Some tweaks to the Den stereo system + Monster Cable MCX

Gentle reader,

The other day, I mentioned to my wife that I was perfectly happy with the sound system in the den. She laughed and said, "Right. Sure you are." "What? I haven't bought anything in a long time!" I replied. "Let's see, last weekend you told me you 'rearranged the stereo'." Well, I did say that and did do that. But for a good reason! As you will see. Please read on.

For the new reader, I have made numerous changes in the sound systems over the years and covered the changes in these digital pages. To make it easy for the readers, I compiled all the sound-related posts on this page: The Robb Collections: ALL my posts about stereo equipment, speakers and more!  I have made nine other posts since then showing changes/improvements. They say change is good and for those that may, I say, may, be slightly OCD, we are simply seeking order and in my case the best sound I can achieve with my humble budget.

I just took a look at the above linked post and the only photo shows the room as it stood then. If you look you will see a number of speakers and only a few pieces of equipment. That is because at that time, I had TWO SEPARATE SYSTEMS in the den or as I like to call it: The Listening Room. The glass and steel rack shown below was once on the left wall. That teak shelf in the linked post above now sits there and holds books and Asian stuff. Well, one of the nine posts showed the return of the subwoofer on which the CD tower rested back then. You see, the second system and the three wall mounted speakers plus the sub and the stacked components on the right plus two unseen rear speakers were strictly for playing the small assortment of six-channel (5.1) SACDs (Super Audio Compact Disc) that I owned. I finally realized that having that WHOLE kit of extra equipment was, well, silly. So, in order to help a buddy choose between buying a surround sound system for his TV/Blu-ray or buying an XBox ONE, I offered to give him that whole kit. Which I did. In return, he gave me his whole XBox 360 set-up which I passed on to my grandson. Some months later, he brought the subwoofer back because his wife thought it was too loud. That was good because I am in love with the little speakers shown below:

The story on those beauties can be read here: 

The Robb Collections: Converted my already upgraded Minimus 7 speakers to ribbon tweeters! 

As you can plainly see, they only have four inch woofers. Thus, bass is less than robust. So, rather that having to buy another subwoofer....

In the picture above, you can see a large black speaker on the left. That is one of the two Cerwin-Vega! LS-12 speakers. I am not using them, but will hang on to them because they are amazing and so efficient! Why can Cerwin-Vega! make such efficient speakers and the other makers not do so as well, I do not know. By efficient I mean that it takes very little amplifier power to make them play VERY LOUDLY! 

As to the second part of the subject line of this post: "Monster Cable MCX", M-Series is the second from the top-of-the-line of Monster Cable speaker wires/cables. The top is the "Z Series" which is outside of my budget.

Note the two shades-of-gray (or is it grey?) speaker cables above and below? Those are both MCX Series cables. The lighter colored ones are new and are MCX-1. The larger ones are MCX-2 which are more expensive and complex in their construction. You can Google these cables when you are finished reading if you are confused or seek more information.

To begin, when the subwoofer first returned, I placed it on the left side and neatly placed the Cerwin-Vega! LS-12 speakers on the right wall. This looked fine, (as you can see below) but I realized that the classical and movie score music has the Bass and Cello players on the right side of the orchestra. While I have STACKS of speaker wires and cables that I have tried over the years down in the work/laundry room, none were of sufficient length or quality. 

Above shows the subwoofer on the left and the type of wires, twisted-pair ones (I don't recall their name) also made by Monster Cable, supplied the signals to it and frankly didn't look very good. OCD, remember? Plus, you see those two black cables that are heading up the left corner walls? They are one of two pairs I found at The Village Thrift store. They are of Chinese make: XINXIN is the name and while they seemed well made, the actual conductors (wires) inside were quite thin. 

