Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics

Hi Sonic

It would be cool to see close up pics to look at while reading the TT adventure. Seeing the different configurations while the works are in progress both in actuality and thought.



the discriptions of sound in real time are cool

Hi Michael and Zonees

Sonic now has two MG Tune Racks in my listening room instead of three:



Check out my post of January 25 to see what my original three-rack set up looked like.



The Tune Rack on the right was intended for a reel-to-reel deck that did not materialize. It was a Revox A77 but things didn’t work out as well as they should have. I still have this huge stack of 10” reels tapes of the BBC Proms over many years with no means to play them.

Even though the reel project did not get off the ground, Sonic left the rack there because it was a convenient place to put things like the sleeves of records being played, tools like my stylus force gauge and the powerful Michael Green hex wrench.

Over time I started to hear the effect of all the racks. It sounded like a heaviness in the inner sound of the musick, a slowness, something thick that obscured detail in a particular frequency range (but not all through the musical range).

Sonic felt I should go to two racks. It comes down to a question I ask myself when tuning my room – why is this object in the room? Is it needed? What does it do for (to) the sound? Of course, some objects in my room are there for utilitarian reasons. Thing is we should keep our systems simple and not have lots of superfluous things around.

The sound with two racks instantly sounded more detailed and internally “calm”. The thickness and heaviness was gone. The reduced number of racks also reduced a splitting effect where the three racks in a row created a barrier that divided the room acoustically.

What I heard a few days later after settling is worth describing here: I got this CD of a solo fortepiano recording. A good and detailed recording with detail and frequency range but the image is restricted round the centre stage and the CD gives no sense of the ambient details. Dry and analytical you might say.

With two racks I started to hear the fortepiano recording for what more it could be. What Sonic heard in the recording was a rolled up nucleus of a main image, the infra bass details of the pedals and key strikes, a large instrumental image in there but all bundled together with the near ambience of the stage and the hall ambience that gives the sense of the size and liveness of the recording venue all rolled into an onion of sound.

Over the days that settling progressed, Sonic could hear the layers of the onion separating and the individuals layers opening up and giving me information about the instrument, the performer’s technique, the size of the hall and the reverberant characteristics. The information I was missing was all there. The fortepiano is getting bigger and so is the room. The sound of the pedal and the keyboard mechanism is now audible not as some barely heard audiophile detail but a natural part of the sound of the instrument.

Is this what Michael is talking about? There is more information and ambience captured in this recording rolled up, squeezed and jumbled in recording. I am beginning to hear the recording not so much as the recording engineer heard it but as the performer created the musical event in the original venue. Is this true for all recordings -- classical, jazz and rock?

Sonic

sonic

Are two racks better than three?

mg

Over the years I have found (still finding) that I would rather deal with bigger pressure zones than smaller ones. Every time I add something to the room a little bit of the music seems to go away. That is until I figure out how the piece of furniture works with my acoustical build up areas (pressure zones). Ask someone who listens with me and they will tell you that I will study the sound of the room forever before I start making calls on tuning the parts and pieces in. For me, there's a lot to learn in an empty room.

Racks (even my racks) are like anything else we put in the room. They change the laminar structure of the floor and it's acoustical footprint. Sometimes to the place where the entire stage is pulled down. If I had my way we would have our equipment outside of the listening room.

Your probably finding a bunch of extra space to the music. Your center stage has changed and also the way your speakers are responding now to the rest of the room.

Let me also add that the height of the shelves in relation to each other and the room makes a big difference. Finding the right place for racks in a room is a long and thoughtful process that takes a lot of moving.

sonic

Could you say something about the differences you see in the "audio" objectives between a US audiophile and a Japanese audiophile of the type I been following.

mg

One major difference that I saw was that in Japan listening was some what of a religous experience and in the states the audiophile world is more about fitting listening into a lifestyle. More listeners in the US (this might be changing) look at their rooms as a living room first (meeting the WAF) before the sound of things. Many times they will buy based on a recommendation instead of listening for themselves. Read the forums in the US and you will see this all over. In Japan it's more a journey to finding a particular sound or following a theory over the component. However there are a lot of western type listeners there too.

Do they listen for the same things?

mg

Interesting question. I have tune both in the same listening session and noticed that the US went for a more relaxed sound and Japanese more of an analitical sound. On the same system. I was surprised at how much the listeners (that I did) from Japan really closed in the rear energy. Honestly I'm not even sure if the Americans that were there even noticed the sound to the rear of the stage. For the Japanese that were at TuneVilla, they wanted almost all frontal stage without a lot of side or rear. Their focus was on the center and how to make it really condenced and detailed.

This may have been the flavor of a few though. The Japanese I did listen with did not like dampening, but they also thought listening to the room was not right. They were big into difusion and a what I would call thin stage. Another interesting thing I notice when I was in Japan is how much time the listeners put into their rooms. Seemed like there are two worlds there, one the difusion world, and the horn world. But I did not see horns like here in the US. The horns in Japan were huge and took up the space.


Are the same things or different things important?

mg

Hard for me to tell cause most of the time I was in rooms being asked to fix them or to add to the direction they wanted to go in, but they wanted to do something. They were either for or against. In the US most of the time when it came down to it the systems were mostly for show and tell, and what their friends thought. In Japan I would do part of a system, in the US I would do the whole system cause it was more like a demo more than something the listener did every day. Kinda like a club that sat still till the next weekend. Whereas in Japan the listeners were at it all the time.

You guys who come to TuneLand need to realize that you are not the norm (speaking of US listeners). I'm not sure if I would even call a Tunee (in the US) an audiophile. Typical audiophiles here don't really do a lot of study listening as compare to other countries. We have a lot of big shows and a lot of clubs, but from what I have seen in the main stream not a lot of super serious listeners. In the US we give a impression but in Japan I think they are more into practice.

Like if you ask a store owner here if they even have a serious system at home, many times they don't. So, I would say that it doesn't matter where you are, I think the division is between real or not.


What is the first thing that strikes you as different when you listen to a US audiophile system and these Japanese wonders?

mg

The US, as I said, is more of fitting Hi Fi into their many other hobbies. In Japan they were full time listeners. In the US you will find a lot of very high dollar systems not even hooked up. Tons of audio equipment collectors who seem to have to be in on the lastest HP favorite (less now than 10 years ago). US audiophiles are very much still at the beginning of the journey. I could spend hours talking about this, and if I was not to put some of the industry on the spot who I do talk to, they would say that the US has to constently by restarted whereas the folks in other countries are far more rooted in the hobby.

