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More speaker cable "stuff"- the Silversmith Audio Fidelium Loudspeaker cables.

E-Stat said:
That's what the chart shows but never use the HF control at max. Just past 12:00.


I refer to the huge swings in the midrange.


First of all, I would not choose a cable with such a high resistive value. The VTL amps employ about 15 db of feedback.
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The HUGE swings in the midrange are potentially unimportant. The excursion is from 8ohms to c. 12k (if I remember correctly) in effect. That's because the Active bass amps are driven by an internal amplifier with some gain and the input goes through a resistive attenuator. That implies a 2.5dB loss at the minimum, and 1.5dB at 100Hz, reducing to essentially zero at LF.
If your point is that the soundlabs have a smoother midrange than the Montis when used with higher source impedance amps or high resistance loudspeaker cables, then you are correct, and that actually does support what I am trying to show- except that the system can use ARC to correct for these imperfections. But yes, that's DSP, and that's a different topic for a different thread. The soundlabs will also have inferior HF extension and will lack air, even relative to the Montis.
I too would never use a cable with this impedance, but then again, how many cable manufacturers actually publish this information?
However, the feedback factor that the amps that you have use is probably the worst as far as the choices that could be made concerning subjectively audible distortion (see the attached paper link, which encapsulated some well establish psycho acoustic findings in this area), but that's a subject for another day and another thread.
A NEW METHODOLOGY FOR AUDIO FREQUENCY POWER AMPLIFIER TESTING (next-tube.com)
(in particular see fig. 2:15 and the associated text).
 
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wyn palmer said:
The HUGE swings in the midrange are unimportant. The excursion is from 8ohms to c. 12k (if I remember correctly) in effect. That's because the Active bass amps are driven by an internal amplifier with some gain and the input goes through a resistive attenuator. That implies a 2.5dB loss at the minimum, and 1.5dB at 100Hz,

You support nothing. You have opinions. That is all. That's fine, but it does not support what I am trying to show.
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I do not huh, pretty smug of you, all you are doing is testing some crappy cable that the numbers will mean nothing unless like everything audio, people try it for themselves.

You said they sound different I tried to support what you said excuse me.
 
NH-MAN said:
I do not huh, pretty smug of you, all you are doing is testing some crappy cable that the numbers will mean nothing unless like everything audio, people try it for themselves.

You said they sound different I tried to support what you said excuse me.
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Sorry I accidentally conflated two responses when trying to answer two posts.
Again, if you have any measurements of the differences, it would be appreciated and valid. If not, it's just an opinion and I'm trying to avoid "just opinions".
So sure, if that's being "smug" then you're correct- however, all I'm doing is showing actual measured results, you're claiming something that you are asserting to be correct without proof.
If the results of the measurements had been different, then I would have posted them, and claimed that they were, in fact, supportive of some unspecified mechanism beyond my (necessarily) simplistic evaluation that needed to be investigated. That turned out, just as it almost always does, to be incorrect.
To be clear. I do not believe the materials (without being specific) make the kind of differences that you claim they do, and if they do it's because there are specific technical reasons/system level reasons that make them so. I'm trying to avoid "magical thinking", not encourage people to invoke it.
 
wyn palmer said:
If your point is that the soundlabs have a smoother midrange than the Montis when used with higher source impedance amps or high resistance loudspeaker cables, then you are correct, and that actually does support what I am trying to show...
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Yes. It is about system matching. You are pretty much restricted to using a SS amp with single transformer electrostats like yours for optimal results. Quads and Sanders models provide an even more radical roller coaster ride.

wyn palmer said:
However, the feedback factor that the amps that you have use is probably the worst as far as the choices that could be made concerning subjectively audible distortion
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I'm in good company in that Nelson Pass also chooses to use a minimal amount (10%) of negative feedback in his statement Xs designs. Note that in both cases, that is local not global feedback.

Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding. I've found all VTL amplifiers to absolutely deliver the emotion found in music. :)
 
wyn palmer said:
I too would never use a cable with this impedance, but then again, how many cable manufacturers actually publish this information?
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As for the Fidelium Cables, I'm still trying to figure out how Silver Smith audio quantified that "they were three-and-a-third times better than his previous flagship Palladium cables, at one-tenth the cost!".

What metric did they use to come up with the very specific 333% improvement? What exactly is the undisclosed "comparative method" they use to assign values to cables?
 
E-Stat said:
Yes. It is about system matching. You are pretty much restricted to using a SS amp with single transformer electrostats like yours for optimal results. Quads and Sanders models provide an even more radical roller coaster ride.


I'm in good company in that Nelson Pass also chooses to use a minimal amount (10%) of negative feedback in his statement Xs designs. Note that in both cases, that is local not global feedback.

Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding. I've found all VTL amplifiers to absolutely deliver the emotion found in music. :)
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Remember, that for a four ohm transformer output tap with 15dB of negative feedback the LF (before the feedback factor falls) output impedance is about 0.7ohms.
That would drop the Montis 300Hz dip to about 0.6dB and the 100Hz to about 0.4dB, which is barely a subjectively different level, with a very smooth transition. The issues will arise at HF where the negative feedback factor falls and the output impedance rises. In that sense all of the ESL based solutions have a fundamental problem with low feedback factor, high "intrinsic" (i.e. open loop) output impedance amps.
Also, contrary to popular opinion, it does not matter if the feedback is "local" or "global" except in terms of global loop stability. The increased high order harmonic generation is caused by the amount of feedback and the local non-linearity of the differencing port, and if there is little intervening gain, the feedback reduced local distortion of the output stage.
However, this is severely off topic and a subject for another thread with different measurements, so I'll end this diversion now.
 
Vintagear said:


As for the Fidelium Cables, I'm still trying to figure out how Silver Smith audio quantified that "they were three-and-a-third times better than his previous flagship Palladium cables, at one-tenth the cost!".

What metric did they use to come up with the very specific 333% improvement? What exactly is the undisclosed "comparative method" they use to assign values to cables?
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Never mentioned. If they don't understand the Physics that they supposedly designed the cable using, what's the chance that they have a metric that makes any sense?
 
wyn palmer said:
Remember, that for a four ohm transformer output tap with 15dB of negative feedback the LF (before the feedback factor falls) output impedance is about 0.7ohms.
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VTL takes a different approach to output transformers. You don't find multiple impedance taps for different values. They have a single winding optimized for 5 ohm operation.
 
E-Stat said:
VTL takes a different approach to output transformers. You don't find multiple impedance taps for different values. They have a single winding optimized for 5 ohm operation.
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Ok so the output impedance is 0.89 vs 0.71 ohms at LF. It hardly changes anything in my point.
One other thing. the reducing feedback factor versus frequency causes the output impedance to rise with frequency, which can make the amp output look like a decent inductor if the loop (local or otherwise) uses a single dominant pole compensation approach in the frequency range of interest.
That can cause resonances with the ESL capacitance and further modify the frequency response. This certainly happens with the Montis, even with the AHB2s, and was certainly the case with the Rogue M180s that I occasionally use. They have, if I remember correctly, a similar feedback factor and output impedance when using their 4ohm tap.
 
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Maybe it is my frugality that limits my ability to even consider different cables.
Or perhaps I don't have the ears for it, nor the patience.
Might even be that I'm generally pleased by any decent system with no glaring faults.

I'll continue to leave this to some of the more brazen and intrepid members here. Meanwhile, I do think I'll take a page from @NH-MAN and grab a few random pieces of wire, what decent cabling I got, and experiment. Let's see what I hear.
 
E-Stat said:
I suspect you don't find many seven to nine foot tall Sound Lab stats on your side of the pond.
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My side of the pond is your side of the pond. I'm in NC after living many years in Boston.
I have seen/listened to Soundlabs a couple of times in the past - the A1 and A3 if I remember correctly. I remember very little of the experiences other than they seemed quite nice, but had some of the characteristics (odd imaging, poor bass in several dimensions) of really wide ESL units that I'm not so fond of- and that is not an invitation for a debate- my memory is way too imprecise and way too outdated to go down that rabbit hole.
 
Bodyblue said:
Wow, what a wet dream of over-thinking a fairly simple subject.
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Really? Simple? I disagree. That's why there are so many opinions expressed by so many people.
It's a multi-dimensional problem dependent on the characteristics of the amplifier output impedance, the cable impedance, and the loudspeaker impedance. All of these things are highly variable, and the cable even has the extra dimension of length to confuse things even more.
Even a four foot length of Mogabi 2921 cable can have measurably different results when coupled with the class of loudspeakers that Estat and I use, and an arguably audible effect at lengths that are substantially greater than that. Many cables are both audibly and measurably different, and it's easy to demonstrate/prove.
Frankly, to think that this is simple demonstrates a lack of understanding of the issues involved.
 
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wyn palmer said:
Really? Simple? I disagree. That's why there are so many opinions expressed by so many people.
It's a multi-dimensional problem dependent on the characteristics of the amplifier output impedance, the cable impedance, and the loudspeaker impedance. All of these things are highly variable, and the cable even has the extra dimension of length to confuse things even more.
Evan a four foot length of Mogabi 2921 cable can have measurably different results when coupled with the class of loudspeakers that Estat and I use, and an arguably audible effect at lengths that are substantially greater than that. Many cables are both audibly and measurably different, and it's easy to demonstrate/prove.
Frankly, to think that this is simple demonstrates a lack of understanding of the issues involved.
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LOL, Frankly I think you are just smelling yourself a bit too much. Who cares how something measures? How something sounds is what matters. But keep telling yourself you are talking about an important subject.
 
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