Tuning My Musical Journey

Hi Michael and Zonees

It has been a good first-half week for sound learnings:

a.    Sonic has accepted it as a rule of truth that the equipment reviews in early magazines like High Fidelity and Audio were just doing measurements and said nothing about equipment sounded – a gap which was filled with the rise of such “subjectivist” magazines like Stereophile and The Abso!ute Sound in the '70s.

I have found the archived High Fidelity magazines from the 1950s to 1970 online at the American Radio History website (lots of ancient magazines archived here). At this website Sonic found a whole world of audio journalism I never knew first hand. Check it out!

Sonic read the reviews and while they didn’t have the emphasis on listening tests and the structure of the modern subjectivist reviews, you could not say they did not at least attempt to describe how things sounded.  They did that though you had to some times read between the lines to get it especially when they were criticising the product but to say that High Fidelity omitted to describe how things sounded is not entirely true.

b.   Sonic thinks I may know why the MyeStand I tried with my Magneplanar MG1.5QRs did so poorly in my system…the stands were probably a knock-off made in a country neighbouring mine.  I was troubled  by the holes for mounting the panels being slightly off and looking at it again the welding was rough and the clamp of the angled bars didn’t fit right. Sonic has doubts that the ones I bought used are genuine.  That might explain things.

c.   The idea of angling the Magneplanar 1.5QRs so the centre of the bass/midrange panels are pointing to the ears and the tweeters crossed slightly ahead of the listener to optimize phase and arrival times appears to be working!  The images increased in “hugeness”,  the sound seems more together and the treble sings. Volume went up too.  From what Sonic learnt from Mr Green an increase in volume is most often (always?) a Good Thing.

Will post pictures if this lasts after concerted play to settle the system.

Now Sonic is listening to a CD version of Deodato 2 (CTI - Original Columbia Jazz Classics) after Neil Young's Silver and Gold (CD).

Sonic

sonic said

"I know from experience that if I sat closer to the Magneplanars than a certain distance, the speaker sounds odd and listening fatigue sets in very quickly. Moving further away reverses this fatigue.

Now Sonic listens near field with the tweeter quasi-ribbons on the inside edge of the speakers. This means, all things being equal, the highs/tweeter part of the signal will reach my ears before the mids and lows will.

Is this significant?

I am beginning to think it might be. On some music I think I can get the same feeling that I get when I am too close to the panels but to a lesser degree.

Placing the speakers with the tweeter quasi-ribbons on the outside edges is not the answer. I have tried it and sound is odd, perhaps due to the tweeter being even further off axis leading to severe frequency response anomalies that occur as you go further off axis of any tweeter with rising frequency.

Michael, what are your views on this?"

mg

I think more in terms of sound pressure and how it reacts to pressure zones. In my designing I'm looking at how to make the speakers disappear more and more. This last batch of designing has brought me even closer to doing that, and it's becoming hard for me to see things in speakers that are drawing attention to themselves. I was thinking last night, that before this is all over I might have to get a normal pair of speakers so I can relate to the other side again.

I would describe this as listening without effort, and I'm not sure I could handle a speaker saying "here I am" anymore.

I had on the Mini Mods last night in room two and was trying my hardest to find the speakers. Took me 3 recordings before I could spot where they were. Then I put a piece of wood on top of them and it was like someone took out a pointer. I did this same thing with a piece of marble, and a couple of other materials and you could walk up to the speaker and take the materials off and on and hear the sound go in and out of the speaker.

This morning did the same thing in room one with proto Mandolin, same results but different sounding. It's really pretty wild hearing the same materials co-mingle differently with different materials.

I've also been doing more pressure box testing lately, and am thinking about designing a box or even series of boxes that will do what GARP talks about in his thread. The difference being, my pressure box has a passive radiator in it instead of a real driver. So far the results are much like a device that pressurizes and depressurizes the room. The music ply was the missing ingredient, but now that I'm doing things with this super low mass material, it's pretty interesting. I'm able to do a lot of attenuation for extremely low up through the response range. In bigger rooms this seems to be like a nature room low pass filter. The speaker/room reaction at times drops a good 10hz, and it certainly sounds like the room becomes the speaker more than before.

Pretty crazy really and the adjustability is outrageous. I believe I have just created a natural passive subwoofer. I've done this with pressure boxes, and with my SW10 but never took it to this stage, of making the sub a natural sub. But not only is it a natural sub but also a range balancer. Depending on the dimensions and the radiator size I've been able to increase or decrease the pressure at will.

sonic said

"The images increased in “hugeness”, the sound seems more together and the treble sings. Volume went up too. From what Sonic learnt from Mr Green an increase in volume is most often (always?) a Good Thing."



I have found that looking at things from only a 2d point of view can cause us to loose that next level of pressure.

Sometimes putting things on slants can do amazing things.

Depends on if your waves are setting up linear or not.

Hey Michael

"Listening without effort" -- I like that! And that is what Sonic got an increase of when I aimed the centre of the bass/midrange panels at my ears

A slant -- Sonic assumes this is a tilt back of the panels? Yes we can do that!

