Agreed - a few thousand should do it!

 

On the cabling, yes.

 

 

Yep - it is somewhat disheartening to pour hours of effort into a song, only for it to be dumbed down to CD standard and then worse, listened to on a sh1tbox ghetto blaster

But I try not to think about it too much - otherwise it would be pointless doing it in the first place!!!

Dan

 

TB, while I have your attention, can I ask some advice on speakers - I'm no "phile" BTW, as you will probably tell .

I have a NAD 306 amp and 2 sets of missions, one set of missions I *think* are 762's ( antiques roadshow I know ), and some smaller missions, the ones about 16" high with 2 x 5"ish drivers with a tweeter in the middle, cant emember the model, maybe 12 yrs old.


at the moment the biggies are sat on the floor ( they seem to sound better upside down BTW ), and the smaller spks sat on top.



....got any quick ( READ cheap ) fixes to stop all me bass going through the joists into the dear's next door?? , I am hoping that correct acoustic isolation will help improve the sound quality overall . The room the hi-fi is in not ideal, about 12ft sq with wooden floors/cheapie carpet & bare painted plasterboard walls.

A lad I used to know used halves of squash ***** for a similar thing - any suggestions ??

 

You can buy spikes to mount on the speakers, this should reduce a bit of bass transfer.


I am lucky enough to have a Linn CD12 and a pair of Komri's to listen to in the office!

 

You're using spikes, i assume? Squash ***** will dull the sound - that works for CD players, but speakers is a different matter.

Assuming you are using spikes, further isolation is the only way round it, unless you deliberately go for speakers which are less bass-heavy. There are lots of isolation platforms out there - i use Mana Acoustics - so have a look around and see what suits your budget. Room placement is also important - too close to a wall and the bass "leakage" will be enhanced, even though you might not be able to actually hear it.

 

no spikes, biggies sat on floor, smaller speakers sat on biggies.

 

Speakers ON speakers??!!!

ANY sort of shelf to separate them would be a step forward. Homebase have a 10% off everything sale tonight, seriously!!

 

whislt we are milling around the subject Tel,
my floor standers are bi-wireable.
but I only have two connections on the back of the amp.

what to do?

Peanuts

 

You can get spikes here http://www.bestpricetv.com/Perfect_S...s___19_99.html

 

In fact, so are my amps, so it's not a sign of a bad amp, as some people mistakenly believe.

The best combination is bi-wire speaker cable, joined at the amp end into single connections, but connected to the speakers as four connections.

Tip from the top, that one.

 

As TB sez - bi-wire em - much better

Dan

 

Bi-wire is Good. get the biggest size cable you can to those speakers. nothing worse than bell wire. as for interconnects dont be fooled by Directional cable, It makes no difference to an AC signal as it travels both ways. I did ask a manufacturer once and they said people with a technical backgroung cant hear the difference.. dont pay any more than £80 max..

Ps: when Im doing a mix I have several sets of speakers to use and also a very cheep TV to listen to. so when it does get played on them it should sound ok on most systems.

 

I use 1.5mm twin & earth - free from our stores at work

 

Don't pay more than £80! what a load of rubbish. Cable is an integral part of the system and should not be overlooked. Mains cables also play a huge part in sound quality. If you don't believe me come round and I'll show you.

 

I agree with you on the directional cable but the analogue signal transmitted by interconnects is not AC.

 

£80 is per interconect. maybe upto £120 but the difference is very very small. even the recording studios dont pay anything like that sort of money for cable and I have worked at lots of them. Mains filters or totally seperate Spurs for Hifi would be best. Cables wont do much unless the cd, preamp and poweramp are good quality.

 

All these things work best on proper kit Linn etc

 

there is still a huge debate about the added value of cables. i spent a few hundred quid on cables for my system as it seemed silly not to, given the price of the other parts. however, afaik no-one has managed to repeatedly identify cheap cables from expensive ones under scientific (yes, the old *double blind* chestnut ) conditions. this doesn't mean better cables (i.e. dearer) aren't in any way better, but it does cast some doubt on how much value they really add to the system.

i am happy to pay around £100 for an i/c, but i haven't bothered with the super esoteric stuff. just my personal preference.

 

Same here - so that's 4 x Chord Chameleon II i/cs, £500 on a power distribution block, £500 on speaker cable - then plus the equipment!

 

True the cost of the cable is fairly unimportant but that doesn't mean to say they don't make a difference. We made a mains cable for very little money that out performed a £1750 cable. Having said that the £1750 cable did make a massive difference. I was as synical as most about mains until I had them demostrated to me. Thenm decided to make my own.

 

if you have dirty mains it is all irrelevant. It's own spur is the best solution for a high spec system. Chaz what did you use for your mains cable??

 

in my case it was 4 x Van den Hull D102 mkII, Van den Hull Cleartrack bi-wire and some fairly cheap mains cables from trichord. seems to do the job.

 

You would need a separate ring I would imagine. What the mains cable is doing is stopping the mains cable acting as an aerial. Cuts out all the cr@p from the system.

How did I make my mains cable.......well that'll be my little secret.

 

Oh The joys of Hifi.... but money is better spent on the scooby now...

 

LOL!!!
After working in a studio setup - ATC monitors & Crown Macrotech reference monitors (6 in total - tri-amped ) in a "Recording Architecture"-designed room, HiFi is a waste of time for home - kinda took the shine off it all really!!
Got a nice Yamaha DTS system with some half-decent speakers. That'll do Wise words - spend the money on something much more rewarding - Scooby


Dan

 

True after spending so much time in studios I get much more out of driving the scoob now...

 

after spending so much time on SN, i get much more satisfaction from cranking the volume on a hendrix tune.

 

I think with hi-fi at home there is the law of diminishing returns.
You really will notice the difference between a £250 and a £500 system, you'll appreciate the difference between the £500 one and the £1000 one, if you're very picky you may notice the difference between the £1000 one and the £2000 one. etc.

Unless you've got a very well set up room with good sound proofing or a house in the middle of nowhere (so you can play it louder) and good accoustics then there's not much point spending more than about £1500/£2000. As a start you'd better off spending a decent bit of money in setting up the room (walls, carpets, ceiling, windows, the right furniture that will 'absorb' sound rather than reflect it etc.). i.e. turn it into a studio