for an analogue disc player, too. The material cost was only 10 USD for 3 pieces. I will describe the details about this in the tweak section.

Shuji

Hey that's not bad! I cannot quite make out what is keeping the center pole-piece held up by the springs?

Maybe if you decide that the results are good enough, you could make the outer cylinder out of a fancy wood to make it look fancier

You're always thinking aren't you?

I have some questions regarding your breaker box.
I may have misunderstood, but you have a normal breaker box in your apartment, and you added a new breaker box just for your stereo ?
Regarding the powerline conditioners that many use, I guess you use none...?
You are right in that a separate power line to the stereo is an advantage, and you dont get problems with an unsuitable conditioner that might damage dynamics in your amps, but how do you know your AC is clean ?
In a city you will normally have pretty clean electricity, and voltage goes up by app. 10 % in late afternoons, evenings and at night, do your stereo play better at night ? If so, then you might need some sort of conditioner, at least for your sources.

Beat_Dominator said:

Hey that's not bad! I cannot quite make out what is keeping the center pole-piece held up by the springs?

Maybe if you decide that the results are good enough, you could make the outer cylinder out of a fancy wood to make it look fancier ...

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Thanks for your first comment as usual! As I got the inspiration from the products of Solid Tech and Linn LP-12 which cabinet is supported by very soft springs when I watched them in Singapore, I went to near DIY shop and got all materials there after coming back to Japan. And I made them in 4hours and got good sound from them. I was surprised at the big effect.
As you know, my SACD player, Marantz SA11-S1, is one of the good products. But if I regulated the amount of the self bonding tape as a damping material, the sound changed clearly and easily. I guess the reason why it changes so easily is the player has fine mechanical parts like an analogue disc player. I persuade you all to try them. The material and amount for damping is the key point, I think.

Beat_Dominator said:

...
You're always thinking aren't you?

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That's right! I still have many things I want to try in my brain.
I want to thank this endless hobby from my heart quitely.

Shuji

Thank you for your many questions, Nielsen.
I have been to Oslo and Bergen in Norway as a backpacker when I was young. Beautiful country!

A little bit tired because I have just come back home from long business trip.
Today I got on a train for 12 hours and had meeting for 4 hours. I can be Jack Bauer in "24".

Anyway, I'll try to answer them. I usually don't use English. So please try to understand me.

Nielsen said:

I have some questions regarding your breaker box.
I may have misunderstood, but you have a normal breaker box in your apartment, and you added a new breaker box just for your stereo ?
....

Click to expand...

That's right.

Nielsen said:

Regarding the powerline conditioners that many use, I guess you use none...?
...

Click to expand...

No, but, may be, I use them someday.

Nielsen said:

You are right in that a separate power line to the stereo is an advantage, and you dont get problems with an unsuitable conditioner that might damage dynamics in your amps, but how do you know your AC is clean ?

Click to expand...

That is exactly what I thought at that time. Further more I wanted to avoid any noise from a ref, a PC, lights, a micro-wave oven and air conditioners as much as I could. And I have a very bad image about transformer to change the voltage, because I have the bad experience to use it to change the voltage from AC100V to 120V for my Rotel amp..

I have never measured the cleaness of my AC, but many people would agree that the sound is changable if they change the AC cables. Even if you use short, expensive, hi-end and good AC cables, the house indoor cables there.
So I decided to give up using good AC cables, but using indoor cables directly to my equipments via IEN connectors.

Nielsen said:

In a city you will normally have pretty clean electricity, and voltage goes up by app. 10 % in late afternoons, evenings and at night, do your stereo play better at night ? If so, then you might need some sort of conditioner, at least for your sources.

Click to expand...

Though I don't know the power source condition in your country, I and my neighbours use the common down-tranformer on the power pillar from AC600V to 200V. That means there is the possibility to collect the noise from our neighbours,too. I have heard about the voltage change between day and night in a city area. I believe the AMP makers design their AMP to suit that kind of voltage change and I can't distinguish the difference between day and night.

But I think the problem is our ordinal indoor cable is too thin for audio needs.
Actually the electric current changes very quickly and dynamically for audio needs. That means the voltage drop in the indoor cable is very huge and dynamic. Though you may use more than AC200V in Norway, but we use AC100V to 110V in Japan and USA. The voltage drop by current in Japan is four times as much as that in Europe if we use the same size cables. As the ordinal indoor cable is only 12 or 16 guage, so I used 8 guage to avoid this dinamic voltage drop. Of course, I had a sellection at that time to use 200V to decrease the voltage drop, but in this case I had to use down-transformer.
As I said before, I had very bad image about it. If it is very expensive and good one, down-transfromer may be a good choice. We use many equipments, an analogue disc player, a CD player, a pre-AMP and MLs. I wanted to minimize the effect of voltage drop by main-AMPS to these equipments with the cost-effective method.

Anyway, I thought the first thing we have to take care of is the source, indoor cables, prior to power conditioners. Don't you think so? I feel a big change when I clean the contact of the cables. So I also decreased the numbers of contact and electric resistance of them. The effect of indoor cable change was quite big more than I expected. But actually I don't know what was good for sound because I did many things at the same time. Decreasing the voltage drop? The numbers of contact? Gold plated contacts? Using shielded cables?

I only selected the way with much cost-perfomance firstly. Of course, I may add power conditioner in future.

As for the power chord thread, pls refer this;
http://67.19.167.226/~tdacquis/forum/showthread.php?t=4250

Shuji

Thank you for your answers, I do believe you have made the right choice with your electricity.....
In Norway we have 240 volt. I have 15 gauge wire from the breaker box, to the livingroom this passes 6 outlets before the outlet I use for the stereo.
On one of those outlets I have a lamp with a dimmer. Dimmer´s are the worst source of noise, if you have any, throw them out.
Anyway, I have just "upgraded" my outlets with earth, they didnt have earth before, but I wonder if it can introduce more problems than benefits.....
I have solid 15 gauge going into my stereo cabinet, this is not really legal, but....., I also use solid 10 gauge speaker wire, and same for the Martin Logan Aeon I speakers.
My Bryston amplifier does not have a problem with noise introduced by electricity, but still I wonder if it can get better, I might borrow an ISOL-8 MiniSub GII one of these days and see....

Nice set-up Rabbit :bowdown:

Airport Express

Huey said:

Nice set-up Rabbit :bowdown:

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Thanks for your comment, Huey. My room is kinda experiment room, but your room arrangement is beautifulfulful !!!

My next challenge will be "Airport Express" by Apple, though the topic about it is not so new to most of you. But some Japanese say in an website the sound from an Airport is fur better than that from a Hi-End CD player if it is set properly, so I will check it.

Shuji

This is by far my favorite system on this website. I love audio, but you guys are scary smart when it comes to all of this. I literally understand about 1/10th of what is being said on here Nevertheless I really enjoy your system/mods/room, It is awesome!:bowdown: