Has your system ever lost its Mojo?

[Polkitup2]

My 2 channel system consiting of a NAD C370 integrated, Denon 3910, and Tyler Linbrooks has lost its mojo. One day I was in sonic heaven, then I tried using an Audioquest Viper cable instead of the jumpers on my NAD, left it that way for a week, decided I didn't like it as well and put everything back the way it was. Now no mojo. I can't put my finger on exactly what I don't like as the imaging is still excellent, sounds are coming from where they should be, just seems like the mid range is too forward, bright and overbearing with vocals. I'm going to double check everything this weekend. Heck, maybe I've just hit the point where my brain says I'm tired of listening to the same equipment.

[george daniel]

you might want to try some tubes in the mix,,just a thought. :)

[reeltrouble1]

you are being punished by the audio gods for illicit tampering with your system, you need to remove your pants and do the Dance of Joy around the rack to appease their nature.

Have fun and I recommend doing the dance in front of the Mrs. it really makes em freak out!!!!!!!!!!!

RT1

[Polkitup2]

you are being punished by the audio gods for illicit tampering with your system, you need to remove your pants and do the Dance of Joy around the rack to appease their nature.

Have fun and I recommend doing the dance in front of the Mrs. it really makes em freak out!!!!!!!!!!!

RT1

You should have seen my wife's expression last night when I told her that I thought my 36" CRT TV sitting between my speakers was interferring with my sound and needed to be replaced by a flat panel set. She already thinks I'm nuts.

[Polkitup2]

you might want to try some tubes in the mix,,just a thought. :)

Yea, I keep kicking around the idea of a tube pre, just not sure I am ready for tubes quite yet.

[Early B.]

My 2 channel system consiting of a NAD C370 integrated, Denon 3910, and Tyler Linbrooks has lost its mojo.

You can expect the loss of mojo to occur like once a week. Your system didn't change -- you did. Depends on your mood, time of day, menstrual cycle (for girls and for husbands who catch hell during this period), lunar cycle, proximity to payday, kid concerns, number of beers, etc. You get the idea. At this moment, the worse thing you can do is take advice from us on what should be upgraded.

BTW -- those Linbrooks would benefit greatly from a tube CDP.

[VR3]

Sorry to hear of your system woes...

I no longer can relate, but I use to! :) Good luck

[danger boy]

turn your system off for about 4 or 5 days.. don't even power it up.. then come back.. you and your system's mojo will be found again. ;)

[VR3]

I dont know if a tube CDP would be the best route

But throw some more power on those Tylers, tube pre, maybe a tube CDP, but I think to much tube is a bad thing... and it should be 100 times better. Ty's speakers are pretty power hungry

[TroyD]

DB has it right. Every once in awhile you need to just let it be for awhile.

BDT

[heiney9]

turn your system off for about 4 or 5 days.. don't even power it up.. then come back.. you and your system's mojo will be found again. ;)

+3....

[George Grand]

Darrin once lost his remote, but not the mojo, and it was still one of the funniest things in the Polk archives.

[Ferres]

The Audioquest Viper cable may not have been to your taste but my guess is it produced a cleaner sound that you got a little used to.

Try out more cables and go up the food chain.

[BaggedLancer]

Good luck finding your mojo.

[markmarc]

Unless you had a concussion or was around loud noise for an extended period of time, your brain is playing games. Leave the system alone for a week, listen to a boom box. Then go back to the rig, the psychology of it all will bring you back to happiness I'm betting.

[madmax]

Sometimes and inch difference in speaker placement or a degree of toe in can make all the difference in the world. Did you move the speakers?
madmax

[hearingimpared]

turn your system off for about 4 or 5 days.. don't even power it up.. then come back.. you and your system's mojo will be found again. ;)

No no no!!!! Leave it powered up but don't listen to it. Then go back to it 4 to 5 days later. The longer you leave gear powered up the better it sounds and mojo is evident.

[dorokusai]

Lost mojo? Never.

[stereo_luver]

This is why I'm glad I travel so much with my work. I'll be gone for 1-8 weeks at a time. I get back home and damn it sounds good. The rig I have in my truck sounds pretty damn good and I do listen to it a bunch. Driving anywhere from 5 to 16 hours at a time. When I get home its....turn on the amp to warm the tubes...unload the truck...shower....open a bottle of wine.....sit back and enjoy some tunes until I have to hit the road again.

[dkg999]

They say those magic pebbles help attract the mojo back and then make it hard for it to leave again :rolleyes:

Maybe the AQ jumpers were better than you thought, not that cables make a difference mind you.

