A Day at the Races

Well Ascot was just round the corner, so it seems appropreiate

Cookiemonster, had thrown his doors open to the 'Forum Rabble' yesterday, (did he really know how bad we were), within the first 30 seconds he found out.
An assorted rag tag bunch of misfits and oddballs desended upon chez cookiemonsters for a swaray yesterday, for a abuse you local mod day :clint: plus lots of vibes and chat.
First up Cookiemonster, did a sterling job on hosting, and I know spent a lot of time on 'Preperations'. Plenty of refreshments and food on tap too, Top bloke :kneel:

The assembled crew, Cookiemonster, Our leader Mikelab, Robbo, Isaac Sibson, Carpchasser, Lilolee (mister smooth bopper ), yours truley. Had gathered for a little testing session on CM gear.
A throughly fine and pleasent day, (and intresting day) was had by the assembled party, as well as the Grosloch stock being well and truely raided .
AS for the sounds achieved, well quietly pleased, the others will fill you in no doubt, as I was just an impartial listener.
Once again thanks to CM, for being a great host and having a good get to know you session, nice one mate. WM

 

Thanks :shame: , hope everyone had a decent time, especially after some of you had a sizeable journey. Thanks to all who were able to make it, i had a cool day, just seems to go too quick.

Kicked off with a grandee speaker cable shootout, courtesy mainly of Tones gratuitous trunk load of wire, plus contributions from Isaac, Neil and a nice example specially imported courtesy of the gaffa Michael. I will write a little summary later (Grand Prix now)......maybe some other verdicts too? FFRC was not the best but not the worst either IMO.............

Tone's remortgage capable AZ I/C and anaconda thick power cord were slipped in for a while, and hinted at the good stuff.

A nice selection of power cords were compared as well.....later.

Neils Townshend ss was slipped under the spinner for a while, and IMO was quite impressive, across the board, and will be the first thing on my lookout list.

Have i missed anything? Oh yes - a DIY pre from Lee - bit flat - but different, compact and eagerly awaiting the MK11.

oh - forgot to try the pens again!

Then settled down for some tunes and chat.(Hope Iain liked some of the music). Nice mix - though i still struggle to 'get on' with some of Lee's jazz/prog/hybrid/ stuff?? sorry mate - nice bopping though . All seemed to pass by very quick.

Isaac gave the Rotel a good lube, and the 'inerds' of the specimen were given a good inspection by the remaining experienced hands late in the day, with a bit of blu-tac chucked in for good measure. Some nice pics to follow on 'reviews' hopefully from Isaac who whipped out his paparazzi size photo tool.:MILD:

Thanks to those who came bearing gifts too, which i had 'preordered' - appreciated.

Hope you all found the way to the kitchen - a bit 'self-service' at cookies, as he tends to be a lazy bugger. Hopefully enough scran and liquids for all.

Nice to meet Isaac, Neil and Michael for the first time in the flesh. Your all as ugly as i imagined . And i had complaints from the neighbours about some dodgy merc in the car park which lowered the class

The door is open anytime for easygoing revellers.

I heard prat whispered somewhere in the course of the day, so hopefully my rig passed the minimum standards and played nice music - or were they talking about me

cheers

 

Many thanks to CM for hosting the event. Good tunes, good people, good time!

The playing around with kit was interesting. The speaker cables really showed that you get what you pay for, with many of the cheaper cables being competitive with one another overall, but with different balances (although a couple were really pretty terrible), and one that stood out a little. The two more expensive speaker cable sets (Dynaudio and Kimber) really showed the way.

Neil is in trouble for firmly planting a Seismic Sink on my shopping list, as I felt it offered the greatest VFM upgrade of anything we tried on the day (not to say that other things weren't good improvements... just this was the most improvement per £ to my ears).

Thanks to Tones for lending me a power lead! I'll let you know how I get on with it once it has burned in, and I've tried the old one again!

 

Right, MY amateur verdicts

First of all, some folk seem able to reach decisions on cables pretty quickly. Whilst i am able to do this in some instances, usually with disimilarly priced components where there is a marked difference, in most instances i prefer to live with the subject in situ for a while, in order to learn more about the finer details, and rather than generating just a visceral assessment, actually seeing how i could live the thing long term.

But in the short testing time that we had, a few things were clear.

The obvious difference was between the more expensive cables used (Kimber/Dynaudio) and the 'pelaton' (just watching the TDF )

Maybe this seems obvious to some, but i am naturally cynical, and do not necessarily always assume that the more expensive product will come out trups. But in this instance it did.

