Iggy

When I replace the door speakers I'm wondering if I should go through the trouble of replacing the stock 20ga wire with 18 or 16. Will it improve the SQ that much. I've heard running new wires can be a real PIA.

I was talking to a friend who has pretty good knowledge on this stuff and he recommended running 16ga from the new trunk amp to just behind the HU and splicing the fronts there. As for the rears, run 16ga to the rear door sills and spice into the stock wires at that point. His theory was that for such a small run with the stock 20ga wire it should not degrade the SQ that much.

Hope this makes sense yous guys.


Thanks,
Iggy

Southbound

Iggy,
I gotta agree with your friend.

Fundamentally speaking, you would like to see some larger size wires used to your speakers. BUT if it means destroying your car's interior to do it, then I wouldn't bother.

I seriously doubt that you would be able to tell the difference... If say some "fairy" replaced your stock 20GA wires with 16GA wires overnight, I doubt that you would wake up and start the car and say :wow: It would be more of a mental thing, that would make you feel good about knowing that you had the bigger and better wires installed. They would maybe make a difference if you had say 50ft runs of wire, but at 10ft and at the power levels you're talking... It would be more "good practice" than "good sound".

What WOULD make more difference would be to get the stranded poor quality copper wires replaced by solid conductor "oxygen free" copper wires. (And I don't mean just the cheap monster cable stuff) There are a lot of REALLY expensive but REALLY high quality grades of speaker wire out there these days. I'm not sure who or what makes REALLY good stuff for car audio... I have all of my home audio wired with "AUDIOQUEST" interconnects and speaker wire. It does make a difference. But only when you have some seriously NICE electronics and speakers involved. Also, no matter how much you improve things, your ears/brain gets used to it and you will always want more... So you will, overtime, forget how crappy it used to sound and will still always find something in the system that you think needs improvement. (But you can never go back)

SO DO AS MUCH OR LITTLE AS YOU FEEL CONTENT WITH... Wire guage size to the door speakers would be probably one of the least noticeable upgrades that you could do... Putting DYNAMAT or such on the door frame would probably make more of a sonic difference.

Hope this helps... I'm sure others will differ in opinions, but I do think in this case, it would be more of a mental improvement.
GOOD LUCK!
Southbound

Iggy

Thanks Southbound. I tend to agree.

Southbound

OK Iggy etal,
I'm going over the top again here. This is gonna be another LONG post, but one I hope will bring interest and surprising results to many readers. It's gonna take another double post to get all of my info across to the board, but I think you'll find it worth it. Thanks in advance for letting me pass this tip on to those of you who are willing to read it...

I'm gonna pass on a wiring suggestion that most of you will probably laugh at. Just don't flame me until you have ACTUALLY tried it under the proper listening conditions...

I have actually written some engineering papers on this subject, but I'll spare you poor readers the agony.

It started about ten-fifteen years ago (before surround sound) when all the rage in High Fidelity was to upgrade speaker wires and interconnects. That's when all the hoopla about oxygen free copper started coming to the forefront of speaker wire technology.

Anyway, I got to know some of the people at AUDIOQUEST and got some of their interconnects at cost or at least was able to demo some of their products before buying. I now use their $500/pr. "DIAMOND" interconnects as hook ups between my home audio components. I also got into sampling various types of speaker wires back then as well. It turns out that all of this "Voodoo" does matter. YOU CAN HEAR THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN $500 INTERCONNECTS AND RADIO SHACK RCA CONNECTORS. At that price, YOU BETTER BE ABLE TO HEAR A DIFFERENCE! Thankfully, There is a point of diminishing returns... and it's just a matter of how much you want to spend to keep feeding the upgrade "habit".

Well, to make a long, long, long story long...

I did a lot of research back then as to what went into the design of these interconnects and speaker wire designs besides just better grade copper. What I found was that a lot of designs were inverse attempts to simply terminate the speaker cable into its own "characteristic impedance". They took the complex impedance of a speaker and crossover network and tried to make cables that most closely matched that complex impedance. A speaker and crossover network is made up of Inductive and Capacitive reactance as well as in phase resistive components, all with different characteristics at different frequencies. I came up with the idea of "Gee, we've been doing this with video for years"... "What if instead of making EXPENSIVE speaker cables to match the characteristic impedance of the speaker system, we simply terminate common everyday speaker wires into THEIR characteristic impedance at the speaker end of their run?" This would be VERY CHEAP to do, and would essentially accomplish the same thing by the inverse approach. It was worth a try... We all know that we must terminate a 75ohm video cable with a 75ohm resistor or else we get ringing, ghosting and all sorts of distortion! This obviously has to do with the fact that the wavelength of video frequencies actually approaches the length of the cable run and therefore it trys to become an antenna with VSWR (voltage standing wave ratio) problems, etc. to contend with. A RATIONAL person would NOT think that audio cables would be susceptible to this type of phenomenon. After all, audio frequencies are so low that the wavelength of a cable would be miles long before it would become an issue, RIGHT? At audio frequencies, the need to terminate a speaker run into its "Characteristic Impedance" would be wasted effort because the adverse effects of not terminating the line would be negligible, RIGHT?

WRONG!!!

I agree that at first, it would seem that one could ignore this "termination/untermination" phenomenon when it comes to audio, because again, audio frequencies are too low and have way too long of wavelength to worry about these high frequency antenna type of considerations. This type of cable problem is generally assumed to only be relevant in video and RF circuits... HOWEVER, what I found out with years of blind listening tests and other various empirical data verses theoretical data, was that IT DOES MATTER!

TERMINATE YOUR SPEAKER WIRES IN THEIR CHARACTERISTIC IMPEDANCE AND YOU WILL HEAR A NOTICEABLE DIFFERENCE!

When a video or RF cable is "unterminated" the effects are horrific. When an audio line is unterminated, the effects are not so horrific, but nonetheless the effects of time domain reflections, harmonic time alignment, ringing, intermod beats, and smear are ever present. I won't bore you with more of the details that I theorize cause these issues to develop at audio frequencies. BUT, trust me when I say that there are some valid theories, and the bottom line is that empirical data proves it by the fact that HUMAN EARS CAN HEAR IT...

SO HERE IS THE CHEAPEST SIGNIFICANT STEREO SYSTEM UPGRADE THAT YOU CAN DO, BOTH AT HOME AND IN YOUR CAR!

Don't throw me out of town yet, you've read this far, so here comes the mod. TRY IT, YOU'LL LIKE IT! I've waited this long to bring it up, because there is certainly room for skeptics here, and I thought I should first establish some kind of credibility on the board first. Even now, I am concerned that I will just open up another can of worms that I'm not prepared to control. I'm passing this information on to those of you who are willing to experiment, and who are open to trial and error. I now feel a sense of comaraderie amongst some members of this board, and feel that some of you may now give me the respect of hearing and trying this out. I feel that it is my obligation to help out my fellow TL-S enthusiasts when and where I can. This has been one of my most highly guarded audio system secrets! So I do not give it out lightly...

ALL of my friends and family have this mod on their home stereos and they wouldn't live without it. I have convinced many a skeptic. HOWEVER, you do have to have a set of audiophile ears attached to your brain before you will appreciate the improvement. If you simply just BLAST music and scream along with it, you'll probably never notice the difference. But if you are a serious listener, I'd wager that you'll pick up on the improvement. I have LITERALLY PASSED SEVERAL BLINDFOLDED TESTS and can tell when the mod is in or out of the system... You will either call me NUTS! or you will say, "Hey, Southbound knows his sh**.." In any case, the mod is so simple that you really have nothing to lose. I would compare the effects of this mod to what you could expect to hear from upgrading your speaker wires with the best super high grade, EXPENSIVE copper cables, etc. that you could buy. It's also comparable to upgrading an audio amplifier of the same power to a better brand/design. I'm NOT saying that the effects aren't additive... you will still achieve another level of improvement with each upgrade mod that you do to your system.

You're almost to the good part, read on to Part 2
Southbound

Southbound

ENOUGH SAID! HERE'S THE MOD...
Take a 100ohm/1Watt resistor in series with a .05uF/100volt or higher Ceramic disc capacitor, and tie this RC network across the speaker terminals of your system... THAT'S IT! IT'S THAT SIMPLE!