What's interesting talking about the big horn systems. I have only been invited to listen to one here in the states and have listened to 20 or so in Japan. Keep in mind I have been in Japan maybe a total of 3 weeks. This should say tons. Now this is talking about audiophiles. If you are talking pro, that's a different story. In the states if you are a serious big horn listener you may not be concidered an audiophile at all but more a pro-sound guy. Pro-sound guys here do not hang out with audiophiles.

I think that the different camps in Japan still spend time together whereas here if you are in one camp you may never see someone from the typical high end audio camp.
_______________

From what I have seen the US audiophile is a different breed than audiophiles who I have met in other countries. Kind of hard to explain really without coming across mean and judgemental, but lets say this. What I see here is a different hobby than what I see other places. For example. When I go places here I hear music playing in peoples cars. Believe it or not, a lot of the music is jazz or classical. If I happen to say something to these guys, they don't even know high end audio exist. "Oh yeah, you guys put on that CES show". When I go to other countries I will see audio stores all gathered in one spot. You will never find that here. In general it is such a different mind set and I think that because of this the listeners here never really go outside of what they are reading.

So me comparing the two as if they were from the same view point would be very hard. I know there are serious listeners here, it's just really hard to find them. Mostly you run into guys at the shows who bring their CD's and go room to room comparing, and I don't consider this to be any type of evaluation. It's a 3 day setup expo and really nothing more. It takes that long to hear what the furniture sounds like . People say to me "but that's all we have". Well all the more reason to study and learn our own systems. Club listening and shows are really not my thing, and that is another difference. When in other countries I was in many private rooms that have been settling a long time. I said this earlier but think that it needs repeated. I think when people have you come over and listen here, I get the feeling that they were tweaking up till the moment you get there or have been waiting for you to do all the work. A different mind set I think. Of course I'm talking "typical" US listeners that I have visited and not those in hiding . Or, maybe their afraid to have me come over . As much as I pick on over built systems their probably scared to death to have me listen.

Hi Michael and Zonees

That reply comparing US and Japanese audiophiles is a classic analysis from Mr Green. Sonic thinks of printing it up and framing it somewhere. It is that good because there is so much Sonic instantly identified with in the Japanese audio-fans (for that is what the translation of the words referring to the hobbyists mean).

“In Japan it's more a journey to finding a particular sound or following a theory over the component….it’s like a religious experience.” I can identify with that. Tuning and listening is just that for me. It is something existential.

So US audiophiles like a more relaxed sound compared to the Japanese who prefer a more analytical and condensed sound at the expense of width, depth and rear information (by rear, is the information that is around and behind the listener, Michael?)

I had noticed from my reading of mags and sites that the Japanese are big on diffusion and noticed they appear to eschew absorption. Until now, I did not know if this was the norm or just the practice of the audio fans I followed.

Here is a pix I found on audioheritage.org of the Stereo Sound (Japan) test room.



The gentlemen are Greg Timbers and Koji Onodera who is Chief Editor of Stereo Sound. Are those Corner Tunes from Michael up in the corners?

Now back to what Mr Green said. Sonic can picture the “thin stage”. This is still better than so much audio salon sound where it is almost not musick. As I pointed out once that when listening to SPs I hear a real orchestra playing, a real person singing, recorded with a colored early electrical mike and with the crackly noise. On the big buck audio salon systems it is the “perfect” reproduction of something completely artificial and fake.

Sonic also understand the Japanese reluctance to “listen to the room”. I think (and I feel this too) that the sum of the signal comes from the speakers. Without the speakers there is no sound, so all the musick originate through them.

The room should not interfere, it should help the sound experience but at worst the room is a source of great distortion. Sonic is learning to walk what I find to be a fine line. I can and have damped my room and know the result is not nice.

My room has seen the other side too…remember all my wrestling with BOO!? When the room was live with slap echoes and stuff, when I could play a loud piece of musick and hit Pause on the CD player and hear the room ring on for a split second. It was awful. Never again. Slowly, slowly I am learning where the zones are I need to tune to bring the room into the zone of what I feel is the right balance.

In this journey I appreciate the seriousness of the Japanese audiophiles. Sonic is not dedicated compared to them. They build their systems around themes or teachings of their senseis. It is not a “lifestyle” but a life, a endless zen-like journey. As a Tunee, my system is configured along with what Michael shows as his theme of creating musick in the home.

With the two-rack system I have found more space to the sound. It seems less divided front and back by the row of racks and the room integrates better. True I need to find the best height for the lower shelf of the turntable rack.

The main racks shelf heights have been set experimentally over a long period of time and I know what Michael means when he says it is a “long and thoughtful process that takes a lot of moving.”

For the top shelf supporting the ‘table, I might raise the ‘table with another shelf on MTDs but more of that another time. My spare shelves are the heavy hemlock boards from Michael and may be too heavy. Michael, do you agree?

Sonic

sonic

So US audiophiles like a more relaxed sound compared to the Japanese who prefer a more analytical and condensed sound at the expense of width, depth and rear information (by rear, is the information that is around and behind the listener, Michael?)

mg

The US and Japan both listen to that small "Boxed" sound, but in Japan it is more tightly squeezed into an ultra focus leaving out anything that is inbetween sound. Meaning there is a black hole then instrument, then back to black hole again. The US is slightly fatter but less defined. Both of these are far different from the sound of the tune.

Audiophiles in general live in a 2D world and when introduced to 3D are pretty shocked at first. Let me explain.

An audiophile system sounds like a system you are looking at. It doesn't sound like part of the natural world of 3D that we live in. It's sound in a capsule. It usually sounds awful till you get your head clamped in the sweet spot then your looking at a picture of music. Audiophiles around the world have different flavors to that picture, or box, but it's still a picture within real space instead of being a part of the real space.

Where the tune is different, you have a hard time telling stereo from real life sound. If you stand off to the side of the tune (like I am now) you feel like there is a band in the next room. When you walk into that room you are in the middle of that band, and when you sit down you are watching them. But at no time (in a properly tuned system) do you ever feel like the music is a part from real space. It fools you into believing it. An audiophile system rarely fools you until you are in that tiny sweet spot. Keep in mind that an audiophile system is no more in focus than the tuned one, the tuned one just allows you to get up and walk around the music and sit back down to a more around you sound. Honestly with a tuned system the sound can even be better when you are up standing around cause you are away from the chair burning sound.