Between the top two, i think i preferred the Dynaudio actually. It appeared to have a very nice balance. I think the Kimber (not sure what it was 8tc/4tc??) was very good, with more finer detail in particular, but the treble seemed to be a little emphasised and not as sweet. But again i would need more time to assess these. They were both very good, and a clear step up from the rest, both offering more detail resolution, fuller bass, and a more refined spacious sound.
The other thing of course is system synergy. I don't believe one is necessarily better than the other (i don't know), more a case of how it is suited to the system it is used in. At least this is my belief, primarily with cables and i/c's.

Amongst the rest, my main recollection is actually of the Gale - mainly because of the excellent value for money. Very cheap, and a nice balanced sound, without sounding abrasive or harsh - and whilst not spectacular, for the money is a clear winner.

I have a poor memory now of the names? Which was the one that sounded pretty poor - claearly the worst? It sounded thin and nasty really compared to the rest.

Tone had a muchoo cheapness DIY jobbie on show, which offered a lot of bass and was not all that bad, particularly for the tuppence it cost to make. Not really refined but no loser.

We used quite a few - but not having taken notes i can't remember all of the names. But this is also a reflection of their respective performance. Many of these cables were simply not that great, and the majority of them seemed to lack overall balance IMO, which i feel is important. If they did one thing ok, they failed at another.

As for FFRC, well first i will qualify my feelings. I would accept that i may be biased. But this is NOT intentional bias. It is a reflection of the fact that i have lived with this cable for some time, and this is because i actually quite like it. Mainly because it is a well balanced cable in the context of my system. When first employed it sucessfully tamed the metal domes of the m/d and does a good job of treading the fine line between detail retrieval and harshness with what is most of the time quite a smooth treble IMO, all considered. The bass performance is reasonable too. But the main thing is that i don't feel it does anything badly. And that is why it is ok for me. There were other cables, even similarly priced on show that did admittedly do other things better, whether it be a fuller, tighter bass, or greater air/spaciousness and refinement. But overall, i think the FFRC stood up quite well, and it became obvious to me, why i have lived with it quite happily thus far. The other thing of course, aving lived with something for a while, is that you can potentially get attached to the particular sound that it represents. And i think that is also a factor.

The FFRC will be staying for now. I'm not unhappy with it - which is the main thing. Along with the rest of my rig, it plays music well and i enjoy it. Simple really. But the problem that occurs when hearing something better, is that you know you are not getting the best from your system, which i never believed i was, but my main concern is about getting sound per pound, cos cookie can be a bit tight with splashing his wonga sometimes, as Miss cookie can be a bit of a drain on the ole' dollar, am ong other things. And primarily i think i have a 'system threshold, whereby, i realise that systems costing many thousands are sometimes clearly better. But it all comes down to priorities, and for me, i would find it difficult to justify those quantities of money on hi-fi to extract those last ounces of performance. I can live very happily with a few grand hi-fi and would prefer to spend the rest on music or whatever. I've gone off topic now

So basically, i wouldn't be surprised if the FFRC is replaced by something in the future, and i would be prepared to spend more money, if only based on the performance gains of the best cables on show yesterday, which for me seem to justify what is a pretty modest outlay. But i am in no rush, the FFRC was ok before and is ok now. Man, i waffle

Talking of sound/pound - the seismic sink was clearly a winner, for what is modest money. The whole sound benefited, so a real winner. It was like putting the music through a sieve, leaving all the crud behind. Good stuff, and i am now on the lookout. It was placed under the cdp incidentally.

Mains cables didn't seem to offer as many differences between themselves to me, with two exceptions. The cheapest - DIY effort - was poor. The most expensive - SERIOUSLY expensive for a mains cable IMO was clearly the winner - but i could not justify the money. It is undoubtedly unsuited to my modest rig though. The others were relatively similar i thought. The Eupen/RA reference(?) were more difficult for me to judge honestly - there didn't seem to be THAT much in it. But i now have a Eupen i can live with for longer, so i will be able to judge it better

All of this babble i have written, was based on short listening periods, and as such is not gospel truth, and is also only my own interpretation of events, and what do i know! Its hard to assess how these things would work with EACH OTHER too. All synergy again. One cable might not sound any different, but then change something else in the system and suddenly it comes on song, So it is tricky, or i think.

