Sonic's System

Thanks Michael for your encouragement.

Sonic has started a programme to rebalance the system because I suspect I may have pushed the sound too far off in one direction with all the MW.

So now Sonic has collected a few classical music recordings and compared them using my two other systems, a couple of friendly systems (including big Magneplanars and some exotic single-driver/horn hybrids) and of course live musick. Won't be using much rock and pop music because the multi-tracking makes the mixes ultimately unrepresentative of reality for balancing purposes. This will probably take some time but what Sonic is aiming is to get the clarity of live sound with an extended bass. Achieving girth without warmth and bloat.

First step is promising. Replaced the small MTDs under the subwoofer monoblock toroidal transformer with small Harmonic Feet, no MW thin shims between them or under the points. The upper bass viol and cello range is tightening up. Noticeable much on Couperin's Concerts Royaux (R Claire, D Moroney, J ter Linden, J See -- Harmonia Mundi) where the bass viol has a reduced "bass tone" in its upper range.

Sonic

Hi Michael and friends at the Tune

Sonic is slowly moving back through the recent tunes and winning back the music. Along the way I am learning a few things which could be good tuning hypotheses. For instance, a boomy bass could be due to the dimensions of the room and standing wave build up but it could just was well be an energy blockage that prevents the signal from dissipating properly – it is choked, stifled like in too small a space. The same environment could affect the treble in the opposite way where the reverberant tail of a cymbal crash dies away too soon and is over damped.

Both these effects were audible in Sonic’s system and stood in relief when compared to the benchmark systems which included a horn system in what would seem an impossibly small room in an apartment but it worked well.

Where is the over damping? By now, all the MW pieces were down from the walls and doors. Still not right. Think…then the strangling effect on he sound might come from the equipment itself.

I got MW under everything. Then a light went on. Sonic re-looked at the system pix of the Great Tunees -- Jim Bookhard, Bill333, Drewster, Cdimi and Hiend1 – and noticed that the MW pieces under their equipment are actually very thin pieces…1/8” thick or less. I am using mostly ¼” pieces. Could it be that the lighter and more tuned/loosened up the piece of equipment, the thinner the piece of wood should be so as not to damp the equipment?

So for something light like the X-30, use 1/8” or 1/16” thick MW and for a big heavy amp like a Krell, ¼” would be better. And may be you do not need to always have a piece of MW between the casing and the spring/MTD and one more under it to connect to the shelf.

“Thin may be in” thought Sonic. Happily, I had a large number of 1/8” thick (thin) MW slices in my closet. Started with the CD player. Much better…..next up the preamp….not good…soundstage shrank, dynamics poor. Wait – use just one thin slice between the chassis and the top of each Harmonic Spring and let it rest directly on the shelf. The bass went very tight, cymbals tailed off better and the volume started to come up.

Looks like this weekend is going to be a promising one for the Tune. I’ll gradually introduce thin wood into the X-30 system and the main amps also will experiment with one or two MWs per grounding device.

But I remember Hiend1’s advice – let it settle, don’t go too fast!

So this Tune process may take a while but Sonic is relieved that the musick is back. Yes, this has happened before where I have tuned myself into corners. For now, the sticking of MW pieces n the walls using 3M Command Tape has been a fail. But Sonic is not discouraged, at least not now. This has opened the door to another step up possibly for my main system and demonstrated Michael’s principle that our rooms are in fact the real loudspeaker. And I am not giving up on the idea of Wings for the Magneplanars though.

This of cause makes me wonder what the intended use could be for the big MW blocks that came in my Magic Wood kit. I got a lot of 2.25” x 2.25” x 1” blocks around and what could they be used for? I may also try Harmonic Feet under all my gear that are not top tuned and see what the result will be.

Sonic

Dear fellow Zonees

It has been as busy week for Sonic but still the Tune goes on and my system moved hopefully towards more realistic musick.

Tried two genuine MGD Shutters (heavier MW, with Michael's cherry finish) as Wings on the Magneplanars. Used C-clamps to hold them to the panels. Tested the wings inboard and outboard.

Inboard caused a bloated, heavy bass, not as bad as plywood but unacceptable. Narrowed soundstage.

Ouboard was not much better and after 24 hrs it was still pretty poor compared to the MG 1.5QRs sans wings. But the mids and treble was a bit better and more detailed.

Both settings convinced me that Wings aren't for Sonic in my present state of Tune.

Then I moved to get a more controlled bass with focus and arrived at an idea -- covered half of the rear of the PZCs with Michael's plastic reflective sheets. Before I covered the entire height of the PZCs/DRTs with the sheets and the effect was a odd plasticky colouration. I thought the plastic sheets were a write-off but now it works. Better openess, more projection and dynamics. Sonic covered the lower halves of the two flanking FS PZCs with the plastic sheet. And Sonic did the test with the hand drum and shouts from floor level upward to half the height of the room and now everything was balanced, clear and clean with the lower portion of the PZCs covered. Without the reflective plastic, the sound near the floor was thick, muddy and constricted.

Then I tried covering the top half of the middle PZC with plastic sheet. This was promising with better definition of centre images. Sonic can now hear vocalists turn away from the microphone axis more clearly (and a few instaces I did not notice before) plus when pop singers are double-tracked.

