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Leggo.
I have some high quality monster cable but am yet to get around to wiring it in, what do you think of cable quality and its difference to the sound?

bullit wrote:
I have some high quality monster cable but am yet to get around to wiring it in, what do you think of cable quality and its difference to the sound?

once you've chosen speakers and amp, ask some professional which cable is adapted to "correct" the sound of your stereo. I know it's hard to believe but the right cable makes the difference... trust me.

Technics 1200 turntable
Rane Empath Rotary ( I love the feel of knob mixers)
Pioneer Efx 1000
Boss Re-20 (space echo)


Here are some photos

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x262 ... C01693.jpg
http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x262 ... 1693-1.jpg
http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x262 ... C01700.jpg
http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x262 ... C01699.jpg

bullit wrote:Leggo.
I have some high quality monster cable but am yet to get around to wiring it in, what do you think of cable quality and its difference to the sound?

Interconnects make a lot of difference. The Gothams were very cheap and yet a marked improvement and dealt with some noise problems the cheapo cables were giving me.

Silver speaker cables are bright, may be too bright for reggae, especially CDs which already tend to be on the bright side. Nice thick copper, bi-wired if you can, is nice for reggae.

But if you are playing vinyl, the FIRST place you need to do work is isolation. The TT shelf I am using (20 quid off ebay - 1/10th of its retail price) was a real revelation. It tightened up the bass a treat and stopped all the feedback from the floorboards (Victorian house, no carpets).

I was also amazed at the change a reasonably cheap phono stage made. Very nice that.

I am lucky enough to have a good hi-fi dealer. He visited my house, saw my records and heard what I listen to and checked out my set up. Once he had seen and heard all that he changed his speaker recommendation based on the 'type' of music that reggae is - and considering the less than perfect quality of a lot of this vinyl. It really helps to have someone like this around. Although I suspect you know your technical sound stuff really well, better than me.

Good to have people in the know, the people i know only know a little and i have learnt about soundsystems and speakers and stuff from reading and research.

The monster cable i have is copper with silver built into it, so its a little of both of what you were saying, i was to use it just for my inner workings of the big speakers but thinking of replacing the cables in this room with it also.

Everyone keeps saying this about home speaker cables, im gonna have to start listening

@bullit
I use monster cables to connect my les paul with the effect board and the board with my full tube fender amp. Best guitar set up ever. A wide dynamic range. These cables can whisper and scream. You can find them in top recording studios.
@all
The cable question is difficult. First you have to inform yourself how different materials sound. Silver, gold, coppper. And copper has many sounds, depending on how much oxygene is in. Standard copper has another sound than very clean ofc copper with nearly 0% oxygene. And big-crystalline copper is different again as well as single-crystalline copper (professor ohno method.

But that´s not all. You can´t use any cable for everything. The capacity of your cable depends on the output resistance of your player/amp/etc.
A high end player/turntable (mc!!) is 150 pf/meter. This is the highest quality.
500 to 2000 ohms need a capacity of 90 to 150 pf/m. Lowest quality (tape for instance) > 2000 ohms needs < 90pf/m.
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I use a rega planar tt with a silver cable. I built it myself to get a top quality and to save money. Although it´s the usual cinch thing, I build it as a pseudo- xlr connection. This is a perfect isolation.
I built two wall-mounts for the turntables which works fine.

My rega planet cd player ws designed not to sound harsh and too crisp. They gave him a burr brown chip to get the real analogue feeling. It´s also connected with a silver cable to the rotel pre-amp. I remember when i replaced the originl factory cable. Big difference...lol.))
The pre-a. is special tuned. The original condensators were removed and replaced by really big ones which helps to have enough power reserves. Some smaller cond. were removed completely to get the signal way short and strong.
The pre-amp is connected with a high clean copper cable to the rotel power amp.
The speaker set is by dynaudio (4 ohms), connected with t+a speaker six cable (mixture of less copper amd much silver) to the power amp. I tried some bi-amping but there was no difference.
Not to forget a technics graphic eq, a sony tape deck, a behringer sound enhencement processor, a philips cd recorder and a technics tangential turntable.
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My first sound system was comlpetely technics, except the speakers were lowther horns. Phantastic speakers, but the reggae bass is dangerous to them. Cause the cones only should move around 1,5 - 2 mm.
They didn´t live long. Thx to my former girl friend: she turned up the volume....and burned the coils.
My current gf got a careful introduction how to use my equipment right.
My dream would be valve pre- and power amping with a lowther sub-woofer and lowther satellites.
But first i better play some lottery....

I-Lion Tafari> mad sound dat.....

Thanks for that reply I-Lion.
Good to hear the monster cable i have is as good as i thought it is, will have to install that asap.
I get into all that maths everytime i get near building speakers and wiring up the rig, no one ever seems to realise the full complexities.

I Lion what use do you find the behringer sound enhancement processor? your setup sounds (litreally) good.

Hey bullit!
The enhancer is a behringer dualfex ex-2100.
My pre-amp has no knobs for bass + treble correction.
I could use the techniqs eq but most times i only use it for sound correction when i´m listening to tapes.
The behringer is much more sound quality cuase it´s really modern technology. It has 2 momo-cinch ins + 2 outs on the back side.
It has 4 knobs each stereo channel. 1rst is for bass. You can have a warm and soft bass or a hard one. Usually i never use this bass correction, don´t need it cause of the powerful rotel amp.
2nd knob selects the frequency you want to work with. The scale is 1 / 1,5 / 2,2 / 3,3/ 4,5/ 6 / 8 khz.
3rd one is for the processor to enhence or to excite. Enhencement reduces sharp noises like a harsh hi-hat. It gives a warmer sound to acoustic and hollowbody guitars, it´s great for saxophone, for backing vocals,etc. Exciting is the opposite and clears up "dusty" recordings like old studio one stuff for instance.
Knob no. 4 is for high mix: how much of your created sound you want to hear in the mix.

The behriger is a good tool and can be used for any home recording + engineering as well as for a sound system set up and for home stereo.
Maybe it´s not on the market right now (it´s old), but the follow up was the ultrafex in a modified version.
Pls. gooogle for further information. This could help more than my broken english.

Most times i don´t use any sound correction at all. There are jazz records from the mid 70s that sound better than "modern" prouctions )
Those simply vinyl 180 g presssings don´t need correction either.
Best vinyl sound in reggae i experienced with the good old 12" channel one & joe gibbs discos.

Level vibes, enjoy listening!!

I-Lion

I have experience

I-Lion, thank you for your detailed reply, mine wont be so detailed as i dont have quite so much to say! except thank you!.
You have cleared up a little of what these things do, im slowly improving the setup here hoping to get more into studio stuff in the future, gradual build up of equipment.
They sound like an interesting tool so i'll note it down as something that might be useful to get.
Im not sure if you mentioned but which preamp do you use? did you say home made? sounds good though.. I've wondered about preamps from mostec or jah tubbys but never got around to it..