Jun 30, 2014 19:58:48 GMT pinkie said:

So what do we think is going on with isolation for solid state electronic devices?

Lets be honest , nobody on this forum is equipped to provide a satisfactory explanation as to the audible benefits of isolating solid state electronic devises , if one exists .

Indeed, suppose someone was ,  what would such an explanation look like and how would it be proven ?

So people can report their findings and other people can try and that be fine and dandy ,explanation for explanation sake , what's the point ?  . I once asked my six year old hold my amplifier and wiggle it whilst it played and I detected no difference .

The difference for me , is if someone is selling an isolation devise that costs hundreds or  thousands and can be replicated with materials costing pennies or pounds , then it is reasonable to seek explanatory efficacy.  

eg. why is a townsend seismic sink better than an inner tube in a metal box ,or still point record weight better than any lump of metal .

p.s - what is a hot thread , I do hope it is nothing I said ?

Having a music session with a friend last night allowed me to both evaluate and get another opinion on what I had achieved with my system's speaker port stuffing and cone supports, very much interrelated.  I listened for the effect on bass with different recordings and came to the conclusion that I have the balance just about right, or possibly just on the light side of right.  What became clear is that bass extension and potency vary enormously from recording to recording and that the system reveals this now more than I had ever been aware of.  Listening examples:

Vivaldi - Four Seasons, Drottningholm Ensemble, BIS, CD: lovely potent continuo organ and double-basses, good balance

Shostakovich - Symphony No.10, Jarvi, SNO, Chandos, CD: strong timpani, good impact although hardens up a little in the climaxes, bass drum a little light

Strauss - Also Sprach Zarathustra, Ormandy, EMI, DMM vinyl: fantastic organ pedals in the opening, truly room shaking, balance is tonally bright yet bass is potent (a feature of DMM master, I think)

Damian Rice - 'O', CD: great drum impact, superb soundstage, enormous dynamic range, good balance

Genesis - Selling England by the Pound, Japanese SACD: incredible clarity and detail, not a lot of extended bass

Dire Straits - Dire Straits, remastered vinyl: sounds lightly balanced to me, bass a little recessed

Dire Straits - Communique, remastered vinyl: better balance with good strong drums, impact and reasonable extension

k d lang - Drag, CD: superb bass in all tracks, pretty amazing in The Air That I Breath and The Joker, bass as strong as you would want

Jewel - Spirit, DC: very potent bass, almost excessive on Barcelona

Supertramp - Crime of the Century, Speakers Corner vinyl: a touch light on the bass guitar in School, for instance.  Light & bright balance

Kraftwerk - Minimum-Maximum, CD: awesome, thunderous, room shaking and thoroughly visceral bass

Visit by TonyC of Coherent Systems

Well, TonyC is one superb system diagnostician, the veritable 'House MD' of the hi-fi world. Not only did he listen to my system and pull faces, but he proposed areas of improvement which proved to be spot on with his corrective actions.  His immense knowledge of the professional world and installing high end systems certainly came to the fore.  It's also great talking music with him.

In the missive that follows, I am going to have Pinkie bite my legs because we did a lot of work with power cables and routing, and I'm going to be eating humble pie about an interconnect direction that proved ultimately to be a wrong turn.

Tony listened and used the word 'thin' a lot during his initial appraisals.  Part of it was his assessment of components he knows, such as the Ayre SACD player and the Chord power amp.  He agreed that the heart of the system, the Pass preamp, is not in that category, though, and neither are the Usher speakers.  What was clear to him and had become apparent to me was that the system was not gelling. We agreed that the mid was recessed, the treble was splashy and the bass a little disconnected and fruity. You know that feeling you get when you've made a 'clear improvement' but it wasn't giving you musical results over the long term? I've been there enough times before that I had recognised it even before Tony had come over.

Power

The first item that Tony brought out of his kit bag of goodies was - a power cable. This is a 6D, one of his own products (6th Dimension, not in his website cable page), a very thick hand braided affair with silver and gold content.  We started by replacing my Furukawa 2.6 feeding the P10 regenerator.  To say that I was amazed is simply telling it like it happened.  This one cable, feeding power to my regenerator, brought back a large part of the missing presence range and started to make everything sound more coherent (now I know why his company is called Coherent Systems).  There was more boogie, dynamics were more apparent but the biggest change was that the musical flow had improved.

After that, things became surreal.  Tony brought out a box which is some kind of power treatment but 'not a filter'.  As far as I could see, it was a converted Furutech distribution box with Schuko connectors.  We wired it in before the regenerator.  I was extremely sceptical that this would have any beneficial effect at all.  I was wrong.  More of that midrange presence, a little more focus and tightness everywhere, even lower apparent noise floor.  Now I should explain that I have done much to create a quiet power environment, with plug-in filters distributed around the house as well as the regenerator itself.  Clearly, there is even more hash and noise than I had realised.  We could not change the power arrangements for the Chord power amp because of that damnable highly recessed 16A connector, but Tony is going to make up another 6D for me to try on another day.  We did try powering the Pass power supply direct from his 'magic box' and that yielded a smaller but further improvement.

I'm still shocked that the replacement 6D powering my system could yield such a significant and highly audible improvement, it goes against all intuition especially as my Furukawa had comprehensively left the previous Russ Andrews HC Powerkord for dead.  There is much MUCH more to this power business than meets the eye and tells me yet again how important power arrangements are in a system.

Interconnects

As we were listening, I was scratching my head about a thought that had popped into my mind and Tony was thinking along the same lines at the same time.  I said that I still had my Yannis cables while he asked about the SLICs.  So I went and retrieved two balanced cables and replaced the SACD to preamp and preamp to power amp runs.  I had begun to realise that, since replacing them with the SLICs, the system had sounded better in hi-fi terms but it wasn't sounding as musical.  Listening to the Yannis with CDs was the second biggest revelation of the evening: suddenly the system gelled a hell of a lot more, the flow was better, dynamics and snap were there, female voice soared without constraint and the detail that I know so well in my system had returned.  What I had lost was the edginess of the SLICs, giving the impression of greater impact and detail, and what replaced it was a large dollop of ease, lack of strain and a much cleaner treble.  The soundstage was more natural and slightly further back - less in-you-face, if you like.

We then switched back to vinyl and I replaced the single-ended SLIC run from the VIDA to Pass with my Yannis single-ended with WBTs.  We heard the exact same things as we had with CD.  It didn't even cost me anything!

What was obvious to us was that these two big improvements to power and interconnects worked hand in hand to create a much better synergy, and we hadn't even swapped out a single main component!  I ended the evening with a system that was working well, sounding less edgy, less clunky, less harsh in the treble, tighter in the bass.  It just plays music better.  There is more to do, but I have the main 6D power cable left on loan and will listen over the next few evenings to a lot more music.  Somehow I think I'm going to love every minute of it!

It's always great having friends around for a listen and a play with equipment, but on this occasion I valued an experienced professional's evaluation of my system.  It really paid off.

My thanks again go to Tony of Coherent Systems.