Belden 1313A is a great economical choice for speaker cables. There are improvements to be had on the other 2-cables you mentioned that are also cost effective and provide stunning performance. You might replace your 1694F (flexible variant) with 4694P and the 1694A with the BAV RCA cable. We do terminate everything we offer. Thank you for being a BJC/Belden customer.
I tweaked my system a few days ago and WOW, has that helped a lot. The CWT tweeter panel is real directionsl, worse than I thought. Stuff sounded “soft” compared to the CLX, but good…not great. Imaging is solid with the dial bi-wire speaker cable. This isn’t all a cable post per say but man, what this system can do with some changes.
I moved my seat up a foot or so and stuff images better to my ear on SIZE of stuff. With that move of course felt I needed more toe-in as you want the intersection off the front of the speaker right behind your head some…not WAY back there behind you. In front of you collapses everything. More near field seating will pull-in the soundstage width some, but in my case it added a massive improvement in clarity across the field so slightly less width for clarity is worth it. Not that the soundstage is narrow, it isn’t. I just had them doing more the impossible for maximum clarity of edge sounds.
I added about 1.5" more toe-in than usual, though. That made a big improvement to the edge detail and crispness. The CLX CLS panel, Curved Line Source, is really foregiving on dispersion as are my earlier dome tweeter speakers and far more than the CWT’s, these seem to drop like a rock off the horizontal axis off the tall electrostatic tweeter panel. Not a big deal as I sit in that one spot, but you need to get a lot closer to right toe-in for the best sound. I was missing my ear with the treble some before! Stuff is so, so much better now.
I also got the subs working, and the line-source CWT’s rejected them over and over. What it was, was too much mid bass. I turned the P3100 HV’s tone control down -2dB on bass. This allowed me to add the subs in at 35 Hz and now, bingo, great bass and no lower mid cloudiness. I thought the CWT’s were lean on bass, but it turns out they were too fat mid bass. The in room tests just didn’t rat that out until I ignored the curves and just went opposite where I was before.
The cabling really comes in to it’s own with the new placement. Changed are invisible to the eye walking into the room. A mere couple feet foreward on the seated position and 1.5" added toe-in are not obvious. Those two things made an upgrade in excess of anything I’d add hardware wise!
The CLX panels always seemed to work really well and now I know why.
-) The are a huge sound stage so seated distance isn’t an issue, imaging stuff is big no matter what.
-) They naturally have less mid bass, so the subs splice in cleanly (the subs themselves are fine).
-) The tweeter panel has really good dispersion so that’s not as critical.
Don’t be afraid to try extremes on your speaker toe-in. See what zero and really high toe-in do, assuming that triangle interstection is still behind your head! Some speakers aren’t nearly as contancerous as the CWT’s (the tweeter intersection is closer to behind your head). But if you do have those type, a mere 1.5" was the difference between good and OMG great. I thought I added enough but nope, I needed to go farther than I though and was stuck in place by earlier speaker’s limits. After all that I watched bee-keeper to evaluate home cinema on the 50" Hitachi plasma. Yep, explosions are great.
Best,
Galen
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Anyone going to Pacific Audio Fest?
Staying put, too much good live jazz here.
I think gold is one material that “easily” allows atom-sized strands. Carbon nanotubes are relatively close to atom-sized… And have been already tried to be utilized into working cable… but could be done better.
Congrats Galen on finally getting the toe-in right! It surely can take a while.
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Here’s my go to for speaker placement.
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Great! Thanks for the link and one where the work will absolutely pay off. Even rooms that aren’t symmetrically ideal, have one or more unequal open sides or perhaps a wide cased opening somewhere behind the seating position will benefit from this exercise. Audiophiles with >100 LB speakers will get a work out to boot.
Listening rooms more often than not are multi-purpose and just might have some significant other with a position on aesthetics. Oh the challenges audiophiles face!
This exercise finished off with something like Dirac or other room correction software would pay big dividends. Others might even choose to do something with surface treatments. Reflections can play havoc. How far does one need to go? That is the question. Just enjoy the music!
