The Audio Code

Have you noticed in this hobby how very few times you actually hear people talk about what the audio signal as a vibrating moving object is? Just as water flows, so does the audio signal have flow to it. The electrical part of the chain we call current. It isn't something that starts at one place and stops at another at the same time. There's movement. To date no matter how advanced our audio technology is, there's still a time domain attached to it's make up. That 20-20,000 oscillating signal monster actually travels as a flow through the entire audio pathway. It starts as movement, it's stored, then read and off to the races again.

There's a couple parts to the signal, one is the language. This is the none moving part which is on the storage. The other is the moving part, which we call "the audio pathway, or audio chain". As soon as the switch is flicked there's an electronic charge that goes from the wall to your speakers. Depending on how quiet the system is or how good your hearing is you can be sure sound (energy) is being produced by the system even before the music starts. The language that is being stored on the source gets mated with the electronic flow and the marriage is consummated.



That's not all that's going on. By nature every part no matter how big or small that the signal passes through and it's physical surroundings no matter how weak or strong also becomes part of the signal. This is called physics and is everywhere and intermingles with everything. The audio signal is affected by humidity, pressure, gravity and fields. All of these forms are stimulative energies which means they coexist and mingle. In some way they are all a part of each other and depend on each others specifics. Typically these energies do not hold absolutes but work to find harmony as conditions change. The conditions themselves are in constant change, just as the Earth goes from day to night back to day. All energies working with your system are based on oscilations. Some are very tiny and appear to line up and others are huge and are more like 3 dimensional oceans. No matter how big or small they all have something in common, value. It may not seem possible, but energy changes that happen well away from your system have an effect in proportion according to it's value "in purpose". Energies in physics work as a balancing act always looking to be in perfect form. We call this settling.

As the audio signal makes it's way through the chain it's constantly going through settling and adapting. One moment it's traveling through a big piece of metal the next through a tiny long wire. Everytime the signal hits a different material and shape it takes on the energy "flavor" of that material, size, moment and conditioning. The signal is not necessarily damaged or lost but parts of the signals cycles can be decreased in value becoming out of balance as compared to other cycles traveling. In the end with everything affecting everything else it's easy to see why all components, parts pieces and rooms sound different from each other.



Hopefully this thread will give understanding to the delicate yet powerful event we have come to know as the audio code. Please keep in mind a lot of this writing is me responding on the stereophile forum.


http://www.stereophile.com/content/audio-code

The recorded code is one of the toughest parts to this hobby to get the mind around. You would think that if the system is in tune with itself that it would play the music correctly. Everything on the recording you would hear right? It took me a while when recording to understand that all the energies that go into recordings such as conditions of the room all the way through the type of caps used on a channel in the board were variable instruments. I think I was 17, in Florida I had to take the top plate off of my board to fix a channel, when I got things done and put the mixer top back on and started, everything I was cutting sounded different. I wasn't even using that channel and all changed. What did I do wrong? So I went back in and checked everything and this time I left the screws out of the plate incase I had to go right back in. It was like a different studio. At first I freaked out and thought I was gonna get canned, but lucky me, the next day got canceled and I spent the whole next 3 days figuring out what I did and more. OMG the mixer is tunable! When the guys came back I got laughed at till we hooked up a strat- fender twin- sm58 and laid down 30 seconds, I adjusted the screws just below the EQ pods, another 30 seconds, then had them come in. Now who was freaking LOL. Later when I made my own kit mixing board I had it so I could even make variable adjustments mid note.

Next step

We were doing a string section. In the live room I got things acoustically all nice and intune. Walked into the studio and half the instruments were flat. Went back out, in tune, back in flat again. I made a quick switch from the Neve to mine. Still out of tune. Got my screw driver out and made adjustments till the live room and studio referenced exactly the same.



One more step

A while after this happened and in a different studio, I ran into the same thing. In the live room the instruments sounded perfect, in the control room out to lunch. I was the acoustical engineer so I had no say, but I did have them make me a cut before they did any doctoring. I didn't get a chance for a while more, but when I got around to playing the tape on my home system I could hear that the strings were way out of tune and shape from each other, yuk. By evenings end I put the recording back in tune like I had the live room.

??

I had to think about this awhile as well as do more experiementing in both the studio and home. Drums, guitars pianos, different rooms, different mixers, tape machines, different speakers. I went through everything. Transfered to tape, transfered to disc, everything. Later did direct to's, the whole nine and over a long time.

Recordings are tunable

You can adjust the values along the audio pathway and tune your music. By adjusting humidity (and temps), pressure on the line or anything in a reasonable distance (including pressure zones in the room), gravity (low mass), and fields (a few ways to tune these), your audio system is a natural EQ. Better yet set your system high mass system aside and make a low mass one built to tune and listen to what you can do with the audio code.

What I discovered

Getting into this more and over the years of practice in and out of the studio, hall and home, I have discovered that each and every recording made has a code. High end audio experts will say that the typical audiophile system plays about 1/10 of the music on the recording.



Some will bring out the drums, others the guitars, some instruments more forward some laid back, some focused some disappear. What's happening is you have the whole recording, and then you play it back and your system is somewhat intune with the recording and some what out of tune. This is why all these systems sound different, and sound different with different recordings. The signal is on the source (the music is there), but to play it back you may be playing one part of the signal lending to some cycles going through it with more value than others. It's all there your just playing parts of the frequency lineups equalized by your system.