So I'm running this set up in. I got more ideas but I'll keep the CDs playing and get the system run in before trying more Tunes. I'll next try optimising the pieces of MW supporting my equipment to balance warmth with bass tightness. Maybe experiment with the lighting in my room and how to speed up the grounding the vibrations from my speakers to the floor and to the earth.

Sonic

Hi Michael and fellow Zonees

Here's a pix of what Sonic did with the PZCs and the plastic sheets.







This weekend, Sonic is getting to a new sound test, maybe an adventure. I borrowed a Musical Fidelity V-DAC and will be testing it. This is going to be fun. Very, very initial impressions is that it is better than the onboard processor of my Sony and Samsung DVD players. But that's not saying anything that Drewster has not already told us. More details in the next few days.

Sonic has done a couple of more things that Tunees may want to think a bit about -- we already know that MW is good but too much can get out of hand. I have now supported the subwoofer amp on three MTDs instead of four Harmonic Springs and the bass has got more detailed and the decay of bass notes is more definite. The leading edge of transients seems improved.

In my systemj there is no equipment that sit on Harmonic Springs but are not top tuned. Springs on their own oscillate. Without top tuning, a peice of equipment just sitting on springs with be perpetually in motion and at a frequency consistent with the property/rate of the spring. This adds colouration. The harder Harmonic Springs seem to impart a higher frequency ring while the later soft. crazy looking springs can go muddy. And as Michael has shown us all equipment are in motion. Now this motion must be grounded (the Tune Trilogy) but with springs that are not controlled via top tuning, these vibrations will keep them and the gear they support in some form of resonance and that will colour the sound and damage trailing the trailing edge of signals.

With top tuning, the motion of the springs are constrained and that is a different system application.

Sonic also was reading a recent interview with the brain behind the MIT cables, Bruce Brisson. It is a detailed, two-part interview in Dagogo and it is good reading.

The interview is great and Tunees should give it a read. I found Mr Brisson's discussion lucid and scientific (for whatever my background in technology is worth). He ably explains the MIT cable boxes, the articulation factor and the iconn connectors. Great piece The only thing missing is that MIT's starting point is multi-strand cables and from here, their solutions flow logically. But there is no discussion on what the result could be if we started with 22 -- 26 AWG solid core cable as in the Tune. Will we arrive at the massive boxes, the passive networks and all that?

I do have a soft spot for MIT gear having been a shotgun and CVT owner myself. For sure there is articulation but when I introduced the expensive cabling into my pre-Tune system, I could hear tube-like dimensionality and detailing but it seemed my amps had been halved in power and slew rate or I needed to turn up the wick to get the slam I was looking for.

Today, Sonic is getting a lot of music using power around the 100W point and with Magnplanars at that! With the baroque and small scale works I listen to, I have little reason to triple and quadruple my amps' firepower.

Sonic[img][/img][img][/img]

Hi fellow Zonees

Sonic has been spending more time with the Musical Fidelity V-DAC + Samsung combination. While I agree with Drewster's evaluation of the unit (the accuracy in the way he describes the two devices, you can pratically hear the sound they make), I am perplexed by what they do in my system.

More so since the oddity I am facing is from the V-DAC's main virtue. The thing sounds very punchy particularly in the upper bass. It sounded great at first but...I am getting the impression this box has a signature that it overlays all music played through it regardless of whether it is classical, jazz or rock. It is great with rock and some types of jazz but quite out of character with classical.

Anyone else observed this on their V-DACs?

The unit Sonic is trying has been in use and I set it up on a spare DRT base that sits on four MTDs. The V-DAC is not opened up or top tuned as I don't own the thing. The cabling is from Michael -- Picasso interconnects and the digital cable is a single strand of solid core Bare Essence (two wires of course for signal and ground) with lightweight RCA jacks and no sleeves to reduce weight.

Drewster, want to add your thoughts?

Sonic

Hi Michael and friends at the Zone!

As Sonic moves along with the system, I am finding there can be three outcomes to any Tune – it works, it fails or something is better and some things are worse.

When facing the third outcome, Sonic is learning to take in the good but work at the weaknesses which could be just shown up by the improvement. Earlier, I will just retreat to the “system restore point”.

Here’s the latest example:







I was experimenting with the pressure zone round my head and tried this. The soundstage in the middle ballooned out getting me closer to the “envelopment” sung about by some senior Tunees. On the other hand, the overall soundstage went lenticular – sort of like a convex lens. Fat in the middle by pointy at the speaker locations. Yes, like a US football.

What this shows is there is more pressure on tap at the wall. There Is Musick At That Wall!

So Sonic is now going to work on the sharp ends of the soundstage where the speakers are and enjoy the big middle stage. But this shows up that the images in the middle are sized right in musical context and perspective but the images shrink in size and girth as we appraoch the panel locations.

This struggle could be difficult as I am likely to go head on with a limitation of the Magneplanars. A smaller, flatter stage at the panels is something I have heard in many Maggies, worse in rooms that are untreated and unbalanced. Some are so flat that on-speaker images seem to exist in a separate acoustic universe from the images/soundstage in the centre. So here I go….any suggestions to get me started, Michael?

And yes, Michael: the new R-PZCs look fascinating. More info please on how they are different from the old PZCs, installation options – I guess the brackets I see mean they are wall mounted -- and the cost.

My further experiment with the V-DAC has stopped in the main system. It is punchy on everything. I doubt if the Bare Essence T1 cable I turned into a digital cable causes this. I am moving it into another of my systems and see what happens.

