The coax cable going from my audio-video component to the sub-woofer has
arrows printed on the insulation . Do i really have to connect it with the
arrows pointing to the sub ? Or is it just a marketing gimmick ?

Thanx
JYC

On 12/27/03 2:07 AM, in article jdaHb.145650$8y1.433106@attbi_s52, "JYC"
wrote:

The coax cable going from my audio-video component to the sub-woofer has
arrows printed on the insulation . Do i really have to connect it with the
arrows pointing to the sub ? Or is it just a marketing gimmick ?

It certainly can't hurt. I have seen this on a lot of cables, and I don't
buy in, though a lot of people do. One thing I think everyone can agree on
is that is won't hurt one bit.

It all depends, do you have a dog? The arrows tell you which way to
connect to avoid the highs coming back from the sub, it's to complex to
explain here. If you have a dog, the high subs from the sub would bother
it to no end and domestic peace would be interrupted. Before arrows, an
untold number of dogs were driven insane from these signals we don't here.
Bty, the arrows need to be broken in for no less then 72 hours for best
high trapping effect.

The coax cable going from my audio-video component to the sub-woofer has
arrows printed on the insulation . Do i really have to connect it with the
arrows pointing to the sub ? Or is it just a marketing gimmick ?

Thanx
JYC

wrote:
It all depends, do you have a dog? The arrows tell you which way to
connect to avoid the highs coming back from the sub, it's to complex to
explain here. If you have a dog, the high subs from the sub would bother
it to no end and domestic peace would be interrupted. Before arrows, an
untold number of dogs were driven insane from these signals we don't here.
Bty, the arrows need to be broken in for no less then 72 hours for best
high trapping effect.

But bats love it.

--

-S.

"They've got God on their side. All we've got is science and reason."
-- Dawn Hulsey, Talent Director

On Sat, 27 Dec 2003 07:07:59 GMT, "JYC" wrote:

The coax cable going from my audio-video component to the sub-woofer has
arrows printed on the insulation . Do i really have to connect it with the
arrows pointing to the sub ? Or is it just a marketing gimmick ?

Hi JYC:
If you're referring to interconnect cable, there might be a reason
for the arrow.
Some cables (including the ones I make for myself), have two
conductors plus a shield, with the shield connected at the input of
the device only. This will sometimes minimize hum as this arrangement
is (semi) balanced.
Therefore, if this is the case with your cable, the arrow would
point to the end with the shield connected to the terminal.

-=Bill Eckle=-

Vanity Web pages at:
http://www.wmeckle.com

If it's really a coax it's a gimmick. However, there is a variety of cable
called "pseudo-balanced" that has the shield unconnected on the receiving
end. In that case the arrows denote that.

"JYC" wrote in message
news:jdaHb.145650$8y1.433106@attbi_s52...
The coax cable going from my audio-video component to the sub-woofer has
arrows printed on the insulation . Do i really have to connect it with the
arrows pointing to the sub ? Or is it just a marketing gimmick ?

Thanx
JYC

On Sat, 27 Dec 2003 07:07:59 +0000, JYC wrote:

The coax cable going from my audio-video component to the sub-woofer has
arrows printed on the insulation . Do i really have to connect it with
the arrows pointing to the sub ? Or is it just a marketing gimmick ?

Thanx
JYC



extensive tests were carried out and reported in electronics and Wireless
world a few years ago.

They clearly showed that in the audio spectrum, good mains cable was as
far as you needed to go to ensure quality.

Anyone selling gold or silver cable is really selling 'quality'
impossible to measure. And consider sensitive electronic equipment
measures distortion human ears cannot detect.

The most distorting element of a hifi is not the amp, not the recording
or the tansfer to digital.

Its the speakers.

What can be done about this.

every thing else ( ultra linear amps, low resistance speaker cables etc)
is like painting go faster stipes on a car...

On 1/2/04 1:37 PM, in article 8UiJb.195924$8y1.640799@attbi_s52, "Robin"
wrote:

The most distorting element of a hifi is not the amp, not the recording
or the tansfer to digital.

Its the speakers.

