Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics

Hey, Sonic,

I've been strolling through the TuneLand archives and I recently noticed that same thing about the toe-in angle in earlier Tune Days. Obviously since then Mr. Green has moved on to the "sound doesn't travel in a straight line" approach, which, nobody can deny, has been working for him and others. He is a master who admits to also being a student, so new and better ideas will constantly come through. You have been on a similar path, always experimenting, looking for your own new idea while re-examining old ones.

As for me, I'm ready to ditch my Magnepans. If they can only work well when set-up according to the manufacturer's instructions (e.g., keep away from walls, angle and tilt them away from walls, etc.), that's kind of restrictive, isn't it? I'm thinking maybe mine sounded better in the other room with me at the rear third and the speakers at the front third and a quarter distance from the side walls. With those upright shelves behind me, I could get sound to dance around my head, but I moved on to try and try and try other things, most of which I didn't document. And that is a problem in itself because TuneLand has always been about expounding on what one one hears so Mr. Green or you or someone else can chime in and give advice. So I really must try to participate more with my observations of what is happening in my media room.

Now I'm going at it in an entirely different room and already feeling I may hit that same wall, or should I say walls, as the TuneLand Dream is to make those walls disappear. I'll continue to see if I can remedy that situation, but I would much rather be pushing on with some free resonant, tunable speakers.

Yes, I sound bummed today, don't I? My analogy of the slow kid who sits at the back of the class does fit me. I'm still trying to sort out how pressure zones and laminar flow interact. I tend to read things and then not "learn" them, so I have to go back to the source again and again until it sinks in. So, I'm perusing oldie but goodie threads about listening to and shaping pressure zones and trying to understand how laminar flow can be used for good instead of evil.

But, know this, your chronicles are interesting and informative and I admire your tenacity.

By the way, you never mentioned what you heard on "Sun King" with this latest move.

Hi Robert

Sonic does not apply the "Sun King" test because of something I discussed back on Tuneland that different issues of the same title can sound very different so if we (Michael, you and me) want to compare notes we have to be using the same CD/LP cut of the same work or we are going to get different results. Sonic's Abbey Road CD which I bought just for the test is a remaster and a different issue series from what Michael tests with.

For instance, the Come Together and Octopus Garden tracks on this CD are very different in balance and soundstage compared to a Beatles Anthology box set in my collection.

The Anthology bass is tighter and the soundstage is more detailed compared to the Abbey Road cut -- on Come Together, I can here the tom rolls in the RH channel moving back and forth parallel to the RH wall, whereas on the Abbey Road they just roll in one spot. The bass on the Abbey Road CD is thick and bordering on the boomy, the treble detail (cymbals and some instrumental separation) are better however.

This experience is consistent with others CDs in my collection -- remastered issues and "series production" sound different in frequency balance, detail and soundstage. Better but not always...but always a lot pricier.

I get audiophiles recommending me some remaster and say "this remaster of Kind of Blue, Way Out West ... etc will [add analogy of surprise and audio heart seizure or jaw dislocation]".

The reality strikes Sonic cold in most instances. Different, yes. Better? No....EQ and tweaked for sure. And this last weekend, the buzz around some stores in my town is that yet another reissue of Weavers Reunion at Carnegie Hall is available.

Spare me! I got the original Vanguard CD with the reversed R-L channels. This is not Sonic's favourite type of music but fun in some places and entertaining in others with nice details -- Guantanamera and Goodnight Irene. But what is another version of the same thing to achieve beyond parting audiophiles with their money again and again?

So the whatever results I get on Sun King is not going to directly comparable with Michael's results since we are working off different mastering output copies of the same recording.

Nevertheless with my newly reset speaker position, I played "Sun King" just to see what I hear.

The Flight of the Crickets

Q1: When they start out do they start right at the right speaker or slightly to the outside of the speaker?
No, they start centre to Right of centre at the front wall, hard to decide if we are hearing a big single cricket or cloud of them.

The Frog (ribbit) is clear and at the RH speaker behind the panel by a couple of feet and outside. The ribbit doesn't move during the sequence.

There is a small bell-like sound at the far LH front corner played briefly.

Q2: Do they start in front of the speaker or behind the speaker?
Behind, at the front wall.

Q3: How high are they?
About 5.5ft to 6 ft up and stay at that level in my 10 ft high listening room. The voices and instruments image at a height about 3.5ft from the floor plane

Q4: And very important, what is the pattern shaped like when they cross the room?
They cross the room at an angle from the start point towards the LH speaker, fairly straight with a little curve

Q5: Do they stop at the left speaker, or travel beyond the speaker?
They reach behind the LH speaker and then continue moving outside by 2ft and may curve along the wall for 3ft but softly. By this time instruments and voices come in and the sequence is over.

Sonic

Hey, Sonic,

I forgot about there being different issues of "Abbey Road." The works of one of my favorites from the 1980s, This Mortal Coil, have recently been re-issued in a "re-mastered" compilation. Am I running out to buy it? No. I've been using their last CD, "Blood," as one of my references and I don't need a remaster job to throw me off my listening.

Home video is the worst for constantly re-issuing movies with better picture quality, new 5.1 soundtracks (even re-mixing mono tracks into stereo, with myriad results depending on if they have the original separate dialog, music and sound effects tracks to work with) and documentaries. Then, when you get your favorites on one format, they invent another; VHS to laserdisc to DVD to Blu-ray. At least with music, nothing has really circumvented the CD, yet, although Super AudioCD and DVD-Audio have tried (as well as, to an even lesser extent, High Definition Compatible Digital, a.k.a HDCD).