I doubt this is the DAC for me. The try-out has however shown the limitation of the on-board processor in my Samsung so a separate DAC is somewhere out there if Sonic wants to release more musick. There is an Audio Note one that is up for sale. Tubed but with lots of silver. It sounded great in a system I heard (not the one for sale) and it flowed with the music instead of pushing it at me. I am cautious because of the cost, the silver which Michael said adds a flavour of its own and takes ages to run in and the bad rep of AN gear in this town of blowing up.

Sonic

Hi Michael and fellow Zonees

Sonic is working at getting the sound of massed violins out beyond the side walls with better sizing of images near/on the spekaer panels.

One thing I learnt recently -- I can use the bolts on the 3 central PZCs to tune my soundstage and build centre fill. On some old recordings like jazz from the era when mono and stereo recordings were co-existing, you can get albumsc with everything in the Right and Left speakers and just a hazy middle stage. For example, I got a budget reissue of the classic recording by Milt Jackson and the Oscar Petersen Trio (the one with The Work Song) -- it could be the mastering, but the piano and half of the drums are left, vibes and cymbals and some drums are right with nothing in the middle but some bass.

I can play this in mono for a realistic repro but now by tightening the 3 PZC bolts, the fill in the centre sharpens up a lot.

Sonic

Very good.

I believe somewhere on TuneLand I talk about acoustical phasing and what happens when waves are out of shape do to waves not moving (or developing) at their intended speed. Speed and the shape/size of the wave are interconnected. This is why (even if they don't know it) many people are so attracted to single source drivers. If the drivers are truly matched with their cabinets the results can be "simply" beautiful.

Hi Sonic

The new PZC design is to allow more interaction of the wood and the room. If you could imagine the frame of the PZC being exposed so that it may freely resonate with the room (without being dampened by cloth) making the PZC even more energized. The 6 vents (on the 36" and FloorStander) let energy in but not out while the rest of the unit is more uniform in it's exchange compared to the original design.

The R-PZC stands for reversible or rotating. There are 2 sizes 12" and 36". Both of these are 4" wide and deep.

The new PZC-FS (FloorStander) is 44" high (but can be ordered up to 50"). It is also 4" wide and deep. It of course comes with stand and spikes.

There is one more addition. The Omni PZC. This PZC is 6" X 12" X 4" and in my opinion is a must have for any serious room. It comes with an Omni-mount and is vented on the sides top and back. The Omni PZC is like a thrill ride for tunees. I might come out with a bigger model of the Omni but don't know why yet.

We have been selling these to recording studios but will release pricing for our market in days I hope.

Hi Michael

Tell me more about the Omnis!

Anyway, Sonic has been working on getting more beyond the side wall imaging and this is my latest Tune:







Now this is my initial placement and now that it sounds promising there is a lot I need to dial in. The angling against the walls, the use of spikes or MTDs (are these available?), plastic sheets on either the front or back to adjust the reflection/absorption plus the use of floor Shutters and the whether the EchoTunes in the rear of the room are beneficial.

Sonic will have to investigate these step by step and let each step settle.

Right now, the system is sounding better and there are so many Tunes and ideas to test out. Yes, this is such a great adventure! I have found a dynamic "knee" in my system/room -- at say 10 o'clock on the volume control, Sonic finds the musick nice and detailed but just up the volume setting to 10.15 o'clock and the change in volume is huge, the dynamics come alive and the room shakes. Now if I can get the sound outside each side wall by 10 ft or so, things will be ideal.

I recently read a review of an Italian loudspeaker that is priced at around $200,000! This speaker, whose name rhymes with Venice, was born when the chief engineer of the company was listening to some speakers and felt vibrations coming from them to him thru the floor even at low volumes. He decided that speaker vibrations are The Enemy.

This resulted in a speaker which used mass and tension to kill vibrations. Think of an aluminuim clamshell device weighing about 500lbs, with bipolar drivers, tensioning rods not to tune but to squeeze vibrations out of the system. Also a platform to ensure nothing gets down to the floor.

Very contrary to the Tune but the idea of speakers at this price for domestic use troubles me particularly the ethics of this. The idea that killing vibrations is to be a design objective is debatable. Can we really damp vibrations to the point that we win? What about the room?

Sonic

Hi fellow Zonees!

It has been fun these last two days listening and testing the angling of the DRTs.

DRTs parallel to the front or side walls reduced the width of the soundstage with panels parallel to the front wall poorer in this respect.

The DRTs parallel to the side walls is better but Sonic tested the angling in between and what is in this pix is rather good but a setting half way between this and flat to the side wall gave the strongest sense of images outside the room.

Very satisfying -- now I'll spend a day with CDs running with musick playing to settle things in.

Sonic

Hi fellow Zonees!

Over this week Sonic has been listening a lot and done some tuning. This is what I arrived at:

a. The DRTs on the front corners are now toed-in by about 7 inches from the side walls. This is the average optimal though with some recordings, a setting with them parallel to the side walls gives a biiger, wider soundstage.

b. Found that with the DRTs, my soundstage is more rectangular. More focussed instruments in the front corners and beyond the walls.

c. Sonic tried 1/4 inch 6/20 spikes under the DRTs. Using 1/4 in MW pieces, the spikes clean the side soundstage even more. With the DRT bases directly on the floor, a liveliness is gone sounding like there is too much damping.

d. My friendly Audio Note fan said that Sonic is missing a lot of musick by rejecting silver wires. He regaled me with instances of how addition of silver into systems huge differences. Sonic remembered Michael's views on silver so I politely skirted the matter but he handed me some silver wires(solid conductors 24 AWG) and interconnects all teflon insulated saying "you must try this".

