Re: Dave's IC's

[mdfoy]

Nice

[Nick B]

Dave,
You should have my PM by now. Yes to the SC and I'm hoping to have my McCormack DNA 1.0 Deluxe upgraded to gold status by the time  your cables get here   
Nick

[DaveC]

Got your message Nick, thanks.

BobM should get the ICs on the 24th... 

[BobM]

OK, here's my review ... to date.

Received the wires on Thursday and immediately plugged all 3 into the system and let them burn for 2 days (@50 hrs). I think Dave said he gave them a run in already, so a little extra doesn't hurt to let them settle. On Friday night I pulled them all out, put my own reference cables back in (Analysis Plus Solo Crystal Ovals) and gave a listen to several minute long pieces of reference tracks. In all cases I absolutely tried to listen to one of Dave's cables, then back to mine for a direct comparison. Listening was done between my CD player and pre-amp in all cases.

Dave I - These are the babies of his line. Least expensive but very nicely made. From the description on his website they are made from 18 ga silver plated copper as the positive leg with 2 copper ground plane conductor and Furutech FP126 connectors. Very nice looking, as are all of these cables. They sounded nice, but not great. Good tone all around but lacking in finesse and detail and dynamics and space compared to mine. Still a decent cable for someone starting out. Their sins were ones of omission.

Dave II - The difference between these and the I's from the website are a different pair of ground wires (18 ga copper wire) and connectors (Furutech FP 101's) but the same wire on the + leg . Now this is more my cup of tea! There was more space, more detail, more extension, more everything. Boy, a connector and - return wire can surely make a difference. They lacked a wee bit of detail and dynamics compared to my Analysis Plus cables but not by much. I do indeed like these wires. Nice warm and natural tone. Something you can listen to all day.

DD's - These use the Dueland silver, silk and oil wire on the center pin, with the same ground wires and RCA's as the Dave II's. If you are a detail lover these are the cables for you. At low volumes these gave you everything, and I mean everything. Better dynamics and gobs of detail. At high volumes I found them a bit too much of a good thing, lacking that warmth that would keep me listening for long periods of time. I think this could be a break-in issue though, since Dueland everything takes something like 500 hours to sound superb and I put something like 50 hrs on them. So I threw them back into the system for another 2 days to continue burning. A little better on Sunday night with a total of maybe 7-80 hrs on them, but more is probably needed. They have all the dynamic and details  of my Analysis plus cables but lack that naturalness that I hear in my all copper cables. Is it a silver vs copper thing? Don't know but I bet down the line once others get a chance to run these in further they will indeed sound better and better.

What I hear already is all the spaciousness you could want, with plenty of bass. It's just the very top end detail that appears to be a bit much, and from past experience that is the last thing to break in and smooth out. This is indeed a Ferrari-type cable. Very fast, and in the right system will be amazing. I did try it between my pre and amp, where I have somewhat different DIY cables using my own proprietary recipe of copper and silver wires on both legs. My thoughts were to replace silver with silver here and see aht happens. It did sound better here, but still a wee bit hard on the top. Perhaps silver from source through to amp is too much in my system and I need that copper burnishing somewhere to avoid fatigue?

I'm handing these off to Campy next week so we will see what his impressions are very soon. Thanks for letting me try these out Dave. I think you've got a product for each price level.

Bob

[DaveC]

Thanks Bob, good write up!

I think you're right about break in on the Duelund cable, the dielectric is pretty thick and talking to rollo, Duelund stuff does need an extended break-in period. I also agree that the little bit of brightness on the high frequencies is the last thing to settle down, that was rollo's experience with the D1s as well. He also said the only thing the D1 lacks compared to the JPS ICs he has is the size of the soundstage, so it looks like I have underestimated the true extent that my cables need to be broken in, but it's been hard to keep cables around for too long since I've just started up and coming up with the capital to keep parts in stock has been difficult. Nevertheless, it looks like I need to put a few hundred hours on them before sending them out for reviews in the future, maybe even 500+ for the DD cable.