Sonic

effortless is what you want

This is how you can tell if something is fighting in the room or getting along with it.

Tilting things like acoustical floorstanders or the speakers was what I was refering to.

Hi Zonees

This is settling impressively well:





And from the front wall, giving you a view of the panels in relation to the listening chair.



Something is right – at the end of every LP and CD Sonic plays, I am saying things like “nice!”, “that’s good”, “yes!” or just  

The main thing is the ease of everything, Sonic is just listening to music rather than analyzing how to make this or that better. Sure there are things that could be better, but relaxing now and not thinking about these.

Sonic will try the tilt back of the panels of course.

Sonic

Hi Zonees

Sonic been getting a suspicion about some modern tubes manufactured recently. I wonder if some recently designed tubes have been engineered for a particular sound to copy the sound of the old Mullards, Telefunkens and Brimar-Thorns?

As my sound in the Tune-in-progress system was making good musick with CDs and LPs, with prolonged listening Sonic detected a sound signature (must not say Sonic signature since I didn't sign anything ) that carried from one recording to another.

Then I remember that the tubes Sonic was using in the phono stage and preamp were lauded as modern equivalents of the Teles, Brimars and Mullards.

Now those venerable tubes were the state-of-the art in their days using the best materials of the day. They were the best. But this is 2014 not 1959.

Becoming curious, Sonic tried an experiment -- I pulled out from my closet a set of modern Russian tubes with no pretension of sounding like Mullard, Telefunken, Brimar-Thorn or Mazda, and substituted them for the China modern tubes (much more expensive) I was using that were reviewed to sound like Mullard, Telefunken, Brimar-Thorn. Warm up the system, put my settling CD on repeat for a lengthy period then listened.

The modern Russian tubes with no pretensions of sound were more sounding like what Sonic could relate to musically. The tone changed with every LP and CD, and no sound signature that pervaded across recordings.

Reviewer Robert Everist Greene said that the old triode sound was pleasant but they have a definite sound. A technicolor sound he said. And after reading his writings I have come to be careful of the people who want to anachronistically recreate a sound of the days of Western Electric, Altec, University Sound, Rek-o-Kut.

Now Sonic is playing a Musical Heritage Society recording of Arcangelo Corelli's 12 Concerti Grossi Op. 6. Good musick on a Sunday night!

Comments from Zonees or Michael?

Sonic

Hi Sonic

I don't have a comment about the tubes, but I do about the system.

You've been here a long time and I don't want you to be shy about sharing your adventures. No I'm not going to promote things outside of the tune but this doesn't mean that you need to hide things you are doing to the system.

I haven't seen the front wall yet but by your email you are saying your doing some dampening and I don't want you to try to hide this from us because of your loyalty to the tune. I think that we all grow through experiementing and I have found myself in many situations where I will do something odd to my way of thinking as a means to discovering something that helps me down the road.

Maggies and hard walls certainly present a different set of variables that you or anyone would need to be creatively unique. In these types of setups, tall ceiling, panels, hard walls and heavier racks... I myself would do things a certain way to overcome some of the fighting going on. Here's the thing though, I'm not in your room and with your system. I can look at it and say "I wouldn't be using" some of the stuff in there based on what I have done in the past, and think that you might be making things a little tougher on yourself than need be, but this is your learning curve not mine, and as you make changes I can only guess after a while what is going on with the sound.

What I want and I'm sure you do too is transparency. There's no need for you to share only part of the story of your sound. Relax and let it all out bro confession is good for the soul and you need to feel comfortable with your foot steps, and I'm here to be a part of whether you are dampening part of the system or not.

In my store location long ago before I did RoomTune, I did the whole front wall of one of my listening rooms with foam inch by inch as I listened. Things would get louder and I thought I was getting some where, things would also clear up and so I pushed on. Everything was going good until I put on a recording I thought I knew pretty well, and in this recording I realized something had been cut out, like someone took a knife and chopped out a big chunk of the sound. I'll be honest, I freaked a little. How could it be that things were going so well and all of a suddened I hit this wall? I started to back track and sure enough I started noticing what was coming up missing with the other pieces. I was cutting away at the sound and had no idea I was doing it until that moment happen and I could hear exactly where things came up missing. From then on every recording had that same sound and it stuck out like a sore thumb, till I started slowly and carefully removing the dampening again.

The good and bad was, yes the dampening took care of my wall, but it also became the sound of my room. Many things felt right, but that wholeness I had come to discover and crave was not there with the foam and other dampening materials. It got to the place for me that I could hear that sound even if I introduced the slightest amount. The question then was "I'm I wanting the sound of materials I can't live with or ones that I can"? As time went on I realized that there wasn't anything that I put in the room that disappeared. Sooner or later the sound of that material (no matter what it was) showed up in the sound. I had to go back to my pro days and think about how I voiced rooms and mics and instruments, and how everything in some way tied itself to the sound some how. It may be a pleasant sound at first but somewhere down the road it stuck out as being a nasty.

Long story short, this is what helped me to look at all energies as equals and in time got me to start thinking simple. If it's there, it's in the mix.

