its all in the details

I have a pair of HT pro silway MK II that i have avoided using with my CD player because of a percerved glare and harshness on the top even though there were some great improvements elsewhere. The other day i decided to try them again just for giggles, i put em in...yep glare.. and then, based on another thread i had just read, I tweaked the toe in on my speakers a few degrees less than what they had been. No Glare. WHooo Hooo. all the improved detail, top end openness and bass control these cables offered without the harshness. A little change in the direct path from tweater to ear and in all the reflection points smoothed things out to a level i would have never though possible. Moving all the cables around probably also got rid of some oxidation..should just break down and clean all the connections. I guess you can't just plug cables in for a quick comparison.

As a follow up i took some cones i had under the tube pre to help isolate the tubes and moved them under the cd. Another thread had pointed out the CD player, being electro mechanical, benifitted most from isolation, i had always figured the tubes were the sensitive comjponants. I had tried bubble wrap under the CD once and found improvements in tightening things up and improving clarity in the mids and base but with some serious top end roll off. With the cones nothing but improvements.

Hmmm i say to myself, ain't biased the tubes in over a year, since the kids arrived and made me put the covers on the amps. Negligence there, aargh. One tube in one amp was way out of wack and a couple others had significant drift (probably resulting from the out of wack one cause the other amp was all in spec...bet that tube is heading out the door soon).

The end result of these cost free little tweaks was like getting a whole new system. I switched the amps to triode, put in some jazz and spent the rest of the day astonished at the quality of the system i didn't know i had. I really need to get the dedicated lines in.