I have to disagree. I think in order of impact, you will have:

1. The source material (the music recordings)
2. The room acoustics
3. The speakers
4. The amp
5. The preamp
6. The source player

And provided that there is nothing wrong or mismatched with the previous
things, that should be the "in general" rough order.

This also means that if you spend a lot of money on speakers, but have
highly clipped/compressed recordings - it is wasted money. And if your room
has a lot of bad resonances that aren't tamed, speaker money is watsed
money. And so on.

Bromo wrote in message news:jsKJb.214635$8y1.771783@attbi_s52...
On 1/2/04 1:37 PM, in article 8UiJb.195924$8y1.640799@attbi_s52, "Robin"
wrote:

The most distorting element of a hifi is not the amp, not the recording
or the tansfer to digital.

Its the speakers.

I have to disagree. I think in order of impact, you will have:

1. The source material (the music recordings)
2. The room acoustics
3. The speakers
4. The amp
5. The preamp
6. The source player

And provided that there is nothing wrong or mismatched with the previous
things, that should be the "in general" rough order.

This also means that if you spend a lot of money on speakers, but have
highly clipped/compressed recordings - it is wasted money. And if your room
has a lot of bad resonances that aren't tamed, speaker money is watsed
money. And so on.

Surely the order of impact would be strictly on the basis of which
components produce the most distortion to the signal, and that would
mean that Speakers would be top of the list. The room may or may not
interact with the speakers in the bad way - that's dependent on too
many factors to list, and it can have both positive and negative
consequences. If the source player is a CD, then it probably goes
right to the bottom of the list with it's practically zero distortion,
along with the amp / preamp electronics etc. Whichever has least
distortion should go bottom. Ok, lets put cables at the bottom because
they make no difference at all. If you're looking at vinyl playback,
I'd put the record player system right up there with the speakers in
top position - I reckon it's hard to generalise which does more damage
to the sound - perhaps someone has figures for this. Again, the amps
would most probably go down around the bottom again in a vinyl system,
with the pre-amp doing a bit more damage this time.

If you expand to look at the recording you've got to decide wether the
goal of your hi-fi is to accurately reproduce the recording, or to
reprodoce the "musical event". If you're reproducing the recording,
then it's quality hardly matters in the precedence order of the rest
of the hi-fi chain. If you're after the musical event, then the most
damage will come with the microphone, followed by the recording /
mixing equipment etc, but I don't think you can include this on a
level scale with the reproducing part of the chain - the amps and
speakers at home.

From recent experience at a music recording session, there is just so
much difference between the live event and even the immediate studio
playback, that it would seem that almost anything you do after that is
just going to minimise the damage to that initial recording, but
almost nothing you do will "put back" that which was lost between the
singer's voice and the microphone.

Graeme

Bromo wrote:
I have to disagree. I think in order of impact, you will have:

1. The source material (the music recordings)
2. The room acoustics
3. The speakers
4. The amp
5. The preamp
6. The source player

And provided that there is nothing wrong or mismatched with the previous
things, that should be the "in general" rough order.


Again, I would disagree. Here is the order I would propose:

1. Speakers
2. Room acoustics
3. Source Components
4. Preamp
5. Amplifier (as long as it has sufficient power to drive the speakers)
6. Cables, cords and tweaks.

If you have one excellent recording, this is the order of diminishing
differences from upgrading to a better component. A great speaker will always
sound pretty good.

Source material varies from adequate to great, so it really shouldn't be
considered here, IMHO. Otherwise, I'd list it last.
Regards,
Mike

On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 00:50:44 GMT, (Mkuller) wrote:

Here is the order I would propose:

1. Speakers
2. Room acoustics
3. Source Components
4. Preamp
5. Amplifier (as long as it has sufficient power to drive the speakers)
6. Cables, cords and tweaks.

If you have one excellent recording, this is the order of diminishing
differences from upgrading to a better component. A great speaker will always
sound pretty good.

Source material varies from adequate to great, so it really shouldn't be
considered here, IMHO. Otherwise, I'd list it last.

Well, at least there's *something* we can agree on! OTOH, I wouldn't
even have graced cables with a mention.................
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

Ok...I'll bite.