Audiophiles sometimes say they don't like or use equalizers but fail to realize every part and piece along the entire chain is just that, an equalizer. Many times these big complicated systems are not making things more pure, there equalizing the signal and locking in that equalized sound. We've also heard many of these super detailed systems (studio, mastering and home) that are only able to play a few recordings very well, but many recordings poorly. This is a sign of something wrong and it's not necessarily the recorded signal.

Fact is all recordings have a recorded code and the way to hear more of the recording is to open up the signal path so more of the music can come through.

In order to get the most you have to put the music first and the system second. What's on the recording is your guide to better sound, and space is the reference starting point. If you have a system that is projecting the typical smallish stage you can tell how much of the recording you are playing by doing a little research on the recording itself. If you look at the space and the patterns of the mics this is your first hint to size. If you hear a hall sound look and see if it was mixed in or using a real hall with halo mics. This isn't as hard as you might be thinking and could bring you to a completely different place in your hobby and love of music.

Some of you might be in panic mode and others in denial, but some of you are saying "so wait a minute, that's making sense".

Take a field trip with me.

Remember when you went to the show and people were playing the same music in different rooms and systems and each system sounded different with the same music? That's EQing. Remember when you got your amp and started searching for preamps? That's EQing. Everytime you are making a component or cable or speaker change or movement, that's EQing. We might be tempted to call our systems discrete but the truth is, it's one big fixed EQ. It's no different from the guy who has a receiver and EQ vs the guy who has a pre amp and amp. They're both two component systems only one is adjustable and the other one isn't. Guys who got their components plugged into line conditioners, what do you think your doing? EQing. Guys with more than two drivers? EQing. Any speaker with a crossover? EQing.

Let's start looking at this hobby for what it is instead of the sales pitch of what it is. The sales pitch tells us that separates are better, Ok but where are the separates? There's nothing separate or discrete about the audio pathway. Our systems are one long continuous signal EQ.



every part great or small has it's own sound

A quote to another forum

"Someone in this industry or client of this industry tell me how adding more transformers and inductors is making the signal pathway more simple? We have become so obsessed with this component ladder climb that we have lost sight of what the listening part is even about. When I got here a year ago you guys were talking about bad recording this and that, and I asked the question "how big is your soundstage" and everyone disappeared. The loudness war battle cries came out. How in the world would you know what compression sounds like if your soundstage is 10 wide and 4 deep? When I played those compressed recordings after tuning them in I was 30+ wide as I remember. Yes I could hear the compression but it was nothing like what was discribed on here. What I heard described on here was collapsed staging and frequency clustering, not the description of compression.

The only way you guys are ever going to use terms correctly or even if you want to use those terms at all is to explore what the audio signal really is and how it works. Trying to turn the audio signal into some kind of mystical legend that is this big secret is cool if your trying to bate people to buy some of your secret potion, but let me recommend a simpler route, be real and find out what is real. On one end you have vibration, on the other the same thing. Tune the vibration on the receiving end to match the giving end and you've got great sound. If you don't want to call it vibration come up with whatever words blows your skirt up, as my dad would say, and get with it. Put any way you put it the process is very simple in concept, and once applied in method form is going to make life easy for you plus turn you on to music you never thought you would enjoy, or have been waiting to enjoy again."

mg

"WHAT ARE WAVES?

Mechanical waves and electromagnetic waves are two important ways that energy is transported in the world around us. Waves in water and sound waves in air are two examples of mechanical waves. Mechanical waves are caused by a disturbance or vibration in matter, whether solid, gas, liquid, or plasma. Matter that waves are traveling through is called a medium. Water waves are formed by vibrations in a liquid and sound waves are formed by vibrations in a gas (air). These mechanical waves travel through a medium by causing the molecules to bump into each other, like falling dominoes transferring energy from one to the next. Sound waves cannot travel in the vacuum of space because there is no medium to transmit these mechanical waves."

From what I'm reading sound is indeed motion. Here's some phrases pulled from just this small part of the article. "energy is transported", "Waves in water and sound waves in air are two examples of mechanical waves", "vibration in matter", "Matter that waves are traveling through is called a medium" and on it goes.

"Electromagnetic waves are formed by the vibrations of electric and magnetic fields. These fields are perpendicular to one another in the direction the wave is traveling. Once formed, this energy travels at the speed of light until further interaction with matter."



In this article we have air being called matter "vibration in matter, whether solid, gas, liquid, or plasma" and we have vibrations in matter.

"WAVES OR PARTICLES? YES! A look at photons

Light is made of discrete packets of energy called photons. Photons carry momentum, have no mass, and travel at the speed of light. All light has both particle-like and wave-like properties."

Again "motion is involved" and motion traveling through "matter" has vibration. Now no one is discounting light and it's relationship to photons. Light after all is a super high frequency that is able to move very quick because at the size there is very little in the way of matter to stop it. However as you start to go down the frequency chain you start to see how the cycles become bigger and begin to interact with matter which is how the vibrations become realized. By the time you get down to 20-20,000 cycles vibration is in full swing as a part of the wave formations. The lower the wave the more the force. the higher frequencies move the hairs in your ears but as you go lower the pressure starts moving bones and mass. This explains how you hear if your body.

Take a look again cause this can help you with understanding the audio signal and some of the math http://missionscience.nasa.gov/ems/02_anatomy.html . All of this is actually very practical, but it's important to understand the math of it and how this math must work inside of physics.

