Strictly for fans of Audio Note UK (all things Audio Note UK) PART TWO

@jonwoody has previously published a photo of his single wire+jumpers installation, which is the optimal method. Maybe he'll re-post it here.

 

I can't stress enough how important going through the local AN dealer turned out for me, even though it all concerned second hand equipment he was not selling. For about 1.5 years I was looking for used AN gear. I liked my current system, so I was not in any kind of a hurry. I simply assumed that I could get a pair of used AN-Es, or an Oto SE Sig, or just some cabling, should I see a good opportunity. Every now and then something would come up, I'd start corresponding with the seller, then I'd contact the local dealer (in some cases also the AN headquarters) to verify the information. Oh, boy, the things you find out when you can actually verify the s**t the sellers tell you... Fake cables galore, lies about " AN approved" upgrades, first-owner speakers in Germany with serial numbers which AN headquarters had registered as having been sold in Singapore etc.

In one case I was close to pulling the trigger on a a beautiful pair of AN-E Spe HEs in makassar sold by a reputable second hand audio shop. I assumed everything must have been fine, since the shop was legit. AN headquarters confirmed the numbers as indeed assigned to a pair sold in that country a decade before. But I did make one more step and asked the local dealer about them. It turned out he knew the pair very well. It comes back to the market every 2-3 years. One of the owners modified the internals beyond recognition, couldn't get them to sound right, sold them cheap to another owner, who then could not get them to sound right, sold them on etc. The most recent one apparently used them as a trade-in, lying to the shop that they had been originally AN-modified. The shop either did not check, did not feel something was out of the ordinary, or just didn't care.

At some point I decided that my local AN dealer had saved me so much money without making a dime and being extremely patient about it, that I kind of owed him. I decided to skip the second hand market and build a completely new system with him. I've been in the process of testing components for the past few months. I will write about it here when I'm done.

 

Going through a dealer is the best way to do system matching--trying different amps, interconnects, speaker wires, etc. Although there is a house sound to Audio Note gear, the differences are important and it is good to have a knowledgeable dealer with alternatives that one can try out.

 

That for sure. But also, the opportunity to do all this with your own music, in your own room, unhurried and over a period of days or weeks makes a huge difference. Especially if your method is comparison by contrast not by reference (as described by PQ in Are You On The Road To... Audio Hell? Article By Leonard Norwitz And Peter Qvortrup )

 

I have seen a criss-cross approach where red LF gets fed from the amp and its red jumper goes to other HF and one black HF gets fed from the amp and its black jumper goes to LF. The theory is that both HF and LF "see" a direct amp connection. Someone else keep me honest.

 

Oh yes. I achieved a significant improvement by replacing the stock jumpers on a pair of AN J that I had with Audience AU24 jumpers (that I bought secondhand at a good price).

 

I can only speak as to the practices of my local AN dealer--Deja Vu Audio, Vienna, Virginia--a dealership that permits in-home trial of electronics. They may also allow in-home trial of speakers as well, and they offer loaners when gear is in for repair. They have spools of the more popular AN wire which they terminate in-house, and also have a pretty wide selection of vintage tubes. When speakers have to be re-foamed, they handle that as well. It pays to be on good terms with a local dealer.

 

This was posted in February by @Chris.p.l

I used this single wire + jumpers method, as does @jonwoody.

 

I do indeed and here is that pic nothing has changed for me.

 

Slightly different from @Chris.p.l, insofar as he has the positive lead to the LF, and you have the positive lead to the HF. As I recall, I connected the positive lead to the HF as you do.

 

It’s interesting to evaluate the output of a bi wired speaker and how much the mid bass driver contributes to the overall sound compared to the HF driver and that’s why I always direct connect to the mid bass and then jump across to the HF inputs.

 

I agree it's more nuanced. But I personally would not use the word "coherent".

