An Edifying Journey ...

Couple of points ...

These units are capable of pretty impressive low bass - I haven't had anything yet which conveyed the sense of that quite as well as these. Case in point: some meditation, crystal shop style CDs, with subterranean, synthesizer bass lines - these had the quality of gently vibrating the whole house at points in the track .. impressive!

It's becoming clearer that a key area that needs to be worked on is bringing forth the very low level detail in a particular track - most other things are done so well intrinsically that it's not so apparent that there is a weakness in this area ... but definitely this is a characteristic that varies per the level of tune at the time. Is this because of the behaviour, factor of the optical link? ... Something to be explored more, being the first time I've used this.

And more feedback ... wasn't intending to test whether big orchestral workouts at realistic SPLs would come over well yet, but it just happened because of the sequence of what I was playing - the good news is that it got a solid tick; the not so good aspect is that it revealed that in spite of me attempting to filter out noise from other electricals in the house operating, by using distancing attenuation, that this was not good enough. That is, other household appliances and device plugged in and operating were disturbing the electrical environment enough to substantially damage the SQ - even though electrically they were very far away from the audio area ... bummer!

This means that I will have to do significant work on conditioning the mains power, to get best sound ... but I am still pleased to find out that the speakers have all the grunt in the world to deliver a live concert experience, 🙂 - lookin' good!

You have good days ... and not so good days ... yesterday was one of the latter. No dramas, but I'm still not happy with the ability to bring out the finer detail without audible issues - is this still a mains noise, interference thing, or is it because it means that tweaking is needed inside the speakers, to resolve a weakness there? Hopefully the former - I'll push the experimental side of things to try and confirm whether improving the mains feed makes the 'problem' go away - shut down the house completely, electrically - and see.

Okay, definitely a power supply issue - shutting down lifted the quality ... in particular, this track came good,

This is a very poor quality upload, which is probably why it's been left there, 😁 ... note, there's a piano in there, somewhere - see if you can pick it up 😝 ! What it should actually sound like is much more like this, which is the best YT cover version, that captures the sense of the piece, that I've come across ...

First experimenting with inserting some filtering designed for mains conditioning into the power feeds - it looks as if the DVD player is more sensitive to a less than perfect waveform than the speakers, and so played with one of my early filter builds in that cable run. Certainly helped, but was not adequate to isolate from what other appliances on the same circuit were doing - easily tested by pulling those other electricals from their socket; each did their bit to inject noise into the circuit, impacting the SQ.

Okay, what about moving the DVD across to the speaker mains circuit - this was a house wiring that I've set up dedicated to the active units - earlier experiments showed that player and speakers on the one circuit was not a good move - but now that I've added filtering perhaps this will change the equation? And, indeed it turned out so .. this album made it obvious that doing such was moving in the right direction,

Checking this speakers online... it has built in amp and dac... Do I still need external ones?

So far I've been very happy with the amps and DAC that come with the package - all I did was hook up a low cost DVD player, connecting via the included digital optical cable, to create an acceptable SQ - volume levels are good, bass is good.

They are sensitive to the quality of the mains - the better you can condition this, the better they perform - but all audio gear tends to behave like this ... I find them a remarkably good value for money solution.

Ok thanks.. I think this will save me some money at the moment instead of buying separate dac/amp.

Right, it was clear that from trying some early Stones material, and then Dave Edmunds, that that the mains filtering needed to be stepped up ... retrieved one of my DIY efforts from years ago, and inserted it into the power feed to the active speakers ... good, significantly better rejection of mains dirt; evidenced by the driving Edmunds tracks being better focused, from a cold start.

This compilation,

has been very useful over the years ...

The added filtering is still not good enough ... pulled out another excellent debugging CD collection, RXBOX 31038 THE GREAT N« 1 HITS (3 CO BOX) - first CD has tracks put down in the 1930's, and a chewy one is

Looking at the quality when the brass section comes in with the crescendos - very obvious that other mains circuits in the house are still picking up noise which the filtering used so far is not able to fully isolate ... meaning, will need to add another stage of filtering - always difficult to completely insulate components from interference; it's, yes, another step by step process ... 🙂.

Had a debauched country music session, 😁 - music that that audiophiles love to hate,😉 - fabulous stuff when you get it right... from this, https://www.allmusic.com/album/country-music-classics-mw0000767847 - 6 CDs, count 'em, of emotional roller coasters, 🙂.

In particular, love the rolling sound of the Hammond in this, the version on the first disc,

OK, now two stages of filtering on the system, two on the speakers and one on the player - is that enough ... Noooo!

Might be a combination of factors, but the fridge plugged in is still causing a disturbance - well, can't let the ice cream melt - a temporary fix is to add some MOV's to the fridge mains socket, 😉. Now, I don't want this situation; so more experimenting needed ...

Stood out like a sore thumb using this compilation,

But the addition of these MOV's still wasn't enough - tried juggling with another set, in another mains circuit ... yep, still gaining ...

