richard
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Location: Southeast Tennessee, USA
Posts: 7,797
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« Reply #50 on: June 26, 2014, 12:30:25 AM » |
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Thoughts:
When I started this topic, I had no idea that such intense interest, experiments, and measurement activity would result. Reading over the two threads today, my head is almost spinning.
Shostakovich, Louis: What a wonderful illustration. Here is a composer who sometimes seems the closest to a latter-day Bach that we've had: a perfect marriage of technique with emotion, but darker, darker. What would his larger works have been if he hadn't had Stalin and his enforcers breathing down his neck?
Hindemith once said (paraphrasing an interview in Parade magazine, "There are three people in the world today who are worthy of the name 'composer:' Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and me, and I'm not sure about Shostakovich." Hindemith had this thing with his ego: he was damn wrong.
Regarding this thing about the capacitance loading and the effect on only the upper phono frequency range vs. our personal hearing spectrums (sp?), I've been picking up a perception effect that's interesting. As we age, our high frequency range/perception becomes progressively truncated. Thus, we may no longer be able to hear the highest sounds as well as we once did (I'm noticing that for me, orchestral triangles are no longer an "in-my-face" sound, but are very recessed). But I think that perception of fast waveform leading edges still have a perceived effect, even with normal (or Beethoven's accelerated) hearing loss. So, even though measured acuity may not be audible in old age, some effect will still be perceived in fast transients. In experiments with their extended-range cartridges, Stanton's people made an observation to this effect. I think that further perception research may be interesting.
Cabling:
Maybe 25 years ago, Belden sent me samples of a super-low-capacitance cable they'd put out. It's interesting stuff. I measured an amazing 8 pF per inch. Usually, cables like this get their reduced capacity from having large spacing between the center conductor and the ground wrap (shielding). This cable, however, is very thin. I don't recall the model number of the product. It's good, and it's expensive. Also, the shielding could be a bit better. The center conductor is steel, with what this entails. It's good stuff and not difficult to work with.
Someone in the Boston Audio Society was playing with it. He applied a "Lencophile solution" to improve the shielding while retaining the capacitance: he wrapped the cable with some sort of plastic foam and surrounded that with grounded aluminum foil, taping the mess together. On one hand, he achieved his low-noise goal. But the cable is about as attractive as a basement steam pipe, not conducive to marital bliss.
For real-world application, we may not need capacitance this low in our cables. We may be able to get by with twice the capacitance or a bit more and better shielding, especially if we're willing to put up with fatter cables (the thickness of ignition wire). Someone mentioned the need to conserve money. I've been nursing that Belden cable, but I've also been using some very good fat cable from Taiwan that I got from MCM, a USA company that's owned by a similar British parts house with the weird name of "Inone." And, logically, the same cable may be available from them in the UK. The mating plugs are very good quality, but fastening the shields to the plugs has been non-intuitive and non-solid. I've found, over the years, that technical communication with MCM has been very disappointing, so they were no help to me in solving this particular problem. It's still an issue. But the cable itself is good for phono and very affordable. I recall something like 18 picos/foot. I don't know if it's still available.
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