For example light being of high numbers and little resistance and sound being right in the hart of force. Lights lack of mingling and sounds are dependent on. Both of these two interact with matter (mass being a measurement of). Actually I shouldn't say two because the numbers go from zero up to the trillions. Keep in mind with all these numbers "Cycles" come a value and an interconnect or interaction.

Can you visualize the audio code? It's made up of a flow but it also contains the individual units of sound.



Each of these units has an asigned value. 100hz being 100cycles plus conditions. I know we all get that, but it's important to hang on to this info. As the number goes up the size goes down but the interaction between the unit and the matter also changes. The higher the unit for example the more that unit will act like a reflection against a solid. Like wise the lower the unit the action is more of a pushing against. Put your hand on a wall and turn up the sound. A higher frequency and you will feel little, but a lower frequency and the wall will begin to oscillate noticeably. Your entire audio chain is doing this. Where ever you have units traveling through mediums physics takes place. Because it's an electrically charged flow there is a constant, and the units + charge develope a pathway, like a highway of sound through your system. The mechanical conduits that host the signal are like a road map taking audio through small towns and big ones, streets, highways, turns, detours are all part of what the signal needs to interact with, along with the environment of these hosts.






So to make a basic plan here, a recording is like having a room full of pitchers who are extremely talented and able to throw every size of ball from tiny to huge with many different pitches at a bunch of catcthers, one right after another, all throwing at the same time, the catcher nabs the ball and hands it to the umpire and he loads these balls on a truck (a very fast truck) and off they go. UPS, USPS, FedEx and all the other shipers load up all the trucks they own and travel to the other end of the town or country, depending on how many parts in the components there are.



While traveling there are these turns, bumbs and climate changes but in a split second they arrive at the score keepers, all the balls are dumped on a table (big table) and every ball is evaluated on how it did on the ride, through the constant moving pushing and shoving. Every ball is still the correct size unless smashed or falling off the truck. the truck drivers who did the best job of packing and driving deliver with every ball, or close to it, in place. The trucks who hired part time guys and stopped at dairy queen, and hit every bumb they could delivered their balls in complete disarray.

The signal is there and in most cases doesn't loose a ton of info unless someone is careless, but there is so much signal that even if you loose some there's still plenty to playback great sound. But the playback part, shipper, road and score keeper all play a huge part in the out come of the sound. In order to hear all the sound, you have to be able to fill up the room again with the same type of placement and space that the recording end has given. The simpler you make this path the easier but the individual recorded code still has to be put in play. You can't just dump all these frequencies out there and expect that they all are going to get in line on their own.

recorded signal code


Everytime you put on a new recording everything starts all over and a new set of info makes it's way through the audio pathway. It's not like one recording follows the last in a perfect straight line. If that were the case all violins playing the same note would all sound exactly the same, more so the cello that played that same note would sound exactly like that violin, same goes for every instrument. The audio code is just that, a set of orders given by the notes to the units (frequency and values) to go from beginning to end through the audio chain.

in recording

Our recording books back in the 70's look a little different from this, but here's a look at the basics from today.

http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/01/

http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/01/

And if you want to take a look at more from media http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/

I think that in order to understand the audio code it's a good idea to look at some of the basics that go into the making of the audio signal. If you make the signal more than equations on paper it starts to take on life and takes away from some of the fears of rights and wrongs.

In our hobby I see alot of folks throw up their distortion hands way too soon. They hear something that may not line up just right and that hand goes flying up without looking into what could possibly be causing the sound to happen. Most of the time it's not distortion at all but a misalignment of transfers from one energy medium to the next, or some small coversion glitch as the mechanical, electrical or acoustical parts are trying to intermingle.

Reading this thread you don't have to go too far before seeing why I like to go simple. Where a lot of listeners are spending their time looking at the middle part of the audio pathway, I like looking at the two bigger parts, the beginning and the end. I have found that I've been able to do more in the recording live room or sound effects and the other ends listening room than getting too tied up in the middle. On one end you have this big sound being made, then it is converted to something simple and delicate, then back into the big space again. The high end audiophile way to me is a little mixed up if I may say so. Here's what I mean. The audiophile talks about how we should be making these recordings extremely simple and direct using hardly any electronics at all, but when you get to their playback end they have these incredibly complicated massive systems, with cords and cable and components ontop of even more components. This to me seems like an oxymoron. How can a guy scream out for super simple on one end, and completely do the opposite on the other? I have always found that a fairly simple path throughout, keeping a balance on both sides of the recording to give far more musicality. You can make a very complex recording and still keep it simple, as well you can reveal that recording by a balance in the three parts to the trilogy (acoustical, mechanical and electrical). When I walk into a listening room and take a peek at the system I can tell you almost always right off the batt what we are going to be facing just by how the trilogy has been played out in the room. Most high end audiophile systems way over do it in the mechanics department making it tough on the electronic department causing failure for the acoustical department. Then that same guy gets turn onto acoustical deadening materials and by the time he is done the life is completely sucked out of the sound.



He sits there pointing out a tiny part of a recording that sounds very well and the rest of the recording has had it's units values turned down so low they're barely alive. They do some tweaks and a little of the air comes back and they think they did something great when that air is really a tiny portion to all the other air and other content on the recording.