I have calculated that the Characteristic Impedance of most zipcord speaker runs are somewhere near 100ohms regardless of wire gauge. The LONGER the speaker run, THE MORE IMPORTANT THIS MOD IS! The tolerance of the components are NOT critical. What is important is that you use a "CERAMIC DISC" cap. A mica cap would be better, but good luck finding one with that large of capacitance. The Ceramic disc cap is not a good choice for passing audio frequencies, but it is an excellent choice for the termination of RF frequencies. Ceramic caps do not become inductive at RF frequencies like other types of caps do, so that is why I call for a Ceramic disc cap. THESE ARE VERY EASY TO FIND. 50volts would be sufficient for the car audio application... you just want the voltage rating to be higher than the highest voltage peak that might pass through it. My home system has + - 85Volt power supply rails, so I go for a 100volt cap there. Actually its really easy to find 1KV rated caps in this value. You might find the .05uF called 50,000pF in some of the packaging. THEY ARE THE SAME. Just micro vs. pico... million vs. trillion.

It's a bit hard to test this mod in the car, although I did it with clip leads and my POLK DX-6s before I soldered it on. I was convinced that I heard the effect of the mod in the TL-S with the stock wiring.

What should you expect to hear, and how should you go about it? The effect is NOT so dramatic that you will hear it by a quick A-B test. It's not like switching to a different set of speakers in the store, etc. It's subtle and it takes time for the brain to process the change and the improvement. You WILL notice a smoothness to the overal tonal response. You WILL notice less graininess and harshness. You WILL notice that you can now turn it up louder before it sounds TOO loud. You WILL notice that vocals have less of a "nasal tone". You WILL notice that pianos now sound in tune, as opposed to being sour and "twangy".

Try it on your home stereo first... this is the easiest way to experience what I'm talking about. (or else call me NUTS!) Make up two of these RC networks and have them easily attachable and detachable to your speakers. YOU WILL NOT DAMAGE YOUR SPEAKERS OR AMPLIFIER BY TIEING THIS RESISTOR/CAPACITOR SERIES COMBINATION ACROSS THE SPEAKER TERMINALS. Just be careful not to totally short out your speakers with clip leads, etc. while you are trying this. That is the only danger that you need to worry about. Pick out some of your favorite music with some varied instruments and vocals. (I don't know how well this would work with Rap, because I just don't happen to listen to rap, and it appears that it's exaggerated bass loudness, NOT quality, that rap listeners are striving for) Anyway, find the time when you can be alone without any distractions. NO KIDS running around, nobody trying to talk to you, etc. Turn the lights down and listen carefully to a few minutes of a favorite passage WITHOUT the mod attached. Quickly get up and attach the mod to both speakers, then play the EXACT same passage at the EXACT same volume. NEVER CHANGE THE AMP SETTINGS IN BETWEEN THE TEST MODES, OR EVERYTHING GOES OUT THE WINDOW. You will notice right away that things sound "cleaner" and more detailed. You might even notice things that you never even heard before... such as the pick hitting the strings on the guitar... or someone taking a breath in between vocals, etc. THEN, quickly go back and take the mod off and play the EXACT same passage again, You will quickly notice that things now sound "sour"... You will find youself looking at your partner (if you have someone else quietly and willingly go along with the test)and laughing! You will quite simply be amazed... Again, it is not something that you can notice by clipping the leads on and off in a quick fashion. It takes the brain time to evaluate the change. This is how all valuable A-B comparisons should be done. Otherwise, most people always go for the loudest system as the preferred one. Give yourself time and listen to a minute or so of each version, but don't listen to ten minutes of music between mods or you will forget how the opening sounded. Try this back and forth a couple of times and you will be convinced! THEN try it out on a couple of other musical tracks. You will again be amazed. I find Pianos especially sound to warble and twang when going back to the stock system after listening to it with the termination mod. Sometimes the biggest evidence you will find that it has improved the sound, is to go back and listen WITHOUT THE MOD. The best way I can describe it is that it will now sound "sour" without the mod. You will wonder how you ever tolerated it before... You will find yourself wanting to turn it down... You might find it more obvious to note the degradation in sound when going back to the stock system as opposed to the improvement made by adding the mod. BUT like I said, I can be blindfolded and let me listen to the A-B twice, and I have yet to fail to tell people which way the system is configured.

After proving it to yourself with your home stereo, you will be soldering this simple mod across your speaker terminals in the TL-S... regardless of the level of electronics and speakers that you have installed... I guaran-damn-tee it! or my name will be lunatic around here... (I know it already is) Being a true audiophile is not something that everybody's senses are tuned in for, and That's OK. Those of you with audiophile tendancies, you'll hear the improvement. The rest will simply blast away at me AND their stereos...

Just remember, I really do have a life! I'm really not a nerd, or geek or dork... I'm a redblooded American Male! Believe me, I wouldn't spend hours clacking away at these Posts if I didn't feel that I genuinely had something good to offer the good people of this board. I apologize for taking up valuable bandwidth... but hopefully you'll find it well worth it.

LET THE FLAMES BEGIN!
Southbound

Iggy

:wow:

Once again, My hat's off to you Southbound. Just when I thought I had my system all planned out, you go and throw in a new piece to the puzzle. Just kidding :p

Keep it coming man, I always love to curl up with a good novel!

Cheers,
Iggy

PAW

Soundbound

There's lots of audio engineers out there looking tiny tweaks. Why has no one else found this, built into their cables and charged $100s more for it?

Do you have a pic of this home stereo tweak? I'm assuming you just attach one lead of the resistor to one speaker wire pole, the second lead of the resistor to the cap and the final lead of the cap to the second speaker wire pole? Kind of like:

@---[=]----O---@

Where @ is speaker wire pole(s)
--- are the leads
[=] is the resistor
O is the cap

Do you solder all this together? Are there any other wires or parts involved?

Does this RC network work with higher grade speaker wire? You seemed to imply it does in your statement "I'm NOT saying that the effects aren't additive... you will still achieve another level of improvement with each upgrade mod that you do to your system. " Would you need to change the properties of the components?

Southbound

I don't blame you for being a skeptic... I knew the flames would come.

I agree that it seems too simple and addresses an issue that would be deemed negligible by most audio engineers. However, I have been in the patent development and marketing phase of this design principle. I have incorporated it into many proprietary crossover networks (NO I'm NOT working for BOSE, but I did used to work for ALTEC LANSING) I call it the "BLACKUM BOX". I am a fool to divulge the contents of the BlACKUM BOX, but the patent rights have expired. Attach the "Blackum Box" to your speaker terminals and you will notice the improvement regardless of how high of quality amplifier and speakers you are running. It will make ordinary zipcord speaker wire sound like $$$$ speaker wire. The only times that I have not been able to hear it help, is with systems that have already incorporated the inverse design concept by the use of VERY expensive and elablorate speaker wires. Kimber Cable was one example. HOWEVER, many expensive speaker wires have still benefited from this termination network. The only way to prove it is to try it for yourself. If you are a "Serious" listener, you will notice the improvement... I would almost guarantee it! Especially if you are using simple zipcord type speaker wire. This is the type of wiring that most benefits from this termination. Parallel inductance is a b!tch with this type of speaker wire. If you just have the stereo on for background noise, yeah, you'll never have the concentration to appreciate the difference. Again it is NOT the kind of thing that you can hear by simply clipping the circuit on and off instantly. That is NOT how you should evaluate a stero system. All the human ear/brain can detect in a split second is a change in volume, drastic change in frequency response, or gross distortion. You cannot hear the difference between an amp with 1% distortion to an amp with .01% distortion by simply switching back and forth instantly. If you do hear a difference, it is these other factors that you are hearing. What you will hear is the difference between the two systems over time, after you have carefully listened to them over an extended listening period. After a couple of minutes back and forth your ear will soon learn to pick up on the improved detail of the .01% distortion system. Yet, at first, Your ear might try to tell you that you like the 1% distortion system better because it will appear to sound louder. Fatique will soon set in, and you will realize that the smoother .01% system definitely sounds better. This termination mod is very much analgous to that scenario. TRUST ME, TRY IT... and then come back with your comments. I appreciate you at least not flaming me. MANY PEOPLE HAVE... UNTIL THEY HAVE TRIED IT THEMSELVES. Now to those people who are content to listen to walkmans and MP3 systems... they are simply listening for content, not quality of content. To them, they will not take the serious time to appreciate this phenomenom. And that's OK, NOT EVERYBODY appreciates music for the same reasons...

