Michael's System

I've been off in my own world exploring the depths of "Moby". I never gave him much attention before buying some used CDs and Moby happened to be in the mix. I was about to go trade my Moby double box set in when I decided to throw it on to make sure I wasn't going to like it. Surprise! At least surprised enough to see if I could tune it in. The first thing that caught my attention was the bottom layer of bass and even though the rest of the music was cloudy this convinced me that something (not knowing what yet) was there. With any new CD I check out I let the system get use to the sound. In my book of listening seriously there is a pattern of harmonics that each piece of music brings to the system. The first couple of playthroughs I don't take any music serious. The system is just not able to reproduce the content yet. For some this may be a hassle and sometimes I ignore it myself, but when I want to really hear the system it takes a few times playing through the CD to get to the good stuff. After about 2 hours of playing the same music the system starts to relax and harmonics start to fill in. Inside of these harmonics are the real sound of the instruments, musical pace and musical interaction. At first it sounds like instruments bumping into each other but after a while the instruments start to play off of each other and musical flow (float) starts to happen. When I get to this stage I know the system is ready to take me somewhere and if careful I can take the music where I want to go as well. This is about the time I listen for how the parts and pieces of the tuning tools are performing. Are things transferring, are things grounding? Stuff like that.

How do you know when the tools are doing their job? This takes listening and as much as I could tell you, you need to hear the effects for yourself till you are use to detecting what the tools do. here's what I recommend. Play your setup with the tools plain (like the PZCs without their spikes) then after the sound has settled put them up on the spikes and listen to the huge change. From this point you can start to shape the sound of the tools. Remember each screw on any of my tools will change the sound of the system. And very importantly any tool can make as big of a change in your system as a component change will. many times bigger.

If you ever want to see where your system is and have fun tuning something in "play by Moby" is a blast. Warning though, if your system does not go low you will not have fun. If it does go low you will enjoy layers of deep rich air that contains tons of special, wonderfully mixed pieces of clean tight info that seem to come out of nowhere. I like to listen to huge thick stages. I like for the sound to roll me over and pull me into the stage itself. This is what Moby does. If you where listening from another room you would think creative weird dance/party/head music, but sitting in the chair there is a sea of motion going on. When the bass is tuned in there is a tight part and air part and a rumble part to it. Hearing these 3 as one is beautiful and moving as they play in and out of each other. Track 17 (I think it is) the vocal recording picks up around to the back of the head. You can see inside of this oversize mouth like a dentist, and the 2 keys on the piano are haunting. The ambiance and reverb is fantastic. On many of the tracks (as an engineer) I'm saying "how is he doing that". Moby takes the DJ mixing scene to a new level. This, on the right setup, is an audiophile recording. On many of the tracks you will have keyboards or guitar take you off into a dream state. my only complaint is the songs end much to quick. I would like to stay inside of these songs for much longer than they are.

Been doing a little traveling and it's good to be home. I leave again in a few days but I'm getting a chance to have some really good listening sessions. I haven't really tweaked a ton over the last couple of weeks. Mainly because the settling at my place has reviled this very cool almost headphone sound stage. The front stage is nice and focused but there is a sense that the music runs right through me to the back of the room. The same is happening to the sides. Don't think sound staging can be big in a small room? Think again! There is so much going on that I have scared Ruggie (Bob) out of the room He said it was getting spooky in there.

Over the last 2 weeks my systems girth has been growing daily. The air flows from front to back with great ease. And I haven't been able to put on a CD that sounds bad (after letting it break in for 30 minutes or so). This almost makes me reluctant to tweak but I know I have to put some new things in my system in order to make judgement calls for others. Rats! I need more rooms!

I should also add this little trick that I have been doing with my windows. It's something that can be used with severial applications. In this pic it is used on my windows.



There are 2 types of this builders paper, I prefer the tan.

Settle settle settle!

My small room system has settled into this very relaxing stage that has made it hard for me to pull away from. Hearing the difference in recordings has been a blast and I have probably been through more pieces of music one right after another than I have in a long time. I even have been getting into some modern pop/rock that I haven't taken the time to explore before. As a result I have become a big fan of Regina Spektor.



