Vertex AQ

Vertex AQ – release your system’s potential

[Vertex AQ has now formed a new company, Quiescent Technologies, which is building the Vertex principles into new products. We have left this section on the site because the customer comments and underlying principles apply equally to the Quiescent products.]

“This is one of the best single upgrades I’ve ever made and certainly the most cost-effective one.” Dave C, Bristol (about the Pico Component Grounding Blocks)

“One word Jeremy – FANTASTIC! System is really singing. A total transformation. And the best thing, with just 3 items, there’s more to come!” Andrew B, Chipping Sodbury

Vibration from speakers and transformers is carried round the system, by the metal in all the cables, shakes circuits that are bathed in magnetic fields and generates spurious signals that pollute the music – not hifi hype, just basic physics.

Imaging, treble purity, timing of musicians, music flow, listener involvement – all suffer when recorded information is destroyed. No amount of equipment upgrading can recover what has gone.

LeadingEdge platforms and Vertex cables drain vibration, block it from damaging the music signal and lay permanent foundations upon which to build.

“…getting the fundamentals correct in the first place is just too important and for that, I can only thank you yet again for introducing me to the range of Vertex AQ products. I cannot over-estimate their importance as a vital part of any music reproduction system, AV (Blu-ray & plasma) included.” Richard C, Bristol

An important statement from a very comprehensive review by Roy Gregory in hifi+ magazine, “The Vertex components deployed here are far from cheap, but in purely performance terms they represent

a bargain, both as upgrades and in releasing the performance potential in the electronics you’ve already paid for. At no point in the process did the cost of the upgrade seem expensive given the musical results.

Indeed, translated into equipment terms, you’d be well pleased to achieve these levels of improvement from a change of electronics costing many times as much.”

Read more customer reaction here: Vertex comments

Why Vertex stuff works

There is a lot to read in this section but the next few paragraphs explain in more detail why systems suffer.

Understanding the battle – it may be your best step ever in improving your system.

In essence: two types of pollution – vibration (microphony) and also radio waves, all around us, interact with the music signal and change it, destroying information that cannot be recovered.

It’s worth repeating –no amount of equipment upgrading can put back what has gone.

Read on for explanations and how to deal with the problem.

Vibration damage

Do you have transformers and loudspeakers in your system?
Then they will be creating vibration. It matters because those vibrations circulate round the entire system through the metal cables, unfortunately very efficiently.

Transformers pulse, not just at 50Hz but also in sympathy with incoming high frequency electrical noise, from radio transmissions, wi-fi, computers, TVs, fluorescent lights – also coming from the neighbours.

Loudspeakers vibrate to move air but they also export the full spectrum out through the cables and back into the whole system

This damaging energy enters circuits carrying the most delicate signals. Think “microphony”. Bathed in magnetic fields those circuits resonate and generate spurious signals, out of phase and out of time.

Damaged timing is a very serious flaw because we are all very sensitive to it, music doesn’t flow and performers seem ragged. With degraded timing musicians sound under-rehearsed, but restore it and foot-tapping returns.

Upgrading electronics and speakers will not bring back the ‘liveness’, leaving listeners unsettled, searching expensively and fruitlessly for the solution.

Radio Frequency Interference – the damage

Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) from TV and radio transmissions, emergency services and mobile phone transmissions create electrical interference that seeps into the system at every possible point. The mains is an ideal entry point but it’s also picked up by cables acting as aerials and also at every metal/metal junction where plugs enter components.

RFI interacts with the music signal, deleting detail, spoiling phase information (imaging and depth) and, worst for most listeners, adds an edge and hardness, especially with digital signals.

Money spent on Vertex and LeadingEdge components will bring more improvements than the same amount spent on upgrading the major equipment. (Read the Parallel Universe review from hifi+ below.)

You will be surprised at the scale of these improvements – read the customer comments at the top:

  • reduced sibilance and edginess
  • cleaner treble
  • better separation of performers and imaging
  • greater openness/soundstage
  • greater clarity
  • more detail
  • deeper and faster bass
  • better timing – really important, the toe-tapping trigger

You will connect far better with the musicians and the performance. Everything will flow better, make more sense and be more enjoyable, even recordings that have been unplayable in the past. You’ll see in these reviews how the writers comment on the jump in musical enjoyment.