Where are they going? You may wonder. To terminals in the ceiling, through other no-name twisted-pair 10-gauge cables in the attic, to terminals in the ceiling and then attached to one or the other pair of speakers in THIS ROOM, which is next to the den. It is my study/home office/museum/library/simulation-racing-station room. I use Monster Cable XP (their least expensive) speaker wires in here. Confused yet? My wife gave up years ago on trying to understand all the changes. I can't imagine why. 

I was able to score two new 30-foot reels of Monster Cable MCX-1 speaker cables which included the red and black "speaker pants" shown. As you can see, I use a variety of brands of banana plugs. I'm leaning towards Nakamichi BFA N0524E units which are the silver ones above. I like Monster Cables various ones as they are high quality and fit tightly in their respective receptacles. There are knock-off such as the ones seen below, but they only hold tight the first time you plug them in. Eventually, I will replace all of them with those Nakamichi BFA units. 

Above is the MCX-1 cables as plugged into the high level inputs on the subwoofer. The low-level inputs are the silver RCA terminals on the left. That is a PANGEA power cable you see. PANGEA is sold exclusively by Audio Advisor. They are very high quality and are also available in 7 gauge as well. Those are called: AC-9 and are quite unwieldy.  I sold the one I had for that reason. The AC-14 is fine for my subwoofer and Dynaco ST-200 power amplifier's needs. PANGEA is expanding in the High-End (Audiophile) world and offering more and more products. They are showing the rest of that industry that quality audio products do not have to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to satisfy the "golden ear" segment of the population.

Speaking of the Dynaco Stereo 200 amplifier, here is the terminals on the back. It may look confusing because of the glass shelf it is sitting on shows the cables attached to the preamp below it. The blue RCA cables are Liberty Cable brand which I once had the entire system wired with. They are THX certified. (George Lucas in a marketing genius!) They are the input cables, the other ends of them are below the glass and plugged into the Yamaha preamplifier as are the other RCA cables. Almost all are various Monster Cable units. The red and black terminals on the right are the two sets of speaker terminals on the amp. The small yellow, blue, red and black wires lead to the separate Radio Shack power meters. Note the Nakamichi banana plugs on the top. Below are Monster Cable double-banana plugs. The top row (A) hold MCX-2 cables which feed the small wood-cased speakers. The bottom row (B) feed the speaker switch and hold the new MCX-2 cables which go to the speaker switch.

Above is the LEGEND LE412 Speaker Control switch. I reconfigured it so that the red (right) terminals are on top and black (left) terminals are on the bottom The two pairs of terminals are 3/4" apart which is the standard for "double-banana" plugs. I used to use them exclusively. Right to left, the speaker cables are: INPUT L&R, speaker outputs 1 L&R, speaker outputs 2 L&R. #1 connects to the subwoofer. #2 to the speakers in this room. Do you see the difference between the Monster Cable plugs and the knock-off ones? By looks, not much, but quality and holding power. THAT is the difference. Quality costs, but it doesn't have to cost too much. WHEW!

You got all that? My wife is shaking with laughter that I would A: go to all that trouble and 2: to photograph and write about it. But you understand, right? 

Conclusions: I found an immediate difference in the subwoofer due to the replacement of the other M/C twisted-pair cables with the MCX-1 cables. I would usually have to crank the volume on the subwoofer to 50, with the new cables, only to 35 for the same volume. MCX-1 has fairly thin conductors verses the size of speaker cables I usually use. The MCX-2 is constructed with two sizes of conductors; thick and thin. In both cases they too are twisted around each other, but wrapped with two different kinds of covering. I am going to substitute the MCX-2 main cables with the other reel of MCX-1 to see, hear actually, if they make a sonic difference. More to follow.

UPDATE! After test listening with the MCX-1 speaker cables, I was certain that bass was missing. I switched to the thicker cables and found that I was correct! I looked on line for reviews of the MCX-1 and found that others detected the same loss of bass. So, I removed it all and eventually all of my M-Series cables. I now use exclusively Monster Cable Z-Series cables and the sound is superb.

Thanks for looking,

Scott

Updated May 8, 2019