This for myself was the light bulb I needed to go off in my brain. It got me looking at audio not from the engineer point of view or the audiophile, but a far more natural place in my thinking. A physically organic place that fit with nature.

Now this is not to say that a piece of foam can not bring you or anyone to a good place. Any product or material can do that. However the magic of listening is this, there's always more and sooner or later you and I hear that material played out in a piece of music and it's like a finger pointing directely at it saying "get out of my way".

This is why I love free resonance and simple. True it may mean we have to learn how to tune in each piece of music, but when we get there Wow It's also why I lean toward moving away from anything that can cause waves and fields that take away from the signal. Transformers, outlets, inductors can all play a huge role in shaping not only the direct audio signal as it passes through the electrical conduits, but it also is energy that enters the space we listen in.

One of the reasons I like non-crossover free resonant speakers is because I can hear a charge that happens with parts as they interact. Again back to that organic thing. You haven't heard a fully free resonant system but once you do something changes. It's like your listening to less electric. It can sound a mess out of tune, but once in-tune . It's like someone drained the electric out of the air and everything is pure. Until I heard this for myself the hobby and even pro-life was trade this for that with nothing completely breaking the skin.

We all share in this journey together my friend, and I'm not a MGA product pusher, just a guy who has found freedom inside of the music and like to share it, as I grow closer to the whole of it. The tools I design are made to get out of the way and let the music happen. A cure all? Far from it Just tools designed to give you and I a head start in letting the music come through, as well as enough variable flavor to let a Yamaha sound different from a Steinway.

the answer is always there, finding the keys to unlock the doors to it is the job

Greetings Zonees

Sonic is experimenting with the use of acoustic foam on my front wall to see if it fixes some problems I have been making inadequate headway with. Not much to confess since Sonic has already said some weeks back I was thinking of this option -- and then you'll see some of my experiments in pix from late last month and last Friday’s pix that showed places where I applied the foam panels.

All this is a work in progress – one thing Sonic has kept in mind is the backbone of my system approach is Michael’s tuning method because simply put it has taken my system/room sound so far ahead of any other method I tried or have seen tried by audiophiles I know.

But there have been some problems Sonic just couldn’t shake.  I finally traced all of them to the front wall so I attempted this.



Started cautiously and yes, things got better in a direction Sonic was hoping for. Finally, found that using these six foam pieces and four ETs (burn side facing inwards) made the improvements I wanted without deadening the room noticeably.  I had in the process of course to eight pieces but from the first track of music, I could tell the flow and life was gone.  Instruments and singers turned into paper cut-outs. This didn’t happen with less pieces.

The problems I managed to largely solve were:

a.    fixed the BOO! No more of that BOOing! that irked me so much.  Yet the decay is not too fast either.

b.    got rid of a “loose note”, an F in the alto register. I have a record of an alto singing. On one track she hits this note in a certain way and the room goes crazy.  This never happens in live musick in concert halls with unamplified voices [but with lousy PA systems yes this happens often].

c.    helped the sound stage spread so any hint of U-shape was reduced. I have to say that the Tune eliminated the Banana Soundstage Effect capably, this just improved it a bit more on some records, particularly early stereo ones that were recorded Left/Right and little between.  

d.    getting the cello sound (upper hand positions) about where I hear it is compared to live musick.

Any downsides? Not many actually. But I don’t know if what Michael posted yesterday affected me but sometimes things are not 100% right in terms of life and breath of the music. But no paper cut out images, the images are full.

Last night Sonic heard a complex orchestral work and it was great but next record up was a string quartet.  Maybe it was system shock when the CD was changed but while the four instruments sounded right and every line was clear, it was too big and separated.

Nonetheless, Sonic feels in a Net Gain position, the musick is enjoyable and I am ending every LP, CD, SP with a nod of approval, “yeah” or    

Of course I want to hear from Michael how to get those gains without any foam and using a pure Tune approach.

I know it can be done, these problems are not because Sonic's dwelling construction material makes the Tune inapplicable in my part of the planet. It is just I don't know how or I don't have the right (or enough) Tune devices on hand to get the job done.

Sonic

Hi Sonic

You basically know my approach to listening.

First all recordings have a different audio code to them. Second all systems are variably tunable by nature. 3rd our acoustics  sound like what they are made of. 4th the room is the speaker....and so on it goes.

At first look at the foam in the room I look at how big the room is and the materials in it and how much foam or any other material is being used to shape the sound. As you play through recordings you are going to hear the good and bad of the foam as to how it relates to the other materials and mostly to those vary hard walls and the signal the Maggies are sending into the room.

One thing I've always questioned about your listening is "what does Sonic do when he puts on a new recording"? New recording means different code means adjustments. What I have seen you do more than not (I could be wrong) is voice the room as a whole and then play music according to how the room is set. Chances of the recording revealing itself fully doing this is in question for me. When I play a new recording it's pretty clear that it has it's own mind and I can either listen to it with a one setting approach and live with it or go after it as a unique set of variables and tune to those variables. One setting sound is nice if it was real but that's not really how recordings work.