Vertex reviews

There are many magazine reviews and here is a small selection: Parallel Universe,  TNT audio 07,  Hifi 41 isolation.

See below for product information, Try Before you Buy 

See comments from customers under News and under What Others Say.

That’s the story in essence but read on if you’d like to understand more about the high-level scientific research that underpins these Vertex and LE components.

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Spurn the ‘sticking plaster’ method of system matching

It’s simply wrong to think of the Vertex AQ components as accessories, to “tweak up” performance after you’ve bought everything else, the icing on the cake. Because of the insidious pollution suffered by all systems, actually changing their performance, there’s a strong chance that you will choose the wrong combination of components, setting off characteristics one against another to achieve a listenable balance.

Musical information will be sacrificed in achieving that ‘balance’. So-called ‘system matching’ is a path to unhappiness, trying to soften an edgy abrasive sound or a bloated bass. That’s a ‘sticking plaster’ solution that will actually lose musical information –it’s not satisfying and eventually, you, the unhappy listener will start on the difficult and chancy upgrade path yet again. Better to sort the problem at source and lay solid foundations.

The technology developed by Vertex, for mains supplies, cables and platforms, has been applied with astonishing results inside major system components – electronics, equipment supports and loudspeakers.

Vertex technology is built into electronics from sister brand Quiescent, treating the evils of vibration and RF interference at circuit board level, with spectacular benefits, as proven in the earlier Aletheia dac-1

In conjunction with Kaiser Acoustics in Germany Vertex vibration-draining has been built into the Vivace and Chiara in the Kawero! range of loudspeakers – see Kawero!

Read also the section here on LeadingEdge , another joint project with Kaiser Acoustics to make furniture-quality equipment racks, hugely benefitting from Vertex AQ technology cunningly hidden in the structure, and a range of room acoustic treatment panels.

There’s a clear description of the forces, mechanical and electrical, at work in this Vertex AQ paper: Systematic Approach.

Is it foot-tapping?

We’d like to say something critical to understanding why mistakes are made in choosing equipment: our ears and brain were not designed for listening to music, they were designed for survival, like the snap of a twig and where the sound came from.

So? What this means is that we hear the timing well before we hear the pitch or tone and timing was crucial in locating a potential threat – and it’s the timing of music that is so badly damaged in most systems. Distorted timing leaves us unsatisfied and thinking an upgrade is necessary.

We’ll go out on a limb here: when “upgrading” you will actually buy the wrong components unless you first put some Vertex items in place to correct the underlying faults that plague all systems – yes, all systems. Nothing is immune. Just because your CD player (or whatever) is recognised globally as the proverbial… We’ve proved it in systems from £5,000 to £150,000, to our satisfaction and, importantly, the customer’s.

The thing is, you are very likely to blame the CD source, the amp or the speakers for a sound you dislike – whereas the music signal is being crippled by the system itself, with RF polluted mains and vibration creating spurious signals.

‘System matching will sort out these problems’ (no it won’t)

This is where advice and our Try Before You Buy can save you a lot of money.

Are Vertex components expensive? Here are Roy Gregory’s words from hifi+

“At no point in the process did the cost of the upgrade seem expensive given the musical results. Indeed, translated into equipment terms, you’d be well pleased to achieve these levels of improvement from a change of electronics costing many times as much (our emphasis). And as we’ve discovered, the impact of this approach on the performance of even quite basic electronics is frankly astonishing. The simple fact is, most of us have never heard what our expensive electronic boxes can do…”

There’s a lot of science and very high-level maths behind all this

In case you think this is just another “black magic” ploy consider this: a significant part of the Vertex armoury is based on knowledge gained from non-destructive testing of aircraft.

From its military experience the company is now working with one of the MoD’s defence research agencies, Acuity, and developing tests that, for the first time ever in the field of hifi, show the dramatic and damaging twisting of timing information.

In simple terms, the research shows that no system at any price level is fast enough to follow the music signal, there’s always a lag in response. The bigger and more complex the system the more likely it is to suffer significant inertia.

Some other hifi companies are taking a deep interest, with the idea of using findings to improve their own products – a very significant development and one that will put them ahead in the market. Read an in-depth explanation on the Vertex web site: Time Domain Measurement and download a PDF or click this link ka paper.

