It’s late at night, and a drunk (on a street corner) is apparently looking for something he lost. A passer by asks what he’s looking for, to which the drunk replies: “my keys”. The passer by asks where he last saw them, and the drunk points to a distant spot: “somewhere over there”. The passer …
Category: Auditioning and System Building
Anything related to how we configure our systems, our perceptions, etc.
COVID, Goldilox and the Three Cables
With COVID and social distancing restrictions, we’re more reliant on feedback from our beta testers, other trusted individuals, and of course our customers through our 30-day approval program for our cable designs. The results have been encouraging, and there have been a few “anticipated surprises” along the way. Is there such a thing as an …
Length Matters
Recently, I’ve seen an increase in orders for longer interconnects. This has puzzled me – both statistically (why the change) as well as for reasons of optimum sound (why would you compromise your system).
Change for a Nickel
I’ve been studying the design of Gibson’s classic P.A.F. humbucker guitar pickup designed by Seth Lover in 1954. As the design evolved, conductive covers were specified in order to shield them from RFI. Nickel was selected for a very important reason. What does this have to do with audio connectors, and why is nickel as …
What Do Guitars Have to Do With Configuring a Hi-Fi System?
One of my diversions involves building and rebuilding Fender style guitars. This particular project has been ongoing for quite some time, and as I’ll explain, it’s been fraught with pitfalls, much like trying to dial in your hi-fi system. So you might ask … other than this being a musical instrument, what this has to …
Occam’s Razor
I was viewing an instructional video on developing guitar soloing techniques, and was struck by the parallels to audio design. In both pursuits, there’s a danger of trying to impress instead of focusing on fundamentals.
It’s Only Rock and Roll
But I like it (with apologies to the Rolling Stones) … We just returned from tuning a customer’s system – a visit which brought up the age-old discussion about the validity of dialing in your system with rock music.
Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe
We’ve been advocates of rigid drive belts for over two decades. As much as our early experiments are burned into my memory, I never cease to be amazed at how tunable a turntable drive system can be, merely as a result of drive belt selection. With the release of our new drive system, it was …
Risk Taking
Yesterday, I was searching for words to describe my system building approach to a customer. I started off with a description of attributes I consider to be non-negotiable – tone color, dynamics, transient speed, that sort of thing. The idea of risk-taking occurred to me …
Cotton vs. Polyester
We previously wrote about the superiority of cotton sleeving over polyester braided outer jackets on our signal cables. Yesterday, we delivered a complimentary upgrade to a local customer – a balanced tonearm interconnect to compare against a cable we delivered last Winter. We were confident he’d like the update, but you never know …