I say this because when you ask me to fix something, true I could do that, but the music played afterward would or at least could sound terrible. Your room is one setting and you can make that setting anything you want, but this doesn't mean that when you put on the Maggies with their own mind along with the sound of all the other components, that recording is going to want to play in that space the way you want it to. I think you've been hanging out with your audiophile friends too much and maybe should be talking to some of the gang up here.

There's a couple of things to think about.  One is your not listening to live music, and if your wanting to make every recording sound like a particular hall, your looking at more work than you can imagine and you better get a new set of walls.

next thing to look at is that Boo

With a bigger room with hard walls your going to usually get a pronouced boo or counter boo (suck out), and many times these peeks that pop up from time to time and with different recordings are going to jump out at you. If I wear my pro hat I'm going to say learn how to use a parametric, but with my audiophile hat I'm going to say learn how to use your materials, and make the changes to materials as you need to.

Since your using foam let me introduce you to some other stuff.

One is Styrofoam cups. Styrofoam board, paper egg cartons and cork. All of these are mild absorbers that still have tone.



They won't neccessarily rob you of your music content like something like foam can quickly. If you use too much of anything it will over power your sound but because your walls are so big and hard you could play with some burn but still leave enough of the tone to keep things alive. Also when using foam there are different degrees of stiffness and usually the acoustical stuff is more like bedding foam and you might want to lean toward a stiffer foam like the stuff I used for "diffuse" a while back. It was a foam but not squishy.

The thing you don't want to do while playing with absorption is getting stuck with that dead blanket sound. It's not hard to go that direction and kill the live out of the music.

now here are a couple of tricks

As your playing with any material you can place it directly on the wall but, since your wall is the problem (no full range tone), you might want to put a spacer between your materail and the wall itself so that the material can resonate. You don't want to compound the problem but replace it. When you attach it directly to the wall it is now going to take on that character plus it's own. As you move any of these more resonant materials out from the wall they will influence the room more.

sorry had to grab the phone

Here's the other thing to think about. As you dampen leave enough energy in the room to still use your floorstanders as zone controllers. If you start hearing your floorstanders become less effective you've gone too far with your dampening.

Hi Michael

Good and useful replies from you as always – it gets Sonic thinking.

MG he say: One thing I've always questioned about your listening is "what does Sonic do when he puts on a new recording"? New recording means different code means adjustments. What I have seen you do more than not (I could be wrong) is voice the room as a whole and then play music according to how the room is set.”

Sonic’s response: if you mean I play CD after CD, LP after LP after CD without any adjustments, what is the alternative? Can you describe what you do when you finish one CD and move to the next? Give me a sense of the process that takes place because Sonic has no idea of what is to done beyond at most letting a CD play through once while I leave the room and do something else then come back for in-depth listening. And it is my habit to go through up to five LPs and CDs a night if it is a long weekend of listening.

I remember you once saying that you might listen to a CD over and over all night, maybe for days and tune the system as a journey and you turned Deep Purple into a blues band. That’s a different world from Sonic’s mental state. So I try to voice the room as you say to have no bugs (like BOO! and notes that go Whoom!) and listen on. And yes, recordings are very different from each other but I don’t go from Record 1 being heavenly and Record 2 sounding like the worst dreck in the world. In fact Sonic is enjoying music from one record to the next. I hope I am in the right place saying this in Tuneland.

On your thoughts on alternatives to the foam – applause to Michael. Thank you! Sonic did not think if any of these materials as candidates.

I went (rushed out really) to the stores for a look and found the Styrofoam boards have the Styrofoam sandwiched between two pieces of paper. This is the stuff used for lightweight promotional posters where the ad is stuck to or printed on the paper. Is this the right material you are talking about?

They come in ¼ inch thick pieces. You certainly are not talking about boards of the type of Styrofoam that is used also in packing pellets?

Cork is available but I am looking for Natural Cork not the “rubber cork” that is common in the art shops here. Rubber is awful. I can hear it very quickly.

Right now playing CD of Alfred Brendel playing Beethoven’s Sonata 21, Op 53 in C “Waldstein” (Philips). The piano is big and has good weight.

Let me have your reply soon -- we are at an important stage of things!

Sonic

Here's another look at the blue board insulation.



If you hold it up and tap on it you will hear it resonate. The stuff you got is a start but you should get bigger stuff too so you can hear how a bigger and smaller piece sound vs each other.

yes, natural cork

Also, don't be shy about asking me questions on my thread. Sometimes it's easier for me if I'm focused on my thread, a psychological thing I'm sure, when I'm asked about what I do.

For example when I'm doing stuff, I do and learn a certain way based on where I am at and then with other people trying to put myself in a place where I have been before like where they are and start to think about what made me do the things I did to fix a problem. Like when you see me mention what's in that bookshelf behind you, it's because I have done what you are and know how huge of a difference between an empty one and full one is. Night & day! See, I look at that book case and the first thing I think of is making a framed wall in front of it that I can tune.