OK out of intellectual curiosity. First impression was of more detail but later found those things behave as was described on Tuneland a long time ago -- thin, restricted in dynamics, a bit bright, some rolled off bass, but deep bass was very good. Sonic also found the volume was subjectively lower. May be there is some use for silver selectively in my system but as main interconnects, they are rather strange sounding.

Sonic

Hi fellow Zonees

Sonic has been toying with equalisers on and off over the years and find the graphic EQs cool looking. I liked the Klark Tecniks but being a believer in straight lines, I know that EQs can colour the sound, ring and they can only fix static frequency domain issues while they are pointless when dealing with time smear, delay and resonance problems.

But they are still fun. So I been playing with some EQ recently and thought Zonees will be interested in what i found. Sonic used a modest amount of boosting and cut -- no more than 2 dB for the tests.

A boost in the 100 to 160 Hz range increased the sense of girth by a lot! Male voices take on depth and more strength. I also felt the apparent dimensionality and ambience increase.

Lifting the 600 - 1 kHz range makes the sound go hollow, a high or low hollowness depends on the frequency range selected. Some narrowing of stage detected.

Boosting the 2 - 5 kHz range increases presence and projection noticeably. I found a lift in this region plus some rise in the 150Hz range gave a stronger sense of weight, ambience and dimensionality (but there are drawbacks...see later).

Brightness can increase or decrease when boosting or cutting the 6 - 8 kHz range.

Experimenting with 8 - 10 kHz can influence the peception of air and impression of height of the music sources. A very funny effect when i tried a 9 kHz pink noise -- it came from my ceiling! Actually this is known effect and a bit of an acustician's party trick.

Above this frequency range, all Sonic seems to get is more "air" but not brightness.

So why not EQ your way to the Tune?

Reason is, the whole thing sounded artificial after the initial excitement died down.

I heard an effect I have heard with several big systems with heavy and expensive electronics -- all the right signals, frequencies but it was a reproduction. The sense of involvement and "life" that makes a listener feel there were real epople playing and singing was gone. Its not as bad as the artificiality of MP3 but I have had tried the Klark Tecniks, Pioneer, Soundcraftmen and Yamaha in several systems...and each time something is fixed but a lot is lost.

But this does show that the Tune is not imagination. It is grounded in some solid psychoacoustic perception but to get the effect we need to work at the tune trilogy and adopt what Michael advocates and makes. Unfortunately we can't twist a few knobs to do the trick, melt the walls and get the Tune. I wish....I wish...

Sonic

Hi fellow Zonees

More on Sonic's adventure with frequency bands:

a. A slight strengthening of the upper bass (100 Hz to 200 Hz range) together with a little more 3 to 5 kHz can give the impression of a noticeable increase in volume even though the read out on a sound level meter shows an insignificant rise in C-weighting and no recordable change in A-weighting.

b. Playing with frequency bands can change the image size -- for instance, a steep notch in the 200 to 300hz range can give a flat but very detailed and transparent soundstage. It will be just like many expensive mini monitors perched high on their stands. These mini monitors suffer from a cancellation notch from the first bounce coming off the floor between them and the listener and it nearly always results in that funny sound.

Happily panel speakers like Magneplanars don't suffer this fate, neither do the Sound Labs and Martin Logans. Sad to say the Quads do unless sitting very close to the floor (ESL63) and on their little pointy feet (ESL57).

Look at the way Michael sets his speakers in extreme nearfiled. This is an excellent way to get round the problem -- where the direct sound gets to your ears first and the bounce occurs behind the listener or off the wall. With a tuned room and system (and Michael's tweeter tweaks), sitting 45 degrees off the tweeter axis is no problem.

c. Sonic realises with the flexibility of the X-30, a lot can be done to get a warm, girthful, huge sound and dialing out any bass overhang. This can be done by using the fixed hi-pass, the variable subwoofer cutoff knob and the overall woofer level control. This, plus the harmonic tuneability of Michael's subs, I can see how the room can be filled with musick.

d. Again, though playing with EQ can produce all these effects, the overall sound in several interations is very coloured. Even when Sonic went overboard and got a big fat sound with too much MW (back in August and September) it still sound funny but real. The electronic solution sounds lifeless and always leaves me on edge with the feeling "there's something goin' on here, what it is ain't exactly clear..."

Sonic

Hi Michael and Fellow Zonees

A little progress this week Sonic is happy to report.

I've found what is about the best static setting for the DRTs in the front corners -- a slight toe in about 6 inches. here's what it looks like:







You'll also notice twno things about the Janis W-1 subwoofer -- first, the oak veneer is peeling and it is all chipboard underneath. One day this thing, lovely as it is will crumble. Michael, are your subwoofers available?

The other thing is I have used MW squares under the hardpoints of the subwoofer. This sounded better than some cones (not from Michael) that I been unsing under the box.

The other thing Sonic did was to increase the reflectiveity behind the bookcases and this is how it was done. A cheap screen/room divider from Ikea.







