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 Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics

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Sonic.beaver




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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeTue Oct 15, 2013 12:10 pm


Hi Michael and Zonees

That is a wonderful treatise on pressure and soundwaves from Michael wasn't it? if more audiophiles understood this, we will have a few less myths.

Sonic has been trying out the DecoTunes on the front window panes. I found that there us enough space behind the grilles and the window surface for the DTs to fit.

So just open the window, push the DT out between the horizontal bars (don't let it drop out the other side), hold upright in place and close window.

I tried the DTs on the two middle panes -- see Sonic's pix posted on October 4 to see the window to get what I mean. Played music and very quickly I could hear the banana shaped soundstage return.

Perhaps reflection causes image recession and absorption causes images to come forward. So repeat the process but turn the DTs burn side into facing into the room. Partly true, the images do go forward a little but I now got an uneven acoustic in the front which sounds odd. The Boo! test is not right either, there is a honk in the decay. Another CD played through and Sonic knew that this isn't working. If the DTs are to go up, having them on the two centre panes are not the place.

Sonic
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeWed Oct 16, 2013 12:15 am

Hi Sonic, thanks

From an early age on, I always wondered why the studio people (the engineer types mostly) and the high end audio people were so set on making up rules and theories that didn't exist in the real world.

I like most of you, enjoyed my adventures reading the hi fi journals. I especially liked it when I started getting mentioned and reviewed Basketball  but what was so weird to me in reading these is the reviewers would go off in their own world and make up something about how a particular audio experience or effect or product  would work that would fly in the face of science and physics. I can remember reading these reviews and articles and shake my head and dive into my own research and testing, and also the testing of others and compare what I and the science world found and size them up against the audiophile or studio engineer world.

First we had Stereo Review saying all cable sounds alike, then we had people talking about cables in a way that was so made up from reality that it seemed like out of a space fiction movie.

There are many things at work in the audio chain that can quickly go over the average head, but the fact is there is nothing like experience mixed with a little study. The audiophile and studio geek worlds tend to jump off the logic cliff many times before letting their ears do their magic.

So many times I have sat in listening sessions with well known designers or reviewers and listened to them talk, but also listened to their systems. Most of the time the systems sounded nothing like what they were talking about and I would watch them squirm and quickly put the blame on something else in the system that must be wrong and not their product or part.

Truth be known not a lot of guys doing this hobby for a living know a whole heck of a lot about current flow and acoustics. If so they never would have created some of the dumbest things in the creation of audio reproduction.

For example getting off of the acoustical thing for a moment, how many guys really know electromagnetics? Not many Laughing 

I get picked on for my choice in products a lot of times when I'm tuning but did you ever ask why I make these choices?

In the late 70's early 80's I got the equipment bug. Like any other ego driven male I thought bigger and heavier was better but almost right from the beginning my ears started telling me something different. My first shock Shocked as a teenager was when I was working on my bass players head amp. It was not working (bad solder) so I opened it up to fix. When I got the wires working I played it. As soon as I got the pieces put back together again I plugged it back in and played it again. The sound of it taken apart as compared to the sound of it put together was not small. It made me flash back to when I was a kid playing with building my own stereo. None of my early stereos had chassis. They were basically parts I could find and put together. The more I played the more I heard the same types of signatures. You open something up, and it sounded open, you close it in and it shut down. This was about as simple in my mind as it could get.

To fast forward (cause you all have heard my story) is it really that shocking that at a show I would have a $25,000 amp getting beat up by a cheap integrated? People get so upset with me and I have no idea why. I'm just doing physics. I take the parts carrying the signal and set them free from these huge electromagnetic shields. You would think that guys who are in the business of listening would have implemented this long ago.

The high end audio people are doing the exact opposite from what physics is saying to do concerning preserving the audio signal. It's like hello scratch you guys know that when you put that piece of metal and rubber near that "electrically charged" part that you are altering the signal, right? Not only altering it but causing the field that should be disapating naturally to shut down premature. Why do you think your sound is in the speakers, or you have weird shapes to your stage, or the very worse curse in audio "the small sound stage".

I'm always thinking about what this hobby should be instead of what it is.
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Sonic.beaver




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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeThu Oct 17, 2013 12:26 pm


Hi Zonees

The DTs on the window panes are not working. You have seen from Sonic's Oct 16 post that having the DTs on the middle panes caused middle soundstage recession. On the two outer panes, I lost some bass and a hard, ringy tone came in within hours of installation (maybe even when they went up) though there was no banana soundstage.

So the conclusion is I now got two DTs with nowhere to place them. Certainly not on the window panes.

Michael, any spots in my room I should try the DTs in your view?

Sonic
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeThu Oct 17, 2013 1:07 pm

Hi Sonic

Sounds to me like your room is crying out for wood and control products with wood fronts.

Remember that burn pulls sound toward it like a magnet. All materials have give and take, and what they give or take is not just a frequency range but also a tonal signature.

What your room is doing is exactly what your components (any components) are doing to the signal. All mechanical conduits whether they be hosting an electronic signal or hosting an acoustical wave become a part of that audio signature.

For some time now listening to your results in my minds ears I hear the lack of vibrating materials that hold a full range tone in your place that has the right flavor. Wood is that right flavor. And not just any wood but something that has a nice body of sound to it.

The DT's in the long run might be useful as baricades but as far as controled flavor I see wood.
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeFri Oct 18, 2013 9:57 am

Hi Michael

Yes, I agree that wood is needed.  I am experimenting with stop gap measures to get the sound of wood into the room and it is promising. More on that soon.  Yes, a few FS-PZCs and Aeroplanes are being considered by Sonic.

Michael -- the heavy hemlock compressed wood fibre shelves in my clamp rack, do they qualify as added wood to the room, are they neutral or are they "negative wood" (like a piece of brick or burn material)?