Most recordings are huge soundscapes with tons of lively info. Not only can you hear them but you can feel them when you walk in or even near the room. Audiophiles need to paint the picture properly if they expect to hear more. I tell my clients this. Think of the recording end as being huge, the audio storage and amp end as being simple and open, and the playback end as being huge again.

the parts

So you guys are reading this saying "I don't know, is this guy for real".

here's a test you can do

Take two systems, one low mass and one high. Let's start with the high mass one. Find a capacitor and change it out with another one that has the exact same value. Sound changed but not only did the sound change listen to how it changed. Listen to the parts of the recording that came out more and less as compared to the original Cap. Pay attention and you will hear two things. One you will hear an overall flavor change of the music, and second you will hear that the individual values on the frequencies have been rearranged. It's like someone took a parametric EQ to your sound.

looking at a cap and it's environment



Now many of you aren't familiar with a parametric. Your picturing EQ's that have slides and ranges per slide, but there's another level to EQing. One that you can be a junior at to impress those not in the know, or you can become a master at and shape more than gain. A parametric allows you to go in and take what is there and put it in and out of focus much like a hi-tech zoom and lens. The signal units are there, your just shaping them to be more or less of their context. So to compare to a camera. Lets say your looking at a cello. It's in a 25'x25' room and you got three mics on it, near, mid and far fields. You can shape between the fields to get a general picture to your liking and then go in with the parametric and shape the degrees of color, depth, size and halo of the cello. your in a way photo-shopping not only the frequencies but how they react as notes and sub or support notes. Pretty cool right? Well that new cap just did all of that to the signal. You might even run a analyzer on it and not pick it up. Look at the review on me and Bob Hodas in Widescreen review.

Not only did this Cap rearrange the furniture, but it also set a new pattern for the way the audio signal is running through the chain now. Just that one Cap did all that.

Now I can answer a question about systems for you. Audiophiles are always talking about how revealing their systems are, and how their systems are judges of the music. With this perhaps new, maybe not new, info we have just talked about, you can test and see how revealing your system is. Change that Cap in the high mass system and also do the same with a low mass, and almost always you will hear more of the change being revealed in the low mass. When your system gets to the place where you do tweaks and don't hear them. Your not making your system more revealing, your making it less. Your locking your system into only passing a selected part of the signal coming through.

Again, go back to looking at why each system sounds so different and responds differently to different pieces of music from each other? If this were not the case, we would have systems that all sounded the same to the degree that the music could be ranked from good to not so good instead of all over the map.

Once you work through the high mass low mass thing in your head and hopefully by doing, you are going to come to a different place in the hobby. Your going to start viewing frequencies, units and notes from a more complete picture.

The frequency is the center of a cycle, the unit is the value of that cycle, and a note is the combo of cycles in relationship to their structure.

When you play something on your system and it smears, or splatters or clusters don't confuse this with distorted peaks or compression. Distortion peaks and compression sounds different from signal "blockage". Most of the time when a listener hears some thing not right it's do to the signal not making it's way through the system "whole" or complete enough to paint the picture and it ends up coming out as a distortion from the unit or units being out of balance. It can be an electrical mismatch great or small or a collapse of harmonics around a or many notes. It can be the room not wanting to play what the speakers are sending, or the speakers fighting the rooms pressure. There are many types of distortions that if we decide to look at might come as a good learning tool to study and use with listening. However what I'm giving you here is more than the names of distortion types, and more how and why they form and how to correct them. Many times distortions are just check engine lights telling us to look at the pathway and see what's out of line.

from whole to whole

When a recording is all done and in the bag (put on the storage) it's a "whole". Maybe saying the absolute sound here should be kept for those who have their own idea of, based on the teachings of Harry Pearson and others, and I don't want to change that for anyone. It's a great concept to want to compare live and the recording and I ceratinly see where Harry was going with this even based on my own listening with him. For the sake of being completely accurate I'll be talking about the whole or all that is on the storage.

One of the remarkable things about recording is, how much info actually goes into the recording itself. If you could see sound pressure in a room you would be fairly shocked, but for the sake of a close to real picture, let me use a pool to represent a 3d pictoral.



People talk about the soundstage as a part of the recording to consider. They say "I don't have much of a stage but it sure is detailed" or "the tonal balance is great". Well my look at this is "that's ok in horseshoes". When you marginalize the space of a recording as being only a part you should consider how much of a part. When I made my tours around to reviewers homes the first thing I did was expand the stage for them. Same every where I went. There's really nothing in audio that suggest that stages are suppose to be any less than the size that they are in real life. You might have some microphones that are designed to run out of gas in their patterns quicker than others, but I have found in a room, that doesn't have a ton to do with the pressure pushing on the element, and have heard room influences with some of the tightest patterns.

When recording in my Michigan studio, if I ran full dynamics and listened to the snare mic closely in playback I could hear movement going on in the room some 30 feet away. Now this was in an all digital setting in 2004 so we can't go saying that digital has less than analog. I throw that in cause hopefully later we can get into the D vs A and put that to rest.

So lets go back to the pool idea. I want to cover both a live room and electronic effects. I warn you that I have my own pet names for things so this might take a little interpretation cause sometimes I'm too lazy to look up all these terms and keep up with them. So if you'll bear with michael land we're all good.

first the live rooms



There's two ways as we have talked about to view the live rooms. One is the space and materials in that space and the second is the pickup patterns used to capture that space. Back when I had to learn this I didn't go to a school to get the book smarts, that came later. Nope I was thrown in the room or hall because for some reason someone thought I knew what I was doing. Turns out that worked out ok, cause there was a bunch of designs starting to be used that weren't around before and everyone was just as lost as I was. Actually I kinda got into it cause as you know I'm a doer and was used as a test rat for a lot of new mics (late 70's early 80's), like centipedes, PZM's, wireless and certain shotguns on the live end, and a few on the studio end too. For you AES guys who care to look up some of the writings on theatrical stage miking you'll find some articles based on my work.