And not listening to your system for a few days can definetely give you a new perspective when you turn it back on :eek:

[Polkitup2]

Sometimes and inch difference in speaker placement or a degree of toe in can make all the difference in the world. Did you move the speakers?
madmax

Didn't move the speakers, tried a diferent amp and CDP tonight but still the same suckola. I think I just need to stay away for awhile.

[hearingimpared]

Make sure you leave everything powered up in the idle state.

[danger boy]

STAY AWAY or your mojo may be gone forever ha ha ha.

I think I saw your mojo ordering a latte at Starbucks today ;)

[cubdog]

I have two totally different systems set up in my main listening room. I alternate every week or so. Each system always sounds best that first day.

cubdog

[Lasareath]

Mine lost it's mojo as soon as I hooked up (2) pairs of Monster Z3 cables.

[reeltrouble1]

well I told you to do the dance......man your screwed, you may need an exorcist after all this time.

RT1

[hearingimpared]

I know a good one!

[beardog03]

now a couple of days to a week aint gonna do it...


you need to leave it powered up, and turn the dial all the way down for at least two weeks or more...

Do the nekkid mojo dance...


Then put a Cary Tube pre in the mix...!!


Mojo found !!

[reeltrouble1]

You may be on to it Bear, sadly the NAD might of served its purpose and needs to let way to some hi-fi mojo.

Yep I feel it........mojo rising...........still recommend the nekkid dance in front of the wife though and a dedicated 2-channel, no TV in the room at all.

thats how we roll.

RT1

[george daniel]

You may be on to it Bear, sadly the NAD might of served its purpose and needs to let way to some hi-fi mojo.

Yep I feel it........mojo rising...........still recommend the nekkid dance in front of the wife though and a dedicated 2-channel, no TV in the room at all.

thats how we roll.

RT1

did ya'll pick up on what he just said ;):)

[steveinaz]

Usually when this happens to me, it's because I've made more than 1 change in my system at a time, and it seriously screws with the synergy--did you change anything else?

[Yashu]

That is a good amp... I don't think it is the problem. There is something you may want to try though...

NAD makes one hell of a good amp... the amp in the 370 is nothing to laugh at, even at it's price... it is the kind of amp that will grow with whatever pre that you attach to it. I strongly suggest trying out using the 370 as an amp, and looking into a new pre, perhaps with tubes.

The other thing I suggest is new source. Again, the NAD is a good amp, it's the c160 and the c270 rolled into one, and I can attest to them both being wonderful, with both having their advantages (although I still say that NAD hobbles the pre sections in their integrateds, the c370 is *supposed* to have a full c160 pre inside, though, so don't know if that one is an exception to the rule). Anyway, I think you should look into a DAC. There are some really great DACs out there on the market right now, and you can hook your CDP up to it, look for one with a tubed output stage, maybe something like an MHDT Paradisea or Scott Nixon Tube DAC. You seem to be looking for mojo, well that means musicality, and with digital, you get that with non-oversampling DACs.

For a reference, I have a NAD integrated from the same series as the 370 being used as an amp, and it has only grown with pre and source upgrades. You have to spend a lot of money to out-pace the amp section of the NAD, and *if* the 370 really does have a c160 for it's pre section then you may want to try other stuff before giving it the toss.

Give the gain adjustable pre-out a shot too if you can, I don't know how sensitive your speakers are, but if you can't turn the volume knob more than 1/5 before your ears are bleeding, you may want to notch the pre out gain down 3-6db. The class A stage of your pre should be used to it's fullest, and it would also give you a reason to try more cables between the pre out and main in. Try directional cables with a little capacitance (those little jumper bars work for the little NAD amps, but you basically have a set of separates, so treat them right)

Oh, and one more thing. Turn the soft clipping off. It gives those amps a harsh edge to the sound and only makes them hotter than they need to be. Unless your speakers are really bad loads, you aren't going to need soft clipping, and it just increases THD for no reason, and not in a good tube way. I hate how mine sounds with it enabled. It makes it fatiguing.

[cfrizz]

This says it all right there. If you were listening to the music & not the equipment you would be just fine!

You are simply looking for another excuse to upgrade something. Just be honest with yourself & your wife & say you want to spend more money, but there is nothing wrong with your equipment!:rolleyes::p:D



Heck, maybe I've just hit the point where my brain says I'm tired of listening to the same equipment.

[mantis]

Mojo is something that comes and goes. My system can sound like the best system to me in the world and a boom box in the same week.