In the meantime, here are a couple of things Sonic did that improved the sound of my analog playback a lot.  Inspiration came from one Ed Mendelsohn writing in Abso!ute Sound.  

Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 S113

What was done?

See that tiny copper strip on the turntable cover?  That is an earthing strap that connects the cartridge body to one of the ground pins.  It is slipped into a gap in the side of the cartridge body and goes round the pin. Following Mendelsohn's advice, I removed the strap from both the Shure M97xE and Stanton 500 v3.

Be gentle, use a push pin.  This strap can control hum but can sometimes increase it.  After removing the earthing strap from both the Shure M97xE and the Stanton 500 V3, whatever hum level existed (very little) completely vanished, with a bigger change in the Stanton 500 v3.

For the Shure M97xE, the push in stylus assembly is also a bit loose.  All Shures suffer this and the sound suffers accordingly.   You can very easily pull the stylus assembly out with gentle finger effort unlike the Stanton where the fit is very tight.

Again from Mendelsohn -- I ran a thin line of superglue at the front of the cartridge between the body and the top of the stylus assembly.  Best to pull the stylus assembly out just a bit, run the line of superglue and quickly push the assembly all the way back in.

The clarity, transparency and transient response improved dramatically. Sonic just kept spinning the records one after another. Musick!Very Happy 

Sonic
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeSat Oct 19, 2013 3:42 pm

Sonic says

"Michael -- the heavy hemlock compressed wood fibre shelves in my clamp rack, do they qualify as added wood to the room, are they neutral or are they "negative wood" (like a piece of brick or burn material)?"

mg

When the hemlock was designed into the deluxe JustaRak I did it so it could handle a huge range of weight. People were putting lighter products on some shelves but on that same rack you would have 100 pound amps.

All the other configurations I tried with other woods could not handle this type of load at the time, and the Music Ply was not available.

I needed a shelf that could handle all types of feet and transfer devices.

So to answer the questio of does it add to the wood sound? Yes

But does the hemlock respond to vibrations the same way Magic Wood, Low Tone, Brazilian Pine, Argentine Pine, my treated DF and the Music Ply? No

The Music Ply has become my choice for heavy components and for areas of the world that have high humidity. The .75" weighs about 1/4 if not less than the 1.5" Deluxe shelf.

I don't want to down play how good the hemlock is and need to praise it for out performing the racks of the time, but it was built for something different than what the woods I use now are being made for.

If you put a Brazilian Pine shelf on that rack you would jump out of your chair because of the amount of volume gain in all frequency ranges. However you would also be fighting the woods desire to expand and move.

The Music Ply would again shock you, but the difference between putting the Ply on rods and putting the Ply in a platform configuration is more than huge.

Now all the shelves I have done over the years are great for foundations. Meaning if you put a Mini Platform on top of the shelf in the rack, you have added a layer of transfer and that's pretty darn cool and the jump in performance is pretty big. Also as the size of the delicate woods I use get smaller they also become more stable as far as humidity.

My smallest Mini Platform is 12" X 12" and is made from Magic Wood and Brazilian Frames.

I snapped a pic of one yesterday while taking photos of the new RoomTune Pillow.

Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 M85

It's sitting on the Low Tone 2X4 BTW so you can see the size. This one just got it's first coat.

You might also want to note this is the same wood and design that is used in the new Room Voicer and PZC. The PZC's I'm making are all going to be this size for the wall mount and corners and this will also be a floorstanding unit, which is out of this world for fine tuning.

For those not knowing how their room should sound the Room Voicer is the product that fixes that, along with the other toys I'm doing right now.

I have to run out but will be back to talk more about the wood, and what I'm working on.
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeSun Oct 20, 2013 6:29 am


Hi Zonees

Sonic was reading some early copies of The Abso!ute Sound (the stapled early ones before the full colour covers with glue binding) which I picked up from a discount bin. Yes Sonic is a forager…and in this issue Harry Pearson was talking about what he called jokingly The Pearson Rule of Thirds. He is on record here saying that he is not the discoverer of the placement method of having the speakers at the 1/3 length and 1/3 width intersection points of the room.

To those who like this method is because they think it puts the speakers at the null points of the room so they hear more speaker and less room. But have Zonees tried this? I have. And it is another audiophile myth that the Tune shows a better way.

The first thing I noticed when I tried my speakers in this spot (never mind your cabinets/panels will look too close together) is the loss in efficiency. To get subjective levels equal the volume has to be turned up. Two to four clicks in my case, programme dependent.

“Aha!” says Audiophile “This proves the room is dialed out”.

Sonic asks two questions – 1. did it solve your room problems and did you like the sound? And….the loss of volume tells me your room/system has lost efficiency. 2. If your car has 200 horsepower, will you buy a mod to your engine that resulted in you losing 20 horsepower leaving you with 180 HP?

“But watts are cheap”….Sonic thinks this view needs considering for a couple of reasons – first, is it really true? The best 500W, 1kW amps are not cheap so that may already blow away the myth. There are those who believe that small output amps (tubes mostly) 2W to 30W give the best music.

Sonic is now finding that even as I have finally controlled my room (notice how long it has been since I discussed the effect of the Boo! test in my room?), I am at the start of the next phase of the Tune where Sonic is integrating the right materials into the room so that harmonics can bloom.

There is nothing wild about this idea – all audiophiles know that systems in a floor-to-ceiling tiled room will sound hard and ringy. A room like something from a Vincent Price movie with heavy drapes and tapestries will sound dull and quiet and require more power to get levels where the music starts to soar. It might even be impossible in some such rooms.

In my case, as Sonic considers the wood from Michael I want, I have brought in different wood objects into the zone between and behind the loudspeakers just to see what happens. And they have an effect, make a difference and their effect is audible.

