135's revisited...
Posted by: ken c on 29 September 2003
I know this has been done to death before, but… just to break from heathrow reports...
Sometime ago when I visited my nephew in Bournemouth, I was very impressed with his cdi/72/135/intro system. Sounded quite good. I asked him to bring over his 135’s next time he visited us so i can hear them again. He duly obliged last weekend.
As you recall, I did the active 250/passive 135 comparison at Grahams 2 years ago – at that time active was clearly superior. However, I was excited about the possibility to revisit this comparison in my own listening room and in my own time. So I extracted the passive x-overs from the loft, and connected the 135’s up to my sbl’s on Friday night. I left the system to settle down on radio input overnight to give the whole passive set-up the change to warm-up.
We listened to the passive 135 set-up Saturday evening. here is what happened...
We didn’t make a prior decision as to what music to play – we just played whaveter we fancied as we went along – quite a lot of records, mostly CD, (except Joe Cocker’s “Organic” which was Vinyl). Some of the stuff we played:
(a) The Highlife All Stars (various artists)
(b) Joshua Redman “Wish”
(c) Keith Jarrett “Standards Vol 1”
(d) Eric Beeb “Needed Time”
(e) Mendelsohn “Song without Words”
(f) Victoria “Missa Trahe me Post Te”
(g) Schubert “Die Schone Mullerin” (Hyperion)
(h) Mozart “Clarinet Quintet in A Major K581” (Hyperion)
(i) Joe Cocker “Organic” (on Vinyl)
Part of the time during listening my daughter was there to “help”. She brought her copy of mis-education of Lauren Hill. She has latched on to the idea of an “active” system hook line and sinker after I had given her my half baked explanation to (“daddy, why do you need all those black boxes?”). in fact she was a bit nervous that I was about to take a “backward” step, until I explained to her that we were just messing about, really...
Very soon after we had started listening to the 135’s, I was aware of why I was keen to conduct this test. These amps sounded quite different to the active 250's.
The first thing that struck me vividly was just how “quiet” they were – the silences were much, much darker than with the active 250’s. Sometimes quite startling. Several tracks on albums (a), (b), (g) highlight this well.
The next thing that struck me was the treble – my god that treble is sweet. It wasn’t a matter of quantity – the 250’s in my system manage the same amount (and I can always adjust how much with the active x-over anyway) – but the treble quality (high hats, brush work, etc) sounded much better and truer to the instrument with 135’s than with the 250’s.
The other striking aspect of the 135’s was their warmth and greater sense of ease – giving the impression that there was very little struggle driving the speakers especially with (a). The sound was therefore sweeter – piano had this unfamiliar but refreshing “liquid” character, for example, on (c) and (g).
other positives were more detail -- yes i could hear more with the 135's. several times, i said to myself, "gosh, i never heard that before".
Oh, boy what’s going on here? Did I make a mistake going the active route with 250’s?
With your permission, I will break this rather long posting here and continue in a second instalment very soon.
Till then, enjoy…
Ken
Sometime ago when I visited my nephew in Bournemouth, I was very impressed with his cdi/72/135/intro system. Sounded quite good. I asked him to bring over his 135’s next time he visited us so i can hear them again. He duly obliged last weekend.
As you recall, I did the active 250/passive 135 comparison at Grahams 2 years ago – at that time active was clearly superior. However, I was excited about the possibility to revisit this comparison in my own listening room and in my own time. So I extracted the passive x-overs from the loft, and connected the 135’s up to my sbl’s on Friday night. I left the system to settle down on radio input overnight to give the whole passive set-up the change to warm-up.
We listened to the passive 135 set-up Saturday evening. here is what happened...