Most of the time if the systems mojo is gone, I replace the weakest link and get everything back and then some.

Sometimes you just need to feel juicy, new always adds some level of juice.

Dan

[Ferres]

I remember when I first got to test the DC2's. The store let me demo them for a week or so, swapping out the Lsi9's.

At first, I thought they were just ok but I felt the polks where better. After a week of listening, I swapped them back and the store took back the DC2's. But after a day or so, I could no longer stand the Lsi9's sound and I got the DC2's back.

[hearingimpared]

You seem to be looking for mojo, well that means musicality, and with digital, you get that with non-oversampling DACs.



How do you get musicality with "non-oversampling" DACS? That makes no sense. How then does it become musical if the digital signal isn't smoothed out?

[Yashu]

I am going to describe the process:

Non oversampling DACs take the bitstream and immediately convert samples to "vector-like" waveform, very smooth, like a bezier curve, if you know what that is. The waveform is going to be very smooth, and some say that non-OS DACs lose a tiny bit of detail to the advantage of having a more analogue sound. If you feed a 24/96 signal into a non-os DAC, you are pretty much throwing that idea out the window as the bistream is already extremely detailed to begin with. The thing is... even at 44.1khz, the resulting waveform is very pleasing... it is entirely non-fatiguing.

Oversampling DACs use digital processing to increase the bandwidth for the purpose of anti-aliasing, and by it's very nature, you are going to get the "digital shimmer" that people often speak of. NON-OS DACs are a completely different way of approaching digital. It is like... trying to compare vector to raster, if you are familiar with any part of graphics design, you may understand what I mean. If I drew a curve in a vector program with a certain number of sample points, I could scale it infinitely and it would still be a curve, where if I was to do this in a raster program, even with all the anti-aliasing and filters in the world, you are going to end up with a pixilated/distorted image eventually, not a perfect curve.

That is the best analogy I can give as to what NON-OS DACs are all about. Right now there are a good handful of makers that have taken the NON_OS approach and applied it very successfully. I prefer it, because I love to listen to music for hours sometimes, and I never get fatigue. My last CDP, it was a NAD player, it was very nice, but after about an hour or so I would get a headache. I have tried others... and I just am not happy with the "digital shimmer".

I guess the NON-OS approach is in the "less is more" camp. It's not like there aren't any filtering output caps or anything on the DAC... you aren't going to hear ultrasonic crazyness or anything... just a liquid pleasing sound. To me, it *is* more musical, because I get more engaged with the music, rather than trying to nitpick at every last detail. Sometimes digital is like the "uncanny valley" of audio. I remember with my NAD player, sitting back and hearing what seemed like something real... but my mind kept trying to read into every little sound or transient, it didn't *feel* real... I don't have that problem with the NON-OS DAC. I kindof forget that I am listening to a stereo sometimes. It's nice.

I mean... you could always go vinyl?

[Polkitup2]

Usually when this happens to me, it's because I've made more than 1 change in my system at a time, and it seriously screws with the synergy--did you change anything else?

No other changes. I re-checked all connections and everything is as it should be. Speakers are where they have always been. I think my system just needs time to heal. :D

[Polkitup2]

Give the gain adjustable pre-out a shot too if you can, I don't know how sensitive your speakers are, but if you can't turn the volume knob more than 1/5 before your ears are bleeding, you may want to notch the pre out gain down 3-6db. The class A stage of your pre should be used to it's fullest, and it would also give you a reason to try more cables between the pre out and main in. Try directional cables with a little capacitance (those little jumper bars work for the little NAD amps, but you basically have a set of separates, so treat them right)

Oh, and one more thing. Turn the soft clipping off. It gives those amps a harsh edge to the sound and only makes them hotter than they need to be. Unless your speakers are really bad loads, you aren't going to need soft clipping, and it just increases THD for no reason, and not in a good tube way. I hate how mine sounds with it enabled. It makes it fatiguing.

I don't use the soft clipping but that is a good idea about trying the adjustable gain.

[hearingimpared]

I am going to describe the process:

Non oversampling DACs take the bitstream and immediately convert samples to "vector-like" waveform, very smooth, like a bezier curve, if you know what that is. The waveform is going to be very smooth, and some say that non-OS DACs lose a tiny bit of detail to the advantage of having a more analogue sound. If you feed a 24/96 signal into a non-os DAC, you are pretty much throwing that idea out the window as the bistream is already extremely detailed to begin with. The thing is... even at 44.1khz, the resulting waveform is very pleasing... it is entirely non-fatiguing.

