the TuneVilla tests

Hi Listeners

On this thread I hope to gather some of the info off of www.tuneland.info and the techno-zone as well as write about our testing over the years. For you spec readers sorry, as we did our testing we saw how far off "specs" are from "hearing" so we decided not to publish this kind of stuff that would only to confuse people.

please feel free to jump in

 

TuneVilla was the name of the place in Ohio that was located by the MGA/RoomTune factory. There were several parts to TuneVilla that spaned a time frame of 1989 to 2000. Afterward the opperations moved to Nashville, and TuneVilla became TuneLand, basically any place I was testing the ideas of the tune.

To back up a little I was testing audio equipment and sharpening my tools starting in 1973 or there about when I was making my own stereo while playing drums for some local bluegrass bands. I wasn't very good   but enjoyed being a part of the musician world. I started touring in 75 and full time in 77. The adventures were many and it was my first time seeing the world. By this time I had already taken apart amps, speakers and recording mixing boards. I guess you could say I was already tuning way back then cause I was never please with the sound and would make the sound equipment I had into something where I could change the tone or tightness. This was good training for when I opened up my audio stores, in the early 80's and began runing sound for the Atlanta Symphony as well as work on TV shows for the guys who ran TBS. I'm leaving out a lot of stuff cause you've heard it before, but I think it's important to point out that I really do have a technical back ground and was trained by some hot shots in the recording, music and TV biz. Guys that knew their way around testing but also knew that a test was just a measurement of time and was not really the sound. Because we were recording weekly shows and had other timelines, there was no time to play engineer. It either sounded good and you continued to be on staff or it sounded bad and you weren't there the next week. Same thing for touring. You had a show, you made it great and you moved on. No time for debating.

I lived and thrived in this world and when I got my Hi Fi stores was able to bring home any kind of listening vs studio or live testing there was. I could be at the Fox and after be listening to it on my stores systems and that's about what I did. It allowed me to answer for myself live vs recorded, the same as when I was at Criteria earlier, but at that time I was listening mostly through pro gear to be fair.

TuneVilla though was a completely different setting. The goal after making a bunch of listening rooms all over the town the factory was in, was to make a place where I could get any sound I wanted any time. Think about it, those who know me, any sound at any time. It was like my own personal frankenstein lab. I still had the other rooms around town and the factory to play in so found myself in a place that was going to allow me to test just about anything. I also had UMI (united musical instruments) and SUNY to play around in along with my visits to pro clients.

The TuneVilla (TuneLand) tests covered every part of audio I could think of. If I saw something being done in the audio world I could bring it here and put it through whatever need to be done to see how it was effecting the audio signal. The very first thing that needed to be done was find out what the audio signal was. Once we saw that the signal was so highly variable we were able to do all kinds of tests.