I remember a feature in Japan Stereo Sound magazine where this system made up of Altecs and MacIntosh speakers were in the same room with the owner’s huge collection of……tea cups, saucers and tea pots! Shocked 

There were tea cups and saucers on the speaker cabinets, on the side tables, on the coffee table in front of the listening seat – there were at least 15 tea cups and their saucers on the coffee table alone. All in a room that is not very large. Wonder how that sounded…

On the other hand, when I bring in absorptive materials into my room or turn a RoomTune absorptive side out, I can hear holes and gaps develop in the music and ambience. The musick and its space is no longer continuous side-to-side, front-to-back but splotchy -- the image of a guitar is here, maybe a blob of ambience round it, but nothing connecting it to the bass a couple of feet away in the soundstage which in turn is not connected to the vocalists. It is what we imagine multi tracked music played by musicians who never met face to face, laying down tracks in different studios a few seconds at a time is expected to sound like.

Everything in the room lends its signature to the room.

Your room is your speaker.

Sonic
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeMon Oct 21, 2013 10:02 am

Hi Zonees

Sonic tried an experiment. Took my 12-string guitar that you see in the pix of Sonic’s system and placed in on a small stand in the soundstage area behind the MG1.5QRs about three feet aft of the turntable stand.

The instrument is made of solid spruce (top), rosewood ply (back and sides), unknown wood for the neck and fingerboard. For its price it is an excellent guitar and it holds its own in tone and volume against the solid wood herringbone dreadnoughts in Sonic’s collection.

Played music and the first impression was that part of the soundstage had gone muddy but after several hours of settling with musick, the girth started to expand, I could hear how instruments particularly violas and celli were holding and releasing the notes being played. The critical range of these instruments and the alto voice where audiophile systems are often weak is filling up!

Sonic has known of audiophiles placing musical instruments in their rooms to add tone colour and here I am hearing some effect. Of course, I must not talk too fast…Sonic is going to add more wood in other forms and we will see how these work on the richness and membrane of the sound.

Your thoughts, Michael?

Sonic
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeFri Oct 25, 2013 12:08 pm

Hi Zonees

Sonic tried this on the upper front windows:



Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Test



The effect was initially good with more clarity but over the course of a few days, sound got leaner and less dynamic.  So I went back to this:



Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Windows



For an experiment, the lowest two RTS were turned absorptive side facing into the room.  The effect was audible – the soundstage shrank in width and images got crammed to the front wall.  Tone and dynamics were bleached out and ticks & pops from analog records became more prominent. For certain, reflective side into the room works best. The RTS/ET/DRTs absorptive side out makes for an unbalanced effect due to the reflective layer.  There is a serious amount of absorption (that is why “holes” develop in the soundstage) but less than we may think because the mylar layer reflects sound back and reduces the effect of the burn material giving an absorptive effect that is deeper but narrower in frequency.  

As for bringing musical instruments into the room to give warmth from wood, here is the 12-string guitar in its new place.



Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Guitar



Sonic
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeSun Oct 27, 2013 3:00 am

Hi Sonic

I saw online today a question asked about methods of tuning your acoustics. I thought it kind of funny that this is the way it was worded because until we came along people called it dampening or defusing your room.

I found it interesting that people were talking as if they have not advanced in listening for the last 20 or so years. At the same time almost all were treating their rooms and showing that it is a main part of the listening experience.

It only makes sense that musical instruments used properly would be acoustical enhancers, after all isn't that what I make, esspecially when you get into my wood products.

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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeMon Oct 28, 2013 8:36 am

Hi Michael

Can you post the link to that online site and question? I’ll like to check it out.

Sonic may take the musical instrument thing ahead a bit more, experiment and see where it goes. Wood is good.  Been listening to analog all this weekend, mostly classical but also stuff I collected going back decades like Buddy Holly.  Those recordings were not the scratchy things we imaging.  With my system tune with thoughts and gear from Michael, these records have a surprising amount of bass and detailed trebles.  Those people in the ‘50s could play.

In all audiophile thinking characterised by dampening and diffusion, the premise is the room is an enemy not part of the system. We should instead look towards connection and integration where our systems are a whole with our rooms and we are a whole in this.  

A suggestion: maybe there should be a grading system from Michael on how reflective/absorptive for each product FS-PZC/FS-DecoTune/FS-DRTs and things like ETs, PZC controllers so users can see that they are getting the best mix to suit their taste and rooms rather than going too far in any direction.

Next up too Sonic is looking at going to a taller turntable stand – mostly for convenience, but I hope with the hemlock shelves to get some good sounds too.

Sonic
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeMon Oct 28, 2013 7:30 pm

Hi Sonic

one of the places I was reading

If you go to Steven R Rochlin on facebook and scroll down you will see it. Steven does a good job (I think) of bringing up questions and topics on the casual that is cool and needed. He mixes things in with his relaxed world of enjoyment instead of the being so rigid as the audiophile world for many years has made itself to be.

instruments in the room

Something to watch out for with instruments in the room. Yes their tonality is something to head toward but because they are enclosed boxes they can quickly become acoustical traps and when you put on a particular piece of music that resonates them at one of their fundimentals those frequencies can disappear or go out of whack in your room. Just something to be carefull of and keep an ear out for.

grading the product

A grading system was tried before but because of the differences in room building materials and atmospheric signatures it didn't work so well. I know that these tools are common and many designers use them but unfortunately they are more sales tools to tempt a client than actual true settings and guidelines.

It all goes back to a world wanting a fixed answer for something that is variable instead of learning what the hobby really is at the extreme listening level.

In the end on high end you really need it to be more like a guitar lesson, teaching the student how to play rather than handing them a guitar out of tune. It's still a guitar but it sure doesn't sound like one when you go to play it unless, one you tune it and two you learn how to play it.

