Positively dB’s Feedback
Doug Blackburn

Another issue, another article... what to tickle your curious audiophile minds with this time? Since the last issue I have been occupied with: the great Clamp Rack vs. Bright Star Ultimate Isolation System showdown; the video cable showdown (do video cables really make a difference?); a video signal splitter experiment; the Cardas Heart cartridge; the Audible Illusions Modulus 3A preamp; Cardas Cross interconnects; Cardas Cross speaker cable; the surprising inner tube tweak; and a phone call from an old friend. No way I can fit all of this into one article — is there?

There has been an on-going dialog in Positive Feedback about Stereophile’s position on the "Good versus Evil" scale. People are worried about Stereophile’s "agenda" which, in certain vocal quarters, is presented as being something other than in the readers’ and industry’s best interest. There are references to buying editorial influence, inferences that you have to advertise to get any coverage in Stereophile, and that the Hi-Fi Shows are an attempt to power grab and "control" high end audio.

I’ve been lucky enough in these later years of my audio interest to meet a number of reviewers (current and former) from a variety of high end magazines. I’ve also met manufacturers of various high end products. These people have told insider stories about what really goes on behind the scenes at various high end magazines — good things, and not so good things. I hear these stories from credible inside sources and from the people involved themselves, not from speculating outsiders nor from pulsating paranoiacs. I’ve heard unflattering stories from insiders about most high end magazines except Stereophile, The Listener, Bound for Sound and Positive Feedback.

The people I know/knew who review/edit for Stereophile are not John Atkinson’s/Larry Archibald’s editorial lackeys, as some would have you believe. In fact, my sense is that they get little month-to-month direction from JA and there is even less direct contact with LA. To me it seems that they tend to do whatever they find interesting on a surprisingly independent basis [. . .as affirmed most vigorously by Michael Fremer in a letter to Positive Feedback, Vol. 6, No. 5, Ye Olde Editor notes.]. None of them have ever mentioned writing an article that was never printed. (Though this certainly may have happened to some Stereophile reviewers, none that I know had it happen to them). None of them have had much done editorially to any of the articles they submitted. I don’t see or hear any evidence at all of any editorial conspiracy. How can these guys be fulfilling "the JA/LA master plan for control of the known high end universe" if JA and LA aren’t telling them what to do, what to review, what to say in reviews and what not to review?

Yeah, OK, Stereophile hasn’t had a totally perfect record — but when you’re working with 20 or more writers who are doing their own thing within a looser-rather-than-tighter set of guidelines, sometimes things happen you’d rather hadn’t happened. On top of that you are dealing with subjective reviews of audio equipment where the room, system synergies, and personal preferences are significant elements of the process. These elements guarantee that there will be occasional-to-frequent disagreements among dealers, readers, other magazines, and even within the Stereophile review staff. People talk about these disagreements, write letters, email, and even discuss the issue(s) in other magazines. If examination of the facts turns up something questionable, in general, JA seems to clear up the issue quietly with no fanfare. Sometimes the adjustment is so quiet that the people who were whining and complaining don’t even notice what was done. That small vocal minority never points out to the audiophile community that JA’s action neatly and cleanly resolved what they were so upset about 4 months ago. OK, sure, you can speculate forever about why it was allowed to happen in the first place, and find all kinds of evil excuses in every dark corner. But I’m inclined to write it off to being so absorbed in the daily grind of assembling and printing a monthly magazine that there will be the inevitable "Oops, wish that hadn’t snuck by me" from time to time.

Yeah, I know there are manufacturers out there who are concerned enough to say non-flattering things about the "power" of Stereophile. It isn’t a bad thing to be wary, as long as the wariness doesn’t spill over to paranoia. There are times when I slip into the "if they are big they must be bad" trap about Stereophile, but I can never find anything to stay mad about. The manufacturers who honestly believe the Stereophile is "too big" and has "too much power" in the business of high end audio also admit that nothing untoward has happened so far. I’ve neither seen, heard, nor read of anything outside of the latitude you’d give any other business, especially one you were running yourself. They have had little episodes that were not ideal, but in the big scheme of things, it was nothing serious.

I visited Stereophile almost 2 years ago while on an Arizona/New Mexico vacation. They spent way more time with me than I had any right to expect. My biggest impression of that visit was that John Atkinson, Tom Norton and Bob Harley just don’t freakin’ have enough time to worry about anything but the next task immediately in front of them necessary to get out the next issue of the magazine. They publish every month. That’s hard, really hard. You never have a minute to relax. JA can’t come close to being able to answer all the mail he gets by FAX, post and email. If that crew has time to further some hidden agenda or collect a bit of extra power in the industry... they would have to have god-like powers and not need sleep.