But my current boxes are now clearly capable of serving up more music for breakfast, and i will be on the trail of more tweaky bits, and wires and stuff to gat the best out of it, all for the right price of course.

Ok, i am bored of writing now, and if you are still awake, you will be bored too, so this is the end. I have probably overlapped, and omitted things, but i don't care.

Thanks to everyone who provided the tools for the job. Good stuff.

:MILD:

 

With regard to the speaker cables...

The pheonix el-cheapo was the dreadful one. The next worst (IMO) was the Cable Talk 3. The Gale XL315 was the pleasant surprise, because it was very musical, if a little rough around the edges.

The Kimber used was 8TC for the bass with 4TC for the treble, bi-wired. The Dynaudio had more texture to it, and perhaps a little more detail, but the kimber seemed a little more musical to me. Calling between them would be very hard indeed though. Given the price of the kimber though, vfm would go to the dynaudio, unfortunately now discontinued.

Of the commercial cables though, the ortofon SPK200 was the one that surprised me, as it turned in a significantly better performance than the other budget commercial cables in the context of the system used (NB).

The DIY efforts (FFRC and Tone's homebrew) were both competitive, with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Since this is highly system dependant, trying to draw conclusions isn't helpful, other than to say that they were competitive.

 

First of all a big thak you goes out to Dino for hosting the day and putting up with the mess/rabble etc. It was great to meet up again with people and also to meet Michael, Isaac, and Dino for the first time. Really good guys. I have also got lots of new music to look out for, which for me is the most important thing.

Dinos system was very good, I feel. I think the main stength of the system was in the bass. it was fast, tuneful, not boomy at all and went reasonably deep. Overall the system had plenty of detail and loudness capability, timed well and was fun to listen to which is the most important thing! In the final analysis I felt that there was a degree of hardness in the midband and treble region which could get uncomfortable especially at higher volumes (for me, anyway). But I am being over picky here - its a good system.

The S/sink made a very nice improvement as it always seems to do with CD players. For the power cable tests I was in the kitchen so couldnt really say, but we did notice the bass suddenly become more meaty when the Acoustic Zen cable was put in:MILD:

FWIW, my take on the speaker cables :-

1st = Kimber 8TC/4TC (by a country mile) much more musicality and rhythmic drive than any of the others
2 = Dynaudio quite impressed with this
3= Ortofon biwire
4 = Gale (bloody good VFM)
5= Chord Rumour
6= FFRC, Tones el cheapo knock up (Tie)
8= Cable talk
9= Tones cheap car stuff

Once again, thanks to Dino for the day. If anyone wants to come over to mine sometime and hear music my style, they are more than welcome.

Cheers, Robbo

 

I've since butchered the NAD:MILD: . It has come on a country mile :redrum: , should have done it earlier in the day. Swapped the filter and conditioner arrangement round too.

It's interesting you put the Kimber way clear Neil. I don't dispute that opinion. But it highlights to me what i badly tried to point out earlier. You came to the day, already knowing what to expect from the Kimber, hence spottng the differences much more easily and quickly. You had spent more time with it. I find it more difficult to judge precisley all aspects in a short time.

That said, i generally have the same list in my head as you have posted, but with more dithering.

Top - Kimber/Dynaudio
Middle - Ortofon/Gale/FFRC
Bottom - Cable Talk/Tones Mk1 and II (sorry)

sorry, maybe i am just deaf - but i am confident i could generate 8 fixed positions with more time.

cheers

OR AM I JUST DEAF - at least i'm honest

 

CM,


Glad the NAD is sounding great with the new power cable!

Of course, my ranking is only based on brief listening and so must only be regarded as preliminary view, and I do know the strengths of the Kimber stuff due to prior experience with it.

But it could also be that we are listening for different things, or have different priorities. I am looking for a cohesive performance with the music flowing naturally, with the cable placing no emphasis on one particular aspect of the sound. Very importantly, there must be rhythmic integrity, dynamics and bass control. Detail is not necesarily the most important thing (maybe I am a closet flat earther ).

I felt the kimber did this much better than the others. But others may not feel the same.

