Sonic's System

Hi Sonic

Now you know what high end audio is really about. The question is how long will it take listeners to get out of their name brand mantality and switch over to the real game. We should be thinking about parts and pieces and how they all flow together.

Today I looked at some instrument companies so the I could see how people change out the parts and pieces changing the sound. If we can take that mind set and apply it we will be way ahead of the game. One thing we can count on in home audio is that there will never be a one-size-fits-all. There will never be recordings that all have the same signature. I'm not sure if we should be thinking in terms of strings for a comparison but I think my job is to start breaking things down the best I can.

So how do I put this together and help others find what works for them.

let's start with this

Resitone rods: lowest mass tuning rod




Audio AlloyB rod: same alloy blend as MGA cones & bells




Black Oxide MA Rod: similar to the clamp rack rod




Alloy Z Rod: fast attack for slow transfers

Hi Michael

Which should be used and under whart circumstances? Sonic would think go for the lowest mass rod which is the main teme of the tune -- when can and should the others be used?

What are bells?

Sonic

Hi Zonees

Sometime ago Sonic set up my gear supported with 4 Harmonic Springs of the hand wound variety. As things settled, I prefer the sound of 3 Springs under the preamp, main and subwoofer amps but those softer springs sagged and made top tuning a moving target.

But 3 springs do sound more natural and gives the music a lithe flow (you can say 4 springs -- one in each corner is more analytical and detailed but the soundstage is slightly narrower and cut-out unlike live musick).

Sonic moved to 3 plated machine-wound Harmonic Springs under the preamp -- I used 2 in the front and one at the rear panel which levelled the device nicely. Ditto the amp driving the Janis W-1 subwoofer. Plated (bright polished) Harmonic Springs sound nice...there is a difference compared to the matt Springs, but not that one is right and the other is wrong.

The Main amp took some experimentation. I tried hand wound Harmonic Springs, then moved to large Harmonic Feet.

It turns out that the Springs -- machine and handwound -- better the performance of the Harmonic Feet in my system. The Harmonic Feet narrowed the soundstage and foreshortened depth. The Harmonic Springs allow the system to breathe. Will the main amp sound better with hand or machine wound Harmonic Springs is something Sonic will be testing tomorrow.

I wonder, given the height of my room and my hard concrete walls and ceiling, if Sound Shutters mounted at the edge of the ceiling and upper walls will be beneficial? Michael...your thoughts...

Music playback is something wonderful. Was listening to Dances from Terpsichore by Michael Praetorius performed by David Munrow and co (EMI), Violin Sonatas by J F Rebel (Mainz/Harmonia Mundi) and some historical recordings from the Smithsonian archives. Wonderful musick....Sonic is wondering if the musical experience of reproduced musick is a distinct and different experience from the live musick performance.

Maybe they are two experiences and two different states. Of course the two are related particularly with live recordings but we respond to them in different ways.

To attempt to build a system that will return us to the concert hall and studio is an impossibility given that each microphone, each device, each room/hall is an instrument in the recording. These are all factors in the chain that delivered the musick to our ears and cannot be taken out of the equation.

So Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert was recorded in Westminster Abbey with AKG microphones. Hear them live in another place or in another recording will have the music coming to us through a different space and transmission. They are different states existentially.

Is this true and a philosophically consistent view?

If this is so -- and Sonic is possibly moving my listening, equipment and music appreciation in this direction -- then where do we limit ourselves conceptually?

Should we embrace the idea that Tone, not some imagined "accuracy" should be what defines our systems?

Sonic

May I suggest the answer to your question is "what gives you, as an individual, goosebumps when you are listening?" Is it the most faithful reproduction of the recording or would you prefer what I call "the re-mix effect," wherein your system is tuned to give you something beyond what the engineer heard, or possibly even imagined?

When we played the second "Jurrassic Park" movie at the theater I work at, I was experimenting then with delaying the signal to the center channel speaker, using my outboard digital delay box. Show after show, I would change the setting by one millisecond and listen to the results. At one point, I don't know what it was, but the roar of the dinosaurs just went right through me as they hadn't done before, almost as if I was hearing a "real" one. I doubt it was because of the fidelity of the sound system, just something that clicked with me personally.

I am like you, I can't sit still if I think I can acheive a higher plateau of listening. I have been quite busy these last few weeks, but I haven't felt like putting down all the things I have tried on my thread because I may not care for the results a couple of days later. But I am starting to feel that the "goosebumps" option is worth pursuing.

Now, I am not saying that fidelity should be disregarded. I have one track on a CD called "The Rain Forest," which, the first few times I played it, I believed to be presenting the sound of rain dripping onto large rocks. I played around with a variant of top tuning on my pre-amp using a wooden clothespin and found that the sound was actually rain dropping onto large leaves. That was nice, but not quite a goosebump moment. Perhaps if I could manipulate the sound so that I could almost feel the spray near my face, that would be a goosebump moment. My point being that maybe the recording engineer didn't aim for that, but if I aim for that, maybe tuning can help me achieve that, eh?

Hi Robert and Zonees

You got a point Robert. It is what makes musical sense that is a significant portion of what we think is music in our dwellings. It is a coming together of many things -- our systems presentation of Tone, our exposure and understanding of live music and the volume levels we hear music at.

