Newsletter March 2004

NEWSLETTER March 2004

Dear music lover

In this newsletter:

Fancy alignment protractor

Decibel Hi Fi special versions of turntable and tonearm

ME Sound special offer

Jordan speaker update

Graham Slee Projects

Home Theatre PC

Alignment Protractor

We have been able to obtain a quantity of a rather clever alignment tool from Turntable Basics. As you know, the alignment of the cartridge in the headshell is important to ensure the signal extracted from the vinyl LP’s grooves has the least distortion.

Based on long-accepted alignment geometry, but superbly executed, this alignment tool has a combination of features not available anywhere else. It is also the easiest to use.

We have just added this to the product list under the category “Vinyl Record Accessories”, and there is more information about it plus a larger photo. The price on the website is $40 (plus GST) but as a special introductory offer to newsletter readers we are offering it at $30 till the end of April. When you place your order make sure you indicate in the Instructions section of the order that you wish to buy at the special price.

Decibel Hi Fi Turntable

We have always wanted to be able to offer a turntable that provides outstanding performance and great value for money, but in a reasonable price range. The Moth Alamo basic and X models do that but we felt that we could improve on both. So we now have devised a combination which is exclusive to Decibel Hi Fi.

We start off with the basic Alamo turntable (Rega 2) with the oem Rega 250 tonearm. We replace the MDF platter with an acrylic one (like the Rega 3 and Alamo X). Then we modify the tonearm with the Origin Live structural modification and replace the RCA plugs on the external lead.

This turntable is now on our website for $900 plus GST which is a saving of $70 on the separate prices of the basic turntable plus upgrades. Tradeins are welcome.

As an option we can also rewire the tonearm with the Incognito continuous Litz wiring loom. If included when the turntable is ordered there is no extra labour charge (normally $30).

A further possible upgrade is the Origin Live DC motor kit.

ME Audio

As a personal friend of Peter Stein I was upset to hear of his marriage break up which necessitated the closure of his manufacturing business. The good news is that after this temporary setback he will be producing his widely praised amplifiers again later this year. There will be limited models initially. We are now taking orders for the ME850.

I was able to get the last remaining stock of the RIAA phono preamps and these are now on special to newsletter readers at just $250 plus GST which is a bargain for such a great sounding preamp. They are still listed on the website at $320 so you’ll need to mention the special price in the Instructions section of your order.

Jordan Speaker Drivers

Ted and Denise Jordan haven’t deliberately tried to be hard to visit, it just turned out that way when they bought the seaside house in West Wales in which their family used to spend summer holidays. It was a bleak November day when my wife and I drove for four and a half hours from London to pay them a visit.

Their house is alongside the ocean with a stunning view of the coastline and a small bay where even at that time of the year a lone surfer was braving the cold. If you headed out to sea in a west south west direction the next land you’d reach would be the east coast of the USA. At night there’s not another house or street light to be seen. They probably even see stars some nights when there isn’t a grey blanket over the sky.

The Jordans are very hospitable people and we were soon sitting with cups of tea and discussing our ideas for distributing their speaker drivers in Australia.

Then came the demonstrations. Initially Ted played the JX92s which were in small enclosures on stands. Unusually, they were pointed inwards so that the axes crossed well in front of the listening area. This is done to create a stereo image which is stable across a wide number of seating positions. As their lounges were positioned off centre I squatted down in what I would normally regard as the best listening position. Ted laughed at this saying it confirmed his criticism of speakers with multiple drivers. Due to the phase changes introduced by the crossovers the stereo image is very good only in the “hot spot” at the centre of the listening area. I sheepishly resumed my seat, and sure enough the stereo image was fine from that off centre position.

The speakers displayed a smooth uncoloured sound, not particularly extended at either end of the frequency range, but engaging, and easy to listen to. Then Ted introduced an inductor and capacitor in series and although the efficiency dropped a few decibels the frequency range was considerably extended, particularly in the bass. This modification is unnecessary with some of the other enclosure designs.

Next was a demonstration of his linear array. These are quite unconventional. They consist of 4 tiny metal drivers on each side in a vertical lineup. The enclosures are quite small and are mounted on the front wall well apart and “firing” across at a shallow angle (30°). Being small drivers in a small sealed enclosure there isn’t much response below 130Hz so they need to be supported with a subwoofer. The sound they produce is very impressive. The sound stage occupies the whole wall between and beyond the speakers.

I bought a pair of JX92Ss and was eager to knock up some enclosures and try them out as soon as we arrived home. There are several enclosure designs on the Jordan website (www.ejjordan.co.uk) and I first built the Satellites. These are designed for wall mounting and our family room has an ideal layout for a pair of them with one on either side of a window. The results were good but not outstanding. Stereo image is great in practically all positions in the room. The sound was seamless but a little compressed. I took them into the lounge room and hooked them up to the ME 550 power amp but was still less than bowled over.

Somewhat disappointed I decided to build the transmission line enclosures next. These are a slim elegant floorstanding design. One completed I hooked up the drivers and sat down to listen. What a revelation. Any constriction in the midrange was gone, the bass was unbelievably extended for such a small driver. My faith was restored. The more we listen to these on all types of music the more we appreciate them. These now replace the Audax mains that we have had for a couple of years.