Now I’m not naive enough to think for a nanosecond that the by-far largest high end magazine doesn’t command some level of attention within this community that smaller mags do not. But that’s life. Of course if you like to stir up the pot and find conspiracies where they don’t exist, Stereophile is the perfect target.

Several of the people I know who write or wrote for Stereophile also wrote for some other magazine or magazines. They have lots of stories about intrigue and less than flattering goings on at those other magazines, but absolutely nothing remotely similar at Stereophile. It isn’t just the ‘don’t poop where you eat’ syndrome — some of these guys don’t write for Stereophile any more, remember. As far as I can tell, if you want to write about high end audio, Stereophile is one place you can do your thing and be able to maintain your own voice (Positive Feedback, too, in my experience).

In fact, one Stereophile reviewer whose name everyone would recognize instantly used to complain to me about the abuse his writing suffered at the hands of another high end magazine’s well known editor. One time he showed me the original submission to compare to what got printed. The difference was — shocking. The printed article lost all the "personality" that was in the original. The meaning of his observations about the component being reviewed were altered in subtle ways that were not intended. His experience at Stereophile is the opposite... what he writes gets published, just as he wrote it.

In the end we all have to decide for ourselves what our opinion of this "situation" is. My 2 cents worth is that "big can be bad, but big is not necessarily bad". So far as I can tell, Stereophile has done nothing to deserve anybody thinking badly of Stereophile’s contents or motives. At the same time Stereophile is not a perfect magazine. So what? Clinton got re-elected, OJ got off, cars aren’t as safe as they could be (don’t get me started about drivers!!!), and the most expensive booze usually tastes the best — the world isn’t a perfect place. Stereophile is going where they think they need to go. That trip is not everybody in the high end’s idea of where Stereophile should be going. Tough luck! It’s LA’s and JA’s magazine. If they go off down the wrong road, they’ll find out in a hurry. If they go somewhere you don’t want to go with them, stop reading. In either case... KWIT-CHER-WHININ’.

There’s one last group whose complaints need discussion. The "I hate what Stereophile has become" group. They want Stereophile to be like it was in the golden days of J. Gordon Holt’s reign. Fine, it was an interesting mag then. It was also something like 80 small editorial pages that was published very irregularly and was read by a few thousand kooks, including me. When JGH sold the magazine, it wasn’t his anymore. If LA had changed the name of the magazine when it was bought, you guys wouldn’t even HAVE anything to whine about, except that Stereophile didn’t exist anymore. The only thing similar about the JGH Stereophile and JA/LA Stereophile is the name — so get over it. Yeah, yeah... JA & LA are probably waving arms and saying "but we like JGH’s original tell-it-like-it-is philosophy, we’re keeping it alive in today’s magazine." Sure, guys... but any similarities between today’s Stereophile and the pre-‘80s Stereophile are pretty nearly coincidental. If you hid the name and showed them to somebody who had never seen either one before, they’d never guess the two magazines had the same name.

OK, I’m done, I’ll go back to my listening room now...

In past articles I have chronicled a rather significant improvement in the sound of my system that was the result of finally trying purpose-designed equipment racks along with the manufacturer’s recommended feet. I changed from a marble table with cast iron legs to Michael Green Clamp Racks and AudioPoints (brass cones intended to go under components — and on top when you clamp the component in a Clamp Rack). The improvement was nothing short of amazing. All of the tunability demonstrated to me by Michael Green on my visit to his demo room and to his "Tunable Room" was quite repeatable in my room. I heard the thin and hard sound with a small soundstage that appeared when you clamped a component too tightly. I heard the loose unfocused sound you get when the clamp pressure was too light. Every component sounded better using AudioPoints, and sounded better yet when properly Clamped. I was a happy audiophile.

Then two things happened. Darren Hovsepian of DH Labs, the "Silver Sonic" cable people, suggested I call Andy Bartha about Andy’s Whatchamacallit component feet. So I did. Andy sent along quite a collection of small, medium, large and extra large Whatchamacallits. These are the lead shot and silicone molded-in-a-muffin-tin feet I mentioned before. (I can’t believe that last month I forgot to tell you how to get Whatchamacallits. If you are so inclined, call Andy Bartha at (954) 583-7866. These no-hype, no-mystical-explanation feet just plain work. In many applications they sound better than AudioPoints in my system. When Clamping a component in a Clamp Rack, Whatchamacallits sound better than AudioPoints too. This finding kind of blew out my previous belief that Michael Green’s tuning & mechanical grounding strategy was T.H.E. hot ticket.

