You have some other system? What speakers?Originally Posted by JBLnsince1959
You have some other system? What speakers?
C'monnnnn.
Ok, I went back to the store yesterday to take pictures of the room. Now the camera ( I don't have a digital camera) has been on the table for months with about 2 or 3 pictures left, so I quicky picked it up and drove 15 miles to the Neb. Furniture center ( or whatever it's name is) only to realize it's Nascar weekend and got in traffic.
Can you get a picture?
Walked in looking like a fool taking pictures only to find out that the film had been used up so no pictures were taken. I'll have to try again.
The salesman did say that they are going to get the Studio L series in and that there was a review that the Harmon rep. left about the Studio L speakers, the salesman left for about 10 minutes to get it and said he couldn't find it. Oh well.
Hey MikeBake...did you ever get your woofers and hook them up to the 800's, if so how does it sound.
someday, when I get it finished..I promise.
As I had said before, my total listgening time for the PT800's was about, oh, an hour or so, before Giskard borrowed them. Now I have had them back for some time but not hooked up for several months. Just happened to hook them up last night for HT duty to watch Joe Paterno disable the Buckeyes..........boo hoo. Anyway, so now my total listening time is up to 4-5 hours, listening to a TV broadcast using a mid-fi Yamaha AV receiver. Subs are back in duty, also. Will be listening to music today, plus hapless Browns broadcast, and a movie later. Obviously they are quite nice for HT. The subs always kick major ass. Nonetheless, this basement rec room/HT system is compromised by small room, even if I bring upgraded gear down there. I'll see how it does tonight for the movie. For serious 2 ch. music I'll move them up to theliving room sometime in the next 2-3 months andlet er rip. Might move 4430's in, too. Might as well, but it's a pain to set up tear down all this stuff after I just get things working......
Oh yeah, while the PT800's were sitting idle, the 4 year old rammed into a side corner with the exersize machine and put a nice rip/nick in the veneer. Damnit.
OH MY GOD!!!!..well it happens..( too often)
OK, you twisted my arm...The 'Other' speakers are MartinLogan's ( hey, their main plant is only 30 miles away). I don't talk about them as they're not JBL's and don't fit in this forum. The lady has been wanting to use the room for something else so they might go back into storage ( had them there for awhile already).
She says that there are 4 rooms with speakers and she'll like the 'reference' room for guests, so I'm going to put them back into storage. I was redoing it all ( that's the fun part for me).
as far as the performance series, I've been playing around with them alot and I'm learning more about them as time goes on. There some things you can do to make them better for 2 channel.
well, got to go ( she wants to get out of the house and so does Whit), it's a nice day today.
see ya..
Sonic Impressions In Wiring the PS Stack.
This took a long time. I dedicated about 60 hours to this project, and had to limit it in order to make it feasible to complete it. There are many things left undone, which others are free to pursue, but this is the extent of my contribution for a while.
DISCLAIMER: There is no claim of scienctific validity to any of these observations. Anyone who needs pure science should look elsewhere. I am not a scientist by choice, so I do not pretend I am one for pretense or for credibility's sake. I am a hobbiest with a lot of accumulated knowledge and experience, and any observations made here are intended to be anecdotal in nature. This is my experience, not anyone else's, and if you do not want to hear about it because it may not seem logical or scientific to you, then do not read it.
PREAMBLE: This started as a quest that was larger than it needed to be. I took the time to set up a calibrated mic, get the PS towers EQed to nearly flat using the AS1000 and 2215-R, then played various tones from AudioTest and recorded the signals via AudioXplorer. Interesting, time consuming, and ultimately not needed for me. I would let my ears decide.
I can't hear measurements; I can only be prejudiced by them. If I want to validate what I hear, then perhaps measurements are in order after the fact, but if I hear no difference, I'm not going to waste my time measuring.
METHODOLOGY: The PS stacks were a minimum of three feet from a wall in any direction and exactly three feet from the nearest parallel wall which had the same semi-hard surface for its entire length. They sat on wall to wall carpet. They were toed in 45 degrees to aim at a chair whose head-level listening center was located exactly 48" from the 4" Titanium inverted dome midrange of each tower.
Each speaker was set to output the same full frequency noise level at an 80dB SPL, and all EQ was dialed back to 0. Practically speaking, this meant that the highest peak output was around 85dB from source material. This was the "A" configuration.
In order to compensate for differences in my ears, which are discernible, a mirror image listening environment "B" was set up in order to duplicate the same listening conditions with my ears "reversed." As you can imagine, this was a lot of work.