The good news is (thanks again to rollo  ) that I am now a Furutech dealer and if I buy larger quantities of connectors at one time the price is lower than what I was paying. That means I'm actually going to lower my introductory prices on the D2 and DD a bit, just because I can and it fits in with my goal of being able to offer the best value for the money in this industry. The D2 will probably drop to $275, so it's half the price of the Analysis Plus cables you have as a reference (please correct me if I'm wrong). The DD will drop to $425 which is very close to the retail price of the parts used to make it.

It's interesting that in my system I perceive the DD as being warmer than the D2, which I consider to be very neutral. They definitely sound very different from one another but I don't really consider one to be better than the other. Just different flavors to suit the system and personal taste... of course the Duelund wire is very expensive so the DD does need to cost more.

Finally, the main difference between the D1 and D2 is the connectors... the ground wires do make a difference but most of it is in the RCA plugs. I would love to find RCA plugs that perform like the FP-101s but cost what the FP-126s do. I'm probably dreaming though...     The FP-101s were as good as another connector I tested out that retails for $400 and is made entirely out of UPOCC copper. I am going to try out the rhodium plated FP-126 and see what that sounds like since the Furutech distributor highly recommended them.

I'm going to get the speaker cables burning in starting today and give them ~10 days before I send them off to Campy, so it will be 2 weeks until he gets them. You are welcome to keep the ICs until then if you would like, I would actually appreciate it since it would give them a chance to get more burn-in time.  

Thanks again Bob for your great review.


-Edit-

Just some info on the wires:

Signal wires:

22 gauge Neotech EC-UPOCC copper wire with cotton blend jacket, ~166 individually insulated 44g wires.

Duelund 1.0 hook up wire, 5N silver, silk and oil insulation, 2.5mm x .23mm conductor ~19 gauge

Ground wires:

18 gauge mil-spec silver plated copper with teflon wire, stranded

18 gauge Neotech UPOCC copper with teflon, stranded(D2) and solid(DD).

The 14 gauge speaker cable has ~1060 strands of enameled UPOCC copper in it... 

[rollo]

  Yes Sir. Those dem der Duelunds to take serious time to settle. Silver sonically compared to copper is IMO misunderstood. Silver is not bright compared to copper. Actually sweet on top when done correctly. Copper can be construed as having more weight however it is coloration not weight. Perceived as weight or body but just not. Only a direct comparison will show the difference. Good job Bob.
   Pure silver over the cheap stuff used by other manufactures is the culprit in sonics. The Duelund wire with its engineered dielectric is made to cure the Ils of lean or bright. They use very pure silver. To take it up a notch a pure silver RCA would be perfect however not inexpensive. I wonder who makes the RCAs for Duelund that are used with their ICs ?
    Duelund is not your basic silver house sound. time and lots of it should prove that out.


charles
   

[StereoNut]

FYI - I picked up the I/C's from BobM last night and started listening today.  I haven't spent enough time to make comments yet, but I will soon.

Sleepguy24, I think you're "up" next.

T.B.C.

SN

[DaveC]

Sounds good Campy!

The speaker cables are burning in as we speak, I will send them out to you so you will have them by the end of next week. I want to get 200 hours on them first.

edit: please keep the ICs until you get the SCs so you can send them on in one box, plus you will get to try both in your system at one time.

[bpape]

I'm goign to be out of town from the 9th to the 23rd so whoever has them last before me, please hang on to them so they're not sitting on my porch for 2 weeks.

Thx

Bryan

[sleepyguy24]

Thanks for the update.

To SN. I agree with Dave enjoy his ICs and wait for the SCs so you can listen to it all together. I'm sure from what Rollo said everything will need some additional burn-in time. That and then you will have review/enjoyment time too. Trust me I want to listen to Dave's cables in my system but my boss dumped a whole lot of stuff on me to do and I've been getting home real late and not been able to get as much listening time in with my current system. Hopefully by the time SN is done with his listening tests I'll be through this pile of crap I've got to deal with at work.