The second thing happening simultaneous to the Clamp Rack/AudioPoint/Whatchamacallit experiments was a long string of email correspondence with Barry Kohan of Bright Star Audio. Barry was interested in my experiments with tuning, but he believes that isolation and damping, done right, are better yet. I argued for months that there was no way isolation and damping could do as much as Clamp Racks and AudioPoints. When I experimented with the Whatchamacallits and found them often better sounding than AudioPoints, the door opened for Barry to suggest a comparison to one of his Ultimate Isolation Systems.

We discussed which component to experiment with. My amp is out on the floor between the speakers. All the other equipment is in the equipment closet. So we decided the amp might be a good starting point — isolate it from the floor and room vibrations created by the speakers. Bright Star has been making Big Rocks (sand filled mdf isolation platforms) and Little Rocks (heavy metal-filled-with-something mass loading device for the top of components) for quite a few years. He added a line of equipment racks that would hold your existing Big Rock/Little Rock’ed components.

The latest product in the Bright Star line-up is the Air Mass. This is a rectangular mdf box about 2.5" high with no bottom. An inner tube (very carefully selected for best resonant properties) is glued to the inside of the top surface. You place the Air Mass on the support, an amp stand in my case. You put the sand-filled Big Rock on top of the Air Mass making about a 5" - 6" stack. You put the component on top of the Big Rock. Then put the Little Rock on top of the component. Next you pump air into the Air Mass to partially inflate the inner tube. As the correct inflation is reached, the Air Mass lifts the whole stack of Bright Star devices and the component off the support/shelf/stand. You set the air pressure to give about 1/8" of clearance from the support/shelf/stand all the way around the sides of the Air Mass. Getting the load balanced means having to manually position the load on the Air Mass, not all that difficult. When properly completed, this big stack-up has a very low frequency resonance. Press on one corner and it bobs back and forth at about 0.5 Hz to 1 Hz - perfect for isolating floor motions. Other air isolation devices, even some more expensive ones, do not get this low resonant frequency correct. According to Barry Kohan, the more expensive isolation devices with higher resonant frequencies are not as effective as the lower cost Air Mass.

Combine the Air Mass with Big Rock and Little Rock and you have an Ultimate Isolation System. Bright Star makes different sizes to accommodate different sized components. Sizes for smaller to modest sized components are pretty reasonably priced in the $99 to $159 range for each piece (3 pieces in an Ultimate Isolation System). Larger components and very heavy components require larger sizes and the prices escalate into the $350 range on the top end. Finishes on the Bright Star products are a speckled granite-look paint in your choice of a medium gray called dark granite and a very dark color called black granite.

When you use an Ultimate Isolation System, you need some kind of feet under the component. Barry Kohan believes that the usual nothing-special feet under your component are pretty good. Maybe so, but I found Whatchamacallits offered a modest but worthwhile improvement over the stock feet when used with an Ultimate Isolation System.

I’m now convinced that as big an improvement as Clamping and AudioPoints were, Bright Star’s Ultimate Isolation System is significantly better. I keep thinking "sonic purity" when I try to come up with words to describe the effect. Backgrounds are quieter, detail and harmonics more complete... the amp sounds more sophisticated, as if were a much more expensive component. This may sound familiar, because it is the same kind of thing I was saying about AudioPoints and Clamp Racks earlier. However, the effect is magnified with the Bright Star Ultimate Isolation System — if you like Clamping and AudioPoints, you’ll probably find at least one place in your system where isolation and damping will sound even better. "Right this way sir, if you enjoyed your drive in the 425 hp Ferrari, you’ll love the special 550 hp version."

To put this all in perspective, let me "rate" the sound of various configurations of feet, racks and supports. I’ll use a scale of 1-10, where 1 represents the component’s sound when using the stock feet and 10 represents the maximum sound quality I have been able to achieve in my system so far. This rating table is based on results I achieved using my amplifier, a solid state OCM-500, which can be clamped in a Michael Green Clamp Rack.

3 = AudioPoints with any old amp support

4 = AudioPoints w/Michael Green Deluxe Justarack amp stand, 1.5" thick shelf

4 = Whatchamacallits, any old rack/shelf

5 = AudioPoints w/M.G. Clamp Rack, 1.5" thick shelves, amp clamped with correct pressure

5 = Whatchamacallits w/M.G. Deluxe Justarack amp stand, 1.5" thick shelf

6 = Whatchamacallits w/M.G. Clamp Rack, 3 small feet on bottom, 1 medium on top, amp clamped

8 = Bright Star Air Mass w/Whatchamacallits & M.G. Amp Stand, 1 shelf 1.5" thick, no clamping

9.2 = Bright Star Air Mass + Big Rock w/stock feet on amp, 3 small under and 1 medium on top & M.G. Amp Stand, 1 shelf 1.5" thick, no clamping

