Macca's Lash Up 2: Lash Harder

[Gazjam]

Me old Scottish Mafia mucker Brian has had a few of the big old Sony amps in his system and always sounded great.
Enjoy man, nice kit.

[Macca]

Thought I'd give this Sansui SE7 ten band equalizer a run out, just to have a play around. Took me a while to settle on the settings. The trick is to cut rather than boost where possible. Amazing what changes you can make with just a 2db shift at various frequencies. No wonder rooms affect the sound so much.

I pulled the 1Khz down 4db, and pulled everything else except the top end down 2dB. Knocking 1Khz down makes a huge difference! Gives a quite dry 'studio' sort of sound with no glare and a slightly exaggerated top (but I quite like that). Just need to clean the gain pot on it as it's a bit noisy.

[struth]

a lively room

[Macca]

It's interesting. You do lose a little overall transparency but at the same time small things in the mix are more prominent and musically, it seems more enjoyable.

The transparency thing is probably because it's an old Sansui and not a brand new Klark Teknik.

The room seems to take the edge off the top end but exaggerate the mids a bit. Does make me think about doing all this digitally with no losses.

Anyway, it's all just a stopgap until I get perfection back with the Krell KSA50S.

[struth]

yeah as im digital i was considering getting a mic and doing it through roon. there is a program you can download free that will set up your room acoustics to your seat. be interesting.. the mic is about 120 notes

[Barry]

I have a Klark -Teknik DN360 dual channel graphic equaliser.

I have played around with it in my system, but not in anger. But I would concur that small changes of only 2dB is all that is necessary, and it is all too easy to end up making everything sound artificial and just plain 'wrong'.

[walpurgis]

You do lose a little overall transparency

Every equaliser I've tried has done that.

[Macca]

I have a Klark -Teknik DN360 dual channel graphic equaliser.

I have played around with it in my system, but not in anger. But I would concur that small changes of only 2dB is all that is necessary, and it is all too easy to end up making everything sound artificial and just plain 'wrong'.

Yeah that is proper kit there Barry. Do you use it in your main system?

If you ever want to get rid of it give me a shout.

[Macca]

Stupid cables.

Day off today so thought I'd attack the hi-fi again. I've tried a lot of things trying to get back to the sound I used to have with the old Sony XB790QS - DCB1 + Krell KSA50S that was a close to perfect as I've ever heard.

Someone said to me awhile back that the 'softness' that had been driving me nuts was just the 'character' of the Krell KSA100. I suspected they had to be wrong even though my practical experience was suggesting otherwise. This wasn't 'character', it was clearly that something was sitting on the sound. It was like you could tell there was a good system in there, trying to get out, but was just falling short.

I thought I had tried everything - New CD player, nope that didn't cut it. Add one of the latest and best measuring DACs ever. Still not doing it like that old set-up. Different transports? Nope. Try different pre-amplifiers. Nothing happening. Deploy a 10 band graphic equaliser and rack up the HF a bit? Fun to play about with but still no dice.

Running out of things to try I got to thinking about interconnects and speaker cable. When I got the first Krell I was using Chord Odyssey 2. Swapping that out for some nondescript 79 strand had made a significant improvement that time. Suddenly there was body and bass to the sound. Maybe cables were the key. I've always said cables are horses for courses. So I put in the same unbranded 79 strand stuff that nowadays is in use on the TV system.

At first I thought it was maybe a little better but on extended listening the softness and lack of 'rez' to the sound was still there. Fail.

Looked through all my other speaker cables ( must be at least ten sets), but wasn't convinced any of them would help. However while I was up there I saw a whole carrier bag of interconnects so pulled out some NVA SSC that I had used for years when I had an NVA pre-amp. Something in my distant memory told me that I had got these way back when I was having a similar issue (with a completely different set up) and they'd fixed it.

So I swap them in and... well it doesn't solve the problem. In fact now it all sounds a bit weird, hard to put my finger on it but I switched the whole thing off and went and did something else instead for a bit.

Taking some kit back upstairs in vain attempt to tidy up after all the messing about, I noticed some Chord Odyssey 2 speaker cable lying under the bed. Well that did not suit the Krell KSA50S at all so surely not worth the bother to try it with the KSA100ii is it? But the Chord cable does have a rep for being 'bright' and it was brightness, or rather sparkle, that was lacking. So thought I would have one last go at it, took it downstairs and plugged it in.

And bollocks, it actually does the trick.

I mean I would not believe it if I was not sat here hearing it. No more 'shushy' cymbals! There's a couple of songs that have a big cymbal crash and decay, the start of 'Where Do You Think You're Going?' on Dire Strait's 'Communique' album, a number of them on Donal Fagen's 'True Companion' and all through the 'Nightfly' of course.' So I try all of these, and yes, the proper shimmer and decay is there!

Not quite as good as on the old set up mind, that was just jaw-dropping in every respect, but at least it is there now and not just a frigging 'shush' sound. Plus the rest of the sound has opened up too, and although you'd think there must be a con-commitant drop in bass level, or quality, there isn't. That's better too.

Why would a cable that was a poor performer on one Krell be the best option on another Krell? What's that all about? Impedance? I suppose everything comes down to bloody impedance at the end of the day. But it isn't really supposed to matter with cables.

I had been toying with the idea of flogging the Chord cable as well, as it was quite expensive stuff and I figured I wouldn't have use for it ever again. There's a lesson - never sell anything!

[walpurgis]

As ever, Hi-Fi is 'mix & match' and the ingredients somehow often don't work quite as expected.