Bwhite I have never had the pleasure of listening to a Supratek preamp. And...? Tom |
Anyone in Indiana with a Supratek. I am in the market for a new pre-amp and would love to hear one these, within driving distance. |
I own a large and small platform of the exact type Larry speaks about. And yes they did make a difference. These are dampening devices by nature and are not conducive to the accurate portrayal of the dynamic structure of music. Sistrum replaced all the high mass leaden dampening devices in my system and and brought back the live dynamics and staging the performance actually contains. Tom |
Dampening Larry is not a good thing but a bad thing! Dampening is but a tourniquet only there to impede the natural flow. The natural flow may be from a good design or a poor design but impede the dampening does. Let us hear from the outset the good and the bad, unimpeded from all the sluuuuuring of lead and slow blurrrr and dulling effects of rubber and their sister products! If a cello with its attached end pin were to be placed upon a leaden rubber base and the cello strings were plucked would you not dampen and alter the natural dynamics of this beautiful instrument? There are much better materials for EMI and RFI shielding and efficient resonant energy transfer than that slow sleepy leaden train. Tom |
Long time ahead of us to find the pre-amp deal of the Century. I will continue my search..Tom |
I know of one you can come and get..Tom |
Dampening is a storage device with leaks. Try 21st century implemetation of 17th century laws of physics. The science of resonant energy transfer is what works. Wake up and take a new listen. 84 Joe if your nearby I can arrange for you to listen. This thread has been altered and I may be one of the culprits. Tom |
Good listening for all of those who appreciate my efforts and many others on Audiogon to make the Supratek and for that matter all audio reprodution devices sound better. I am not the only one out here who is a proponenent of the attributes of resonant energy transfer delivered by Sistrum products. Remove your pieces from the dead lead and rubber. Direct couple so you can hear the music. There will be no argument Larry when you try the denial in your own system but do so before you sell off the parts you know. Tom |
It has been my experience that when I have removed the rubber feet from a chassis and placed the component directly on a Sistrum platform there was an immediate and noticeable improvement of sound. Rubber and other dampeners I feel impede the exodus of resonant energy away from what we all wish to preserve and enhance..Tom |
Suspending a circuit within any given chassis will only serve to trap the resonant energy transmitted by the transformer and all internal as well as external wiring. Some of this errant energy will be electro-mechanical self generated by the circuit itself some will be airborne generated. So now the floating board has no way of dissapating this self perpetuating resonant energy. It is now trapped. Oh well.. By the way dampening will only compound this problem.. Tom |
My sole motivation here is for people to get the lead out. Some things are only worth free. Mass loading is old school, dampening is old school,isolation is old school. I am old and have been to all those previous schools. Thankfully I'm not there anymore. Most people I would like to have drop by for a listen. It is very fullfilling to see a friend become excited about some new implementation and benefit of physics. My only payoff is the turn on I receive knowing a friend has now opened his mind and his ears. Tom |
Bwhite, Respectfully this is but an 80lb.storage device. There are many others of this same school.. Resonant energy can only be suspended, stored with no place to go but up into the very chassis it supposedly will benefit. What about airborne energy it too will have no high speed way of exit. It will be slowed to exit by the material that it rests upon. Perpetuating the storage of resonance by such devices only regurgitates and continually amplifies the whole procedure over and over again. No way out...Tom |
My experiments with dampening materials shut down the sound of my system and stifled the dynamics. Life started again by removing the lead and dampening.Tom |
84audio I would be happy to hear your system and you, hear mine. 4 teflon feet compressed under 80lbs, plus the additional weight of the resting component provdes no exit of collected resonant energy. Trapped..Tom |
Oh, but I do understand, so it is very easy to disagree. You know I had both and now I have only one. The platform was replaced years before this thread was started.Tom |
Go Joe! Lets get together and hear each others system and when we do, that we partake in a usefull comparison of mass isolation versus direct coupling..Tom |
Somewhere out there on some web site or maybe it was our friend Warren who said "let it vibrate". Natural is what we all hope for..... Dampen is to strangle as Sistrum is to live. My opinion shared by many..Tom |
Dynamic contrasts were missing from any of the several passive pre-amp or cd direct to amp systems I have heard over the years. Dynamic structure and texture along with the jump factor were never present in any of the previous mentioned systems. I certainly want to eliminate any coloration of the circuit whether it appears to be a pass thru or an active line stage. A well implemented gain stage's voltage swing should accurately track the ebbs and tides of a live performance all the while being transparent.
