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Eliminating spade connectors, upgrading bits, soldering all of it in

Sharing, fwiw. Following a practice a local upgrade colleague did inside a Class A amplifier for me, I recently did the same type of thing on a pair of custom speakers I built for myself a few years back. The idea is around eliminating the last of any low grade connections I could find to see if I could upgrade the sound a little more.  Finally got some time to do it recently, and reporting first results and questions floating around in my head now. Wished I had gotten to this sooner, actually.   

Changes:

1. Removed a quad of quality gold plated spade connectors from speaker crossovers to rear speaker terminal (bi-wire binding posts) on the back of my main audio system speakers.   

2. Removed average run of the mill brass gold plated speaker terminals you can buy at Madisound or Solen. I always intended to replace these, and finally got to it. 

3. Added Cardas Copper binding posts, two pairs, for bi-wire configuration speaker connections to replace the prior pairs just removed. Sat in boxes a few years...

4. Soldered everything back together with Cardas solder thus elminating all prior quality gold spade connectors, internal speaker wire soldered directly. All spades eliminated. 

5. Also noting these new/better and more secure connections from my existing Cardas speaker cables to the new Cardas binding posts just installed

1st Listening Day:

Wishful thinking or not, I've been listening for a while, and something became immediately apparent now in question.  Woah, is it actually smoother on top and is the detail down into the upper midrange actually coming through with a little more and nicer "texture" now?  I could attest it seems like I can hear a little bit more "out there", too nah, really, hmmm. Really liking the added change with tone/texture. Puzzling.  

Setup - first testing with my Class A 50 watt solid state amplifier, and can say its already approching the smoothness of my tube amps in terms of tone, texture, and how it reveals details in a smooth way. The prior connections were good, nothing wrong, well crimped, I checked all of it before converting everything over. 

I really was NOT expecting this type of change, kinda scratching my head.  Its caused me to pause letting go of some of this gear too.

I'm not sure if anyone has encountered this kind of change with such [seemingly] small changes. Hmmm. Should have known better, my prior pair of speakers had everything all soldered in like this with no spades.  Maybe just a few weak links I had. Okay, just sharing in case anyone wants to comment or debate it at all. :) 

 

 

decooney
oberoniaomnia
361 posts
 

@gdaddy1 The number of alterations does not indicate the audibility. And the changes may also be negative (remember two-tailed distributions in statistics?). If change is audible, great. My point stands that measurability ≠ audibility. E.g. S/N ration of -130 dB is better than -120 dB, but it is irrelevant as threshold of hearing is around -90 dB, if memory serves me well. 

mihorn
910 posts
 

If change is audible, great.

Not all audible changes are great. People said that some sound changes force to upgrade audio systems. I agree it. Removing metal connectors is removing veils. (**Only little parts of veils are from metal connectors.) Almost your systems' mid-range (human voice) is far behind the speakers. What hitting you right in front of you (for forward sounding systems) is veils, not the voice. At least, these veils pretend like the system's sound forward and you feel the music is fuller and punchy. So, don't go too much with removing connectors before the sound is weak and boring. Again the connectors are small portion of what makes veils. Alex/Wavetouch audio

devinplombier
1,675 posts
 

🤔

pindac's avatar
pindac
3,956 posts
 

Connectors are a convenience design, with this as the goal, there will be compromises, of which one will be a End Sound that is not presenting as well as it could.

With a different thought for how the Signal can pass from Xover to Speaker Driver, there are improvements to be found, just as there are similar experiences has through using exchange components on a Xover, where a improved signal path is put in place.

This same compromise is present upstream at all umbilical’s and their terminations.

Additionally, the connections to the chassis and the wire design for the signal path within the chassis are all worthwhile getting familiar with, as changes made are able to offer much more of what has just been discovered by considering the Speakers signal path.

sns
4,218 posts
 

I don't  observe anyone trying to oversell these modifications. For sure we're at the marginal gains edge of things here, the fundamental components like amps and speakers  remain as most critical/important aspects. Thing is many of us have discovered a certain critical mass of marginal gains can result in much more than a slight improvement. 

 

Some manufactures understand this, others not. I recall my interactions with Bobby of Merlin loudspeakers fame, his obsession with marginal gains resulted in increasingly better sounding speakers throughout their production history. You see this with other manufacturers as well, they understand marginal gains can offer real advancements in sound quality. These marginal changes can also offer improvements  in spec's and reliability. 

 

And I assume most of us into the art of diy are also well acquainted with voicing, we've experienced lateral and regressive  effects from some of our mods. As for expectation bias, the negative and lateral experiences  bring about  an inherent control for this, expectation bias only works in short run at best, over time you'll hear the downsides if they exist. 

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