You are correct in your schematic layout. Anyway that you can attach it to your speakers with relatively short leads will benefit you. I solder and insulate the resistor and capacitor together and then just attach the opposite ends to the speaker, in the easiest way possible. Also, the longer your speaker run, the more significant this termination mod will be. Any wire run beyond 20feet will greatly benefit by adding this RC network.

The polarity of the termination components or the network itself does not matter, since neither the resitor or Ceramic disc cap have polarities. The resisitor will NOT smoke, because it will only see energy from frequencies above 30KC, and there is very little energy from an audio source at this frequency, EXCEPT for all of the residual artifacts caused by the effects discussed in my original post. It is these anomalies and artifacts that this network terminates, aborbs and damps out so that they do not interfere with the properties of the other sonic frequencies.

SO yes, hook it up like this...
Speaker terminal to one side of the 100ohm/1Watt resisitor, Connect the other side of the resistor to one side of the .05uF Ceramic Disc Cap, Connect the other end of the Cap to the other speaker terminal. Again it doesn't matter which speaker terminal has the cap or which has the resistor. It doesn't matter which way the resistor or cap is oriented. These are all non polarized components. What does matter, is to make sure that the resisitor and cap are in series before they connect across the speaker terminals. Without the cap in series with the resistor, THE RESISTOR WOULD SMOKE! Without the resistor in series with the cap, it would not have the desired effect of providing a stable 100ohm resistive termination across the speaker at high frequencies.

You must remember that since a speaker is INDUCTIVE by nature, it's impedance rises to infinity as the frequency increases... AHHHHHH, you have just discovered another part of the mystery solved! Amplifiers do not like to see an infinite impedance as they increase in frequency as well. So this termination also helps to stabilize the amplifier at RF frequencies. While the amplifier is supposedly only passing audio frequencies, it still has a lot of gain left well up into the Megahertz range. Taming it down up at that range, makes it more eventempered to operate properly within its intended bandwidth. Where does it get RF energy supplied to it from an audio source to excite and upset its operating characteristics? Well, that would take me another journal to describe my theories, but they do exist... Engineering can be a fascinating subject, when the results are CRANKING UP MUSIC!!!

If you are serious about "quality" music, give it a try... What do you have to lose, but time?

Southbound

Yes, I have yet another audio trick up my sleeve.
It's called "GREENING CDs"

This one is even easier to try.

Some of you may have already heard about it or the controversy around its theory.

The theory addresses errors that are caused in the D-A process of decoding audio CDs. Back when CDs were originated, it was assummed that 16bit processing would be more than adequate to sample the analog material and transparently convert it to a digital format.

Well, since everything in nature and our human senses respond to things in an analog capacity. Digital storage technology only has the advantage of enhanced signal to noise, improved dynamic range, a convenient faster than real time archival medium, and duplication without gernerational losses. However, the initial concept is flawed if the initial process is flawed. Is it flawed to the point of being negligible? For the most part, most people say YES... BUT in reality music is made up of analog waveforms that can only make sense to the human ear/brain in that format. Have you ever listened to the data of your modem, etc. Digital hash is all that the human ear would hear coming off of an Audio CD if it were not for the D-A converter required to convert the digital data back into its original analog form. So, the process of recording in a digital domain is to sample an analog waveform and turn it into a stairsteped waveform. (at 16bit A-D processing this gives you 64K increments to represent the original sinewave.) While this may be a fairly accurate approximation, it still has small stairsteps in its sample. Sophisticated filters smooth out the rest of these square bumps in the original signal before it is recorded. Once recorded by laser imprints on the CD, it takes another laser in your CD player to read it and then process it through a D-A converter along with other digital filters to again approximate and smooth out the waveform to look and SOUND like its original self.

Well this system is inherently prone to flaws, just like any technology. In fact, newer standards for CDs are being formulated by AES and SMPTE to increase the sample rate from 16bits to 20bits or even 24bits. This would increase the amount of original samples in the A-D process to 1 million. or possibly 16 million. It turns out that HUMAN EARS can hear the interpolation that occurs by sampling at the lower 16bit rate. Also there is jitter that occurs in the transports of CD players that tend to mis-clock the data and therefore confuse the D-A converters and associated digital filters. Most people find the 16bit processing to be just fine, but for some, it comes across a bit TOO "edgy" a bit TOO "harsh", etc.

At this point in time there is very little that can be done about the fact that the data is encoded onto the CD as 16bit data. However, sonic improvements can be made by upgrading to expensive , more accurate D-A converters and expensive more jitter proof transports.

BUT AGAIN, THERE IS ANOTHER CHEAP WAY TO HELP CANCEL OUT THE EFFECTS OF JITTER DATA ERROR CAUSED BY MOST ECONOMICAL TRANSPORTS.

The laser beam in your CD player used to read the laser imprints on your audio CDs is a RED spectrum laser beam. This laser beam reads the pits on the underside of the CD and takes that data and processes it through the deck's D-A converter and subsequent filters, before finally feeding it to an analog preamp. HOWEVER, there is some laser light scatter as the beam scans the disc surface. This scatter reflects back into the lens and is misread as improper data. The result is bits that are slightly out of time from where they should have occurred, or bits that simply shouldn't exist at all. The D-A converter then has to work overtime to substantially "interpolate" data to make up for missing, mis-timed or incorrect data. The result is that waveforms are misrepresented from the original analog signal. It is sort of like the effect that you would hear if the system used a lesser bitrate for sampling and processing. We already know that 16bit processing is detectable by the human ear (it's why some old time audio junkies are calling for vinyl records to come back) so LESS than 16 bit processing would certainly be less than optimum. (I myself can't wait to hear some of the newer 20bit and 24bit CDs... they may finally be sufficiently sampled to indeed produce negligble side effects.)

How prevalent, prominent and objectionable are these laser light scatter problems? Well, that depends upon the quality of the individual CD player's transort, D-A converter, jitter correction circuitry, and digital filters. MOST CD players do not have enough physical stability or correction capability to completly compensate for this phenomenon. BUT KEEP READING, I HAVE A CHEAP FIX!

If you want to experience effects similar to what I have described above in my "speaker wire termination" post, try the following procedure to your audio CDs. You will notice an obvious improvement with the smoothness of the audio. It will be less harsh and will loose a lot of that "digital edge". You will again hear small details that you may not have noticed before in the music... such as the pick hitting the string, or someone taking a breath, or perhaps you will all of a sudden actually understand the missing word of a song that you never quite knew before. You will also find youself wanting to turn it up more.

ENOUGH TALK AGAIN! HERE'S THE MOD...

TAKE A GREEN SHARPIE AND USE THE "SIDE" OF THE TIP TO COLOR-COAT THE "EDGE" OF THE CD.

COLOR BOTH THE OUTER AND INNER EDGE OF THE CD. NOT the top or bottom surface. Coloring the bottom of the CD would make the laser unable to read it and would ruin the CD. COLOR THE OUTER EDGE BY HOLDING THE CD AT A VERTICAL ANGLE, AND HAVE THE GREEN SHARPIE ON THE LABEL SIDE OF THE CD. This way if you slip, you only write on the lable side, NOT the data side. Take the side of the felt tip and run it around the outer edge of the CD a couple of times until you have a good coat applied. Then run it around the inner edge where the spindle would come into contact. AGAIN, DO NOT COLOR THE TOP OR BOTTOM OF ANY OF THE CD. Just the 1/16" thick outer and inner edge. Have some rubbing alcohol handy, just in case you slip. If you slip and color the bottom of the disc, use the alcohol on a Q-tip or soft paper towel and quickly wipe it off before the Sharpie ink dries. DO NOT use nail polish remover or Acetone, this will MELT the CD. Let the CD dry for a couple of minutes before playing it. USE A SHARPIE, NOT a simple felt tip or highlighter! You don't want the felt tip to rub off and you want a solid colored result. It will look like "coke bottle" glass when viewed through light from the edge when you are finished.

This crazy procedure works to improve the sound by absorbing the light scatter from the laser beam as it shines through the center of the CD. Since the laser beam is RED... GREEN is the opposite color and it will absorb the energy and not let it relect back to the lens. GREEN IS THE ONLY COLOR THAT WILL WORK! The effect of this will be the same as if you just purchased a $1,000 jitter reduction box or a super high quality transport. The data seen by the lens will now be more accurate, and the D-A converter will now be less confused and will be doing less interpolation to produce a more faithful and transparent reproduction of the original signal.