Also like I have said before, if I had your room I would make a room inside of a room and get rid of the sound of those walls. Even with our last back and forth in my mind I would think about framing a wall and putting up blue board, which would be cheap to do and then see how it changes the rooms character. I look at you putting up foam and reading your results it makes it clear to me that your walls are fighting your speakers. In my way of thinking I remove the fights and get to as simple as I can and spend my time not fixing equipment and such but voicing the music.

When I made the comment about the audiophiles, here's what I meant. They keep building ontop of problems and never really get to answers. They form opinions but any of us could go over to their place and play the audiophile game of playing a piece of music that we know will sound bad on their system. They would do the same with us. It's just a spin and really has nothing to do with playing music. I want to get to the place with my systems where I can make anything I want happen, and to be honest this doesn't happen through plugging and playing stock or complex system setups. All that does is lock me into one sound and that drives me crazy.

So, I'll be back in a minute and look at this through my eyes so you can see how my mind works with your system.

Ok, I'm Sonic

First thing I want to do is think about what I want my systems to do. I've been listening to maggies, listened to rogers and listened to horns and listened to my favorite live places.

Here's the list of likes and dis-likes about all of those places and speakers.

sonic's list

The interesting part is (this is you speaking) I hear things I like with all of them. I can also tell that they don't sound like each other. So here is a list of how they sound alike and not alike.

sonic's list

Now let me take a look at if I can get one of those systems, setups or places to do everything I want. Which one has come the closest, and where does it still fall short?

sonic's answer

Now let's look at Sonic's music. Here's the type of music I like.

sonic's list

Here's why I like it.

sonic's list

Does my system play these pieces of music the way I like?

sonic's answer

before you take another step take a look at this and see how you feel about your own listening. Not what your friends think, not what michael thinks, but what does Sonic think? What is it that turns you on, and your favorite moments, and what is it that turns you off, bugs you?

We know one turn off, the BOO factor, but before that's our focus or any other.

Lets do casual listening and relax, but lets start looking into why you have the system you do, and where do you hope and think it will go. let's remove audiophile pressure and michael pressure and anything that locks you up. Put on any piece of music you want and don't pick it apart. let it speak to you. Put on a couple of recordings and just "BE" with them and let them talk to you. There's a few things they're saying. One is their message, two is their mode of communicating, and three the technical (studio & home) relevance. Lets get rid of the last one and let that recording paint it's picture for you.

Go do it, don't read any further, and tell me when your done.

Views from Sonic Beaver (responding to Mr Green)

First a Question: Michael – what is the process/drill you adopt when you change CD and start playing a new one? What are the steps you take and things you do over the period you stay with one CD which I understand can be days.

Now to the meat of this post -- MG he say to Sonic: You've been listening to maggies, listened to rogers and listened to horns and listened to your favorite live places. Give a list of likes and dis-likes about all of those places and speakers.

Magneplanars:

Likes: openness, no sense of a box (because there isn’t one), big and room filling sound, tolerant of a wide span of recordings, good tonal balance, gets the midrange right, decent transient speed, can sound coherent as I recently discovered, simple crossover, value-for-money

Dislikes: an inner dullness, bass extension sensitive to placement, de-lamination risk particularly the earlier models, without the Tune Magneplanars need to be cranked up louder than acceptable to sound real. It is easy to get placement wrong – I have heard Maggies in set ups sound so bad it makes me wonder what the owners were thinking – no bass with peaky peaky treble

Rogers LS3/5a:

Likes: tonally pleasant and correct when operating in within its limits – speech, small scale music, not too loud. Very pin point imaging when listened near field, throws a surprisingly large wall-to-wall image (with images outside the speaker outer edges) when placed near front wall and listener sits against the opposite wall, well chosen bass bump (to originally compensate for the sound of the air-con unit in the BBC OB vans where the LS3/5As were used, nice price back when Sonic bought them – now priced crazy

Dislikes: don’t feed it big bass, don’t feed it large scale orchestral works, don’t crank up the sound or you might blow it up literally, very complex crossover saps power, so you have a power hungry speaker that cannot play loud, images small, needs some suspension of expectations for long term listening, only works in small rooms

Horns:

Likes: efficiency, effortless dynamics, fast transients, slam, extreme clarity allows you hear right into every line and nuance within the music, startle factor, brings out the best in tubes, captures the size and weight of an orchestra, once I heard a Muddy Waters LP placed fairly loud and I could hear real people singing and making music and how the record was made so even if the bass wasn’t what can be recorded today and despite the compromises in the 1960s technology the whole thing sounded real. That is one those listening sessions Sonic bookmarks for life along with my hearing the Quad ESLs for the first time.

Dislikes: no quarrel with the best horn systems I have heard but others were coloured and midrange honky. Some horn speakers Sonic has written about show the stepped soundstage – images at the speakers fronts and the virtual images stepped back in a line behind the speakers.

Comment: Sonic wonders what living long term with a system like the best horns I have heard. My continuous enjoyment to these wonderful system measure up to an hour a time. These sessions were “wow!”, “wonderful!”, “zowie!” …long term what comes after I get accustomed to the wonder? Would I find the horns fatiguing – what about my toughest test: will Sonic listen to Gregorian Chant on them quietly at 3 am?

