Belden ICONOCLAST Interconnects and Speaker Cabling

[rower30]

Ron is right, no harm done messing with loading.You could in theory suggest that the cartride could be made too stiff, and cause mistracking hurting the record, not the cartridge. But no one would play it that way too long and…I’ve messed up more record trying to incorrectly clean them than anything my cartridge could do!

Ideally, we want the cantilever to be damped such that the cartride tracking ability is maximized. In my old day at Good Vibes Sound, we’d adjust the anti-skate, tracking force and loading to get the given table+cartridge to track the highest difficulty track on the test record. This supposedly gets the sound to be as good as the cartridge can deliver, Still, we started there. We definitley ignored the sound at that setting, assuming (maybe wrong) it was best case.

The beauty of being a consumer most of the time, is that we don’t have to really know the WHY, we just have to know the, “I like it” or “I don’t”. When we make stuff, we have to know the why’s and so much is not known even when we think we do know stuff…submersibles implode, bridges wiggle and collapse and more. We though we knew, but we look backwards at how much more we know than say a laymen and feel invincible with our “degree”. But, making stuff required you know probably a good bit more looking forward than we do in the present. Some unknown physics can caus just an irritation, some can really make a mess of it.

Best, Galen

[rower30]

This kind of misunderstanding is so easy to do in print, the visual record of your face AND your verbal language goes many times farther than we can convey in print. And, witness all my typos, I’m not an english major ot typist! I’m sorry, I started it by accident, so let me say I’m sorry, and to end it.

Incidentally, all ICONOCLAST papers are public for a purpose…to educate is the easy answer, but the critical answer is to peer review and find ERROR’s in application or confusing applications of principlas to our products. I can’t know it all and there are people who are ahead of me in all kinds of areas that can potentially bring stuff up to date! Thus, the education gets better. So hammer away, I’m expecting the suggested corrections and improvements. Just look at the REVISION versions, I’m not sitting idly by.

Best, Galen

[rower30]

I’ve been playing with the “ratio” between the tweeter distance divided into the seated ears distance to the tweeters with the ACORA SRC-5.2D’s. The room will play with this some, but a 1.80-1.84 ratio is suggested. I did cheat, or cheated myself, and added a 1.0" toe-in. I may go back to zero but golly, my mind can’t accept zero toe-in. I can’t say it improves anything except my stubborn feelings on toe-in. And, probably just wrong with this speaker!

My speaker tweeters are 10 feet apart. So a ~12 foot from the seat to the tweeter. (I use a laser measurer, but don’t hit the actual tweeter with it!). Have any of you played with Jim Smiths sonic observations on this? If not, and you have great sound, just calculate what you ended up with “blind”. Or, mark your current spot and move the chair to .80-.83’ish and see if you hear a benefit. I have found no good user data on this ratio in use.

One caveat, we may have to choose bass or imaging in most rooms. The equation can’t take that into account. I just moved the chair out of the way and moved back until I was at the 12’'ish distance and market the floor with a piece of masking tape. I’ll have to listen a while across sources.

The ACORA 5.2D’s are so, so dispersion accomplished that they still boggle my mind for imaging precision with that much dispersion. Hand that to the newest Accuton crystalid drivers and tweeter. The box handles mostly the nasty resonance sounds but the drivers are pretty critical for dispersion. Yes, the box does have to mitigate diffraction(s) but that doesn’t necessarily increase dispersion past what the driver can do. It just gets the box out of the way!

Best, Galen

[tech-hifi]

I read Jim’s book years ago and ascribed to his findings. 0.83 works so well, why mess with it?

[straightwire]

Yeah, I hit that ratio after I did a bunch of moving and listening and not as a seeker of that recommendation. Wide dispersion speakers may also give you more wiggle room.
I would add that horizontal distances…where your ear aligns with your tweeter…is equally important.
That’s why my speakers are tilted, and my chair is on stilts, and I live in a basement.

[dchang05]

My preferred ratio is different from before. It probably has something to do with the back space. I am now preferring .78 (or less) instead of .83 ratio. It is probably because there is still 15’ behind my listening chair, plus one side has a window and the other side has a door in the back (usually open). So I do not experience sound bounce from the back much, and the bass has never sounded booming. With this setup, even when I sitting way back (over 20’) the sound quality is still great.

[rower30]

So far it sounds really good, but then these speakers are crazy good at everything. I’m still absorbing what they are doing! I will sit tight (ha!) with the 0.82 spot for now until VA Cora stops by to give the set-up a whirl. So yes, why mess with it.

Best, Galen

[tomhail]

Whose basement?

[rower30]

I’m in the basement, too!

I made the HUGE mistake of getting the builder to frame the basement for drywall. Well, it turns out you do not want to do that yourself! I should have gone the extra miles and had it dry walled. I’ll finish and put in all the doors, electrical, window wells, bathrooms, floors and more. Boy do I respect good carpenters.

