VertexAQ Site Syndication http://www.vertexaq.com Sat, 05 Jul 2008 09:37:18 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.vertexaq.com/information/welcome/welcome_to_vertex_aq.html Introduction Thank you for visiting our website. Below are a few short summary paragraphs about us, please explore the rest of the site to find out more. Who are we and what do we do? Vertex AQ is a small UK Company based in the heart of Wales. We manufacture a comprehensive range of cables, supports and mains products for hi-fi and home cinema use. We have been in business since 1999, and have built up a strong reputation for producing outstanding products. We have a small but good selection of dealers in the UK, and are now expanding overseas with a dealer in Stockholm and one in Monaco. Vertex - in a nutshell A short question. What is the essence of the Vertex approach, and the Vertex product range , and what's it going to do for me? A (not so) short answer! A conventionally set-up hi-fi system, as a complete entity, will suffer from some seriously debilitating effects. Some are external or 'environmental', others are 'interactive' in their nature. Looking closer we also find that some of these effects are constant, others are variable - and often a by-product of the constantly changing levels of energy that our systems generate (and therefore volume and music program dependent). We can categorize these problems broadly as follows: Mains borne Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) - largely environmental, can be variable, but can also be interactive (for instance, many CD players 'push' a substantial amount of RFI back onto the mains, polluting the supplies to other components in the system). Acoustic (vibrational) energy within component chassis - can be environmental, interactive and variable. Vibration might get into your components from the ground (up through the supports). It may be internally generated by devices such as transformers and optical disc transports, or just picked up from high sound pressure levels in your listening room. Acoustic (vibrational) energy being passed around the system by all the interconnecting cables. Again this is a combination of effects. Transformers constantly send their vibrations around all the mains leads, vibration from speakers is fed back to the amplifier along the speaker leads. And, similar to ground borne vibration being fed into your system through a stand, it can also be fed into your mains loom through the sockets in your wall. There are some other concepts to bring in here now too, to aid understanding (we never said it would be easy!) - we call these the root causes. Or in other words, what is it that the effects described above actually do to damage performance. Firstly, unwanted RFI in analogue circuits raises the noise floor, loosing fine detail and phase information (blurring the image), and 'inter-modulates' with mid and upper frequencies causing a noticeable harshness and edge. In digital circuits RFI raises digital distortion and effectively reduces the fidelity of the reproduced recording, sounding significantly flatter and compressed. Unwanted acoustic vibration causes extensive damage to sound reproduction because almost all electronic components are to some degree 'microphonic' - that is, if they are vibrated, they will turn some of that vibration into a small unwanted electrical signal, which is literally added to the actual signal we want to process - they all act like mini microphones! Vibrate a whole system, and the musical signal gets blurred and distorted, the damage varies massively with level so usable headroom is curtailed and important timing cues are lost. If you have not heard about these effects before, or seen these sort of descriptions, they can all seem rather complex, and perhaps not really plausible - after all surely, over the past 6 or 7 decades of hi-fi design, these things would have been fully explained and tackled. But, up until recently, they have been almost totally ignored. What we have done at Vertex is carefully identify and understand all these effects and designed techniques to counter them. And there is a very good reason why we have done this - when the 3 effects described above are significantly reduced, the improvement in audio reproduction is truly massive. At this point, to be convinced, you might wish to go to the reviews in the 'what others say' section. The 3 reviews that are probably the most comprehensive and that give you a true insight into the performance benefits, are 'Just Like Busses' by Paul Messenger, 'Parallel Universe' by Roy Gregory and 'Less Noise More Music!' by Nick Whetstone. So how do we counter these problems? Well, the key in a way is that a hi-fi is not a set of discrete boxes at all, as we said, its a completely interactive system. So, its actually the supports and interconnecting equipment that we use to tackle all the vibration and microphonic problems, and our various mains filters tackle the RFI issue. Lets start with our supports, because the basic theories here are fundamentally the same as in all the other products. The Kinabalu supports comprise an acoustically absorptive platform, a coupling tripod and a further 2 supporting feet (just to keep things level). The tripod is specifically designed to be a low 'acoustic impedance', and when correctly set up the system allows damaging acoustics to flow out of the box being supported, through the tripod and into the platform. Its a case of taking the acoustics away from somewhere you don't want it (the electronics) and dumping it somewhere else, where it cant do any harm (into the platform). What's the website for? Our website is here to give you information on the wide range of Vertex AQ products. We explain how they work in a system context, and what performance benefits you will get from using them. We intend that this website is not full of over-inflated marketing hype; our message is simple - our products work superbly, period. We will describe performance gains as accurately as possible, based mostly on the opinion of those who matter most - customers. There is a decade of research behind our products. We take great care over the technology, materials and build techniques we employ, to ensure your Vertex products are robust and reliable. But its really the performance that we take care of most. And just to make sure its not our imagination (or egos!) we can hear, all significant prototypes are sent to selected dealers (and maybe a customer or two!) to ensure that it provides demonstrably excellent performance at its price point. If they don't think it does, it doesn't go into production until its right. Not all of this website is complete yet - we are building it up as fast as we can. The UK dealers are all listed in the 'how and where to buy' section, and under 'what others say' you will find a comprehensive list of downloadable press reviews. We are now working on populating the products section, and this will keep building with additions every few weeks. The 'how it works' section will come along soon. If you have any questions for us, please use the feedback forms in the contact details under 'about us'.Latest updates: 18 May 2008 - What others say/Customer testimonials, new content added12 May 2008 - What others say/Customer testimonials, new content added16 Apr 2008 - What others say/Reviews, new hi>fi+ review added Information - Welcome Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:22:49 +0100