There is better air and depth and envelopment. So it does show how much effect the bookcases have on the room. But this is all sounding better and there are more ideas in Sonic's head. The Tune really engages the mind.

Sonic

Hi fellow Zonees!

That screen behind the bookcases made a nice difference and I got more effect by adhering the RoomTune plastic reflective sheets from Michael behind them. Now I can walk round the room shouting "boo!" and hear less of a closed down sound when I cross the space behind the bookcases. In fact the difference has become almost negligible.

This has resulted in more "life" in the sound -- the nuances I can hear in instruments and voices point to humans generating the sound, not machines.

At the same time, I can hear the room speak to me more clearly. I have been able to move my listening chair closer to the speaker by about 4 inches and instead of getting a more rolled of treble due to my going further off axis from the tweeters, the treble increased. I can hear triangles, bells and cymbal nuances more clearly.

Some side compression of image is noted but the room seems to be teling Sonic that some of the Shutters need moving and angling. The crossover and setting of the Janis W-1 may need adjustment, something is not sounding completely right or true in the bass now. Slowly...let's pick at it methodicaly...

Sonic

Hi fellow Zonees!

Sonic was looking at audio designs off the beaten path and found a 1999 interview with the 47 Labs designers -- Junji Kimura, the president and the chief designer of 47 Lab, Koji Teramura,marketing director and Yoshi Segoshi of Sakura Systems (the US distributor of 47 Labs products) who asked the questions.

Though this is something from long ago, notice the many parallels with the Tune. Here is an extract that Zonees may find good reading.

For the full text, go to Enjoythemusic.com September 1999 issue.

Teramura) Our initial idea was (and still is) to create audio components which cause minimum loss of information.

Q ) In your literature, you talk about the resonant control of the components. Can you tell me more about this? What do you actually do to control it?

Kimura) That is a bit of a confusing issue. We are trying not to control it, at least not in a conventional sense. The common approach to control the resonance and vibrations is to damp them, but our approach is exactly the opposite. Instead of trying to kill them by damping, we are trying to find a way to live with it.

Teramura) Yes, our approach is based on the concept that we can’t stop the vibration no matter what. We may change the resonant mode or the amount of it, but, whatever we do, we can’t eliminate them completely anyway.

When someone says controlling the resonance, it usually means changing or shifting the Q by damping it or combining different materials in construction. But as long as we use the known materials, it is impossible to move it out of audible frequency range, and by damping them we are causing modulations in the signal itself. That often creates more degradation than not damping it at all.

What we are suggesting is that the vibrations and signals do not always need to be taken confrontationally. It was always thought that the signal is a good guy and the vibrations are the bad guys, so we have to kill the bad guys to save the good guy, but that is a fixed idea and not always a valid one. After all, they come from the same root, same electrical energy, and basically they are synchronized. By damping the vibration, we destroy this synchronization.

Teramura) Yes. If we can’t stop the vibration, we need to find the way to minimize it’s effect on the signal. There isn’t any super material or a method that only releases the vibration and prevents it from coming back. Our approach is to minimize the vibration itself by making things rigid and compact.

Kimura) The short signal pass and the minimum number of parts contribute to preserve the information, and that makes it possible to make the whole package small which contributes to minimizing the vibration. If you use the same material, the smaller you make it, the more rigid it becomes, shifting the resonant mode up to the higher frequency with a lesser amount of radiation.

Q ) When you say to minimize the loss of information, it sounds as if you know it was lost quite a bit in the other designs.

Teramura) Little by little, we found out there is a lot more information buried in the soft ware and, especially in the case of CD, what we thought was the limit of the format was more like a limitation of the reproducing equipment.

Q) How do they not sound good?

Kimura) To me, many of them sound somewhat electrical. Of course the degree of it differs product by product, but my ear always detects this artificial quality.

Teramura) Many of todays high end products seem concerned more about the purity of each sound and not enough about how these notes are made into music. So they all sound very static and distant. There’s a gap between the space where the listener is and where the reproduced music is. That is probably what Mr. Kimura calls an artificial quality. They tend to leave the listener as a solitary observer and lack the power of emotional involvement.

Q) Is this related to what you call "activity" of the sound?

Teramura) What I wanted to mean by "activity" is that every note in the music is not an isolated sound but more like a vector that includes the past, the present and the future in it. It doesn’t exist as a static, solitary note, but an active, living thing.

In other words, the music, whether reproduced or played, represents the passion of the players, recording engineers, and also audio designers and audiophiles who recreate it. I can’t feel this passion through many of todays’ high-end equipment. Instead, it is a purified and polished static sound. There are more measurements, higher grades of parts, and material superiority, which I fail to see as having much relevance in reproducing music.

Teramura) If the listeners want to reproduce a complicated music full of nuances, there’s no way they can accept the components that only care about pure sounds. Those legendary speakers of the 50’s and 60’s, JBL, Altec, Tannoy, Quad etc., had obvious flaws by todays’ standards, but within their limitation, they have quite a bit of “activity” that communicates the music to us. Their flaws became more apparent when you play them louder.

On the other hand, audiophiles seem to play music louder with modern speakers as if to cover this lack of "activity" or information. Also the appearance of CD must have had a big effect on the course of today’s high-end. To fulfill the wider dynamic range which CD is capable of, something weird happened to amplifier and speaker design.