Here is another really important factor that we should bring up. US homes are built out of different materials than Japan or where you are at. The sound of most of these rooms here without any treatment sound completely relaxed as compared to rooms over there. This is why many over there have built wood rooms. The more the materials are modernized the more I see the Japan rooms sounding like the US rooms. This is another important fact. Even those over there or here that think they are removing the room from the equation are not. If they were traveling listening experts like myself they would hear that an RPG room in Japan sounds completely different from and RPG room in the states, "Completely Different". Same goes for dead rooms in Japan vs US or any other type. This sticks out to me big time yet no one talks about this.

Taking my tunable systems around the world I was able to pick up on how different these rooms are and discovered that as we grow up in one type of environment we take on the sound of that environment. Spend time talking to someone from the US then spend time talking to someone from China and listen to how different their tones are and most of all the speed of their delivery. This is very telling for me as I have noticed that the talk of the peoples in any particular area reflect their surroundings. For example an American from the middle of the country that travels over seas sounds very slow and sloppy as compared to the Asian speaking folks, that sound very fast and direct.

sonic

"Japanese are big on diffusion"

mg

It's sad to see the Japanese head toward dampening. This means their journey back to real will be delayed as it has been in the US.

sonic

"without the speakers there is no sound" according to the audiophile

mg

Actually this is backward. Without the acoustical space we would never hear the speakers movement. Audiophiles have always had this messed up and it stops them from getting the most out of the sound or even an accurate sound. In science, no sound can be made without a conduit of delivery. The speakers make "NO" music at all. They only make sound in the context of the rest of the environment letting them produce sound just as any other moving part.

You would think that with something as technical as sound systems engineers and designers would have made this clear from the beginning. Instead I (along with the science community) have had to spoon feed these guys. There is a huge disconnect between real and technical fantasy when it comes to the audiophile sound and how it is made.

Ever stand right in the middle of a standing wave? A true large standing wave can be stood in and the music can not be heard. Usually we only hear this in part but you can and do look at your speakers all day long and parts of the sound is missing, why? Because the speaker is only vibrating. It can't make sound until it has an environmental enclosure such as the atmosphere or room to make the sound in.

People in parts of the world may not like or understand the sound of their rooms but your room is what is making the sound and should be treated as the delicate music maker that it is. There is no removing it and why would we want to? It is our biggest tool to making good sound.

Audiophiles who don't get this should never jump into the art of stereo until they do cause they never get it figured out. This is why we have ended up with these tiny un-real soundstages that don't even resemble 3D real life sounds.

Yet we have built a whole industry based on this fallacy. Boggles my mind, it really does. We really as a whole hobby don't understand even the most basics of what is going on. And, someday when the hobby is based on real music rooms first, the systems will blow away what we now have.

sonic

Sonic also understand the Japanese reluctance to “listen to the room”. I think (and I feel this too) that the sum of the signal comes from the speakers. Without the speakers there is no sound, so all the musick originate through them.

mg

I do understand the mentality here and apperiate the impotance of everything in the audio chain, but where the disconnect is from reality is when the audiophile starts to think that the speaker has the ability to do the rooms job. The speaker can only do it's own job. The electric, source, amp, cables, environment all do different jobs from the speaker. As I said above the audiophile has this notion that the speakers actually do the job of the room which is scientifically impossible. If this were the case, why does the same speaker sound different every time it is placed in a different room or outside? Hook up any speaker in any room and it will sound different every time. Same goes for a voice or any vibrating part.

The acoustical designer has never ever removed the room from the equation and never will. They have two choices and two only. Remove the sound of the music to the place where they hear what is left and pretend it is real, or use the room to save as much of the music content as possible.

sonic

The room should not interfear, it should help.

mg

The room is where the hobbyist actually becomes a bit of the designer in the audio chain. It is the biggest component by far and must do what every thing else in the audio chain did right to give the most of the music. You can go with a super simple setup that passes energy purely and absolutely blow away the most elaborate setups. Designers in high end typically do not have a grip on the rooms part in the audio chain and make huge mistakes in their designs trying to make their components match the sound in their own systems and rooms. This is a major flaw and is the reason why the simple built "by the numbers" mass produced stuff blow the doors off of them.

For the most part mass produced products are based on pure science and engineering, matching the input to the output on the test bench. I use to think this was wrong until I met with Samsung, Phillips and RCA design teams at a CES. I realized that their approaches to audio preserving is far more accurate than the guy designing their products in their own environment and assuming that it would sound the same where ever it was shipped. I tested this theory many times myself and have found that the mass designers are acyually much more on the ball than the tweak shops only able to produce products that suite the very few.

sonic

sonic is not dedicated compared to them

mg

I would disagree here. Anyone can throw around acoustical products and kill large parts of the sound. It takes a real listener to take the time to figure our their room and how it plays with the rest of the audio chain. You may go back and forth a lot and most of this is do to boo vs sound reality, but this is a far cry from the disfunctional environments that the audiophile world has created for what they think is a quick fix.

Keep in mind, if they are dampening and diffusing they are only at the very beginning and have a long way to go to learn the interactive part of listening.

Hi Zonees

Two things to report:

Sonic finds that the amount of sand weighting the Mye Sound stands is right. I tested by adding more - about 10 lbs more sand in bags on the base frame of each stand. The sound images started to cluster round the speakers and images near the speakers sounded different from those in the centre stage. Also the centre images started to recede. So back to the earlier weight....very nice, full and big sound that is protected forward.

I bought a Shure M97XE cartridge and started using it instead of the Audio Technica AT95E. Tracking at 1.25 gms, it sounds a lot better and quieter right out of the box although the bass could be more free which I expect will happen when the elastomers run in.

From what Sonic understands, the Shure M97XE is a very good cartridge. And it is when compared to the much cheaper Audio Technica AT 95E. Interestingly I tested the cartridge with and without the damper brush engaged (adjusting the downforce as recommended by Shure to offset the upward pus of the brush). The sound without damping is better with more life and transient impact. Shure's own material says the sound of the cartridge will be slightly better without the damping brush.

Very happy with the sound of my analog set up.

Michael, what is your finding/teaching about plexiglass record player lids? Do they affect the sound when down closed, can their effect be tuned out and how? Do you hear the lid's effect when playing records (closed or open)?

