Belden ICONOCLAST Interconnects and Speaker Cabling

[scotte1]

Use the center face of your speakers’ “tweeters” as the point to measure distance from your speakers.

Try spacing the speakers such that the center faces are about 85% of the distance from the center faces of the speaker to each of your ears (or use your nose for the center point). Then play around with the distance between the speakers, but only move them 1 to 3 inches at a time closer and farther apart. I would not be surprised if you found the imaging, depth and width of field to sound the best with the distance between the speakers somewhere between 83% and 85% of the distance to your ears/nose.

Have fun and let me know what you discover/thing.

Cheers.

[rogerdn]

That’s what I thought, my current positioning has the spkr spacing 97 and 88 to the tweeter, backwards. I’ll try your adjustments, thks.

How do your treat toe in ? I have none currently.

Roger

[scotte1]

My speakers have the ability to cast a wide sound field from their “CDTII” tweeters, which are a half cylinder shape.* So I don’t toe my speakers in at all.

Given the nature of the PSA speakers’ tweeters, I suspect you might not need much toe in either, if any. That said, given the narrow room and the proximity of the wall to your right channel speaker, a little toe in might be just the ticket for making that wall more or less disappear (in terms of first and second reflection points).

Good luck.

*"…a diaphragm membrane made of Kynar™, a cutting edge aerospace plastic. This diaphragm is then coated with pure silver because of its high conductivity and reliability, next we silver solder high quality, oxygen-free copper wires to each end of the diaphragm. Finally, the diaphragm assembly is tightly wrapped around a rigid polypropylene core. This inner core acts as attenuation for the driver’s back-wave.

Unlike conventional drivers, the CDT™ doesn’t use voice coils or magnets. Instead the signal is passed across the conductive surface of the diaphragm, which attempts to expand, while the shape of the driver supplies the necessary restorative forces."

[BobBJC]

Welcome to the forum. You’ve stumbled on one of the best kept secrets in audio…“Iconoclast.”

Designed by 34+ year principal product engineer at Belden (Galen.) Belden owns the patents and manufacturers the bulk cable. Blue Jeans Cable in Seattle is the exclusive sales and marketing point for Iconoclast. Here it is cut to length and hand terminated with your choice of connectors before being thoroughly tested and shipped to you.

1311A is a 12AWG variant and one of a couple of a very fine Belden commercial/home theater/integrator type 2-conductor, stranded speaker cables. You can do much, much better in terms of sonic performance.

You might visit our site at the link Roger provided or send me a PM and we can have an email discussion or I’m happy to give you a call to discuss.

Bob

[rogerdn]

Scotte, what is your thoughts on leaving the door next to the right spkr open since I’m missing a wall on the left ?

[scotte1]

If it happens to be the second reflection point of that speaker, it might be a great idea. Alternatively, you could put an absorption panel on the door if it is a second reflection point.

Do you know how to use a mirror to find the first and second reflection points on the side walls?

[scotte1]

By the way, its been at least a week since I made the following suggestion to anyone:

Buy Jim Smith’s “Get Better Sound”. It’s a great reference for getting the most out of the kit you own and the room it occupies. Highly recommended.

https://www.getbettersound.com

[rogerdn]

Yes I do thanks, the treatment on the wall next to the CD rack was positioned that way, but not sure about second reflections, is it good for them ?

[scotte1]

If it works on the first it will work on the second.

Conventional wisdom is that CDs and books won’t do much to absorb high frequencies and upper midrange frequencies which is what you want to do at the reflection points on the walls.

But others swear by adding diffusion at these points.

[scotte1]

Let’s continue our exchange in DMs or, better yet, you could start a new thread for this general topic.

Cheers.

[rogerdn]

I opened a continuation thread under Loudspeakers

[rogerdn]

Moved to the new thread

[tony22]

@BobBJC , you make it through okay?

