the astoria studios set up.

  • Thread starter Deleted member 188516
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D

Deleted member 188516

Guest
I've just realised that must be why I never read books.

maybe read this:-
(its the section on cabling...)

XLR connectors… We did that more specifically when we got near, when we knew we were going to buy the 88R. And we’ve done years of testing already, in regards to cabling, physical supports to the equipment, different mains cabling, filters and all sorts of things like that. When we knew we were going to buy the 88R, I said, “Okay, this is our one opportunity to actually rip it all out and start again.” Because you can’t take the floors up, even if you discover a better cable and just re-do everything. You can only do so much with the equipment in place.

This was a perfect time then. Absolutely – our one chance to get as good as we could. We underwent a testing program. We wanted to listen to every type of different connector we were going to use, every cable we were going to use and also pay attention to the physical aspects of the support of the all the equipment. All this stuff we had learned had basically come from the high-end hi-fi field, which we’d been trying out over the years and discovered a lot of that stuff made a difference. Some of it was just different; some of it was detrimental but some of it was an improvement. So we went though and we listened to a whole bunch of XLR connectors, we listened to 20 different audio cables, because I needed 23 kilometers of cable to make our own patch bay and rewire everything in the studio… all the outboard gear and the machinery.

We listened to 20 different cables. We directionalized them all first, of course. Every cable sounds different in a different direction. It’s small, but it sounds different. And actually, the most amazing thing we discovered was when we listened to our technical earth cables, which we have going into copper rods in the riverbank. Our technical earth cables are just a heavy duty, high quality, regular, copper thick-sheathed cable. We’d been recommended to try this multi strand thinner cable, which had been woven like some of our audio cables.

These are cables for electric? For earthing, woven to cross individual strands at 90 degrees to each other as much as possible to help eliminate RF etc. We listened to this, and we ran it straight out the door of the boat, over the bridge to the copper rods and we did an A-B and listened. Even the technical earth cable, you could clearly hear the difference from the original earth cable we were using. But even more surprisingly, we said for a laugh, let’s just turn the cable around the other way and see if we can hear any directional difference on the technical earth cable. And we couldn’t believe it, but we could.

What was the difference that you heard? A difference in clarity, I suppose. One way it sounded a little middle-ier, and a little more distorted than the other direction. Anyway, back to audio cable. We went though all these regular cables that people wire studios up with that are fairly inexpensive. And the one that we ended up using was made by - this is for the 23 kilometers of cabling - was made by a high end hi-fi audio manufacturer called Van den Hul from Holland. I’d actually later found out they had originally designed this cable for the Philips Studio in Holland. Now because they had a lot of stock on the shelf, ready to go, I was able to negotiate a terrific deal. It only cost five times more than a regular cable would cost. But it was worth it. It was our one chance.
 
D

Deleted member 188516

Guest
this is the section on the mains:-

Can we talk about AC power? I know you have given a lot of thought and effort to power on the Astoria. We realized many years ago the AC power, the mains as I call it, can make an incredible difference to the sound, to the audio. Most people, or a lot of people, are unaware of that. They think that if you plug something in and it lights up, fine, it works, with no conception that it could sound different.

What kind of power is coming in, and where is it situated? It’s coming in from a main electricity sub station, into our site where the phases are split. The studio audio has its own phase, which then it goes into a building where the voltage is stabilized. Then we balance it. I had some transformers made by Plitron in Canada, (who made the transformers for Equitek). And they made some special balancing transformers for us to our spec. Then, that’s then sent down to the boat, to the distribution area, and everything is done shielded. The main runs are done in shielded high-end, directionalized mains cables for the whole studio distribution. We use a combination on different things for a lot of different mains needs. Nowhere in the studio do we use any standard plugs or leads. Everything is selected for all our equipment. For example, for the Pro Tools system the Shunyata distribution boxes have copper bus bars in them, and they’re full of what they call space dust… this chemical compound which is a combination of a load of different elements that work at different frequencies to take noise out off the mains. It works really well. It is made with pure copper sourced from one particular mine because of its purity. It is then cryogenically frozen at -320 degrees to alter the molecular structure because it sounds better, with thick Rhodium plating on all contacts, etc. I know to some people this sounds ridiculous, but I can only say the difference is there to be heard and digital is where the biggest improvements are noticeable.
 