Hi Michael, Robert and Zonees

Sonic’s experiment with the Magneplanar 1.5QRs moved inward to 24.75 inches from the side wall is done.

Conclusion – the earlier placement at 18 inches from the sidewall with less toe-in throws a larger instrumental stage that resembles a live musical event more closely. The narrower spacing of the speakers sounded worse as settling progressed over the last week, but sounded promising when first set up.

I think this about validates the earlier positioning of the loudspeakers. So we are back to where Sonic’s system was on September 1 when I felt the room and equipment was nicely balanced given the available Tune equipment and the conditions of my dwelling.

One other thing that led to my going back to the 18” placement was how far the reproduction of Sun King in my system from what Michael talked about even though we are using different mastered CDs.

See what The Flight of the Crickets now sounds like with the earlier speaker placement:

Q1: When they start out do they start right at the right speaker or slightly to the outside of the speaker?

Yes, they start in the front Right corner actually a foot beyond the Right wall, the cricket sounds closer to a big single cricket.

The Frog (ribbit) is clearer, louder and now has more detail and size, more frogs behind the panel by a couple of feet and outside. The ribbit doesn't move during the sequence.


Q2: Do they start in front of the speaker or behind the speaker?

A bit outside the Right wall, at the Right front corner at the plane of the front wall.

Q3: How high are they?

About 5 ft now and stay at that level all through the panning. The voices and instruments image are still at a height about 3.5ft from the floor plane

Q4: And very important, what is the pattern shaped like when they cross the room?

They cross the room along the front wall for about ¾ the width of the wall towards the Left corner, then the crickets turn at a gentle curve, intersect the LH speaker and keep moving till the crickets are about 3 ft ahead and outside the LH speaker.

Q5: Do they stop at the left speaker, or travel beyond the speaker?

The crickets intersect the LH speaker and keep moving forward till they are 3ft ahead and outside the speaker.

Sonic will keep this speaker placement and move on with tuning from here.

I still don’t get a 35ft x 20ft expanse of crickets like Michael gets. The thing I cannot to get my head round is this: if the crickets are this big then the image of them is larger than my room and expands way beyond the room boundaries. If this is so, how do they move from the RH speaker to the LH hand speaker when the image size is far larger than the room and speaker spacing?

Sonic

"Michael, in your earlier set ups, you toed in your speakers quite a lot. I see this in your landmark interview with Positive Feedback where your original Tunevilla system had the Chameleon toed in almost to the drivers on axis to the the listener's ears and from your earlier diagrams in the Tuneland archives.

What made you move to a near zero toe-in set up? What were the differences and benefits of the more recent set up?"

2 answers. First one being a taste thing that changed in time and flavoring when I wanted it. The more the system was disasembled the more the toe went outward. Secondly many of the pictures and diagrams in those days were done by or for distributors who didn't want to change the status of setup. Meaning I was too radical and they wanted me to look more like I was part of the crowd. Yes, they were this goofy back then.

going to throw on Abbey in the little room real quick

OK, did my quick cricket test. I'll let this burn in a little and see what happens. I love this test! It is so innocent and harmless and yet so telling once you get use to it.

First off I haven't fixed my left room thing yet so until I do I can hear the hole. maybe I should wrap up my other tests so I can take care of this . I am the slowest listener on the planet when I need to be.

I'm surprised that the cabinets sound this good without a tuning bar in them yet. Of course they have that bubbling belly sound until the bar goes in but I need to do this so I can hear how the cabinet blodes before tuning. This is very important. If they don't blode they don't reach as far down when the bar is put in. The bar just by being in there brings the solidity to things even loose. Mainly because the connection is made from side to side. OK, enough of my secrets.

In this little room (only just shy of 9' wide) and even with the over sized 102 proto cabinets the crickets still started outside the room about 5 feet and double the frogs were front to back in the room. It was so cool I had to back up the track to the last song a ways so I could hear the frogs and crickets start. My front to back for some reason is astounding. The crickets and frogs had a rich spacial thing going on that was different from pin point. It was like being more in a field and the crickets moved across the stage but you still felt the field's presence. They were still focused but in a bigger space. Here's the staggering part though. The guitar is out of this world full, precise and warm. OMGoodness was that ever nice! Is he doing the strings by hand or bar? I don't know but the vibrato on the strings is sustained and beautifully round. This was a 3D event and to honest I was not expecting this at all. On track 6 I do hear the lack of tuning bar but for some weird reason Sun King was spot on and when the next track started back to the tuning bar missing. Could there be something about Sun King that wants bigger and even more body than the rest. What was also surprising is I thought the bass was going to load but it was really nice with a bit of sweetness to it. A magic moment, how about that.

Greetings Zonees

Sonic has been working on my secondary system after getting a 300B single-ended triode amp. I am driving it with a Sony DVD player (tuned, of course), and my new amp drives the Fostexs with 7 nice triode watts. Those things are musical and a pleasure to listen to and I have been doing a lot of listening to this system set up in a smallish room in another part of Sonic’s dwelling. Apart from the Sony having screws loosened, tie wraps cut, Michael’s power cable, there is some basic tuning done such Harmonic Springs x 4 under the Sony, MTDs under the amp – with its big transformer, this amp is too heavy for Harmonic Springs, Michael Green clamprack shelves, rods and cones but no clamping, plus Picasso interconnects. These are some of the things left over after my main system went “simple”. The room is untuned and will stay in its natural state.