IMO, the #1 component is defiantly the room.
I've got great speakers...and they sound like crap because of my room.
I will quote from something else I read recently; "a great room can make
a marginal system sound magical, and a bad room can make a great system
sound horrendous".

Not verbatim, but you get the idea..and it is true as I've lived both
ends of this spectrum in the past year.

in my last house, I ran a system I put together for $1200. It was the
cats ass. Completely pleasing and then some.
In my current house, I built a system costing 5x this...and it is
nothing but frustration. Again, the room is putting all of my upgraded
components and speakers to waste.

My other rule of thumb is "crap in, crap out"...so source and material
are high on that list.

I'd go:
1. room
2. speakers
3. source/material
4. amp

and I'd leave it there as a premap is just not even necessary in a
purely digital domain...which is where I live. If you are listening to
LPs and tapes, then i'm sure it has a place on the list.

Nick Georges wrote in message news:9aiKb.65416$I07.286195@attbi_s53...
Ok...I'll bite.

IMO, the #1 component is defiantly the room.
I've got great speakers...and they sound like crap because of my room.
I will quote from something else I read recently; "a great room can make
a marginal system sound magical, and a bad room can make a great system
sound horrendous".

Not verbatim, but you get the idea..and it is true as I've lived both
ends of this spectrum in the past year.

in my last house, I ran a system I put together for $1200. It was the
cats ass. Completely pleasing and then some.
In my current house, I built a system costing 5x this...and it is
nothing but frustration. Again, the room is putting all of my upgraded
components and speakers to waste.

My other rule of thumb is "crap in, crap out"...so source and material
are high on that list.

I'd go:
1. room
2. speakers
3. source/material
4. amp

and I'd leave it there as a premap is just not even necessary in a
purely digital domain...which is where I live. If you are listening to
LPs and tapes, then i'm sure it has a place on the list.

In my opinion, the way to budget a system:

1. Speakers (1. mains 2. sub 3. center 4. surrounds)
2. Player
3. Receiver
4. Speaker cables
5. RCA/Interconnects

Sincerely

If you read the original message carefully, you will see that the
questioner mentioned "a hifi", which is commonly understood as a
system for reproducing recorded music. As such, a hifi does not
include the sound carrier, although the latter may be heavily
distorted.

The questioner also asked for elements that introduce distortion.
Until now, I was convinced that the listening room introduces timbral
colorations, not distortion, but I may be wrong :-)

For the rest, I would suggest that, unless we are talking of (some)
tube amps or ss amps driven to overload, that the amplification
elements produce distortion well below the threshold of audibility.

For the source components I would agree in that they produce audible
amounts of distortion as long as we are talking about vinyl record
playback gear.

So we appear to be left with the speakers as main producer of
distortion and hence the weakest link. Close, but no banana. The
weakest link in the chain is the listener :

"The listener is the heart of the high-fidelity system, and is noted
for having high distortion, poor frequency response, marginal
stability, and arbitrarily variable performance characteristics.
Listener instability is the most common form of defect in a
high-fidelity system, which is why manufacturers recommend that the
ears be checked periodically by a qualified service agency to ensure
that they meet their specifications. Defective ears may be cleaned
with anti static spray or a mild washday detergent containing a
wetting agent, or may be replaced by a microphone and an oscilloscope
or, in cases where there is little interest in music, by a camera and
a well-equipped dark-room." J.Gordon Holt in Audio Magazine 1959

Klaus

Bromo wrote in message news:jsKJb.214635$8y1.771783@attbi_s52...
On 1/2/04 1:37 PM, in article 8UiJb.195924$8y1.640799@attbi_s52, "Robin"
wrote:

The most distorting element of a hifi is not the amp, not the recording
or the tansfer to digital.

Its the speakers.

I have to disagree. I think in order of impact, you will have:

1. The source material (the music recordings)
2. The room acoustics
3. The speakers
4. The amp
5. The preamp
6. The source player

And provided that there is nothing wrong or mismatched with the previous
things, that should be the "in general" rough order.