Try this when you have all of your supplies handy. Listen to a CD song a few times until you have it really good in your head, then do the "GREENING" procedure, let it dry for a couple of minutes and pop it back into your CD Player... You will hear a much smoother and improved result. NO JOKE! Soon you will be "GREENING" all of your CDs... This is good for both your home and car stereo. Your wife will call you crazy, but you will be

GIVE IT A TRY, AGAIN WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE?
Southbound

PAW

I assume this $20 pen with the special grooved tip does the same thing? Especially, since the name of the pen is "Stop Light Green Paint Pen". It just lightens your wallet a little bit more.

http://www.audioadvisor.com/store/pr...%20Paint%20Pen

I'm glad you understood I wasn't flaming you with my last post. I was just curious. Plus as technologies mature, original ideas are harder to come by. Just look at washing machines. How much have they changed in 20 years?

Southbound

Yeah, the light stopper pen is used to do the same thing that I just described to do with a .99 cent Green Sharpie.

I said that some of you might have heard about this trick. Have you tried it? The theory of operation defies explanation, but I just described my theory of what I think is going on in my above post "GREENING CDS".

I heard about this stoplight pen and tried my own Green Sharpie method and found out that WHOA! It really does make a difference. I've had conversations with a lot of engineers who say that the principle is bogus and that it can't achieve anything. BUT HEARING IS BELIEVING... It's what made me do some deep thinking into what "could" be going on. Again, sometimes the obvious is just under our noses and we choose to either ignore it or sometimes simply overlook it, because it appears too basic to be taken seriously. NOTHING in life can be taken for granted...

Anyway, if you haven't tried it... TRY IT! It does improve the sound quality of digitized CD music. The stoplight pen is supposed to have the more precise green color wavelength to null out the RED laser, but I haven't tried the two to know if there's a difference between them or not? I just know that the .99 cent Sharpie has me "greening" every CD that I buy now before I even put it into the player. I've long since proven to myself AND others that there's a noticeable improvement.

I didn't invent this green scheme, I just try to explain what must be going on with it, because empirical data has proven to me that it does indeed, do something good!

SO, if you've tried this green CD gag and have heard an audible improvement, then TRY MY SPEAKER WIRE TERMINATION NETWORK. It is my original idea and it WILL give the same kind of results. If you haven't tried either... TRY THEM! Sometimes the simple solution to complex problems, go overlooked by even the most studied of minds. Can't always see the forest for the trees type of thing...

If you can honestly say that you have "Greened" your CDs and haven't heard a bit of difference. Then you will call me, and others like me, crazy! Again, my explanation for that would be that not everyone listens to music for the same purpose. If you are a serious listener... you WILL notice these improvements. BEST OF ALL, they are CHEAP to try. There's nothing to lose if you find that they don't work for your ears... I'm just trying to pass on some knowledge and easy improvements to those willing to give them a try.

It's no more crazy than those installing gigantic multi-Farad Capacitors in their car and replacing the alternator and battery, just to claim their system is now suitable for listening. In reality, GOLD contacts are NOT the best conductors. Everybody thinks that if they have Gold, it must be best. YES, it's best for the prevention of corrosion and oxidation that can deteriorate your sound overtime. But PURE copper and SILVER are by far better conductors of electricity! And thereby sound better, if kept clean and under a gastight crimp or solder connection.

Science turns out not to be such an exact science sometimes when the human Psychy becomes involved.

Thanks for keeping the flames down to only a spark of skepticism... Take care, Southbound

johnnyb_s

Just curious if anyone has tried either of these...

Southbound

Only one way to find out...

You could be missing out on a good thing.

The GREEN SHARPIE routine is very easy to try.

GO FOR IT!

SOUTHBOUND

260 HP

iTrader: (3)

Hey Southbound, I want to try the Speaker wire terminator. I have component speakers in my car. Should I attach the terminator on the crossover input or midbass input?

Thanks!!

Southbound

Hey 260HP,
Glad to hear someone has the intiative to try this.

Assuming that you have short wire runs from your crossover to your midrange speakers and tweeters, I would put the termination across the point where the factory speaker wires feed your crossover network. Then keep the speaker runs short from the crossover to the actual speakers/tweeters.

I am not feeding you a bunch of B.S. with this mod. It does work! BUT it does take some serious listening to prove it to yourself.

THEREFORE, I would try it out on your home stereo speakers first. That way you can convince yourself that something is really going on here. If you have a decent home stereo system, then definitely try it out there first. If all you have in your house is a boom box, then you don't have a sufficient level of hi-fi to try it out there.

But, unless you are good with electronics and really know what you are doing, it is hard to put it on and off inside of the car door in any expediant amount of time. YOU HAVE TO BE CAREFUL NOT TO SHORT ANYTHING OUT WHILE DOING THIS INSIDE THE DOOR!!! IF you play a song, then take half a day to redo the door speakers with the mod and then turn it back on... You will probably say... "I can't tell if there's anything different or not?" If you can play the system for about a minute or two during some carefully selected music, then do and undo the mod within a couple of minutes in between listening sessions, you will definitely hear it and you will definitely be pleased. It will take you going back and forth a couple of times before you are truly convinced. BUT each time, you will keep smiling more as you realize that YEAH, it really does help... It's not just my imagination, etc.

I was able to jury rig my door speakers so that I could attach the termination safely and "tape" the door speakers back in place to achieve a proper door seal while doing my testing. JUST BE CAREUL! IT'S REAL EASY TO GET CAUGHT UP AND YANK THE SPEAKER OUT WITH THE POWER STILL ON, ETC.!!!:wow:

Go for it! Just be careful, and try to try it out at home first... that would be my recommendation.

Southbound

Southbound

Hey 260HP,
Sorry I misread your question. I thought you asked whether the termination should be placed across the midbass speaker or the tweeter?

To answer your question directly. Place the termination across the input of your crossover.

Since you have components I assume that you have a better crossover than a simple series cap to the tweeter. If so, I'm sure that there are a couple of chokes in there. One would be in series with the midbass speaker to "choke" out the high frequencies. You definitely want the termination on the amplifier side of any crossover coil. Part of the reason that the termination helps, is that it provides a stable resistive component to the amplifier output stage up at very high frequencies (Megahertz range). Since a speaker is inductive by nature of its voicecoil, its impedance steadily increases with frequency to where it would approach infinity at infinite frequencies. The amplifier is much happier working into resistive loads. Yes, I know that it is "supposedly" only passing audio frequencies, so why should we care about what it sees at RF frequencies, etc.? Well, that is just part of the "Voodoo" that you have to take my word on. There are things going on up there that react with the audio frequencies that we do hear. They may be minor and subtle, but they are NOT totally neglibible. You will see... or should I say hear...

Like any improvement, you will get used to this improvement over time. BUT YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK. It's like how the 260HP felt REALLY good the first couple of months... now it only feels adequate. BUT HOW WOULD IT FEEL TO GO BACK TO 180HP THAT USED TO FEEL ADEQUATE??? You know what I'm talking about here, WE ALWAYS WANT MORE AND BETTER!

Have you rewired any of the factory wiring? If so, what type of wire did you use? and how is it constructed? This mod works best with simple zipcord parallel wiring. It makes zipcord sound like Kimber Kable for .99cents! THAT IS ESSENTIALLY WHAT THIS MOD DOES... If you have made major improvements to the wiring (beyond just increasing the wire gauge size) then the mod may not be as effective. If you have added monster cable in its zipcord form just to increase the gauge size, this mod will amaze you! Again zipcord has a very predictable characteristic impedance of 100ohms and this mod works best to improve that common type of cable run.

I hope you find that this mod works for you... I'm ready for the flack... it may take a couple of people to try it before someone agrees with me. Just have an open mind to it, and listen carefully. Let me know how it goes.
Southbound

Southbound

Hey 260HP,
Since you have components, it just hit me that you may not have to break the speaker seal to attach the termination to your crossover. If you have the crossover box mounted on the outside of your door frame behind the door panel... you would be "golden" for doing an A-B comparison.

You could easily attach the termination to the crossover box under the screws that hold down the speaker wires from the amp. Then you could easily take one end of the termination off to listen to it stock. Re-attach the lead to listen to it in the termination mode.

You should be able to do that safely in a relatively quick amount of time in between listening tests. Just remember to listen to a minute or two of music in between tests. You WON'T hear an obvious difference by just touching the lead on and off instantaneously. It's not that drastic of a change. It's an improvement that takes the ears and brain a finite amount of time to adjust to and recognize... as do most fair listening tests.