Cheers, Robbo

 

Yeah, that is also a crucial point. We all have a priority list and order of things we actively 'look' for. Of course some things are immediately apparent without looking for them and these are easier to diagnose.

cheers

 

Dino's system did surprise on the amount of music it produces, it's PRaT's pretty well which is a big plus for me (not every one), it does room filling capability, and I would agree with the others on the bass (but then I would, as I hate bass and now these days I've read that ATC are likened to Kans??? )
I brought a long some speaker cables that were firmly in the FFRC price camp, for an open comparision to the whole listen panel.
Some el cheapo' Phoniex Gold £2m OFC, reasonable nothing more, but acceptable.
The Riches sounds Gale XL315, bargin of the month £2 and pretty damn fair, no real sins, nothing great but for £2@m a steal
The Cabletalk 3.1 have to say this 'Dire tripe' (for me)
The Chord Rumour, wasn't too bad, nice upper freq's and clean, but a bit thin in the mids for me, but not bad at all.
Tone's 79p a meter knock up, (the plugs were 4 times the price of the cable, much warmer than ffrc fuller bass, less cleaner upper freq's but hardness was lacking too. So it's possible to do a fair cable for low outlay.
The surprise was the Ofton SRC 200 Bi-wire pretty good for the money, midly amazed at this, better than the rest of 'low end stuff by a mile' so worth a look into guy's. (I seem to remember some one mentioning this, not to long ago either)
Seimic sinks, a lot of us 'Old Farts' know how good these are, and they seem to work well, with what ever you put on em, from DCS to Cambridge Audio, better resolutoin,bass cleainess and seperation, no brainer really in my totaly baised and ruthlessly commerical opinion (shame we don't make em)
Power leads Tone's £2 special, not too bad, it works a lot better with amps than sources (we only used it on the CDP), it's not got much RFI shielding, but it's current delievery is superb, and it helps amps with dynamic's and bass (IMHO) again just a point that you can DIY stuff pretty well
The RA power chord with wattgate, nicer freqency responce, cleaner mids, more open sound, wider stage
The Eupen 2.5mm with marinco, better bass (deeper/and cleaner) more dynamic drive, more tightly focused image, mids cleraner, but not as good as the RA, top end air but stage not as big as the RA. but for £48 (otto heil silver plated plug) a bargin again I feel, but we've said this before, so I won't go on about it.
The Acoustic Zen Tsunamia, hum, totaly unfair as it cost as much as the amp but, it brings to the party, things that only A/Z can, LiloLee summed it up with 'Combine the best bits of the RA and Eupen, and add a bit', but for this system cost is stupid, this was an exercise to show, what can be achieved with a dearer cable.(But not all do this)
Silver Ref i/c's, just more music/bass/air/detail, but at £900+ way out the question, the reason for bring this one, is pure demostration of 'what happens' if you tip the balance in any one area.
The last 2 speaker cables, the Dynaudio (which surprised me, it's not bad at all), full mid range, nice tightish bass, and good top end extension
The Kimber 4TC/8TC (Robbo will shoot me but) not one of my fave cables, but on the day for me a head and shoulders above the rest job.
Now, this brings me to 'How' and 'what' the guy's were listening for during the speaker cable tests, I was the only one 'Outside the room' back to the speakers, and able to watch their faces when various items were changed.
Myself I am intrested in the ability of a component to 'Coehesively' assemble the music together, in a dynamic,
rythmic way, whilist enabling correct timing. Tonal accuarcy is important, but not at the expence of the other traits stated.
The dynaudio, is a fine cable at the price, I felt the mid range textures, were better than the Kimber, with the bass being close, but in all the other 'traits' I look for for the kimber was clearly the better on the day for me.
That is not to say, I dislike the dynaudio or the ofton, I am baised towards the sort of presentation the kimber gives, and on the day, I found it to be more my cup of tea.
Dino's sytem is a cracking little MM (music maker), that gives PRaT and bass, and groove in nice amounts, I have a problem with hardiness now (Being spoilt I'm afraid), When I first entered the room, the sound reminded me of the first time I had my GR 20's at home on the Arcam A32/P35 combo. (metal dome tweeter again) not to such an extent but akin too. During the afternoon, we demostrated that you can remove 'various artifacts' from the signal path by carefull tuning. (and not large sums of cash either).
But one over riding factor of the day was power, and how to treat it.
A big thanks again to Dino for his great lay on, and to all the guy's who made the trek (Who's was that Dodgy Merc? anyway ), must have been an arms dealer I reckon )
Good to see new faces, and hopefully in the future, more of the ZG memebers will come along and join in, that way we can have one big super 'Clique', where every one's a memeber WM

 

Yes, thats a good point, similar kind of sound. Maybe its just that I am sensitive to the sound of metal dome tweeters!