I like this sound a lot. Some may say it has a signature and it probably does. Sonic thinks it harks back to an age when sound equipment were designed primarily by ear.

As for the main system, Sonic has been working on it too. My latest tune started with something unrelated and with an observation – I read some articles on cosmology where scientists were discussing the shape of the Universe – is it infinite, does it coil back on itself so that if you keep traveling in one direction you will end up where you started? So we have the theory of a soccer ball-shaped universe where going out one “panel” brings you back through an opposite panel on the other side of the ball. Of course the distances involved are measured in billions of light-years. There is also a Slab Universe model – it is infinite or far larger in one direction (let’s say “horizontal”) but much shorter in the other (the “vertical”). Think of a slice of bread….

The observation: at a concert recently, Sonic was listening to the music (live, unamplified instruments) and observed the hall was like the Slab Universe acoustically – it was more live in the horizontal/front-back axes but acoustical “deader” in the height (ceiling to floor) axis. I could hear harmonic sparkle that extended across the width of the hall but nothing going up and down. This was noticeable when the musicians played and also when the audience applauded.

Sonic thought…can this be applied within a Tune context especially if the floor –ceiling distance is a near multiple of another axial length and causes problems?

Idea! I already have DecoTunes hung from my ceiling like Larger Shutters (see my 5 June 2012 post on Page 3 of Sonic’s Restoration Road thread). What if I turned the DecoTunes so they are parallel to the floor. Michael has mounted PZCs this way in studios and on the ceiling in homes.

So I did. They were turned so the reflective side faced down towards the listener and were about 16 inches from the ceiling. When mounted on the front Shutter points using string from the Shutter brackets (Shutters now removed), the effect was improved sparkle in the sound and the removal of a fair amount of the overhang I notice on the F-note. The Boo! tail was noticeably more controlled.

I listened this way for a few days and found it pretty good.

Then Sonic wondered “what if I reduced the separation of the DecoTune from the ceiling, would control improve?”

So from 16 inches of space, I reduced it to 3 inches (like about a PZC if it were mounted on the ceiling).

Now Sonic has found that the Boo! has two components – a low and a high note to it – it is therefore a composite resonance.

The reduced distance killed off the low part of the Boo! and the bass vanished when music was played. Every record I played after that sounded like the bassist in the band went on a holiday and for orchestras, all the basses were on strike and half the celli were on their day off! Just change the distance of the DecoTunes and the bass vanished. This caused the higher component of the Boo! to be more prominent and because the DecoTunes were over the front soundstage area, the middle stage got sucked out. Weird effect and unmusical.

So Sonic is working on controlling the up-down flow using DecoTunes but back to the larger spacing. I am hoping to damp the Boo! right down till the room just feels dead and overdamped and then go restore the harmonics of the room by taking down the curtain and putting the wooden blinds on the windows again. That at least is the plan.

Michael, can you give your comments on:

a. my observation of the hall’s acoustics and what I described about how its acoustics were behaving horizontally and vertically

b. my experience with the DecoTunes mounted horizontally in my room

c. why the severe roll-off in the bass when the DecoTunes were brought close to the wall -- it was a slope that started above 100Hz and dropped 60Hz to inaudibility. Otherwise, in my “simple-tune” system, the Magneplanar 1.5QRs are full voiced down to 40Hz and a bit lower.

Sonic

Sonic

a. my observation of the hall’s acoustics and what I described about how its acoustics were behaving horizontally and vertically

michael

I have been in so many halls, and ran sound in so many that I kinda keep quiet when someone says they are after the sound of live with their system. From my experience I have never heard 2 halls sound the same just like I have never heard 2 systems or 2 studios sound the same. It makes for a good story line for the audiophile to use but for the truly mature listener and musician they know that each acoustical adventure is unique to the moment. This for many is part of their own self developed nightmare but for me the magic of music and one of the reasons I love tuning so much. Ever since Harry and others made their absolute statements a part of me finds it fun but a more real part of me rolls my eyes. Never have I ever heard 2 sound situations sound the same, ever, and that includes my visits to Harry's place. There was never any absolute about any of his systems any time I was ever there, or ever to any of his writer's places. They have created a very fun world that many over the years have followed (including me) but I have always kept it in it's place because I "do" live in an ever moving place called Earth, where every moment is a unique one and is never repeated to an absolute exactness. If absolute were the case "time" would not exist. Time and motion are interlinked, but I won't go off on that one as it will make me sound to cosmic.

Someone reading this could take it as a swipe at Harry and the gang of high enders, but they would miss my appreciation of the hobby that they have created and all the flowers of speech they have blossomed. I think it very cool that you are sharpening your tools to pick up on vertical and horizontal plains while listening. If you listen very, very closely you can hear mini versions of this in your home system. It's easier to hear with carpeted floors and is one of the reasons you never hear me compare carpeted systems to hard floor systems. They are completely two different animals altogether. The concert experience you just had also depends on how many people are in the audience, what the walls floor ceilings are made out of and the sound of the seating. Sometimes you have heard me tell you how different our room and system is as compared to others, or even live events. Well you are hearing this more and more.