If the crossover box is mounted INSIDE the door frame, then you will have to take the speaker in and out to get to the mod. That would be more difficult. I only have coaxials in my front doors, so I had to keep taking the speaker in and out to do an A-B test on my system. It was a pain, and a potential hazard. Yours could be a lot easier if your crossover is mounted on the outside of the door frame. Just as long as you didn't mount it way far away like under the dash or something... then we'd have to re-think the best place to attach the termination, because of the extra lead lengths involved. In any case, you shouldn't have to mess with the tweeter mount.

GOOD LUCK! I hope I'm right about how you have things mounted... things should go easily if I'm thinking right...
Southbound

260 HP

iTrader: (3)

Hey Southbound, thanks for your clarification. I'm going to try it on Monday and will gladly report the result on the board.

My crossover is mounted inside the door, unfortunately. The good thing is that it's very accessible. I will make some sort of adapter to enable instant install-uninstall for the test.

As a background, I have a 00 Accord V6 sedan. The speakers are Boston Acoustics Pro 6.5 installed in the stock location. I use the inexpensive Rockford Fosgate 16 ga speaker wire. The amp is Soundstream Rubicon 405, bridged. The headunit is Eclipse CD5441.

zotl

Southbound, I like to try your experiment but I cannot find the ceramic disc capacitor at Radio Shack.
They carry .047 uF/50 WVDC but none of them have .05/100v .
Where can I find it ?
Thank

Southbound

A .047uF/50volt ceramic disc cap would be close enough. The component values are NOT critical. This is not a 1/3 octave graphic equalizier that you are building. You are just trying to provide a 100ohm termination to the amplifier and speaker wires up at HIGH frequencies. These values were designed so that they wouldn't have to take any of the audio power down at lower sonic frequencies. The point where this circuit comes into play is somewhere around 32Khz. It would shunt 3db of the signal into the 100ohm resistor at that frequency. It would start a break point of 1db at 16khz. So only audio information above 16Khz even begins to see the 100ohm resistor in parallel with the speaker. With the dynamics of audio and the fact that there is little sustained information up at that frequency, a 1Watt resistor (at 100ohms)is sufficient to absorb any energy there. The 100volt rating on the cap would be nicer... But I think 50volts should be fine for most car audio systems. 50volts is definitely adequate for the stock system that only has a 14volt power supply. If you have a home stereo or a large aftermarket amp that you know has a power supply rail of greater than 50volts, then you should continue to look for a 100volt cap. 1KVolt caps are actually easy to find at electronic supply stores. You would have to find an electronic supply store around your area that sells electronic components and parts for ham radio type folks, etc. FRYS Electronics even has a big assortment of electronic components. Ask one of the Radio Shack guys to recommend a store around that might sell more electronic componenents.

BUT if you are working with the stock system, those values are FINE to use. JUST MAKE SURE IT IS A CERAMIC DISC CAP , NOT MYLAR OR SOME OTHER PLASTIC DIELECTRIC. The Ceramic disc cap is one of the best materials to remain capacitive up at RF frequencies. If you find a mica cap that big, you can use it as well. Mylar and such are great for audio frequencies, but become inductive at RF, and therefore do not have the desired effect up at the frequencies of concern. A .047uF would only push things up to around 34Khz at 3db and 17Khz at 1db. We are concerned about things that are going on way higher than that up in the 100KC and 1MHZ range... So where the break point begins is NOT that critical. WE just want it as close to the audio frequencies as we can get it without having to actually absorb and dissipate audio with a giant resistor.

Hope that helps clear some things up to a lot of others as well.
Southbound

Southbound

Zotl,
I just noticed that you are from So. Cal
Go to JK Electronics in Westminster. on Westminster Blvd between Edwards and Sprindale.

They have .05uF/1KV caps that I used in my install. THEY are sadly out of 100ohm resitors up in the 1 and 2Watt range. You can parallel two 200ohm 1Watt resistors but that just takes up more space and hassle. FORD ELECTRONICS on COMMONWEATLH in Buena Park, just about a mile EAST of BEACH BLVD. has all of this stuff.

I ended up getting my .05uF/1KVolt ceramic caps from JK electronics. and got the 100ohm/1watt resistors from Ford ELectronics. (I didn't like the way the cermics at FORD looked. They weren't dipped right, and you could see the bare plates. One bad property of ceramic disc caps is that they do tend to short out over time, just like electrolytics... all the more reason to have the 1KV version if you can find it. (JK has some nice ones hangin on the shelf, NTE brand probably, but they're good for 1000 volts.) They are just out of stock of 100ohm resisitors and it is the value of the resistor that I would say is the more critical of the two. The cap just determines the frequency of where the termination begins. The resistor actually matches the impedance of the speaker wire for the best possible termination of its characteristic impedance. Doing all the math, 100ohms comes out very close to every size zipcord that I have seen. I have just continued to use it in any other wire applications as well.

Now you know where to go...

260 HP

iTrader: (3)

Southbound, what about Orvac Electronics on Orangethorpe in Fullerton?

Southbound

Yeah 260,
Sorry I missed that you were from SO. CaL as well. ORVAC should easily have these components. I've been there before too. I think there's a Sav-On Electronics in Garden Grove as well.

You probably have to ask for the parts behind the counter. BUT these are exactly the type of stores to look for to find these components. JK stocks all of their 1/4 and 1/2watt resisitors on the shelves... BUT they stock 1 and 2watt resistors behind the counter. A couple of weeks ago, JK was out of stock on 100ohm/1watt resistors but claimed they had them on order. (they always claim that) But zotl, you might try there first for the caps and then ask if they have the 100ohm/1watt resistors behind the counter. I liked the size and rating of their .05uF/1KV caps that they had hanging on the peg board in the center of the store... Hope I didn't buy them all...LOL. ORVAC, etc. probably stocks a lot of parts behind the counter as well. They might have a variety of different ceramic caps with different voltage ratings. The tolerance isn't any big deal with these, so get the ones that look the best (some are surplus caps that look pretty beat) If that's the case, hand select some that look nicely dipped, and aren't TOO big in size just to keep the install nice and compact. I've seen some 1kv caps that are about the size of a dime that work well. Some are as big as a quarter and get a bit harder to install depending upon your situation. The 50-100volt jobs would be about half the size of a dime or so.

Good shopping!
Southbound

zotl

Southbound
- JK Electronics have .05uF/1kv .
- Sav-on Electronics have .47uF/630v.
The salesman @ JKElectronics told me that the 1kv voltage can handle between 100 -> 1kv, so it is better to get the 1kv rather than 100v ???
Check out at www.partsexpress.com, item# 020-2082, but you have to order with the minimum of 10 pcs.
Which one should I get ???

Southbound

Zotl,
GET THE .05uF/1KV ceramic caps from JK Electronics. They should be in the middle of the store hanging on a peg board. I believe they are in packs of two made by NTE. If they haven't gotten their 100 Ohm/1Watt resistors in stock yet, then you'll have to get them elsewhere.

I hope you meant .047uF, NOT .47uF at Sav-On Electronics! The difference between .05 and .047 doesn't make enough difference to really matter, but if you used a .47uF, YOU WOULD SMOKE THE RESISITOR! Because your break frequency would now move down to 1.6Khz and there is a LOT of audio at those frequencies.

Again, the voltage rating is ONLY critical to the point that it is large enough to handle the maximum "PEAK TO PEAK" voltage of the audio being fed from the amplifier. In the case of the STOCK amp, that would be 14Volts (power supply max) times 2 (bridge mode) equals 28VOLTS PEAK TO PEAK MAX! Therefore, a 50volt cap would be sufficient for the stock system. However, if you are using, or plan to use, an aftermarket amp, or have a high powered home stereo amp that you are also using these on... Then you would want a HIGHER VOLTAGE CAP.

1KV is a common voltage for these type of caps because they are quite often used in the sweep and convergence circuits of television sets where the common voltages are around 450Volts. For a margin of safety, especially at that high of voltage, it is customary to double the voltage of what is actually required. Like I said, one potential problem with ceramic disc caps is that they sometimes short-out with old age. Therefore, the larger margin of safety you have, the better you are that these will last you a lifetime.

Again, just to be extra careful to clarify... (and people wonder why I clack so much)

A 50Volt cap would be fine for the "Stock" system.

