The WyWire Diamond RCA interconnects I am using for my turntable makes a pretty loud hum to the speakers because the ends are not shielded, so I got some shielding material from Amazon and it worked great. I put it on the full length of the cable and grounded the shield. No more hum.
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That comes to be fairly far from the conductors so assumably no significant increase in capacitance, still, would be interesting to know how much (or how little) it does affect it.
I donât know how it affect the sound if any, but it donât seem to sound worst, if anything, thereâs less interference from the noise and everything just sounds cleaner. I will listen more and compare it with other cables I am familiar with and see what happens.
Surely, what you hear now is a bigger advantage than what could change by slight deviation in capacitance, which is probably hard to assess in terms of sound. It canât be a significant deviation considering the distance.
Well no doubt the surface area is substantial with a shield like that, but I meant a foil conductor not used as a shield but a high surface area conductor to be used as a low impedance pathway for RF to ground, so not affecting capacitance on its part. Since the ground conductor should be shielded anyway, I donât know if this foil would be needed as an additional improvement though. But might be good, what do I know.
Apparently.
I have not seen foil conductors being used in other power cables than the Verastarr ones. They have exclusively silver foil - even double foils in the high current versions! Six wide silver foils all in one cable, I wonder how capacitive they are and how they get away with it. Their effect on sound quality has been positively described though and I could see a part of their performance having to do with the groundâs surface area. Then I donât see how the live and neutral would benefit from the structure since obviously skin effect isnât a problem with mains and considering RF, seems bad to have high surface area silver for live and neutral.
I just compared my home made shielded WyWire Diamond with my former WW Platinum Eclipse 7 and WOW, not even close, the WyWire is so much more live! Better presence, air, and micro detail! The WW is super quiet, no additional shielding is needed.
PRAT is way better, toe tapping time! I use âBasie Jamâ. Incredibly recorded! I feel itâs much more difference than when I first compared the two cables, but that was some time ago so I canât say for sure.
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The Whisper is in the hands of FedEx and currently in Honolulu. Should be with me in Bendigo Wednesday or Thursday, I reckon.
My intention is to use it from the wall to the Isotek power board. I currently run an Isotek Premier in that position, with a pair of Sequel to the M700s and an Elite to my Innuos Zen MK3. My pre is passive.
This week (while waiting and curious) I swapped the Premier and Elite, with the better cable now feeding the power board. The soundstage got deeper and better defined at the edges, but I lost a deal of colour from the Innuos. I suspect the extra staging depth and definition is because everything is benefiting from the better cable instead of only the streamer.
So, should I expect more of the same with the Whisper on the power board and the Elite back on Innuos? Iâm thinking Iâll regain the colour from the Elite feeding the Innuos, but the everything will benefit from having the Whisper from the wall.
Does this sound right to everyone? Should I leave the Elite from the wall and fit the Whisper to the Innuos?
Cheers
Mick
Hi Mick,
What brand cable is the Elite on your Isotek?
Most say put your best cable on your power distribution.
I think it can be just important to get the sound you prefer. The only way to do that is small samples all playing same recognizable piece you know. Pick what you like best. Then live with it awhile a few days or weeks. Next after time change back see if you still love what you thought was best.
Sometimes our opinions change. It is so easy to get different sound signatures with four cable that are different switched between components. So unless you have an integrated doing everything. The sound and presentation can sound vastly different as you move cables around. I think this depends on where the noise is in our systems as much as the ability of the cable to adjust to instant peak load demand. It can become a confusing and confounding balancing act. Power cables can sound like component changes.
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I couldnât agree more that itâs about noise more than anything else, and that each cable is different in terms of what it lets through. Because of that, I think itâs important to run the same cable to both mono power amps. All of my current power cabling is Isotek; not only do I want to run identical cable to the amps, I found my best solution was to run the same family of power cables to the whole system. I feel the same way about signal cables, too. I used to be a mix & match guy, but I was never really satisfied. Once I had a complete loom from one family my system just felt settled.
Iâll try the Whisoer from the wall first. Maybe in a few weeks Iâll try the streamer.
Thanks for your experienced words,
Mick
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Thereâs a lot of people that feel this way about having a full loom from one vendor. I did for years with Transparent and only recently started to drift. But, Iâve drifted very carefully and have backed out from a change or two for the reasons you call out.
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I may be wrong, but I think the techflex on the Elite may be Flexo Shield. Itâs been on my to do list for a while now. It looks very promising.
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And thereâs this for our friend @aangen. Though Iâd be the last to call his furry creatures anything less then friends:
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Yes they even make drain pipe size diameter to bunny proof his Stealth Cables.
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The Silver-Plated sleeve one looks cool, it goes well with my golden wrapper power cords. Both are shiny but this one look much nicer!
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For the last few days, I have been playing around with @vmax newest tweak, a 3M 7050 RFI/EMI absorbent tuning ring. I have tried a 1.5â ring on PCs and I didnât really hear much difference. Now I use a 3â long ring and the tuning ring works!
In my system the most improvement was made on Cullen Crossover2 pc connecting to BHK Pre, the music simply flows smoother with more energy, as if the musical notes gained 10% weight (in a good way). It made a similar improvement when I switched to a Purist Audio Colossus Rev. B PC. But, when I add rings to Stealth V10, Silnote Orion M1 Ref. and Zaffino OCC Silver Dart, the effect is smaller. in fact, too many rings may not necessarily be a good thing, I played mostly the DCC Elvis gold CD (which is better than my SACD copy btw) during these tests. When adding three or more rings to the system the music became too heavy, and Elvis sounded like he had a cold. My final try was to put a 3" long ring on the AQ Dragon, here it simply made the sound worse.
My conclusion is the ring would help in tuning for sure if it is placed in the right combination of the PC and gears. Two or more rings may help or may not depend on the systems too. The best location of the ring is closer to the male connector which is consistent with finding from vmax.
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@Vmax
@dchang05
If you havenât yet, you guys might be interested in considering a Schumann resonator.
Why it can work, it might have to do with the effect on the listener and the equipment both.
All electronics ever have been designed and constructed under the influence of the Earthâs field (and weâre all born under it too) so itâs natural that stabilizing its average frequency in the room can affect the performance of electronics and our nervous system too.
(This is why a 100% mu-metal coverage would not be a good idea in any case)
I use an Acoustic Revive RR-777 Ultra Low Frequency Pulse Generator together with a KingRex MK2 PSU. The thing it seems to affect the most is the soundstage which becomes fuller/more dimensional when itâs turned on.
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I appreciate your eagerness to try the tweak and sharing your results I have had lots of success using rings on the Whispers and the whisper Elite power cables. I actually found the Elite the AB7050HF tuning ring you can go from warm bass thick sound with strident highs nearer the female Iec to an articulated bass with more balance at one index finger from where the cable starts entering the backshell. The number of wraps and being snugged to cable changes sound more. My rings are two inches wide by 8.25 rectangle laying flat. the sheet then wrapped snuggly in a tight ring two to three times thickness of a single sheet. It is like having an infinite selection of power cords. I credit this tweak to @aangen stealth dream loan cable! My previous attempts at absorber on cable I tried wrapping the plugs. Moving it up and down the cable really was the enlightenment.
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