If there isn't that emotional connection, the raising of goosebumps, something will be gone and the sound no matter how "accurate" has failed to connect and touch something deeper in us as audiophiles as a recognition that sound is being received at our ears.

These last couple of days have been something of moving forward for Sonic and the tune in my room. Two things happened at the same time:

Sonic has been exchanging emails with Michael about PZCs on taking my room forward in sound.

As the dialog was going on, Sonic made a discovery that lead to a big change in my room. I was listening to some big orchestral works...think it was Bruckner or Bloch and wondered why, even with the Magneplanar 1.5QRs further from the side walls, there was a feeling of something better could be achieved.

I heard a change of timbre as I moved my head...comb filtering and found that the comb filtering was related to the two FS-DRTs in a \ / ahead of the equipment racks and platforms. Also the FS-DRTs were very visible and dominated the front view.

Sonic removed the FS-DRTs but got a vague and recessed middle soundstage.

But this time I persevered.

Sonic placed the FS-DRTs at the Bookcase flanking the single FS-PZC.

See this scan:







A:

Is what the bookcase wall tuning looked like when the FS-DRTs were in a \/ ahead of the racks and platforms.

B:

Ts the flanking placement. This was good giving less of a recessed soundstange and improved focus in the soundstage. However, image girth and size varied across the stage.

Then Sonic got an idea. Pull the FS-DRTs further apart so the axis of the Magneplanar 1.5QRs quasi ribbon tweeter was focussed and pointed right at the middle of the FS-DRTs refelctive surface.

See C for this where the FS-DRTs are pulled out 18 inches from the FS-PZC. Sonic got a huge improvement, with dimensional instruments regardless if they are strings, brass, keyboards, percussion. And voices! Are they warm and dynamic that surprised me. This is getting to the standard set by the Infinity IRS/Genesis 1 without the excessive high volume

Wonderful music again and the treble increase has improved detail and removed the recessed stage. Womens' voices like June Tabor (Air and Graces -- Shanachie) has focus, size and emotion. The plane of the speakers has come forward and had size and impact and volume.

I have not heard my system like this -- differnet recordings from different ages show a realism from images now projected and getting wider through the walls.

Stupendous.

Better yet, this is how Michael recommends I use PS PZCS and some specialty boards that fall off where the going gets loud,.

Sonic

Hi Zonees,

Here is the plan that Michael developed for my room. The numbers are positions for the PZCs.







Sonic

Hi Zonees

Sonic will be testing the positions in the chart using reflectivity-enhanced DRTs (that is with MGD plastic, and other materials to increase reflectivity to determine how many FS-PZCs I should order.

Certainly Positions 2 and 3 will require PZCs. I can tell from the varying transient impact and focus across the soundstage that PZCs are needed here.

5 and 6 need testing -- Michael indicated that these two positions may or may not work and the PZCs there might have to be placed ahead of the speakers or not at all.

I got DRTs working at 9 and 10 to excellent effect with a central FS-PZC. Really good as Zonees have read from my recent posts.

But when these DRTs are reflectivity enhanced with MGD plastic the soundstage shrinks and the images are pushed towards the front wall. So PZCs with their increased diffusion might be an "if" here -- unless the wood given harmonics that compensate for this effect .

Sonic has used DRTs earlier in 7 and 8 and it has not worked, but 11 is a possibility.

Sonic will get testing and see what I learn.

Also been reading up this week about different recroding microphone techniques such as Blumlein, the French ORTF and Spaced Omnis.

Theorectically, there is no single speaker placement that can playback all microphone set ups without spatial distortion. And with multi-miked pop everything goes out the window....

So as part of Sonic's learning, I took a recording made with the Blumlein technique -- two cardioids at 90 degrees to each other -- and played it back in one of the other systems in my dwelling with the speakers toed-in so as to be 90 degrees to my listening chair and equidistant from each other and from the listener.

The Blumlein recording I used was Water Lily Acoustics' A meeting by the River (Bhatt and Cooder, engineered by Kavi Alexander). The playback system was the one with the Fostex taper quarter wave tubes, the Samsung P191 and the Pioneer 7W amp.

Conclusion: there is something right when a Blumlein recording is played back with a 90 degree speaker set up as an inverse of the microphone pattern. The playback sounded balanced and pleasingly correct. A feeling of peace if you like. The sound did not have the all- round ambience, size and micro detailing of the Tuned Magneplanar 1.5QR system. But what I heard was musically satisfying.

Michael -- your comments about microphone techniques and in-room speaker position? You must have worked with the Blumlein back when you were an engineer.

Robert -- Sonic relates this evening's musical event to what you posted about context and what raises goosebumps. A presentation of the music that harmonises the performers, the listener and the universe through the system.

On the Tuned system I listened to Handel's Water Musick (Harnoncourt/Teldec) and Nocturne (Charlie Haden Quartet/Gitanes). And on the Blumlein-configured Fostex system -- A Meeting by the River (listened to twice!) and John Coltrane with Don Cherry -- The Avant Garde.

Sonic

Oh yes, forgot to say this:

Didn't realise how coherent the single driver taper quarter wave tube speakers (there have no crossovers) sound. And when placed to be an approximate inverse of the recording microphone pattern Sonic is getting great calm music and tone despite the limited bandwidth and colourations here and there.