That aerial sticking up on the shelf behind the TV set just goes above ground for HD digital TV, works great. Dayton, Indy, and Cincinnati stations. The TV is an old 50" Panasonic PLASMA that looks terrific in the low light basement. AMAZON firestick and movies mostly.

Galen

[flenser55]

In previous postings under this topic, I’ve enthused extensively about how Iconoclast interconnects and speaker cables improved the transparency and musicality of my system to such an extent that it sounded as though I’d upgraded my entire system by several tens of thousands of dollars, but for less than $10K. I was, and still am, amazed at the performance capabilities hidden in my gear that were unlocked simply (easy for me to say, given @rower30’s design efforts) by transmitting audio signals with as little damage as possible across their entire bandwidth. I didn’t imagine there could be much noticeable improvement going forward without an additional injection of a lot of cash.

Purely out of curiosity, I asked @BobBJC to send me, for my appraisal, a pair of Iconoclast’s Series II speaker cables identical to the ones already in my rig but for one difference—the conductors would be silver-plated tough pitch copper (SPTPC, in the jargon) rather than the unadorned TPC currently in play. I thought there might be an audible but marginal improvement, given the silver plating on what was still mostly solid copper. After all, I had 30 days to compare and return, so there was no risk except $32 for a FedEx Large Box return shipment.

The difference turned out to be not only audible but clearly better, to an unexpected extent. I listened with the SPTPC cables in my system for a week, then swapped the TPC back in. I listened to a number of pieces, but I’ll only mention a few. The rapidly plucked guitar strings from Gajdarsko Oro (Krushevo, MA Recordings) now seemed muddled. The entire soundstage from Tool’s Chocolate Chip Trip was narrower and shallower, the spatial placement of items was fuzzy-ish, and the crystalline notes from that piece sounded rounded off. Midrange and treble transients from percussion and piano in Murmuration (v2.0, GoGo Penguin) were dull in comparison to the SPTPC cables.

Mind you, I noticed none of this previously, and now only in comparison. Everything sounded nothing less than spectacular, and when I tried the SPTPC cables everything sounded, I guess, more spectacular. If I hadn’t tried them, I’d still be thrilled. I know I could spend a lot more for cables, but I can’t imagine getting more bang-for-the-buck than what Iconoclast provides.

It might sound like it, but this isn’t a paid endorsement. I’m just a very satisfied customer who appreciates the application of physics rather than voodoo to the furtherance of audio. I don’t understand why silver plating improves things, but there you are.

— Chris

[BobBJC]

Audiophiles like you help us evangelize one of the best kept secrets and best values in audio. We’re grateful for your willingness to share your comments and help spread the word!

[rower30]

The silver was originally employed to lower lead free solder temps and improve flow bracket tolerances. It did that for sure, as did only using higher silver content solder. The silver doesn’t change conductivity, it just moves the heat uniformly throughout the solder.

Best, Galen

[rower30]

The sound changes were unexpected and can’t be explained, so we don’t. But they are real and I’ve heard them myself. Your trial mirrors many others. We aren’t at GHz frequencies where the superior uniformity and silver plate would be measurable as attenuation or signal return loss.

Best, Galen

[tony22]

That’s the thing I love most about Iconoclast, Galen. A willingness to say “we don’t know why” as opposed to coming up with mystical B.S. to claim why something sounds a certain way (basically, pretty much everyone else).

[rower30]

Always something. Andre Jennings from Absolute Sound magazine was over this afternoon and fresh ears are a wonder! I’m so blown away by the speakers as is, I kind of just froze in place.

After a three hour session playing all sorts of stuff, he concluded all was excellent EXCEPT the image focus was not at par because of the right side energy reflection off the hard wall. We draped a knitted blanket stolen off the couch off the window well and WOW, that fixed not only the center image shift, but the imaging itself took a jump for the better. The left speaker gets the first reflection fix automatically as the first re-election is into the “void” of the L-super room (picture).

OK, notice the WOOL RUG is now there. Yep, I stole my office wall decoration and sacrificed it to the stereo Gods. The alternative was buying something but this passes the WFA and matches the carpet. Since it sits about two inches off the wall it re-attenuates higher frequencies. Low stuff naturally won’t be as affected.

Now that both sides high frequency energy is better balanced but sure, not perfect unless it is identical room bounce. Still, good things are happening. It really pays to have people who are less emotionally involved in your system than you are. Demerits can be ratted out way faster. I knew I had to fix this, but I wasn’t pushed to get it done.

Val may have a better fix, but this quick fix wool rug is doing a lot more than it was in my office.

Best, Galen

[weedeewop]

[rower30]

That dude can probably hear really well.

[weedeewop]

Lonely, eh?

[rower30]

As long as you like yourself, you’re never lonely.

Galen

[allan.thunes]

Though I can be my own worst company.