For you guys picturing this here's how it goes, walk into your recording's studio and fill the live room with water. Don't do it literally or it will be a shocking experience, but in your mind make that studio floor to ceiling wall to wall a pool. This is your "real space".



there's no empty space in stereo

To make this clear and relatable, the pool is your acoustical "real space" and sound pressure is your water. Depending on where you are recording your pool is as big as the last drop. As you play anything, as long as you can hear it, it's part of the pool. So let's say your Led Z recording in a home. Everywhere that sound pressure leaked to is a part of the recorded space. Down the hall, around the corner and out to the kitchen. If you can hear it, it's part of your pool, and in some way is making it back to the main area like pouring colored dye into the water and stiring it.

here's the first place I depart from the other acoustical guys

It's cool on the front end to play around, but I'll show you why it is deadly on the playback end to screw with patterns. Acousticians talk about dampening, trapping, and defussing right? Put any or all of those products into the room and take a look at what happens when you fill the acoustical pool with water (sound pressure). Some of it is absorbed like a sponge, some trapped like a bottle, and some broken up in little disembodied waves. Still all apart of the pool, nothings been removed just getting in the way of making uniform symmetrical wave patterns.

what you put in the playback room becomes part of the signal



OK, we got the pool and all that is in it. Keep in mind that the walls of the pools come in all kinds of thicknesses and materials, and because these walls are all different in size and materials ranging from solid to giving they have their own response to the waves (pressure) coming at them. All the walls, floor, ceiling and any object react very much like what you would see with an ocean or pool only in 3D. But to keep it simple lets look at a flat surface of the water with everything in it floating at the top just for a second. Throw your girlfriend in the water. I'm tired of the "throw a pebble in and watch it", much more fun throwing her in and it represents movement. I better say beautiful movement or I'll be in trouble. When she hits the water, there's an immediate splash which sets in motion the pattern that begins to spread out.


On the patterns way to the wall here is as soon as the motion happens and immediately at the source origin an action and reaction. Notice that the action and reaction is 3D and close to instant. She hit the water and there is a displacement in volume that goes into work in a split second. Look at your sponge, your bottle, and your splicer dicer. they have all three become part of the overall and have become sources themselves doing the same thing to the water that the source did. They look like source islands sitting in the ocean creating their own waves. Also notice that they are taking away from the main sources energy output and doing it randomly causing the waves to become choppy.

Now that I've picked on the typical acoustical guys lets go back to the live room.

We're going to use the pool but make it more real by putting a cap on it, the ceiling. Above I gave a 2D so you could get warmed up and see some of the happenings but lets do a recording in the pool for real. First thing to look at is the mass. You might not think of a room as being full of mass but it's actually not that far off of water or solids, just a few letters and numbers away. Here lets make it react so you can feel it. Walk into any room in your house or even outside and wave your hand.



Feel the friction between your arms and the air movement? There's something there, it's not empty. That air (space) is called a medium or host. If your eye sight was good enough to see all that is going on you probably would be afraid to breathe so good thing you can't. When you walk into a space that is enclosed you will start to experience an effect called air pressure. You might not think this force is so tough, but if you didn't have an inner ear to keep you in balance it's enough to make you fall. When in a place as enclosed as a house or building, your body and ears have to stay on guard and adjust from the amount of pressure outside to inside. Air pressure and sound pressure work together. Air pressure as the host and sound waves as the language work together to make sound pressure. It's important to understand how this works cause it's more than air movement and it's more than soundwaves catching a ride or just bumping the next set of waves like dominos. The two play off of and support each other. To test the acoustic pressure in your own house start talking and walk from room to room. You'll notice that each room sounds different from the next. This is called the mechanical/acoustical signature. Every space has it and every space is different from any other space.

try this

Walk into an empty room and talk, then start bringing stuff (or have someone else) into the room. You'll notice that the room as more stuff comes in changes sound. Are you surprised how much? Fact is you can shape the sound of that room to make about any EQ setting you want. Want to get one up on the audiophile acousticians out there? Spend a weekend and start with an empty room, then go through my RoomTune fieldtrip. And you will blow away the audiophile acoustician when it comes to tuning in your sound.

learning what goes on in the live space on the recording end can change this hobby for you

the recording side of whole

I'm telling you, if you guys get this audio code thing your going to be miracle workers with your sound. There's a lot of guys in the industry that don't even get it. Just because someone has a title and has fooled a few, doesn't mean they can fool mom. There's a ton to learn here and even getting the book smarts of it doesn't mean anything if not put into practice. The learning curve on the audio code will go on for quite some time and as far as the audiophile hobby goes will pretty much change the landscape.

It would be cozy if things fit into nice little neat formulas wouldn't it? If audio could truly work off of things like the golden ratio, or travel in these straight lines and points of reflection , oh man wouldn't that be something? Well as you've heard me say before "time to put those books on the shelf".



