Belden ICONOCLAST Interconnects and Speaker Cabling

Tony22 and BobBJC, thanks so much for your suggestion, I appreciate the quick reply

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Yes, do use 4 feet for MONO amps sided with the speaker. Most report ABOUT what I describe below.

TPC and SPTPC are fast sounding with the silver plated version adding a larger dimension to the room’s height, width and depth.
OFE is a warmer sound and more forward intimate sound. It is a private room as it were, not as larger.

The series II are a more complex polarity design specification and are harder to make and terminate. They leverage the exact same design principals so they aren’t changing the “house sound”, just pushing the properties as far as we want to go for value and performance, both. We aren’t into this to make cable no one could ever buy!

The series I to series II enhances the aspects that make the cable, all of them, sound good. The ability to seperate the musical event from one another in space across the sound stage. When we expand the sound stage and further deliniate the musical events, stuff just sounds more real and that was the most remarkable attribute early in the development. The series II add more perceived space between everything in the realistic sound stage. The added clarity using more smaller wire does the trick.

How is the imporovemnent done? ICONOCLAST is made to flatten the Vp and lower the low frequency input impedance of the cable. We can argue how this is heard, but the calsulations and measured data are all there to support the design’s electrical. We are indeed talking about the speed of light on Vp linearity! Even 10% of that is fast. Use and compare the cables as some amp/cable/speaker networks are much different than others. Maggie’s are GENERALLY more resistive load so amps and cables should technically matter less. Amps measure the best loaded into resistors.

I use four foot double bi-wire and there still is is a characteristic sound provided by the amp/cable/speaker. Before you buy, do audition trial the series I to series II in the wire you’d generally prefeer. Any length will do to hear the basic properties of the ICONOCLAST’s reactive properties.

Best,
Galen

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Thanks Galen, I will do just that!

I wanted to talk about the SPTPC Series 2 Anchoring Left and Right surround channels in a home theater. I don’t use a center channel speaker but use my HT processor to Ghost the center speaker. Hard to find a 40 driver line array center channel. But it is nit needed.

After some 2 channel listening my wife and I decided to stream a movie. I just wanted to say wow how much more amazing the SPTPC series 2 adds to the distributed front stage. Way better depth into the screen and realism in voices. Not to mention integration with my XXL front that also do LF Effects.

The downside though is I wish I had the Iconoclast SPTPC series 2 for side and rear surrounds. It so out classes the 10 gauge speaker cables i have in surrounds . You think the surrounds are not working most of the time. The fronts have so much realism and are adding so much you are hardly aware sides an rear are there. The TPC series 2 was not the same feeling.

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Sounds like movie watching just got a little more expensive. :thinking:

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Perhaps increasing the db a point or two for the surrounds might help.

When I changed amps to a 625 S2, I reran ARC out of our Anthem and ended up adjusting the center and all 8 surrounds up a few notches.

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Well the RoomPerfect already does that so outut levels match. The thing with the silver is it sounds louder because of the Vp flattening. The TPC never gave that effect to your ears though performance graphs are identical. I did watch a 2003 movie John Q. I need to try a more recent sound mix. Like All’s Quiet on the Western Front.

RoomPerfect with McIntosh processors also correct for driver distance and time arrival as well as level matching.

I do like your idea and system gives that flexibility to increase surround dB. Not ready to override the algorithms yet until I hear a newer surround mix. But I will keep in toolbox. Long SPTPC series 2 surround driver runs would be awesome. In a no limit HT system if thst were an objective.

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That’s ok, Sue needs new shoes for Christmas!:blush:

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A woman cant have too many pair of shoes or too many purses.
Kinda’ like wires for the stereo if you know what I mean. :grin:

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For my wife it’s sable paint brushes.

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Whenever I get a box from BJC my wife asks “whats in the box?”. I just say “wires honey, just some wires”.

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Almost every time I connect new Iconoclast Cables I experience what feels like hangover symptoms the next day. I have noticed the problem as gotten worse as I age.

The problem starts when I turn on the system. Usually what I hear is positive overall, but there still may be something that sounds a little bit off.

It often turns out to be a leftover system change I made to accommodate the last set of cables, but I don’t know for sure until I imbibe in further music.

If it’s a Friday or Saturday into Saturday or a Sunday listening session. The most common audiophile hangover symptoms I have noted include:

·Fatigue and weakness

-Typically happens when I tell myself at 11pm “it’s time for bed”. However, I then decide to indulge in listening to one or more tracks, or a tweak I just had to make and then had to listen for the results.

·Muscle aches and headaches

-Typically occurs after I have squatted, contorted, twisted behind the speakers or equipment to connect or adjust the cables, or moved the speakers to adjust toe in/out.

·Poor sleep

-Typically experience sleep delay when I ruminate about the tracks I played, could have played, the changes I have made, changes I could make tomorrow, or equipment I now want to upgrade, or add.

·Shuffling of gait, sensitivity to light and sound

-Typically happens because I slept late from being up late listening the previous night, woke up stiff, have a song repeating in my head, and a slight tinnitus ringing in the ears heard especially in the quiet of the morning.

·Dehydration

-Typically happens because I may have consumed alcohol to increase my receptivity to relaxation, music and imagination. Or gone without sustenance when raptured by the whole audio experience.