This has become a reference for me as I have fallen inlove with the simplicity and recording girth. Such a simple light hearted snappy performance that puts me in a fun trance. She goes where some have never attempted with her vocal grunts and utterances. I find it to break modes and sometimes hilarious. She totally gets in the room with you and your either going to run out or wait for what she going to do next.

I got so into her that I got up on youtube to see what she does live.



amazing!!

As you guys know

I am mister slow and methodical. But, it beats not knowing what something sounds like. I've been testing the new MGA Spikes on different parts of the system and am so pleased with the flexibility of these units. I can now say that you can pretty much tell me the size you need and they can be made to order. We can make them out of any material but the 2 I recommend are the AA Zinc and AA Brass. I also recommend using them with the tuning nuts but regular nuts will work as well.

After placing a few well positioned spikes in the system I've started to head down a path of voicing the circuit board of the pioneer from underneath. This is extremely time consuming and you have to give much attention to settling. I'm finding that the larger the circuit board is and what the material it is made from makes huge differences in how the voicing goes. Resisters clearly have a different sound than do capacitors and all the parts feed off of each other in relationship to how they are placed on the the board. I'm also finding that a person if they wanted to be this crazy (I do some/many times) can actually move instruments into a space of choice and fine tune it in that space. Without a tunable room here it is more difficult but even in my little room with the tunable wall behind me I am able to do some very cool things.

The last two days I've been doing an EMI recording of Franz Liszt's Symphonic Poems. His work does a lot of build up and releases that I find are easy to follow. Why do I like this? It gives me a chance to follow the instruments as they play so I can find predictable patterns soft to potent and see how they might change in their relation to the sound of parts and the room.

Hi Tunees

It's here! The new listening chair has arrived and it sounds so good!



I need to remember to take better pictures tomorrow but just try to pry me out of my chair right now.

Hi Guys

I want to take you on a little walk through on the small listening room. After playing in here a while I've learned much about how the space is working. Even without having my custom PZCs made yet the room with even basic products is sounding really cool. I'm able to shape the soundstage any way I want by making the room variable, something all of you might want to consider.

I could have closed off this room but with it being so small and the fact that from my writing/sleeping room I can hear settling changes, I decided to keep this area open and use the hall and other rooms as tuning tools.



Materials and space is what makes a room magic. This room being an odd shape gave some opportunities to my tuning of it that maybe a typical room may not have, but believe me it is not automatic. I've had to carefully listen to the pressure in the room and how it reacts when I divide the space up into varying ports and spaces within spaces. Here's a good side view of how my Tunable Wall is separating the front from back. Notice the window covering too. A major player in the voicing of the space.



I'm listening nearfield but not as nearfield as I usually do because of where the door is in the room. This was a bit of a problem for me at first cause I like to go inside of the music. The Tunable Wall is something every one should have in my opinion. Mine being a little on the shabby side has done wonders and I can't imagine being without it. Shifting from nearfield to mid and far fields is a dream come true with the wall. It's like adjusting a camera lens and gives me an inside look at the soundstage from many views. This particular T-Wall was made from left over wood from the Chicago Tunable Room (this explains the odd shaped sizes of panels used). I want to tell you something really important in this pic. See how the T-Wall is not toughing the side wall in this shot? Well the cool thing about what is going on in here is not only do I have control of front to back but I also have control of how much energy I want to get to the back part of the room. This has turned out to be huge in my tuning of this space.



The space between me and my front wall is fairly empty. I currently have 2 CornerTunes up and 3 Music Ply PZCs.



You can see that it is only 5.5' from the back of my speaker platforms to my front wall. My speaker platforms, equipment platform and PZCs (BTW also made from the same wood as the T-Wall) all are a part of my acoustical treatment as well as being my mechanical grounding tools. Moving them any little bit makes a big difference to the voicing of this system.



