Aego M deemed to be not worthy cable upgrade by leading HiFi retailer

[PJPro]

My system: PS3 60Gb, Samsung LE26R88, AE Aego M, Newlink 85 Mbps powerline ethernet adaptor, Netgear DG834G Modem/Router

I have the above set up in my kitchen as a secondary system for viewing free view TV, listening to music (CD or streamed from Windows Media Player on my PC), DVDs and for gaming. The PS3 is conneted to the TV using a cheap HDMI cable and the Aego M is connected to the TV via the headphone socket so that I can use the TV remote to control the volume.

I wanted to upgrade the cabling used throughout. The first step to achieving this was to take up the subscription to WhatHifi to get the Chord HDMI cable (I have read the magazine for many years but only buy it when I am about to purchase something). For the interconnect between the Aego M and TV I intended to use either the QED QUNEX J2P or Chord iChord. However, the speaker wire for Aego M is more tricky due to the bespoke fixtures for the satellite speakers (in the USA a company have produced a Aego M speaker upgrade cable but it is not available over here) and the small spring clips on the sub woofer.

I have trawled the web trying to find a definitive solution to the speaker wire upgrade for the Aego M and have been unable to find anything definitive for the UK. So I decided to ring a leading hifi retailer with many UK branches and a big advertiser in the WhatHifi magazine. I wanted to know whether it was feasible to use QED Silver Anniversary XT with a RCA plug at one end and pin connectors at the other (to overcome the small spring clips on the Aego M sub woofer).

Just got off the phone to the salesman.....he said that I would be wasting my money, that the Aego M is not hifi and you cannot improve the sound of such a severely limited product. He kept saying "I have to be careful what I say here....". I think he wanted to say that the Aego M is rubbish.

Ok, I accept that the Aego M is not hifi (it's only a £100). I accept that it is limited in it's ability. But is he right to say that it's performance cannot be improved by upgrading the cabling?

I have always assumed that however poor the component it's performance could be bettered buy upgrading cables.....so the cheapest DVD player would provide a better picture using a quality scart rather than the freebie provided in the box. The logic behind this is that the freebie acts as a further 'barrier' to the signal while the quality cable does not.

If this logic is correct, I would have thought that improving the cables on the Aego M would only serve to improve the quality of the sound. His view was that any improvement would be so small that it wouldn't be worth it and that you had to spend upwards of £300-£400 on a system before cable upgrades provided any real, noticable difference. The only thing quality cables would do would be to highlight the weaknesses of my system.

Has this salesman done me a favour and saved me some money or is he wrong? If he is right, then I have probably wasted money on my hifi too. Moreover, have I been to hasty subscribing to the magazine in order to get the Chord HDMI cable if I will only experience nominal/no improvements over my cheap HDMI cable. At the end of the day, the PS3 is not hifi and my TV is at the lower end of the performance scale too.

If the salesman is wrong, I still need a solution to the speaker wire issue so would be grateful for any advice.

 

[Dazmb]

I heard exactly the same thing mate when I asked about upgrading the speaker cable for my Aego 2.1 system a while back (when it was my main downstairs A/V sound). The hi-fi shop owner said that some very (over) enthusiastic reviews had led people to overate the Aego system, which while a new standard setter for it's class of equipment was at best a collection of surprisingly well balanced speakers tonally, with good sub integration. But that flattered what is a fairly cheap tranny amp at heart. At the time I was miffed with him for saying that. But on reflection having upgraded to a much better setup I can see what he was saying. Don't get me wrong, the Aego do out perform their price - by a long way. And I still have my Aego 2.1 system upstairs connected to my PC and that's still a pleasing sound.

But while very good it's not hi-fi quality, and the guy telling you what he did is probably correct also because actually the cables that AE ship with the Aego systems are not too bad by the standards of some freebies. Better cabling may help a bit, but it may only show up the root problem that is the Aego's integrated amp.

 

[Anonymous]

Interesting on the cable front, as I have the Aego M in my conservatory & need slightly longer speaker cables. Was going to get some made up, not for improved sound, but just to get the damn sats where I need them!

 

[PJPro]

Thanks for your replies.

