Connection tweaks

[TimJ]

Hi All,

Been a while since i have been about. Hope everyone is keeping well.

Complete system change from Aventage & Dali to Rotel A11 Tribute and Triangle Borea BR03's. These are being fed from an iPad, to a Zen Dac Blue with the ifi filter plug. Tacima mains block. Audioquest Golden Gate RCA but the freebee usb in the dac to go from iPad apple adaptor to dac. Need to change this but not sure which to go for on this side.
No pics of system set up but here are some leads I have been tinkering with;

Power lead for the Rotel;
Lapp Kabel 2.5 CY shielded, MK tough plug silver plated with polished 10a fuse, connected the outer screened to mains side earth. IEC plug with apparently rhodium plated connections (China import!). Covered with that expandable braided sleeve and then heat shrinked.
Put a blue dot on at each end so I know which is which as I will be making all my power leads the same with the braided sleeve so helps identify them with different colour dots!

Speaker Cables;
2no. @ 3m
Audioquest Rocket 11, silver plated banana plugs, silver solder to the ends of wire, cotton sleeve, heat shrinked and put arrows on for the direction of the wire. Also fitted some TDK ferrite magnets to each negative before the speaker. AQ's wire seems to show a direction so I have stuck with that.

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[Filterlab]

Very nice, and the screening earthed to mains side makes a remarkable difference in some cases.

On my Audiolab DAC some years back (can't remember the model for the life of me), I dismantled the power supply and rebuilt it into a custom casing surrounded internally with a full Faraday cage earthed to mains. The result was absolutely amazing.

[TimJ]

Thanks filterlab.

Wow was it a straight forward job or a few difficulties along the way?
How did it change the sound to your ears? Warmer or just generally better etc?

[Filterlab]

It was quite straight forward actually. I obtained some metallic shielding sheet which I applied to the inside of the casing and connected it to a grounding point on the mains inlet side of the casing, then connected it to the incoming earth that the power supply itself used. Simple really, just a bit of diy. :D

Worked a treat. Sound was a bit cleaner and more open, an overall improvement that belied the pennies spent. Worth spending a couple of hours messing about with. :lol:

[Firebottle]

The cleaner you can make a Dac's environment wrt noise the better, including anything coming in from the mains.

I have recently fitted an ultra low noise regulator feeding the Dac modules in a Metrum Musette with very good results.

[TimJ]

Love doing tweaks, don’t think I’m adventurous enough for that level though!