"Would it be worthwhile..."

[jimtranr]

...to replace my newly-acquired, ‘customer-returned’ Paradigm Studio 20 version 5s’ stock brass speaker-terminal jumpers with something close to all-out?”

Not a trivial or no-brainer question, given the Studio 20s’ system context and application. As shown below, they’re parked five-and-a-half feet apart, driver-center-to-driver-center, in a home-office system squeezed into a sardine-can shared-space extra bedroom that accommodates a single bed and a host of DIY oak bookcases affording equal opportunity to history and cook books. (I said it was a shared space.)



Aside from the acoustics challenges the room poses, the speaker cable running from the 125 watt-per-channel, Cardas-terminal c-j Sonographe SA250 is barebones, fixed-income-retiree basic: Banana-terminated Blue Jeans/Belden 5T00UP 10-gauge. So the “worthwhile” question had to consider the extent to which the signal arriving at the woofer terminals was compromised by the cable feeding them as well as how the Belden would “play” with whatever jumper cable I selected. Another factor was the Studio 20’s 12 db/oct crossover point--2KHz. How much quality and timing discontinuity might I expect from the dissimilarity between the Belden and an upgraded 6” jumper--a not insignificant consideration in view of what extended listening to the stock-jumpered Studio 20s had indicated as excellent integration from midrange to top end. Nonetheless, something had to be better than this:



As a contextual aside, this is where I spend a lot of time knocking out unpublished murder mysteries that I write to keep my septuagenarian brain from vegetating. As a consequence, the home-office system gets more listening time than my main rig. The program sources are CD rips and downloaded high-resolution (24/88 through DSD128 and DxD) files fed via a Wireworld Starlight 7 USB cable to a TEAC UD-501 DAC. The music itself ranges from classical to jazz to “big” film scores to vocal standards…and an occasional, though not frequent, toe dip into opera.

Since the USB feed is Wireworld and the interconnects from DAC to preamp and preamp to amp are WW Equinox 6s, I contacted Ivan for a price read on Equinox 7 and Eclipse 7 jumpers. And then took all of about 15 seconds to decide once he’d replied. As you can see here, I jumped close to all-out into the pool.



Yes, those are Eclipse 7 jumpers.

So what’s the verdict in this extreme-nearfield setting (I push my computer-hugging chair back four feet for more critical listening) now that they’ve been in place for about 75 burn-in hours?

I made the right move. Whether handling the relative intimacy of a Previn jazz trio or the brash exuberance of the massed Sofia Opera chorus belting out Borodin’s paean to Khan Konchak in “Prince Igor”, the new jumper configuration imparts greater transparency and what my ears tell me—not subtly--is more timbral “rightness” to the midrange and top end. The overall result on recordings where the engineering/producing team concentrated on putting the listener into the performance venue is a markedly improved sense of “being there”—no small feat given my listening environment.

Do I hear a qualitative difference an octave or so below the Studio 20’s spec’d crossover point? Yes, but it’s not as distracting as I thought it might be. Obviously, the solution is to—well, let’s just say I need to get cracking on writing a saleable blockbuster so I can “Eclipse 7” the feed from the amp.

In the meantime, thanks, Ivan. I love the upgrade.

[Masterlu]

Jim... Outstanding, thanks for sharing your experience!

[Yamaki]

Great write up!

[John Jordan]

Jim-

Changing jumpers can make a real and admittedly surprising difference!
BTW, I too use the 10g Belden amp to speakers on 24 and 30 foot runs.