CD player response (red) from the music signal (green)

From the Knowledge Alliance paper, showing the displacement of the CD player response (red) from the music signal (green). Note how the CD player response lags behind the music signal on the Time axis as it changes rapidly. Timing displacement worsens as volume and complexity increase, so heavy rock or full orchestral music suffer incrementally as replay volume rises –exactly why so many systems sound worse as the volume increases.

We are particularly struck by the rigour of this interesting partnership: “…the Acuity staff are applying the highest level of scrutiny to the work, just as they would if they were delivering information to the UK MoD” – taken from the document.

Our ear/brain combination is a survival sense and their sensitivity and discrimination are extraordinary. The traditional measurements of frequency response and distortion are not irrelevant but they miss by a mile the other things that our ears listen for in music. Timing information is critical to our enjoyment.

So, where to start? At its simplest probably a mains distribution block, an equipment platform and a mains lead (see more detail below), but to understand why you’ll probably need to read some explanation. Contact us to discuss your system and seek our advice about where to start. Also visit the Vertex AQ web site: Vertex AQ

Energy absorption

The two key elements in the Vertex approach are mains treatment – not so unusual though their particular approach is (more on this below) – and acoustic energy absorption/blocking, ie not isolation. Isolation methods produce variable results and now Vertex are showing that there’s much more damaging energy created inside the components – generated by the system itself – than there is coming from outside. In fact, by isolating one is trapping the energy and causing even more problems. The villains are especially power supplies and loudspeakers but almost anything else, at a lower level, carrying a current.

Put simply, vibration across a very wide band of frequencies – not just low frequency vibration that we can feel – shakes circuits that are carrying currents in complex magnetic fields. Spurious electrical signals are created that do massive damage:

  • timing of the music at different frequencies is warped, spoiling imaging and tonality
  • bass sounds loose and imprecise because the start-of-note timing clues are lost
  • phase information responsible for imaging and placing of performers is lost
  • high frequencies are distorted, creating an aggressive edge to female vocals, brass instruments etc
  • and fine detail creating ‘presence’ is destroyed
  • all this information loss limits dynamics, making music sound ‘flat’
  • the loss also limits useable volume range: low and music lacks interest, higher and distortion makes it unlistenable.

A classic mistake is to think that a more powerful amplifier will ‘control’ the loose bass – it may sound better in some ways but it’s likely the extra vibrational energy will cause even greater damage, as in the list above!

None of this information loss and damage can be properly recovered by upgrading the major components. Yet people all too often are persuaded into ‘upgrading’ the main boxes, vainly seeking the information that has already been lost. Even sadder is the fact that better components will show up this loss even more savagely.

MISSING IMAGE

Vertex platforms in the Kinabalu range proved highly successful over the years in draining this damaging energy out of the equipment.

Now the Kinabalu range has been replaced by the beautifully-made LeadingEdge platform that is also significantly more effective.

Graphic showing the fast path to drain energy from the equipment into the labyrinth
Cross-section of the LeadingEdge platform – note especially the fast path to drain energy from the equipment into the labyrinth

It’s worth spending a moment here to describe the operation of the platforms because there is often some misunderstanding amongst audiophiles, probably because there are other “cone solutions” out there. Besides the two rubber-tipped cones that are supplied purely to maintain correct height, there is one hard steel cone that couples the metal chassis through the metal plate to the acoustic labyrinth beneath where the energy is dissipated.

In other words, the cones and the invisible labyrinth are one complete energy-draining system. It is the labyrinth that is the “magic” ingredient, helped by the hard cone and the metal plate that form a swift path for the energy to travel with a low mechanical impedance right through from the metal chassis.

If cones are placed on different surfaces, such as wood, glass or granite alone the results will be variable because the energy has no clear destination. There is a significant danger that energy will find its way back into the chassis, rapidly and with a ‘glassy’ sound in the case of glass, and with some time delay in the case of other materials, naturally causing some smearing of information.

There’s fuller information here on the Vertex web site: Time Domain Measurement where you can download the measurement paper that focuses particularly onto the performance of the platforms and has shown remarkable new evidence of the damage that we hear but that has so far eluded measurement.

This is ground-breaking research, conducted at the highest scientific level in one of the MoD’s agencies.