It may not look like it but there is 8' of space behind the Tunable Wall. 6' of it is being used as a vented port where I have acoustical product back there tuning. The changes I can make to the sound from behind me is astounding. In fact I can put myself right in the middle of the recording if I want and shape how it wraps around me.



Between the variably tuned port behind me and the door that goes into the hallway I have a ton of voicing options at my figure tips. BTW my highs don't fatigue at all. They are extended and even warm. This area of the room is a tool that helps me tons when voicing individual recordings.



My tuning does not stop at my door way. It goes far beyond down the halls to the other listening areas and casual rooms. I have a PZC at the doorway that I use to voice the energy coming in and out of the hall.



This area of TuneLand, just outside of the small room, has closet doors and openings to the rest of the place. By shaping the closet doors into patterns of open and closing plus the RT pillow tuning I can effect the sound dramatically inside of the room.



I could take you down the halls into the other parts of the place but it would be a picture of the same, one voiced space after another. Here's a view of the tuning done right outside of the small room looking at the upper space in the hall. I voice the energy before in comes back into the room. There's a great sense of fair exchange that take place in these hall areas and it's actually very nice to listen to there.



And finally a peek at a corner in one of the rooms closest to the small room. My writing/music storage room where I have the sound nice for over flow listening. BTW the wall covering is extremely sheer and all the art is not very bulky and dampened. From here I can make judgement calls on things like the music settling which is a big help to me as it tells me when to go in and listen. This room also helps to voice the hall be used as the port for some of the other spaces.



While taking these pics I was listening to Jack. So nice.

Materials are everything! So much of the time we get lost in the focus of our components. For years I have been teaching getting away from the things that make us stuck and getting focused on the sound of what effects the signal, whether it be any one of the 3 parts to the audio trilogy. I'm very methodical about my listening studying each part, maybe sometimes even too much if that's possible. Since being here in Vegas I've had the chance to live with tile floors long term and even though I have sweated to make them sound good they do not sound great. You have to have a lot of space in your room to work around the character of tile. If you don't have this space it will stick out like a sore thumb and it will take you a ton more time tuning around it than many will want to spend.

Yesterday begun a new era in the small room system setup. First finding a floor that had the sonic character I wanted. I thought about different hardwoods but after hearing a sample and seeing Bob's floor I decided to try a composite wood flooring. My flooring is maybe a little lighter weight than Bob's but not by much if any. Listening to this wood on it's own was actually a nice treat and I felt was pretty balanced with low tones. BUT, hearing it on the floor is a different adventure and until the system is on it's a guess at best.

Putting the wood directly on the tile would amplify the sound of the tile and this is not the direction I wanted to go in. Bob once again showed me what he likes to use to keep the floor floating, but the question I had was what will this do to the sound. Taking a closer look at the "foam" I discovered that this is not foam rubber, it is styrofoam. A air sealed plastic foam that was more of an air barrier. Now we're talkin. Watching Bob lay down this floor is an experience. First goes down the foam, again not "foam rubber" more like a plastic air floater. In the picture below you can see how thin the floater is.



Once the floater is down the wood can start being locked together. The trick here is to put the same amount of force on each seam. DIY, after seeing Bob do this I would question doing something like this on my own. Leave it to the pros.



Listening so far has been a treat! Bottom end has extended and room clarity (evidently caused by the tiled floor) is gone. I will be doing serious listen over the next couple of days but so far I would have to say this was more than a different move, it was a step in a good direction.

For those following my little room adventure you might be noticing something of a change besides the floor. I have turned the room side ways. What It's ok, when exploring a room I try about every setup there is so I can answer questions for myself as well as others.

Setting up side ways has cast a very wide sound stage for this little space but the challenge will be depth. I'm having a fun time voicing the front window though. Looks like something out of pink floyd movie. Very fitting cause I'm listening to a lot of floyd right now (very telling).



With the 60's being a ways from the side walls the Wall Mount DecoTune did a fantastic job of focusing the bass and stage focus.



At first I was starting to do some fancy stuff with the acoustics in here but then I said not so fast Mr. Golden Ears . Before I get lost lets stick to the basics.