If it’s a Sunday into Monday, or a weekday listening session I may experience:

·Poor concentration and anxiety

-Typically experience regret for the loss of sleep, followed by bargaining and false promises that I won’t stay up late again.

-Typically regret for playing artist/music I would normally never play, but do because it’s late, I’m relaxed, curious, feels acceptable at the time, make promises it’s only this one time.

-Typically have questionable recall of all the events from the night before.

-Typically I must double my caffeine intake to stay focused and then will experience the resulting gastrointestinal changes.

-Typically feel irritable because “I have to” go to work, when “I want to” or “would rather” call in sick, stay home and play new music.

The best cure is often “The Hair of the Dog”, adopting a comfortable seating position and listening to more music on the primary system.

On another note:

Ignore the upper positive and negative binding post. Those are part of an Ambient Recovery System. Note the lower binding posts. Outer blue bananas are going to my super tweeters, the red cables are the Series II TPC, blue cables are the Series II SPTPC.

-I have one pair of Series II TPC and one pair of Series II SPTPC cables and I ran the experiments on single posts stand mount speakers using Cardas adapters.

-I ran parallel or doubled Series II SPTPC cables into a mono speaker. What I heard was more weight, fullness, and clarity over just one cable.

-Ran parallel Series II SPTPC combined with Series II TPC cables into stereo speakers. I tried this because I accept some risk, was curious, was told by a knowledgeable adult not to, had down time, had both cables on hand, thought it could be an alternative to buying an expensive second pair of Series II SPTPC cable.

My conclusion:
-When combining two cables be extra careful to check to make the right connections or risk shortening the amp, could be a very expensive experimental lesson.

-Individual single stereo and mono runs of TPC and SPTPC sound great and are enough, but you can go one step further, for the absolute best sound run two.

-Was not impressed with the TPC and SPTPC parallel combination, it decreased the sound attributes of the SPTPC cable enough to not warrant the combination.

-The resulting sound with TPC and SPTPC parallel cables did not appreciably elevate the performance of the TPC cable.

-There was greater weight and depth with the combination, but less realism, nuance, and upper frequency information.

-Adding TPC to SPTC made the music sound slower, less spontaneous and alive, less dimensional, and less splat of horns. I would guess due in part to less edge information.

-If you are going to do it don’t compromise, wait, save your money and buy two Series II TPC, or two Series II SPTPC pairs of cables to run in parallel for the best results.

IMHO

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I resolved my Home Theater surround channels vs Mains SPTPC series 2 level issues with a different film streaming solution. I watched the new Netflix All’s Quiet on The Western Front.

I also found some two channel music that wasn’t musically pleasing. I drifted off on a Roon radio channel only to wake up to my ears hurting. Luckily it was just a Celine Dion song that a thumbs down :-1: quickly cured before I had to pull any speaker cables.

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I fell asleep last night listening. I woke up to Roon Radio playing The Rolling Stones Sister Morphine. I wonder what Roon was intimating.

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I didn’t think ai was a Celine Dion hater. French is a beautiful language when sung. Then I heard Ordinaire off encore un soir screeching in a loudness war track.

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Nice report with just the right amount of humor blended in. :grin:

Quite a report on your cable journey and good in-site on the psychological and physiological conditions that affect our listening. Nice to have an audio doctor in residence. I have used single pair and now parallel pair of Iconoclast cables. The FR30’s allow direct connection to mid/top and bass cabinets. Running the SII SPTPC on the top and the SI SPTPC on the bottom is my end game (for now :slightly_smiling_face:). This replaces the SII TPC on the top. A bit better HF definition and extension but much better instrument placement. Things are better delineated in space with greater depth and width. The SII TPC is still no slouch, and since they are close in price to the SII SPTPC, the later is the easy winner. The takeaway is try to get the SII in your system, full range or bi-wire, copper or silver plate.
Galen’s mantra of “design over materials” seems to hold true with this new series.

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Bill, I have the same dehydration issues when listening as well. It’s good to know that it’s not just me!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I’m seriously jealous of y’all. I haven’t asked Galen for a set of the latest and greatest Iconoclast speaker cables to test because… I don’t have any speakers right now. The Boss finally convinced me that the modular open baffle setup that I’ve had for the last 15yrs just takes up too much real estate and it’s time to downsize. They’ve been disassembled for quite a while now and I’m anxious to get back to listening. I have a pair of Eminent Technology LFT-8c’s on their way with a custom crossover that will allow me to bypass the onboard DSP and digital crossover that comes with the latest version of the LFT-8. They will take a while to break in and will sound awful for a bit, like planar magnetics do so I’ll have to be patient, even after they arrive. It sounds like you guys are starting to appreciate the new design. I was pretty stoic in describing the comparison of the original and latest designs that we did on Galen’s system. I was kind of tired when I wrote it but also, truly, have run a bit thin on ways to describe audio. These things just sound amazing, and all the more on Galen’s system. It’s a tremendous tool to allow him to discern the slightest nuance that a change in equipment or wiring topology makes.

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Since you’re the thread starter it is only fitting you try a pair on your new speakers. Your thread start happily sucked me into a great Iconoclast ever improved experience with each iteration. I searched high and low for s pair. until the BJC arrangement started true production and ongoing sales. Thanks for starting it all!

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