10 = Bright Star Air Mass + Big Rock + Little Rock (Ultimate Isolation System) w/Whatchamacallits & M.G. Amp Stand, 2 shelves with no space between, 3" thick, no clamping

Please don’t take the ‘10’ to mean ‘best possible’. I would never admit to that in print! In this context, ‘10’ means the best I’ve achieved so far in my system. Also bear in mind that what worked best for this amp in this room in this house in this suburb where farms are no more than 1/2 mile away could be something very different for your NYC apartment or your California house-on-a-concrete-slab. Barry Kohan doesn’t think so! He’s pretty confident that you’ll find isolation and damping to always be superior, especially for source components (CD players, transports, laserdisc players, turntables, etc.).

In the midst of the experiments with the Bright Star products, I got a little excited and bought 6 or 8 inner tubes, size 4.00x8. I partially inflated a tube, de-clamped a component and slid the tube under the component with no feet at all. This produced sound quality at about the 5 or 6 level on my scale! Pretty darn interesting considering the inner tube cost about $7.

Further experiments with inner tubes revealed that putting a heavy shelf on top of the inner tube and putting Whatchamacallits under the component (and 1 medium size Whatchamacallit on top) further improved the sound of the cheap inner tube tweak. I’d guess this level of performance was in the 7 range on my scale! A stunning performance from a not-that-expensive setup.

I know we’re dealing with mostly audio topics here in Positive Feedback, but I almost accidentally made a great video image quality improvement after cable TV finally arrived in our 3 year old neighborhood a few months ago. I was very disappointed that this cable company’s delivered image quality was even worse than I’d experienced in other locations. At the place I go to rent laserdiscs, I noticed several times that the store, a mid-fi audio and home theater shop, had Monster Cable video signal splitters on display. I read the back of the package and learned that the Monster splitters were optimized for flat frequency response over the entire broadcast, cable and satellite frequency ranges. Yeah, sure, like I really believe the stuff on the back of the box!

The splitters are built on small PCBs with better component quality rather than having a few cheap components hanging in mid-air as inside most splitters. So I brought home a 4-way and a 2-way splitter. The store said bring ‘em back if they weren’t better than what I was already using, so I had nothing to lose. In a couple of minutes I’d installed them in place of the existing splitters. The existing splitters were rated for wide frequency response for broadcast, cable and satellite. I’d even selected the splitters being used based on performance against a half dozen different brands that were accumulated over the years. There were differences and the best looking ones were not that hard to pick out. Prices of the various non-Monster splitters ranged from about $3 up to $12. The Monster Cable splitters cost $15 for a 2-way and $25 for the 4-way.

I used Caig Labs ProGold spray on the splitter connections to assure "years of worry-free connection." The first look at the picture on even the inexpensive 20" Sony was stunning — a major improvement in video image quality. Everything about the picture was better... clarity/detail, dynamic range, range of colors displayed... I was seeing shades of colors that were never visible from cable before. It was still "cable quality" of course; the splitters can’t repair the damage done by your cable company in assembling and transmitting their signal down their wires. Nevertheless, the improvement is quite addictive.

For example, take a blue background... instead of seeing 3 or 4 shades of blue in the background you see 10s or 100s of slightly different shades in the same area which gives the scene a smooth, texture-free appearance which leads to better shape and depth. I can heartily recommend these splitters to everybody who has splitters in their system. Regardless of whether you use a broadcast antenna, satellite decoder or cable TV with or without a decoder box these splitters will improve the image you see quite dramatically. A very small price to pay for the magnitude of improvement. This is the smallest amount of money for this magnitude of video image quality improvement I’ve ever made.

While we’re on the subject: how much difference can the cable you use between your laserdisc player and your monitor make? I’ve been collecting some video cables at different price points for a while and I finally had enough different ones on hand that were all broken-in that a comparison would finally be possible. The cables evaluated include 2 that originated as digital interconnects but the manufacturers realized that video performance of these cables could also be excellent.