I would rather make different instruments that get the job done and cover a wide range of responces and allow the client to learn his hobby and craft. Audiophiles keep saying they want a one fix, fix and yet they play their whole life. Reason being is they still don't get what it means to have a recording and play it back. They are still after all these years thinking somehow that all recording resond to a system the same and this is so far from the truth. All recordings are extremely different and the more you push to unlock their secrets the more you learn something about their individual characters.

Not to put Bill333 on the spot but this is something that I talk to him about almost everytime he changes CD's. A recording of Donovan's greatest hits is never going to sound like Abbey Road with the same system settings. These recordings have a completely different code from one another and a stereo is not a decoder, it's a play back based on how the mechanics are setup. His system has the potential of such high resolution that you can tweak in the greatest hits and spend a lifetime uncovering the studio and all that went on there, but as soon as you put on Abbey you are in a different time zone so to speak. Someone has scrambled the combination and Abbey for example after "D's" greatest can sound very bassy. This is because of the extreme differences in response of both recordings. It's not the recording fault and it's not the systems fault "it's real life" and this is something that listeners have still after all these years are not getting and in many ways are moving away from even more. Bill is learning some big lessons in sound that he probably never thought he would be a part of but in his search to uncover and find what he is looking for he is learning that each signature of each recording is it's own animal and the further you strive to bring it in particular to life the more you are dialing in to a specific set of settings. Once you hear something at that higher level it is hard to go back but at the same time your system becomes finely tuned to that signature. The next recording may sound fantasic or you may need to tune in it's combination as well to bring it to this level.

All listeners have to make the choice at each step of the way of what to do when they put on a new recording. It's a huge mistake to think that the system is playing the recording, when in reality it is the recording that is playing the system. And the better the system the more the recording plays it.

I have been doing the uncovering of music all my life and have thrown away or rewritten every audiophile guide ever done (including my own). The more I learn about exposing the truth of a recording the more I learn that there is more information on that recording that I thought was. I can do one of two things. I can let it play and take it the way it wants to play my system or I can attempt to match my systems vibratory code to the code of the recording revealing far more of the music's content. The choice is mine cause the system is just waiting to recieve comands from me.  Once I know and become friends with my system and relax in the confidence of what it can do then I can make these choices and decide if I want to listen or judge. Judging requires action if I wish to do something with my judgement, and every recording offers that chance to explore it deeply or listen to it play the way the system is setup at the moment.

There is no way to cheat this truth as I and others have proven (maybe me being the most extreme). The question is always going to be about understanding that there is no such thing as a standard recording system.

Why don't we get this?

Why do we think that I can set my system to "A Sound" and that "That Sound" is going to work for all recordings? This is a big messup and wrong thinking. At best you are going to set your system at a flavor and reduce the musical choices to be enjoyed when you choose a wide swing of those pieces listened to. Hey, it's not a bad thing, it's just a thing of truth. We shouldn't expect a system flavored to play a particular setting to do miracles any more than we should expect our guitars to be intune when we pick them up.

the hemlock

Personally I feel that your taste in sound is out growing the sound of the hemlock, but that's just me looking from a distance. I feel like you have out grown the DecoTunes and the Hemlock and maybe are in too deep in fabric (but this is me). The sound of lower mass wood is something that I could see as giving your system a big boost, and I would bet (I do live in Vegas) if you got some of the new room voicers and or new PZC;s you would be shocked at how much further you would go, along with doing what Garp has done with a platform or two.

I'm not saying ditch the Hemlock but maybe try using it as a stepping stone by having it as a transfer foundation and voicing on top of it. It may or may not go full enough range because you are in need of tone and every time you step toward tone vs dampening I watch your progress and see how the tone is more important for you to get in your system.

For example: when you do a placement change using dampening the results are usually you get an improvement but when settling it gets dull. This is a sign of too much burn and not enough full range vibration.

Don't let me forget about writing about this. "the character of settling". My memory (short term) is so bad that I forget about things I need to write about. One of them is the studies I have made over the years of how things settle and how you can tell if you have a good "prominent" material or not. This is something that is in my mind that needs to get put down for you guys.

Anyway I bring this up because I can sense that you need as you are saying yourself to head in materials in your room that you can control that are more along the lines of that guitar sitting there. More guitars are probably not the answer but the tonality is.

think full range tone my friend, it is the next right move
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeWed Oct 30, 2013 8:24 am


Hi Michael

Can you explain what you mean when you say “try using (the hemlock shelves) as a stepping stone by having it as a transfer foundation and voicing on top of it”?

Does this mean I can use a hemlock shelf in combination with music ply shelves in the same rack?

How thick are the music ply shelves and how heavy is one shelf?

As for your comment that the hollow bodies of the instruments can cause effects on the sound, I heard that as a loss of transparency in the upper bass with the guitar in the front. The familiar dimensionality and openness returned when I moved the instrument to its old spot behind the Bookcase Wall. OK on to the alternative Sonic can access.

Also an observation – tell me if you agree: from the threads on Tuneland it seems to be a given that as we carry out tuning the perceived volume is expected to go up. Sonic is of the view that can happen when we tune but also when we mis-tune and do something that brings down the acoustic headroom of the room.

Which means the room goes into acoustic overload at lower playback levels. In fact, as we start the tune in an untamed room, the perceived volume for a given setting may go down first as the worst room problems are dealt with.

My observation came about because Sonic helped an audiophile start his untreated new room. It was one of the public housing apartments that over 80% of people in Singapore stay in. Hard walls etc so in this smallish room with concrete and tiled floor, his tube and DIY horn system was very loud and smeared. It was ringy, hard, shouty, cupped hands colouration…you know the rest, very fatiguing. Not listenable at all. And room overload occurred at low SPLs where the compression and closed-in ringing happened.

I helped this audiophile mount 4 Corner Tunes, 3 Echotunes (at ceiling/upper walls) and four tune strips (actually rows of Echotunes) in the corners. We applied this in stages but with each advance, the perceived volume for a given preamp setting went down. But each time, the overhang in the room reduced, the sound got clearer and the room got quieter.