For me this is the most satisfying presentation of the real performance..Emotion....Tom |
Sorry guys its not reflection and it aint no Bose speaker neither. Its resolution and room geometry controlling the air flow, umm like a manifold in a car..Room pressure reducing the 90's to 40's 58's and 62's..depends on the volume and ratios..I record live acoustic instruments in this same room. Just using what I got...Bend it shape it contour it don't let it stick and come back at you later..Tom |
Could it be that tube rolling is like mixing and matching cables in ones system? Compensation for certain attributes one thinks or feels that their system maybe lacking. Adding color here and there to fill in and round out what a particular system's owner may feel their rig is missing.Is this hopefull pursuit of accuracy one of reliving the actual event or a surreal pipe dream of an occasion that never happened? Tom |
Okay I'll shut up...As some say ignorance is bliss and others just call it ignorance.. Find out for your self. Tom |
Tubegroover sir..I question more the method of inserting a new device into one's system than the the mere presence of the device itself. How many of us have re-tuned our system by mix-ing and not matching cables? Was it the color that we just added to the previous red that now made it sound more purple..Cause and effect. I think that it is too easy to hear a difference and everything added makes a change and change is not always recognised for the negative colorations that may result. I feel sometimes the statement system dependent is overused, abused and misused when certain equipment is inserted in the musical chain and bashed because of misapplication or the end user does not understand the inneractions of all the devices involved. I feel much equipment is never really heard as it really is, because of such poor methodology.. Tom |
My backround in audio and video goes back over thirty years. It is and has been my hobby and profession over the same span of time. I have owned way back tube equipment from Marantz, Mac, Arc, Conrad, Sonic Frontiers ,Cary and Melos and Bat..Some of this gear is in use in my system today.None of it in a total state of originality. I suppose my criticism is non specific at anyone person or any single instance or thread. This thread is perhaps the most mature one that I have read and participated in for sometime..Because of these feelings, impressions or even facts, I felt compelled to question some methods by which some Goners' actually evaluate parts pieces or whole audio systems. It seems at least to me some, of less experience make wholesale random changes not having a method to their enthusiastic madness. Conclusions, bashing of gear that maybe way better than any other piece of gear that they own and is far more revealing of all of the stuff attached to it and thru it. When a client asks me to lend them a cable for audition I try to take all the same cable brand and type to that clients home. How can you evaluate one cable out of perhaps six or eight that are thrown in to the mix. All the same cable all of one voice. There has to be a point of stasis to really have a basis of comparison. This is only one example... People on this thread know how to do this and implement this. For this bobby to survive and hi-end audio as an ongoing work of art to survive, those of us with the knowledge education and expertise should take it upon ourselves to inform others on proper methods of design and implementation and not just the product in the box..Tom |
Bwhite, the most effective way to reach the synergy we all wish to achieve is thru high speed mechanical grounding techniques. Ground is the point of reference,and the most efficient way to reach the reference is direct coupling..Tom |
Asa the turn on or the fix is the awakening of the video head who hears my two channel surround system and asks where I am hiding the center speaker. I then ask them to close their eyes and and point to the edges of the sound stage, the reaction is 180 degrees or more. Its just stereo, what can one expect...Tom |
Worse than the classic definition of ignorance[ lack of knowledge] is one possessing a shut down mind. Reminds me of dampening devices such as lead or rubber, materials that slow , alter and destroy the natural dynamics of music. Thats all about friction and thats not what this is about...Tom |
Thin skinned maybe. Some of my ideas on this site have gotten me wacked. Some days I lack the skills and the patience to explain some of the methods that I use, some will be applied to real acoustic musical instruments. I try not to dampen anything.I believe in direct coupling.Equipment is direct coupled, speakers, subs ,even the acoustic devices I built to redirect the flow. I think of my room as an aerodynamic vessel not as a room that needs to be tamed and dampened by lotsa sound deadening materials. I killed the music in previous rooms of mine. I try to focus the energy that is trapped along 90degree surfaces. Dynamics speed and resolution are not lost in this method of control and refocusing of the natural energy contained in the room. I am not a engineer I am not a mathematician..These are ideas and concepts that I have am willing to experiment with and ask for the proper help when needed. So when I stated that my soundstage was 180 degrees or more I feel I was not mistating this audible and visual presence. Others who have come by stated the same thing. A few ,before they arrived, said it had to be gross reflections, when they left they said it wasn't reflections after all. Now it does not do this trippy stuff on every recording but the stage is always outside of the box. Some of these ideas came from the use of Argent Room Lenses. Again sound pressure is like fluid in that it can be redirected and refocused. Moving the Room Lenses around I found that the edges of the stage were more defined and sharpened. By doing this, broadens the stage I feel in a natural way. I found in my room that there is a bass suckout. The bass is in the room but it is on the ceiling. I found this out one day while playing music and changing a ceiling lamp. So I built a 5 sided panel of three different angles that is direct coupled to the ceiling that captures and redirects some of this lost bass energy back to my listening chair. The fellow that built the panel said it looks like a space ship. The ship is dual purpose,it also contains my projection screen. So because I state these ideas and describe these devices in vague terms I leave myself open to being wacked. Self fullfilling I guess. These ideas and other concepts are ways I maximise the sound of equipement in my room. These are concepts that I try to design into customers systems as well. Tom |