[StereoNut]

Dave: Please let me know when the SC's ship out, so I have an ETA on them.

SG24: I will keep you "posted" on when my evaluation is done here and then make arrangements to get all of Dave's cables to you here locally.

Thanks all!

[DaveC]

Just a quick update....

UPS is scheduled to deliver my connectors on Monday so I will ship the speaker cables out to StereoNut on Tuesday. The speaker cable will have Furutech's new FT-211 spades and FT-212 banana connectors.

http://www.partsconnexion.com/prod_pdf/ftech_75946.pdf

http://www.partsconnexion.com/prod_pdf/ftech_75949.pdf

The package also has my RCA connectors so I will get a set of D2 and DD ICs as well as a set of 11 guage, 4' speaker cables out to rollo on Tuesday as well. topround, you will get these IC cables after Charles has had a chance to break them in and check them out, I can also get you the 12' speaker cables that are going out on tour as well.

Sorry for the delay, Furutech ran out of stock on some parts and it took some additional time for them to resupply me.

[rollo]

    Looking forward to checking them out. Will put 250 hours on them and 500 on Duelund oh my !!


charles

[rollo]

Dave we were talking about grounding requirements of Incs and the like. I found that conversation intriguing. Could you without giving up your trade secrets on how important grounding is starting at the incoming AC and passing through the components.
    I believe you hit the proverbial nail on the head. manageing the ground potentials and designing accordingly makes a lot of sense.
     taking up a notch could the ICs be specifically designed for a particular system ?


charles

[DaveC]

Dave we were talking about grounding requirements of Incs and the like. I found that conversation intriguing. Could you without giving up your trade secrets on how important grounding is starting at the incoming AC and passing through the components.
    I believe you hit the proverbial nail on the head. manageing the ground potentials and designing accordingly makes a lot of sense.
     taking up a notch could the ICs be specifically designed for a particular system ?


charles

Hi Charles, they are hardly trade secrets, just observations (that most cable designers seem to miss!). The equipment that we connect together with ICs serves to transfer signal from one component to another, that is it's primary purpose. But it also ties the grounds together. This doesn't fully apply to double insulated components that don't require a ground connection, but these components can still have leakage current through the neutral line, which is connected to ground at the service entrance. In most systems there is a ground connection, and in theory signal ground and true ground are isolated from one another and some component designers try to isolate a signal ground with hybrid grounding techniques. In practice there usually is no difference and the signal ground plane in a component's PCB is directly connected to the house's grounding system. If you check out this doc from Rane on sound system connection, the newer, recommended way to wire an IC is to tie pin 1 to chassis ground, not signal ground (if indeed there is any decoupling using hybrid grounding in the component).

http://www.rane.com/note110.html

What that means in simple terms is that your power cord's ground wire makes the same connection as the ground wires in your ICs, and due to parasitic capacitance causing leakage currents and slight differences in potential between different receptacles you get current flow through through the ground wires, eventually returning to neutral.

In this paper by Bill Whitlock on audio system grounding and interface, the issue of parasitic capacitance and 2 prong plugs are discussed starting on page 39, and on page 81 and on, the "pin 1 problem" and some associated diagrams are shown that detail current flow through the component's grounding system as a result of voltage differences.

http://centralindianaaes.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/indy-aes-2012-seminar-w-notes-v1-0.pdf

What it points out is that the ground connection on ICs is not just a return, there are are currents flowing through our ground wires that have nothing to do with the music signal. The noise created by these currents is a function of the resistance between components. The resistance between components depends on the gauge of the wire used in both the IC's and PC's ground wire. This also means the PC's ground wire serves as a return for the signal transferred by the ICs as well as the ICs ground. This is why I use 18 gauge ground wires in my ICs, 4 of them together make a 12 gauge ground connection between components which reduces the noise created by stray current flow through these wires. The larger gauge ground wire makes for a lower noise floor that may or may not be noticeable depending on your particular system.

I hope that made at least a little bit of sense, I'm no EE...