My Constant State of Change System...

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Made a couple of changes to the system recently. First was getting rid of that giant 32" monitor on the back wall behind my listening seat for my Roon Core PC. It has been replaced with a little 8" monitor that is now hidden in the cabinet along with the rest of the gear. Not that it matters in this particular situation, but this little monitor has excellent picture and color quality. All of only $82 shipped! It's perfect for just running Roon on.




The second change was swapping out the AudioQuest CV-8 (72 volt DBS system) speaker cables with the Tara Labs The One CX cables. These Maggie 1.7i's take extremely well to cable changes because holy cow, what an improvement! A wider sound stage with greater space and air within the stage, more grunt and energy in the bass and a more natural, realistic body in the midrange. Treble also benefits some with a bit more snap and refinement.

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One major improvement (cosmetic/visual more than anything else), I installed curtains on the front window, and removed both of those ugly garish homemade hillbilly looking things the previous owners threw up over the windows. Man I'm glad those are gone. I honestly don't know why I waited nearly a year to remove them. Geeze, the 1st of next month it'll be a full year!

Anyway, the curtains... I really don't notice any difference in sound that I can tell yet, which I suppose is a good thing. They just make the room look a lot better, and the ceiling a bit taller. And of course the main goal, to make the window look centered on the wall instead of 7 inches to the right.

[Gazjam]

Nice system and room Man,
appreciate the "vibe" stuff you've done too.

Couple of floor related questions?

Do you have cats?
Wondering about the "fireguards" around the base of your speakers...
If you don't want the Maggie's used as scratchposts, I'm totally on board.

Also,
what cable lifters are you using?


Cheers!
Gaz.

[cube-tube]

Nice system and room Man,
appreciate the "vibe" stuff you've done too.

Couple of floor related questions?

Do you have cats?
Wondering about the "fireguards" around the base of your speakers...
If you don't want the Maggie's used as scratchposts, I'm totally on board.

Also,
what cable lifters are you using?


Cheers!
Gaz.

Hello Gaz, and thank you for the kind words!

Yes I have cats, six of them. I have that garden netting around the Maggies just as a "just in case", though even without them in place, none of the cat have ever paid any attention to the Maggies luckily. They're all older, rather laid back kitties. But "just in case" one of them decides to get a wild hair up their you know what, the Maggies are protected either way. Of course, that netting doesn't effect the sound one bit.

The cable lifters are actually 100 year old porcelain telegraph insulators that used to be on telegraph poles along side railroad tracks way back in the day. I use them because they're a nice piece of history, look neat, and keep the cables up off the floor for easy vacuuming. I purchased a dozen of them from a collector up in Washington state a few years ago on eBay for $60 shipped.

There's an audio tweak company out there that sells the newer brown and white ones that you currently see on telephone/electric poles everywhere! There's a bunch of them in our neighborhood! All they do is put their company logo sticker on them and charge you $65 a piece for them!

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The 2" Impression panels came in Friday, the 4" Alpha panels showed up first thing yesterday morning around 9am! That alone was shocking! They were supposed to ship out on the 24th and arrive by the 29th! Good on GIK Acoustics for that. As for fit and finish, I've read that a lot of these panels arrive looking like they were rushed, bad corners, wrinkled cloth, etc, etc. I have none of that with these panels. They look great front to back, top to bottom.

All day yesterday, and I do mean all day, I played around with location. I tried the Alpha and Impressions panels everywhere in the room, swapped one out for the other in each location, tried all combinations, tried all types of locations, and the simplest actually ended up providing the best results.

Music was from Phil Collins, Norah Jones, James Taylor, Depeche Mode, Neil Young, Diana Krall, The Cure, Peter Murphy, Gregory Porter, Holly Cole, Fleetwood Mack, Pink Floyd... Basically, artists and music I know extremely well and a lot that I have been listening to recently with the current system.

I first tried the Alpha panels in the 1st reflection points on the side walls. They gave me a solid center image, but they killed the width of the sound stage. Any stage width I got it was restricted to only between the inner edges of the speakers. Even the ambient width in the recording was sucked out almost completely. While keeping the Alphas there, I tried putting the four Impressions in various locations to see if they would resolve these new issues, but they didn't. Even completely out of the room, these new issues stayed.

So I swapped out the Alphas for the two Impressions you currently see in those 1st reflection locations. With no other panels in the room, these "removed" the walls, widened the sound stage considerably beyond the walls, and still give me that solid center image. This is something these speakers and room needed, and the Impressions in these locations deliver.

I then tried the Alphas on the back wall and the other two Impressions on the front wall. They seemed to work really well, but something was off. After more listening of various tracks, I realized that stage depth had flattened and vocal height had dropped to about just below center of the TV screen. Also, some of that ambience in the recordings had gone away again, though not as bad as before, but it was noticeable. Lastly, imaging focus had become a little bit fuzzy. Again, just because I could, I removed the Impressions on the sidewalls while keeping the other panels in place and that just made things worse, so those Impressions went back to the sidewalls.

