Yep. Will certainly be saying what I think in due course ;-)
Thanks for your good wishes, Alan. It's Sam's great aunt's funeral, continuing the run of deaths of family and friends that started back in November. It's been one after another.
My condolences Dave. We've had a similar run in our family with two parents passing away and another going through cancer, so know what you're going through I think. I'm bracing myself for your review, with everything crossed!
I've been promising some thoughts on @PAC's interconnects vs NVA SSPs, and for a number of reasons, personal and professional, just haven't been able to get around to it. One great side-effect of this is that I've lived with the Klotz-based interconnects for nearly a couple of weeks.
The end-point of all this, if you recall, was that I'd keep my preferred set of cables in the main rig, and put the other into my office system.
Klotz with connector porn interconnects
These are things of beauty. I got Paul to build me a set of cables with the very best plugs he could lay his hands on. What would have been a £75 set of interconnects with the minimum realistic spec connectors for use in my system climbed to a mighty £150 for a 1m stereo pair with the locking WBT Copper terminations.
Straight away, the Klotz cables seemed smoother, more organic and perhaps less 'digital'. I liked them. But with more listening, I noticed less bass extension and a general feeling of being less engaged with the music I chose. There was less drive and oomph. Sometimes double bassists were there keeping time, not taking an active role in propelling the music forward.
NVA SSPs
The SSPs are both loved and hated. Loved for their musical rightness and ability to transmit information, and at the same hated for their sheer impracticality - Super Sound Pipes are stiff and are easy to break connections at the terminations.
But switching back to the SSPs and things sound less refined, and maybe more 'digital'. But some of the TDSs raw drive returned.
And the winner is...
So which wins and remains in my main rig? The SSPs. Their life, speed and grunt rather than @PAC's beautiful detailing and more relaxed presentation are what make me sit up and grin like a goon.
Some may well prefer the Klotz cable, liking their sweetness and relaxed feel. But maybe they're going to listen to string quartets, not the David S Ware Quartet. I'm sure @PAC's cables are going to be many people's choice, but they're not quite to my taste.
Now, can someone give me the detailing and sweetness of @PAC's cable with the life and drive of the SSPs?
Interesting results Dave. I think it just re-confirms what a big part personal tastes play in hi-fi. Paul's cables are obviously very good but probably do not synergise as well with NVA as the SSP's do. Like a few here I use NVA amps as I relish their dynamism and sheer musicality and others equally enjoy their amps for different reasons. Same rules apply to interconnects I suspect.
Interesting write up Dave and one I can relate to. The klotz cable was one I chose to work with as it excells at low noise floor and detail but I hear what you say about bass and drive. I've been playing around with different materials and have now engineered a much improved cable which excels at the other things too. I decided to search out the very best 6N OFC copper and silver solid core and experimented with different guages, finally settling on 26AWG (0.42mm) solid core. This seems to give the best all round results. The cable's had to be sourced from the States as I wanted only to use cotton sheathed wire (giving the best dielectric and anti-microphony coating) and after trying various configurations have settled on a triple Litz Braided confuguration.
The results have been outstanding with excellent detail, but importantly, better bass response than the Klotz. There's no scientific reason that the Klotz should offer any less bass performance (I've done the calc's and used the science, but bandwidth for both constructions is near identical). Therefore it may just be down to system synergy (in my own system, the Klotz gives excellent bass performance). Several customers have now rewired their entire systems using my Litz IC's and I'm in the middle of building two pure silver sets. If EMI isn't a serious issue, the these may well give the results you're looking for.
The copper is the more economic choice and is a fine performer. I am happy to provide a shortish (0.5m) pair for review as i'd be interested in the thoughts of those on this site, as they do seem to have gone down a storm elsewhere.
Interesting write up Dave and one I can relate to. The klotz cable was one I chose to work with as it excells at low noise floor and detail but I hear what you say about bass and drive. I've been playing around with different materials and have now engineered a much improved cable which excels at the other things too. I decided to search out the very best 6N OFC copper and silver solid core and experimented with different guages, finally settling on 26AWG (0.42mm) solid core. This seems to give the best all round results. The cable's had to be sourced from the States as I wanted only to use cotton sheathed wire (giving the best dielectric and anti-microphony coating) and after trying various configurations have settled on a triple Litz Braided confuguration.