What's exciting for me is the way you have been developing as a listener. For myself hearing horizontal plains in the mid 70's changed my way of relating to sound forever. I'm looking forward now to your next comparisons between real "live" and recorded sound. Hopefully this won't screw with your head as you go deeper into the differences that you always knew were there but as you turn the live experience more into "the tune" you see the bigger more unique event and treat it as such.

b. my experience with the DecoTunes mounted horizontally in my room

Laminar flow tuning and pressure zone tuning do work together but clearly have their own worlds.

c. why the severe roll-off in the bass when the DecoTunes were brought close to the wall -- it was a slope that started above 100Hz and dropped 60Hz to inaudibility. Otherwise, in my “simple-tune” system, the Magneplanar 1.5QRs are full voiced down to 40Hz and a bit lower.

The answer for c is really the same answer as b. Boundary tuning is like cutting with a knife (slope) and spacial tuning is more of a flow that is developed after the laminar effect happens and pressure is built. By following your room for years I would guess that your laminar effect is between the surface and maybe 7-9" out. After this you are dealing with pressure zones in the open.

Hi Michael and Zonees

It is fascinating to see how just the change of spacing of a DT can slope the bass in a room severely when people spend $ thousands with acoustic traps and things.

I thought more about the two pitch components making up the Boo! and feel that their flow is not along the same length/axis but the two tones are possbly axial in nature and working perpendicular to each other. There might be a third tone that could be a beat or a vector from the two axial flows. This is why fixing one by barricading one axis may control one component but have little effect on the other which then unbalances the room.

Now must think what to do to test this idea and then fix the problem.

One thing Sonic noticed when comparing live sound to hi fi is that live music has tremendous midrange projection. Most hi fi systems I hear are recessed in the midrange (which some audiophiles might consider "musical"), like several British speakers and their "Gundry Dip". I find it is hard to get the midrange projection forward and sounding natural. It appears to be not just a matter of frequency repsonse but quite a lot of thing being balanced right.

To Sonic's ears, the only systems that get the midrange nearly right in projection and dynamics are horns, though many horns have problems elsewhere in the frequency range.

Sonic

You have made some profound statements here which I totally agree with. One of the major points is the midrange comment. This is perhaps one of my biggest beefs with highend audio. They have managed to loose half (even more) of the midrange info and chalked it up as distortion because they don't know how mechanics work. The audiophile world has boxed itself into a cult culture of subtracting instead of adding. I do appreciate where they are going with clarity but cutting out most of the harmonics to get there is ridiculous.

One time at a CES in Vegas (Sahara days) I was walking around the different floors making my RoomTune stop in and listen visits. Some audio nuts asked me what I thought of the sound that year. As typical of me I took the 10 or so on a little field trip. I was talking to them about real sound.

"guys, sound is not what you hear when your sitting in front of your typical audiophile system. It's what you hear when you take in the whole event." I took these guys into about 5 rooms using the same CD. "your only hearing part of the music" I said, as I asked the spectrum room to keep playing the music for me while I took the gang into an area that was open with a staircase. I picked this area cause during setup I noticed it had the best midrange in the building and no matter what room you went into (except for ours of course) the midrange sounded weak and audiophile-ish. By this time there was a crowd of more than 20 so I took a hand full down at a time and showed them what the hall way had that the systems didn't. "Is this distortion?" I asked. Most of them didn't know what to say when they could clearly hear that the systems were missing entire parts to instruments whereas the hall brought those parts to life with realness and clarity. Then I took the guys (crowd growing) to my room and showed them that the parts that were missing in the other rooms and playing in the hall was playing on my system. It took us a while cause I only let 3 in at a time. The show was getting ready to shut down for the night but I asked who wanted to hang around as my guest? About everyone did so the tour continued. While my guys went after a meat and cheese platter I had some of the folks stay and listen in my room while I talked the night guard into letting me set up a temp system in the hallway/stairs using a cheap boombox with speakers that could be removed and spread out. I cut the ends off of the speakers and hooked up a set of 6.5" two way book shelfs speakers. Keep in mind that the other rooms were tweaking up their systems for the next day as the first day of the show usually doesn't sound so good for most of them and the designers who had shared rooms would be tweaking and blaming each other for the bad sound. After I got hings hooked up down there I had the folks go around to the other rooms still open and then come back to the hall way to see if they could hear the difference. It didn't take long for the smiles to turn to laughter, and also for the other designers to complain to security. Oops, my bad! The next morning I was greeted by a crowded room and hall outside my room. There were lots of questions.

My answers then were the same as they are now. High end audio has no idea just how over built they really are and how much sound they are missing. Remove the harmonics and you might as well kiss the midrange good bye. I find this all the time when I'm testing drivers. These way over priced ones are missing so much sound it is a joke.

Hi Michael and Zonees

After thinking about the causeof the Boo! being likely a bi-axial issue where different notes making up the Boo! related to different vectors of the room, Sonic attempted this:

a. there are two FS-PZCs in the centre-front of my room in a V-shape pointing towards the listening chair.

b. Sonic separated the two FS-PZCs from their bases.

c. I placed one flat on the floor (absorptive side down) centred along the front wall.

d. The other PZC was set at an angle against the front wall perpendicular to the PZC lying on the the floor against the front wall.

This really worked! The overhang from the Boo! was significantly reduced to the point it has become insignificant.

There is no upward shift in tone at Boo! any longer.

The whole room went quiet and I get the feeling that the Boo! has been solved or substantially solved.

I have been able to take down the redundant ETs and Sound Shutters from the walls (there are only 3 ETs now and the Shutters at the 1/4 points of the front wall are now gone) one in the top-centre of the front wall and one on either side at the midpoint of the side walls.

