Longer speaker cables or interconnects

@unreceivedogma,

First of all my rig is in no way in your rigs league. Let’s get that straight right now. I notice you play your albums with the dust cover on. Well, my first so called ’audiophile’ turntable was a Pro-Ject RPM 5.1 SE and I couldn’t believe it when the owners manual said specifically not to play albums with the dust cover on as the dust cover tends to vibrate from the speakers and the turntable when the turntable is playing! Is it is just a dust cover only? For when the turntable is not playing? And not for sound reproduction? I'd enjoy some feedback on the above comments here.

I thought this was nuts, but tried it anyway, and you know what, I have been playing albums that way ever since. No matter what tuntable I am using at the time. I found through listening tests that the sound is better when no dust cover is used!

There’s a long standing debate of what the stylus can and and cannot hear or read. Is the stylus similar to a mic? Or does it only read what is transcribed when in the grooves of vinyl?

Maybe the closed turntable dust cover/lid thing is a holdover from the 70’s when our parents would buy us those cheap-o all inclusive thingys so us kids could have our ’blue lights in the basement’ parties. Ahhh...Those were the days weren't they? Never realising that the old RCA or Magnavox that mom and pops had upstairs was actually a way better rig!

As to interconnects and speaker wire I think you said you had something similar to the old Monster cable back in the day? I know you didn’t want to spend a lot of money but with a $17,000 rig, I think you can afford more for interconnects and speaker wire than you give yourself credit for.

I would suggest you take a look at Morrow Audio speaker wire and interconnects especially since they have a 60% off sale going on too right now. When you have good speaker wire and interconnects you can almost run them as long as you want.

I’m using Blue Jean Cable speaker wire and interconnects and have 25’ each for my dual subs with no problems in sound degradation whatsoever. Cheers mate.

The word you’re looking for is resonant cavity.

Tyray,

Actually, the dust cover is usually up. But with about 10% to 15% of my records, beyond a certain volume, say 85 decibels or so, the cartridge picks up feedback hum from the speakers. When the dust cover is down, the problem disappears completely. The cover does not “chatter” at all. I presume Westfield must have dampened it somehow. And, I presumed from that experience that it must actually be better to have the cover down all the time, but I get lazy and I otherwise don’t hear a difference. With the new room, that may change.

As for the cost of equipment generally, never mind cable, I’m from the David Halfer school of audio. You shouldn’t have to mortgage the house for good sound. I see someone has brought an updated version of the old Dyna70 back, still regarded as one of the great designs of all time. I still have my Dyna MK III monoblocks for the day that I finally get around to bi-amping my speakers.

i did not pay for that Koetsu. It was a gift from a very well known rock musician / environmentalist via his engineer. No way do I spend $10K on a cartridge. That said, it is way better than my Benz Micro. 

@unreceivedogma, having read a few Springsteen biographies before his recent autobiography I was pleasantly surprised at how candid he was. He didn't gloss over his problems with perfectionism or forget those who gave him a helping hand.

It's must be kind of strange for you to have been involved in a scene which has since gone down in history and been catalogued hundreds of times. The closest I got to Max's was via the Pistols LP. 

Regarding the turntable feedback I wonder whether the lid is picking up the airborne feedback when its up and transmitting it to the headshell. It might be worth removing the lid completely to see if it disappears entirely.

In any case 85db or thereabouts is pretty good. Many a deck would start dangerously howling by then.

Cd318,

I did try removing it once to experiment but I still got the feedback. Putting it completely down did the trick. Maybe with the new space this will be a non-issue.

BUT...sometimes I think in at least some of those recordings, the engineer is messin’ with us audiophiles. As an example, when I play the overture to Tommy by The Who, about when the French horn kicks in, my dog goes running to that speaker and starts howling like a wolf. Then she hears something in the other speaker and goes running over there and howls some more. And on it goes, back and forth, left to right, right to left, driving her nuts. It’s the only time she makes that sound. My guess is since we humans can only hear to about 15K - in reality more like 8K - but dogs can hear to about 45K... you get the picture.

The dust cover is always down during parties. Guests can be really obnoxious, and I’ve had to have been very curt and rude with them to not only keep their hands off but to stay back.

As for the scene, I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Only with hindsight did I realize how special those times were. I went to the Max’s 50 year reunion a couple years back. It was held in some tacky classic rock club in midtown Manhattan that felt like what you would imagine a Hard Rock Cafe off the NJ Thruway in Parsippany would be. But a lot of the old crowd turned out for it: members of the Dolls, of Bowie’s bands, Tod Rundgren, The Fugs etc.

There was also CBGB right down the street from me, on The Bowery, the Mudd Club, Area (another Warhol hangout), Sin-e, The Knitting Factory (Jeff Buckley hung out at the latter two). All are now gone.

I’ve had the system up to 95db. Almost no distortion.