What Speakers Get Sonic Heading Out the Door?

Without mentioning brands:
a. some large, heavy, multi-driver cone speakers with elaborate cabinets from certain US manufacturers. For all their power and articulation, they have a sound – even their supposed “neutrality” is a “sound” in itself

b. metal domed anything

c. mini-monitors (aside from the Rogers LS3/5A and Harbeth P3s), the audiophile raved ones made with special materials for drivers and cabinets. All those I have heard wow you at first with definition and pin point imaging. Then cast your mind to a live performance of musick and speech (unamplified in a real acoustic space) and their trick falls apart.

I have not heard Mr Green’s Mini-mods or his Viola and Sonic is prepared for the possibility that these tunable little boxes might just be able to do some giant killing.

Favourite hall:

A moderately size hall in a university complex here. Two tiers of seating. large enough for a chamber orchestra max. Very balanced and extremely quiet. Just listening to unamplified voice and music here is always a treat. My speaking loud doesn’t make my voice abnormally resonant. Handclaps are clear and they decay in a way that is not fast but it doesn’t ring.

This hall set my expectations of what results Sonic wants in Tuning my room:

Finding 1: my spoken voice doesn’t sound over resonant, it sounds like me, yet not damped, no strain to project voice loudly

Finding 2: softly spoken lines from the stage are audible clearly, voices of people I recognize are voices of people I recognize (allowing for them articulating to an audience)

Finding 3: with music playing, I sense the hall size but not any ambience effects around me like in hifi ambience

Finding 4: the bass impact from a Steinway Grand is chest thumping – I use this sound to tune for piano sound

Finding 5: the scaling of sound of instruments are big, not over big, there but not focused in a hifi way (2D paper cut outs)

Finding 6: there is no BOO! effect and no overhang. When a jazz wind group I heard playing went fff loud then stopped suddenly (as part of the performance), there was no overhang, no ringing from the room, the sound was not damped -- it just stopped, and I could instantly hear audience noise of the people round me.

Music You (I) Like:

Here's the types of music I like: classical mostly baroque, renaissance, gothic, Gregorian and Byzantine Chant, some modern classical music, a little pre-1070s jazz and some pop and rock – proportion of collection 7:2:1 [classical music all types:jazz:pop/rock]

Here's why I like it: no way I can answer that.

Does my system play these pieces of music the way I like?

Definitely yes when I am listening to musick and not obsessively asking “what’s the system doing wrong? What could it do better? Should I email Michael? What if I turned the PZC another 30 degrees? Why are the images on the left stuck so closer to the panel than the right???”

It is a mindset thing ultimately. I was driving home and there was some Ella Fitzgerald playing on the radio. Did I enjoy the song? Yes -- even though it was a very ordinary car stereo playing amidst all the noises you associate with road travel. Why is this possible because playing the CD of the song on the Magneplanar system on getting home showed how wildly distorted and unbalanced the car stereo was.

Flaws Sonic Been to Correct?

Before the BOO! There wasn't any flaw that vexed me as much. But this room had four problems:

a. there was an opacity that I knew should not be there given my exposure to live music and speech

b. a lack of a convincing wall to wall soundstage

c. having the ambience recording in the front of the room mixed with the music so the ambience images behind the orchestra

d. banana soundstage

At the start I was using absorptive room treatment products from competitors.

Then I found Michael’s tuning method, bought his products and they quickly dealt with problems a. and c. For b. and d., things took longer needing learning and experimentation but the Tune delivered…but in the process the BOO! appeared.

The BOO! problem is so irksome that Sonic decided it must be removed by any means possible. Fighting the BOO! turned my hair gray and the effort nearly sent Sonic to the shrink and then funny farm.

For whatever else Sonic has done or compromised, the BOO! has been finally exorcised. In this I have reached my goal and you cannot imagine what a relief this is for me both musically and for peace of mind.

Sonic

Sonic,

I must agree with your observations of your Maggies, Rodgers, and Horns. I believe I could live with Horns long term if the honk could be eliminated and they could be tuned to be holographic. Since I do not like to dedicate the space required for big horns or Maggies, smaller speaker designs supported by a sub are my compromise. In reviewing your excellent post, it appears you may be at a 90% satisfaction point with your Maggie system? I really appreciate your perseverance in attaining the perfect sound, a goal every critical audio listener seeks. As you have discovered, recorded music may never achieve the sound of live music, so we must enjoy what we can with the Tune. As I sometimes remind you, stop and enjoy the music, because that’s what this hobby is all about.
My own listening room has brought some challenges, but overall my enjoyment level is at the 90% level. I am looking forward to my Christmas present from Michael, a larger tone platform for vinyl listening. My 2015 music journey will include more LP listening. My listening choices are ever changing, but I am finding that I enjoy new music whether it be jazz, classical, pop, or rock. Since the local community offers many excellent live venues from an excellent symphony hall, local clubs, and of course the Ryman, I will listen to more live music this upcoming year. There are so many outstanding musicians that live and pass through this community, one could never need purchase a high quality audio system for all of one’s time could be spent attending live performances of any music type every day.
Happy (soon to be 2015 ) listening!