I have an upside down capital L shaped room 29ft long ,16 ft wide until you get to the kitchen (to the left of the room end with the speakers) which is 30 feet wide. My FR30’s are currenty positioned so the left speaker has the open wall to its left. I have the back of the speakers pulled out 4 ft .
But it’s not clear to me how I would apply this technique to my L shaped room .
Yep,
My room is L-shaped, too. Off to the left is an open end of the short L-leg. This is back with the Vandersteen’s and McCormack DNA-225 with the MAP-1 pre amplifier. See the big picture on the wall to the right of the chair? Looks like a Quatro speaker with music emanating out of it! The room didn’t change! With the T+A CWT 1000-40 I’ve moved the seating position WAY up. Like eight feet from the speaker plane across them. The line-source need you to be seated much closer.
Galen
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Here’s my room, you can see the kitchen opening to the left. So looking at that do you have any suggestions ?
roger
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Btw pretty much all my cables are Iconoclast 
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My experience, was to get the speakers as far from all walls as you can so the “room” regardless of the shape does less. No reinforcement from corners or the rear wall. Move them out as much as you can and from side walls. But yes, rooms won’t let you do as much as you want to! It is a challenge to move them closer, and reducing the imaging over a smoother frequency response in some rooms.
That’s the passive side. Bob mentioned active DSP as a worst case remedy. I haven’t used that level, and only used a -2 dB cut on the bass in the tone controls in the T+A P3100 HV pre amplifier. I didn’t use the bass only parametric as it wasn’t needed.
But I’m not a hero as it took well over a year of moving stuff to get the toe-in and everything else working in my room. It takes awhile as doing too much gets confusing. I used a matrix chart and did one set of four variables at a time. I used FOUR; rear wall, side wall, chair distance from speakers and speaker toe-in. So 16 combinations if I used just a two factorial variable on each attribute. UGH. So in my case examples is rear wall was 3 feet and 5 feet, side wall was 1 foot and two feet, chair distance was 12 feet and eight feet, toe-in was two inches and four inches. More than 4 inches of toe-in intersected in front of me, can’t do that. Adding more variables just made the matrix GIANT.
I just hit pay dirt with speakers 5 feet out, 2 feet from nearest wall, seated eight feet from the speaker plane and 4 inch toe-in (speaker’s face with a laser pointer on top intersects about two feet behind my head). Still, all that took a good while to do.
I didn’t adjust the subs (even more problems!). I got the best of the best from the basic speakers and after that I tweaked the subs levels and bass response. I had to cut the tone control bass - 2 dB and that blended the subs in. So after more than a year of on-off matrix tweaks I got it.
Best,
Galen
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A few thoughts…
- When you really want to “critically listen” you need to have a center seat (you may have but the picture looks like you might be off a bit).
- Check to see if the distance between your speakers is about 85% of the distance to your ears seated in the sweet spot.
- Your left channel does not not appear to have a first or second point of reflection that matters, since there is no wall nearby. To have a balanced sound, you need to emulate that openness by taming the first and second reflection points on the right did of your room. I prefer to use absorption as opposed to diffusion at these points. You might consider adding a panel or two along the right wall in lieu of the CD cases.
- Given the modest size of your room, near field listening and making sure you are not sitting too close to the back wall will help minimize the room size and shape impacts.
FWIW.
PS,
Nice kit!
Thanks Galen
Thanks for the comments Scotte. Yes the chair to the left is actually dead in the center, pic was taken off center. The right side spkr has several first reflection ASC panels.
i’ll check out your other suggestions
Roger
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I’m not familiar with Belden Iconoclast? I use Belden Brilliance 1311A 12 AWG 2C speaker wire and it seems nice.
This whole thread is dedicated to this “audiophile” Belden line.
Might be worth your time to scroll through here a bit…
Welcome to the forum.
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Galen is their head tech guy and has designed all their cable, they use the Belden factory to build the cables I believe but best I know they are separate companies. Galen I think once worked at Belden. Great cables at reasonable prices
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Scotte 1, by ‘distance to your ears’ you mean from seating position to one of the speakers and not to the front plane of the speakers right ?