For the "shoot-out" reference laserdisc, I selected the first few chapters of Terminator 2 because of the incredible video transfer and the scenes which are either mostly shades of blue (humans vs. the machines and the arrival of the time travel bubbles) or mostly shades of red (flames and the sequence when Der Nudiste Schwartz enters the ‘Sickle Bar). In addition there are some excellent sequences where chrome is a major element — and chrome is hard to get to look great in video. Add some night scenes with dampened pavement, some shots of clothing, and the Galleria, and you can get a pretty good handle on whether a video cable is doing anything to or for the image. The laserdisc player is the venerable and highly modified Pioneer CLD-980. Try some mods on one of these inexpensive laserdisc players if you want to invalidate the need to own an expensive laserdisc player — this one cost me $250 new! It’s the last of the low cost multi-bit DAC equipped laserdisc players from Pioneer, probably 5 years old now, and has the improved video performance Pioneer added about 6 years ago. Here are the results of the comparisons:

* Radio Shack quad shield (cheap, about $.32 per foot + Kimber RCAs) - nothing to complain about — looks like a movie to me

* XLO/VDO ER-1 ($49.95 1m; $77.95 3m) - OK, the picture IS better... crisper? more vivid? white titles look sharper and cleaner against a variety of backgrounds, a definite upgrade from the coax

* DH Labs D-75 ($75 1m; $110 3m) - YIKES! The picture looks much more dimensional, way less flat, highlights hold up better, chrome looks so much better it isn’t funny, many more shades of blue and red , posterization of the motorcyclist’s leathers in one of the all-red scenes in the bar is dramatically reduced due to the large number of additional shades of red being displayed. The image seems to have a scrim lifted, revealing the REAL picture as being brighter and more life-like.

* Cardas Lightning ($230 1m; $290 3m) - better still, surpasses the DH Labs by about the same amount the XLO/VDO beats the Quad Shield. This wire made me think "this is almost like FILM". Really. It is quite a stunning improvement, especially if you jump from the coax to Lightning. There are times when the video image is very three dimensional. The color detail is stunning. Scenes that were not attracting much attention with the other cables suddenly became marvels of subtle detail: previously unseen magenta specular highlights in a reflection in chrome; flesh tones in a previously all-shades-of-blue scene; in some scenes faces that were gray-ish and dead looking looked real for the first time; almost complete absence of posterization of detail in the all-red scenes in the bar. The performance of this wire was a real eye opener. It’s the kind of thing worth getting excited about. Easily as large as a component upgrade — actually, laserdisc player video image quality in players of the past 5 years or so isn’t as different from one another as the Lightning is from the 2 cheaper cables.

The 2 best video cables in this shoot-out are so much better than the others (an old Monster Video cable was not much better than Quad Shield, by the way) that everyone with a laserdisc player should consider getting as good a video cable as they can justify. I’m even wondering if I can swing 100' of Lightning to get from where the cable enters the house to the monitor... a rather expensive proposition, no doubt. Replacing the $20 or $25 100' cable that’s there now could be a huge improvement.

"Yeah, George, that’ll be 100' of Lightning with F-connectors please."

"OK, Doug, that’ll be $1,100." (My guess!)

Maybe this cable TV coax isn’t really all that bad.

Audible Illusions has turned out preamps in the Modulus series for about 15 years now. These have all pretty much been recognized as very musical and excellent values for the money. And the "money" has always been well into the lower half of the preamp price spectrum. When the Modulus 3 came out I was floored by the improvement over the M2D. So much so that I became something of a Modulus 3 evangelist. I proposed such heresies as the Modulus 3 being a heads-up competitor for the CAT preamp (pre-Signature) and others in the $4,000+ price range. I proposed that the M3 should be judged as a direct competitor for the expensive preamps, and if some other preamp was chosen as better it was a matter of personal taste and listening bias. Then the more expensive preamps all seemed to leap ahead in performance at about the same time and the M3 seemed slightly out-classed.

Soon A.I. updated the M3, first with a new complement of better capacitors, then with the option of removing four 100pF capacitors in the line stage to give better systems a new shot in the arm. There was at least one more round of capacitor upgrades and finally a new internal layout and PCB that predicted the new M3A layout. Through all these running production changes, the M3 was able to continue to compete head to head with the best preamps in the world. People who heard an earlier version of the M3 then heard a new version of some expensive preamp would think the M3 was again clearly outclassed. To their surprise the updates that the M3 received kept it in the running — up until maybe 1995 anyway. At that point, the M3 seemed to sort of reach the end of the line, and the latest versions of the very best preamps began pulling away again.

But Audible Illusions was not sitting still. The development of the M3A was well under way. When people began hearing the M3A the raves were heard around the world. If anything, the M3A was an even more impressive accomplishment sonically, than the M3 was in its day. The reviews have been universal in their "approval" of the sound quality of the M3A. Stereophile even put the $1,995 to $2,495 (low output MC phono boards) M3A in their Class A recommended components along with the world’s best "price-no-object" preamps.

You’re not going to hear a dissenting vote from me. The 3A is a stunning accomplishment. It is simple, exceptionally well built, and in spite of price increases, still an incredible value considering the level of performance it is capable of. The slow-ish break-in process is a little frustrating. You hear all of this promising sound, but it doesn’t quite come together until 200 hours later, when it has finally jelled into something incredible.