Experiments with single and bi-wiring of a pair of AN-E SPe HE (which I've been testing in recent weeks) have been eye-openers for me. In testing single wiring (six different cables) I found myself often listening to individual frequencies or elements - how the double bass sounds, are vocals recessed, does the cymbal sparkle etc. The distance between musicians differed in width but not so much in depth (while still delivering appropriate spacial info on the size of the room between, say, RVG's studio and Monmartre club). Tube rolling helped but the result was still limited. Maybe it's my room, maybe it's those specific cables - YMMV.

I was using a single-wired setup for a few weeks, mostly because I wanted to make sure the speakers were well burned-in and my ears/brain were well adjusted to the character of the new speakers in my room. I loved them, but I kept telling the dealer "they sound beautiful, I wish they could cast a deeper image". Then I switched to bi-wiring and it was a revelation. The immediate difference was in the depth of the stage. In my room and to my ears the descriptive difference would be as follows. Single wiring feels like I'm sitting in the audience and the musicians are lined up in front of me more or less. The primary plain is horizontal. As a result, the sound is concentrated, condensed if you will. In bi-wiring it feels like I'm looking at a 3D group of musicians from a slightly elevated position. My brain feels like it can listen to specific musicians not by concentrating on their frequency and filtering out the rest (as in cocktail party effect), but by walking up to them. There is no primary plain - it's a 3D space. As a result the sound is not as concentrated.

My immediate reaction was that I stopped listening to elements of the recording and simply got lost in the music. It was one of those moments when you want right away to go through all your albums, because you feel you have never heard them this way. I felt "I want exactly that, take my money", because my Harbeths do not image that way. Alan Shaw gave up on bi-wiring because, I assume, in his philosophy of sound it is detrimental, not beneficial.

Now, why would that be? Again, it's only my personal opinion, but I feel the difference is not quantitative and not qualitative. You cannot say bi-wiring is "better". It is different. You might not like it. Your brain might read is as weird. (I would love to hear an explanation from a physicist what really is happening there - does the separation of signal/frequencies between woofer and tweeter cause some delay on signal delivery resulting in phase difference?) Also, apart from your room, your hearing, your system elements etc. it's the matter of the music you like. Classical benefits the most for me. It's stunning. Generally anything large scale, big bands etc. sounds mesmerising. Smaller jazz combos are good. Rock music can be great, but it can be messy, depending on mastering. Electronic or generally mechanical music loses a lot of the drive - not good then. And, unfortunately, I'm often not so happy with how vocals are positioned, as they can be pushed back compared to instruments.

So yeah, it's more nuanced. You have to try it to make up your mind. Don't automatically assume it's better.

 

Minimum 200 hours run time for the speakers but more realistically, 400 hours and you start to hear what they can do.
The Gaia feet work very well as an interface between stand and floor, generally the Gaia II’s and they will address your concern over vocal positioning.
Lots of posts in this thread and the previous version on set up recommendations.
Most importantly, just enjoy them and don’t listen to the Signature versions or the Alnico’s.

 

I actually know that from your older posts, so thanks. That's why I didn't do any significant changes with tubes or cabling for some time. For a few weeks I was turning the system on in the morning and off at midnight (my listening room does not interfere with life in the rest of the house). First they sounded boomy, then dry and flat, very unbalanced, different every few days. When I was switching back to my Harbs I felt relief. But I knew from this forum how much time I should give it, more or less (the dealer was not sure how many hours they played in the shop he took them from for my tests). Plus some other elements in the system were also new, so the run in was basic hygiene. They stopped changing noticeably after about 3 weeks (some 250 hours in my system). I still gave it another week, before I started playing with cables, tubes etc.

I'll definitely try out Gaia after I'm sure of all the elements currently in play.

 

See if you can borrow some Gaia’s sooner rather than later, they will have a significant input on the outcome.
The SPe wiring internally has the largest grind time of the components internally, the caps and inductors play like normal kids on the block but the SPe is the proverbial challenged unit and then one day, it starts to sing. The higher the AN strand count the longer, Sogon LX96 took over 700 logged and torturous hours before it came up for air.