I've incorporated 3 of the tools so far and thinking about Sound Shutters, but first I want to get to know the space better.



I'm not crazy about dealing with this window but as long as I have the room turned this way it will need to become a fine tuned acoustical tool. Here's the beginning but in no way is it the end. Yes. that is an RT XLT above the window.



No, I do not believe in first wall reflections as such, howevr I do believe in pressure zone build up and this DecoTune is controlling this area well. The speaker is about 3' from the side wall.



just beginning

Well

I must get some new pics up and show where the system has gone. Discribing the breakin of a floor is something and I'm not sure if it can be done in a short period of time. This particular floor however is easier cause you are not talking about curing time. Settle yes, curing no as it is a prefab. Is it as good as real hard wood? I laugh! Absolutely no way. But better than tile? Without a doubt. I am a little surprised at how well it does sound and am happy the change has been made. The room has been transformed.

No More Window is big news as well as the front wall has been liberated from tons of disturbing evils. Unbelievable how much I was working around that thing instead of letting my system free to do what it wants to.

and more

The Pioneer has also been replaced with my Technics SA 5360. I'll share the differences as time goes on as well as some of the other older products that will be going in for my review.

Been playing with several pieces of vintage equipment lately and have noticed something interesting. There are bigger differences between vintage than more modern components. This has to be due to the fact that newer equipment has not reached a maturity level, or maybe some of the older parts actually are bigger sounding and have more harmonics. A few newer products have the bigger more musical sound but they have proven to be products not on the high end radar.

Sonic has talked about his recent change to simple and I could not agree more. Simple for me is the key to letting the music live. Sometimes it's true the music with a simple system is so big that it seems unfocused until we dial it in, but once done the fewer parts really shine.

Speaking of recent, I had a chance to listen to a simple yet complicated (to my ears) system that had 2 power sources (battery and house AC). The system also had a transport, power supply, DAC setup. Bamm! As soon as I jumped in the driver seat I heard all the extra parts jump out at me with great confusion and lack of passion. It was like arrows were pointing at the culprits telling their crime. Fortunately I had a Magnavox DVD near by to throw into the system. It was like an explosion of sound hit the room and within 5 minutes the stage was full, lively and entertaining.

I have to say once again the sound of simplicity is my personal cup of tea. It's more than a wall of stage that I look for, it's an enveloping effect that sucks me inside of music. I can listen to it but the typical audiophile stage is boring to me as I have a need to be inside and investigating the piece of music as if it were a 3D / 360 movie.

Speaker Update!

As some of you know I've been working ever so slowly on new 60's. The process takes so much time that it is surprising that I'm almost to a point of saying their a go. Having crossover-less speakers are so revealing as compared to running the signal through all that distortion and blockage. At times it's frightening as notes come out of nowhere the more the voicing matches, and when giving birth to a new speaker it's like your listening to your music all over again. In the 60 there is one cap and one resister and without chokes the resister makes a huge difference in the performance in both woofer and tweeter believe it or not. The value of the resister acts like a crossover cut off point as it matches the tone of the woofer to the tweeter. In other designs the drivers always stick out but with free resonance the key is to let the energy flow and make the entire unit act as a complete music machine instead of parts that limit the producing of responses.

I have been using several different woofers on my adventure and have to say that this is where a matter of taste comes into play. For mine, I am usually drawn to the sound of paper or a very light weight almost sheer stiff plastic. But in most cases I find plastic to be pretty fussy even though many times it measures better. In my cases measuring is left at the door as I am listening to how the notes respond and the air aligns.

I'm presently listening to a woofer that so far is surprising me. I always thought (in smaller woofers) that having ridges in the paper would be unacceptable. I'm not sure how I came up with that but it was somewhere in my brain. I'm rethinking this now as I'm listening to one that so far sounds very clear and to the point as if the ridges were in someway breaking up cone surface waves, or would it be better to say stabilizing them. I have heard this effect on bigger woofers and liked it but didn't think it would be the same on smaller ones with such little cone area. I'm not sure these will be an option or the actual woofer but at least my minds fear has been some what tweaked and more accepting than before.