I knew the 3A was going to be killer because of all the reviews I’d read, and because of what I’d heard at shows and dealers. My first listen in my system was more of a "so that’s what its going to be like?" than a complete freak out. What will a Modulus 3 owner hear upon upgrading to a 3A? Dynamics, transparency, better highs, more tonal/harmonic beauty, and natural detail. Did I mention even more soundstage width and depth? No? Well, that’s here too. You get everything you would expect from one of the best preamps available in the world, regardless of price.

There are still the quirks of the Modulus design, but they are now reduced to being nearly meaningless. The dual volume controls are now stepped attenuators, instantly settable to the same level for each channel. Gain is still on the high side for a line stage, but there is now a switch in the line stage of each channel that reduces gain by 7 dB — a most useful feature. Input switching is by a simple rotary knob. The old front panel input selector used in all but the very last of the M3s and all older AI preamps is replaced by a unit that switches inputs mounted to the rear PCB that contains the input and output jacks. A shaft runs to the rear mounted switch from the front mounted knob. This change alone reduces signal path length by 50% or more in the M3A.

One of Art Ferris’ obsessions is capacitor quality and performance. Art may spend more hours making detailed analyses of the performance of a particular capacitor using test instruments and listening tests than any other manufacturer I know. In the M3A, many of the capacitors are labeled "Audible Illusions" because Art has them custom made to his specifications, since he simply cannot find commercial capacitors that do what he wants them to do in his preamp.

Other changes in the M3A involve power supplies and regulation of the supplies. The M3A has a bigger and "stiffer" power supply with more regulation stages. Some astute designers and tweakers out there know that you can have too much regulation. And some, if not all of them, might assume that the M3A is over-regulated and that would be a weakness rather than an asset. Art understands this, and has taken this into account in his regulation circuits. I was asked not to reveal exactly what he does that makes what appears to be an over-regulated design perform so much better than would be expected. Better, in fact, than having fewer regulation stages. Art is more concerned than ever about the voltages inside the M3A. Because of the powerful power supply, you could hurt yourself badly if you touch the wrong places inside the preamp. Always pull the wall plug when opening your M3A and let the supply discharge for a minute or two.

I discussed many of the details that went into development of the M3A with Art. It sounded to me like most of them are things Art would probably prefer not to have out in the open so as not to "give away" some of the tricks or trade secrets he’s learned over the years. I can say that I cannot imagine any other designer or manufacturer sweating over each detail of his preamp with quite the depth and attention (obsession?) that Art gives. One of the reasons Art can do this is because the component count in the M3A is as small as 30% of some of the more expensive but not better sounding preamps. That means for every capacitor Art sweats over, another manufacturer would have to sweat that much over 3 capacitors, ditto for resistors, tubes, regulators, filter capacitors, etc. The manageable component count of the M3A circuit permits component selection and analysis of performance to levels of detail that other manufacturers can’t deal with in preamps with 2 or 3 times the number of components in them. Art has been working with the basic Modulus circuit for 15 years now. I don’t know of any other preamp circuit that has been evolving for that long. The performance of the M3A and its universal recognition by the high end press as one of the 5 or 10 best sounding preamps in the world says a lot about just how effective the Modulus circuit is.

What nits to pick on the Modulus 3A? The obvious "devil" is the 1,200 ohm output impedance. Ideally, this should be lower, under 800 ohms would be nice, under 500 would be very nice. What the 1,200 ohm output impedance would mean in a conventional tube preamp circuit would be too much change in sound quality if there were any added capacitance in the interconnect to the amp. It would also mean the preamp would not drive an amp with a low input impedance — say 20,000 ohms or less — very well. Art knows about these issues, but he can’t make the M3A sound as good with a lower output impedance. So he has done as much as possible to put a lot of raw power (in preamplifier terms) into the preamp. He swears that driving a 10,000 ohm input impedance amp with an M3A is no problem for the M3A.

My amp has a comfortable 50,000 ohm input impedance and I have not had access to a low input impedance amp so far. Philosophically, I don’t like the idea of a 1,200 ohm preamp driving a 10,000 ohm amp, but I know quite a few people who are ecstatic about the M3A with the Ayre V-3 amp (10,000 ohms). Dealers love the combination too. Go figure. Just to keep my subconscious happy, I’m going to stay with amps 25,000 ohms and higher (about 95% or more of all amps manufactured today).

Other M3A shortcomings... some people don’t like dual volume controls. I never much minded. In mid-1996, Art switched to dual sealed gold contact stepped attenuators. The physical clicks are so easy to duplicate on the 2 channels that the dual control excuse is nearly obsolete now. There will still be those who complain that changing volume should require no more than a single wrist movement. Better yet, no wrist movement, put it on a remote control. I’d like to have remote control also. Maybe some day. For now I’ll just take the great sound quality and wait for remote control.