Correction: Blumlein technique uses two figure-of-eight microphones at 90 degrees apart not cardioids as I earlier posted.

More listening shows that the Roomtune near field setting, contrary to "theory", presents Blumlein, spaced omni and multi-miked recordings equally well.

Sonic listened to "A Meeting by the River" on the tuned system today and it was very good.

Actually better than the 90 degree Blumlein-inverse Fostexs except for the coherence of the single drivers.

Otherewise, the tuned system was as good or better, maybe a little wider in soundstage width but with a slight loss of definition between instruments in the back of the stage (between the deepest tones of the dumbeck and the tablas) in this recording.

Sonic

Hi Zonees

The testing with the "reflectivity-enhanced" DRTs continues.

One interesting development is a reflectivity-enhanced DRT placed at 11 causes a sharpening of focus in the soundstage and a projection of images like Sonic likes, almost making a pair of Future PZCs at 2 and 3 debatable.

Why almost? Because the soundstage width feels immediately reduced in width right from the first 30 seconds of the musick. Maybe tuning in the 7, 8 and 11 areas may do something.

Testing goes on.

Sonic

Great to read your adventures.

I like it when you blend things together as a whole. When anything is introduced into a system it sticks out and draws attention to itself. It also changes the performance of everything else in the room and system. It's one long chain from beginning to end. This is while I do not put much faith in quick AB testing.

Lets take a pressure zone that has developed a certain flow of character based on the information it has been getting fed from the other PZs in the room, then one of the other PZs pressure and content changes. This effects the PZs your listening to. The key to get balance is to have the materials used in the system in all 3 parts to the audio trilogy to disappear.

In your case how do we take a hard surface that has a particular resonant core sound that is pronounced in a few frequencies and turn it into part of the overall balance? We create full range variable products that can be place between the PZs of the room and you, or in key spots of the PZs making them change character from less full range to more full range.

Hi Sonic

I'm glad you corrected the Blumlein to include the figure 8s. Had me worried for a second. For myself I like doing layering but many engineers are too lazy to do this correctly and you can run out of space. Blumlein works best (I think) in a more symmetrical setup, where you can take advantage of space and size. One thing I don't like the sound off is squeezing the 2 figure 8 mics.

Hi Michael and Zonees

Sonic had gone round and round this week with the reflectivity-enhanced DRTs, plywood boards and measuring tape. At times I felt I was closing in on a good Tune but it slipped away each time.

Then I looked again at my room layout and Sonic noticed something.

I got a shoebox-shaped room, 20+ ft long x close to 15 ft wide. While I got tune gear from Michael distributed round the room, true it is that most of the Tune devices are concentrated at the two ends of the room along with centres of mass.

Front -- the equipment racks, subwoofer, PZCs, shutters, wood blinds, corner tunes and echotune.

Rear -- the bookcase wall, shutters, PZC, FS-DRTs, corner tunes.

But there is nothing to control the PZs and things at the 1/2 way point of the room (the 10.5 ft point down the length).

What's there? The speakers and a couple of Shutters and one Echotune high up the sidewall.

This zone is practically untreated which means uncontrolled pressure and reflections.

From Sonic's experience, uncontrolled reflections of sound = narrowness of soundstage.

So I tested some reflective/absorption devices at the halfway point right at the speaker plane. Now this flies in the face of conventional audiophile thinking because the zones at the edges of panel speakers are said to be the least troublesome because there is a null point here where the front and back waves canel.

This is correct but the acoustic issues of a room at the halfway point predominates. Treating this zone seems to increase the volume, creating much more imaging outside the speakers and give images and tone that does not vary across the soundstage width.

Sonic listened to Beethoven's 7th symphony (John E Gardiner/Arhiv), Modern Jazz Quartet's Blues for BACH (Atlantic), Rameau's Harpsichord pieces (Sophie Yates/Chandos) and Abbess Hildegard of Bingen -- A Feather on the Breath of God (Gothic Voices, Emma Kirby/Hyperion).

I got superb dimensionality and a sense of a soundstage that is far wider than my room width, finally. Warm and huge tonality with girth too. More work is needed to improve this and get the right devices from Michael to do the job but something good is here.

Sonic

Hey, Sonic,

Very interesting. I have brought this up before. Every so often, I put something directly beside my Maggies and it does make a difference, despite this talk of a null. I currently don't have anything at that particular place, but I may give it another shot soon, perhaps an RT Square at listening height on the wall by each speaker?

Greetings Robert

Yes, you might want to do that. And look for the best position for the RoomTune square front-to-back in relation to your Magneplanars.

I found the best musick and soundstange when the rear edge of the the DRT-equivalents I am testing is lined up with the Magneplanars and they extend forward of the plane of the speakers. But further forward (that is closer to the listening chair) the benefits reduce. Also when the device was moved further towards the front wall the benefit diminished and then turned into a nasty effect.

Give it a try. Also if you got DRTs or more RT-squares try treating a larger area. I don't know how sensitive your room is to tuning. I found when Sonic first started tuning, I had trouble hearing the effects but as my room got more tuned,even small changes could be heard clearly and quickly.

