Russ Andrews
Posted by: pcm on 12 March 2001
I think that much of what RA sells is overpriced, but seems to work (IMO). I've never tried the Torlyte stands, but on a wee break in Windermere last year, I passed by the RA shop and popped in, to be treated to an old Naim system on the Torlyte stands with an LP12/??/Ekos I/?? playing - sounded nice.
Some of those Kimber cables are soooooooo pricy, though - £8,000 for a pair of speaker cables???? I ask you, does it get any sillier than this?
John
The whole site is, BTW and IMHO, brilliant and features the most beautiful (and probably already well-known) turntable gallery.
Have a nice day
Bernard
Greetz, Bas
quote:
It's a great article Bernard, but the author doesn't give Julian a place between the gods of audio. This bothers me!
Yeah, I was ready to bet my teddybear that there would be some reaction about this! 
And I agree totally that Julian was not only a genius, but also an inventor without being a crook - as are so many manufacturers who are particularly good at tearing the money out of the pockets of some audidiots.
At least the author seems to know what he's talking about, has his own ideas and I guess that is the point in hifi, after all ?!
Bernard
quote:
I found that the Russ Andrews mains solutions didn't work with my Naim gear. Unbalanced the sound and reduced musicality.
Exactly my opinion regarding the many Kimber products I have tried. They simply do not time right at all.
I have also seen the inside of a Audio Research preamp that had been modified by Russ Andrews, and without wanting to say anything here that could be construed as libellous, lets just say I will certainly not be sending anything I own in for the same treatment.
Tony.
Now I may be a little cynical, bearing in mind the vast sums of money he's set to make from people that follow his ideas, but many of the ideas presented seem strange when viewed through cynical eyes.
e.g.
1. 'Upgrade from the equipment working back towards the mains supply for the best rewards'
I'm sure this advice has nothing to do with the fact that he would gain little if people upgraded from the mains end first?
Starting at the supply end of the chain would seem to be a logical 'source first' policy - I doubt a cable can improve on the basic quality of the incoming mains, but maybe Mr. Andrews will disagree. One thing I can say for certain is that the amount of noise induced upon the Hi-Fi mains supply by other devices in the house will be improved dramatically by installing a seperate spur, but will be totally unaffected by changing mains cable to equipment!
2. 'Use a ring circuit not a spur'
This piece of advice effectively creates both a supply and ground loop which I would consider to be an unacceptable compromise. The reasoning behind this is based on the fact it offers a lower impedance, from the two runs of cable in parallel, but the simple process of using thicker cable, circumvents this, whilst keeping proper earthing.
and my favourite....
3.'CD playback speed is directly affected by changes in mains voltage. CD spindle motors are not quartz locked but driven by a DC voltage which despite being regulated varies with mains voltage'
Utter b******s!
Whilst there is a disclaimer stating the above was a result of subjective listening, not measurement, it's utter tosh. The CD spindle motor has to be servo'd since the disc rotates at a constant linear velocity, it's angular velocity changing depending on the part of the disc being played. It will be unaffected by the incoming mains voltage, unless extreme - at which point other more serious problems will show up.
Some of the advice is sensible, but most of it is aimed at justifying the purchase of his own, expensive, product range and should be read with this frimly in mind, in my opinion.
Other advice that has been offered, including the use of kimber cable interconnects that remove the star-earthing inherent in the Naim cabling / interconnect design leave me wondering about where Russ's real motivation lies.
Andy.
Andrew L. Weekes
alweekes@audiophile.com
Reveel CD cleaner - Makes a small difference to the cleanliness of the sound but can make some badly recorded CDs sound harsher. Works brilliantly on my playstation games - disc access is almost twice as fast!
Oak feet - On my very bottom of the range system made no difference that i could detect.
Yellow extensions and Powercords - Again i tried back to back tests and could not tell the difference. However i have very bad mains and when i tried them on my TV and video it cleaned up the picture and sound alot. Horizontal interference lines almost disappeared.
My Conclusion - So far they have made little/no difference to my hi-fi (maybe its too well designed in the first place) but have made my other toys much better!
The thing is: IMHO, our players usually don't care about dust when it comes to read a disc flawlessly. But soon after the disc starts, all the stuff on it feeds the interior of your beloved player ...