Sometimes speaker designers have got to miss the magic of certain drivers because they are using their test gear. There is no way a microphone would every pick up on the changes that the drivers I am listening to are going through. You can hear the spider, foam and cone fighting and struggling to get their timing. While this is happening the cabinet is saying "what's going on here?". This is one of the reasons I like smaller magnet/cone ratios.

LOL, Do I dare show this picture or not



I have no idea if this is a final configuration to the mini mod's big brother but had fun playing with basic ad ideas.

I usually don't show anything but drawings while working on model designs but this is so darn cool looking I wanted to give a glimpse. The 102 does so many things it's hard to break it all down, but for starters it is built like no other speaker that I know of as it incorporates a tuned frame network that allows each wall of the speaker to act like a tuning board. The 102 can be taken apart one panel at a time. This means the speakers will be able to have interchangeable wood parts. Is the industry ready for this? Who cares, I am. We are so far ahead of the other cats out there that I'm getting too old to wait up

As I've said before the reason why I wanted to make speakers in the beginning was so I had the flexibility to make them sound the way I wanted them to so it only makes sense for me to have a speaker that is built like a room/equipment voicing machine right? The more I see people trying to work around fixed components only to give up the more I feel the need to develop tools that give more listening flexibility than anyone out there. Seems like designers are trying to get you to listen like they do instead of giving you the chance to have sound the way you want.

The 102 is a throw back to the sound that got me into this side of the hobby. 10" 2 ways have not been done by many but as drivers become more stable in their full range responce 2 way 10's can offer a lot of real estate to the notes. This speaker has a paper woofer and 4" paper tweeter to guarantee there is no ear tweaking point sourcing.

more to come in a couple of days, unless I don't return from my listening room

Getting close to the finishing the voicing on the Mini Mod Stands, nice So far all of the transfer points are working fine so now we need to mate the transfers to the sound of the material and finish and we are off and running.

Wow! what an eye opener this is.



Almost definately a room with carpet will want to have a platform added to the stand unless they are able to press the spikes through the carpet, but if good contact is made and the room can produce a good 40hz the mini mod stand and mini will reach 40. I say this with comfort, and won't be surprised to find going below 40hz. After a good burn in, in my 60 cabinets, the woofers of the mini are hitting some low organ notes. Now is it possible to make a stand go this low and get the mini to go down?

What we have done is take the lowest pitched wood we have used and put them together to make this happen. What you don't see in the pics are the upward spikes and the tuning rings that go between the front upright and rear upright. We are also working on a couple of shapes for the top plate to see if we like 3 or 4 upward spikes to the bottom of the mini.

Did I tell you guys this, not sure?

I have framed in my window in the small room and put in drywall. This is a quick fix but has given me considerable flexibility. I can now listen with my speakers facing any direction. This gives me a chance to explore far more than I was able to before. Up until this time I had to choose between flat and wide vs long and narrow stages. The last few days though has given me a diferent picture. I now have (set up lengthwise) a fairly large stage that wraps around me. This little space has actually turn into a pretty nice classical music event capturing the hall front to back. Surprisingly I'm hearing a lot of side hall and the feeling of 6th to 10th row listening is very real. Rear hall is also very present as the speakers disappear into a believable stage. One interesting note to this though is I can now also hear the peak power times in my neighborhood very clearly especially with nice hall classical. Through the day I have good sound and distinctive personalities to the instruments but about 1am the system opens up to a rush of air and space gain that puts me in the hall. I've been monitoring this for a few weeks now and from 1am to 5am is prime listening here. I never did this at TuneVilla cause I had my own transformer but in a few places since I have picked up on prime time listening. Line conditioner folks would say "see" but truly I have never heard a line conditioner sound better than an outlet set free "ever".

Back to the beginning!