I also tried a pair of FS-PZCs next to the speakers where the DRTs were. It didn't work. Images were clear but were pulled onto the speaker panels. So it is back to FS-PZCs at the front wall, DRT-equivalents at the middle of the room length then FS-PZCs and roomtune burn at the bookcase. It seems Sonic's room at this stage needs a gradient of liveness at the front wall then progressively more burn down the length of the room but with enough diffusion and liveness too so the room does not turn into a Live End/Dead End room.

Sonic knows about the work of Don and Carolyn Davis with the LEDE idea for studios where the area round the monitors and the mixing desk was turned into an acoustically dead cavern and the rear of the room was live and diffusive. AUDIO mag said it was great but mixers soon couldn't hear round the LEDE and gave up.

Then some turned the LEDE round -- Live front, Dead rear. Weird but not as bad. But dead acoustic damps sound and once sound is damped, details and music is lost and you can't bring it back.

So what Sonic means is the gradient of live to more burn in my room is a gentle gradient and not steep slope that ends in an absorptive environment.

Sonic

Hi Michael and Zonees

Sonic got to listen to a 4-channel system based on a pair of British large BBC monitor grade loudspeakers in the front and a pair of British mini-monitors for the rear channels. The 4-channel effect came from a digital delay system set between 30 to 50 uS. The front end was a Rega Planet CD player. The room was treated (not tuned) with a lot of absorptive panels and cylinders.

We played Belafonte at Carnagie Hall (the original CD release) and on Man Piaba I could hear the guitar softly tuning up and with Matilda the layers of the audience sing-along was convincing.

The sound was on first listening attractive but soon got the feeling of the ambience being imposed on the room. Not exactly natural in color. It was enjoyable to a good extent with the system could go fairly loud and the effect musical. Brass instruments had bite.

The rear speakers were not pointing at the listening area but angled to fire onto the ceiling. My host explained that this was to give longer path lengths for the sound to reduce localisation of the rear speakers as sources.

The front speakers were noticeable as sources but the overall musical presentation was musical and pleasing. The tube amplification helped I am sure.

Sonic wonders if stereo and rear ambience delay causes listening fatigue because the brain has to work overtime to process the inputs and push earlier arrivals to mentally locate the front signals and late arrival sounds to the heard in the rear rear. Maybe that's why so many ambience delay systems, Hafler and as such were not employed by their owners long term.

In the meantime, Sonic's experiments with DRT-equivalents placed ahead of the MG1.5QRs have worked well. I also optimised the placement of the DRT-equivalents now moved about 3 inches forward of the speakers and the set-up. Think this is also so good that we should move to a more permanent set up it may be downhill. This is one of the "lost points" in the room where once found and treated, huge gains are experienced.

Sonic also found another two "lost points". I hung two EchoTunes on the sides of the Bookcase Walls (where the Echotunes point to the sidewalls).

This is very good! I am getting more projection and volume. Also there is strong rear signal recovered but while less obvious, Sonic system sounds more natural in comparison to the British loudspeaker-based system.

The 4-channel system also required constant setting up of volume. It was almost magic on some trackes but mostly sounded over-ambient on othersw. The Tune lets the ambience build up but there is no feeling of it being put one and contrived.

The musick Sonic heard tonight is a. J S Bach -- Sonatas for Viola da gamba and harpsichord -- Savall/Koopman (Virgin). b. Gregorian Chant -- Choralschola der Wiener Hofsburgkapell (Philips).

Very realistic sound with a more expanded soundstage that is appearing to expand outside my room.

Sonic

More....

Sonic found the volume has increased. At a given setting of the amps (9.00 pm), the music has become subjectively louder. This is not distortion bua speaker-room interface now working together better.

Also an old recording I have --Twin House (Coryell, Cahterine.AMV) has the two guitars moving from being plastered on the panels and hanging onto them to being more dimensional and separated from the Magneplanar 1.5QR positions. Very good.

The sound is room filling but in a subtle way. I'll be listening for hourws and hours this weekend. Now for the new cones from Michael.

Sonic

Hi Michael and Zonees

Audiophiles have remarked that, compared to live sound, their systems seem not to reproduce alto and tenor voices in a choir or violas and the cellos in an orchestra recording. This is as compared to the violins/basses or sopranos and tenors/baritones/basses. It is as if there was a suck-out in the frequency ranges of these middle instruments or voices.

Sonic made this observation too but found the solution of a pushed up mid bass the wrong path – it made things muddy. But listen to real live musick and you’ll find altos and violas are actually softer than the rest of the choir/orchestra but they are still prominently audible for one reason – their sounds FLOAT.

Yes, and so do some percussion. Have you heard a percussion ensemble where a small drum is occasionally louder than everything else? Listen again and you’ll hear it is not loud but it FLOATS over the rest of the ensemble.

Sonic found that the Tune reproduces float in a realistic presentation. Float is captured in the recordings and I now can hear them more and more clearly in my listening room even at low volumes. This is rare – I have heard this infrequently on some systems -- the Genesis V comes to mind, maybe the JBL horn system that I love driven by flea watt amps. Otherwise, this float effect is missing in so much of reproduction that Sonic is familiar with.

The other things about the Tune is how even peripheral things can affect the sound. Just for a test, I tried some large Harmonic Feet under the MW platforms that support my mains distribution strips instead of the matt machine wound Harmonic Springs.

