Hi Neal,

Sorry for the late reply, last week was a bit hectic, but I did promise and I forgot, so sorry. Anyway, about the amp situation, I had a go in my wife Mercedes and the results were interesting. As we discussed, on its own with the 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable that I got from who knows where, my Nano struggles to produce any real volume. As for my system, I’ve got a Blaupunkt Velocity 2Go 5, so I’m good to go.

Blaupunkt Velocity 2Go 5 speaker system for both in and outside of the car. Brilliant!

Belkin cable upgrade

The first thing I did was to switch the rubbish cable for my Belkin 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable, and the results were surprising. The difference was very noticeable, and the sound was as clean cut as the design of the cable. There was also an increase in volume.

The “Royal” Amp

iPod, C&C mini crystal 6″ mini-to-mini cable into the amp, Belkin mini to mini cable from the amp into the Mercedes jack. There was an increase in the depth of bass, and the volume, however I feel it was “overkill”. The amp can pump out more than the standard speakers can handle, even with the bass switch turned to the lowest settings if you’re not careful the speakers will wave a white flag. The speakers can handle the Belkin upgrade well enough.

FiiO E5 amp

Sorry no pics the battery ran out.

The FiiO E5 amp was another good choice, but again, the speakers began to show that they’d had enough, not as much as the Royal amp.

Conclusion

The Royal amp will provide a decent increase in volume. I didn’t analyse the sound to the standard set up. All I’d say is; if you want clean bass at a reasonable level, the Royal amp will do it. Personally, the Belkin cable will be a good way to clean the sound up and add a touch more volume.

Welcome To Our New Shop, headphonedeals.com

It’s the new headphonedeals shop. Headphones, amps, earphones, IEMs, cables, software, downloads, speakers, yes speakers and headphone modifications. It’s all there. plus links to headphone modifications.

Headphone cables are often treated with suspicion; this isn’t surprising as there’re many quite (or too) expensive cables out there. But, many listeners also are of the opinion that cables can’t make a difference, which is rather weird. Conductors are part of the signal path. Whereas the ideal amp is a “wire with a gain”, a set of headphones really is “diaphragms with conductors”.

A cable can also make a noticeable difference in clarity not because it’s anything too special, but because stock cables aren’t. Manufacturers usually look for ways to lower production costs, to increase profits and cut prices. Production costs scale - a 10 cents economy on a production run of a thousand units is an economy of $100. AKG’s stock cables are built of what someone called “cheap telephone wire” - not the finest copper.

Cable design and material affect how effortlessly an electrical signal is transmitted. An audio signal isn’t just a constant electrical signal, it’s modulated to have a flowing, rising/falling current. This shape has to mimic the shape of original sound waveform as close as possible: human listening is echoic and pays attention to the shape of sound waves more than to frequency range.

Sweetcome is a maker of audio cables based in Hong Kong, the “Diva” is his newest AKG mini-XLR cable.

It’s a bit of a mystery how he achieved it, but the new cable is an improvement on the older star-quad cable. The K-240 Studio have a kind of effortless transmission of music that obviously shows the audio formats and the players are the bottleneck, not the headphones. The dynamics aren’t just quick, they’re effortless, smooth, the music flows. It’s no longer down to divisions of soundstage or upper/mid/low frequencies, the music is as whole as the soundcard or player can reproduce it. As a tool, the K-240 now show all there is, and even better, they show what there isn’t: the lack of space in MP3 files, the cut high-frequency harmonics in CD audio, and so on.

AKG Diva cables are pricier than the regular star-quad cables; the cable sent in is 1.5 metres long, and costs $105. The cable has a stiff non-tangling plastic jacket, aluminium screening and is made of high-purity copper wire in a star quad layout. Regular star-quad Sweetcome AKG cables cost $50-60, depending on length ($50 for 2.5 metres, $55 for 3.5m), which makes them a better choice than AKG’s own stock cable (~$35 for 3 m., unarmoured, straight wire, unscreened).

Here’re the current prices:

…in which the Sweetcome cable for AKG Studio line of headphones is examined. Quick summary: well-built, durable, and with a magical effect on sound.

Not quite complete yet, but there it is.

AKG K-240 Studio -> Sweetcome cable -> Cowon T2.

Sweetcome Audio is a maker/EBay merchant specialising in audio cables, among other things.

The store stocks RCA interconnect cables, even turntable cables with grounding, 5-pin-DIN-to-minijack cables and speaker cables for Bang & Olufsen equipment, and… AKG Mini-XLR connector cables. Sweetcome even makes cables for the AKG K-1000. AKG headphone cables all cost under $100 ($45 ex. shipping for a 1.5m mini-XLR cable for K-240, K-271, K-181, K-141, K-171, etc.).

The Cowon iAudio F2 is coming

back!

After sending back the iAudio F2 2GB back to amp3, I’ve just ordered the 1GB version (there is method to my madness, I’ll explain later). My only concern is that the iAudio produced volume levels that IPods could only dream about. This begs the question: how effective will the CMoy amps be with the F2?

C&C 3.5 interconnect cable on order.

I’ve just order the C&C cable, in the hope of finding out how much of a differnce interconnect cables can make. So why the C&C 3.5 interconnect cable? Pure vanity I’m afraid. It looks good (I must get out more!) and I want to test a C&C amp in the near future.