Teramura) Those accessories (such as CD enhancers and gadgets) tdo not improve the quality of information anyway. Sometimes it feels like transparency or S/N is improved by some noise reduction type of accessories, but what it actually does is to reduce the amount of information and that gives an impression of a clearer view. Listen carefully if the presentation becomes somewhat static or not. If it does, the music has shrunk into the sound. If it really improves the S/N of the component, such a component has a problem in its original design.

Kimura) I don’t hear any soundstage nor channel separations at any live concert. You don’t care if it’s mono or stereo at the live concert, do you? On the other hand, there are many systems that can’t reproduce mono properly using two speakers. I don’t listen analytically at all. When something is not right, you try to analyze what it is, or you listen analytically when you try to find something negative. In my case, most of the time I’m happy with whatever I did and after sometime of listening, I would think that maybe I can do even better and start experimenting again. I don’t measure at all while I’m working except when there’s an obvious anomaly. Everything is more or less instinctive.

Q) What do you consider as reference? Original acoustic event?

Kimura) For me, the reference is in my head. My image or the memory of the live acoustic is the reference.

Teramura) In relation to that, I would like to emphasize that there is no ultimate reference outside the designers experience. Some say there’s always the master tape, but we can’t experience it without reproducing it through some kind of equipment. So we are always hearing the quality of the equipment that is reproducing it.

Even at the recording session or at a concert, what you perceive differs according to where you are. I want to liberate ourselves from the idea of the one and only reference. When somebody says original acoustic sound, he or she is talking about his or her perception or image of the sound. In this sense, what decides the sound of audio component is the designers’ taste and sense which is the result of his or her musical experience. Same thing can be said on the reproducing system. It represents the musical experience of the audiophile who set it up. Reproducing the software through audio components is not just a mere passive act but is actually a very creative one.

Q ) What is your stand point toward recent development of new formats? Are you going to produce any 24bit/96kHz product?

Kimura) I don’t have much interest nor enthusiasm in them. We are finally getting somewhere with the current 16bit/44.1kHz. How many other companies did really try to reach it’s limit? Jumping onto the new format without trying to see the real capability of the current one is actually short selling the format and that is an absurd disservice to the customers. Those major corporations trying to market the new format, what are they expecting people to do with their collections of CDs? Dump them and buy the same titles in the new format? Paying even higher prices for each one? I think there’s still a lot more we can do to get to the bottom of the current 16bit/44.1kHz, both on the recording and the reproducing end.

Teramura) I wonder how will designers, who can’t take full advantage of 16/44.1, be able to properly decode 24/96.

Kimura) Some audiophiles cram their rooms with equipment and no other members of the family can even enter the room. This is another reason why audio has become such a maniacal thing these days. I don’t like that. I want to share the experience with as many people as possible. If I have to choose between the convenience and comfort of the living room and the great sound with a solitary chair, I’d choose the former. The audio system has to be family friendly, otherwise it’ll die out eventually. I have some friends who says they dedicate and sacrifice their life to audio. I’d say forget it!

From Sonic: Fascinating – this doesn’t lessen the uniqueness of Michael’s thinking. It just shows there is a whole different and equally valid train of thought in audio out there.

Sonic

Hi fellow Zonees

Sonic is very taken up with Japanese esoteric hi-end audio. The people who collect Klangfilm, Western Electric and Altec. There is something there although my expereince with field coil speakers and the old stuff...well most of it just sounds old.

They are atractive in many ways though.

I have removed the Ikea Poang from my room and replaced it with an open wicker chair adjusted for the same height as if I were stting on the Poang. It seems to have removed another bit of absorption.

It is this chair I have pulled a little forward.

What next? My system is has some way to go and I am trying to max out what I have and deal with those bookcases before more stuff from Michael. I need to remove the obvious bugs and get the system to havr maximized what is already there. I think Sonic is getting close....

On another note (literally), Sonic is starting to play all CDs of musical performances pre-1965 or so in mono. There is something about mono and while a mental adjustment has to be made a lot of music is gained. One some mono jazz, I am getting mini-stereo! I might attach in a tube mono integrated amp driven from the tube output of the Quicksilver into a single-ended triode amp driving a single ancient single-speaker placed between the Magneplanar. This could be wonderful or a mess if it interruptes the main system.

But all this has taken Sonic problem off the bass problems -- they sound like there are large excursions in amplitude but friends hearing my system in mono and with measurement find nothing wrong and they are quite aghast at the mini-stoero.

My subwoofer still needs some adjusting -- I am getting perceptual uneveness in the bass but these don't show in my using a hig-quality tegt CD of pink noise, I hear a difference but the measurement of the system like the freq. response measures a thight variation and good focus....there is something but doens't show I the hard measurements.

Sonic

Hi Michael and fellow Zonees!

Garp got to Sonic just in time and had me reconsider using an external DAC in my system.

I've also looked at Michael's astounding Tuneable Room and found he only uses one EchoTune on the front wall, none of the side wall.

I got one EchoTune on the upper LH wall and I took it down this evening. Now this device has been up for year or more so I'll need to let its absence settle. First observation is there is more treble and detail with good transient snap. Without any adjustments, the soundstage is bit narrower and also taller. Sonic will listen more and see how the effects shape up.

Got a different set up angling the Shutters on the front and side walls but I now need to get the room without the LH EchoTune into balance and in Tune.