The conclusion -- in my system, Harmonic Springs are better than MTDs for everything but speakers and very heavy devices like tape decks, and MTDs are better than Harmonic Feet. The Feet however are way better than the supplied feet with equipment fresh from the stores even if they are supposedly hi-tech aluminum things with elastomers to damp vibrations – actually especially IF the feet are aluminum things with elastomers for damping.

Also while Sonic is planning to tune the Musical Fidelity V-DAC and preparing for online downloads of albums in FLAC, I have heard a state-of-the-art music server system with Ethernet and i-phone control. I was disappointed. Compared to the same musick played through a CD player, the server-sourced stuff was flat and dead. Strong bass yes (those were active monitor speakers I was hearing) but a treble that was both bright and dull at the same time. Hey….that’s what digital first sounded like. Digital playback has truly come a long way. CD players can approach analog and in some ways do better especially if tuned. Sigh….server musick is not there (or here) yet. Yet, the day when physical CDs disappear is not distant. It sounds just like starting over.

Sonic

Hi fellow Zonees

Sonic has been moving on with the Tune this week a little, both in things applied to my system and some more learnings into DS or Digital Streaming.

I had said that of all of Michael’s equipment support devices, the best sounding was the hand wound springs (they give a ton of musick as Michael says), then the machine wound springs follow closely in musick and harmonic development , then MTDs and last of all Harmonic Feet

Not that Harmonic Feet are bad, just the others are better – and as group, these devices stand way above a lot of things out in the stores.

But this week Sonic discovered something new – the Large Harmonic Feet work very well under my Rotel subwoofer amp (4 Harmonic Feet, one under each corner of the chassis). They give mixed results elsewhere in my system – they were always bested by the Springs.

The Harmonic Feet under the Rotel imparts an ease to the music, the opposite of being wound-up and mechanical in the bass. This is not a loss of tight and punchy sound definition but a move away from what could be described as over-etched on some recording. The Large Harmonic Feet in this application gave Sonic’s system flexion, a “lightness” and “looseness” – I don’t know what else to say about it except it is related to the idea of “membrane images” in the Tune that I discussed in my last post or two.

Sonic was listening to Telemann’s Darmstadt Overtures, Handel’s harpsichord works (Archiv) and some acoustic blues by Lightnin’ Hopkins, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed. Very good!

Harmonic Feet don’t work under anything top tuned but they can work on the top of a top tuned device like I did with my CD player. I also found they need to be matched to the weight of the device they are supporting. The small Harmonic Feet go with lighter gear. Use a small one under a heavy amp and they constrict.

As for Sonic’s research into DS and CD (optical playback): my initial listening point to DS sounding worse that CD – now this should not be so given that DS avoids the noise and vibrations inside a CD box, there should be no clock issues as the data is buffered and streamed thereby reclocked not played real time almost and having error correction done on the fly.

The consensus of the audiophile community is that the technology is not there yet. Will it ever be? But as more and more CD stores are closing down and music bought online, we need to have a solution that works.

Maybe a music-dedicated laptop with something like Airport Express and a good DAC for playback, buy music online in FLAC, save to hard disk, burn a CD-ROM and play that.

What’s you take on this Michael and Drewster?

The other thing is LPs are coming back steadily I hear and they may become a niche genre of music delivery in parallel with online album purchase.

Sonic

Hi Zonees

Sonic tried an experiment last night and got some interesting results.

I moved the PZC that was behind my listening chair over to the mid-point of the front wall. This means I got 3 PZCs up front (one in each corner and the third centred) and there are 4 RoomTunes near the speakers and at the sides of my listening chair. Nothing else in the room was adjusted (Shutters etc), only ther centre PZC had its bolt tightened to the same extent as the corner PZCs.

At first listening this seemed promising, more focus in middle stage images and a little more detail in the upper bass. After an hour of musick, I realised something was not entirely right although I couldn't put my finger on it. Just an urge that Sonic needed to tune and adjust something to make it come together.

I resisted and played another CD....then another hour or so and I could hear where the change was heading. I was getting a midrange "honk". Not in the same frequency range as the "Horn Honk" though. Violins had the tone relationship between the strings and body upset, harpsichords sounded brittle, alto saxes started to sound like clarinets and clarinets had a hollowness.

Didn't take long for me to decide to beat a retreat. While the Tune is ever progressing, I think this means I got the optimum number of devices in my room to deal with the acoustics at this stage of Tuning. I suspect that the high walls and ceilings could do with something more but let's work on that. There are the new cones and mini clampracks to bring into the system so Sonic thinks that is where the effort and expense should go next.

And as for digital playback, I did look again at the threads and found that Drewster was underwhelmed with the Airport Express and computer combination. I am underwhelmed at DS. And to use a computer even a dedicated one to play CD means the playback is subject to all the noise and vibrations from such a device that was never designed for audio as a primary objective -- an engineer told me that computers and laptops are a huge source of electrical, RF and all other sorts of noise imaginable. So stick with CD players -- in my case cheap DVD (soon Blu-ray) players and tune and tune.