This also means that if you spend a lot of money on speakers, but have
highly clipped/compressed recordings - it is wasted money. And if your room
has a lot of bad resonances that aren't tamed, speaker money is watsed
money. And so on.

I agree that the listener could be the "weakest link", even I don't think
listener belong to a "HiFi system"...

I don't know, when you put up a system for yourself, should you have all
components balanced? (I don't mean the balance and single end)

Say you have a $5,000.00 system, you would not want to spend $2,000 on CD-
Player, $1,500 on Preamp, $2,000 on Amp, somewhat one or two hundred
dollars on cables, and spend $300 on speakers? Then, sure the speakers are
the weakest link!

My point is, keep all components at the same level, say 30% of your budget
on speakers, you may not get the best speakers, but hey, what can you
expect? It is just a matter of whether you like the sound of American
speakers (Soliloquy), European speakers (Cabasse), or Asian speakers
(Yamaha)?

Again, I'm a cable guy, I believe in cables make difference.

Yesterday, I listened between two pairs of nice pure copper and
silver/copper hybrid interconnect cables. Man! The difference is so
significant, my six years old daugther can pass the blind test.

Lawrence Leung

On Tue, 06 Jan 2004 09:13:54 GMT, Lawrence Leung
wrote:

My point is, keep all components at the same level, say 30% of your budget
on speakers, you may not get the best speakers, but hey, what can you
expect? It is just a matter of whether you like the sound of American
speakers (Soliloquy), European speakers (Cabasse), or Asian speakers
(Yamaha)?

Keeping all the components at the same quality level nowadays means
spending *at least* 50 % of the budget on speakers - and nothing at
all on cables!

Again, I'm a cable guy, I believe in cables make difference.

Yesterday, I listened between two pairs of nice pure copper and
silver/copper hybrid interconnect cables. Man! The difference is so
significant, my six years old daugther can pass the blind test.

Care to try? We hear lots of such comments, but not one single person
has actually been able to do it under blind conditions.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

Lawrence Leung wrote:
My point is, keep all components at the same level, say 30% of your budget
on speakers, you may not get the best speakers, but hey, what can you
expect? It is just a matter of whether you like the sound of American
speakers (Soliloquy), European speakers (Cabasse), or Asian speakers
(Yamaha)?


My advice would be to spend at least 50% of your budget on speakers, since they
are the weakest link.

Again, I'm a cable guy, I believe in cables make difference.


Yes, they do. I believe they should be chosen last, to 'fine-tune' the rest of
the system.
Regards,
Mike

"Lawrence Leung" wrote in message
news:m%uKb.140820$VB2.540126@attbi_s51...
I agree that the listener could be the "weakest link", even I don't think
listener belong to a "HiFi system"...

I don't know, when you put up a system for yourself, should you have all
components balanced? (I don't mean the balance and single end)

Say you have a $5,000.00 system, you would not want to spend $2,000 on CD-
Player, $1,500 on Preamp, $2,000 on Amp, somewhat one or two hundred
dollars on cables, and spend $300 on speakers? Then, sure the speakers are
the weakest link!

My point is, keep all components at the same level, say 30% of your budget
on speakers, you may not get the best speakers, but hey, what can you
expect? It is just a matter of whether you like the sound of American
speakers (Soliloquy), European speakers (Cabasse), or Asian speakers
(Yamaha)?

In general, I'd suggest that more than 30% of the total be spent on speakers
if the goal is to build a system that will be static for years to come.
OTOH, if the goal is to get the best source, pre-amp and amplifier you'll
ever need, so that any and all future expenditures are on speakers, then I'd
agree with you. I constructed my own system in exactly this way. My
Plinius 8200 (175 wpc, plenty of current and probably the most amp I'll ever
need) lists for $2,000, the Modulus 3A at $2,495 and the Sony NS900V at
$550. The speakers are Paradigm Studio 100s and represent, IMHO, the best
value speaker available, performing on a par with many 4 and 5 thousand
dollar speakers. The point is that I believe that I've built my system in
such a way as to future proof the electronics so the only link I'm likely to
change will be my speakers.

Again, I'm a cable guy, I believe in cables make difference.

I don't allow more than a couple of bucks for cables.