The sound is now clear with some expansion of the soundstage and images live in their own space but images were not stuck to the panel. Midrange projection is a step towards "real".

I'll have to let this settle and see where this takes me. But one thing I found is that if I took a base of an FS-PZC, and placed it under my Rega amplifier, the sound goes bass-light and thin.

About a month ago, Sonic said that I arrived at most suitable Tuning set up. This time I am closer.

Sonic

Hi Zonees

Here's what my front PZC set up looks like:



I originally had the flat PZC closer to the floor. As Sonic raised the PZC starting with 1/4 inch MW pieces, the effect and control of the Boo! became stronger. The panel is now raised on 3/4 inch MW blocks which I am finding is a good point.

Sonic's room is now looking consistent again with Michael's RoomTune layouts. No more Shutters in odd places, no more chains of EchoTunes of the ceiling/wall junctions mid-point of the front and two side walls.

The Boo! is satisfactorily controlled in two important aspects to my ears -- the frequency components of the Boo! are decaying at the same rate and the overall decay envelope therefore sounds even.

What this means is, if there are two components in the Boo! -- a low pitch and a high, they should decay in tandem. If the low pitch damps faster and the higher component sustains, the sound gets glassy. If the low pitch sustains and the high decay fast, the sound becomes overly warm and thick.

At the same time the overall decay should fall evenly and there are several theories of what the ideal decay waterfall plot should look like.

Sonic was listening this evening to Igor Kipnis' recording of J S Bach's Anna Magdalena Notebook. Very nice. This was followed by some Bill Evans.

There are about 10 days of settling ahead. At this point the imaging, soundstage, upper bass, midrange and treble are very good. Sonic notices the improved transient speed and clean midrange projection.

The lower bass needs some work though. The removal of the Boo! overhang has made the bass tight but a bit too lean. This may resolve with settling....or back comes the Janis W-1, Rotel monoblock and X-30 crossover?

Sonic

Hey, Sonic,

Heaven forbid you bring the sub back in. If you already have had the bass response without it, then it's got to still be there. If there is a truth to The Tune that brings a bit to apprehension to me, it is the "everything affects everything" principle. I think it was Jim Bookhard who said if you make a change to one thing, you have to tweak everything else to compliment that change. I don't know if Mr. Green agrees with that, but if it's true, then you have to figure out what other tweaks to make. This whole pressure zone thing is really wild, as in how changing one zone changes another. I hope I can get the hang of it someday. Not to mention the whole mechanical and electrical thing. One of these days I must really do an exercise where I should try to change something I think is an acoustical problem by turning a screw instead.

Sonic,

I must agree with Robert do not add the sub as your system will be compromised again. You will go round and round again starting back to your starting point from recent posts. As some say, take some to enjoy the music.

Like you, I have played with sub in and out. I am currently very satisfied with no sub although I have been playing with my lightweight tubed SE Triode equipment. Right now, I am listening to my lightweight tubed preamp and 245 tubed amp with the Maggie and I hearing the best defined bass and midbass that I have expereinced in this room with a 45 power tubed (4 watt per channel) amp. Michael's recent post within this thread was spot on regarding midrange. If you do not get the midrange right where music lives, everything else is compromised.

Like you, I always yearn for alittle better bass response, but I have chased better bass at the expense of midrange. Right now, I think my best upgrade will be going to a platform and some MGD tweaks for the Maggie. Since my vinyl collection is large again, I am looking at some tweaks for my Linn LP12 or some interesting restorations of lightweight vintage turntables. A MGD turntable platform aka Jim Bookhard's may be in my future.

Excellent posting guys

Hi Robert and Garp

My good Brothers-in-Tune, Sonic’s gratitude for your fast caution about what could result from my going back to a crossover, amp + Subwoofer set up. I’ll take your advice and persevere with the simple system.

Enjoyed many hours of listening to musick this weekend -- some CDs played include Brahms’ string quartets (EMI), baroque hurdy gurdy-harpsichord-bagpipe musick (Pierre Verany), Creedence Clearwater Revival, John Renbourne playing the Blues and Chet Baker with the Duke Jordan Trio.

The sound of the room is nice and big and the bass is pretty good as the settling is taking place (or am I imagining this?). OTOH I think that it is certainly an option to soon take down the curtains and hang the bamboo blinds back again. As it appears to my ears now, the damping effect of the curtains compromises the vital midrange projection and details that I was talking about recently.

To expand on what Garp said, the life in the sound is in the midrange. Get that wrong or lose it and nothing will bring it back. When I was grappling with the Boo! ring in my room the curtains served their purpose but now that things are balanced out and moving in the correct direction, I can hear the damping effect of the burn and it is not in the trebles but in the midrange. Why is this? Sonic thinks this is because trebles are projected directionally towards the listener and they are specular in propagation (they behave like light waves) but the midrange frequencies engage the Pressure Zones and need room to sing out and the curtains may inhibit that.

It is surely a relief that Sonic is moving back towards the “standard model” of the Tune. Good that there are no longer DecoTunes hanging from my ceiling, all we have are Sound Shutters. We don’t have Shutters at the front ceiling/wall edge where the Boo! moved along ceiling to the corner and reflected out – once the flow between ceiling floor at the front wall was controlled by the flat PZC, the effect of the reflection out of the corner became a non-issue.

The two DecoTunes that were hanging from the ceiling – over near the listening chair and recently over the equipment rack area in the front – are now in conventional placements. One DT has be refitted to its earlier base and in the rear corner on the Right of the room. The Left side corner has the CD cabinet near so the DT went on top of the CD cabinet leaning against the wall facing the RH wall at an angle. Works good giving a nice air to the sound.

