Newsletter April 2003

NEWSLETTER April 2003

Dear Stereo Type

Welcome to our first Decibel Hi Fi newsletter, I hope you find some information of interest. If you do we would really appreciate you forwarding it to any of your friends or colleagues who also might find it useful (and tell them to Suscribe so that they get future issues directly). If this has reached you by mistake, or you do not wish to receive email newsletters from us, please accept our apologies, and please reply with "remove" as the subject.

Topics this issue: Lower Prices
                                 Entry Level Turntable
                                 New Hi Fi News Test Record
                                 Record Cleaning Products
                                 Cables & Interconnects
                                 Phono Preamp Kit
                                 Speaker kits coming soon

Lower Prices
The big news this issue is lower pricing. As you know the Australian dollar has had a poor exchange rate for the last few years compared to the US$ and particularly the UK£. The recent rise in the A$ has meant that we have been able to reprice all the imported products and reduce some prices substantially. Most of these new lower prices are on the website now. The main ones affected initially are the Disc Doctor products and new Hi Fi News test record.

Entry Level Transcription Turntable
If you have browsed our website you may have been surprised by the prices of the Origin Live turntables. They are superb, and offer excellent value for money when their performance is compared to others priced much higher, nevertheless not too many people are prepared to spend that sort of money.

What I have been looking for is a more basic turntable, still properly engineered, which will provide a high level of performance at a budget price. If it also can have various modifications over time to improve it that would be a bonus. Well, I'm pleased to say that I can now offer the Moth Alamo turntable. This is based on the Rega Planar 2 design, a classic that has been produced for nearly 30 years. The Moth Group is another UK manufacturer that has been trading for over 30 years and is now the driving force behind British Audio Products Online.

The Moth Alamo turntable is a solid plinth design and comes complete with a Moth Mk1 tonearm (oem Rega 250), which like the Origin Live equivalent can be upgraded at a later stage. And the price - just A$660 including GST. More information is on the website.

New Hi Fi News Test Record
Len Gregory (The Cartridge Man) is recognised as the foremost authority on phono cartridge performance. In conjunction with the Hi Fi News magazine he has produced a new version of the test record. It is pressed on heavy duty 180 gram vinyl, and comes complete with a template for aligning the cartridge in the tone arm headshell (3 different alignment patterns are provided in order to accommodate different tonearms).

The record includes the expected tracks for Left Right channel identification, phasing, and channel balance. By far the most important tracks are the ones to help you adjust the bias setting, test the tracking ability, and cartridge alignment.

There is also a thorough article on High Fidelity Pickups, freely adapted and updated from John Crabbe's definitive 1968 work "Hi Fi in the Home".

If you are serious about getting the best performance from your turntable/tonearm/cartridge this is an essential tool.

We expected that this record was going to have to be priced at A$99 including GST, but due to the currently better exchange rate, and lower than expected freight charges we have been able to price it at $75 plus GST.

Most of the information which comes with the LP, including the "How To Use This Record" and High Fidelity Pickups article, is now on the website. http://www.decibelhifi.com.au/category18_1.htm

Record Cleaning Products
Although vinyl LPs can be easily demonstrated to sound better than CDs on a good system, the clicks and plops you get are annoying to say the least. Cleaning and taking care of your LPs is essential.

The absolute bare minimum accessory you need is a carbon fibre brush. This will move a lot of the dust which accumulates on a LP and should be used before every playing. The AR carbon fibre brush which we sell has been our most popular product by quite a large margin. http://www.decibelhifi.com.au/category9_1.htm

But to really clean a record thoroughly you need a properly formulated fluid cleaning system. This is where the Disc Doctor Miracle Record Cleaner and Brushes have no equal. Duane Goldman has developed his products over many years and there just doesn't seem to be anything that works as well. Due to the better exchange rate and by negotiation with Duane we have been able to substantially reduce the pricing, particularly of the brushes. The prices (including GST) now are: Disc Doctor Fluid 1pt $38.50, Pair of Cleaning Brushes $55, Stylus Cleaner $38.50, Complete Kit $132. This is drop of about 25%.