Add my voice to the others that have heaped praise on the M3A. I bought this one. Many other reviewers bought theirs too. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that more high end reviewers own M3A preamps than any other single model.

Ahhhh, darn, running out of space fast. Time to tantalize you with the Cardas Heart Cartridge. This is a custom-for-Cardas version of the Benz Ruby (often quoted at $3,000 list) that Cardas has priced at $2,395. The Heart has a burl wood body with a slightly different shape than the Ruby and a few extra holes. George Cardas swears that you really need to rub a few drops of Torumat Oil on the body to achieve even further levels of sonic nirvana. I haven’t tried this ‘oh, come onnnn!’ tweak yet, but I will eventually. Les Edelberg, Mr. Power Wedge, says he heard the change, and it is indeed freaky good.

For your Cardas Heart money you get your choice of "normal" output, around .4mV or low output, around .25mV. I chose the low output model on the advice of Audible Illusion’s chief illusionist, Art Ferris. All I can say is: "Where have you been all my life?" This is one awesome sounding cartridge. I’ve had two others temporarily. But I have been playing in the "all I would permit myself to afford" circa $200 - $400 cartridge market for many years. I’ve tried medium & high output MCs and the best MM models I could find. I had settled on the Roksan Corus Black which is a really good cartridge in that price range. But I was unprepared for what one of the best-in-the-world low output MCs would sound like in combination with the John Curl designed Gold Phono boards in the AI M3A preamp. HUH-MUH-NUH doesn’t even do it justice. This is almost an "out-of-body/abducted-by-aliens" equivalent experience. It’s been weeks, and I still can’t believe the sound that is coming out of my system.

I hate to admit that fussy little bits of wire, aluminum, brass, wood, who-knows-what other metals, a fleck of diamond and tiny ruby bits costing over $2,000 can do this for your system. I have had a strong aversion to expensive cartridges for a long time... they age just sitting there, the diamond tips wear out, the suspension gets harder or softer or sags, they get magnetized and one guru says you MUST demag while the other guru says NEVER EVER demag... I hate it I hate it I hate it... so I must go listen to some music now. (Cheshire cat grin appears at the mere THOUGHT of listening to music with this cartridge!)

Nothing fussy about the setup of the Heart. Keep the top of the cartridge parallel with the record to get into the correct VTA zone. The bottom surfaces of the wood body are not flat and can confuse you if you aren’t resolute in observing the top of the cartridge as the reference line for arm height. Tracking force is 2 grams. Use the old reduced polar moment if inertia trick (on any cartridge) for reduced warp and wow noise getting into your system... do not zero the weight of the cartridge with the counter weight then add tracking force with a dial connected to a spring... use a stylus force gauge and set the counterweight to achieve the correct 2 gram (or whatever) tracking force. This leaves the counterweight closer to the pivot of the tone arm. Instant lower polar moment of inertia. This will permit your cartridge to move left-right and up-down more easily which will translate to less cantilever movement which reduces low frequency junk getting to the preamp. Tables where the counter weight is the only way to adjust tracking force are already taking advantage of this trick.

What is the future of the Heart in my system? My expensive cartridge phobia has been vaporized by the irresistible Heart. After hearing what the Heart did for what I thought was a miserable sounding Hales plus unnamed famous tube gear manufacturer using that manufacturer’s digital front end, preamp and amps (Stereophile Show 5/96)... I could hardly believe it was the same system. When the VPI table/arm with Heart replaced the digital front end, that system sprang to life and became a thing of beauty. In my system the Heart renewed my jaded appreciation for LPs, and I am frequently and very happily diving into the collection regularly again.

By the way: I’m buying the Heart too.

Cardas Cross speaker cable is innocent-enough looking in its plump turquoise (the greenish shade). But it can only be described as "serious wire" at $800 for an 8’ stereo pair and $120 extra for internal bi-wire. In case you aren’t familiar with this particular cable and others like it... some speaker cable manufacturers have taken to putting both the + and - conductors inside a single sheath. When you hook up a normal stereo cable of this type, you only have what looks like 1 cable running from your speaker to your amp. But there are indeed 2 conductors inside. Internal bi-wire uses this same single cable but splits the conductors on one end into 2 "groups". The Cardas Cross I’m using has 2 spades on the amp-end and 4 spades on the speaker end. You pay extra for the work to separate the conductors on the speaker end and for the additional pair of spades. But this cost is a lot lower than buying a 2nd 8’ pair of wires and doing a more "traditional" bi-wire ($1600 for Cross).

