Guess integrating Bybee's in the NOS1 would create the best effect. Normally modifications up in the chain are the ones most gratifying.

Cheers,
Quint

From personal experience, I know having a good powersupply gives you a better sound, however understanding why is not so easy. All equipment I use has a trafo and rectifier circuit with caps, filtering, regulation etc. So the 'hot' side is floating relative to ground and independent of the AC-net. That leaves us the grounding when you us RCA mode, however when you play balanced, one should think the grounding is not that important anymore either...

Ok, lets give it a try...

My former cable exists of silver polycrystalline round wires with a teflon coating... It has a warm sound, a bit 'dark' and lacking some high extension. Nice to combine in a 'typical' digital setup (to which I do not count the NOS1 Phasure DAC).
Reading this link http://www.steenduelund.dk/download/kabler%20intro.pdf  there are a couple a things a good cable must have...
1. It consists of flat wires, wide for good lows, more square for the highs with a special surface treatements so skin effects are reduced...

GH IC are made of flat wires with some patented features and material choices eliminating  skin effects, so I guess this is one effect I hear.

2. The electrical isolation material used has influence on the sound, Duelund uses 'natural materials'.

GH IC has also covered this in his latest version: out of his blog  'Turns out Teflon was holding me back'. He uses now a different isolation material, not sure what it is.

3. Electro-magnetic shielding should be excellent in nowadays RF smogged ambients.

GH IC has a nickel shielding layer taking care of this.

So, there might/will be more effects we are not (yet) aware off, but anyhow, this cable takes care of some the more interesting 'cable science' topics I could find on the internet and it shows.. eh sounds... 
Much more extension, space (voice/instrument seperation) without blowing things up,  information, micro and macro dynamics.
Guess there will be better cables around but I haven't found them yet for this reasonable price level.

For who is interested and to come back to the topic, I compared the plexiglass Quadraspire QX feets with the the Ebony wood spikes recommended by Hein (thanks  ). The Quadraspires sounded more spacious, however the Ebony spikes more natural.

Got me a XLR IC from Grover Huffman. (Big thanks to Juanpmar for this link). Not played in fully yet but already VERY good. Space, location, macro and micro dynamics, good extensions in low and high. Really revealing, hearing 'new' things on 'old' tracks.

And this for sensible pricing...   

Hi Gerard,

did you get them from ebay?

Best,
   Quint

same for me -> all email bounces

Quint

Hi Gerard,

that looks very nice indeed! 

What units did you use?

Cheers,
       Quint

Interesting, I was triggered by the remark on 'boxy' sound...

One could switch to a dipole speaker solution. Had a pair of Quad 63's but those seem to lack some detail and dynamics compared to (top) 'normal' speaker or horn solutions. Also, there is always a bit of the 'electrostat' sound, a somewhat artificial, plastic-like timbre.

So what's the ideal speaker?  Reading at this link: http://www.high-endaudio.com/RC-Speakers.html
one would conclude that conventional very well designed speakers and horn setups seem to be the best (at least of what Mr. Salvatore has heard).  However there is an interesting letter of a different approach:

"Some friends and I recently bit the bullett and built a set of Open Baffle designed speakers (see pics). The dimensions are 45"h x 20" wide with side "wings" measuring 5" at the top scalloped out to about 16" at the bottom to assist in bass wave launch and cancelation. We went with a narrower profile than usually found in OBs because we're incorporating a bass driver into the OB and thus not trying to maximize the bass from the mid driver.

We used the new high excursion form of the Supravox 215 Exc. OB midrange driver and their 15" 400 Exc bass field coil drivers with a pair of horizontally positioned Fountek Pro 5.1 tweeters. Expensive drivers but well worth the cost! The field coil in each Supravox driver is powered by its own small dc power supply. The tweeters have 2.2 uF Mundorf gold/silver caps on them (11 khz) and the bass drivers have a high pass filter using Solen 16 ga. Hepta-litz 17 mH inductors (75 hz).

Despite the somewhat pedestrian look, the sound of these open baffles is absolutely breath taking and a SUBSTANTIAL improvement over my Oris 150 horns with AER MD III drivers and Altec Lansing 16" bass drivers. We compared them side by side to a set of Avant Garde Duos and simply unplugged the Duos after about 25 minutes.

We're knocking around the idea of refining the shape of the ob frames (rounding off edges, perhaps a little narrower) and then making the OB frames available in "flat packs" with 2-3 grades of matched drivers (Chinese import, Visaton, Supravox). Kind of an "Ikea-like" approach to absolute world class sound for less than the sales tax on a pair of Avante Garde duos!"


Although the unit used here are quite expensive (I checked with current prices of these units and it will be approx. 5.5 - 6 thousend Euro's for 2 speakers, which, for me, is a bit much for an experiment), this (mostly filterless) open baffle approach can be used with many (somewhat cheaper) high quality broadband speaker units, like PHY-HP (especially the KM30), the above mentioned Supravox 215,  EAR MD1-3, Fostex F200A, Visaton B200 and many (often vintage) speakers. Additional advantage is that many of these units are very suitable to drive with low power amplifiers...

Well, the H shape reminds me on a segment of a YAGI antenna, so maybe putting some NOS1 dacs in a row will improve the reception. 
Just like the old days when I got 'radio Moskou' on my phono inputs.


Beewax, silk and wood seem to improve sound. Here's a (unfortunately Dutch) review of some DIY audiophiles that made a wooden enclosure around their elcaps. http://www.dhtrob.com/impressies/elna_inhout.shtml

And companies that sell wooden plugs http://nfo.dhtrob.com/ and natural material cables http://www.phy-hp.com/English/Products/Products.html

Well, there seem to be a couple of mechanisms of the mechanics that might influence sound.
1. Macro vibrations, so long wave vibrations that cause the whole case and cables to vibrate, causing movement of wiring and parts and thereby causing 'some' electromechanical effect.
Resonance can occur depending on the coupling between speakers and cabinet, so room factors, positioning, decoupling etc. have effect here. Normally this will be a low frequency effect.

2. Micro vibrations that make the housing resonate in their Eigenfrequencies. Material choice and construction (stiffness) of the housing will be of influence here. Overall room resonance can occur here too and effects will be mid/high frequency range.
As the housing has more then one dimension, you will have more frequencies, waves & knots. (When you tap the housing you will hear the tone of these frequencies). Spikes help to 'break' the size of the cabinet (think of a string)  and will thereby make these frequencies higher.

Would be interesting to analyze the mechanical construction with some finite element package to see if these frequencies are in the audible area and what to do in order to suppress them... I might be able to help here.

Hi GerardA

Went this morning to the grocery to get these blocks and did a huge investment of 7 Euro for 3 of them.
Must say the first impression is very good, much more musical then the perspex cylinders I used before.

Thanks for the posting!

Interesting discussion.. The definition of this material is:


Sounds like a sort of concrete to me. Once had a speaker made of concrete. It had a very well defined sound... until it dropped once and scattered...

Hi Hein,

thanks for the suggestion. Having listened some longer time with more various material I discovered that the 'spikes' I use give the described improvements but also tend to make the sound somewhat artificial, a bit more digital. So I ordered the 'original'  Quadraspire feet to see if that would improve this. If that's not working I will try the Ebony one's.... Is that the same result as with the Harmonix discs?

Cheers,
  Quint