Sonic

Hi Sonic

After a few listens with a lid on I never went back to using one so my advice on this would be one of not A/B fairness. In my experience the sound shut down when the lid was on. Others might find something different though.

MG was in shock today to find out that you only let your system settle for 5 hrs. Are you saying that you have never let your system settle?

A system takes at least 7 days of constant play to settle, and even that is not truly settling. I have never heard a system of any kind ever settle in 5 hrs.

Are you saying that your system is actually turned off while you are gone, or just not being played but still on?

I had no idea that you were cold starting your system every time. This is probably the single biggest tweak I know of. Reread some of Jim Bookhard's writing on this or mine.



It can't be!

This is a chapter that will change listening for you forever. I'm not saying that you can't have enjoyment out of a system that is cold started, but I will say that the harmonics can never have a chance to settle in such a short time.

here's a quick example

Last night I put on No Doubt and the sound at the beginning was in the box. You could hear this box clearly from the writing room as if the music was seperated from the rest of the room. This was putting it on directly after playing New York Dolls through about 5 times. No I don't always play things 5 times through, but if working I do so I can hear the burnin in process. Before NYD I went through several CD's but only listened in general to them. Anyway (no doubt playing all night), this morning the music was transformed from last night with it flowing through the place so I grabbed a listen, Wow! About 8am the air conditioning guy was here looking at the unit and so I turned off the CD Player (amp still on). He was here 30 minutes and I didn't turn it back on for maybe another 15. When I did the music was lifeless, flat without juice, sounding dull or rolled off. It's 11am and still hasn't returned to it's flowing self, good but not flowing like it was this morning.

Here's my biggest concern for folks that cold listen. When one is cold listening and make adjustments to the system things never develop and you will stay in adjust mode forever never landing on a good stable tune. The system will always in a way sound like an unsettled ghost visiting. Parts will sound good sometimes but it rarely gels. The room doesn't fill up with music, it will fill up with sound, but not music and not recorded content. When you do hear the room fill up with music it's hard to listen to the system without.

Hi Michael and Zonees

Michael’s description of the effect of a turntable dust cover is exactly what I heard – a dead, shut down sound. I have also tested this with a friend’s Linn Sondek LP12, Grace G707 Mk II and Denon 103 system. He had his lid on to keep the dust out and plays records with the lid propped up on its rod (early model LP12 with the fluted afromosia plinth, not the later friction hinge lid and plain sided plinth).
I encouraged a test where the lid was completely removed and taken out from the room….and the sound was much better. As a Linnie, he said the musicality, pace and rhythm was vastly improved and has been listening this way since.

Sonic managed to reduce the effect of the lid on my Audio Technica LP120 with a EchoTune on it with the reflective side facing the ceiling. Better and shows us that everything can be tuned.

Now to address Mr Green’s shock….Sonic is not saying that my idea of settling is five hours. Not at all!

It is at least 5 hours per day of music playing time with the system fully warmed up over a 5 to 7 to 10 and more days. It takes weeks to get the real effect of a Tune. By fully warmed up, I mean the whole system is turned on for about two hours and dehumification switched on, then musick play starts.

The first hour is background listening when work is done, emails cleared, meals are taken and stuff like that. I can hear the system get into gear over this period but impressions are discounted and Sonic is almost never in the listening chair during this time.

Then serious listening starts for three, four hours. I usually play up to 4 CDs or a couple of CDs with a collection of SPs and LPs according to a pre-thought out konzert programme. The phono system is warmed up with everything else. Tunes are never judged on am immediate basis, I have learnt to work by Tune Instinct and now draw definitive conclusions for days or weeks on.

Sonic is however a “cold starter”. The reasons are those I gave on Tune Trainee’s thread and there is more. I am personally committed to the environment and to doing more with less in a resource limited world. I know my rough carbon footprint and moderate it where I can and try to limit my use of utilities when not necessary. I am one who may switch the lights off in my office when going to the washroom….also leaving the system on and playing musick through the day has risk including to animals and is an issue with others in my dwelling.

On to my work in progress: I am hearing the limitations of my Audio Technica LP120 turntable. I bought it because it is “cheap and good” and for its 78rom speed. It was weighted down with a 7+ lb steel plate in the lower plastic plinth which I removed. This made the sound more lively but now I find the sound is thin. The turntable is mostly plastic and the bottom plinth is a plastic shell with dampers on the four corners.

Of course I could go search for a Garrard 301 or a Thorens 124 but everything needs tuning and can be made better with Tuning.

Michael, is there a quick and cheap way to tune the plastic box so Sonic gets a fuller sound rather than the clean but thin in the lower bass musick I am getting?

Sonic

Hi Sonic

If I remember correctly the bottom plate was screwed on. This can be replaced with a wood one. My tables were converted Table/Tuning boards with either spikes or springs.

They looked more like Tuning boards with TT parts mounted to them. I made different size boards and wood types to give different flavors.

You might want to take a look at woodsong audios site, or do a google image search technics with wood plinths. I don't know what they sound like but it will give you some ideas.

Tables sound like their plinths, and you can voice them any way you want.

sonic

"Sonic is however a “cold starter”. The reasons are those I gave on Tune Trainee’s thread and there is more. I am personally committed to the environment and to doing more with less in a resource limited world. I know my rough carbon footprint and moderate it where I can and try to limit my use of utilities when not necessary. I am one who may switch the lights off in my office when going to the washroom….also leaving the system on and playing musick through the day has risk including to animals and is an issue with others in my dwelling."

mg

now your talking my language

For myself this would be a game changer and I would be looking at a system that could start up more quickly. One that could perhaps get up to speed in an hour or so (if that was possible). Honestly your speakers and components are no way getting to full charge in 3 to 5 hours. One of the very first things I learned about audio was current and parts charging. Unfortunatly homes are not built to save on our carbon footprints. Someday they will build circuit boxes to address this, but until then we burn about 3 times as much as we could by having our electrical "out of tune". If you have read tuneland archives you will see at tunevilla I designed a house electrical system that cut my electrical to one third. In the grand scheme of things this was to be my life's work with audio being the door opener. However the government and schools gave this very little attention. "A long story that cost me lots of my life's work " it would be boring. However relating this all to your system, audio parts do not charge quickly. In fact if you have a more efficient system that stays on all the time it burns far less energy than a system that is trying to charge. What burns electricity is resistance (blockage). The same things that make your audio sound better and more open are the things that pull the least amount of electricity out of your wall.