D

Deleted member 108165

Guest
Mods, is there any chance we can get a "Yawn" button along with the "Like" button? :)
 

Gray

Well-known member
maybe read this:-
(its the section on cabling...)

XLR connectors… We did that more specifically when we got near, when we knew we were going to buy the 88R. And we’ve done years of testing already, in regards to cabling, physical supports to the equipment, different mains cabling, filters and all sorts of things like that. When we knew we were going to buy the 88R, I said, “Okay, this is our one opportunity to actually rip it all out and start again.” Because you can’t take the floors up, even if you discover a better cable and just re-do everything. You can only do so much with the equipment in place.

This was a perfect time then. Absolutely – our one chance to get as good as we could. We underwent a testing program. We wanted to listen to every type of different connector we were going to use, every cable we were going to use and also pay attention to the physical aspects of the support of the all the equipment. All this stuff we had learned had basically come from the high-end hi-fi field, which we’d been trying out over the years and discovered a lot of that stuff made a difference. Some of it was just different; some of it was detrimental but some of it was an improvement. So we went though and we listened to a whole bunch of XLR connectors, we listened to 20 different audio cables, because I needed 23 kilometers of cable to make our own patch bay and rewire everything in the studio… all the outboard gear and the machinery.

We listened to 20 different cables. We directionalized them all first, of course. Every cable sounds different in a different direction. It’s small, but it sounds different. And actually, the most amazing thing we discovered was when we listened to our technical earth cables, which we have going into copper rods in the riverbank. Our technical earth cables are just a heavy duty, high quality, regular, copper thick-sheathed cable. We’d been recommended to try this multi strand thinner cable, which had been woven like some of our audio cables.

These are cables for electric? For earthing, woven to cross individual strands at 90 degrees to each other as much as possible to help eliminate RF etc. We listened to this, and we ran it straight out the door of the boat, over the bridge to the copper rods and we did an A-B and listened. Even the technical earth cable, you could clearly hear the difference from the original earth cable we were using. But even more surprisingly, we said for a laugh, let’s just turn the cable around the other way and see if we can hear any directional difference on the technical earth cable. And we couldn’t believe it, but we could.

What was the difference that you heard? A difference in clarity, I suppose. One way it sounded a little middle-ier, and a little more distorted than the other direction. Anyway, back to audio cable. We went though all these regular cables that people wire studios up with that are fairly inexpensive. And the one that we ended up using was made by - this is for the 23 kilometers of cabling - was made by a high end hi-fi audio manufacturer called Van den Hul from Holland. I’d actually later found out they had originally designed this cable for the Philips Studio in Holland. Now because they had a lot of stock on the shelf, ready to go, I was able to negotiate a terrific deal. It only cost five times more than a regular cable would cost. But it was worth it. It was our one chance.
That still looks like a book to me.
But I did have a skim down until I reached the generalised statement:
'every cable sounds different in a different direction'
.....any book I ever read will have to be non-fiction 👍
 
D

Deleted member 108165

Guest
yes your posts are boring !
For someone who has previously said that they are not a firm cable believer you post an awful lot of cable oriented threads.

Now either the reverse is true in that you are a firm "expensive cables do make a difference" person, or you are just here to wind people up and create annoyance... which one is it?
 
D

Deleted member 188516

Guest
For someone who has previously said that they are not a firm cable believer you post an awful lot of cable oriented threads.

Now either the reverse is true in that you are a firm "expensive cables do make a difference" person, or you are just here to wind people up and create annoyance... which one is it?

where did i say i'm not a firm cable believer ?

i don't believe in the silly high prices that's for sure...

if i "wind you up" just ignore my threads / posts - simple !
 

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