The results have been outstanding with excellent detail, but importantly, better bass response than the Klotz. There's no scientific reason that the Klotz should offer any less bass performance (I've done the calc's and used the science, but bandwidth for both constructions is near identical). Therefore it may just be down to system synergy (in my own system, the Klotz gives excellent bass performance). Several customers have now rewired their entire systems using my Litz IC's and I'm in the middle of building two pure silver sets. If EMI isn't a serious issue, the these may well give the results you're looking for.
The copper is the more economic choice and is a fine performer. I am happy to provide a shortish (0.5m) pair for review as i'd be interested in the thoughts of those on this site, as they do seem to have gone down a storm elsewhere.
Cheers
paul
Thanks Paul
I sorry I took so long to publish my thoughts.
Please pass me the 0.5m review pair for when you have the time - there's no hurry as I think I may have developed an amp problem this weekend, and I need to track it down.
What are the prices for the copper and silver configurations?
I'll make a review pair up next week. I sell the copper IC's at £72 per metre pair and the silver at £125 per metre pair. I can get cheaper silver cable (sold at £75 per metre pair, the difference being the silver is 4N silver threaded through ptfe dielectric sleeving) but as the Jupiter copper cable I use was so good, I decided to stick to the same cotton sleeved cable in high purity silver from the same company, and with gold and silver prices going through the roof at the minute, it's getting more difficult securing a decent materials deal.
I thought litz braid was a fat nono with unprotected NVA gear, along with goertz (whatever that is). Or is that only where speaker cable is concerned? I thought I'd bring it up as it might prove relevant.
I hope your amp problem Is nothing serious though.
1) They're going to connect the Young and the Eva, and not touch anything NVA
2) NVA's litz problems are only with speaker cables (I'm 99.9% sure, but I stand to be corrected)
Not sure about the amp problem yet. Thanks for your concern, though. I'll be reporting back once I've got to the bottom of things or have hit a brick wall.
Sorry to hear about the amp problems Dave; hope you get it sorted. The Litz braid isn't an issue with any amp when used in IC's, it can be an issue with 4 or more strand Litz braid speaker cable with some amps, as capacitance rises with increased conductor numbers in speaker cables and produces an overly reactive load for the amp. Not so of interconnects though.
Litz is the best way to configure IC cables when they aren't of coaxial design; ie with an outer shield and insulation between shield and signal cable. The idea is that you combine more ground area than signal cable which without going into nerdy detail, helps keep the noise floor low (it's very important to have less impedance for the ground than the signal). By Litz braiding, you ensure that inductance is kept low, the trade off being a slight increase in capacitance, but way below what would affect an audio signal as capacitive issues occur at much higher frequencies than the audible bandwidth frequencies. The issue with multi-core litz in speaker cables is that they generally are higher capacitance than twisted pairs, and this increases reactive load on the amp. I wouldn't personally use litz in speaker cables as there's absolutely no advantacge in doing so when a couple of 1.5mm2 conductors in a simple twist are all that most systems require for short lengths.
The litz braid also gives a flexible and forgiving cable and helps to reduce interference by placing signal and ground inter-twined throughout the cable length with equal areas of each taking turns at centre and outside of conductors but not as effective at EMI rejection as a coax with a 90% coverage braided or spiral shield. You can get a similar effect just twisting the cable but when more than two strands are used, Litz offers the better construction. It's important that the braid is even, so great care is needed when painstakingly doing this by hand. In triple braid, you can use either the flat plait or the cylindrical braid. I prefer the flat braid as it is lower in capacitance and easier to achieve a neater job. With four or more core braids, it gets quite complex and takes considerable time to weave a decent 1m set! I take great care when making these and a 1m pair can take upwards of 3 hours to construct from start to finish, including time to sleeve, solder and test (depending on the number of cores), but the results are worth it. It goes without saying that I don't make a great deal of profit on these but the whole point is to offer a service to hifi enthusiasts where the very best materials are used in sensible constructions at a fraction of the cost of commercial brands. It's more of a hobby, but I enjoy the results.