The same four music pieces were used for every session, and for every listening experience in each session. There were ten sessions over several months. Each session included ten listening experiences (five "A" and five "B") using five different connectors between the PT800 and PS1400 subunits of ONE stack and the standard connector on the other stack. Thus, I heard each musical selection 10 times each session or 100 times over the course of the project.
By keeping the standard connector on one stack while changing the wire on the other, I was able to make real time comparisons in the near-field listening I was doing in both the "A" and "B" environments. I did not depend on auditory memory to carry over while I was switching wires, because it does not carry over. The effects of this method were immediate and interesting.
I kept detailed listening sheets, both narrative and numerical, for each trial except when using the standard connectors on both stacks. I focused on specific elements of sound that matter to me as I constantly compared the standard set up with the nonstandard one. I always started with the standard JBL plated connector on both first as a baseline, then changed the order of the other four connectors in a computer-generated random pattern for each listening experience within the session.
The numerical results were recorded in separate Excel spreadsheets. However, they were not merged and tabulated until all trials were completed so that any developing patterns would not influence my subsequent sessions.
The narrative keywords were entered in a FileMaker Pro 7 database with customized search and tabulation components to see if I could generate a verbal evaluation from recurring words, concepts, or ideas that might repeat from one session to another. No analysis of this database was made until all trials were completed.
BASELINE: The baseline configuration always used the stock JBL gold-plated connectors on both stacks. Aside from removing one of these connectors on one stack to install different types of cabling, all other elements of the listening system were identical.
PUBLICATION: Due to the lack of scientific protocol and method, I have no interest or willingness to share or publish the actual data, as I don't intend to defend it, explain it, or excuse it. Just take my impressions for what they are worth.
The stock connector:
Out.
This little wonder made an immediate impression on me that grew over time.
One thing that happened immediately was the the center of the soundstage moved to the left, toward the PS stack with the standard connector. This appeared to be because the midrange from the standard config, especially on vocals, was more pronounced, or as I wrote, more "forward and flat," whatever that means.
The ZMC stack was decidedly less forward, less in my face, and more "sensitive" as I put it. In the first several sessions, I noted this to be a minor weakness, but as I got used to it, it turned into a virtue.
Where the ZMC stack really knocked my socks off was in the high frequency stuff. This was so much more "open, airy, and detailed" that it became a drudge to my left ear to have to listen to the standard config. When I went to environment "B" to give my right ear a listen to the standard configuration, I think it shut down. It was like there was no treble from that side at all--just irritating tone bursts compared to the ZMC side.
There appeared to be no discernible difference in the upper bass.
One thing I defintiely knocked the standard config for was the "noise" it seemed to produce in percussion. It was harsh, had an edge of distortion to it.
So, on balance, the ZMC was less aggressive and more refined in the mids, and much, much imporved in detail and sharpness in the highs.
Out.
I've been through the cable wars on other forums; hence, my super wordy disclaimer, methodology, etc.
There's a lot to be said for using zip cord and solid core and who knows what else, oh yeah, jumper cables, from an electronics point of view. The basic rule is that only a fool spends a lot of money on cables, since there's no real difference between zip cord and Monster Cable. (Maybe that's a bad choice.)
My biggest gripe is that if you're going to spend some serious money on gear, why suddenly be a cheap bastard when it comes to cables? How about putting some Kumho tires and painted steel wheels on your Mercedes, then, huh, Herbert? Tars iz tars.
Anyway, at one point I went to home Depot some years ago and bought a bunch of 12-2 Carol speaker wire by the foot just like an electrician. I thought that this experiment would be a good time to pull it out of the bucket where I keep it and try it again. This stuff is notorious for two things: it's stiff as hell, and the plastic sheathing discolors the copper and oxidizes it over time. When you look at the picture, you'll see how green this shit is.
Anyway, how did it do in the sound department?
First off, it sounded better than the standard config. That's right, even this old, stiff, corroded cable sounded better. It wasn't a huge difference, but it was perceptible in the first session.
The HDCW cleared up some of the static, edgey issues on the high frequency stuff. This seems to be an area where the standard connectors just have an inherent flaw. The highs were less "airy and detailed" than the ZMC, but I still felt they were "more open and musical" than before.
The midrange also seemed somewhat improved, but around the fifth session I wrote that it "was probably a figment of my imagination," as I began to think of the HDCW as nearly the equal of the standard config in most respects. That's not a compliment!
Of course, there was no apparent change in the upper bass.
Overall, the HDCW helped a little, especially at the top, but I wouldn't use it if I had any other decent choice.