This is something I have spent years and years studying and is one of the reasons Drewster and I hookup. Again a very long story and one I'm happy to get into if asked but staying on the topic of audio only. Your parts are all built on the tech of flow and resistance. I have found by removing the resistance as much as possible the signal passes more smoothly. Point and case: gaining volume when things are in tune. Using drivers that are very easy to drive (not necessarily more efficiently rated) makes it far more easy for your system to charge quickly, delivering a bigger stage. Using fewer power supplies, less mass, easier the drive parts (smaller caps and resistors) bigger or more balanced circuit boards and the list goes on. All these things add up to get your system up to speed faster, more efficient and far better sounding.

In my listening studies I have found that I have never heard a system start to have the soundstage fill in behind me if it has only been on a short time. In my mind the harmonics geling would take much longer than this. Maybe I would and have heard bits and pieces but not that float I talk about.

Here's what you might try even if you don't keep it going. Put on a simple piece of music that you know has a lot of info. Let it play for 2 days, stopping by to see what changes it makes. The longer you do this it will tell you exactly what your system is doing settling wise. You might not return to this type of listening but it will show you what can happen. One thing for sure is, if you do this and don't hear big changes you will know your system still has tons of blockage.

here's some old threads on the topic

http://www.michaelgreenaudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=619

http://www.michaelgreenaudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=186

http://www.michaelgreenaudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=505

Hi Michael and Zonees

Yes, power consumption and responsible life-practices we must have.

Anyway, moving on with things Audio:

Sonic doesn’t use a dust cover on my ‘table – I have an Audio Technica-supplied cardboard cover for the felt mat. My reference in yesterday’s post of placing an ET on the cover to tune it is a “best of the worst result”. In my set up a felt mat sounds better than a rubber mat which again tells us about damping and killing vibrations.

I’ll look at introducing wood into the plastic plinth of the ‘table. Sonic got a lot of pieces of Magic Wood and finished pine from Michael which I have enough to line the bottom and sides of the plastic plinth of the turntable.

Michael, how should I attach these pieces of wood to the plastic shell? The one thing not to do is to go the audiophile way and stick bitumen sound deadening panels for cars into the base to damp it. Someone I know tried this in a good (was it?) Thorens TD150 ‘table and destroyed it. The sound was completely shot and the black gooey stuff could not be removed cleanly.

Another question: what should I do about the rubber isolation feet at the 4 corners of the plinth which are the turntable’s feet? Replace them with MTDs?

My room: now here’s what I added recently:



Notice the pair of ETs high on the side walls to the front. They don’t face each other but are offset. Thing is in acoustics we are dealing with waves and pressure between surfaces so you don’t have to treat both surfaces for best effect, just one will do. In fact, in cases where an absorptive-reflective solution is adopted like Michael’s products, facing two devices may increase reflection at some point that may not be beneficial. Staggered/offset placement also broadens the area of control.

This has been in place for more than a week now. The sound emerged and it was good, room control improved and better yet is the room now passes the newsreader test – no echoes as I sit in the listening chair and read something aloud. Yet the room is not damped and dead sounding. Nice…

Sonic

Hard rooms have to be reborn I always think. I've experienced the hard wall battle many times and have found that you have to control them by replacing their fundamental pattern development. These rooms a far different from rooms that have walls that flex a little. Echo ping ponging in hard rooms can seem to go on forever. These are the rooms that tend to be more math based, but can also get really screwy when things start getting put in the room.

Looks like you are systematically replacing the sound of your walls with the sound of other materials, which is probably the very best way to deal with the solid materials used for your walls construction. This is a long job cause it doesn't take much to throw a hard room into dull mode. And the thing that bugs me the most is when you put on pieces of music that need redialed acoustically. This would mean revoicing the whole room again. I get to the point when I have this to start looking for other ways, like SAM walls or shrinking the size of the room, but the way you are doing it can end up giving a really nice size stage once you get a recording to match the rooms voice.

One of my rooms in a place in Ohio (not tunevilla) had plaster walls that were so bad that I had to go with duel subs and satilites cause the waves were that disconnected. I could not get the room to line up no matter what I did. When I moved anything it would either jump to the lows and the highs were gone or the other way around. I think if I would have spent the time you are a voiced this room out inch by inch I would have found it, but this is a battle. Your placement is looking very organized.

The TT

First thing I would do is just get rid of the feet and see how you like the sound with the table sitting directly on wood. I wouldn't attach it till I played around with the effect of the sound. Like you saw with your friend, it's too easy to kill a table.

Michael is right again.

This is what I didL:



The object next to the strobe is one of the feet. You'll see it is an elastomer damper with a threaded rod to fit into the plastic plinth of the turntable.

The base now sits on MW finished pieces. No damping anywhere. You can also see the Shure M97XE on the arm.

A big change the sound was fuller in the bass and upper bass, clarity improved and midrange projection improved. Noise reduced and soundstage more distinct. Cymbals has the complex harmonics that encompass a bong and snazzzzz at the same time...not a metallic zisss that we encounter too often with high end audio gear.

The turntable is much better sounding now.

While the Audio Technica AT LP120 sounded has sounded analog (especially after being direct wired bypassing the internal phono stager and A/D converter -- what could it be but analog...?), the "analogness" has increased a huge amount with the feet removed and the plinth suppported by MW.

No microphonics or feedback even at high volume levels even if there is no suspension and isolation now.

Question for Michael: I have four genuine Michael Green MTDs with threaded mounting studs. They will fit the mountings vacated by the isolation elastomer feet of the turntable. Should I fit them? How should I mount the MW and pine wood pieces into the plastic plinth?

Sonic

Hi Sonic

Can you tell me more about the sound? Your at a point where listening becomes so crucial. The plastic is the odd man out here. The pieces of wood inbetween the plinth and DJRak board might be so balanced that you may not want to introduce anything else or you may need even one more transfer, which is what the MGA cone/spike does.

Did you say that the hole is 14/20 and the MTD can screw right in?

If the table is sitting on the wood, is there any need to fasten it? I say this because without being there I don't know what glues work and what doesn't. I'm always afraid of gluing plastic cause of the change in sound that takes place. I have not studied the latest in apoxies, but because they work by heating the surfaces of both objects I know they change the chemics in the transfer. Here a simple super glue works but will it there?

Things dry so fast here that applying coats and their thinknesses can be regulated, but this is different when you get to places that have higher humidity. And the scary part for me is the perminent chemical change that happens. This is why I usually try some kind of testing before gluing on something that I might ruin.

