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Post binding for crude tone control

I have a newish pair of ATC SCM40 passive speakers.  They're 3-way, notoriously revealing and have triple binding posts*.  The posts are connected by metal plates (steel?).   The dealer advised, and I believe it's common practice, that I bind my cables to one of the bass driver's posts, and to one of the tweeter's posts.  I expect this setup treats all 3 drivers the same, with an equal amount of plate in each's circuit.

Recently, I've upgraded cables, fuses, USB cables etc, and resolution of the system has increased along with a little digital glare.  Female vocals are too often sibilant.  The probable cause is the ethernet stage and I am working on improving it, but to "tame the treble" I thought I'd try playing around with the binding setup.  It occurred to me by binding across the bass or mid-range posts I might be "favouring" those drivers, and attenuating the others.  I'm assuming the plates have a slightly higher resistance than my TelluriumQ Ultra Black II cable.

So, I unplugged from the tweeter's terminal and moved the cable's plug to the mid-range's.  Each cable is now bound to both the bass and mid-range posts.  The tweeter's posts are connected by only the plates.

And, hey presto, the system is now exhibiting a slightly warmer, darker sound.   I might be wrong, of course;  wouldn't be the first time the Emperor's new clothes are warmer and more musical. 

Has anyone else done the same?  

It did occur to me that strategic use of resistors might attenuate a driver even further, though I doubt this could improve resolution.

 

* - has anyone ever tri-wired their speakers?

128x128lollipopguild
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jallan
303 posts
 

I have SCM40’s too that replaced SCM 35’s. I have biwired them, using the stock jumpers. I had originally tried fancy jumpers from Cardas, but the sound was smoothed too much. I was surprised that I preferred the stock jumper plates.

 

These speakers benefit from biwiring, in my opinion. My SCM40’s are not bright or hard at all. The SCM35’s could be bright and hard on poorly recorded material.

sngreen
36 posts
 

Binding cables to one of the bass driver's posts, and to one of the tweeter's posts - I wonder if this really works, or ever observable, but good idea nevertheless - to try. Thanks.

lukemaximus
38 posts
 

I have a pair of SCM-19 v2 and use high quality jumpers that match my speaker cables. I found both clarity and smoothness improved with jumpers instead of the stock plates.

I asked the owner of Audiosensiblity cables about diagonally connecting speaker cables as you described and he suggested it is better to connect the speaker cables to the base driver posts since it uses/needs the most juice. He also recommended using one set of the best quality possible speaker cables along with jumpers rather than bi-wiring with two sets of lesser quality speaker cable (for a given budget.) I presume the same logic applies to tri-wiring (unless you are using multiple amps?)

I recently replaced the stock binding posts on the ATC's with WTB Nextgen, which required enlarging the mounting plate hole diameter. It was a bit of a project but here again clarity and smoothness improved. 

FWIW jumpers seem stupid expensive for what they are and I would suggest making your own with appropriately high quality speaker cable and terminations, i.e. 4 banana-spade jumpers for each speaker.

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lollipopguild's avatar
lollipopguild OP
132 posts
 

Don't get me wrong, all, it can still sound great, but like most I want better.  

I think it likely, however, that I will try for a warmer speaker cable.  I've read great things about the Purist Audio range.  In particular, their Poseidon might well do the job.

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