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Free Advice
for a while now. There’s a reason.
The best sound can be had from
professional-level I/O cards, which cost
considerably more than the CardDeluxe.
However the CardDeluxe will sound
better than most of the sound cards
you’ll see in PC stores, and it can even
record in 24 bits and 96 kHz sampling
rate. Shut down all unneeded peripherals,
disconnect from the Internet, and
record onto a high speed hard disc that
has been freshly reformatted.
I am building a new music/family room.
The music system has 10 plugs, including
tape decks and spotlight.
Should I have the electrician set up five
of your hospital grade connectors in tandem
on one circuit, or is this overkill? Would one
or two (for the power amp/ preamp/ CD /
turntable) suffice with the balance of equipment
on regular connectors?
Ron Kennedy
DEUX-MONTAGNES, QC
Ron, if your electrician puts in that
many plugs, he will daisy-chain them,
and from the third outlet onward the
quality will deteriorate.
A better choice, though admittedly
a more complicated one, is to have him
put in two lines (the labor costs a lot more
than the wire), and daisy chain from
each Hubbell on those circuits to cheap
outlets. Add a Gutwire Stingray power
bar (4 outlets) and you have a total of
seven good connectors and four ordinary
ones. In the Hubbell closest to where the
power line comes in, plug in the power
amplifier and the power bar.
Naim is giving me no end of trouble,
when they tell their authorized dealers that
customers will “blow up” a Naim amp if you
connect it to any other preamp !
Have you done this before and is there
any risk? I am now worried that I might
damage my new Copland preamp! If they
were trying to scare me, they succeeded!
David McGuire
DALLAS, TX
We’re not sure why they do this,
David. Spectral also does something
like this: their warranty is void if you
don’t use their cables, or the ones from
MIT. There’s no danger of damaging
the Copland, and (although our lawyers
wouldn’t want us to get too categorical)
we don’t put much stock in the warning
about the amp either. It sounds like a
grain of truth that got expanded into a
whole beach by the time it got to the
dealer.
The possibility is this. If the amplifier
is very wideband but was designed
on the assumption that the preamplifier
would limit the bandwidth, then it may
misbehave. Specifically, very high frequency
signals (available from analog
and SACD/DVD-A, but not CD) may
cause slew-rate distortion.
That’s a worst-case scenario. Translating
that into the amplifier “blowing
up” is, we suspect, a case for the
X-Files.
I have a peculiar problem with my
sound system which I cannot resolve. My
system consists of an NAD 5300 integrated
amplifier, Cambridge Audio DiscMagic and
S-700 DAC. All components are powered
through a hospital laboratory-grade voltage
conditioner.
On occasion the volume will momentarily
dip (no more that a tenth of a second) to
inaudibility and then back to normal volume.
This occurs at all volume settings. I was told
to run ground wires from both CD player
components to the amplifi er ground post.
It now happens much less frequently, but
nevertheless it still does.
This problem has existed before I
upgraded to the S-700, but would occur
once or twice when listening through a CD.
When I upgraded to the S-700, the sound
would cut out maybe two to three times per
cut on a CD.
Roland Auffrey
CAMPBELLTON, NB
The cause seems evident, Roland: it
has to be the transport, not the DAC,
since the problem existed before the
DAC arrived. All sorts of problems can
throw a transport off stride, but the fact
that grounding reduced the problem
points to one likely cause: static electricity.
The effects of static on electronic
equipment, and especially on equipment
with digital controls, are often underestimated.
We once lost a $900 computer
hard disc just by touching it with an
index finger, much as God touches Adam
on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. A
similar spark would lock up a solid state
preamplifier so solidly we had to unplug
it for a full minute before it would work
again. And we’ve seen momentary CD
dropouts as well. All we needed to do
was touch a light switch.
But that doesn’t happen to us anymore.
We are regular users of antistatic
fluid. We don’t buy the commercial
version for $8 a litre, but a home-made
substitute: fabric softener diluted 4:1
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 17