It is an attractive and interesting space ship..It does hide the screen..It fuctions very well and there are no flashing lights to scare my neighbors or to make their dogs cry.As for the Bp20's I have sold many of those in the past .They benefit greatly with the addition of the threaded 1.5 in Audiopoints, really open up and make the bass much more articulate much more apparent speed and attack.Also give the front nose a slight tilt up.. about 5 degrees.Great buy for you..Tom |
Rodger I would first recommend, as a point of reference, for ever more that you mechanically ground all your components... Do not mix and match different coupling devices they all have different ground potentials..And do not intermingle so-called isolation devices with coupling devices. You do that and you will have no reference at all. For a few hundred dollars you can direct couple all these pieces and they will be in step with each other as much as they will ever be. Intrinsic noise internally self generated as well as airborne micro-vibrations can be drained away quickly to ground. Resulting in a total system gain of 1.5 decibels netted by using Audiopoints thruout your system. Do not forget the speakers...Some of the brightness is distortion, and left in place in your components, will only be re-amplified and regurgitated over and over again.The reduction in noise and distortion will net you better and more tuneful bass, increases in soundstage and image focus, with greater overall system resolution. I am convinced these devices will allow you to truly hear and evalulate correctly what you do have, either right or wrong in your system. They will speed you on your journey to learn faster, and to store sonic memories and experiences, so you can become an honest to yourself educated listener of musical reproduction equipment. Tom |
Your room will not suffer from darkness. Tom |
Rodger I am refering to one single method of mechanical grounding and thats via the Audiopoints products. As far as electrical grounding goes. I found dynamics and timing improved if all major components[amp, pre-amp, main source]all share a common ac outlet.. A quad in this instance 20amp circuit of high quality outlets, dedicated and with an isolated ground. I have 3 separate dedicated lines all wired exactly the same and by the same electrician. I suppose there is a slight difference in the 3,and that it can throw the timing off..One common outlet works the best with all the majors hooked to one.. Remember it all starts with the power supply. Tom |
Jim2 I have never been to a Turkish prison nor to a Turkish bath..What about you? Tom |
Actually I live in Louisville Kentucky..I know most of the audio crowd in this state..So I was just reaching out...I may have questions concerning the structure of the chassis ..Thanks for the invites..Tom |
Well gentlemen I am a proponent of Sistrum technology..It is everywhere in my system. In side components as well as outside. Under my subs under my Dunlavy's, under my Dunlavy external crossovers. I have an Sp6 rack and 2 Sp101's, one under each of my amps that are built around Sistrum technology..The acoustic space ship and screen box combo that I described earlier are mounted to the ceiling with Sistrum technology. I have measured a 2 db increase of efficiency using these products..No down side, all the audiophile adjectives apply. Bwhite I would try a Sistrum Sp1 platform under your preamp with the apcd-2 discs between the downward facing points and the equipment shelf. You may also need the Sistrum Sp001 under the outboard power supply. These devices I feel are a major contributor of resolving power and major factor in the reproduction of the 21 ft soundstage I hear and see on several recordings played back on my system.They ain't no darn reflections neither!.. Tom |
Or, In search of the next level. Tom |
As for power cords I use all Sonoran Plateau..The Plateau has the Micro-Bearing steel insulator. Really wokeup my Krell SACD player..Everything is now in the right proportion and with even greater perspective..I have the old Sonoran cable hardwired right into my Melos outboard powersupply. Even though it will be a hassle to replace the cable I will upgrade to the Plateau..Tom |
Just looking..Is the Supratek dual mono? I have performed many mods on my Melos pre-amp over the years..One that was a bigee was installing 2 Noble volume controls removing the mute switch and the tape monitor switch, really a great improvement.Having two independent volume controls and no balance control makes for a huge stage, one that can be tweaked for perfect center fill.Tom |
Has anyone heard from Mr Mustang Bill as to how his Canary sings compared to his Grange? Maybe Judy and Fiddler have heard from this connection.How does this dual mono piece compare? Tom |
Larry I thought you would have been taught this lesson by now..Everything is, as it was before.Nothing ever changes not people or their perceptions of each other or the things they possess.Tom |
Wc65mustang you must be proud of that setup! I for one, and I would think many others would love to see all the pictures you have of your system and its environmental surroundings.Tom |
Wc65mustang, man oh man waiting to see the pictures of your hifi rig. When are you going to post those pictures for all of us to see, not at your place of business but in your own digs, in your own home? Tom |
Bill I'm sorry I meant to ask you how the Canary 903 4 chassis dual mono preamp sounded in comparison to your Grange. I thought you would have made that comparison by now in your home or at least in your shop. We are anxiously waiting your report. Tom |
Tbg would there be much alteration of an experienced tube designers original implementation and resulting power response curves if the end user were to swap tubes? Could these tube swaps result in whimsical colorations to fill some void of either room, equipment or end user's listening equalization preference. Tom |