So, I definitely need to tame this mains sensitivity - this may need several more rounds before I can be certain that this issue, of external interference, via, almost certainly conducted, noise is truly under control.

And another thing ... the way I've organised the main filtering is very prototype-like - meaning it looks like a mess, and with poor quality connections within it, so that it's easy to experiment with. Which is coming back to bite me ... the lack of integrity here is getting in the way of determining where the noise issues are coming from. So, I will have to stabilise this area better, so that the feedback I get is giving me the true story ... there's always something else, 🙄.

Right, fixed up the filter stability thing, which helped a bit ... latest experiment, however, confirmed that mains noise is still getting through - other mains circuits in the house pick up RF, etc; and in spite of my efforts so far, dulling the sound.

So added another stage of mains filtering - of my own design - now 4 different elements trying to condition the mains, in total ... yep, much better shape now.

Used a DGG string quartet recording from the 80's to monitor this - slightest issue, and the sweetness of violin tone takes a major dive, for this CD - without, and with extra filter stage is chalk and cheese, as they say, 😉.

Interesting - and disconcertingly so ...static effects from the materials of the mains leads are not filtered out ... so far. SQ went bad, and it turned out that a cable was touching something it shouldn't - an accidental disturbance by someone moving about caused this, and it meant that I undid some of the filtering arrangements, in an effort to understand what had happened. Couldn't recover the quality, so did a careful inspection, and found the 'problem'. Now resolved, and redid the full filtering package - and all's fine.

Have yet to really understand this static mechanism, and have a "best" repertoire of methods to properly deal with it - in the meantime, using sensible approaches to stop it being there in the first place, seems to be a good method.

Bugger! ... the setup is sensitive to mobile phones - was hoping it wouldn't be this way; but the degradation is definitely there ... something is acting as an aerial, and feeding noise into the chain - shown by by a dirtiness, a loss of sweetness in the treble.

Now, my hope is that my prototype filters are the bad guys here - so I will go over them with a fine tooth comb, and get rid of all rough edges that may be picking up interference - or remove them entirely, and see if that makes a difference.

Yes, the rough mains filters I'm using can definitely do with a tidying up - improved the layout of one, and the RF sensitivity is better - but now I'm noticing a slow degradation of SQ after resetting the power ... the other unit could be the problem because of the crude earthing and shielding arrangements. Will do a further refinement of the box, and see what that gives me ...

Just to comment on the fact that an extreme budget setup like this DVD player and digital speakers can easily be tweaked to the point where the slightest mis-adjustment of the chain can be trivially obvious, audibly ... it doesn't require expensive gear to make minor changes obvious; once a certain standard of replay is reached then everything one does gives strong feedback, in terms of the sound altering.

On 5/16/2020 at 12:58 PM, fas42 said:

 

This compilation,

 

 

has been very useful over the years ...

Looks like this album is going to get a solid working out, in tweaking this rig - the production of the studio tracks in this savagely highlights the speakers' particular weaknesses, making it a go to for verifying where I'm up to. This was confirmed by hearing it on my friend's rig yesterday, which did a decidedly better job in some aspects of extracting the content.

Always amusing to hear people imply that ordinary CD can't do dynamics ... we have a few easy listening CDs here, one is of the harp played extremely softly and gently, against various backdrops of "natural sounds" - bird song, waves at the beach, water running down a brook, type of thing. But one is of a storm breaking, in the distance - Bev literally jumped out of her skin when the thunder cracked - the sense of menace was quite something ... "This is scary!!", she said ... quite amusing for an album intended for meditation background filler, 😉.

Still haven't got a full handle on these speaker's warming up characteristics ... from cold, they are very, very listenable; don't do anything obviously wrong - but after some time, of the order of hours, they really start to bloom - develop a decent level of immersive sound. Now, is it time that's key, or is it the amount of "thrashing" the drivers get that determines this?

At the moment trying to get the mains noise isolation working well, still; haven't focused on other areas yet ... again, this is step by step; iteratively getting a better handle on all the parameters that impact the subjective presentation ... all will come, in good time ... 😉.

Running with this again,

This is coming together nicely, now - very powerful, intense, immersive - quite brilliant music making - the speakers are working well enough to allow the raw strength of the sound mixes to work lots of magic ...

Looking more and more like decent conditioning will be needed to bring it into the "good zone" - very, very rough estimate is about 3 CDs worth. Yesterday hit quite a high point, with some temporary, extra fiddling to improve mains quality - orchestral classical ticked virtually all the boxes, while running at close to live sound levels ... Bev was quite excited, 😄.

Hmmm ... not so happy with https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-essential-odetta-mw0000195159. Vital to get the quality of her voice to ring true; and this was decidedly borderline - every variation in the tweaking arrangements for the mains power caused quite significant changes in the acceptability of the vocals  ... I need to get on top of the mains conditioning situation.

A live recording of the Sydney Symphony, at highish volume, had a nice touch at the beginning - the 'voice' of the concert hall, before any music was heard, has almost an overpowering presence to it; like a large creature looming over one - these are certainly effective to have in the capture; "setting the scene" 🙂.