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From: chowkwan@aerospace.aero.org
Newsgroups: rec.audio.high-end
Subject: The importance of conditioning your line
Message-ID: <5268@uwm.edu>
Date: 24 Jul 90 18:01:50 GMT
Sender: news@uwm.edu
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Approved: tjk@csd4.csd.uwm.edu



(OR Enid Lumley triumphant.)

I recently bought a pair of Stax headphones and used
my humble Sony C7ESD as direct input to the headphone amp.
1 metre of Audioquest Lapis (old style) was used as
the interconnect.

On Ronstadt's Howl like the Wind and Walters' Beethoven 6
the sound was disappointingly hashed and confused.
Simply put, it sounded distorted.  Similar results
obtained when I interposed a VTL Deluxe preamp.

The next day, I tried again using the interconnects
that Stax provides.  I had disdained these as cheap
OEM stuff, unworthy of my attention.  Lo and behold,
the music cleared up.  So maybe there's some magic
to these OEM cords after all.

But hold on.  I had violated the first rule of
experimentation and failed to keep all other variables
constant.  I had unplugged the Stax the night before to store
safely out of the way of my kids' sticky fingers.
When I re-plugged them in I used a different bank
in my line conditioner (an Audio Advisor modified Tripplite).

So when the CD player and the Stax are plugged into
the same line conditioner bank, the sound is
hashed and unpleasant.  Plugging them into different
banks lifted the veil.  Replacing the OEM interconnects
with the Lapis improved the sound still further.
All pre-conceived notions about the relative worth
of OEM and after-market wires fell back into place.

So the moral is: top quality equipment is fantastically
revealing (and I include the ears in the category
of top quality stuff).  I would never have believed that plugging
components into the same power bank could cause problems.
Yet the Stax revealed all.

Records are great but as a practical matter I feel compelled
to investigate tweaks that make CD sound enjoyable.  
One of the keys to date is to keep that power to the CD player
pure.

-- ray