We then tried cranking up the volume and found that the sound was listenable at higher levels than before. The room’s overload threshold was raised so we could play music louder without going into that horrid overload signature. But after the application of that bunch of products from Michael, we had a room where music could be listened to. This one has a lot more work to be done and the owner needs enlightening about the Tune.

So Sonic is of the view that if you tune and the subjective volume falls, you have done something right. You could have cleaned up the room of overhang and given yourself a few more dBs of headroom to crank up the volume so your music plays louder without overloading your room. But don’t jump to conclusions. Listen to your room with music you are familiar with for a few days – suggest about 10 hours of music play time. Sonic has found that nice sounding things happen at 10 hours or so. Then you can stress test the room by pushing up the volume and see if the room goes into acoustic overload at a higher SPL. I have found my room doing much better than before in the respect.

And I have found that absorbent things like carpets can actually lower your acoustic headroom. Don’t ask me why but Sonic has noted this.

Michael – your views on Sonic's observation.

Also post the discoveries you and Bill333 are making in Chicago.

And what you said that our recordings play our systems rather than our systems/rooms playing our recordings. Now that is a revelation!

Sonic

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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeWed Oct 30, 2013 6:39 pm

Hi Sonic

I see this post in 3 sections

1) the hemlock shelves
2) acoustical headroom
3) music playing the system vs the system playing music

First the hemlock

As time has moved on I have progressed in my listening and designing. For many years it was about the rack being the center of the transfer process. As my systems got simplier I started to evaluate vertical and horizonal placement of items in the room for both transfer and acoustics and moved toward platforms as being the best of both worlds. I say this for me and others with few components. For the rest who want the height we need to do our transfers as carefully as possible cause ultimately the vibration is going to run into a rod or suport and share the transfer.

In Sonic's case an older shelf is used as the transfer to rod and all the tweaks need to be ontop of this shelf unless the top one is used for top tuning. To make the setup more full range one of two things can be done. One is to go with super low tone platforms to sit on top of these shelves or go with music ply shelves replacing the hemlock.

In your case soinc you would go even further to replace the hemlock and use the shelf platform. But a first step is to go with the shelf platform I would think. Keep in mind though I'm always going to push for a platform instead of a rack when I can because of the stacking effect.

The weight of the shelves vary greatly depending on how I voice them but as compared to the hemlock "feathers". Music Ply shelves come in .5" or .75"

I'll try to find time to do a drawing to show you the options.


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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeWed Oct 30, 2013 7:37 pm

2) acoustical headroom

I look at acoustical head room as what a room does emptied and then filled.

Most guys I have listened with try to do their acoustics backward by putting the system plus funiture in first along with creature comfort then try to work around them. I feel this is the long way around. They also read audiophile articles telling them to start at a certain point based on what, I don't know, and move forward leading them into a dampened and hard room. Why people follow these uneducated moves I have no idea. These same people feel that a wave travels in straight lines to which it wouldn't even be called a wave but a beam. Why these things happen in audio is shock to me as it is pretty easy to see that these starting points and understandings are oxymorons.

Acoustical headroom has been unfairly demonized in the listening world and it's sad that the teachings about it from the beginning were not more clear. Basically someone heard acoustical amplification and didn't know how to use (tune) it and put a label of distortion on it. This was and is a huge mistake that should have never happened.

When we walk into a room and hear it amplify the sound we automactically think of it as something wrong when infact that's what rooms are built to do. They are not built to distort but to find order among the waves and contents. Different shapes and builds of rooms do different things but all on their own have a function. That's where we come in.

When we walk in a room or start putting things in it, this is when a room starts to have to deal with something other than the structure itself. We blame the room when we should be looking at the room as a friend wanting to help us amplify. Every room has it's good and bad and there is no perfect formula cause when you put even the smallest of objects in a room you have changed that formula.

what makes up the acoustical formula?

The first thing to understand about the acoustic formula of a room is that it is pressure driven. You can build the same exact room in two different places (even only a few feet apart) and change one variable like elevation or temperature or humidity and the two rooms will sound different. This is extordinary when you think about it in the world of audiophile formulas. We use things like the golden ratio and first wall reflections as guidelines but they couldn't be further from reality of how a room works.

Rooms are fantastic natural amplifiers and if we use the right materials when building or refit the room with the proper enhancement tweaks we should be able to add a good 3 DB to the playback or more, bringing out more of the music content. It's when we start making steps to dampen the room that we run into ruining the natural amplifying formula and begin making the room disort. Even stepping into the room or putting a chair inside begins to change the flow of the sound pressure, this is why I teach a different methodology about room acoustics than others do. They play in the "if the world didn't rotate" mode and I look at things a lot more practicle with the knowledge of energy flow and effect.

It's not that hard to run a formula based on numbers of dimensions in a non-active world that is energyless. Makes for a nice template but it has nothing to do with sound in the real world and never has. Science shows us in every case that when a sound wave is created the momentum makes the wave move in an amplified manor. The wave grows till it either hits a boundary, another wave or disapates naturally. In the case of a room 100'x100'x100' and down (throwing out this number to cover all listening rooms) ampification of the acoustical signal is scientifical a must. Attempts to make a room "flat" or without gain is acoustical distortion and should start being viewed as such. The original signal at the point of source is only that gain at that source. Once it moves "air" pressure it should be view as a shared transducer of energy. This enegy shares the already existing pressure of the room and takes on that rooms sonic nature.

You've heard me say "the room is your speaker" well it is. No speaker can produce a sound without waves and no waves can exist without the effects of pressure.