So many things that happen when attaching one thing to another. If it's just screw a cone in then finding the right wood or thickness and finish of wood that's a lot easier than gluing and changing the physical structure perminently.

Hi Michael

Briefly here are the changes to the sound from my analog set up -- remember these are quick first impressions from playing a couple of rock/pop records:

Treble before:

Cymbals have texture, clean, not like digital "white noise cymbals", sounds like a 12" cymbal

Treble after:

More texture, especially in the "bong/strike" zone, sounds like a 20" crash cymbal, image moved forward to plane of the loudspeaker

Midrange before:

The singer -- male, light tenor -- seems to be fighting the instruments and imaged small and towards the front wall

Midrange after:

Vocals more forward towards the listening chair. Still slightly recessed but much improved. Voice has more weight and size.

Bass before:

Thin, lacks weight, reggae-themed musick doesn't have the BIG BASS of this kind of musick that vibrates the body and fills the room.

Bass after:

Fuller, extension and weight improved but could be better, reggae-themed musick now has hints of the power and vibrations of the BIG BASS from this type of musick.

Sonic found a Technics 1200 and tapped it. Compared to the Audio Technica AT LP120, the Technics 1200 felt solid while the AT LP felt cheap, lightweight and plasticky.

I found a wood plinth for the Technics from the KAB site. It is just a box where the 1200 sits in with its plinth and damping feet, not disassembled and bolted onto.

Comments Michael on what you advise should be my next steps.

Sonic

Hi Michael and Zonees

Michael – your thoughts on what I heard after removing the elastomer feet from my Audio Technica AT LP120 and seating the plastic plinth on wood pieces (genuine MG).

The two ETs high up forward on my side walls (see my post of May 31, 2013) are working very nicely but notice that they are not flush against the wall surface. They are mounted on MW blocks which give a space of about ¾” behind them. Michael’s pillow products get more effective and powerful if you have a bit of space behind them. If we look at Michael’s instruction for wall mounting the DecoTunes, you’ll see he separates them from the wall surface by ½”.

In the meantime, Sonic has been talking to an audiophile who is into headphone listening and learnt a few things.
We take an on-axis flat response as a design target for our loudspeakers as a given. For sure, there are debates what the polar or off axis or “power response” should be…but there is agreement on the direct response.

Not so with headphones. If you do a search on the internet for various test reports of headphones, the frequency response varies a lot. Compare Stax to Sennheiser to Grado and you might be surprised. Sonic was. Interestingly the treble was more uneven than we would like to see in conventional loudspeakers even in headphones that are said to be accurate and musical.

In the July 2013 issue of HiFi News and Record Review, we read:

“What Response?

As we went to press, the latest chapter in the long-running saga of determining the optimum headphone frequency response was about to open at the AES’ spring Convention in Rome. It is almost three decades now since Gunther Theile, working at the IRT (Institut fur Rundfunktechnik) in Munich claimed that diffuse-field response – the response at the ears when sound arrives with equal intensity from all directions – is the ideal headphone response. Previously it has been suggested that the so-called free-filed response, imitating that of loudspeakers at +/- 30 degrees to the head’s median plane, was the ideal. Now a research team at Harman International, led by Sean Olive, is investigating the matter anew. What they will suggest in Rome is a new target response, based instead on acoustic measurements of calibrated loudspeakers in listening rooms.”

This was part of a test of the Grado PS1000 and this headphone set has a +5db peak at 80hz compared to 1 khz. The treble rises from 1 khz to an 18 db peak at 5.5 khz before rolling off. Compared to 1 khz, 20 khz is 16 db down. The treble rises and falls in 5 db gyrations. A response like this in a loudspeaker will call forth serious questions and criticisms.

Headphones are strange thinks Sonic.

Greetings Zonees

Here’s something Sonic just found. I got this CD -- The Celtic Viol, Jordi Savall and Andrew Lawrence-King (Alia Vox). It is recorded at very low level.

When played back at my normal preamp setting of 8 to 10 clicks (out of 60), the volume is really on suitable soft background listening. Now the pictures in the CD booklet of the recording shows the two musicians sitting about 5 feet apart.

At these low volume levels, they appear in my system to be 15 to 20 ft apart – the images are small and the ambience of the monastery where the recording was done just makes it far away.

I then tried bringing the volume level up to what a small viol and a Celtic harp would be like in close seating in a recital space. It took 16 clicks to achieve this, maybe 18 to get it real. And Sonic found that image size increased and the subjective impression of the distance between the performers reduced to close to 6+ feet apart.

What this tells Sonic is there is a correct playback level or a range of settings where the spatial relationships of all the performers become realistic. This is something that Peter Walker of Quad pointed out a long time ago.

Another thing: here's an example of how an audiophile did some thinking out of the box.

This audiophile has basically three musick amplification systems. System 1 is an Accuphase system, System 2 is a Sun Valley preamp and a 300B single ended amp. System 3 is some homemade set up with 845 tubes for output (single ended too). Various sources like CD players, turntable and tape are used.

But only one pair of speakers….a JBL studio monitor set.

What did the audiophile do? He bought a speaker switch box – the sort that the output of your amp is connect to the box input and up to four speaker pairs are connected to the outputs and you selected which you wanted to hear by pressing the appropriate switch buttons.

He turned it around and connected the three amps to the outputs and the JBLs to what was the input and so switched between the three amplifier set ups by pressing the speaker select buttons. Clever

Sonic

Hi Sonic

I gave my comments on attaching (gluing) things to the plinth. I would have to be there or have a duplicate here to truly give a lot of advice. But the way you are approaching the process looks to be the right one. If I didn't have to attach anything I wouldn't. This gives you the ability to explore options.

I can say this though. There are a lot of people who have had sucess using the deluxe shelves with tables. I use to get mail from many different places asking me did I build these stands specifically for tables.

"We take an on-axis flat response as a design target for our loudspeakers as a given. For sure, there are debates what the polar or off axis or “power response” should be…but there is agreement on the direct response. "

When ever I hear people talking about on or off axis the first thing I do is look at their test room. If it has foam defussion or traps in it I automatically discount what they are saying.

I have'nt had to play with speaker tilt (with the exception of a tiny room and big speaker) for a long time. With tuning and free resonance it's not in the equation for me.