 

Like most things in audio, I suppose it's worthwhile to try both methods and listen for differences.

AudioQuest recommends connecting positive to HF (treble) and negative to LF (bass):
From P.4 of the linked Guide -
For 2-way speakers, be sure to put the red connector to treble + and black connector to bass -. This is the only way to preserve the tonal voice the speaker designer intended.

 

Surprisingly, I understand their reasoning and it is in an absolute sense, correct. In connecting the terminals their way, indeed you are treating the 2 drivers in a way that compromises both drivers equally and thus, it maintains a tonal voice, compromised as it may be by using whatever material the jumpers are made of.
My reasoning was based on feeding the best quality cable direct to the driver that does the vast majority of the work, not compromising its performance and then jumping over to the HF driver so that only one driver sees compromise.
No argument from me, just a different perspective.

 

Any gospel from AN on connecting just the single stereo run of speaker cables? My J’s manual only discusses Bi wiring and Bi amping cable connections.
Proud new owner of some SPa, be nice to wire it right?

 

To add to the cable discussion, I’ve finally pushed the button on SPe, (single wire + jumpers) & AN-Vx, upgrading from bi wired Lexus with ISIS interconnects. I already have black Pallas as a digital cable.. so that will stay. I’m also swapping out my arm 1 to arm 3 which uses AN-Vx. Really looking forward to the sonic journey!

 

@R.T.Firefly very good description of the difference between single and bi-wired speakers.

Bi-wiring as you say can lead to a relative lack of drive in some material versus the 3d involvement one gets from other material. It does have that little bit of "hifi" about it in that i want to play live recorded material with many participants more with bi-wiring versus single. With single i feel like my rock records play extra nice and sound more like themselves. Your description of flatness is spot on.

Regarding the lack of drive i feel this is because bi-wiring (especially with silver which is my only experience) reduces noise/distortion and leaves the field for the equipment to perform. Single wiring can make equipment sound a little more exciting than it otherwise would be. So for example Jesus Christ superstar on bi-wire is an amazing and engaging experience of interplay of sound and performance. But thru single wire it reverts to being the recording which I have heard many times before.

 

FWIW I briefly tried each of these:

red to LF, black to HF
black to LF, red to HF
both to LF
both to HF

My clear favorite was the first line above although that's how I had them wired originally so maybe an electrical or cognitive bias there.

 

Thanks for doing the legwork, I’ll give your preferred solution a try

 

one thing about trying stuff with AN-E HE Spe speakers (IMO) is that you need to give it time. the speakers are so tight that as soon as you change input you are back into the realm of needing to let them run in. I found this when Finn installed Gaia feet on speakers and whenever i have changed cable (although for cable changes to a lesser extent than the Gaia which was a bit like getting new speakers).

 

all, I read a lot of great things about Gaia II feet for AN-E-SPE HE speaker (with the original stand, filled with lead shot and sand). I also read about dramatic improvement on suspended floors. Now, my situation is that currently the speakers are equipped with spikes on a concrete floor and and room with concrete walls. Now I wonder whether such Gaia II feet would be an improvement in this case, specifically in tightening the bass response, introducing more spatial clarity and deeper sound stage, compared to spikes with a little contemplate and Teflon gliders on my concert floor.

Anybody with experience on impact on concrete floor?

 

The only way to really know if specialty feet will help or hurt the sound is to try them--things that really do alter the sound can do so for better or worse and any sort of "tuning" means trial and error. Generally speaking, if you have a suspended wooden floor and you want to tighten up the sound--putting footers that absorb the vibrational energy (convert movement into heat) will help vs. spikes because spikes transfer energy to the floor and a suspended floor will act as a sounding board. But, if the flooring is concrete, spikes do a good job of anchoring the speaker and the floor will not itself vibrate meaning this is good if you want a tighter sound.