Cheers, Robbo

 

sounds like a good day for all, wish i lived in the area

Whats the availability and price for the dynaudio cable, ive never seen it anywhere, and as you know im itching to get some new cable

glad to hear the Eupens didnt do to bad, arriving tuesday

 

Penance, some of us traveled over 100 miles to cookie monsters, so why is distance a problem? some of ZG's memebers don't drive and use the train, and they live farther away remeber he who dares' wins WM

 

I only got a motorbike, was tryin to imagine bringin some kit on the back of a bike

maybe ill just listen to thers

 

Haven't got time to write much today (I'm in an internet cafe as I don't have internet access at 'home' when I'm in London - only at work, and today is Sunday).

Thanks to Dino for hosting the event and for picking me up (and dropping me back) at the station. Being the only one (I think) not having to drive much Grolsch was consumed by myself :beer:

Good to meet Robbo, Dino, Isaac, Lee and Ian for the first time and put faces to names.

I didn't pay attention to the power cable test (I was in the kitchen with the Grolsch and Pringles :MILD: but as the bass sounded a lot better there than in the listening room some judgements could be made. That AZ cable really is amazing, but £900 :cry:

On the speaker cables I'm pretty much in agreement with the rest allthough I preferred the Dynaudio cable which I brought to the party to the Kimber. I felt it sounded more coherent and musical and had more top end detail. The Dynaudio and the Kimber walked all over the rest though. IMO it's a pity we stuck with the Kimber for the remaining tests as I feel the Dynaudio would have possibly pulled more out from the other changes made.

For those interested, the Dynaudio cable is called "OCOS" and it's a coaxial cable (looks just like black satellite cable) with small coaxial "plugs" at each end. Dynaudio speakers of old used to have a coaxial socket in them where this cable could be plugged in directly. For normal terminations, the cable comes with an "adapter" at each end which plugs into the cable end and has 2 lead out wires coming from it. I don't know if the adapter does anything more than just the connections for the lead outs (eg Zobel network like on the Isoldas). I doubt it as they are quite small.

AFAIK the cable is discontinued or at least, very hard to get hold of in the UK. My local Dynaudio dealer in Lisbon can apparently get hold of it easily though so I don't know where he's getting it from! I paid 150 Euros for my 2x3m set which is about right - it occaisionally comes up on eBay for around that price (25 Euros a metre). I found an old Home Entertainment review of it here but their quoted price of £4 (per metre presumably) must be a mistake - it's quite a bit more than that!

I'm now using Townshend Isolda cable at home and surprisingly didn't find it to be a huge improvement over the Dynaudio allthough it was definitely an improvement. I'm going to be doing some more back 2 back testing with the two cables.

For the Seismic sink I was sitting in a bad position on the floor quite close to one of the speakers but I didn't notice the dramatic improvement with it that has been mentioned at other bake offs. I'd say the difference was quite subtle and not worth the money they're asking for them

Personally I think I'd rather go for the Voodoo Systems isolation plaforms:

http://www.southwestanalogue.co.uk/voodoo isolation.htm . Walrus are doing them for just £199 which is quite a bit cheaper than the Townshends and IMO they look a lot nicer too

Lots of music played on the day and far too much to remember but most impressed with a CD of Louis Winsberg that Lee brought along. Definitely going into the Amazon basket

Hmm - I said I wasn't going to write much.....

Michael.

 

WM - perhaps we must set up a west country meet?

 

Issac, I have hosted about 15 of them I have no probs in doing more, however, I feel another venue should be put forward as well, then no one can say commericalisum, but there are about 20 or so of us in a 40 mile radius, I could always wheel out the second system to be more realistic
Wadia 6 modded
Densen B300 modded
Kef Q55.2's or Neats
A/Z matrix ref and Isolda
But you are welcome to drop round for a listen no probs. WM

 

I think you were the only one drinking Michael, as evidenced by your highly hurtful comments on my bass - LOT better (remember in my biased opinion it would benefit from a couple of feet extra width for 'breathing') . No, but you are quite right, bass is a strange phenomenon indeed, and there are various tasty nodes scattered around the house, as the paper walls are particularly conducive to bass transport There is a noticeable sweet spot in the neighbours bedroom. She showed me one time. :MILD: .(NOT REALLY).

:buddies: :elephant: :beer: Seconded

 

chewing on hay and drinking cider

Easterners (even adopted ones) will travel Isaac. I expect VIP on the doormat. I'll pick penence up en route.

 

HeHe

ill buy the pitza