Sonic

Greetings Zonees

Here’s something Sonic just found. I got this CD -- The Celtic Viol, Jordi Savall and Andrew Lawrence-King (Alia Vox). It is recorded at very low level.

When played back at my normal preamp setting of 8 to 10 clicks (out of 60), the volume is really on suitable soft background listening. Now the pictures in the CD booklet of the recording shows the two musicians sitting about 5 feet apart.

At these low volume levels, they appear in my system to be 15 to 20 ft apart – the images are small and the ambience of the monastery where the recording was done just makes it far away.

I then tried bringing the volume level up to what a small viol and a Celtic harp would be like in close seating in a recital space. It took 16 clicks to achieve this, maybe 18 to get it real. And Sonic found that image size increased and the subjective impression of the distance between the performers reduced to close to 6+ feet apart.

What this tells Sonic is there is a correct playback level or a range of settings where the spatial relationships of all the performers become realistic. This is something that Peter Walker of Quad pointed out a long time ago.

MG

I'm 100 percent on board with this. I believe every recording has a playback/room recording/volume signature.

It's so easy to lose the recording perspective but when the proper volume is found for a particular recording the size ratios snap into focus, along with some hidden music parts revealed.

Hi Zonees

Here is what Sonic has set up the front of my room using the third FS-PZC.



With this and after what Sonic did recently by mounting the TuneStrips higher in the front vertical corners and the ETs mounted high on the front side walls, Sonic can now say the BOO! and the honk in my room is appearing to be tightened and controlled.

Michael....weigh in please in with your views of this tuning.

Sonic

Hi Sonic

Does this raise or lower the stage? What do you hear different between this and the slanted front PZC?

Hi Michael and Zonees

If Sonic had not known about settling I might not have ended up with using a FS-PZC flat on the floor. The first impression was of excessive height for images in the centre stage, with height around speaker positions normal. The images were projected forward so that was good. But the combination of high and forward was strange.

After a couple of days of musick play, the height effect lessened and images were forward in a more “rounded” sense. A few days more of musick play and the exaggerated height was no more perceived, it might be higher than before by a little bit but everything worked together and sounded more dimensioned and real. So with this tune taken as successful, Sonic posted the pix.

I have tried a FS-PZC leaning against the front wall. Sonic might have even posted pix of this on this or one of my threads with comments. The results were never good. Nasty excessive height issues that did not resolve, problems with banana-shaped stages and such so this time I did not try it in combination with the two FS-DRT set up I am having how which on their own are working very well.

Sonic will report soon on what is the optimal height of the flat PZC from the floor – directly in contact with the floor or raised on MW blocks and by how much.

What is good is the BOO! test is nearly all what I want – no overhang, no sense of a honk coming back at me from the front wall and window. A very good newsreading test. Yet the room has no “damped room signature”. The musick is not dry, the decay of ambience in recordings are clean and voices and impulse sounds have no upward shift in pitch.

There is a slight hint that the front of the room is drier and more controlled compared to the rear which is more airy.

On Michael’s comment about the optimal replay level (something QUAD’s Peter Walker pointed out 60+ years ago), there is also another idea rolled up with it. This is the Fletcher Munson equal-loudness curve. For Zonees who might be unfamiliar, it is the reason why receivers of old had loudness switches. As playback levels fall, bass rolls off progressively more with diminishing volume, treble too but to a lesser extent. So if we play music softly we hear the mids OK but no bass and little treble. This is a dynamic relationship so the more the overall sound goes down, the more severe the bass roll off becomes and the more bass has to be boosted to give subjective equal loudness.

The point Sonic is raising is not so much our own playback level in our homes which are dictated by taste or constraints of family and neighbours. I am thinking of the relationship with the mastering level of the original recording. NAS-man told me he was grooving to an album by Phil Collins but he had to play it really loud. He said when the CD was replayed at the around 80db average, the recording had no bass, it was lightweight and thin. NAS-man concluded that unlike the video formats where mix down is done at certain industry standard levels, music is not. The Phil Collins recording may have been mixed and mastered at very high levels like 100db (Collins is hearing impaired Sonic understands). So when played at lower levels the Fletcher Munson effect gets into the picture and the sound becomes thin and lean. Go the other way and take a recording that was mixed and mastered at 80db – a lot of classical works are mastered in this range -- and play them back at 95 db and the bass will sound exaggerated.

What this means is that the right playback level also affects the frequency balance of the music we listen to which Sonic thinks is as important as the imaging and perceived distance factor.

Sonic observes that so many great audio amps had tone controls – the Scotts, QUADs, Radfords, Audio Research (the SP2 and SP3), Marantz 7, JBL SG 520….somewhere along the way someone decided that tone controls were evil, their very presence, even when zeroed or bypassed, corrupted the sound of the music signal. And by the time we got to the 1970s (Sonic is a bit of a hobby historian into home audio and hi fi), things with tone controls were regarded as compromised, flawed even pariah devices meant only for the unenlightened masses. Magazines automatically assumed that any devices with tone controls were compromised in sound quality. To them, true audiophiles only used preamps (integrated amps were looked down upon) that had no loudness switch, no tone controls, no balance controls and no mono switches even.

When did a manufacturer get the idea to collaborate with the hi-end/audiophile/underground magazines to create the myth that it was a badge of honour to have equipment without all these features? Was there a scheme maybe to create a kind of buzz to allow senior audiophiles to sniff at lesser beings “I buy only audiophile stuff because I can afford to own the best recordings…my ears are so delicate they will be offended to hear lesser recordings.”

Michael, you were around in the industry at this time? Do you remember how all this started?

Sonic thinks that tone controls have a place in allowing many to enjoy musick. There is one audiophile I know who faces limitations in playback volume. This listener has a Sansui AU555 amp (quite a collectable item now) and gives the sound a slight bass boost to compensate along with a touch of treble lift. In that space, I have to say it works rather well.

My Quicksilver has no tone controls either….I wish I had a balance control at least...

Sonic

Hi Sonic

I do remember the shift from recievers to separates, and the shift from "bells and whistles" to straight forward. My thoughts on back then and now is that the industry is still full of experimenting.