So in the coming week when I got time and energy, the curtains may come down and the bamboo blinds may go back up.

Michael – tell me more about the builders’ paper – do they have adhesive on one side to stick on the window glass? Do you have a product number like from 3M? Can you give more description of this product? My favourite DIY store proprietor hasn’t heard of this product but we know that the same item could be described or used as differently in different places on the planet.

I tried listening to musick with the curtains open and it was good in the midrange but a spot more control is needed to sound right IMO. The projection is good and makes me want to think about how to get this tune done.

Also this weekend, Sonic had an experience that is making me (other Zonees too?) think of newer possibilities. I got together with a friend and audiophile who we might call “NAS-man” because he is a proponent of Network Assisted Storage of his musick. No CD player, tuner for his system let alone a turntable. He has a big collection of stuff on his hard disk set up. Lots and lots and lots of rock and pop stuff in FLAC and MP3 formats.

The FLAC files on playback in his system is rather nice but the MP3 ain’t. They make Sonic feel like I am listening to a turntable and the stylus is dirty and I want to lift the arm and clean the stylus. Except there is no arm or stylus….

Then we tested and later bought some Hi-Res 24/192 FLAC files of choral musick online. A few moments of listening told Sonic a lot. Never mind the way it blew MP3 into the weeds (understating it and this is to be expected many times over), but 24/192 was far superior to 44.1 kHz Red Book on that system that it sounded more continuous on NAS-man’s gear which is of good quality.

The experience was disturbing because the choral musick was stuff Sonic collects and is very familiar with. Retreated to my dwelling and warmed up my system and played musick….whew! my tuned system is playing Red Book CD very nicely but the 24/192 is something that may be surpassing my analog playback. Whatever my sentimental attachment to analog and Sonic knows that tape masters are the pinnacle of the sound capability, I have to recognize that vinyl is perplexing because with recent music recorded digitally then issued on LP (Michael Jackson), why do listeners say the LPs of these releases are preferable to the CDs? 44.1 kHz Redbook format losses aside, doesn’t this mean vinyl LPs and the cutting chain are not a transparent medium…?

LPs aside, does 24/192 equal or surpass analog? I need to try this out and see. In this, what Sonic might be facing is not a new format that I need to start over with buying my collection of musick again (relief!) but the possibility of building a source device that can play through my Tuned system, this source where I can add to my existing collection with new albums of musick in 24/192 Hi-Res. It is not replacement but an extension. Might be an exciting idea since more and more musick will be bought online, streamed and stored on to hard disk systems.

Michael and Zonees, your views on Hi-Res?

Sonic

Sonic,

I have spent the past year searching for a lightweight cd player/dac that did not sound sterile, did not remove the harmonics, and that did not fatigue me with digital glare. Today’s 24/196 players/dacs come in a multitude iterations from different dac chips, opamps, digital filtering, reclocking, and the list goes on. These players/dacs can playback a small flying insect passing gas as it crosses your soundstage, but they can’t seem to take me a step closer to the music. Recently, I had become so distressed from listening to this so called sound improvement that I ALMOST gave up and left the hobby. Enter the Maggie DVD player and everything changed with music much closer to real compared to these detailed obsessed extreme machines. As Michael preaches, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) when setting up a tunable system. The more wire, parts, giant audiophile caps, and unnecessary components/software in you source chain will do nothing but have you on an endless chase to get back to good musical sound with the detail the engineer put on the recording. Yes, simple is not only good, it is better to my ears!

I also have a modern turntable with a modern cartridge that attempts to mimic what digital has become: detail and clarity at the expense of everything else. I have recently recorded and remastered lps that sound worst then the red book CD. Unless you throw crazy money at lps recorded as 45s, you do not really find any sound improvement. I am happy to pick up old vinyl slightly used or new for a fraction of the price of new vinyl. Classical lps are a case in point as you can obtain excellent new to slightly used lps here in the states for less than $5.00 per lp.

Yes, new music mediums have arrived. PC audio, Ipods, and music downloads are today’s rage/fad to compete for your audio money, but are they better for those that really listen and enjoy music? Will these new devices eliminate the millions of volumes of recorded music that we all enjoy? Will Hi Rez be the music savior? For me, the answer is NO for now.

Hi Garp

Think this shows how audiophiles can get locked into different themes of the hifi world. It is related perhaps to the starting point. NAS-Man is a good listener and his system is reasonable in an audiophile way. Moving between his MP3 files and his 16/44.1 music you can hear the difference but the Redbook is not that far ahead . However when the the 24/192 files got played and there was a major difference.

How would this have compared in a Tuned system? My tuned Sony player works magic with my CDs but if we had two fully tuned playback for CD and for Hi-Rez 24/192 I wonder how they will compare. For Sonic, all I have played through my system is Redbook CD and analog so I have no idea how other formats will sound played through my gear.

Sonic is warned about how the problems with Hi-Rez almost led you to abandon the hobby. Thanks for warning, Garp!

On the other hand I have difficulty coming to grips with the idea that 16/44.1 is in some way more tuneable or superior at a fundamental level than when compared to the various Hi-Rez formats.

What made you get into Hi-Rez, what were the issues you noticed and worked against and how did it bring you to the edge (but happily not over) the edge of frustration?