The Alphas then got moved up front. What the Alphas did on the front wall is what the room/system needed. They opened up that front wall giving more space, air and much needed stage depth to the sound, as well as lifting the vocal/instrument height to realistic heights as if those vocals/instruments were in front of me. The ambience of the venues in the "live' recordings are back in strides and very clearly apparent, giving even more space and air within the room. The second pair of Impressions are on the back wall where they help reinforce what the Alphas are doing up front as well as the fact that there's zero slap echo in this room now.

As an added bonus to these panels, and something I wasn't expecting them to do much of if any, is that they have in fact improved the bass in this room. I don't know if they helped clean up some of the upper bass or bass harmonics or what, but the overall sound of the bass is just a bit more clean, solid and planted. Almost to the same effect as putting the subs up on those IsoAcoustics sub stands I have them on. Definition and sharpness of attack just seem to be better. And no, the Maggies, the subs or the sub settings were never touched through any of this.

Lastly, in order the mount one of the panels in front of the window, I mounted a couple of "legs" to the side of the panel, put a couple of eyehooks on the back of them, and a couple of L hooks in the wall, so installation and removal is simple and literally only takes seconds to do. Also, instead of using the sawtooth hangers that GIK provided with the panels, I decided to use heavy duty D-ring picture hangers for the wall mounted panels.

All in all, I am extremely happy with the results and am quite amazed at how much was achieved with only six panels. They far exceeded my expectations. This doesn't mean I'm done however. I still want to get some diffusors for behind/above the TV, and maybe a few other things here and there after some more research and advise seeking.

I should have done this a long time ago. This has definitely taken this room/system to an all new level!

Anyway, here's some pics...

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A little update...

Turns out those Tara Labs The One CX speaker cables as well as that big The One AC power cable are fakes. Yup, I got cheap Chinese knock-offs. It's not a fault of mine or my dealer friend as he got suckered getting them as a trade-in, though he should have checked into them with Tera Labs and the S/N on the cables. Oh well, at least I didn't pay much for them. A year later he still refunded me the money and I get to keep these cables. Maybe I'll use them in my girlfriend's bedroom system. LOL I mean, they're not horrible. They're at least still better than cheap stock cables and zip cord.

So I swapped my old AudioQuest CV-8 cables back into the system because they are longer, more manageable, which in turn allows for more flexibility in speaker placement tweaks, and they are the REAL DEAL. I also swapped in one of my old Wireworld Aurora 6 power cables.

This all started because I decided to replace the stock Maggie steel jumpers on the tweeters for a pair of WBC (Worlds Best Cables) Canare jumpers that I purchased back when I had those Klipsch Heresy III's.

I have to say, with the Wireworld power cable installed, bass punch and attack seem to be sharper now through the Maggies. I'm sure some of that has to do with the AudioQuest cables as well. Possibly a little deeper/wider sound stage too. The jumpers cleaned up just a touch of "grit" that I kept hearing in certain recordings when played at higher than average volume levels.

All in all, a good tweak in the right direction!


Also... I've been talking to a recently retired certified electrician friend of mine (35+ years in the business) that I work with, and in the somewhat near future we plan on running at least one 20 amp dedicated line to the front of the room and a dedicated 15 amp line to the side of the room where most of the system resides. All I have to do is pay for the materials and he's agreed to do the work in exchange for a nice little cook-out afterwords. Can't go wrong there!

We also plan on doing overhead (recessed) lighting as well with zones. Same agreement as above!


Anywho, some pics for fun...

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[Barry]

Also... I've been talking to a recently retired certified electrician friend of mine (35+ years in the business) that I work with, and in the somewhat near future we plan on running at least one 20 amp dedicated line to the front of the room and a dedicated 15 amp line to the side of the room where most of the system resides. All I have to do is pay for the materials and he's agreed to do the work in exchange for a nice little cook-out afterwords. Can't go wrong there!

Good idea Charles. Whilst redecorating my listening room, I took the opportunity to have a 32 amp 'ring' installed covering 18 sockets (need so many as I use electrostatic speakers powered by close coupled monoblock amplifiers, as well as several sources and preamplifiers). Whilst the flooring was up I also had balanced line cables installed between the power amplifiers and the preamplifiers, so there are no cables on the floor.

[struth]

Good idea Charles. Whilst redecorating my listening room, I took the opportunity to have a 32 amp 'ring' installed covering 18 sockets (need so many as I use electrostatic speakers powered by close coupled monoblock amplifiers, as well as several sources and preamplifiers). Whilst the flooring was up I also had balanced line cables installed between the power amplifiers and the preamplifiers, so there are no cables on the floor.

if your gonna do a job Barry, do it right... bravo

[cube-tube]

Good idea Charles. Whilst redecorating my listening room, I took the opportunity to have a 32 amp 'ring' installed covering 18 sockets (need so many as I use electrostatic speakers powered by close coupled monoblock amplifiers, as well as several sources and preamplifiers). Whilst the flooring was up I also had balanced line cables installed between the power amplifiers and the preamplifiers, so there are no cables on the floor.

Thank you.

After further consideration, I've decided to run a second 20 amp circuit to the gear on the racks instead of a 15 amp circuit, just because there isn't much difference in price, and it pretty much future proofs that area of the room.