Maybe I shouldn't have, but tonight I decided to give my sherwood the tone control test based on your post. I'm leaving in two days and when I come back I'm redoing things anyway so why not have some fun before I go. I played through Dark side of the moon twice, thought about what changes I would make tonally, hit the tone control settings, turned it back on and it sounded like trash. The problems were not fixed at all, but instead the sound stage got really weird. I did low volumes and moved my way up, and could not get things to sound even ok to my ears after the last 3 days of successful listening. I sat there and thought I know a lot of folks who would like this but it was not doing the magic any more for me. The image stayed between the speakers and it very much sounded like the sound of parts not burnt in at all. It was glairy glassy and not real. It all of a sudden sounded like solid state to me. I think I would need to burn in the tone parts for quite a while before I could do a comparison.

Here's the weird part though. When I went back to direct and reset the volume it too was now messed up. I believe that switching it through the signal path threw it out of whack and I will need to wait for a resettle before I will be able to move on with a reference.

Because things were already screwed now I decided to make an adjustment I've been wanting to. I loosened the transformer screws (unfortunately these are underneath) so I flipped the unit on it's side and made the adjustment and turned it back over. Turned it on and it's a completely different animal alltogether. An animal that needs to reset itself and find where it is as compared to the rest of the system parts. The whole system after this move is clearly unsettled and the musics tone has changed dramatically. I turned down the unit and came into my writing room to respond. After about 5 minutes of writing I went back into the room turned it up and listened for a minute or so. It's a completely different system than the one that was playing for the last 3 days. If this would have been done and I was sitting in here the whole time I would have said (not knowing any better) that someone put on a different system. It's like the instruments that were highlighted before have taking a back seat and new ones have stepped forward.

What does this mean in reference to your post? I honestly don't think these guys who talk about stuff in the industry are spending any time tuning and probably have no clue that this world exist. They are probably doing tests and listening in rooms that are so far away from our world that if they spent time tuning in a delicately sensitive room they may have completely different views themselves. In the changes I experienced in the last few minutes I'm quite sure there is no tone/volume/Eq control that have could duplicated this. BTW, from my writting room I'm liking the sound the system is now producing better than I have over the last 3 days, but I may hate this when I go sit down.

Based on doing what I did I would have to say if I were a tunee I would try to find the answer outside of extra parts. Without any doubt I can do a bigger tonal change to my system with the transformer alone in my amp, and do it without any parts weirdness. If I were a stuck audiophile sitting there with a typical audiophile soundstage and it was sterile and off to one side, I'd be replacing my system with a reciever in a heartbeat, and maybe add a graphic EQ.

do I remember the change?

As far as the other part of this change that took place back in the turn from recievers and toys to separates not using tone or balance, I would have to say a ton of this was based on marketing and ego. I can remember people sitting there with the most God awful sounding high end systems with all of us covering our ears. Sadly these same guys had fairly nice sounding systems before they took the high end plunge. Remember these guys went from systems that had speakers in the corners of the room, and the room sounded like music. They would play around with placement but in a different way. I had many friends with these systems and the tonal balance was actually pretty cool. It was cloudy but very toe tapping. More of a party system. The more exotic systems were either horns (corner loaded), PA systems, or some AR and Advent systems. All these systems had their own thing, but none captured the whole. When High End Audio came in if you had any of the old school you were looked at odd. Certain parts of the old school were looked down upon quickly and perminately. It's when people stopped reading Julian Hersh and started reading Harry P and JGH. Stereoreview and Audio were put to the back and Stereophile and TAS were moved to the front. The shift seemed like it was going from Popular Mechanics to Rolling Stone in feel. But with selling magazines what the public doesn't know is it is all about a story and not neccessarilly accurate accounting. Hobbyist became writers and the new breed of rags found the formula for turning on a new listener.

As the snob factor went up in this male driven hobby so did the sense of dictated right and wrong. The listeners didn't stand a chance and the "amp of the month club" was born and things moved so fast that most designers barely got new products ready for the press or the Bi-yearly shows. I knew many of these guys personally and can remember how their products were set by the timing of reviews and shows. Made sense for a budding industry but terrible sense for the art itself. All someone had to say was tone controls and balance was part of the old school and you saw products follow suit like scared kids. Audiophile myths started coming out of the woodwork and so did black-balling any manufacturer who didn't want to play. There was very little about this that was actually about better sound. It became more about social standing and I was warned more than once about how it worked, but for me it was too late. When RoomTune hit it was so needed that the designers, reviewers and listeners came running. RoomTune was one of those products that didn't offend and was a sonic help for cheap. Plus I wanted to see everyone jam so I traveled like a fool tunee man. While traveling I saw hundreds of closets stacked full of the old school. People didn't even bother to sell them at first they were in too big of a hurry to buy the latest Stereophile recommended component. I kid you not it was that bad and I was booked solid trying to make these systems sound good for both reviewer and listener. You can not imagine what I went through to get those grill clothes off and speakers moved into the room. And the WAF became a battle cry for those ego driven guys who didn't want to admit that they had bad sound. They would rather give the reasons why they had bad sound but never changed out components that would actually work sitting in the same place. The ego was thick as gel and I would walk in to these setups that sounded remarkably bad and be expected to do the RoomTuning Miracle. Sonic it was so bad that people started calling the company as if it was a standard for me to come tune their acoustics after they spent a fortune as if the service was free. I'm not kidding, they treated me like I came with the deal. Unbelievable egos!

as far as bottom to top goes though it went like this

you have a reciever, your out
you have an integrated, your a junior member but under review
separate pre and amp, almost there
separate pre, amp and monos, your in the camp

This had nothing to do with sound and everything to do with climbing the ladder of status. Keep in mind the American and world mindset at this time. We bought things that made us fit into a class and not by what it actually was. I can not count high enough to tell you how many guys I had talk to me about them buying a piece they never heard before and they were spending ridiculous prices for. And as soon as they did the model changed they'd be in line for the next model. Some of these guys never even opened the box before moving on. This was not about a method of listening but about a compulsive buyer marketing plan. By this time the tone control, EQ, horn speakers and anything under $2000 were not considered in. It was literally like being a biker and not owning a Harley.

I did want to throw this in as well to fit the last post.

When the loudness button was designed guys were not listening with their chairs out in the room and the rest of the room empty. The loudness button was a low level compensation boost as sonic stated. There were very few listeners at that time who listened in a dedicated setup. The curves that were developed were not to enhance staging but to enhance tonal rolloffs.

When not going after staging I love loudness buttons. I've even used certain ones fairly well in listening, like the pioneer for example. My Sherwood experience last night scared the willies out of me but maybe I'll revisit this sometime down the road.

Sonic do you have the actual parts list for these circuits and the curves.