Well I can use my testing tools as a guideline. Can you? Does your testing tools tell you particular note structures? Hardly, and yet this is what we are listening to. Not just a range of frequency responses but the actual recreation of music notes. These sterile dampen diffused rooms of the audiophiles do not lend themselves to the rooms natural amplification proccess but are room distorters forcing your systems to sound like something they are not. We shouldn't be looking at kill or break apart, but instead the uniting of the sound pressure zones to amplify the music distortion free.

Wow michael your a genius. No I'm not, I just didn't get off track from true science as a lot of audiophile myths have. I look at waves for what they truly are and don't try to bend them into a fictitious world. A world that has no foundation in proof. The proof of wave movement has been documented for years and years. And the pebble in the water has been used in audio for ever, but the audiophile has not been watching or maybe questioning the acoustical amplification proccess and some where down the line decided to make a set of rules based on nothingness. We should make our rooms flat, instead of the truth which is, we should make our rooms amplifiers.

reality sinks in

This is where we should be starting our talks on acoustical headroom. Not from we kill it then bring it back, but more how do we treat it without killing it?
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeThu Oct 31, 2013 7:28 am

3) recording playing the system vs the system playing the recording

Even though I've been side tracked from time to time, I've aways liked when a system gets out of the way to let the music play. In our weird thinking we have created a world where the  system is what we listen to affraid what's wrong with this? Well first of all it always results in a smaller than life soundstage to listen to a system instead of the recording.

are you confused?

Are the systems we play, playing the music? If you have a recording that is big as a house and your listening to a 8 foot wide stage something is missing somewhere wouldn't you think? How can I record an instrument and the room it is in and have it come out the other end tiny or missing the original sound of the moment is the question that I have been asking forever, or at least until I heard a real size and space sound stage, then all bets were off. The hobby as I thought it was disappeared when I heard the big stage. It was like camping overnight to find the next morning that I was in the middle of a huge town. While camping my vision and space was impaired, but when the morning light came I saw all the way out to the horison. The camp fire may be intimate but at best tiny compared to the light. I say this over and over but this is what the industry has created.

Aren't we going to be shocked one day when people take this serious and big stages are actually "in fashion". And won't we be double shocked to find out that it took the simpliest systems to do this instead of the mega big bucks systems.

When you play a recording it should be like non-other you have ever heard. The more system character you hear the less original recording is getting through. It's like when I cook a burger on the grill. Every time I have a choice to eat that beef as it is naturally or I can season it making it into whatever I want, but one thing I can't do is go back to the original taste without starting all over. High end audio is about a ton of different types of flavoring within the same space. Sometimes we can play this recording and it sounds great and other times on a different system it sounds horrible or at least different. Audiophiles come to shows with their CD and try to judge the sound, yet I have never seen an audio room at a show tune in for that recording except for the rooms we did. Isn't that odd, these guys are walking around to see what system sounds "right". Right? to that particular recording at that particular setting, and after all these years they haven't caught on to the most obvious truth. Those systems are playing the music the way they are designed and haven't a chance in hades to play more then 10 percent of the recordings out there to anywhere near satisfaction. This being the case I would rather have a klipsch or cerwin vega or bose system that at least knows the sound they want to make. They make no bones about it. They want to make the music sound the way they want and sure enough they do. It may be something the listener loves or may be something that after a while completely gets on your nerves but that's the goal.

I use to live in the world of "that sounds like brand X" but after a while I could never be totally happy. Something on some piece of music would reach out and touch me in a way that would not let go of my ears and start eating at me. The system would dictate the sound of the music and after a few pieces I would start in the back or front of my mind be thinking about another component, another flaver. Then I even got to the place where I was saying "boy I bet that would sound good on those speakers or that amp". The trap I built for myself got bigger and bigger and I ended up having stores full of systems all sounding different and not one of them could play my entire collection of music.

take a breath

That's when I knew I was approaching this backward. I shouldn't be listening to systems playing my music, I should be listening to the music playing my system. Why am I letting a system tell me what I have to hear and the song what to play? Why can't I just hear the song the way it was recorded as if the system wasn't there? I mean if I could turn on the music without the system I would in a heartbeat. Presto, put me inside of "the jazz singer" or "brothers in arms" or "aerial boundaries" or "wish you where here" or whatever I choose. I don't go in there to listen to a capacitor. I listen for the recorded signal. You see we somehow have started listening to what the parts are sounding like and what the parts do but this is not the original signal. If it were we would hear only music (all the recording).

This is pretty magical really and we really should take our hats off that we can enjoy this technology but we also need to become responsable in understanding what this hobby is and what the parts do to help carry and amplify the sound. We know that this signal must have an electronic host to carry it but we have a hard time making the signal path connection between the language and the function of the parts that carry that signal.

True high end audio to me means the absence of the electronic part's sound. It means we find the simplist path and try to get rid of parts and pieces that hold too much of their own signatures or cause blockage. You see I'm not after the best sounding parts, I'm after the parts that don't make any sound of their own that takes away or adds to what is original. In the proccess of the search I found that it isn't always the audiophile parts that are the least contaminated. It's actually usually the parts that have more of a freeing character to the way that they pass the signal. In general I find that the relationship between the circuit board and the weight of the mass in a part makes a huge difference in the signal passing through.
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeFri Nov 01, 2013 9:21 am

Hi Michael and Zonees

A number of things have happened this week in relation to Sonic and audio.

First, my soundstage is pretty good after all.  How did Sonic conclude this?  You see an audiophile heard my system and said things like “great…..those things with woodboards are the speakers….?” The shock of finding out where everything came from,  then saying “if you had a carpet in here your sound will be better”.

So Sonic did a demo.  Played a piece of musick over a few times to acquaint ourselves and the room, then I brought a woven carpet from another place in my dwelling and placed it just ahead of the listening. Instantly the sound changed for the worse.  The sound got thick and sludgy, the treble rolled off, the volume level fell and the instruments were out of sync and the soundstage shrank and was focused in the space between the inner edges of the speakers.  