Hi Sonic

I'll take these step by step, first.

sonic

First a Question: Michael – what is the process/drill you adopt when you change CD and start playing a new one? What are the steps you take and things you do over the period you stay with one CD which I understand can be days.

mg

This is something that none of us can change no matter what we do, but every recording and system goes through a settling period everytime we put a new recorded code into our system. To be clear, this isn't a system settling by letting it settle after a physical change, but the system settling into a common place with a recording.

Hiend1 brought this up when he listened to "Hell freezes over" Eagles. I also bring this up about my listening. This isn't me making changes during the playback. This is letting the recording play on repeat at the same volume for a long period of time. As time goes on the stage begins to fill out and the insruments become extremely life like and vivid. I'm of course using a super low mass simple system, so my setup is going to settled far easier than one with more parts and complexity.

Sometimes I do CD after CD, but I have become more fond of putting a recording on, and then when it calls to me, after some settling, I'll go in and listening. I have found that my system being so free resonant and so full of musical sounding materials, almost plays itself if I'm patient enough to let the system do it's thing.

Right now I'm playing "Pure Prairie League" Amie & Others. When I first put it on it was ok put nothing to write home about. After 2 days of having it settle I almost can't get out of the room, learning more about that recording than I ever have. Even when I'm writting I'll hear something (maybe a strum) I'll I'll head back in.

So for myself, I've become less of a DJ type of listener and more of a student of each recording, till I feel like moving on. Not always but most of the time. Maybe this is me getting more mellow with age, I don't know, but I'm finding more enjoyment in viewing the recording as something I use to do when recording.

When I do the DJ type of listening, not song to song but LP to LP, one thing I notice about me, I sit there while listening thinking about what I would tweak as much as just listening. Sometimes I will tweak, but honestly the system is so darn simple now that I find myself finding a happy place way faster then when I had more components. I still do tuning on the other systems but it's more as a response to fine tuning the tune, and developing more pure forms of tuning.

let me know if your following

Now before I go into your Q&A any further there's one more thing I want to share with you.

One source systems.

You guys have probably noticed that I use CD only and may wonder why. Isn't MG missing out on a lot by only going CD?

Well a while back, and everytime I have tried it since, one being recently, when I have done more then one source I hear something that bugs me. I even did this at the tunable room up at Bill's and have done this on several systems. When you plug more than one input on a receiver or preamp there is signal loss. The other component doesn't even have to be turned on, or even have a component there at all. Just plug cables into any jack and you will hear the signal change.

When recording the same thing happened but I could never talk any of the guys into doing what I did (I was the time wasting weirdo ) . But when I recorded I physically unplugged all the channels I wasn't using.

Every time you plug more than one source into any component you are creating another electromagnetic field antenna. Look at how close those RCAs are to each other . The two fields are competing.

I know I haven't spent a ton of time here on electromagnetics but the truth of it is the more simple you make your system the more your going to get in return.

sonic

there is no BOO! effect and no overhang. When a jazz wind group I heard playing went fff loud then stopped suddenly (as part of the performance), there was no overhang, no ringing from the room, the sound was not damped -- it just stopped, and I could instantly hear audience noise of the people round me.

mg

There was dampening, you just didn't pay attention to it. Bodies are huge dampeners. If you would have gotten up on a ladder about halfway between the floor and ceiling in the hall you would have heard the Boo. I use to have to run shotguns & spots from up above and there is plenty of Boo in most of these halls . When the people come in you loose about 3db of gain.

That said, what happened to the Boo in your room when you used your pressure boxes? Did they ever make the room go boo-less? Did you ever put the pressure box in the room on a wood stool about ear level?

It sounds to me, before we get into the speakers and rest of the chain that we build your confidence for dealing with the Boo. It might mean a compromise with the sound at first but lets get you more confident that you are in charge.

Hello Garp

Christmas greetings and may many great hours of listening be yours for 2015!

Yes sir, you might say that Sonic is now at the 90% satisfaction point.

As I write this, it is now late at night and I have Baroque Recorder Works Vol 1 – Frans Bruggen, N Harnoncourt, A Bylsma, G Leonhard et al (Telefunken) on my turntable and enjoying every moment of this musick.

Congratulations that you are in the 90% range of happiness with your system too. Because we are here get to enjoy the music that we love, the room and equipment is a means to this end and secondary ultimately. My years of wrestling with gear and the room, while necessary given my dwelling conditions, is just a path to enjoyment of musick.

Sonic still meets my motley group of audiophile friends for lunch on Saturdays followed by the accustomed tour through the stores and record digs. I sense for some of my companions there is no end point – there is the next piece of gear, DAC, tube, cartridge, improved speaker model so on and on. A hamster wheel that I want to be able to step off.

Thank you for responding to my post. What you say is instructive to me.

Sonic

Greetings Michael

You wrote: "That said, what happened to the Boo in your room when you used your pressure boxes? Did they ever make the room go boo-less? Did you ever put the pressure box in the room on a wood stool about ear level?"