The report is a technical read because it involves very high-level maths but it’s a prime example of the dangers of shutting one’s eyes to the complex in audio and relying instead on simple solutions. It’s no exaggeration to say that this is a major breakthrough for the audio industry, for the first time allowing us to quantify the damaging effects of timing distortion. The discovery will also improve analysis of search data in the defence industry.

Cable technology

An explanation of the energy absorption process is simpler with the Vertex cables. With a stethoscope and two interconnect cables, one Vertex and the other a standard cable, it’s easy to show the blocking ability. Place the stethoscope on one end of the regular cable and gently stroke the other end – the sound carried through the wire is LOUD. Do the same with the Vertex cable and it’s virtually silent. This blocking ability is especially important with the speaker cables, because they naturally link the very noisy speakers into the rest of the system.
One misconceived idea “to gain more control” in a system is to upgrade to more powerful amplifiers and more meaty speakers. Of course this actually puts a lot more vibration into the system! Think of the direct connection from speakers back into the amps and thence into the rest of the system, even directly back into delicate sources such as a cartridge, efficiently conducted through the metal cables.

A simple illustration of this point: how often have you heard a system that sounds good with quieter, simpler music but becomes unpleasant and raucous as the complexity and volume builds? That is acoustic energy doing its damage. It’s also a good example of how “upgrading” to more powerful amplifiers, for instance, may help with some aspects but may well also cause a lot of disappointment.

We make sure your money is always spent in the way that will bring the greatest enjoyment – and that way might not include conventional upgrades.

Interestingly, the reputation that silver cables can sound ‘harder’ is a perfect illustration of their greater efficiency: because silver is a harder metal than copper it is conducting this damaging energy round the system more successfully! It’s not the fault of the silver, it’s simply revealing faulty system set-up.

Mains treatments

The mains treatments come in various forms, from a range of plug-in filters through probably one of the best-value items – the Taga six-way distribution block that both absorbs damaging energy and also filters the mains – to the Aletheia PSU1 and 2 for ultimate mains cleaning.

An important point to make is that these filtering devices do not limit dynamics, a common criticism of filters from other manufacturers. The reason is simple: there are no components in the supply line. The Jaya series simply plug into a socket alongside the equipment, nothing is plugged into them.
The Taga distribution blocks, standard and HiRez, may look like many others but each socket is connected directly to the input – no restriction on current supply.

The filtering with all the Vertex devices is done by “shunting” the RF contamination, ie drawing it off to the side and dumping it to Earth. This is in contrast to those of other manufacturers that have chokes, transformers or diodes in the supply path that can limit instantaneous current delivery, otherwise music loses dynamics and sounds flat.

The second crucial function of the Taga block is acoustic energy absorption – every component plugged into it benefits. The technology is the same as is used in the platforms and cable boxes, described above. In this case the Taga absorbs vibrational energy coming in from the mains and also from the power supplies of the system components, draining the energy down the mains cables.

The Taga is therefore an excellent first step whether or not there are any other Vertex components in the system.

Vertex produce a range of HiRez filters, cables and a Taga, using “stealth” materials that absorb electro-magnetic interference (EMI).

The HiRez Jaya filter is an astonishing component that allows life, energy and transparency to leap out of the music, all information that was being killed off before by interference coming through the mains. Here’s the reaction of a customer who bought one: “So I have spent tens of thousands of pounds chasing insight and transparency, which ultimately took a £960 ‘add on’ to unveil.”

Vertex Taga 6-way mains distribution block

  • Vertex Taga 6-way distribution block – also available with Continental (Schuko) or US sockets.
  • HiRez version has a higher performance vibration-absorbing labyrinth plus RFI/EMI absorption
  • Balanced HiRez Taga takes performance even higher, supplying source components with ultra-pure balanced power

Try before you buy: we’re willing to lend out items for you to try in your own system, to satisfy yourself that this is not mumbo-jumbo stuff. We ask only that you pay the return (very rare!) cost if it does not live up to expectations. Mind you, if you are not impressed in the trial it could be that your system is stifling the improvements, which means that it’s also losing a lot of musical information.

(Note: Why the strange un-memorable names? All the products are named after mountain peaks around the world. One customer said to us, “Ah yes, I’ve climbed Mount Kinabalu!”)

 

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"When love and skill work together expect a masterpiece".

John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)