I am currently using my sixth player in 15 years, because they were all out of order one day. It might be the law of cause and effect
Bernard
"The CD spindle motor has to be servo'd since the disc rotates at a constant linear velocity, it's angular velocity changing depending on the part of the disc being played. It will be unaffected by the incoming mains voltage, unless extreme - at which point other more serious problems will show up."
Haven't you also said in prior threads that changes in mains supply affect pre-amp sound, amp sound, RF dissipation, CD performamce due to mains noise, etc. etc. etc.
Why do you think it's so reasonable for these things to be affected by changes in mains voltage but "tosh" for the servo of a CD player to be affected!!!
Since your CD player objects to CDROM recordings so much (earlier thread) I would think it's unusually sensitive to minute timing changes and you ought to go out and buy Russ' kit at once. 
BAM
quote:
Haven't you also said in prior threads that changes in mains supply affect pre-amp sound, amp sound, RF dissipation, CD performamce due to mains noise, etc. etc. etc.
Err....yes, your point is?
I could offer many scientific, and measurable reasons for all of those effects.
quote:
Why do you think it's so reasonable for these things to be affected by changes in mains voltage but "tosh" for the servo of a CD player to be affected!!!
Because I didn't say that, that's why.
What Russ Leaflet states, as a fact(!), is that the motor speed of a CD player is not frequency controlled against a crystal reference, which is wrong, pure and simple.
He then states that it runs from a regulated voltage, again rubbish.
And despite the fact that it is regulated (which it isn't) it still varies with mains voltage.
Let me make this clear, I have no problem whatsoever with someone stating a subjective effect, against a cause, e.g. mains voltage varies - CD player SOUNDS as though it changes speed. But Russ categorically does not do this, and gives reasons which are fundamentally untrue, to support his ideas.
I'm the first person to look for scientific, factual reasons for the effects I hear, but they must be that - facts not utter rubbish based on total absence of knowledge.
The test to determine whether speed varies with mains voltage is a very simple one - play a disc with a test tone, and measure it's frequency as mains voltage is varied. One could go a step further an perform FTT analyses of the CD player output to see if some change in distortion could be perceived as a change in pitch.
The words 'unless extreme' were there for a reason. The point at which the servo is likely to be affected is when the circuitry no longer operates within it's design parameters (i.e. the PSU's drop out of regulation). In any well designed player it is highly likely that other parts of the circuitry will malfunction also, for the same reasons.
quote:
Since your CD player objects to CDROM recordings so much (earlier thread) I would think it's unusually sensitive to minute timing changes and you ought to go out and buy Russ' kit at once.
Your confusing two totally different arguments here. I have no proven explanation for the subjective things that I hear (and I call them just that as I cannot measure them), but that does not invalidate the effect to me. Whenever I've commented on the difference between copies and originals I've never made the accusation that there must be something wrong with the hearing of others who do not detect a difference.
What I fail totally to see is the relationship between my mains supply, and the subjective, audible difference I hear between a copy and original CD. The mains was not a variable in the CD comparison test!
Andy.
P.S. It's not MY CD player that 'objects' to CDROM recordings, the effect is clearly audible to me on every player I've tried.
Andrew L. Weekes
alweekes@audiophile.com
[This message was edited by Andrew L. Weekes on WEDNESDAY 14 March 2001 at 22:18.]
Anyhow, I'm not a big accessories guy. In fact, before joining this forum I had never even heard of Russ Andrews. So I just visited his website in search of this mains guide: not surprisingly it's not available on line. The site is a little vaunting for my taste.
I agree that companies should not deliberately mislead people with technical half-truths. But they all do it. How can people see the wood from the trees? It's tough. I wonder whether they really want to half the time anyhow - this hobby is to some people about the fun of making changes and they open themselves to follow even the flimsiest theories to guide their next purchases. All I can advise people is to use their ears and not their preconceptions.
BAM
Personally, I have difficulty seeing how a small droop in mains voltage could be affect the effecacy of this control machanism. The speed accuracy of the disc is going to be all other the place as it comes off the disc compared to that required for extractraction of information in any case.
I believe attention to detail in de-interleaving, de-modulation, error-correction, D/A conversion and the interface points between these blocks are more of a concern. That and a good analogue section on the end of course. I guess the affect of the quality of power supplies and its subsequent regulation is greater on the sound than a meandering motor. Thats what buffers are for.
