upgrade help

[aragorn723]

Hi,

We moved to a new house several months ago, and my Quickie doesn't sound the same.  The new room is bigger, and has different acoustics.  Both rooms have carpet, though the new one sounds deader.  I'm looking to brighten up the tone a bit.  Here are my current tubes:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Audio-tube-3S4-RT-2-pcs/254006918609?hash=item3b23fdfdd1:rk:5:pf:0

Coupling caps are Russian K75 PIOs.  Was going to try some different tubes first since they are easy to swap.  Any recommendations on tubes?  I'm also open to swapping caps if that will help too.  Suggestions?

Dave

[cpaul]

Hmmm.  Tubes would be my last suggestion.  RCA and Mullard come to mind, as well as Amperex and, for some, Telefunken.  But I'd aim for other upgrades first.

Top for me, if you haven't done it yet, would be either choke or CCS load of the tubes.  You've replaced caps and I don't think you'll see a big change there from upgrades.  Volume pot replacement is another promising upgrade if you haven't done it.

But... more importantly, think about your amp and speakers more than Quickie.  A bigger room will change everything.  I moved one system from my small living room (13' x 14' or so) to the upstairs of my barn (20' x 25').  The entire system sounded great in the living room but anemic in the barn.  The main solution in this case was bigger speakers (in my case Magnepan 3.3r but of course lots of other choices exist).  You may need a more powerful amp.   You may need speakers with a bigger driver to push more air.  And you may want a brighter presentation from the tweeters.  In short, anything you do with the Quickie is not likely to have nearly as much effect as the amp and speakers.

[Paul Birkeland]

Both rooms have carpet, though the new one sounds deader. 

Tube rolling isn't exactly a substitute for treating your new room. 

[aragorn723]

I thought sound treatment generally deadened the sound in a room?  Could be totally off here    Is there something simple I could try as an experiment to see if the sound is improved? 

Dave

[Paul Birkeland]

The place to start is room measurements.  If you don't have access to the tools, it's a good excuse to work on making new audio friends. 

[Deke609]

If you are using pure copper interconnects and speaker wire, you could try adding some silver to the mix. In my experience with my setup  (see signature), there is a lot of "tone control" to be had from different wire compositions. I haven't tried pure silver, but switching from pure copper to silver plated copper has a very noticeable "brightening" effect: music has more "shimmer" and "sparkle". I still tend to prefer copper, but sometimes switch to silver just for variety. Might be worth trying, and is relatively inexpensive if you go the the diy route.

cheers,

Derek

[aragorn723]

Derek,

Sounds good!  Do you have a link to an interconnect design that sounded good to you?  Might be just enough of a boost if I put one between the preamp and amp. 

Paul,

Wow, the room measurement equipment adds up fast!  (mic/mic preamp, software).  I'll definitely have to look for some Atlanta based audiophile groups.  Would be nice to find new music that way too. 

Got a Onkyo HT receiver with its own mic and Audyssey technology.  Heard of that?  It has you put the mic in different listening positions, then sends pulses of audio to measure the dbs and it automatically equalizes the frequencies.  All of the data gets stored in the Onkyo after it finishes, but I could look up the settings and see what it did to each frequency.  Maybe there is a way I can use that data to improve my Quickie setup?

Dave

[Deke609]

Do you have a link to an interconnect design that sounded good to you? 

Hi Dave,

I didn't follow any particular recipe.  I'm not certain, but I believe I used the equivalent of 20 AWG or slightly heavier silver-plated-copper stranded wire - so 0.8 mm dia / 0.5 mm sqr area or bigger in metric. And then some tightening/locking-type rca connectors (WBT knock-offs), some 3/8 in dia tinned copper braid as shielding, all covered by some 1/2 in dia cotton tubing.  The copper braid is connected to -ve at only one end/connector and left floating at the other end (to prevent ground loops - the virtues/pitfalls of this approach is debated ad nauseum on the usual online audio forums - I pretty much arbitrarily decided to go with the "connect only one end of the shield" approach and haven't looked back).

But given that your music sounds deadened, you might want to try pure silver. Or try different combinations of pure copper and pure silver stranded wires -- e.g., 3 26 AWG silver wires with 1 26 AWG copper wire, etc.  I haven't tried the latter combination approach, but I've been meaning to. 

cheers,

Derek

[aragorn723]

Thanks, i'll definitely have to try that.  Found a 1/4" to rca connector that looks a little messed up in my system (connection between Quickie and amp).  Not sure it is making a good connection.  Bought a new set today, going to test out the system once Amazon delivers some new 9v batteries.  Going to see what effect that has on the sound, then maybe try the silver wire.

Dave