Topic: Settling

MATERIAL:

I have been perceived as slow, very slow in my designing. The main reason is settling. The reason we hear muddy when settling is because our system is in the process of dropping to the lowest possible note it can make. Since this note is bigger than any other notes or frequencies it throws our system into a state of messy deliverance until the notes have a chance to develop harmonically. It's very common for us to stop shy of the bottom notes development. When we do this we almost always end up with a brittle sound or one that is shifted upward from natural.

This is another reason I have never really truly trusted reviewers reviews. They stop way short of letting a system settle before making their claims. They are in a constant state of change which never allows them to hear the bottom note.

I have also seen many use subs who actually do not need them. Our room/speaker/amp interaction is far more powerful than we give credit to. If our rooms go down there than most free resonant cabs will follow. We must learn to throw away specs when it comes to our rooms. Meaning, if a speaker (driver) is said to bottom out at 50Hz in a test chamber this has no relevance to what the driver will really drop to in a room that goes into the 20s. Let me give an example. Yikes listening room right now easily goes into the 20s. This is mainly do to the construction/shape of the room. When he plays the mini mods they follow the room down to the bottom note with the amp he is using. When we have used a slightly different configuration of system in there you can clearly hear the bottom note not being completed. Why?

Our systems are vibrating making machines, and everything in our system that lets those vibrations happen "in-tune" adds to the efficiency of our sound. As I have been saying for decades "there is no set formula for bringing out the most music other than opening up the full range and tuning it in". If people came over to my house right now and placed their finger on my amp circuit board they would feel the music playing through it. Whenever we do anything to filter these vibrations electronically or through dampening we are taking a big risk of loosing much of the music. At the same time when we apply tuning through transferring the mechanical part of the signal we find magic when the frequencies fall in alignment with each other harmonically.

Settling is a huge tuning tool because it ties itself to the lowest notes, and the lowest notes are the foundation or floor to all the notes above. When we have a more stable bottom our other notes have something to rest on that allows them to "float" or become stable themselves. A stable bottom is the difference between splashy open highs and a sudden here and gone hit without sustaining power. Sustaining power is what makes our soundstages expansive and lifelike.

Through this process we must always remind ourselves that vibration is not distortion. Vibration is energy. The big bottom waves have tons of it and can make or break all the other waves.

MATERIAL:

Time is always the factor in these test. The question for me always is "if I don't let it settle how do I know?". I've gotten use to the settling process which kind of goes like this. At first clean and shifted up, next mellow but disembodied, then finally the real sound where you can here some of the full range settling in.

It's easy to be fooled by the middle part of settling and I feel this is where most probably get lost, confused and make irrational changes. At my place the repeat button is one of my most important tools. Back in my writing room I can tell when it is time to listen. It's when this bottom note floats down the hall. All of a sudden the hall sounds like liquid music and I know it is time to go listen. Yes, in an open area I can tell more about the sound of the system than sitting in the listening chair. And I might add half of the fun of listening for me is getting the sound to flow through the whole house and that wonderful sense that something special is going on in the next room or rooms away. I think this sets my systems apart from high end audio more than any other factor. It also speaks volumes for the harmonic balance of a system. For me, I want to listen while sitting, cooking, writing, bathing or even doing something outside. I like hearing something down the hall that makes me want to jump out of my writing seat and run down the hall to hear it.

When I do things in my system correctly I can hear when it is time to take the next step anywhere in my house. For example, I can hear that it will soon be time to take the next step in 22 gauge wire. If today I would not have heard the system drop into it's smooth harmonic flow I would have known that I either have to wait or back up in my tweaking. But the sound is full and flowing which tells me that it is safe to go from Type2 speaker cable to Type1 and hear what happens. Listen for brittle or dull! Your sound should have a full range flow to it that is not bright and brittle or dull and dampened. These sounds are sure signs of not moving on but backing up. Sometimes backing up and waiting. If your ever around me and my setups you will sometimes see me stop and just sit there as if I am trying to make up my mind. Everything to me is a sense of timing, a sense of settling, a sense of harmonic flow and energy. Change usually effects the fundamental and the first harmonic but these things in my experience are only the front end of the whole which is much more musically involved and expressive. When there is a change I don't listen for the now but the what will be. I find it very useful to go from a first harmonic listener to an open harmonic listener. It's like eating food at the right temperature. There is a window of taste where the ingredients are at their perfect essence. You could take the food out and eat it too soon but the difference is huge and the blend is effected.