Thanks. I hate getting flu because my sinuses get blocked and the many people who get that know how it can give you migraines and toothache, plus it’s now in my ears. I think we’re now on Omicron Mk2.
2 years ago we were worrying if it would be fatal, besides the sinuses my main gripe is that I missed a new triple bill show at Covent Garden tonight. The wife enjoyed it.
Steven,
DCR just means Direct Current Resistance. Smaller wire has more loss moving electrons. The current in the wire squared multiplied by the wire’s DCR is the LOSS in the wire. This is called “I SQUARED R” losses.
The AWG is kind of backwards, the LARGER the AWG the SMALLER the wire is. A 40 AWG is smaller than a 10 AWG, Ya, it seems backwards.
The series II RCA are ICONOCLAST brand made to lower group delay over frequency. The chart shows how it works compared to the series I that are better for digital.
Notice the yellow trace is “flatter” and this means the frequencies travel closer to the same speed down the wire. That’s what we ideally want.
The cable’s capacitance and resistance for Vp linearity is low enough on the RCA that the cartridge loading for frequency response above about 10K is primarily done with the head amplifier.
Kick the COVID man! Sorry about that.
Best,
Galen
Covent Garden isn’t going anywhere soon. I do wish COVID would just go away. Now I find from my wife that two additional staffers in the Harrogate area also have come down with COVID Omicron BA.2. I do wish you well, and some soothing music as well.
I think we had a super-spreader dinner party last Saturday.
I found a bit of a bargain on eBay, about $35 for 10 clean LPs. The Trevor Gilbert version of the Bach 48 was one of the first great classical CD issues and I listened to it walking across Ladakh and Zanskar in 1987, so I have fond memories.
I spun the Goldbergs but my ears are still blocked.
Wishing you a speedy recovery!
I had a look and cannot find where these tonearm cables are sold, whether in the UK or US.
Steve,
The ICONOCLAST cable is sold through Blue Jeans Cable. These are the RCA cable that goes from the Tone arm to the pre amplifier inputs. You want to use the series II RCA per the below. Lengths are custom to your needs. We recommend 1.5 meter min length.
https://www.iconoclastcable.com/rca/index.htm
Best,
Galen
Can you explain please. To me your story reads as a military pilot crew running through their checklist prior to take off.
Here we go…
-DCR, Direct Current Reistance. The voltage dropped across any item in a circuit at DC is the current in that series circuit times the items DCR, or resistance. All wire has a resistance and takes some of the signal away before it gets to the LOAD…or where we really want the voltage to go. To avoid that voltage loss we can reduce the resistance or the current or both.
-(T=RC) is the Time Constant for a capacitive circuit to CHARGE when voltage is applied to it. A capaitor doesn’t reach a fuill potential charger equal to the applied voltage for about 5 time constants. The RESISTANCE and the value of the capacitance mutlipled together is the Time Constant. This time factor distorts the AC signal from an ideal shape.
When the capacitor REACHES a full charge in about 5 time constants, the orange area, it will stop changing voltage across it. The opposite is true when we remove the charge, it doesn’t happen all at once, it take “backwards” time constants in a circuit due to the resistance before we get all the voltage out of the capacitor. That’s the dashed line you see.
The EM signal travels between the wire’s surface and the outer ground plane. This is why the DIELECTRIC influences it’s speed. It travels slower in a dielectric than in a vacuum where it is really fast, 3E8 meters/second fast.
I completely understand how involved this is. This is why people tend to avoid STEM, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, but…it is a lot simple item by item. It is just a LOT of items and “rules” to follow to get “approximate” answers. I say approximate because look at the number “pi”. It isn’t a whole number, 3.14 and a whole lot after the decimal .14XXXXXX… pi has never been solved. Technically any equation that uses “pi” is an approximation. As exact as we would like to be, there is error built-in to many calculations. We don’t know it all yet.
Best,
Galen
Cool stuff, Galen
Galen, I absolutely appreciate your explanation. I understand what you say and it will support my choice of cables.
Thanks 
My skills in math and rigorous understanding of these sciences are quite rudimentary and even a bit rusty, but as you say, it’s simple item by item and with a good common sense and imagination, I don’t feel like I require the rigour to truly understand what’s happening. Not an excuse to keep avoiding textbooks, sure, but… I ain’t gonna wait no longer than for the monetary income required to start building my own cables as I trust my common sense enough already. I try to simulate the EM geometry in my head, with some constants and relations having to be learned of course.
Relating to this, the constants of nature are inscribed into our brains because the brain has evolved under these constants. Albert Einstein was de-encrypting the workings of relativity from what his brain (and any brain) already knows, then went on from there.
Ramanujan, he was receiving Mock Theta functions and other complex mathematics as visions on his death bed and he wrote them down. (He said the goddess Lakshmi accompanied him and Lakshmi “was bleeding mathematics”)
It took about a century or so until some of those mathematics found applicable use - they are now used for modeling the dynamic workings of event horizons modeled as a superfluid surface if I recall correctly… We have to thank good old deity Lakshmi for that, I think she foresaw the future uses!
Sometimes it is better to start a learning process by first inspecting one’s natural intuition and then checking how correct it was. This method will yield positive surprises, we do have supercomputers inside our skulls and with an enormous genetic memory that remembers not just what our ancestors looked like but also the nature of nature by far. Not string theory though (it might be BS anyway)
Edit: Huh, I must have been drunk when writing this, what the…