Sonic

Hi Michael and fellow Zonees

These couple of days told Sonic some new things about Tune thinking:

1. Just because a set up has settled in and worked doesn’t mean it is right or cannot be improved

2. With more Tune gear on hand, you get more flexibility and combos that didn’t work earlier can come to life.

3. The Tune gets to be a way of thinking and there is a “Tune Instinct” that starts to pop up. It may like the Force – the Force is very strong in Mr Green but others can get a bit of it too.

I was listening every evening thru this week when yesterday I felt something more could be done with the middle images. The images could be more fleshed out and transients that are from the back of the stage like with orchestral percussion which are played from behind the front desks should have more impact.

The logical things will be to try a single PZC or RoomTune in the middle and see what happens. Now I had placed a single PZC and a RoomTune in the middle (at separate times) and both failed. Sonic also did a bit of testing with “boo!” and handclaps and the upper portions of the room could do with a bit more control. The decay is not even top and bottom. The lower part of the room decays faster than the top. That’s not unusual given the height of my room and that there are only Corner and midwall treatment and Shutters.

What if I stacked the floorstanders?

From the first note the centre images were huge. Voices articulated very well, sibilants were in sync with the voices and not disembodied. Good but the side images shrank and got plastered to the Magneplanars, outside images disappeared. “One more failed tune among many” thought Sonic. Then the Tune Instinct got me feeling “why should I keep assuming my room wants a gradient of diffusive-live in front to a more absorptive rear?” What if I turned the acoustic treatment around – the RoomTunes going to the front corners along with the centre stack and three PZCs behind my listening chair. There will no longer be any Tunes adjacent to the outer edges of the Magneplanars and I could increase the liveness of the rear of the room by unloading the bookcases more.

I had tried this sort of placement before and the result was nasty. Good to make notes if your can’t feel the Instinct and Sonic tried to be methodical. The time the reverse placedment fail was without any device in the centre and certainly no stack. There was a Tunestrip tried once but something against a window behaves differently from a freestanding device. Sonic started to get some exercise.

This time it worked – and worked very well. I got a filled soundstage with fatter images especially in the centre – the angling of the Floorstanders in the corners affect how much beyond speaker images appear and where. I won’t say my soundstage increased in width or image size because if you added up how many times Sonic or audiophiles say this, our soundstages would be light-years in width by now.

I’ll let the combo run in and describe the system as it settles.

Sonic

Inaudible High-Frequency Sounds Affect Brain Activity: Hypersonic Effect

By:
1. Tsutomu Oohashi,
2. Emi Nishina
3. Manabu Honda
4. Yoshiharu Yonekura
5. Yoshitaka Fuwamoto
6. Norie Kawai
7. Tadao Maekawa
8. Satoshi Nakamura
9. Hidenao Fukuyama, and
10. Hiroshi Shibasaki

Submitted 15 November 1999, accepted in final form 6 March 2000.

Abstract
Although it is generally accepted that humans cannot perceive sounds in the frequency range above 20 kHz, the question of whether the existence of such “inaudible” high-frequency components may affect the acoustic perception of audible sounds remains unanswered.

In this study, we used noninvasive physiological measurements of brain responses to provide evidence that sounds containing high-frequency components (HFCs) above the audible range significantly affect the brain activity of listeners.

We used the gamelan music of Bali, which is extremely rich in HFCs with a nonstationary structure, as a natural sound source, dividing it into two components: an audible low-frequency component (LFC) below 22 kHz and an HFC above 22 kHz.

Brain electrical activity and regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) were measured as
markers of neuronal activity while subjects were exposed to sounds with various combinations of LFCs and HFCs. None of the subjects recognized the HFC as sound when it was presented alone.

Nevertheless, the power spectra of the alpha frequency range of the spontaneous electroencephalogram (alpha-EEG) recorded from the occipital region increased with statistical significance when the subjects were exposed to sound containing both an HFC and an LFC, compared with an otherwise identical sound from which the HFC was removed (i.e., LFC alone).

In contrast, compared with the baseline, no enhancement of alpha-EEG was evident when either an HFC or an LFC was presented separately. Positron emission tomography measurements revealed that, when an HFC and an LFC were presented together, the rCBF in the brain stem and the left thalamus increased significantly compared with a sound lacking the HFC above 22 kHz but that was otherwise identical. Simultaneous EEG measurements showed that the power of occipital alpha-EEGs correlated significantly with the rCBF in the left thalamus. Psychological evaluation indicated that the subjects felt the sound containing an HFC to be more pleasant than the same sound lacking an HFC.

These results suggest the existence of a previously unrecognized response to complex sound containing particular types of high frequencies above the audible range. We term this phenomenon the “hypersonic effect.”

Read the full paper at: http://jn.physiology.org/content/83/6/3548.full
[url=http://jn.physiology.org/content/83/6/3548.full]

Hi Sonic

To respond to the post on the 23rd. I constantly struggle with the thought of minimizing SKUs (number of products) to get the basic job done vs having every conceivable piece available to the tunees. In the long run I personally feel that when the "Tuning Revolution" takes over High End Audio our industry views of the sport are look a lot more like instrument building than what it looks like today. Tuning must cover the sonic reproduction of every instrument and to do this we must make our systems uniquely variable in both form and function. Does one size fit all? Seems to be what people want when they reach for their remote. Is this a reality? In my book it isn't and never will be. before the Tune came along the turntable was the closest component to the true spirit of audio that we had ever had, why? The parts moved and where tweak tuned. The more this hobby seeks "fixed" the future it moves away from music.