A 100Volt cap would be fine for any aftermarket
amp made for door speakers.

A 1KV cap would be FINE FOR ANYTHING INCLUDING A TELEVISION SET AND THE KITCHEN SINK! There's no such thing as TOO much overkill on the margin of voltage safety. The problem you can get into is that some of the 1KV caps are REALLY big, like the size of a 50cent piece. Sometimes this is hard to solder across the speaker terminals in series with a resistor without contorting and cracking things. If you have plenty of room... Then size is NOT a factor. Use some kind of sleeving over the leads of this network to protect things from shorting out. Or else just tape everything up really good with electrical tape.

The guys over at JK don't ever know a thing about what they are talking. We call them JoKe Electronics at work... but sometimes they have what we need.

Living in So. Cal, there should be NO NEED to mail order these simple common easy to get parts. There's also Mar Vac electronics down in Costa Mesa.

If JoKe doesn't have the 100ohm/1Watt resistors in stock yet, they will try to sell you the next common values that they carry... 82ohms or 120ohms. I would pass on that. This value is the more critical of the two. The reason they are out of 100ohm resistors is because they are SO COMMON! You can use (2) 200ohm resistors in parallel, or you could use (2) 51ohm resistors in series. More likely they would have 47ohm values. Two of those would be close enough in series. It's just a cleaner install with the right parts. But to keep things smaller... If you end up having to use two resistors to make the value, you can go with 1/2 watt ratings. (two 1/2 watt resistors used EITHER in series or parallel, make up a total resitance wattage of 1Watt.) I know JK has 200 Ohm/1Watt metal film resistors behind the counter that are a nice size for 1Watt. I bought some and was going to parallel them for my install until I got the real 100 Ohm/1Watt jobs from Ford Electronics.

This is a SIMPLE mod... you are trying to make it more complicated than it needs to be. But better safe than sorry... I hope you hear the difference after all of this effort. How old are you and what type of music do you listen to? If you are looking for a gigantic change like swapping out the stock speakers for components and a giant SUB, that's NOT going to happen. However, if you're into audio enough to know the difference that good speaker wire makes, then you WILL hear this improvement. It's that kind of subtle thing.

Again, GOOD LUCK!
Southbound

260 HP

iTrader: (3)

I went to Orvac Electronics and they had the 100 Ohm/1W and .05uF/50V in stock. At least when I visited them. You have to ask the parts counter.

I notice smoother high frequency, like cymbals. I can hear several guitar string-finger friction that I never heard before. I'm going to leave the mod in place for about 1 month, then remove it to prove that it does work.

I used Eagles' "Hotel California" from "Hell Freezes Over". I listened to the song for the first 4:30 back to back and I notice the difference.

Thanks Southbound!!!

Southbound

I Told You So...

It's subtle, but IT'S DEFINITELY THERE!

It's audio engineering down to its finest detail...

You won't have to wait a month. Listen for a few days, and you won't be able to hack it when you go back. You should do the A-B routine again when you switch back, though. Listen to a good tune with the mod installed, then immediately take it off, and play the same tune over again. Things will sound REAL SOUR all of a sudden...

Hotel California should have been a good song for the test. It's like when you install the mod, you will all of a sudden hear something new that you NEVER noticed before. (like someone's breath, or the pick on the string, or finally understand a lyric line, and you will also have less ear fatigue at the same volume. Although, I assure you that this mod HAS NO EFFECT ON VOLUME, BUT, You will be able to turn it up louder without it just sounding like it blares) Then when you take the mod off, YES, you can still hear the new found musical item... but why didn't you notice it so prominently before? Why didn't you notice that pluck of the string at that particular point before? It's always been there... But It just took this mod to bring it to your attention!

It's all about harmonic time alignment and time domain reflections... all minor distortions, but when combined they do smear the true audio.

YOU'RE WELCOME! That'll be $1.99 (or whatever Orvac hit you up for) LOL

TRY THE GREEN SHARPIE GAG... it has the same sort of effect. It works too! I do yak a lot, but I sometimes know what I'm talking about...

I'm really glad you went ahead and took the initiative to do the mod, and I'm even more satisfied to hear that you're NOT calling me crazy! You just put a smile on my face
I like it when I can help out... Southbound

260 HP

iTrader: (3)

Southbound, it cost me just $.96 plus tax at Orvac... I'm still smiling myself.

You're so right about less ear fatigue. I tried it at the volume level when I noticed a little "sharpness" in the vocal without the mod, and the sharpness is gone with the mod.

I already tried the Sharpie thing on the very same CD, but for me the difference is not as noticeable as the the terminator. It's different, but not as much. Probably not enough coats? I put like5-6 coats.

It's all gooood!

zotl

Southbound
I went to JoKe Electronics and got the last 2 packs of .05uF/1kv
( $ 2.15/pk ) . The 100 ohm/1w picked up at Radio Shock the day before.
Will start the project this weekend.
Thanks a lot.

Southbound

Hey 260hp,
Thanks for the updates. Probably why the terminator mod works better than the Green Sharpie, is because it WAS MY IDEA Like I said, I did a lot of research and calculations as well as blind listening tests years ago on the terminator mod. I have solid theories docuumented by a notary public as to what I believe is going on electronically. It's complicated, but it's my passion! Just so you're ALL straight on things, It's my passion to improve music through better electronics, it's NOT my passion to be a geek! GEEKS DO NOT DRIVE A TL-S! But there are passionate TL-S drivers who love to get the most punch from their 260hp and their stereo at the same time!

The green sharpie was something that I read in a magazine, like others have. I thought to try it out with a .99cent Sharpie instead of their $20 dollar pen. I swear I hear a difference with it as well, but you CAN'T A-B it... Once you paint it, you're done. So it may be a bit harder to tell if it's in your head or not. Also it would depend upon individual CD players, and possibly even the recorded material. 5-6 coats is WAY plenty enough for it to work or not. I just take the disc on its edge and spin it slowly as I work the side of the green sharpie pen around the full circumference of the edge two or three times, and then do the inside edge of the spindle. Let it dry for a few minutes and then give it a try. You might want to try a couple of more before you call it a bust... Listen well first, then "green" it and then replay it. I think you'll develop that same kind of improved smoothness out of it as you get used to what to listen for. I agree that it's not as pronounced, but I tend to notice that it takes a bit of that "digital edge" off of the music... If you find it doesn't really help, well, one out of two isn't bad... at least it's the one I can take some credit for...:p

Hey Zotl, after reading these last few posts, you should be encouraged. The caps you bought should be legit' and you should be good to go... As 260hp says... IT'S ALL GOOD!
Southbound

Southbound

I just read my last post and it sounded like I was trying to gloat... I don't like that in people. I was just excited to see someone experience this improvement mod firsthand again. I went through this buzz with friends and family years ago, and I'm sorry if I came off arrogant in the last post.

I'm just a humble guy who likes to help where and if I can.
Southbound

Southbound

260hp,
I just re-read one of your posts where you talk about your equipment.

What it the TRUE RMS power rating of your amplifier RATED INTO 4 OHMS? If it's over 80watts rms into 4ohms, then you might be pushing the 50volt limit of the cap. If it's less than that,
YOU'RE FINE.. If it's only rated as PEAK and they don't really give you the true rms rating, then it's hard to say. If they're talking apples to apples, 80watts rms should be about 150watts peak. If you're putting out MORE than that, you might want to replace the cap with a higher voltage one before you totally button things up for good. I wouldn't worry about it for your listening period. If you fall somewhere below those power ratings mentioned above, I wouldn't worry about it either. BUT OVER TIME, if you really cranked a 100watt/4ohm rms amp to its clipping, the cap could short out and then burn up the resistor. The 50volt rating was a common value meant to give plenty of headroom on the STOCK 20watt system. If you're WAY above that, then you might reconsider the rating...

Just covering all of the bases...

heyrandy

Southbound -

I want to test the blackum box deal with my DX-6s and my home stereo but your posts got me thinking (ah oh).

You said earlier that a .047 cap would start cutting at a lower frequency than a .05 cap. If I were to go even lower (ie .03 or .04), would that cut a little of the brightness from our stock TL-S head unit or is this ill-advised (ie. fry the resistor, etc.).

Thanks in advance.

260 HP

iTrader: (3)

Southbound, no worries, I'm using .05uF/1kV caps. I'm pushing 100 W RMS at 4 Ohm.