[JASinPhiladelphia]

Bob
Are you and your wife alright, or are you doing the backstroke? We are concerned. - JAS

[roger-macklin]

Bob,
Many friends on this forum would love to hear how you and your wife are doing.
Roger

[BobBJC]

Thank you all for checking in on us! Jeffery, Roger and Tony, you are especially kind!!

Grateful! Sue and I have been in our home here in the Pensacola area for 17-years with a single CAT-3 storm a few years back. We’re both native Floridians with well over 6-decades of hurricane tales. We’ve been blessed. This time we didn’t get a drop of rain and I used the cloudy afternoon and nice breeze to do some overdue late summer yard work.

Florida has +/- 1,350-miles of shoreline and while Helena was one for the record books in terms of eye wall size, it was estimated at 36-miles wide and much larger than the estimated 15-mile eye wall of the amazingly destructive Andrew. Like most things, hurricanes come in all sizes and intensities.

Living at the water’s edge is a beautiful and privileged experience but comes at greater risk. Low elevations above sea level is also not a good idea. Though unusual for Florida, my home is 148’ above sea level and I’m only 4-miles as the crow flies from salt water. We were unaffected. This could always change the next time. This is one of our local beaches.

Thank you all again for your concern. Our thoughts are with those who lost all yesterday. On a positive note, Helena pulled a hard last second jog to the east moving into one of the least populated portions of our state. Millions are without power and my insurance bill will go up once again.

Have a great weekend to all! God bless!!

[BobBJC]

Good morning Tony, now it’s your turn to worry about a hurricane. Milton is bearing down on Central Florida. I just learned that Milton is now a CAT4. This is dangerous. Please be safe!!

[paul172]

Stay safe all the Floridians

[tony22]

Thanks, Bob. Yes, this one is going to be a little bit worrisome. Hopefully central Florida will get through it without too much damage.

[DrPain]

Recent SPTPC Series 2 Cable Re-termination quick summary

-I purchased a single pair of Iconoclast SPTPC Series 2 speaker cable years ago.
-I purchased a second set and ran them parallel after hearing Galen’s presentation at AXPONA and reading an Iconoclasts review by Douglas Schroeder.

-Doubling the Iconoclasts speaker cable, doubles the well-reviewed positive sound attributes of the cable, plus adds greater bass weight.

-This meant to each speaker and amplifier binding post there were 2 pairs of spades, one with and without a Cardas spade to banana adapter.

-I knew all the extra spade and adapter hardware likely effected the sound.
-However, I did not know how much.
-I delayed having them re-terminated because I did not want to spend the money or be without music.

-Finally I decided late this summer to send the cables back to Blue Jeans and have them re-terminated. So I could properly run parallel cables.
-In doing so I eliminated the hardware shown in the picture, plus 4 pairs of spades and 4 additional Cardas Connectors not shown.

-You can see the Iconoclast re-terminated cables in the photo.

-With the re-terminated cables the first thing I noticed was there was greater musical cohesion.
-The instruments and vocals just flowed together more naturally, were more consistent and synchronized.

-A new problem then revealed itself.
-There was a negative softening, dullness to the immediate left and right of the center phantom image within the soundstage.
-I discovered the culprit was the foam padding my super tweeters rested on, that was slightly wider and forward than the tweeters.

-I had been using the foam padding for years to angle the super tweeters down as they sat on top of my speakers.
-Now the greater resolution allowed me to hear just how much the foam was softening and effecting the side and back waves of the music.

-I was surprised I had never perceived this softening before and how detrimental it was.
-I then changed out the foam wedge material, adjusted the super tweeter position to lock in proper phase, and BINGO.
-There is now greater resolution, separation, leading edge and decay, bass note distinction, and the music is more uniformly and evenly spread across a wider and deeper soundstage.
-The change is hard to quantify, but it is noticeable.

-It was a worthwhile investment having the Iconoclast cables doubled and terminated into one left and right pair.
-Both are things I would recommend others consider.
-As always it was nice working with Blue Jeans Cable and Jeff does great work.