Sonic

Hi Zonees

The curtains are down and the Bamboo Blinds are back up over the window

With the PZC leaning against the wall and one flat on the floor, the Boo! in Sonic's room has reached the level of control that this is possible. The first impression was an agressive midrange but I soon found that the curtains had darkened the midrange and that the sound with the Bamboo Blinds is closer to the mids I was talking about that characterised live musick.

There was a reflection i could hear off the front lower wall to the Right and Left of the leaning PZC. This was easily fixed by leaning two DecoTune panels against the wall at those points where the reflections originated.

Very nice. A person talking in the room may think the room is ringy when talking (that's you "NAS Man") but it doesn't show in the musick being played.

A long but educating detour that started in March this year.....

Sonic

Sonic,

Sorry for the late response but my work schedule has been hectic this week. Like you, I am exposed to other audiophile systems in my local club and each system has strengths and weaknesses as you have also experienced. Except for a few locally like me, most have jumped into computer audio and downloading Hi-Rez albums. My daughter is perfectly content to download only those songs she likes on her simple I-Mac based system, so it is true that many younger music listeners are quite happy with this recent sound median. Many local audiophiles mainly use Mac/iTunes based systems for ripping cds and lps supported by music software like Amarra or Pure Music. Although Pure Music based systems sound better than no software at all, none can seem to approach the sound that I am currently enjoying. I offer that Hi-Rez is still evolving much as cd did before it can sound as good as my current set up. I was a late adopter of CD not acquiring my first CD player until the late 90s as I listened to lps only. I suspect I will dabble in Hi-Rez if Michael can recommend a simple Hi-Rez system that truly can carry a tune. Computer audio brings a whole new set of variables as well as additional maintenance to optimize that I just do not want to spend the time conquering when I can enjoy the music on my simple, less parts, tuned system. I still have over 500 classical and vintage jazz lps that I have acquired from estate sales of local record producers that I have never played which I must find time to listen.

Hi Garp

You’re right about Hi-Rez. While it appears to have much to offer on paper, I have not heard one system that gave me a feeling that this has superseded analog or for that matter digital at its best.

Like you, Sonic will be sticking to analog and 44.1/16 bit CD for my musick. Hi-Rez and computer formats are in our future and come as they may and we’ll face them when they do.

For me, I find it comforting to hold a record and a CD in my hand. Somehow being able to hold the thing that stores my musick feels right. For me I haven’t downloaded any music to a hard disk for playback in my system yet. I’ll try that one day remembering what you said about how that stuff nearly led you to give up the hobby.

Hi Zonees

Got to talk to several experienced audiophiles this last week. It is a constant thing that Sonic hears people say – that somehow their rooms is a kind of enemy “I only want to hear my equipment, I don’t want to hear my room.”

Every time Sonic hears this from someone I nearly always find quickly that two characteristics of the listener follow: their rooms are pretty dead and they play their music LOUD to “get the punch” of live music as they say it.

We need to counterpoint this with Harry Pearson going to concerts at Carnegie Hall and measuring loud orchestral passages to average just 78 dB(A) maybe a bit more where he sat. While it is true sound levels are much higher at the conductor’s podium and deafening at the 2nd violin desks in front of the brass, what we think is loud in classical live music isn’t really all that loud. Contrast this with one classical music fan in this town who had giant speakers and insists on playing symphonies at 100dB. I know what he is trying to achieve but the Tune can get us the music and impact we want without threatening our hearing.

Sonic has found the music in my room with the Bamboo Blinds again most appealing now that the Boo! signature has been mitigated – this weekend I was listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variation (Pinnock/Archiv), Bach’s Orchestral Suites Nr 2 in b-minor and 4 in D-major (Hogwood/Academy of Ancient Music/l’Oiseau Lyre), Haydn’s Symphony 47,65 and 35 (Bolle/Mondadock Festival Orch/Albany), Mountain Music of Kentucky (Various/Smithsonian), A Feather on the Breath of God (Abbess Hildegard of Bingen/Gothic Voices/Hyperion) and Walton, Vaughan William etc, Works for Viola and Orchestra (Helen Callus/New Zealand Symphony Orchestra/ASV).

Very engaging music and a good thing to listen for hours without thinking too much about equipment and tweaks. Yet with learning the effect of the curtains that the Bamboo Blinds has shown, I find there is no way we can hear just the equipment and not the room. Everything in the room – damping, harmonic developers and all that create the totality of our listening spaces. The sound of “damped” is as much a room signature as “live” is.

It appears now that there may be blockages that Sonic is beginning to hear. There is some in the Pre-amp set up. Next up, I’ll work to get the musick through my pre-amp with less impediment.

Sonic

sonic

"Michael – tell me more about the builders’ paper – do they have adhesive on one side to stick on the window glass? Do you have a product number like from 3M? Can you give more description of this product? My favourite DIY store proprietor hasn’t heard of this product but we know that the same item could be described or used as differently in different places on the planet. "

mg

Builders paper can be found in any home improvement store. Look under "masking paper" or Kraft paper". The stuff I use does not come with tape but you can get it that way. http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/catalog/servlet/Search?storeId=10051&langId=-1&catalogId=10053&keyword=masking%20%20paper&Ns=None&Ntpr=1&Ntpc=1&selectedCatgry=SEARCH+ALL

sonic

"Michael and Zonees, your views on Hi-Res?"