I may also get a dimmer light source for my stand lamp in the listening room. The lo-light set up of the Tuneable room looks beautiful.


Sonic

Hi Michael and Garp

Thanks again Garp for your advice on the external DAC -- you showed up more than a questionable purchasing decision on Sonic's part. I heard the "glare" in the V-DAC which presented itself more as a "hardness" in my system and to my ears. I may have used a different word to describe it until you said "glare" and I thought "yes, that's the word was looking for to say what this sound is like".

The questionable bit is why I wanted to buy something (admittedly not costly) but will open the door to a lot more work thinking I could tune the glare out when what I have working now is good. And look at what Mr Green did -- I dunno what the CD player is but no separate DAC is in sight and the receiver is one of those ancient Japanese things that snobs laughed at and said "you know how much feedback there is in that circuit so they can get distortion down to 0.00x%?". Yet I am sure in that funny claustrophobic room, the soundstage and dimensionality will outdo my system a dozen times over and any Infinity IRS, any YG Acoustics best loudspeaker in world period (I couldn't resist that )

Sonic was going to post what I did to adjust my shutters to get a more width outside the walls but then I saw Michael's room and thought...let me try my room without the sidewall EchoTune (the one on the front wall is still there) and see what that does to the soundstage considering it is the side images that are limited. Tell you all in a day or so...

Till then, here is my new listening chair that is acoustically transparent compared to the Ikea Poang.







Sonic

Hi Michael and fellow Zonees

This has been a very busy weekend not related to audio but still Sonic got some tuning done. Here are some things I did:

a. Sorted out the optimal distance of my ears from the bookcase wall which turned out to be 15 – 18 inches. Sonic thinks that different types of music could call for a listening position nearer or further from the speakers. For 9/10 of the CDs I play, I prefer my ears 18 inches from the Wall because being closer to the speaker plane, I get more focus, better transients and treble. I was listening to Beethoven’s 5th and 6th Symphonies played on original instruments (and with a smaller ensemble) – John Eliott Gardiner, Archiv -- and the perspective and impact was just right. Jazz like Bill Evans Live at the Village Vanguard is fine too but there is a Mahler that I hear occasionally and for this huge work with Big Orchestra and Choir a more distant perspective is better so I go closer to the Wall.

b. The removal of the EchoTune from the LH upper sidewall was a Fail. The sound got compressed, the loudness was reduced and the soundstage got narrower and flatter. The soundstage moved to the front wall, was stuck there and the sense of depth and space was gone. Two things stand out in this Tune attempt -- the amount of control exerted by that small, thin pillow of fibreglass and mylar and that it took a day or more for the real effect of the Tune to come clear. In my earlier post, Sonic said "I'll need to let its absence settle. First observation is there is more treble and detail with good transient snap. Without any adjustments, the soundstage is bit narrower and also taller." Now this was the first observation within an hour of taking the EchoTune down and here is the result a day later with similar volume levels and musick programme. Was I mistaken? Or is the change a result of settling?

c. Sonic also tried following something I saw in the pictures of Michael’s super room – sometimes asymmetry may work even in a symmetrical room.

I moved the rear LH shutter back at 45 degrees towards the rear wall, while all other vertical Shutters were set to 90 degrees. The soundstage on that side of the room became more insubstantial and felt like a balance control had been moved a little to the Right. OK, in my room the rear shutters need symmetry…lets see what happens with the other shutters.

I think the set up in Sonic’s room is pretty optimised for this level of the Tune and using the Tuning devices on hand. Of course this does not mean that I have achieved the Tune. Sonic is far from this state of Audio Being.

The Tune, as Sonic understands it, is actually a series of levels. At each level, a combination of Michael’s gear and ingenuity can be used to create a musical environment that can give a listener great satisfaction for the amount of effort and money put in. And once the set up for a given level is optimized, the music lover can be perfectly happy there or can choose to move on with the adventure.

There is always a next-higher-level that calls forth more tune products and ingenuity. A great continuum if ever there was one. Sonic has refrained from getting new Tune gear until I have overcome in-part the deadening effect of the bookcase. That will mark the point that will call for a decision on moving to the next level or adventure or staying put. We are nearly there.

Sonic

Hi Sonic

Even though my ears are glued to the new room it was interesting to read the recent posts.

"The audio system has to be family friendly, otherwise it’ll die out eventually." could only be made by someone who has never truly fallen inside of the music envelope. The privite audio system is something to be shared not crowded. When I turn people on to music I leave and let them take it in. To not let them experience the fullness of the event seems shallow. Sure for some this is not their thing to be deep and to experience things on a personal level, but we are built for personal relationships as well as cummunity events. One will not force the other to die away but instead gives us balance.

There's a big difference between shared music (which I enjoy) and the real High End level of listening. Honestly who doesn't want to disappear in the gift of music in a personal way? Just tonight I was hearing the effects of my little 10" lampshade and got all excited about picking out one (or even new lamp) that lets more of the music into my ears and life. I don't believe in the separative spin that some talk about as I have only seen these people get to a level that is far beneath the level of the "tune". "Die out?" I don't think so unless this is not truly a love affair.

Here's how I look at it

We don't sit around altogether reading the same book, in the same room, at the same time. Of course not! We hide ourselves away with our favorite light in our favorite reading spot and hope that no one jumps in our space while we "zone" into the magic of the words. There is a place for sharing and a place for gathering the deeper things in life that our senses can commune with. This does not make us selfish, but instead makes us deep and uniquely refined.