We need to remind ourself (as you do when you talk about the different function of the parts) what parts really mean.

for example a clarinet

Preparing the body

1 When wood is harvested for clarinet-making, logs are sawed to between 3-4 ft (1-1.2 m) in length. The logs must be seasoned, to prevent later warping. They may be seasoned by being kept in the open air for several months, or they may be dried in a kiln. Then the logs are split and sawed to lengths approximating the finished lengths of the clarinet body pieces, (upper and lower joints, barrel and bell). The body pieces look like narrow rectangular blocks, and pieces for the barrel are carved in a rough pyramidal shape. These pieces are known as billets. The manufacturer buys the billets in lots, and begins the manufacturing process from these roughed-out shapes.

2 When the manufacturer receives the billets, workers inspect the lot. Then skilled workers place the billets on a borer, which drills a hole lengthwise through the center of each piece. The diameter and shape of this hole, called the bore of the clarinet, is crucial to determining the tone of the instrument. The bore may be drilled in a straight cylinder, or the cylinder may be slightly tapered. After the bore is drilled, the body pieces are turned on a lathe. The rectangular billets become smooth, round, hollow cylinders. These cylinders are then seasoned again.

After the rough pieces have been seasoned for the second time, they are reduced to finished size. The pieces are turned on a lathe and trimmed to exceedingly precise diameters. The joints where the body pieces fit into each other are turned after the exterior is completed. The bore may be reamed more precisely, and then it is polished on the inside. Then the joints are painted with a black dye.

Boring the tone holes

4 Next, the maker bores the tone holes that the player's fingers cover to make the different notes. The most common method for mass-produced clarinets is to set the body pieces in a setting out machine. This is a table which holds the piece on a mount under a vertical drill. The holes are drilled at specified distances apart and with precise diameters. The exact dimension of the holes affects the tuning of the instrument, and the holes may be adjusted after the instrument is nearly complete. Not every hole is the same size, and the maker may have to insert a different drill bit for each hole. The holes are smaller on the outside than on the inside, and to achieve their precise shape, after the holes are drilled they are undercut. The clarinet maker uses a small, flared tool placed in the tone hole to expand the underside of the hole. Next to the tone holes, tiny holes for holding the key mechanism are also drilled.

Construction of keys

5 Early clarinets were made with hand-forged keys. The modern method is usually die-casting. Molten alloy (usually German silver) is forced under pressure into steel dies. A group of connected keys may be made in one piece in this method. Alternately, individual keys may be stamped out by a heavy stamping machine, and then trimmed. These individual keys are then soldered together with silver solder to make the connected group. Next the keys are polished. Keys for inexpensive models may be placed in a tumbling machine, where friction and agitation of pellets in a revolving drum polish the pieces. More expensive keys may be buffed individually by being held against the rotating wheel of a polishing machine. Some keys may be silver-plated, and then polished.

6 The keys are then fitted with pads. The pads are usually made of several layers—cardboard, felt, and skin or leather. The circular pads are stamped or cut, and then workers glue them by hand into the head of the key. This will muffle the sound of the tone hole closing when the instrument is played.

7 The keys are drilled, and then fitted with springs that will keep them either open or closed. These springs are made of fine steel wire.

This is similar to my thought process while I'm designing and voicing the tune. I'm constantly studying the techniques of instrument building to see how I can apply these elaborate uses of transfer to the tune. The formula of tuning electronic components are completely different material wise but if you took the full range of the acoustical instrument process and combine it with the formulas of the building of the electronic part and how it responds to vibration the connect between the two worlds become quite clear. Our systems are 98 percent materials and mechanics and 2 percent circuits and language.

Hi Michael and Zonees

Sonic's room switch around started settling, and the more settling happened the more Right and Wrong features became audible.

Great big soundstage? Check.

But a "honk" on some notes in the alto sax range is appearing...and it occurs right over the listener's head.

Outside wall images? Half-check
.
But the sounds round the two RoomTunes in the corners sound dead. A viol ensemble with instruments across the width of the stage can sound very real and very strange at the same time, depending on what I choose to focus on

Ambience all round? Check.

But the sides of the room have become oddly live. If Sonic sat in the listenng seat and said "BOO!" all is well. Another person standing at the side walls in line with my ears saying "BOO!" I hear a ringing echo. This must affect the sound. Could that be the cause of the "honk"?

So much for Sonic's Tune Instinct....frustration built up so in one action, I restored everything to the Last Stable Tune Point. I steeled myself for the first notes of music because the system has gone through shock from the movement over the last few days plus the frenzied restoration.

It was marginally OK but after a couple of hours of musick playing time, Sonic can hear that nicely dimensional, relaxed tone emerging.

Was I lacking in resolve to have given up? Some aspects of the alternate set up was really good but it would have taken days or weeks to get a satisfactory presentation and deal with the Wrongs assuming I could do it right (Sonic is not certain I have the skills...Michael could I am sure).

Also, the solution might only have been achievable with more Tune gear like more PZCs, aeroplanes, shutters and such which I do not have at hand.

Is the Stable Point the right set up -- is there only One Right Set Up per Room? Michael, what's your take on this?

