Why my system has detail but no body & warm vocal?

Mejames & Bob, please help me with my understanding of electronics - exactly how would a change in cable produce an (apparent) increase in sound in the lower midrange and upper bass (without a corresponding reduction in the adjacent frequencies)? I always thought that passive devices could not add, only subtract.

I would agree with a number of the posts above with respect to tweaking and tuning. Speaker placement and whether the room is really hard sounding and bright are critical issues. So are what your electronics are sited on.

So, for a freebie, experiment with speaker positioning; that is a given.

For under $150, you will get a major improvement and a big move in the direction you're looking for by:

1) replacing your electrical receptacles with Hubbell 5262's
(that is model HBL 5262) at about $10 each

2)siting your amp and CD player on either a maple cutting board from Home Depot for about $17 or vibrapods, (4 per component @$6 each), preferably both, using a vibrapod sandwich with the cutting board.

3) Buy one Quantum Electroclear for $40 and plug your CD player into it and the Quantum into the Hubbell receptacle.

If you like what that does (and you will), buy another Quantum for the integrated amp and plug the amp into it (it will probably have to go into another receptacle than the CD player is plugged into though-this, in itself would be a good thing.)

So far, it's pretty cheap. If you then want to blow big bucks, build 2 five ft. power cords for your amp and CD player by ordering 10 ft of in wall JPS AC cord (about $15 ft. from the Cable Co. or a JPS dealer) and use Marinco 8215 plug and 320 IEC to terminate it. This will cost you $100 per cord in total and you will own outstanding cords that absolutely address the problem you describe.

So, for about $350 (and you can do this in stages if you want to), you have addressed receptacles, isolation, power conditioning and power cords. You will then know what your system is really capable of without blowing your brains out on equipment. Only then would I start to make any equipment or wire changes (and I have owned both the 4TC and Hero, currently use 8TC, and replaced the Hero with something less expensive!). My system is reasonably low budget like yours, but with attention to details, you can pull some very high performance out of economical equipment.

don't know about speakers, but replacing your amplifier might do just a right trick.

change it to Creek integrated or the best will be Bryston 3b-st paired with passive preamp such as McCormack TLC1.

You can also go with McCormack separates such as Micro Power Drive or higher powered DNA1.

Further, please remember that if you're not satisfied with the sound, examine amp and speakers first before you even think about changing ANYTHING else.

Newbee: While i know that your "invitation to debate" was made to Bob & Mejames, i'm going to butt in ( what else is new ??? ) and throw some thoughts your way.

If you know what passive components go into building a tone control or filter ( and i think that you do know ), then you should know how other passive components like cables can alter the tonal balance of a system. All of these do the same thing i.e. they alter the load that the circuit in front of them sees and the electrons respond accordingly to those changes. There are differences though.

Tone controls or filters offer predictable results due to their presence being factored into the total impedance / conductivity of the circuit. The variables entered into the equation with different components and their various electrical characteristics responding to various cables contributing their individual and quite random electrical characteristics throw all formulas to the wind. This is why cables can tend to produce different results when paired with different components. The levels of stability and impedances / loads encountered with different combos can be quite varied. As such, the presentation from system to system is a combination of all of those factors combined.

I would suggest looking at the various waveforms / different transient responses / loading characteristics that can be experienced when substituting various speaker cables into what is an otherwise consistent system. The article / test results that i'm referring to can be found at Pass Labs under the title of Speaker cables: Science or snake oil.

After viewing the test results and reading the information that Nelson documented while doing this research, I would also look at the differences in frequency response of an amplifier itself as the load that it sees is altered. Some results can be found in an article titled Questions of impedance interaction that was printed in the January 1994 edition of Stereophile. Bare in mind that you are looking at the frequency response of the amplifer itself as the load changes, NOT the frequency response of the speakers connected to the amps in question. One should note that many of the amps share common loading characteristics with certain speakers, which is why some speakers seem to have a very specific sound to them whereas other speakers can be "chameleons" when different amps are substituted into the system.

Now if you take into account that one could simulate different loading conditions by altering various aspects of inductance, capacitance, impedance and reactance using passive components, you can begin to see that cables CAN play a role in how components sound / load up. On top of this, just as an amplifier responds to the load that is presented to it by the cabling / speaker, components respond to the load that is presented to them by the cabling and component(s) that they are loading into.

I specifically remember Frank Van Alstine working with Julian Hirsch on this subject. Frank actually demonstrated to Julian that some components were 100 times more susceptible to cable loading than other, more stable designs. The funny thing about all of this is that Frank is basically a "cable naysayer" yet he knows what he does about loading variables, etc...

While some would say that "all designs should be stable" and i agree, unfortunately, this is not the case with every component known to man. As such, one must "experiment" with various components / cabling to see just how they do respond to changes and if the changes are both discernable and beneficial to the reproduction and enjoyment of music. Sean
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