Have not heard one yet that tickles my fancy, but it is my job to tune and that means tune whatever is there that people listen to. For me it is about the mechanics so my door is not closed to any source including MP3. I have heard one MP3 system that was tuned so well that it sounded pretty nice, but this was from a guy who can really, REALLY tune. He had his PZCs doing magic in that room. Even ceiling speakers sounded surprising. So I try not to shut doors too fast because there are those extremely talented listeners out there that do the imposable.

GARP

"I have spent the past year searching for a lightweight cd player/dac that did not sound sterile, did not remove the harmonics, and that did not fatigue me with digital glare. Today’s 24/196 players/dacs come in a multitude iterations from different dac chips, opamps, digital filtering, reclocking, and the list goes on. These players/dacs can playback a small flying insect passing gas as it crosses your soundstage, but they can’t seem to take me a step closer to the music. Recently, I had become so distressed from listening to this so called sound improvement that I ALMOST gave up and left the hobby. Enter the Maggie DVD player and everything changed with music much closer to real compared to these detailed obsessed extreme machines. As Michael preaches, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) when setting up a tunable system. The more wire, parts, giant audiophile caps, and unnecessary components/software in you source chain will do nothing but have you on an endless chase to get back to good musical sound with the detail the engineer put on the recording. Yes, simple is not only good, it is better to my ears!"

michael

Holy smokies, when I read " These players/dacs can playback a small flying insect passing gas as it crosses your soundstage, but they can’t seem to take me a step closer to the music." I about fell out of my chair

I do (still laughing) spend time in analytical listening cause I have so many asking me to listen to particular parts of the sound, however as GARP is saying if it doesn't have that musical feature it doesn't pull me completely in. "in walks the Maggie" is exactly the way I feel. I have so much confidence when I go to tune a system when the Maggie is present. There may be something out there that trumps it, but it gets me to the music fast and the Maggie lets me at will change it's character from an analytical mad man to a lush, lazy boy, music couch potato. It helps me pin point holes in a system, cross over, drivers, acoustical products, stands, transfer devices, cable, room construction faster than any component I think I have ever used.

Here's what the Maggie is missing, digital glare. With this player you can spot a problem in another part of the chain in seconds. Even when I'm tuning a DAC I use the Maggie as my guide to see how far the listener is going into the digital world. Some do like the sound of digital and smaller and I have no problem with this, and the Maggie to me lets me come up for air when I get in to deep in someones digital sound preference. I can pop it in and say "ok, here's where they are" then go back to work on "their sound".

The Maggie "to me" represents the closest I have ever come to the real thing outside of my 24t X 2" Studer (tweaked of course) and a very nice one of a kind AR suspension cherry table on my mod table stand. But even this table had problems that the Maggie doesn't have (outer and inner edge distortion). And a studer can get weird either at the tape extremes or the middle. But with the tape you are usually listening to first or second generations and that is hard to beat if you do not have the machine in the same room with you and your electric system is clean.

But here's the thing, 29 bucks

Our friends in the audiophile world have fun systems. Part of the fun is the look and feel of all the exotic pieces and the stories behind them. Their systems present us with something we'll call "the different effect". Anytime we hear someones system we hear something different, something new that our system doesn't have. I go through this whenever I put a new driver into a cabinet or walk into a room, any type of room, restaurant what have you. Any time there is a pressure change and when my temperature here goes from 95 in the day to 65 at night. Everytime the power grid relaxes.

The audiophile thing is fun, for me maybe in limited measures cause I was such a part of the inner circle and got burnt out on systems that were fun but only produced a very small piece, a picture of what I wanted, but not what I wanted. Same thing happened in the studio world. Nothing as cool as a studio till you hear the reflections off of the board you are hovering over and have to every 5 seconds or so move your chair back 2 feet. Having to in your head mix between what is at the seat and what you hear in a sweet spot that still doesn't sound as good as the playback room which no one uses.

What I like about our end of the hobby is history. We have systems that are taking on their own sound, "our sound" and letting them open our minds up to possibility. We can in a few short turns make a completely different sounding system or let settling be our tweak. Our minds build their history banks and we can go back to those banks anytime we want and pull out the sound and build on it.

For example, taking the journey of the curtain and everything that it brought to the sound and switching it to the bamboo. Both have their characters plus and minus but you can blend (add) the pluses together because you have studied the effects of both during tuning other parts of your system as well. Not many audiophile buddies can get their minds around the magic of the whole system as you and the other tunees are. I picture their sound in my mind knowing it all too well and then read you guys describe your systems and can almost feel the air (life) in yours compared to theirs. Even your systems on a dampened day sounds far more open than theirs if you focus on the lack of harmonic over tones they have.

You've been talking about the midrange. Here's why I think it can be magical. The midrange in a balanced system is taking the harmonics from the lows and the harmonics from the highs (which don't get talked about enough) and thickens or thins the middle. When the middle is lean it is very analytical but can shift upward fast. In an audiophile system they counteract this with killing the room, but if you took away their killing you would hear their systems tilt upward dramatically and the bass would probably show some problems of their own like thinness or boom. This is why they don't listen in open sounding rooms cause most of their systems are bright and brittle by nature and they have gotten use to the dull. The Tunee system has many times over the midrange vs the typical audiophile setups. True, out of balance it can sound ghosty or boo-y, but in balance the music can flow forever in an exacting precision with a dynamic range that leans toward ease and effortless tones. The instruments are complete, full and punctual. There is a start and stop to the music that dampened rooms can never get right. In a dampened room you hear a forced take off and a stop that is way before the instrument is done. At first it can sound dynamic but in time there is a clear lack of believability and you can tell huge parts of the music are missing altogether.