Everything in acoustics is based on mechanics, time, shape, momentum, volume and value. Pull the plug on any of these and watch your tank spring a leak. When a sound is made in that live room all of the things above come into play to create a "note". A note doesn't have to be made by an instrument or voice only. A note is a fundamental strong enough to create harmonic structures. It can be a tightly concentrated pitch powerful enough to break glass or wide enough to shake the room. Each sound made is as unique as a snowflake. In reality your not really going to hear the same note twice. By the time the next moment comes our note has been put to bed. Part of the magic in this hobby and industry is grabing part of that note and playing it back another time. No your not going to recreate it exactly, cause you don't have a time machine, but what you can do is give birth to something almost as special. The most remarkable thing about space is it's domain of size and shape. Thanks to some really smart guys who discovered the world is round, we have been given the concept of the sphere.

When you think of a soundwave take your eyes off of your scope long enough to realize that it is giving you a 2D of a 3D event. Remove the straight line thinking from your audio vocabulary and replace it with "pressure patterns". Sound is not walking around with a laser light. It's especially not walking around with a laser light in an enclosed area such as a hall studio or vocal booth. Lets make this easy, pack it up and get it out of the way. Go in a dark room, get out your laser, turn it on and point it. Yes it might hit a reflective surface and show up somewhere else, but basically when you point it you see it in one concentrated little spot. Now lets move to something a little more natural and open. Get a candle out and light it. Move it so you can see it on the ceiling. What shape is the light on the ceiling? Correct, round. Move it closer and it gets smaller move it further and it gets bigger. Now go grab a seat and let your friend hold the candle and you tell him how close so you can not only see the ceiling but the effect in the entire room. Make the circle on the ceiling about 2 or 3 feet big. Pay attention to how it plays out in the whole room. Ok, got it in your memory pretty good? Go into a room of different size and make the same size circle on the ceiling. See how different the same light circle in a different size room make the rooms look different from each other?

BTW, use smooth ceilings and compare against textured ones.

Go gather a few candles, some with multi wicks to represent a chord and some single to represent a note. Do the same thing you did before only with the chord candle. Pretty cool right? Go closer then back away. Now if you have some bar stools or friends who aren't already gone or calling the men in lab coats, set up the candles in different places and at different heights, and if you have them different types and thicknesses of wicks. Look at you, you just made a soundstage!





Now you can throw in your laser if you want but comparing tiny frequencies to real size notes are two diferent ball games. If you have a smooth enough ceiling, see the harmonic rings?

Something I have learned about nature is, she's not going to let you down. Physic studies and exploring nature has been around long enough that many of the basics are really just a matter of us practicing them.

Got your room or rooms all nice and glowing? Let's add a mic or two. Go to your kitchen cabinet and get those old plastic see through glasses that your wife never tells her friends that she still has but makes you use them when the guest are gone. Grab a few colors along with some tupperware see through colored bowls and maybe some high end mics, the good cystal. Sit back in your chair and choreograph your helpers chosing some of the glasses and bowls as mics and others as instruments. Have them approach the candles at different distances and watch the soudstage light show go from frequencies to notes, halos and textures. You thought the soundwaves went from the instrument to the mic in a straight line, look at your walls LOL.

It's nice to have guys in this industry that are detail freaks, or tonal freaks, but those are only small parts of the recording the engineers are laying out for you and putting on that storage. The truth of it is the mics have no choice but to pickup the entire acoustical environment "real space". Your only choices are the dissipation of pressure or the build up of. In other words if it's in the acoustical space and audible, in some way great or small it's getting on that recording.

You see pressure works off of the principles of force. Works like this. You have a full acoustical tank and you transport an object into that tank, that's one thing. Then this object starts to create movement, two things happen. That movement looks for a way to get out, and when it can't find it there is pressure created on every part in that tank. That pressure is called vibration and it's going to happen either out of tune (distorted) or in-tune (sympathetic).

So are you surprised? You've been told to get rid of vibrations, when all this time you want to do the opposite. The vibrations are there, period. It's just a matter if they are distorting or sympathically intune with the source.

Guitar players, here's where you come in. When you hear the strings out of tune what does that mean?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWmn21knRKM

Well as we have been going though the audio pathway you are seeing that the room is an extention of that guitar or other sources. If it's a good acoustical engineer he is going to hopefully be wanting to put that room in-tune with those instruments unless he is wanting another effect. The room is a natural amplifier and the more in-tune the room is the easier it will be for the instruments to stay in-tune with each other and form great uniform patterns

know your poison

Are you an audiophile hypochondriac?

When you have a hobby like listening it's easy to hear something, look at symptoms and do a ton of assuming.

I live in a town where you can drive any type of car you want without fear of judgement, it's just the way Vegas rolls. It's also a town filled with some of the worst drivers on the planet. I think the words ding and fender bender were created here. After my first 3 years of watching prizes turn to rubble I started viewing things a little differently. Goal one get from A to B, goal two do it in something your not attached to.

It's hard for audiophiles to think of their systems as part of the problem.



After all the reading and imaginings of "some day", the day comes and the golden calf has finally arrived, life is perfect. Shoot lets be honest life is perfect before the component is even plugged in. Come problem child or not, that component can do nothing wrong in the eyes of the beholder. The thought that something is incomplete or even wrong is out of mind. We get out our music and begin the love affair. Immediately hearing something different is only the tip of our excitement. We can't wait till it does everything better in every way than our last setup. looking at the clock on the wall counting the suggested break in time we just know that the magic is only one step away, and when that breakin does indeed get here we sit back and view parts and pieces of the music we know do things that it has never done before. "wow I never heard that" The affair goes on for days, weeks, months or even years then out of the blue, the 7 year itch. You put on a piece of music that you have played before or hear something at your friends place and to yourself go "a ding". At first you blow it off, and then the next ding. Your new setup is now used, and even though your in-love in the back of the brain cells you feel this twinge every time a note hits that doesn't belong. You didn't care at first but now it's starting to get on your nerves. You want the neighborhood to think every thing is fine, and you try not to be obvious or let anyone see, but slowly your eyes start to stray and you begin to spiral. Something is not right in audio love land anymore.

