From Johnnycopy: " Interesting how we rarely talk about having too much bass??"Looking at bass and how powerfully it can steal the beauty of complexity from the rest if over or poorly done, I think this is really good point. I have never been able to take thick muddled bass, wanting bass that sounds like bass in a good room, and more-or-less across recordings. Once tuned overall, gain riding is a final tuning for me for leaner or over-full/dense recordings. And I have found every time that wire quality and size effects bass, bass in the balance, and all else. So I think this is a good thing to keep in mind for the copper slug pieces with the FUSEBOX. Though this is a really short application, and therefore maybe not much of a thing... it could be real too. Do more and more slugs replacing fuses make the sound deeper and denser while balancing the whole toward bass? And if so, is it natural sounding, or does it mask or off-balance something.
Also relative to the hazards of less-than-balanced and complex bass, thanks for another of GroovySauce's active threads, his extensive room treatments and results:
https://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl?num=1662491252/Bass effects us all... and room effects us all, and wire size effects us all. In fact everything effects us all, this thread another indicator of how far some of us are willing to go to cultivate engulfing sound experiences. And not solving imbalances without work seems rare or impossible, in turn effecting how we hear changes that can seem subtle or nonexistent in a not-so-well tuned system/room, or... pretty profound in a more resolved and balanced system/room.
Room for most seems the biggest barrier to really magical music, but that
everything effects everything, this thread points to that... one weak link can damage the whole, and many can leave us out of the deeper game altogether. I have been lucky living in natural buildings, and perhaps an interesting (though probably rare) juxtaposition to Groovysauce's sound being so good in his highly treated room and not outside it, but also really flexible sonically within the room due to such in-depth calculated treatments... And mine is comparatively minimally treated in classic absorption/diffusion ways, but has a fair bit of natural "treatment," while being pretty live, and sounding great outside it. And we both have tuned hard to get all we do have to work together with minimal impediments toward a more ultimate musical experience... enough resolved that we can hear seemingly subtle changes as notable.
My adobe house has plastered walls that are irregular in shape and surface... Typically wider at the bottom and narrowing/angling some as they rise. The plaster on adobes is irregular in micro ways, not many sq feet truly plumb except windows. Also irregular brick floors, segues to other spaces, round and square beams, different height rough wood ceilings with boards in straight and herringbone patterns and with ±.3 to .5" spaces between boards, a doubled tar paper "diaphragm" above the boards with lots of insulation and a relatively sealed air space, followed by a foamed roof above that. So a lot of un-calculated, but pretty extensive diffusion and absorption was "done" with the house construction.
With minimal but calculated absorbers added for different spectral areas, along with rugs, pads, and other tuning over year... not least of which, I use by-sound EQ on the digital files in player software before leaving the computer... This is relatively cheap "treatment," but takes practice, and probably is much more easily successful when a lot of it is solved by the system/room first. In my case, EQ on or off may not sound profound to a casual listener, but it is to me, some of the last percentages of space and balanced harmonic complexity is, as, or more important to real sound as the rest.
And tuned by-sound across recordings, I get into some tuning that I imagine measurements and algorithms can't generally do as transparently. A broad range of recording styles gives a baseline to tune to, and if successful, there is automatic balancing of the whole room regardless which individual recording is playing. These EQs do not seem to mess up phase. My room sounds good most anywhere in it. It also sounds pretty real anywhere else in the house. Once this "live" room is right, it becomes the speaker for the rest of the house, the sound more distant in other rooms, but having the same feel overall. So here, the whole house is my listening room, and "the seat," my gateway to the more fully entrancing beauty since it allows experiencing the sound stage in a more engulfing way. But the listening seat is too easy in ways, the sound so enthralling/seductive that I can miss some imbalances, even with a pretty varied test playlist.
I listen to Bach solo violin most evenings as I take a bath down the hall. It still sounds like the player in the room, just that the church room from the recording is down the hall. And hearing the reflected sound of the listening room-as-speaker, in this case the distance is a tool. Particularly when mid-bass or bass are just a little strong, or if mids or highs are a little consolidated and cold... Anything "off" shows up really well from the tub... and once tuned to be "right" there, the room gets more refined.
Anyway, bass and big metal fuse replacements may or may not be notable issues, but bass waves are a difficult part to get right, and anything that contributes to that can mess with everything else. It can hide how much the room and/or gear are smearing the rest of the sound, and this may explain part of why some of us hear things and others don't. In my rooms, bass in particular has great potential to be the grand thief of convincing "live" sound.... potentially robbing space and complexity from itself and from the rest. Even sort of reasonably resolved bass can so easily mask/smear itself and the rest, in turn making it harder to hear and repair smearing, and null, or peak imbalances across the spectrum.
Where I am trying to go though... rather than the cultured ideology of more is better, if the bass gets too strong in my system/rooms, too mushed together, it sounds like less bass. Then,
reducing it in appropriate areas clears it, making what is left faster/tighter, deeper and more impactful, supporting rather than precluding a truly magical sound. This, to me, makes looking at whether a lot of copper and/or brass slugs effect this interesting.
In all the iterations of my Decware based systems: using pretty nice parts and wires, generally more gauge (or higher value caps, or heavier connectors....) can increase density, speed and clarity to a point, and then start to get heavy handed, slowing it down, and weighing the sound toward bass/darkness/smearing/masking. I say general since different designs and materials obviously effect the sound and speed along with gauge. But for really deep refinement, there have been fairly narrow windows for me. And if any aspect of the sound is off, they are all off, so worth looking at.
If interested in a test, comparing using a homemade power cable made with multiple strands to make the composite gauge for each of the hot, neutral, and ground, can be a nice test. From my experiments, I am pretty sure, all else the same, multi-strand cables (to a point) are usually better sounding for complexity and speed than single conductors. A potentially pretty good cable that is fairly low cost might be to use nicely made Chinese all pure copper, or gold plated copper ends, and the following gauges of NOS silver on copper/teflon wires (or whatever you like):
16 - 1
18 - 3
20 - 2
The calculator I use makes this ± a 10 gauge cable. It averages, so not totally accurate, but for listening comparisons this is good start and flexible beginning. If we reduce gauge, we can hear the relative spectral balance and speed change using fresh wire/parts without much burnin. Probably don't want to do extensive twisting/weaving or ground wrapping/weaving at this point because the idea is to change it and listen. All else the same, making the cable a little smaller gauge by pulling one wire will tell the tale. If the original is a little thick, muddled, bloated, darkish sounding, even with this silver/copper being pretty "hot" wire, the cable is likely too big and will balance more neutrally with less gauge. Removing one of the 18s from each group the cable would be around 11 gauge. Remove 2 of the 18s and it would be ±12 gauge. Once close spectrally, for a more ultimate cable, I would have to do some specific twisting or weaving or ground wire wrapping, and damping by-sound, and would prefer it be sort of burnt in for this part since these all effect the sound too. Just wanted to offer some ideas and a possible project for learning if interested in testing gauge versus sound.
Don't mean to hijack this thread, just offering some experience that this thread is bringing up to the top.
And by the way, I seem to recall that instead of using a polished copper ground wire replacement for fuses, seems some folks wrap a fuse in pure copper foil? Could be an intersting test I guess.
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