Finally, if you regularly look at styli under a microscope you'd be amazed at how much "crud" adheres to them even after a few playings, unless the records are scrupulously cleaned first. What starts off as a nice shiny clear diamond tip becomes a black encrusted abrasive blob. So a stylus cleaner is also recommended. If you have a new stylus don't let it become dirty by brushing it frequently (carefully from rear to front only). Use your carbon fibre brush if you have nothing else although that will not remove anything that has adhered to the stylus as it is too soft.

The Disc Doctor stylus cleaner brush has densely packed very short fine hairs designed to remove accumulated dust and vinyl fragments. The fluid provided is very important as it has to help loosen and dissolve the accumulations but not creep up the cantilever to the suspension. Evidently alcohol based stylus cleaners can cause the rubber material that the cantilever is mounted in to become brittle and lose its damping action. http://www.decibelhifi.com.au/category9_2.htm

Cables and Interconnects
It makes sense to have good speaker cables and interconnects if you have a reasonable stereo system.

At the front end, where signal levels are very low (particularly from a phono cartridge) any slight colouration or loss of detail of the sound will be amplified many times before it gets to the speakers. So high quality interconnect cables are important. If you have equipment which is many years old, look at the connectors on the leads from the turntable, tuner, CD player. Are they still shiny and clean, or are they corroded and grotty? And the RCA sockets on the back of the preamp or amps - clean them if they have become dull.

There are lots of interconnect cables on the market, avoid the cheap ones. Go for ones with heavy duty plugs and thick connectors. Even these will colour the sound but they are better than the flimsy leads often provided as standard with much equipment.

With speaker cables the aim is to allow the high level signal to pass through to the speakers without favouring any frequency range, or limiting the impact of transients like a loud kettle drum. To do this you not only need cable with very low resistance but also a neutrality.

If you want to see if you can hear the difference that cables make, try replacing your figure 8 flex with something far more substantial, like solid core house wiring cable, which you can buy from any hardware store at about $2 a metre.

A great deal of experimentation has been done on all sorts of materials and configurations for speaker cables and there are number of websites where you can reseach this if you are interested. One particular Belden cable, type 89259 has received the highest recommendation as one you can use to make up your own high performance speaker cables and interconnects at a modest price. Only problem is that it has been unobtainable in Australia unless you were willing to order a 100 metre roll.

We now have this cable available by the metre, plus the connectors needed. Designs and pricing are on the website. So you can now make up cables that perform as well as ones selling for many hundreds of dollars for a lot less than that.

Phono Preamplifier Kit
Most amplifiers and receivers nowadays do not provide a suitable input for a phono cartridge. When records are created the frequencies are modified - high frequencies are boosted and low frequencies reduced according to a very specific tonal equlisation curve specified many years ago by the Recording Industry Association of America.

If you played a turntable through an amplifier without this equalisation you would get a very thin sound with over bright treble and lacking base. What is needed is a preamplifier which has the RIAA equalisation so that the tonal balance is reproduced correctly.

There are a few commercially built units on the market, many are dreadfully expensive, but we have two on our site which are great value for money - the Graham Slee Projects Gram Amp 2SE now at $550 including GST, and the Australian made ME RIAA preamp at $352.

However, even these products may be too expensive for someone wanting to "dabble" with vinyl records but not willing to make a substantial investment. In March last year the Silicon Chip magazine published a design for a RIAA phono preamplifier kit but it has not been made available by any of the electronics kit distributors.

This self-contained preamplifier has been designed to be installed under your turntable and give better performance than the RIAA preamp in most stereo amplifiers and receivers. It can also be built up into an external case (not provided).

So, we are offering this kit ourselves. The complete details are on the website. We will also be able to offer a service to install the built up kit into a turntable for people not interested in doing the project themselves.

Speaker Kits
A major addition to our product list will be a range of speaker kits. We expect to have kits for small and larger stereo speakers, centre and rear speakers, and sub-woofers available by the end of May - we'll email you when they are available.

Well, that's it for this edition. I hope you have found the information of interest. If you have queries please send them to enquiry@decibelhifi.com.au .

Happy listening

Brian Maddern
www.decibelhifi.com.au

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