RD claims that Litz speaker cables artificially boost treble on badly designed amplifiers by making them slightly unstable. (I hope RD will feel free to put me right if I'm misinterpreting what he has said to me over the years).
I'm sure more learned members of the panel (more learned than me, that is) will be able to give a less left-of-field view as well ;-)
Litz cable can't boost treble. Signal is created by the source and amplified by the amp, not the cable. What happens when reactive load increases is that some amps run unstable and can clip. That doesn't boost treble. If anything, an overly capacitive load will act as a first order filter as in a speaker crossover and actually attenuate treble, but the reactive capacitive load would have to be very significant. Some cable manufacturers actually terminate their cables with a capacitor circuit to tame bright systems....not recommended. Consider that the greatest reactive load is to be found in the voice coils and magnets of your loudspeakers, all the speaker cable does is add to that and it's largely insignificant in terms of total reactive load unless speaker cables are long and of high capacitance.
Be wary of what you read out there in hifi on-line world as there's so much tosh talked about the "science" of cables (and I'm not referring to the debates about different cables sounding different...I leave that entirely for the listener of a system to draw their own conclusions on) but on what cables actually do in terms of physical characteristics, such as the very true but also very taken out of context, skin effect for example (the latter being totally meaningless for hifi analogue signal cables and only takes effect at higher voltages and frequencies typically NOT encountered by IC's).
Happy to jump in for any cable queries and hopefully I may have something to offer. I'm sure there's plenty of better read people out there than myself able to explain some of these issues with a little more experience than I, but happy to offer an opinion based on my own limited knowledge.
Yes please - would love to. I'm off for a week from Saturday, so let me know how you want to do this. I assume they fit through letterboxes with those chunky connections!
Comments
Sorry to hear of your loss as well, I hope all goes as well as it can.
I've been promising some thoughts on @PAC's interconnects vs NVA SSPs, and for a number of reasons, personal and professional, just haven't been able to get around to it. One great side-effect of this is that I've lived with the Klotz-based interconnects for nearly a couple of weeks.
The end-point of all this, if you recall, was that I'd keep my preferred set of cables in the main rig, and put the other into my office system.
Klotz with connector porn interconnects
These are things of beauty. I got Paul to build me a set of cables with the very best plugs he could lay his hands on. What would have been a £75 set of interconnects with the minimum realistic spec connectors for use in my system climbed to a mighty £150 for a 1m stereo pair with the locking WBT Copper terminations.
Straight away, the Klotz cables seemed smoother, more organic and perhaps less 'digital'. I liked them. But with more listening, I noticed less bass extension and a general feeling of being less engaged with the music I chose. There was less drive and oomph. Sometimes double bassists were there keeping time, not taking an active role in propelling the music forward.
NVA SSPs
The SSPs are both loved and hated. Loved for their musical rightness and ability to transmit information, and at the same hated for their sheer impracticality - Super Sound Pipes are stiff and are easy to break connections at the terminations.
But switching back to the SSPs and things sound less refined, and maybe more 'digital'. But some of the TDSs raw drive returned.
And the winner is...
So which wins and remains in my main rig? The SSPs. Their life, speed and grunt rather than @PAC's beautiful detailing and more relaxed presentation are what make me sit up and grin like a goon.
Some may well prefer the Klotz cable, liking their sweetness and relaxed feel. But maybe they're going to listen to string quartets, not the David S Ware Quartet. I'm sure @PAC's cables are going to be many people's choice, but they're not quite to my taste.
Now, can someone give me the detailing and sweetness of @PAC's cable with the life and drive of the SSPs?
Interesting results Dave. I think it just re-confirms what a big part personal tastes play in hi-fi. Paul's cables are obviously very good but probably do not synergise as well with NVA as the SSP's do. Like a few here I use NVA amps as I relish their dynamism and sheer musicality and others equally enjoy their amps for different reasons. Same rules apply to interconnects I suspect.
I hope your amp problem Is nothing serious though.
What does Litz actually do to the signal then? What characteristic does that type of construction have that is beneficial? (in dork-terms please!)
It obviously is hit & miss, as not all cables are made this way.
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