Sonic

Hi Zonees

Since bringing my system back to its starting point (sort of the system restore point), Sonic has started pushing out again with getting more musick from my room again.

While it seems that my room treatment set up is about maxed out as far as this equipment set up can allow, I tried something that Michael hinted at – with hard walls, the speakers may have to be brought closer together to sound right but sometimes they have to go even closer to the wall.

I had tried a closer in setting successfully – 6 inches closer in per side than my original speaker to side wall distance. This time Sonic went closer to the walls again back to around where I started but with more toe in. It works well but the soundfield at the centre of the room is going slightly vague again.

Sonic then remembered that with all the “BOO!” tests I had noted that the resonance and ringiness was high up at the ceiling and I had on some posts remarked that I had to treat the upper walls. This is because I have a full set up of Shutters on the ceiling so short of using ceiling PZCs the top surface is about done. So an idea: fit Shutters up at the top of the walls at the junction with the ceiling since there is a horn here and the upper ½ of my wall height have no treatment.

I cut some MGA balsa Shutters to make 4 pieces each one foot long, bought some brass hinges from the DIY shoppe and mounted the hinge at the mid-point of the Shutter blade. See Cdimi’s classic system in the Tuneland archives if you are uncertain what this looks like.

The hinge allows the Shutter to be angled and gets the round the problem an L-bracket will cause when fitted at the ceiling/wall junction. Shutters work on laminar flow which is a layer of no more than 6 inches from a surface according to Michael. So the closer a Shutter us at the surface, the more powerful the effect.

I mounted these mini-centre-pivoting Shutters at the ¼ and ¾ length points of the two side walls. There was a change (not to be declared an improvement yet…) that was immediately noticeable:

a. the vagueness in the centre was gone

b. the room stopped sounding like it had two acoustics – the treated one art the lower half and a ringy untreated one at the top half. Sonic thinks this is a problem that occurs in a tall room.

c. apart from the cleanness in the sound, I now got better height impression without images appearing at the ceiling.

d. played J P Rameau’s Pieces de Clavecin en Cordes (Bruggen, Kuijken x2, Leonhardt) on Teldec. Speakers did a better disappearing act (not perfect but better).

e. the volume for a given preamp setting was up again. A person in my dwelling who didn’t know what I had done remarked “you are playing music very loud today” and this was from outside the listening room.

All usually good signs. A big change for no cost and with 4 little pieces of wood. Not surprising given that Michael tamed a whole hall by clicking his fingers and saying the magic word (“BOO!”) and setting up Shutters for a small fee when experts had quoted lots, lots more.

If Michael would make these Shutters out of MW, I’ll get a whole bunch and deal with the upper wall acoustic ring and that would be the end of acoustically tuning my room until I change my equipment set up.

By change, I mean a big move like new speakers, more equipment and racks, a radically different placement or changing the ratio of materials in the room like getting wood panels from MGA and mounting these on the wall. Or getting a portable listening room like Bill333.

While Sonic is far from obsessed with playback volume, I can understand why some audiophiles play their systems at OHSA incompliant SPLs. It is about dynamic compression and acoustic interface I think.

Dynamic compression: attend a live concert of unamplified music in a good recital hall and you’ll hear that when musicians play with strength and force, it is no loud. I recently heard a Steinway grand in a small recital hall and the transients were powerful and the piano thunderous but it wasn’t loud, definitely not in the way you hear at a hi fi salon.

I guess these audiophiles are realizing the shortcoming and trying to make up for it by turning up the volume control. And if rock is their thing, pity their ears. Loudspeakers compress dynamics and many require high wattages to “come alive”. Sonic will be first to say this has been observed as a problem with Magneplanars – particularly the earlier models. Harry Pearson wrote about this effect of how much a speaker had to be turned up over concert hall levels to sound “right” (classical music only). He viewed the speaker that exhibited the least dynamic compression was the long-gone Beveridge electrostatics. And there are loudspeaker brands on the market who are said to need lots of juice to get going probably due to the complexity of their crossover networks. Peter Walker also wrote about getting the right playback volume which for classical music was loud/osft enough to allow two people to speak to each other at normal voice levels.

The other factor is acoustic interface and coupling into the room. Horns do the best job but have their problems – like colourations, size – but they are efficient and can sound effortless. Sonic recently heard a horn set up with Altecs and 15” JBLs driven by (surprise) big transistor amps in a multi-amped set up. The owner who has them set up in a very large room believes that “you can never have too much power – as long as the watts are clean”. By tune standards this is a big, heavy over complex system but I had never heard such bass power coming from a single bass viol playing in a small baroque ensemble.

The timbre of the gut strung viols were OK, pretty good actually and the delineation of the complex musical lines was excellent though some micro details were missing but who listens to bows hitting music stands? The thing is the system could also play softly and still give the benefits but Sonic’s host was perplexed at my turning the sound down rather than up. So horns do give possibly the best acoustical coupling as Sonic understands it, then cones must sit somewhere in the middle and…planars would logically give the poorest coupling hence the need for size to give force-over-area because high excursions are out for this type of speaker. And of course the cone of a horn or other loaded cone driver moves very little even when playing loud. The Tune works on the acoustic interface from a different angle to get the music to our ears.

Sonic