That is when Sonic realized that for all its shortcomings the sound from my system was in fact going thru the walls Very Happy  Remove carpet and woooosh everything opens up again.  And I had one rather confused audiophile Shocked  with me remarking that what he heard should not have happened.

Question 1 for Michael: about the way I went tuning the apartment listening room for that friend with the Corner Tunes, ETs and Tunestrips.  Was I killing the room because the subjective volume fell slightly was the tunes were introduced – even though at the end, the sound was more listenable, could be played louder and was more even in frequency response?  The room was not furnished – just the gear, big horn speakers, a throw rug on the floor over tiles, light curtains, two leather covered chairs, all gear (CD player, tube amps one per channel) sitting on the floor, not racks.  Plain walls, one had a picture hung on it.  He and his wife just moved in you see.  Size of room about 12 ft x 10 ft x 9 ft.

Question 2 for Michael: Sonic made a taller rack for my turntable, very much more convenient and the sound is OK. I felt that now that both racks were the same height and had the same number of shelves, the soundstage was more balanced and in proportion Right to Left.

Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 S115

Am I using too many shelves?  Will I reduce blockage by going to two shelves per rack instead of three (though I have to give up top tuning of the Pre-amp and the phono stage)?

I need to get my system as optimized as possible before Sonic starts switching to the musick ply shelves which I’ll do in the new year.  Was going to do the switch now but Sonic’s car gearbox died and had to be overhauled. Was it a manual or auto box? No…it is one of those semi auto things with a switchable auto/manual sequential gear shift with an electronically controlled clutch and computer controlled hydraulic whatzis and computer managed throttle plus this and that.  The whole thing fell apart. Cost to fix is many multiples of $1,000. Not funny, so expenditure deferred I am afraid.

Another pix:

Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 S114

You’ll notice the small mini-tunestrips are gone.  As the sound settled, I found the sound bleaching a bit and Sonic’s tune instinct said “its them!” and so it was Exclamation   A lot of weight and girth and tonal colour came back.

An eventful week.

Sonic
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeFri Nov 01, 2013 8:12 pm

Hi Sonic

Sometimes the best way to tell that we have moved forward is moving backward again for a few minutes. The way we grow and experience things is a continuum and sometimes it's hard to tell just how far we have come until we go back and look at where we were and even sometimes trying to go back to where we were to see how bad or off it was. It's funny how the magic moments of listening are that "a magic moment". Was it better than where we are now or that at that time it hit our emotions a certain way. For myself I pretty much enjoy the moment for what it is, a moment.

When I listened last night I kinda got a kick out of how far I have come as a listener and how different the way I listen now is compared to when I first started. One thing that has remained the same is I'm like a little kid in front of my stereo. I sit there like I am some kind of stoned guy in a maxell picture I'm sure Laughing . High on the music and nothing else.

BTW Yikes about the car. I feel your pain believe me. My tranny rebuild is still not working right.

sonic says

Question 1 for Michael: about the way I went tuning the apartment listening room for that friend with the Corner Tunes, ETs and Tunestrips. Was I killing the room because the subjective volume fell slightly was the tunes were introduced – even though at the end, the sound was more listenable, could be played louder and was more even in frequency response? The room was not furnished – just the gear, big horn speakers, a throw rug on the floor over tiles, light curtains, two leather covered chairs, all gear (CD player, tube amps one per channel) sitting on the floor, not racks. Plain walls, one had a picture hung on it. He and his wife just moved in you see. Size of room about 12 ft x 10 ft x 9 ft.

mg

I like the size of that room number one. Number two I would have to see it to make that kind of judgement but we must keep in mind that if a person is not going free resonant sometimes the only way to fix the sound is to loose some of it. I made a lot bigger sonic sacrafices when I used systems of mass then when I used the more light weight systems that I do now. In a system that is all the tuned it might be better to loose some to gain something able to be listened to.

When you read some of the reviews done with me visiting the reviewers listening rooms they talk about how I tuned the systems and in the process removing some of the tunes once the system was able to deliver the better sound. I would not have done so if the systems were not a little more set free. So in a way I used the product to mask some of the problems till the listener raised his game.

sonic

Question 2 for Michael: Sonic made a taller rack for my turntable, very much more convenient and the sound is OK. I felt that now that both racks were the same height and had the same number of shelves, the soundstage was more balanced and in proportion Right to Left.

Am I using too many shelves? Will I reduce blockage by going to two shelves per rack instead of three (though I have to give up top tuning of the Pre-amp and the phono stage)?

mg

I'll tell you what I can. One, the rack is less stable at two shelves cause you might be tempted to over tighten it. 3 shelves is far more stable. On the other hand I've really studied this and as much as I know racks are used when ever possible I would think about ways to remove the rack from the listening area and not try to make it part of the acoustical treatment.

This is one of the reasons the #2 audiophile rack company at one time (me) went from a rack to the platform. There is more to this but this was a biggie.

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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeSat Nov 02, 2013 12:53 pm

Hi Michael

You are saying that my room and system will be better off without the racks, aren't you?

Sonic may take up this idea in some form to see if this will lead to opening up more of the tune. My experiment for the coming week. Let's see what this leads to.

Sonic
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeSun Nov 03, 2013 11:17 am

Hi Zonees

Talk about jumping in with both feet.

Sonic removed all the equipment from the racks and removed the racks from the room! I then assembled a small two shelf (hemlock) rack that had all hex nuts and cones from Michael for the turntable. More on that in a bit.

Sonic placed the equipment on the floor in a cross formation ahead of the FS-PZC trio:

Amp
CD player Preamp
Turntable

[Listening Chair]

The CD player now sits on a single hemlock shelf supported by three large Harmonic Feet, top tuned with rods, cherry finished wood, balsa thrust plate and MTDs from Michael.