We didn’t make a prior decision as to what music to play – we just played whaveter we fancied as we went along – quite a lot of records, mostly CD, (except Joe Cocker’s “Organic” which was Vinyl). Some of the stuff we played:
(a) The Highlife All Stars (various artists)
(b) Joshua Redman “Wish”
(c) Keith Jarrett “Standards Vol 1”
(d) Eric Beeb “Needed Time”
(e) Mendelsohn “Song without Words”
(f) Victoria “Missa Trahe me Post Te”
(g) Schubert “Die Schone Mullerin” (Hyperion)
(h) Mozart “Clarinet Quintet in A Major K581” (Hyperion)
(i) Joe Cocker “Organic” (on Vinyl)
Part of the time during listening my daughter was there to “help”. She brought her copy of mis-education of Lauren Hill. She has latched on to the idea of an “active” system hook line and sinker after I had given her my half baked explanation to (“daddy, why do you need all those black boxes?”). in fact she was a bit nervous that I was about to take a “backward” step, until I explained to her that we were just messing about, really...
Very soon after we had started listening to the 135’s, I was aware of why I was keen to conduct this test. These amps sounded quite different to the active 250's.
The first thing that struck me vividly was just how “quiet” they were – the silences were much, much darker than with the active 250’s. Sometimes quite startling. Several tracks on albums (a), (b), (g) highlight this well.
The next thing that struck me was the treble – my god that treble is sweet. It wasn’t a matter of quantity – the 250’s in my system manage the same amount (and I can always adjust how much with the active x-over anyway) – but the treble quality (high hats, brush work, etc) sounded much better and truer to the instrument with 135’s than with the 250’s.
The other striking aspect of the 135’s was their warmth and greater sense of ease – giving the impression that there was very little struggle driving the speakers especially with (a). The sound was therefore sweeter – piano had this unfamiliar but refreshing “liquid” character, for example, on (c) and (g).
other positives were more detail -- yes i could hear more with the 135's. several times, i said to myself, "gosh, i never heard that before".
Oh, boy what’s going on here? Did I make a mistake going the active route with 250’s?
With your permission, I will break this rather long posting here and continue in a second instalment very soon.
Till then, enjoy…
Ken
don, continuing to play with numbers -- i believe i have a slightly "better" scheme which captures component dependencies somewhat -- by considering a hifi system (loosely) as a chain of communicating components, each able to pass on a certain percentage of what it receives from the component upstream -- i shall call this percentage a "communication coefficient" (CC).
for simplicity, i am lumping components with their power supplies, when relevant. i postulate the following CC values for my system:
CDSII 50
NAC52 60
SNAXO 65
NAP250 75
SBL 90
how does this help? first point is that the total CC of the system is the product of all the CC's, so for the above system, its 0.5x0.6x0.65x0.75x0.9.
this multiplication encompasses the fact that any signal lost upstream is lost for good -- components downstream can only xmit what they receive from upstream. i shall call this hierarchy principle number one.
so, whats hierarchy principle number 2? well, its that, with the current technology, the improvemnt in any of the components can only be as a percentage of the "balance" CC, i.e. CDSII can only improve by whatever percentage of (100-50) and NAC52 by whatever percentage of (100-60), etc etc. this captures the law of diminishing returns very nicely, i believe. for as the CC values increase, the potential benefits of upgrades "diminish". however, one has to be careful here the subjective nature of the whole thing means small changes for one person can be very significant for another person -- i.e. it depends how sensitive one it to the balance CC, i.e. what info is missing.
for example, i surmise above that the balance CC for the NAP250 is (100-75)% i.e. 25%. upgrade to 135's active would probably increase its CC by 15%??? which is about 4 -- which means the CC value for the power amp section will rise to 75+4=79, from which we can calculation the CC value of the total system using the multiplication rule as above.
also, consistent with experience, there is no such thing as "maxing out" -- an improvement in any component of the system will improve the overall CC, hence the whole system -- because essentially no component is perfect. (remember, "straight wire with gain"???).
what drops out of the somewhat deliberately contrived CC allocation above is the fact that a 20% improvement in source components makes a much larger difference that the same percentage further downstream. bingo!!!