As for the Sharpie mod, I'm thinking of buying another Eagles "Hell Freezes Over" CD to compare it apples to apples. If I really can hear the difference, then I'll green all my CDs.

Thanks again!!

Southbound

Heyrandy,
I see what you are trying to say and/or ask... Let's see, how do I explain it in ten pages or less? LOL:p

Actually, I said that the frequency would begin to break at a HIGHER frequency, the lower the capacitance is. But nevermind that for now.

The terminator network DOES NOT ROLL OFF HIGH FREQUENCIES TO THE SPEAKERS IN THE MANNER THAT YOU ARE SUGGESTING. IT DOES NOT ROLL OFF HIGH FREQENCIES FROM THE AMP TO THE SPEAKERS AT ALL! IT DOES NOT ALTER THE VOLUME FROM THE AMP TO THE SPEAKERS AT ALL, EITHER!

What the terminator mod does is provide a stable 100ohm resistive termination to the speaker wires and the speaker output amp at ultra sonic frequencies.

Forget about the speaker even being in the circuit for a moment and I'll describe how the network comes into play. Impedance is a term used to describe the overall complex component of an electronic circuit made up of the combination of resisitive, capacitive, and inductive elements. A resistor has a true resistive value (in ohms) that has the current flowing through it in phase with the voltage applied across it, and remains constant regardless of frequency. A capacitor has a "reactance" value (in ohms) that has the current flowing through it "lead" the voltage by 90 degrees, and has its reactance decrease as the frequency increases. An inductor has a "reactance" value (in ohms) that has the current flowing through it "lag" the voltage by 90 degrees, and has its reactance increase as the frequency increases. The combination of resistor "resistance", plus capacitive "reactance", plus inductive "reactance" equals the total "impedance" of a circuit. This impedance is expressed in ohms, and will have varied phase angeles between the voltage and current which will be varied further at varied frequencies. Confused yet? I hope I'm actually making some sort of sense.

So, in the simple series network of a resistor and capacitor, the reactance in ohms of the capacitor will change with frequency. The resistor will ALWAYS remain 100ohms. (neglecting side effects of lead inductance, etc that we won't get into here) With a given capacitor value, and a given resistor value, there will be a given frequency at which the reactance of the capacitor will equal the resistance of the resistor. In our case of the .05uF and 100ohm network, the capacitor's capacitive reactance will equal 100ohms at 31.847Khz. This is considered the "BREAK" point. Above this frequency, the capacitive reactance will become less and less until it becomes zero ohms up in the megahertz range.

If you had two simple 100 ohm resistors in series. The voltage at the midpoint of the circuit would be down by 1/2 or 6db. However, due to the phase shift caused by the capacitor, even though the reactance of the capacitor is equal to 100ohms, the voltage at the junction point is only down by the inverse of the square root of two, or .707 times the original voltage, or 3db. If you do further math, you will find that the voltage is down by .9 of the original value, or 1db at one octave below the "break" point... in this case 15.923Khz. Above the break point, the voltage would continue to drop at the junction point at a rate of 6db per octave or 20db per decade. Below the break point frequency, the capacitive reactance would continue to increase to the point where it would be infinte ohms at zero hertz. Therefore, beyond an octave below the break point, the capacitor's reactance is so much larger than the resistor's resistance, that it effectively takes the resistor out of the circuit and there is no effect at all below this point.

So, with regard to this network, the amplifier effectively sees an open circuit below 16Khz... and above 32Khz, it begins to see closer and closer to a 100ohm resistive load. Since the network is completely in parallel with the speaker, there is NO EFFECT ON FREQUENCY OR LEVEL OF THE SIGNAL AS SEEN BY THE SPEAKER BEING FED FROM THE AMP. So therefore, this circuit is NOT acting in a manner which ROLLS off high frequency response TO THE SPEAKER. The speaker ALWAYS SEES ITS FULL SIGNAL. But, to the contrary, what the amplifier sees is a different load at different frequencies. If it were not for the terminator mod. The amp would see the complex "impedance" of the speaker and its crossover network. This "impedance", while called 4ohms, is only close to that actual impedance. And it would only be near 4ohms down at the audio frequencies. Since the speaker is inductive by the nature of its voice"coil", its reactance increases as the frequency increases. Therefore, up in the megahertz range, the amplifier (and speaker wires) essentially see an open circuit. With the mod in place, the amplifier and speaker wires see a 100ohm resistor at ultrasonic frequencies. Again, seeing a 100ohm resistor in parallel with 4ohms would have NO AFFECT at all on the frequency response or level down at audio frequencies. NO MATTER WHAT YOU PUT ACROSS THE SPEAKER IN PARALLEL, you will not affect the response or level of the signal being fed to it until you get to such a low resistance that the amplifier can't drive it and the amplifier overheats, etc.

Stay tuned to Part2... It just gets better!
YAWN...

Southbound

Keep reading... I dare you to stay awake!

So what's going on here? For the purposes of the mod, it would be nice if we could just put a 100ohm resistor across the speaker to provide the amplifier with a more stable load at high frequencies, and to keep the speaker wires terminated into their "characteristic impedance". However, if we did this, we would need a substantially larger resistor or it would burn up from the energy in the actual audio signal. Since the objective of this mod isn't to affect anything down at audio frequencies anyway, we add a capacitor, so that none (or very little) of the audio signal actually gets to see the 100ohm resistor. This lets us use a more practical value of 1watt. If we simply put the cap across the speaker without the resistor, it would appear as a short to the amplifier up in the magahertz range. Even though there's very little energy up at that range, we still don't want to short out the amp, and we MORE IMPORTANTLY WANT TO TERMINATE THE SPEAKER WIRES INTO THEIR CHARACTERISTIC IMPEDANCE OF 100OHMS... The sooner we make the "break" point occur just outside of the audio range, (that a practical 1watt resistor can absorb) the sooner we can provide the amplifer with a stable resistive load and the sooner we terminate the speaker wires in their characteristic impedance. Now you know the design criteria...

SO STILL WHAT DOES THIS CIRUIT MOD ACCOMPLISH? What is "Characteristic Impedance"? Well, I'm sure you've heard of 75ohm video cable. If you were to measure it at DC, it would ohm out as a short or zero ohms. BUT, at high video frequencies, due to its capacitive and inductive properties, it displays a "CHARACTERISTIC IMPEDANCE" of 75ohms. The cable is precisely designed to maintain this characteristice impedance over a very large range of high frequencies. That way the video amp has a constant stable impedance along the cable run and does not distort signals due to ringing effects as long as it is terminated with a 75ohm resistor at the other end of its run. We all know what happens to a video cable that is not terminated... We see ghosting effects due to ringing and reflections back and forth on the cable, becasue it has NOT been terminated in its characteristic impedance. While many will argue that audio cable does not present a "Characteristic Impedance" at audio frequencies... they are correct. Where they are in error is in assuming that since we are only passing audio signals, who cares what the characteristic impedance of speker wire is way up at video frequencies! We aren't passing video through it, so who cares? (Anybody see what video looks like on a long run of speaker wire?) FUGLY! This post is already waaaaay to long, so I won't go deep into how high frequencies of that order are introduced into an audio signal. But audio is not simply sine waves... If it were, then this mod would be unnecessary, and the ill effects of leaving the speaker wires unterminated WOULD be negligible. However, Audio is in fact very complex waveforms, and contains many fast rise times, square waves, sawtooth waves, and harmonics that do produce very high order harmonics above the individual fundamental waveforms. This in turn also excites the final amplifier stage which is looking at an open load up here and yet still has sufficient open loop gain to cause further disturbances to the overall signal. I have dual trace oscilloscope photos of complex audio signals, one trace unterminated, and one trace terminated. The difference is quite interesting to analyze. One can see a much better transparent representation of the original signal between the terminated version verses the unterminated version.


So, having said all of that, and to sum things up.
1. The termination mod DOES NOT affect the frequency response or level of the audio signal as seen by the speaker.

2. The termination, instead, provides two things.

A. It terminates the speaker wires in their "Characteristic Impedance" up at ultra sonic frequencies. This damps out any reflections and audio smears caused by the generation of complex high frequency signal component interactions due to an unterminated speaker line.

B. It provides the amplifier output stage with a stable resistive load up at these high order frequencies. This further helps to prevent anomalies in the audio signal otherwise caused by the amplifier exaggerating these interfering signal reflections.