Don't get me wrong here, I knew the limitations of the Aego M. However, for my kitchen system I needed something with small seakers which I could attach to the walls either side of my TV and have any gubbins stashed under the kitchen table out of sight. Nothing else seemed suitable.

I think the point I was looking for was that the supplied cabling is adequate....thanks for that Dazmb.

However, I am not sure that I can help myself but try upgrading anyway. I have read the thread where andrewsw (http://whathifi.co.uk/forums/p/6064/33490.aspx#33490) has experimented using various interconnects and found them to have significantly improve the sound quality. Also in another thread (http://whathifi.co.uk/forums/p/1627/7481.aspx#7481http://whathifi.co.uk/forums/p/1627/7481.aspx#7481) Andrew Everard indicates that the Chord iChord will provide big improvements over the freebie interconnect. I have to say that this is what I would have expected. I just cannot understand why the retailer did not mirror this advice (and make a sale to boot)? Perhaps the salesman hadn't actually tried it and just looked at the cost of the Aego M and came to the conclusion that it would not be worthy of an upgrade?

Anyway, assuming the interconnect will provide an improvement, it should follow that the speaker cable can provide further gains. It's just how to go about it! Again, any advice gratefully received.

Should I actually upgrade, I will post my non-audiophile conclusions here regarding the improvements or otherwise.

 

[PJPro]

Quick update......

Gave Chord a ring. A guy called Matthew reckons that he can fabricate some speaker cables for me based on Chord Carnival Classic with a phone plug (as used on the Cobra) at one end. For 2 cables @ 2.5 metres long he guestimates a cost of £36 ish. We did discuss the Chord Leyline 2 (lots of people seem to use this for upgrades in the USA). This is still available over here but Matthew recommended that I go for the slightly more expensive Carnival Classic.

I did try ringing QED technical support as well but the line was too busy.

Unfortunately, you cannot deal with Chord directly so I am going through hificables.com. Had a chat with a fellow called Paul. Discussed the system and the various merits of different mini jack leads. I wanted to go with the iChord (2m length approx £53). However, he has convinced me that I should go with something a little cheaper, so I'll probably go for the QED Qunex J2P (1.5m length approx £18).

He did suggest that the achievable performance will be severely limited by the quality of the sound coming out of the headphone socket on the TV. This worried me greatly so I plugged in some Grado SR80s into the TV and bunged Madonna's Music CD in the PS3 to see what it sounded like. To my untrained ear, it was great. If I can get the Aego M anywhere near the Grado's I'll be happy. So the cable upgrade is still on.

I have to say that the Aego Ms pretty good straight out the box and massively better than the Samsung TV speakers. The Samsung has rubbish sound, remote and user interfaces but excellent an picture and I got it for a song from PC World (£350 - price matched to Dixons).

While I was fiddling around with the Aego M speaker cables today, to establish whether the positive wire went to the pin or the earth of the RCA plug, I could not help but be struck by how flimsy and thin the cable was. In light of the fact that you get 10m of it out of the box (2 x 5m lengths), corners must have be cut with this cable to keep the price down. I cannot believe that upgrading the cable will result in no improvement in the quality of the sound.

Anyway, I will be given the quote tomorrow. I will update the thread as events unfold.

 

[PJPro]

Bespoke Chord speaker cables arrived today. Nigel Finn (Techincal Director) recommended the Chord Leyline 2 rather than the Carnival Classic, so they're based on that!

They have made a good job at fitting the RCA plugs....I was expecting a bit of a hack job to try and get the cable to fit the plug. What I didn't know is that the cable is round, so this helped produce the perfect fit into the plug.

The cables are much thicker than the Aego freebies. Surely these are going to make the system sound better? I will post again when I have tried them.

Incidently, I would be grateful if readers could take a look at this associated thread.

http://whathifi.co.uk/forums/p/6725/37391.aspx#37391

 

[PJPro]

So I fitted the new cables and there is an improvement in sound! The sound projects further into the room (if you know what I mean). The satellites sound sweeter and more controlled. But I have to say it is marginal. My wife says I'm deluding myself...so the change isn't massive. Moreover, the new cables are only 2.5m long while the AE supplied cables were 5m long, so I would have expected some improvement simply from shorting the cables.