also, i have often wondered why, for example, upgrading my SBL's at this stage would improve the system at all. it does, because the SBL does not have a perfect CC score. period. so a better speaker will make a "better" job of playing the signal received. i put "better" in quotes because sometimes this improvement downstream may NOT be a good idea -- this may simply reveal deficiencies upstream. one source of deficiencies is noise -- say from power supply xformers.
now a 15% inmprovement in the CD player amounts to 7.5 which increases its CC to around 58 (rounding) -- a "bigger" improvement than the 4 of the nap250 to nap135.
of course, i could play with these largely artificial numbers to justify my point -- but i believe if i get good base numbers to start with, i can make some good decisions (of course, on the basis of detailed dems!!!).
oh, LP12 CC, i believe, is about 60.
i havent dem'd the cdsiii, but from HiFi+ review, i guess it would increase CC of CDP by 20%?? taking the overall CC of the CD player to 60 (by "construction"
!!)
well, i had time to kill... and i was happy that England are through after the Turkey game.
any thoughts don? martin?
enjoy...
ken
ps: i was playing randy crawford "the best of" a second ago. the emotion in "tender falls the rain"... !!!
for simplicity, i am lumping components with their power supplies, when relevant. i postulate the following CC values for my system:
CDSII 50
NAC52 60
SNAXO 65
NAP250 75
SBL 90
how does this help? first point is that the total CC of the system is the product of all the CC's, so for the above system, its 0.5x0.6x0.65x0.75x0.9.
this multiplication encompasses the fact that any signal lost upstream is lost for good -- components downstream can only xmit what they receive from upstream. i shall call this hierarchy principle number one.
so, whats hierarchy principle number 2? well, its that, with the current technology, the improvemnt in any of the components can only be as a percentage of the "balance" CC, i.e. CDSII can only improve by whatever percentage of (100-50) and NAC52 by whatever percentage of (100-60), etc etc. this captures the law of diminishing returns very nicely, i believe. for as the CC values increase, the potential benefits of upgrades "diminish". however, one has to be careful here the subjective nature of the whole thing means small changes for one person can be very significant for another person -- i.e. it depends how sensitive one it to the balance CC, i.e. what info is missing.
for example, i surmise above that the balance CC for the NAP250 is (100-75)% i.e. 25%. upgrade to 135's active would probably increase its CC by 15%??? which is about 4 -- which means the CC value for the power amp section will rise to 75+4=79, from which we can calculation the CC value of the total system using the multiplication rule as above.
also, consistent with experience, there is no such thing as "maxing out" -- an improvement in any component of the system will improve the overall CC, hence the whole system -- because essentially no component is perfect. (remember, "straight wire with gain"???).
what drops out of the somewhat deliberately contrived CC allocation above is the fact that a 20% improvement in source components makes a much larger difference that the same percentage further downstream. bingo!!!
also, i have often wondered why, for example, upgrading my SBL's at this stage would improve the system at all. it does, because the SBL does not have a perfect CC score. period. so a better speaker will make a "better" job of playing the signal received. i put "better" in quotes because sometimes this improvement downstream may NOT be a good idea -- this may simply reveal deficiencies upstream. one source of deficiencies is noise -- say from power supply xformers.
now a 15% inmprovement in the CD player amounts to 7.5 which increases its CC to around 58 (rounding) -- a "bigger" improvement than the 4 of the nap250 to nap135.
of course, i could play with these largely artificial numbers to justify my point -- but i believe if i get good base numbers to start with, i can make some good decisions (of course, on the basis of detailed dems!!!).
oh, LP12 CC, i believe, is about 60.
i havent dem'd the cdsiii, but from HiFi+ review, i guess it would increase CC of CDP by 20%?? taking the overall CC of the CD player to 60 (by "construction"
!!)well, i had time to kill... and i was happy that England are through after the Turkey game.
any thoughts don? martin?
enjoy...
ken
ps: i was playing randy crawford "the best of" a second ago. the emotion in "tender falls the rain"... !!!