The sound of Cross... excellent bass, best in my system so far. Clean, powerful, rhythmic, everything you could ask for in bass. From there up you get a very refined sound, slightly distant perspective and perhaps a little less dynamic than I prefer in my system. But the sound of the midrange and highs is exemplary. Very natural, highly musical, seductive in the way it pulls you into the music. If I could have a little more dynamic punch, this could be my ideal wire. Further adjustments to my system are moving me closer and closer to the ideal performance that would lock in the Cross speaker cable as the "best". But for now I am still switching back and forth with the XLO type 5, since I appreciate the attributes of both.

You could easily get very different results in your system. Different amps will take to this wire differently. If you are working with a system that is maybe a little TOO dynamic with some other wires, this one could be just what the doctor ordered. I’ve heard incredible differences in what wires sound best with different amps.

"Cardas Cross interconnect?" you are probably wondering by now. Quite a family resemblance to the speaker cable actually. Pretty much everything I said about the speaker cable applies here. I have a few of places in my system where the Cardas Cross interconnect have found permanent-for-now homes... the CD player, laserdisc player and center channel amp interconnect. My, My, My — what these cables do for digital-derived sound! It’s like finding a hidden "refinement" button on the front panel. Oooh-weee, and the depth these interconnects coax (a 1 syllable word in this case he said, grinning!) out of digital is quite a surprise. Listen to your favorite movie and the explosions, helicopters and crashes have authority in the bass that was simply not there before. When the shooting starts and the voices get loud... you find yourself smiling contentedly instead of wincing at the over-sharp balance that can plague movie sound. So the Cross also loves life in the center channel between the surround decoder and the center channel amp. CD music blooms with the refined air and depth you always wanted to hear, but could never quite achieve. Again, your mileage may vary, but I have to give Cross a high recommendation for auditioning as your digital component and center channel interconnect.

In the amp-preamp interconnect wars, the Cardas Cross is making inroads as the preamp continues to break-in. The increase in detail and dynamics of the preamp combined with the additional boost of switching the 4 line stage capacitors in the AI M3A preamp to the ‘off’ position has jazzed up the mids and highs to such an extent that the Cross interconnect is becoming ideal. Best of all is the way the detail from the digital sources is improved. Other interconnects flatten the presentation too obviously in comparison to Cross. Cross maintains a sound field with more depth than any other interconnect I have available now.

My SME V arm’s DIN connector doesn’t allow me to try Cross as a phono interconnect, so I have to be happy with the places it can be used... for now.

The Editor of Positive Feedback, David Robinson, sent me email that said something like "Michael Green would like to talk to you again. Can you give him a call?" To be perfectly honest, my first thoughts were that Michael has been reading my Soundstage! and Positive Feedback ramblings about how to get better sound in your system than you can by using Clamp Racks and AudioPoints. I sort of braced myself to defend my findings that mechanical resonance tuning was not always the pathway to heavenly sound... isolation and damping used properly could actually be better. The subject didn’t even come up. Michael was far too excited about the changes at Michael Green Designs/Room Tunes.

The first thing that he talked about was bringing distribution back "in house" rather than using an independent distributor. Next he related how he came to his first big time design job, an entire new concert hall that will incorporate tunable walls, floors, stage, ceiling, and tunable sound reinforcement speakers... all the things he has been working on in a smaller scale through his tunable room projects. The location of the hall will be revealed as the project progresses. He indicated that a documentary of the project was being done, so we might some day be able to see some of the behind the scenes development work.

The best news for audiophiles is that Michael has figured out how to make tunable room tuning products people can buy for their own listening rooms. 1997 will be a big year for the launch of these products. The products will be called "Pressure Zone Control" and there will be a wide array of products for existing homes and products to be used when constructing a new listening room or home theater. His non-tunable Room Tunes have proven to be an audiophile staple for years. The low cost, highly effective products are seen everywhere at shows, in dealer showrooms and in home listening rooms. The PZC products will cost a little more than the existing non-tunable Room Tunes products. PZCs are passive devices like the original Room Tunes products. Making PZCs tunable is what makes them more desirable for the audiophile — and also what makes them a little more expensive to make.

The new Room Tunes factory is 6 times the size of the original factory. If everything goes according to plan, Room Tunes will move to an even larger facility before too long. Michael is promising an interesting introduction to the new PZC products for Positive Feedback readers. He says we will be able to virtually create a tunable room within our listening rooms. Michael is going to outfit my listening room with a full complement of PZC devices. I’ll be reporting the results right here for you.

So don’t forget to renew if you’re getting near the end of your subscription! You won’t want to miss this.

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