I add this

Which would I take? Put me in a room where part of the music is muted at flat with no structure (which is the goal of most Audiophiles) or put me in a room that is 6 DB up over the output of the speakers? I'd take 6db up every time if I'm in control of the waves. People in this industry still do not get it!! We are talking about "amplification". It's true that the audio designer has not reached the level of acoustical purity that we have and are shy or even fearful of stating the fact that up db (acoustically) is the purist approach to audio reproduction. They haven't even learned to top tune which is a must in keeping harmonic alignment intact. Until they do understand and are able to catch on to or catch up with these 2 issues they will always talk in circles.

My soap box comes out when I hear people speaking as experts when they have not even graduated the basics of the listening experience. Shall I teach them or be quiet? For now I will go back into the "tunable room" and smile.

Nice to see you having fun

Hi Michael

Aww...Sonic thinks you're a little hard on Teramura and Kimura. There is something endearing about the quirkiness of Japanese audio. I'm just fascinated with their over-the-top dedication to brands like Altec, Western Electric and Orotofon not to mention the delightfuil way they describe their listening expriences using a syntax that we are not accustomed to.

Descriptions like "the bass is very calm", "I struggle to achieve a calm tone" rase a smile. Some designers say (I wonder sometimes if it is done tongue in cheek) that different tubes have different spirits, different materials that are used for turntables have different souls and the state of mind/heart of a person assembling an electrcal circuit affects the sound. And this is not to simply mean that a tired solderer will goof up and produce a cold joint. This is about the infusion of one's emotional state into a circuit board and design.

Ok so this is what Sonic gets from bits of Tube Kingdom translated for me into English (I don't read or understand Japanese beyond some basic words and names of types of sushi) so I could be wrong. But I think I am right. This is becuase I was recently introduced to the music of Shonen Knife. After a listen on my system, Sonic is certain I have not been misinformed at all.

Sonic

Hi Sonic

That is probably because I see (hear) the world of the Audiophile experience being totally different from the listening experience. These 2 hobbies for me have always been different. One is the collecting of some really cool audio gear and listening to the sound the parts make when they are put together, and the other is blind to the parts, faceplate, reviews, and clubs. My job is to create the ultimate and all the steps that lead up to it.

Here's why I differ

I have met and talked with thousands who were in search of the ultimate but got side tracked by people who go part way and persuaded them that they held the truth of the ultimate when in fact they could only go part way themselves because they have never heard the higher level of listening. Most people blow their budget way before they even come close to the perfect system for them because the guides to the promise land never quite get them over the mountain.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the Audiophile world for what it is but it leaves me shy of the real joy of my goal. I mentioned top tuning in my last post to you. Well lets look at this for real. I can't even begin to imagine a serious listening world without top tuning. That's how into listening I am. Removing the top tuning lowers the level of listening by such a great extent that (for me) it's like belonging to a different hobby altogether. A fun hobby but certainly not the real sound we say we seek.

Because of the experiences I have had and the position I am in I can tell where someone is on their path to "the sound". They may have great insights for the levels they have reached in listening but once you have been beyond it changes your view of the almost and not quite. It doesn't make the almost a bad thing or less fun for what it is. It just leaves the belly a little empty or not feeling as satisfied as we were hoping.

So for me I don't see Altec, Western Electric and Orotofon as any thing more than what they are, "cool stuff". Stuff that can and do sound far better when the tune is applied but probably not nearly as good as things that have been designed simply to begin with. Where I see magic is in stuff like the Magnazox dp100. Think about it. Here is a piece that will blow the doors off of any High End unit at any price when top tuned. This to me is poetry and at the same time is within the reach of whoever will.

I would imagine that if Teramura and Kimura were in the presence of the tune for a while you would see an interesting change in the way they look at things. Regardless I'm happy for them and their happiness, at what ever level they are at.

I guess I should also add that I had 47 Labs when they first hit the states and when I compared their product against the Samsung DVD player stock the Samsung took it easily. I was assuming that you were referring to the same guys.

Believe me I don't go around trying to be mean, honest.

Hi fellow Zonees

Michael wrote " ....Just tonight I was hearing the effects of my little 10" lampshade and got all excited about picking out one (or even new lamp)..."

Sonic thought hmmm....that metal stand lamp has been in my listening room for years....and through a couple of systems....I have been told that anything with thin metal and cone shapes that ring should be left outside of the listening room, yes I have tried listening without the lamp but never heard a convincing change. But then since I started this latest system with the Magneplanars and started relatively serious tuning (since 2006/7), Sonic has not heard the system with the stand lamp out. Let's try it now...."

You can guess what happened.

I replaced the stand lamp (which uses a halogen tube) with a small table lamp -- porcelain body, energy saving incandesent bulb, fabric 12 inch lampshade -- sitting on the floor where the old lamp used to be.



There is a big change. A certain signature that has followed my systems in this room which I put it down to an artifact of the structure, which was most noticeable in the upper mids and a sort of imbalance....appears to be gone.

I must be careful in describing this and taking it all in. Sonic has been crazily excited by things only to be proven wrong in a few days if not a week or two.

This lamp thing has really enlightened me. Thanks for the idea Michael!

Sonic