The Preamp and Amp now sit on their “platforms” that have upward pointing resitone rods contacting the circuit board (Preamp) or casing (Amp). The wood is from FS-Deco Tune bases. No covers, no top, tuning. They and their second platforms that carry the transformers sit on hard Harmonic Springs then to balsa (M Green cherry finished).

The Turntable sits on the small rack with the phono stage on the lower shelf. The circuit board of the phono stage is top tuned, no casing. Top tuning with MW, downrod (mild steel) and a soft Harmonic Spring from Michael.

Setting this up was labourious. Sonic was crawling on the floor to ensure the canopy is upright and laying out all the mains cables, interconnects that now had to be swapped around so they can link the gear up. Then assembling the rack and making it level, first clean then with objects on it. The whole system first looked like a confused mess and ugly. Soon bit by bit the thing looks like a system not a pile of electronic junk.

The Boo! test was performed – slightly more bOO! than I have liked.

Then Sonic powered up the system. Nothing blew. The moment the tubes reached operating temperature and state, I played a CD. It wasn’t the mess I feared but the sound is not gelling – the Left – Middle – Right stage images seems out of step with each other, it was a Bill Evans trio CD, like Bill and his bassist and drummer were not exactly together tonally or in time. But there were good harmonics in each of the three “bubbles”.

Sonic knows better than to jump to conclusions so the burn in and settling starts. Reports to follow.

Michael, what do mean about the system on the second floor? What if the system is on third or on the ground floor? What if the system was in an apartment complex with five, ten or 15 floors above or below? What difference does that make, what can a Tunee do about it?

Sonic

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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeMon Nov 04, 2013 11:36 am

Hi Zonees

Funny formatting:

I meant



                                               Amp

                             CD Player             Preamp

                                            Turntable


                                       [Listening chair]

Day +1 --  the soundstage is expanding, bass has more extension and weight (especially when a low bass note decays, it does not get thinner or shift up in pitch).  Width is good but a "darkness" and  heaviness can be heard.

The MG1.5QRs are giving a surprising amount of bass with low extension.  

Sonic can hear how the racks messed up my soundstage. Even now, the single low rack which the turntable sits on creates a "no soundstage zone".  This is a dead zone where no images or soundstage goes, the images and soundstage wrap themselves to avoid the rack. Yet in themselves, Sonic is getting very good girth image size and weight and treble extension except around the rack. But I can now hear the deadening effect from the two racks I had on the soundstage and tone in my system.

The focus with simply miked recordings of a small number of instruments in an ensemble is much better than I  ever heard!

I think the excessive warmth can be tuned out easily but I should wait as settling occurs.

Michael, please comment on my latest no-rack set up.

Sonic
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeTue Nov 05, 2013 7:49 am

"Michael, what do mean about the system on the second floor? What if the system is on third or on the ground floor? What if the system was in an apartment complex with five, ten or 15 floors above or below? What difference does that make, what can a Tunee do about it?"

I was refering to systems on a floor with flex as opposed to a system on the basement floor.
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeTue Nov 05, 2013 8:06 am

Hi Sonic

My comments are simple really. When I went from rack tuning to platform tuning it opened up a new world to me. As you can see with my drawing a couple of posts ago the acoustical flow changes dramatically and gives us an easier front soundstage pressure zone to work with.

Even with the hemlock (not the most low mass stuff) you can hear things open up. If these were the super low mass platforms you would have tons of tuning and be able to tune in much of the tonality you are wanting and a lot easier.

I hope people are seeing the bigger picture here as I'm trying to get people to visualize the approach I'm suggesting for us to take, and some of us have for a while now. Lighter transfer devices (platforms and such) and voicing wood to be put in the places of need both mechanically and acoustically. Don't forget top tuning but the need to get a good foundation that works better than the racking of stuff (when possible) is a huge step. I'm not going to fool you sonic, the hemplock is not going to give you what the lighter toys will but your getting the idea here.
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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeTue Nov 05, 2013 11:36 am

Hi Michael

So that is what you meant about the upper floors.

The sound in my room +2 days after Sonic went to a set up with no hemlock racks (except for one to support the turntable) is going somewhere interesting with settling.

The sound is a bit dark but the bass is going lower, deeper and more "shaped/articulated" than before. While Sonic does not hear vibrations coming up through the chair, I am hearing pressure and slam in the low frequencies which I only heard when my system had the X-30 crossover and the Janis W-1 subwoofer. The images also wander less. Best of all I am getting more convincing outside the walls imaging than ever before. Better in the bass than then trebles but a great improvement!

Was listening to Copland's Fanfare and Rodeo (Analogue Productions) which sounded like the whole orchestra was continuous in imaging right to left. Before this the imaging was rather L -- Centre -- R with gaps in between. The orchestral bass drum and cymbals played huge and beyond the walls. Then played George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (LP -- Colombia 360 stereo) which also gave a wide orchestral image while the piano, muted trumpets sounded real.

The middle stage is affected by the presence of the rack and the soundfield seems to span the width of the room and beyond the walls but the centre is slightly recessed by the presence of the Turntable rack.

Michael, how do you make a rack disappear -- even one of your own? Please comment.

Sonic

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PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitimeThu Nov 07, 2013 9:18 am


Hi Zonees

The sound in my room is opening up and the volume for a given preamp setting has increased.

The soundstage is going beyond the side walls but not the way Michael has described the way his system does. Mine has images seeming to fade through the walls like a perspective drawing rather than 3D images standing in the adjacent volumes to the right and the left of the room. Yes, I think this description that came to Sonic today expresses what I wanted to relate to all of you for some time.

I think there is a way I can neutralize the effect of the rack....

Will post pix soon so Zonees can see what Sonic has got up to.

Sonic
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Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Empty
PostSubject: Re: Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics   Building a Room Full of Balanced Harmonics - Page 18 Icon_minitime

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