You start going to theropy, reading stories about how this can happen and how to be content by adding some spark to the relationship. The shrink holds your hand and tells you it's not your fault and that you are suffering from distortion. You take a few tweaks and feel better, but as time goes on you find yourself needing more and more tweaks. Every time you hear something that gives you hope you try your best to not pay attention to the bad, but stay focused on the good. Pieces of music that once were friends start to fade from your life as you listen to them and don't like what they have to say anymore, so you put them on the shelf. You may run into them again at a party but you don't say hi, or if your stuck, you'll say hi but quickly move on cause you know what they're really about. You meet up with a friend and without being able to help yourself you and they start talking dirt about the recording. You wonder how some of your other friends can even stand the music and still hang out together, and as time goes on you stop hanging out with those guys as well. They must have a flaw too if they can't see what is so clear. Before long you find yourself only hanging out with the music that you get along with. "they don't know what their saying or doing" to the rest of the world.

One day you happen to be passing by and run into an old friend and he sounds great. "hey man good to see you" and he returns "you as well". As you talk a while you look at him and say "so why did we ever stop hanging out". The recording looks at you and says "I don't know maybe we should be friends again". You take him over to your place and before too long your back in the same old argument. You look at him and say "you'll never change, get out of my house and never come back".

There are a few different types of audiophiles, and one of the most common is the guy who developes beliefs based on him being right and the rest of the world, or anyone outside of his agreeing circle, wrong. Male egos are weird that way in so much that instead of finding out what is really going on they will start making sides based on not much more than some audio master brain throwing something in the wind. A lot of times the wind throwing guy hasn't really done much more than read a couple books and follow a couple formulas. The industry is full of people who get involved but rarely do you see them explore the audio chain from start to finish. They can rattle off every equation ever known in circuitry and yet not be brainy enough to know that every room on the planet sounds different from every other room. The very fundamental of what makes this hobby work is something that many guys never get a grip on ever in their whole career or hobby. Same goes true for the electrical mechanical part of the audio pathway. Something as simple as "keep it in-tune" throws people completely for a loop. Many audiophiles would rather say "that can't be the way it works" more than even giving it a try. They would rather stick to a belief that the audio code is not something real even though they hear it every time they put a piece of music on.

You ask the audiophile "why does a recording sound good or bad" and they say "loudness wars". You say "OK what about before loudness wars" and they stand there with a blank stare on their face, or you start to hear them ramble on about theories and flaws that happen to sources. True, but not really all that many. Then comes a good one. They think because they have bought into something call high end audio the recording will play itself. They have a system made of parts like any other system, but because these parts have been "audiophile approved" they do something magic to music that no other part of the audio chain does. Instruments have to be tuned, so do rooms, so does the recording going through the mixer, but some how the high end audio system magically plays this music? They look around and can plainly see that every system sounds different than any other system with the same piece of music, and it still doesn't register.

High end audio has reduced itself to a volume control and component swaping to react to recording differences. "my system is revealing", is that it, is that all you have? Your system is revealing therefore it won't play a lot of recordings? They twist this into "my system is so revealing that it will play good recordings and expose the bad for what they are". Let me fill you in, your system won't play that music because it doesn't know how to.

how do we get past this?

One thing is being able to picture notes and harmonics in and out of tune. Here's a piece of music. First with the equipment out of tune.



And here's the same piece of music in tune.



The answer to getting past a so so belief system is simple, know your poison. Don't pretend you know what distortion is, find out what distortion is by jumping in with both feet. Trust me, when you still have an industry telling you to walk around with a flashlight and mirrors and you follow this coming up with a theory of first 2nd and 3rd reflection points your a part of an industry that has a long way to go with knowing what distortions are. In fact you have an industry that still doesn't know what shape frequencies are, or how sound pressure works in an enclosed space.

There's a long way to go in learning about what distortion is and what the industry is able to do or not do about it, but the worse thing it can do is fall into the trap of thinking that every recording is the same and high end audio just because it has developed a market ladder holds that key.

My friends electrical technologies rediscover themselves at light speed any more. They figure out what is going on and move toward making things better. Audio reproduction is at one of those places. We're sitting at the spot where the mechanics of the audio signal itself can be tuned. Tuning is the key to allowing your system to play acoustically, mechanically and electrically correct. The first step to this is exposing what distortions are in the audio chain. We have to look at the audio signal for what it is, not book smarts and not audiophile theories, and not look at the measuring of it on a scope, but actually what it is. Once you got the energy part down then you can look at and experiment with what makes it react. What makes the audio signal from when it is pressure, to electric, and back to pressure respond. It doesn't just sit there and do nothing. It responds to the language it is fed as well as the current and the conduits hosting the current. The audio signal along it's path responds to adjusting. It can be adjusting by making mechanic/electric/acoustic changes, as well as the signal response of the language itself.