Out.
Thanks to forum friend JBLnsince1959, I got some Kimber Cable to experiment with. He sent both 4TC and 8TC. I decided to use the 8TC for the long haul experiment after doing a brief stint with the 4TC as well. They were quite similar, though the 8TC was "more."
The first thing that struck me was how much alike the Zilch Miracle Cable (ZMC) from forum buddy Zilch was to the BK8. Only the BK8 was just a little bit better. Looking over the FileMaker database, many of the same words come up again and again: "open, airy, detailed" and a few new ones: "sensitive, delicate, intimate" when describing the high frequencies.
I must have been in a semi-comatose state from too much listening, but in one entry I wrote "sublime," which at this moment just seems too humorous to take seriously.
On the midrange, I felt that while the soundstage had shifted a bit to the left on this as well, it wasn't as dramatic. Over time I began to think that the "balanced, articulate" (this is where the voices are after all) midrange was much improved over the standard config. The midrange quality of the BK8 eventually influenced me to appreciate the ZMC's cababilities more.
One key point is the "naturalness" of the midrange and high frequencies. Attacks and decays are much more effective. Again, the static, edgy artifacts of the standard connectors are gone.
There was no apparent difference in the upper bass.
This was quite an improvement over the standard config, much better than the HDCW, and a slight improvement over the ZMC. Of course the ZMC is a very small fraction of the retail cost of the BK8. I'm wondering if the ZMC were doubled if it wouldn't exhibit virtually identical characterisitcs to the BK8.
Out.
This is my default system speaker wire, everywhere except for the PS stack standard connectors. Obviously, if this wire has any limiting characteristics they placed the same limits on the ZMC, HDCW, and BK8 wires, because the signal came through the JSC wires to get to the stack's crossovers.
This "Pro Sound Oxygen Free" 12-2 speaker wire is about 50 cents a foot in 100' spools at a local electronics hobbiest shop. So, what happened?
For starters, the soundstage stayed right in the middle, no shifting to the left as with some of the other cables.
Once again the highs opened up. You know, "open, airy, detailed" from my now limited vocabulary. However, instead of "sensitive, delicate, intimate" as with the BK8, I only wrote "pristine." The motivation for this was that the highs seemed just a teeny, tiny bit less delicate, yet they were cleaner. Does that make sense? In the listening it did, and it's a feeling that grew over continued exposure. Percussion decayed with a clarity and directness that was almost brutal the first few times I listened. Once accustomed to it, I was writing, "How the hell did I not hear this before?" The PS stack with the standard config was clueless, appallingly bad by comparison.
All in all, the BK8 and ZMC had some slight edge in overall high frequency performance IMO, but their somewhat retiring midrange performance, while much better than the standard config and HDCW, was aced by the JSC. When I say "aced" I mean the midrange was a bit more out front like I like it. It also was a distinct improvement over the sometimes muddy/indistinct midrange output from the standard connectors.
Voices were "clear and natural." Strings were "warm, melodic, and musical."You get the point. Perhaps people with better hearing or audiophile pretensions will consider my preferences pedestrian, and they'll desire other qualities in the midrange. That's fine by me.
As expected, I never heard any useful distinctions between any of the connectors and upper bass performance.
So on balance, considering cost/performance ratios, I ended up going with the JSC wire. Big surprise, huh? I had some more in my garage.
Out.
End
Without some encouragement from Zilch and JBLnsince1959, I wouldn't have embarked on this project. I think I overdid it in a lot of ways, since there's no really new observations in the last four listening sessions, just corroboration of already formed ideas and opinions.
I would not have thought to remove the standard JBL connectors, nor would I have thought that they had a negative impact on the sound before trying this project. Now it should be an article of faith to all Perfomance Series owners not to use the supplied straps to connect the stacks. Almost anything is an improvement, though some improvements are better than others, and thicker isn't always better.
(Well, just look inside the enclosure to verify that.)
FWIW; YMMV
Out.
Thanks for taking the time to put this evaluation together and share it with us.
Widget
Good job, Ti Dome. You're more of a scientist than you'll admit.
Chop a ZMC in half and configure the ends as I did. I think the shorter length as your interconnect, even without doubling up, will provide the mids you like.
I've only used it to wire HF drivers, in maximum 3 ft. length; it works well for me in that application. It tested vastly superior in HF performance on WT2 in comparison to "standard" wire here, which is Radio Scrap 12 Ga. Your results certainly confirm that.
I'll make up some long pieces and give it a try. It's equivalent to about 15 Ga, according to the Belden book....
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