I'm with Bam on design though. Most of the kit I see is a basic implemetation of a chip set. With most of budgeting in marketing and a distinctive case. There are exceptions but they are few and far between.
PS When you burn a CD copy are you absolutely certain that the digital signals do not go through a sample rate convertor (regardless of whether you are changing the sample rate or not). This would affect the sound through an increase in jitter level (and hence spurious an-harmonic tones). It would also explain why HDCD codes can get trashed in the copy.
I can hear the difference between the original and a CD copy.
[This message was edited by Martin M on FRIDAY 16 March 2001 at 10:29.]
I tried a little experiment last weekend.
I transferred my favourite Sarah Brightman music from the original to a cheap blank CD which cost 50p.
The result was a flat sounding mess.( please no jokes)
I then transferred the music from the cheap CD to a good quality one(Kodak) and the results were very good and on par with the original.
The moral seems to be........use good quality discs.
Regards
Mick
quote:
But nor should CDROMs sound different to pressed CDs if the bits are the same - that is just fact.
It would certainly be nice if this was the case, but I'm not sure it's as simple as that. As with all elements of engineering there are compromises to be made at any given price point.
Don't forget that there is a difference between comparing the data streamed from a CD in real-time, and comparing just the data values themselves. The replay element involves time (discrete value at given time point), the data extraction just compares data, time is not being measured. Buffering the data first can be done, but since the positional information within a red-book audio CD spec is very low resolution, reading the data at a higher rate, then pausing and restarting brings a multitude of problems with re-synchronization of the data stream.
The problem occurs because the Philips CD specification doesn't require block-accurate addressing. While the audio data is being fed into a buffer (a FIFO whose high- and low-water marks control the spindle speed), the address information for audio blocks is pulled out of the subcode channel and fed into a different part of the controller. Because the data and address information are disconnected, the CD player is unable to identify the exact start of each block. The inaccuracy is small, but if the system doing the extraction has to stop, write data to disk, and then go back to where it left off, it won't be able to seek to the exact same position.
Linn's CD12, which claims to have virtually no jitter, uses a very complex algorithm, running on some hi-tech silicon, to effectively de-jitter the incoming RF signal from the CD. Linns' description of the pit on a CD is that it is like a bathtub with sloping ends - how does one determine where it stops and starts? This is what the algorithm does, apparently.
And it costs £12k for this level of engineering!
I also have no doubt that the 'pits' on a CD are very different to a CD-R, one is stamped , the other is a change in reflectivity of a dye.
It would be interesting to see if a CD12 is less sensitive to the CD-R / CD issue, something I shall try if my dealer is co-operative next time I visit.
Andrew L. Weekes
alweekes@audiophile.com
Indeed use good CD-Rs. My own exeriences are with Kodak discs, but the differences are still there (they are just subtle). PS I've long since learnt not to comment on people's music tastes - its bad news and plain condescending and rude. I'm glad Sarah does it for you!
Andrew, as I haven't read the CD spec I can't comment. However, really good sample rate converors convert in slow time and give extremely good, low-jitter performance. Real time SRCs tend be a bit cruddy as they approximate to the best conversion in time and so introduce jitter. this re-inforces your point I believe, I hope....
As an aside, the original Sony players used to have an internal option to optimise what they called 'data extraction' for discs for Japan and those from Polygram in the then West Germany. Polygram used a different pressing technique from the Japanese which Sony said led to a less distinct pits on the disc. Sony maintained that this effected the performance of their error-correction systems.
[This message was edited by Martin M on FRIDAY 16 March 2001 at 10:57.]
Three reasons I've considered as to why they would not sound the same are: 1) The D/A convertion system doesn't resync the data to a precise clock frequency in order to remove any timing errors, 2) The amplitude of the digital bits when sampled varies and this affects the D/A output, 3) There is some noise creeping in to the post D/A signal that is correlated with the signal coming off the disc, eg: differences in servo noise or digital noise.
These things come down to undesirable (and unintended) system behaviours that don't have to happen. They happen because of cost constraints or oversights or lack of measurement. I think if I were a manufacturer of high-end CD players I would really value this observation of CD and CDRs sounding different and would immediately start making measurements and track down the problem and fix it. Fixing this would probably fix other sensitivies that are undesirable - perhaps mains or stand effects. Of course, this assumes I could measure the difference and I had the nouce to be able to fix it!
BAM