You know I've been around this business for a long time now. I've seen waves of audio brilliance come and go. The industry gets fired up about the possibility of something new and their off to the races like a fast food chain. The day I took my eyes off of face plates was the day I found liberation in the art of sound. This hasn't been the most popular road I could have taken but it sure has been the most rewarding for me as a listener. To think what a difference the smallest things in our systems make, makes me realize how keeping things simple truely is the key. I've been playing around with designs lately that hopefully will allow me to deliver a total tunable system and plan from the ground up. It's a plan that isn't built by completed designs being shoved up against other designs, causing confusion, like I see in our hobby. It's a system design built to work as a whole. One part is as important as the next and the system as a whole is dependent on that part. One of the biggest secrets to this system is to use as few parts as possible. I should be careful saying this because some of the pieces I have chosen use many parts. Parts however that work together as a whole and don't require a ton of power cords or a ton of interconnects which I have found to be the area where the most signal blockage electronically occurs.

Recently I've done a test where all I did was plug things into the back of a preamp, receiver and integrated amp to hear the effect. Without turning any of the other components on except the one source the difference just having things plugged in was shocking. In our "high end wisdom" we have been teaching separates as if they are a must to better sound and yet I haven't found this to be the case for over 15 years now. When I made the jump to the MA700s I realized that a preamp is added color that I could easily do by other means and not have to add a whole seperate power supply and interconnects into the mix. We add DACs, line conditioners, preamps, active crossovers plus our many component sources into the mix and this has created a noise factory. It may look impressive but I guarantee your music is so bogged down your only hearing a fraction of it. The last several systems I have done where we got rid of the outboard DAC for example have opened up greatly. If you want a closed in somewhat sterile sound as if the instruments don't quite know how to break out of their skin use a DAC with it's own seperate power supply. Same goes for anything extra you add to your setup (sound may be different dependent on unit). the simpler you make your system the easier it is to hear this.

High end designers have been building in their own room's taste or test bench into their components for years and years. You know how I can tell when a designer has done this? I look at their power supply, chassis, circuit board or crossover for parts that are too close together, dampening and mass. Go ahead take off that top panel of any component and loosen the wires squeezed together, get rid of that rubber on the transformer and listen to how the sound changes. If the sound opens up and becomes more full and detailed you have a chance for good sound. If the sound gets weird and out of balance you have a design that was tweaked for someones personal room and system and more than likely it will never quite deliver true openness in your place. This is one big reason I have found the simply less exspencive products to out perform the more expensive ones once tore down. Believe me when I say I'm not looking to kick anyone just going for the gold that's all.

The cable industry has become huge, why? Because cables make a big difference in the way something sounds. Think how much sound your saving by not using that extra cable. It doesn't make a lot of sense to run the signal through that hose and connectors when you can do the same thing with a simple jump. Power supplies is another over kill. If your setup needs all those power supplies to make it work you have a problem. Power supplies breed noise and having more than two or three is more than you need and more than your signal path can handle to keep it clean. Bottom line is you have a signal and you have an amp. That's all you need and for purity that's all you want. When you step over this line you are in a world of gaining and removing and gaining again noise. The noise correctors end up adding their own noise.

One listeners junk is another's treasure!

Or, something like that. I've been playing with the mini mod (what a great little speaker) and the 102 and 82. The other day though I ran out of drivers while doing some tweaking and needed to hurry and put together a pair to test something. I remembered that I have some Jamo buyouts hanging around and I grabbed them and threw them in the 82 to help burn in the tweater, resister and cap. This was one of those cases of very light weight magnet deals with equally light frame and paper. Needless to say I'm in love and wish I had gotten a million of these things now . The tonality is beautiful and the driver goes off the charts high without any weirdness as it flows into the upper midrange. A perfect example of a woofer that works better without a crossover messing it up. People would probably look at the back of this driver and dismiss it immediately but I hope this one up pair of drivers last forever and never is tempted to leave my place. If nothing else I can use this pair as a sample for testing other drivers when they come to warm plump snap which is what they do very well. There's not a hint of cold in them and they make a great tube like sound with the tightness of solid state. If you were listening to the 82's right now you would guess I was playing tubes on them.