I suspect the performance of the Satellites was affected by the drivers not being sufficiently run in, and maybe too much acoustic padding. I’ve since put the drivers back into those cabinets and using the recommended resistor and inductor in series have been much happier with their sound.

As a result of our visit Decibel Hi Fi is now the agent for the Jordan wide range, metal coned, speaker drivers in Australia. Initially we have available the JX92S drivers, and a transmission line enclosure kit. The JX92Ss are a great speaker for experimentation in home theatre, multiroom sound, and wall or ceiling mounting. We will be adding other kits over the next few months, and also offering the JX53 drivers. Take this link http://www.decibelhifi.com.au/category24_1.htm to the website for product information. We will also be offering the JX92Ss in high quality solid timber enclosures similar to the Essence speakers from Konus Audio Systems in Bosnia. These sell for €3500 in Europe which is about A$5000 but you can build our kits for less than $1000.

Graham Slee Projects

An industrial town just north of Sheffield England is probably not where you’d expect to find an electronics engineer who produces a range of the best sounding phono preamps in the world.

Graham Slee lives in a small semi-detached house in a suburb of Barnsley with his wife and young son and builds his products in his shed. The little shed is crammed with components, prototypes, and test equipment. It’s a cottage industry. He uses a number of local suppliers for metalwork, circuit boards etc.

Graham started designing audio equipment for the first UK FM radio station in Sheffield in the 70’s. He designed much of the electronics and studio consoles for the BBC’s FM stations throughout the empire. About that time he built his first solid state phono preamp. In his words “most solid state preamps followed tube designs of the time”.

In the mid 90’s after a series of design engineering jobs he decided to go out on his own. He had some circuit ideas that took into account the availability of electronic devices which weren’t around in the 70’s. So he developed the Gram Amp. Then he had the idea of a different circuit which he developed as the Gram Amp 2.

Finally towards the end of the 90’s he developed yet another circuit idea which became the Era Gold, now up to version 5. The three product families are separate and improvements continue to be made on each one.

In order to evaluate the sonic performance of his designs he developed a specialized headphone amplifier, now released as the Solo 1 product. The Jazz was a variation of the Era Gold as a result of requests for a model which could provide different equalization curves to suit older records produced before the RIAA compensation became the standard.

His products gradually developed a reputation and received many favourable reviews and are now sold in dozens of countries around the world. Recently the demand has been such that there is often a month or more wait for some models.

The website has more information on the various models in the category “Phono Preamplifiers” or you may wish to have a browse of Graham’s site http://www.gspaudio.co.uk/ .

Further information available on the website http://www.decibelhifi.com.au/category17_2.htm

Home Theatre PC

Our associated company, Altair Computer Services, has been building custom made IBM compatible PCs for about 12 years now, and with them we have been working on a PC that can be the centre of a home entertainment system. We displayed the PC at the recent Brisbane Home Show.

We housed it in an elegant Antec “Overture” case, which looks more like a piece of furniture than a computer with its piano black gloss finish. It also has a special power supply with a very quiet fan so as to not interfere with the sound during quiet passages.

It includes a VisionPlus digital TV tuner card which enables TV programs to be viewed via the PC’s monitor. Programs can be recorded onto the harddrive, and time shifting allows you to interrupt a program and catch it up a few minutes later. It comes with a remote control, which only works while the TV software is running, not with the other functions of the PC.

The DVD rewriter reads CDs and DVDs, and burns CDs and DVDs in several formats. One thing the Media Centre PC cannot do (at least not yet) is play Super Audio CDs or DVD-Audio disks.

An M-Audio Revolution 7.1 sound card generates up to 8 output channels for home theatre and surround sound. It also has excellent signal to noise figures and can enable recording of LPs and other sources at 24bit and 192Khz sampling compared to 16bit and 44.1Khz which is what is used for CDs. For more info http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.subfamily&ID=consumerproducts

We fed the signals from the sound card to an ME 550 power amplifier for the front channels, and other power amps for the centre, surround speakers and subwoofer. Volume levels for each channel are controlled via the M-Audio software.

The Steinberg Clean software enables vinyl records or tapes to be recorded to harddisk, cleaned up with a variety of restoration techniques, then burned onto CD or DVD. I have recently transcribed a number of LPs to harddrive and can report that the playback is indistinguishable (using the Decibel special version of the Moth Alamo X turntable and a Garrott P77 cartridge).

It uses 10Mb of space for each minute of recording, so a typical LP uses up about 400Mb, that’s 50 LPs in 20Gb. I’ve yet to clean them up and burn them onto CDs or DVDs – maybe by the time the next newsletter is due. One thing to watch in recording is the signal levels – I initially recorded at a bit high a level and the clipping distortion was evident on playback – you can also see it via the Windows Media Player “Scope” visualization.

We used a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse so that we could control the PC from a distance (useful if you have a projector or large screen connected). In the USA there is a special version of Windows XP (Media Centre version) with a remote available, but it’s not released in Australia yet, and we got on OK without it.

If you would like to check out the details of this Media Centre system go to www.altaircomputer .com.au in a few days time when we will have added it to the systems available.

Feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you know who has an interest in hi fi, and ask them to subscribe it they would like to receive it themselves in future.

Please address any enquiries to enquiry@decibelhifi.com.au

Cheers

Brian Maddern

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