Interconnect choice

Emre posted:

 

i think we should organise a jury of 5 and make blind test 202/272/282 naked and powered by reasonable matched PSs

A large and good dealer can organise this somewhere in UK, i might fly from Istanbul just to watch it, i don't consider my self a jury member status.... but i can bring Turkish delight and Raki! 

 but then what are we going to argue about here

My " not counted " vote is for 272!

An interesting idea... do you find that clothing can mask the sound?

BTW, which UK dealers are relaxed about running auditions with naked customers?   (or is it only dealers in more enlightened parts of our world that encourage this?)

In the late eighties and early nineties reading the hifi press to help me put together a budget system, it was common to read reviews of cables that gave nuggets like - can tame a brash system - good for putting some zip into timing - good for dulling down sibilant treble etc . Hifi has moved on since those days and cables are best thought of as being a system as much as the core components. 

You hear many going on about having a balanced system of front end ,amplification and speakers, well interconnects , power and speaker cables need to be of a balanced system.

the old way put former is great if your an experienced dealer to showcase the ability to put together differing components ,because you would have the sheer numbers of pieces available to choose from, not so great for the punter - hence the prevalence of these type of reviews that were tied in with said dealers to provide products to review.

if you think of cables as being a balanced system you look for say what has been recommending above from chord cables as a good interconnect, do a little research to find out what's its technology and where it sits in the companies product family and get the appropriate speaker cables and power cord, then you might hear the difference your looking for.

JamesN posted:

rather than changing a very good amp which the 202/200 is, a very good Dac which the Chord is, I might try cabling first as I've seen the effects before.

As I said I might be barking I the wrong tree though!

i'd be suprised if the pre, amp, or dac were the cause of your problem. room and speaker positioning seem okay too. might be cables.

it might be worth mentioning that i have just received a custom cable made by designacable. it sounds superb, excellent workmanship, and the best part is that it only cost over 30 quid.

the best sq from the hugo tt i have is out of the rca but the scm40a speakers only accept xlr (unbalanced or balanced wiring). so i wanted an rca to xlr cable but wired in such a way as to get the best out of both the tt and scm40a speakers (unbalanced to balanced). i decided on van damme xke tour grade classic as it has very low capacitance, low resistance, has a combination of pure copper and silver plated copper conductors, and it is widely used in the pro audio industry.

Cable:
Van-Damme Tour Grade Classic XKE mic cable

Connectors:
Rean NYS373
Neutrik 3 Pin NC3MXX-B Male XLR Connector

Wiring (best way to connect unbalanced to balanced):
RCA centre pin - cable red wire - to XLR pin 2
RCA outer ring - cable blue wire - to XLR pin 3
RCA outer ring - cable screen - to XLR pin 1
Silver solder

not yet compared with my chord rca-xlr shawline  (wired same which is all silver plated and also sounds superb but more expensive) to see which i prefer.

Halloween Man posted:

might be cables.

 

But the OP said the problem didn't exist with his previous DAC so that can only mean one thing.  Did the OP audition the new DAC in his system?

Regards,

Lindsay 

Hi again,

Well after quite a bit of changing around, thanks to some of the advice here, I now have a Chord Hugo which has replaced my 2Qute, and am using a Gustard U12 to convert USB to Optical. 

The difference is very noticeable compared to the 2Qute via USB. The sound is so much more relaxed and easy to listen to. The bass seems deeper and the treble seems much smoother with no sibilance except on bad recordings which is hard to escape totally from.

The only issue I have now is that the Guatard only seems to be showing 44.1 on the display even when I play high res (pink Floyd Division bell atm). Any ideas

Thanks again for the help with this. I wouldn't be where I am now without the great advice from this first class forum!

James

James, what player are you using. You should set it to use the xmos wasapi driver for the Gustard. Then set to allow 24bit output.

I'm at the moment just using ITunes on a windows netbook (planning for mac mini) and the xmos Gustard driver. How do you set for 24bit?

Hi James,

Have a look at the Network Isolation thread in Streaming Audio. In HiFi terms relatively cheap and I have found has tidied up my sound very nicely.

M

James - some digital sources are artifically limited in their output sampling frequency. Perhaps this is what is happening to you.

Is there a MIDI or a soundcard interface on your laptop, where you could check the digital out settings?

Ok thanks Adam...I'll have a look when I get home tomorrow. From memory I think you can change the bitrate in the settings. But not sure that is the answer.

james

JamesN posted:

Ok thanks Adam...I'll have a look when I get home tomorrow. From memory I think you can change the bitrate in the settings. But not sure that is the answer.

james

I know where to change those settings on a Mac (there is a MIDI controller). Perhaps someone with Windows can advise.

laptop issue nothing to do with dac and cables