Would I have bothered spending the £33 for the cables if I knew the end result before hand? Well yes. £33 isn't much money really and I like to know that I've got half decent cabling in place.

Am I going to upgrade the interconnect? Hhhmm, I think I might have gone a bit on the whole setup actually. I spent £70 on CDs and DVDs today. So it seems a bit miserly to only have spent £140 on the audio for the kitchen. So I am having a rethink. Trouble is, I really need a small amp hence my interest in the Fatman iTube (see http://whathifi.co.uk/forums/p/6725/37391.aspx#37391) but no-one has posted a response so I'm stuck.

 

[Dazmb]

I'm not surprised you didn't hear too much improvement from the cables. Because:- a) The Aego cables are fairly decent. and b) You are only going to bring out the best in what is after all a cheap active tranny amp.

As to the problem of using the Aego sub whilst using power/pre from the Fatman... well have you checked out the user guide that came with the Aego? (and the adapter lead)? It shows you how to use the Aego when connected to a high level input from another amp (basically not line level). This could possibly be tweaked to allow the sub only (if the Fatman has a sub out?)

I'm assuming that AE still offer this adapter lead and functionality in the Aego M. I have the older model Aego 2 which is basically the same.

 

[PJPro]

[quote user="Dazmb"]I'm not surprised you didn't hear too much improvement from the cables. Because:- a) The Aego cables are fairly decent. and b) You are only going to bring out the best in what is after all a cheap active tranny amp. As to the problem of using the Aego sub whilst using power/pre from the Fatman... well have you checked out the user guide that came with the Aego? (and the adapter lead)? It shows you how to use the Aego when connected to a high level input from another amp (basically not line level). This could possibly be tweaked to allow the sub only (if the Fatman has a sub out?) I'm assuming that AE still offer this adapter lead and functionality in the Aego M. I have the older model Aego 2 which is basically the same.[/quote]
I have looked at the manual. It's rubbish (a single peice of A4 folded in half) No mention of how to connect using the high level input cable. Its got a red bare end wire and white bare end wire and black wire with rca plug at one end. I don't get how I fit that to the FatMan or anything else for that matter! I you know, I'd be grateful if you could enlighten me.

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="PJPro"]
.....

While I was fiddling around with the Aego M speaker cables today, to establish whether the positive wire went to the pin or the earth of the RCA plug, I could not help but be struck by how flimsy and thin the cable was. In light of the fact that you get 10m of it out of the box (2 x 5m lengths), corners must have be cut with this cable to keep the price down. I cannot believe that upgrading the cable will result in no improvement in the quality of the sound.

........

[/quote]

Dear PJPro,

Could you help me identify the polarity of the wires for the original RCA cable? The pin connector of the bare wires are not color coded and what I can see is that at one side of the flat cable there are spaced stripes towards one of the wires. Should I consider it positive or negative wire ?

As to your issue, the fact that the original RCA cable is long and unbalanced, replacing it with a shorter and balanced quality cable should be a sound upgrade however I am not sure if it would help much of such tiny speakers even though they have quite striking sound quality.

Thank you.

 

[PJPro]

Yes, the marked side is the negative wire. If you look closely, and I didn't pick this up at first, the marks are a series of negative symbols eg - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

[PJPro]

Issue with the high level cable resolved by speaking to a AE rep at the Bristol show.

The red and white bare end go to the left and right speaker positives on the amp you wish to connect it to. It doesn't matter which way round as long as you kept it consistant with the connection to the Aego M. The mystery black rca plug is the earth (as expected). You plug it into any spare rca socket on the amp - it doesn't matter which one.

I gave him feedback on the quality of the manual.

We also touched on speaker wire upgrades. He thought that the supplied cables were probably OK (silvered wire?) but agreed that some improvement (modest) could be gained by upgrading the cabling.

 

[Anonymous]

I suspected the minuses but could not be sure so it occurred to me that
I could do a conductivity test using a lamp and a battery and I did it. Anyway thank you and AE, confirming the negative wire. Both of your messages arrived almost simultaneously. I am triple sure now.