Oversampling DACs use digital processing to increase the bandwidth for the purpose of anti-aliasing, and by it's very nature, you are going to get the "digital shimmer" that people often speak of.

I mean... you could always go vinyl?


I get none of that digital glare ("shimmer") that you speak of with my Timbre DAC as a matter of fact, and I have many other ears that can attest to this, it is very analog sounding.

I know what my ears tells me not what some theory says it should be.


That is the best analogy I can give as to what NON-OS DACs are all about.

I disagree.


I mean... you could always go vinyl?

Vinyl is much more pleasing to listen to for hours on end.

[lightman1]

I haven't listened to my 2ch for around two weeks. Just wanted to see if I could hear anything different. Amps have been powered up 24/7 and the VU meters keep staring at me from across the room.

[Yashu]

I know what my ears tells me not what some theory says it should be.

That's fine. There are many good DACs of all kinds. NON-OS is not some panacea technology, it is just another way of doing things. There are good oversampling DACs, good upsampling DACs, and good non-oversampling DACs... just like there are good tube amps and good SS amps and there are good sub-categories of each. There are good class A, Class AB, Class D, and even Class T, there are good SET, Push pull, ultralinear class A, and so on.

Everyone has different ears. I have ears that are tuned to very HF sound... so I kindof like the pleasant, musical, rolloff that my non-os DAC gives me with 16bit audio. Like I said, it isn't for everyone. I enjoy it, and you enjoy your DAC. I was offering the OP a suggestion that was *different*, since that is what he seems to want to do... try something new and exciting. I don't know very many people that dislike the sound of a non-oversampling DAC. There are people that prefer the super-hyper detail of some other DACs, but again, it might not be for everyone. I am going to use the word "synergy" here. A system with a certain type of speaker and other components might do very well with either, it all depends. The only way to know is to try. I just know that, right now, non-oversampling DACs are at a price range that makes them a bit easier to experiment with. Scott Nixon, MHDT, Monica II, and so on... You can get a lot of DAC for your money.

Non-OS DACs take the source and directly convert to vector curves... so the issue is that jitter becomes more of a factor with these. That is the thing to watch out for. Oversampling DACs are less prone because of the way they take the signal and apply anti-aliasing and filtering. IF you can get a source with very low jitter, or perhaps a reclocker (then you can use any source you want), it will give you a very fine sound. I like it, and I know many that like it as well. That doesn't mean it is for everyone... just a suggestion.

[reeltrouble1]

How do you get musicality with "non-oversampling" DACS? That makes no sense. How then does it become musical if the digital signal isn't smoothed out?

you just had to do it didn't you..............

Justin should make you pay for the added server space.

Spent three hours in the Shed last night, so much mojo I bottled the ****e for shipment to Polkitup. Dude needs to get tubed.

RT1

[Early B.]

Here's what happens sometimes that affects the mojo -- a change is made in your system and it sounds great. You're all excited, grow accustomed to the sound, and look forward to listening. After a couple of weeks, the change you made breaks in and you begin to hear a "new" sound. Then you scratch your head and wonder where the music went.

[hearingimpared]

Sorry, LOL!

[venomclan]

Fat Bastard and Dr. Bose traveled back in time to when I was a baby, they played Weird Al Yankovic through the Bose speakers on a continuos loop. Now I think Bose speakers are the best and I am white and nerdy.

Mojo gone.

[madmax]

How do you get musicality with "non-oversampling" DACS?

The AudioNote DAC I use is non-oversampling. They had a big writeup about how this makes it sound more musical but I don't remember all the hype. I'll look for a link later.
madmax

[Yashu]

What about the stress factor. If you come home stressed and *expect* your system to sound good and take it away... it may not. Sometimes, the best sound is late at night when you are least expecting it, or during the day when you come home happy, the sound feels right.

I don't know. They say a watched pot never boils, well I notice a similar thing about audio. Audio Nirvana is like a woman, when you are desperately looking is when you are the least likely to score.

[AudioFilet]

Fat Bastard and Dr. Bose traveled back in time to when I was a baby, they played Weird Al Yankovic through the Bose speakers on a continuos loop. Now I think Bose speakers are the best and I am white and nerdy.

I had a very similar nightmare once. Recovery was difficult.

[venomclan]

I had a very similar nightmare once. Recovery was difficult.

Years of therapy, years.

[reeltrouble1]

yea, years, dont forget all the little pills...........

major mojo mofo

RT1