My experience: The pressure boxes when I tried them had no effect on the BOO! The boxes initially gave a nice clarity to the sound but with either settling or the cardboard soaking humidity, a sluggishness and "inner dullness" crept into the sound which had Sonic sending the pressure boxes to the recyclers.

I have tried big boxes and small ones, with and without the toilet roll port. More than one in the room at a time too.
Had them in the front corners, along the front walls and next to me at the listening chair. Always had the initial improvement followed by the dullness. Had stacked the boxes too. Tried one on top of the Janis W-1 subwoofer when it was in my room which gets the box up to near ear level. They didn't work, not on the BOO! nor created any benefit that lasted.

Your thoughts on this?

And your views on my Q&A?

Sonic

Hi Sonic

What this means is trapping is out for your room when it comes to the boo. It probably also means that as you played with the foam and the boo went away that the boo is probably a surface issue.

When you had the sound shutters up in bigger numbers did the boo go away?

I would like to hear the difference between the foam and in the same places fabric instead of the foam.

So listen with the foam up again and get rid of the boo, then put fabric up and tell me how they sound different.

Before I get into equipment and speakers I want to see what the boo is doing.

Hello Michael

Useful observations. I am so happy we are engaging this interactively with you While the acoustic foam has consigned the BOO! into the void of silence, as a student of the Tune, I am open to exploring a more consistent way to deal with the BOO! I now have a benchmark of the sort of control (degree of removal) to work towards.

Here are answers to your questions/observations:

Q: When you had the sound shutters up in bigger numbers did the boo go away?

A: Not at all. I had used more shutters right up at the ceiling wall corners (mini ones) front, side and rear, at mid point of vertical wall, on Bookcase Wall, on the floor ahead of racks. Zero effect on BOO!

Hanging DTs from the ceiling from the Shutter brackets affected other things but not the BOO!

Folding the Ceiling Shutters flat against the ceiling messed up the soundstage and imaging solidity big time but may have only had small worsening of the BOO! (at least according to my notes). It did not change it significantly the BOO! this way or that.

You see how stubborn this problem is?


MG he say: I would like to hear the difference between the foam and in the same places fabric instead of the foam.

Q from Sonic: what sort of fabric? Mounted over the foam like you suggested I put Builders Paper over foam?

Sonic

Hi Sonic

If the Shutter's didn't affect the boo, than we have whiped out two on our list. One it is not a pressure issue (the pressure box would have taken care of that). Second it is not a laminar issue (the shutters would have taken care of that).

Was there a time in moving the bookcase that it cleaned up the boo?

Any fabric Like a blanket, I just want to hear the wall with different materials on it. Remove the foam when you do it. Also though don't forget to try builders paper over the foam.

Don't go too fast cause I don't want you to miss any sounds that we need to add to our journel.

Once we find out what type of waves they are, where they're hanging out and what's making them then we can find the best way to treat them.

Hi Michael

I'll go try the Builders Paper and tell you what the effect is. I don't have enough blankets in my dwelling.

But here is some more info after looking deeper into my Tuning Notes (this is why I keep copious notes).

The Shutters (incl. mini shutters made from M Green's balsa) placed high at the junction of walls and ceiling were mostly ineffective but my notes indicate ones on the front wall had a slight effect (but not enough to remedy the problem).

Bookcase wall -- notes indicate something interesting. This structure contains the BOO! and keeps its pitch down. Once as an experiment, I removed the Bookcase Wall by moving them against the rear wall. The effect was a steep roll off in low bass and the BOO! moved up in pitch into something like BOOwangggg!!! The BOO! therefore is even worse without the Bookcase Wall where they are.

Why did I not complain of BOO! or make remark of them in my notes before all this?

Sonic apparently did not remark BOO! when I was in conventional high-fi fan room treatment mindset.

I had a large sofa as a listening chair, a carpet ahead of the speakers, rugs all over and all sorts of absorptive junk and speakers placed in far field.

The room was dead but the music was dead too and soundstage tiny -- that's why I looked to alternative solutions and met the Tune. Huge different, so much more musick released but the BOO! appeared.

Sonic

Hi Sonic

It's my guess that we are dealing with the rooms natural acoustic resonance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_resonance

By moving the bookcase you are changing the pitch of this, if I can use the term "note".

I think it helps to get out of the audiophile thinking and look at this from the point of view of your room being an instrument. Not only an instrument, but one that has walls that are forcing the resonance.

The trick is going to be that fine line between loosing music content through absorbing the energy and keeping the music real while burning the Boo. I had something similar to this in a couple of my rooms long ago. What I did was design and build a tunable wall that wasn't fixed untill I found the spot where most of the extra energy was gone, then made the wall/walls perminant. One such wall was in one of my tunable rooms in Ohio. This room was not a room inside a room design but a re-design of an existing room.

Might I draw up a plan for you and then you see if this is worth exploring?

You could make a test wall from your book cases some 2x4's and some blue board. My gutt tells me that you started to solve the problem with your bookcase and additional ones but this wasn't enough to cut off the rooms existing structure resonance.

Remember a long time ago I drew up a wall for you? Well I think this will get you tons closer to making your room more instrument like.