3. The result is a more accurate and transparent transfer of the original audio signal to the speaker. YOU CAN HEAR THE RESULTS!


SO, NO, you can't change these values around to roll off the frequency response of the audio signal. The mod just doesn't work that way. The improved smoothness is NOT coming from the fact that high frequency audio is being rolled off. The fundamental audio response and level are NOT being affected! The improvement is due to the fact that the entire audio signal is being better transferred from the amplifier to the speaker. The speaker sees what it was supposed to see, so that you hear what you are supposed to hear... no more, no less.

Even if the circuit did act in a way as to roll off the frequency response. THAT IS WHAT THE TREBLE CONTROL DOES. You cannot effectively build an EQ circuit from an amplifier speaker output signal. You would have to have a LARGE resitor IN SERIES with the speaker and then use a cap down to ground to roll the signal off. THIS WOULD DECREASE THE VOLUME AT ALL FREQUENCIES, and then achieve additional high frequency attentuation by further rolling off the higher frequencies even more. That is why EQ circuits are built in line level amps, so that they can work with higher impedance series resistors, and the overall gain can be made back up in following stages. Or more commonly built with active filter opamps where the reactive components are in the feedback loop, which then effectively only affects the gain at the frequency selected.

If you find that you can't drop the high frequency response of the POLK DX-6s with the stock treble control. Then you have no choice but to bypass the EQ or install another headunit with a more comprehensive equalizer. It would be nice to have a professional 1/3 octave graphic equalizer to dial the sound in... But then again people wan't icewater...

SOOOOOOOO, THAT'LL TEACH YOU TO ASK QUESTIONS! LOL:p

I guess nothing comes for free... If you want my mod for free, I guess you've got to suffer through reading my journals!

Sorry about that, but it took me years of research to develop and prove this mod, so I guess I felt inclined to explain it to you. I know, yawn! :o

STILL, thanks for reading, and trying it! If you have any more questions, I'll keep them down to ONE page... (honest) LOL

GOOD LUCK!
Southbound

Southbound

260hp,
Yeah, with 1kv caps, you're good to go!

Everybody else, who tries this... Go ahead and try to get 1kv caps. They're NOT that hard to find at electronic supply stores. 50volt caps are OK for the stock amp, (and can be found at Radio Shack) BUT, if you ever upgrade the amp, you'll want at least 100volt caps just to provide a good margin of safety. And if you go to that level, it's just as easy to go ahead and get 1kv caps that are good for lightening!

Zotl, I hope the JoKers at JoKe Electronics sold you the correct values. I looked at mine, and the package is rated in picoFarads... Again, that's just a million microFarads. SO YOUR CAPS SHOULD SAY 50,000pF on them. If you look at the actual cap, it will have 503 printed on it. That stands for 50 plus 3 mulitplier zeros which equals 50,000pF which equals .05uF. I'm sure you're cool! Just double check, unless you picked them out yourself.

260hp,
Yeah, I was gonna suggest you try and borrow a CD from a friend that has a copy of one in your collection. That way you can "green" one and compare with the other. I think I tried that back when I was trying to convince myself of the worthiness. I can tell that you're a guy who already knows what he's doing, so I didn't need to give you this idea. I'M ENVIOUS OF YOUR SYSTEM! IT'S GOTTA SOUND PRETTY DAMN NICE... ESPECIALLY AT HIGHWAY SPEEDS TO VEGAS!!!!
Southbound

heyrandy

Thanks for the simple explanation Southbound!

I'm an engineer too - ChemE. If you ever want to know about gasoline, I could probably teach you a little.

But thanks for the audio education.

After I get back in town, I'll hunt down the supplies and let you know what I think.

About the green pen, I'm not yet convinced. Are you saying that my CD burner does not make clean copies? If not, wouldn't data be affected as well? If it does, shouldn't audio be true?

260 HP

iTrader: (3)

Whoa, Southbound. I feel like sitting down in one of my EE classes 10 years ago. I've forgotten a lot of things but still remember reactance, resistance, etc.

And also thanks for your compliment. I like my stereo system, but I still feel something is missing. I'm thinking to get Audio Control EQS and place the speakers in kick panels. But I don't really want to lose the space. Any thoughts? The last time I dealt with car audio was 6-9 years ago. Things changed a LOT in 6 yrs.

heyrandy, I believe CD burner does not make EXACT copies. When I listen close enough, usually the burned CDs don't sound as good as the originals. I'm not 100% sure if that's true or I'm just hearing things. Maybe someone can shed some light?

Southbound

Heyrandy,
While I hold a BSEE, I don't know "jack" about chemical engineering. You could help me out by telling me which gasoline is best to buy. I usually fill up with Unocal Premium which is only 91 Octane out here in California. Although this is off topic, is there a particular brand that is best to use? I know some have detergent additives, etc. For the long life of the engine, which brand of gas do you feel is best?

One messy thing you could do with the POLK DX-6 speakers that might help to lower the high frequency response would be to add a power resistor IN SERIES with JUST THE TWEETER. You'll notice that even though the speakers are coaxial, the crossover cap and tweeter wires are conveniently mounted on the terminal strip where the main speaker wires plug in as well. Another reason I chose these speakers was because it would be relatively easy to mod the crossover point of them. When I bought them, I also bought a bag of misc. 2ohm, 4ohm, 6ohm, 8ohm 10ohm 10watt resistors, and some different values of non-polarized crossover caps. The stock value is 4.7uF. I bought some various values like 1uF, 2.2uF, 3.3uF, 4.7uF up to 10uF. I thought I might play around with different combinations of these values that could be used to just drop the level of the signal being fed to the tweeter. I could also change the crossover point feeding the tweeter. BUT After seeing the small clearance issues involved with the install, and after listening to them in my door panels, I decided against the madness! You could mess with just lowering the level to the tweeter by putting one of these resistors IN SERIES with the tweeter lead, but that would increase the impedance of the tweeter circuit, so you would have to lower the value of the crossover cap to keep it at the same frequency. And if you ever added a real 100 Watt amp, like 260hp has, you'd cook the resistors and you'd need gigantic ones. It was just too much of a mess to try. I knew that I would be in for a listening/testing nightmare FOREVER! So please don't ask me to get more involved with explaining the process. I found that I am fine by just using the stock treble control. It REALLY has the SAME effect or MORE, than the effect you would achieve by using a "one pole" 6db/octave rolloff that you would be creating by the addition of these components in the tweeter circuit. It just wouldn't be the RIGHT way to do things.

With regard to the green CD gag... Anytime you go back and forth through A-D converters and D-A converters you do lose some sampling resolution. So you do introduce "slight" errors. But the purpose of the green gimmick is to nullify the errors created and picked up by the CD player. Even if you had a PERFECT digital signal on the disc... when the laser on the player scans the surface of the disc to read the pits... it also sends some laser light scatter through the clear center of the disc which can reflect back into the pickup lens. When this reflected light hits the lens at a different angle, it is picked up as digital jitter. The D-A converter is then confused and has to "interpolate" some of the misssing data to recreate the original analog signal. By using the GREEN ink, it absorbs the RED laser light and doesn't allow it to reflect back into the lens. Anyway, that's the theory behind the gag. I know it sounds far fetched as well. I'm not sure I actually buy into it totally, but I do swear that I can hear slight improvements when greening my CDs. It doesn't hurt anything to try it. So try it, you might like it???? I'll be curious to hear what 260hp has to say about his further experiments with it. He obviously has the critical ears to observe the termination mod effects.

Hey 260hp,
I wish I had a true 100watts rms feeding my door speakers. And being components has to help as well. Who knows, after I've had the car longer, I may have to eventually upgrade to that level. I haven't been into the car audio game for 10-15 years. So I'm DEFINITELY out of touch with what is out there these days. So sorry that I can't really help you out with any actual equipment recommendations. I've just been spouting off about basic electronic theory that is relevant to all audio. I'm not that up on specific car systems these days. Like I said, "Further on up the road"... (Clapton) maybe I'll have to get deeper into the game. It's obvious that you know what you're doing with respect to electronic savvy. If you also have an EE degree, then you can obviously ask intelligent questions to installers, etc. Doesn't it drive you nuts to hear some of what the self proclaimed experts have to say Like telling heyrandy that he couldn't possibly change out just his door speaker amp without also adding line converters to his sub amp.... Glad there are guys like StreeEffectz out there.

Thanks for the feedback and Happy listening!
Southbound