OK

This weekend hopefully I can do some posting, that is if I can get my ears out of the 4105 room. I've already started recommending the Sherwood to folks and hope that the break in continues to go as smooth as it is now. I'm also going to have to start deciding on woofers for the 102 and 82. Wish I had 20 rooms right now. It would be so much easier to just go from room to room instead of what I have to do here. A girlfriend of mine was by the other day singing and dancing to the music and said "you mean you keep this going all the time?". Living at TuneLand is the coolest thing. To be honest it's really hard to get me to leave and go do things.

You know something that people rarely talk about is the breakin of playing a new piece of music. I'm not talking about turning on your system cause mine are always on, but talking about every time I change a piece of music. It's not just the DVD player going through a movement change, it's the whole system being fed a new food. It takes time for the system to digest the new information and for the waves to settle in place. For example, I put on Todd Rontgen which almost always sound a little on the upward tilt because of the type of sound he does. After the room settles to his sound though I find that his music is as mellow and relaxed in the highs as any other it just takes a little longer for rooms to deal with the complexed recording material he produces.

Once you get use to the character of recording stayers you begin to learn how long the burnin of a particular recording is. I know that for many this could be a drag cause we live in the instant world but for me I enjoy hearing the natural process take place now that I understand it and realize that this is every bit as much of a part of being a true audiophile as any other part. I think of it this way. I can't imagine forcing a red wine drinker to partake too early. Even though I'm not much of a drinker I appreciate the process and yes can taste the difference in a big way. Same with music. Settling is very much a part of the scene and for me has become a joy to experiencing it. Most of the time I will put on a piece of music and wait till it calls me to come listen to it seriously.

As you guys know we're in design mode. One of the things we have been asked to redesign is the DecoTune FS. I made it too "simple looking" according to some and the base was hated . Guess my sense of style doesn't fly sometimes. Any way since this was going to either have to be redone or dropped from the line up we decided to get creative and give the DecoTune an overall face lift. I'm glad we did cause they look really good and have more tonal balance. The DecoTune needed to incorperate some of the things we have learned from the other floor standers I have designed.

While doing this Bob made up some for his room that look cool and we took a pic to show you guys. Yes, it has a tuned frame and a typical tuning base that will come with spikes.



note: Bob does great art work for custom projects

Hi Guys

I wanted to show you my small room after putting up the window cover but My camera is not liking the lack of light in there. So sorry you can't see how I'm doing any lighting to make the room relaxing. I also don't want to show some tricks to the equipment and exposed acoustical toys. Well what good am I right But the good news is I have a proto half taken apart in the pic where I show the place where the window use to be. Covering the window made a huge difference and as you have heard I can go long ways again.



Ok, speaker talk

I have made these protos so I can take (and have many times) everything apart. Here you can see an 82 woofer and the horn pretty much gone except for a couple of pieces. Yes, that is a silk dome tweeter in the horn plate. I don't actually know if I'm going to make the 102 with the out board tweeter or not but this makes it easy for me to play with a lot of the parts inside the speaker and I'm able to study the tweeters responce separately from the woofer. BTW I think this pair is staying with me if I do decide to make the 102 with the drivers internal. I'm sure some will see the design I have here as being weird looking but I kinda like the look and feel of them. A special part to the design of the new series is the frame that you can see good in this pic. This internal/external frame work is miraculous. Even though you don't see it, the 62 and 82 both have this frame work inside. This is a change from my older designs. The frame allows energy to be distributed more evenly especially in cabinets that are floorstanding. It acts kinda like a rim of a drum keeping tone consistent.

The sound of having baffle boards voiced to the drivers has also made a big jump from the older models. I thought my speakers had resolution before, but this is another level and if I ever get stuck I can change the baffles out with differently voiced wood. So far though I have been anything but stuck. My older 60's sitting here are saying "what happened dad" . Don't worry, they have their new baffles on and have gained some of the newer models clarity.

Hey MG

Stopping in to say hi!

Jimmy,

Good to see you. For those of you who might want to buy his music visit http://dinnermusicforthegods.com/ and tell them Michael sent you.

welcome to TuneLand