We need to get past that hard part that you engineers are fighting in your heads of somehow the signal being the same. That part that is dug in deep fighting to understand about how every recording has a different code and that code being a part of the conduits responding differently as that code is flowing. I get it believe me, trying to make a 2D model tell a 3D story is not the easiest thing, but that doesn't make it disappear. Fact is again, every recording is different and every signal pathway is responding differently as a continuum and not a one value constant, from the beginning of that recording to the end, and again rearranges it's path for the next recording. That rearranging thing really gets you doesn't it.

let me show you

Hopefully your systems are open enough to display this.

Put on a recording that you know fairly well. Listen to it for as long as it takes to get a fair read on the sound. Put this recording on repeat and walk away for a while. Don't do anything like exercise or anything that will change your bodies condition much. Come back after an hour and listen to how the recording has changed. The audio signal is making a new path of flow as the music plays. Usually if all things are equal on the recording end the playback start to finish will have it's own particular sound. Put on the next recording. Notice how it sounds different from the first in character. Walk away again, come back an hour later. A new flow has started all over. Each time you do this the signal pathway realigns as it passes a new set of recorded codes. If your a music list player one right after the other you are going to notice that as the playing and changing of music types change the system after a while sounds disembodied. You usually call it a night at that point but if you played the music to where you could hear it in the background on repeat you will notice the music will settle back down again. This happens because recording codes don't fully play where not welcome. I have a whole bunch of settling tricks you can do, but this isn't where I want to go right now. Right now my goal is to get the minds struggling to loosen up. It's not the end of the world that your hobby is a variable one, but it's a new world if you can get your mind to deal with it. It doesn't have to be a straight line approach, and your system doesn't play absolutes one minute and not the next. You need to get over black and white thinking when it comes to music cause it's never going to happen.

If you have a system and it is playing a recording in "real space" and "real size" for a particular piece of music kick back and enjoy it.



If you put on several pieces and it does the same, lucky you. But if your system starts to play a piece of music and it's not right, don't run to your computer to check the loudness wars or bad review because chances are that recording is probably doing nothing more wrong than distorting on your system. Splatter, clustering, jumping in the speakers, banana shape stage, small stage are all parts of distortion, and distortion is nothing more than being out-of-tune.

Go back up on you tube and listen to instruments playing intune and out of tune again. That's what your system is doing. Some of the time you get lucky and play a recording in tune. How do you know when this happens? Your stage will be close to the same size of stage that is in the recording, is your first clue. Second, you won't hear your speakers playing at all, they will have disappeared whether your in the sweet spot or walking around. Third you will hear parts of the music behind and off to the side of you as well as in front. Fourth if playing a live recording with a tall ceiling you will hear the music play way over your head as well as all around.

how do we know

Audio has always had a wide range of characters involved in the dicussions of. Someone starts talking and before long there are others who join in with their ideas on things. Sometimes you read stuff and it sinks in and other times you have to stop and look at it a while cause it sounds like news to you.

how do you know if something is right

For myself I try to keep things simple and only talk about things I'm actually doing so that I stay in the realm of accountability. It's not that I don't trust myself, it's just that there are so many people who seem to say things that don't make a whole lot of sense and my mind works better when I'm actually part of the cooking. I brought a few of these weird ideas (like straight lines) up on this and other threads here, but still I aways have this thing built in me that says "check it before you say it". Great thing about this hobby is that's easy enough to do. Audio theorist truly are a dime a dozen.

As far as this industry goes there has always been something I can count on even if I've had a hard time getting it through my brain, or see others having the same struggle. You've heard people say "proof is in the pudding", well in audio the one thing you can bank on is "proof is in vibration".

Do a study on anything audio and before long you are going to run into the word vibration or other words that lead you back to vibration. The audio chain is full of movement.



Some people will try to paint a bad picture of vibration because in their thinking vibration has to do with distortion and that's the ugliest, most despised word in sound. However vibration itself is used in sound both for positive and negative. Do your own search but you will see that vibration is a positive when used as a means to tuning or keeping something in tune, and in a negative way when something is out of tune or balance.

Vibration is not a one way street with warning signs up saying "wrong way". Fact is if you didn't have vibration there would be no sound at all. Vibration is the fundamental of motion and once set in action the results can either be one of out of balance or one of harmony. Go bump a molecule and watch what happens. Watch the rules of action and reaction take place. More important understand that vibrations are here to stay and all along the audio pathway are part of the signal. They're not fat that somehow is floating to the surface and you are suppose to skim them off, and take them out of your audio diet. That's the wrong way of looking at things and will screw you up and for sure shrink your soundstage. Instead look at vibration as being part of the signal for you to put in-tune. If you put something in-tune there is no waste. Putting vibration in tune will give you more of the whole. The fat is in the things that are preventing you from tuning the signal.

This part I talk about digital but also answered a question for the first part that leads into "tuning digital"

"I don't know how you can stand the treble on CDs"

High frequency clusters do not come from CD's, but their playback systems. As you start tuning you can remove the tilt cluster by doing a few tunes. I have found that digital has an amazing high frequency response in the realm of harmonics, but it can be a challenge to get the top to open up.

looking at the CD fig1



There are a lot of CD players that fall apart in the upper responses, as well as amps, speakers and electrical systems. One of the things I do when designing or referencing in "the tunable room" is have the client, studio or home user give me pieces of music that have a tilt to them. You can read about this on https://tuneland.forumotion.com/ Usually within 20 or so minutes I start to find where the cluster is coming from. It can be hiding in any part of the system including a fuse box. For some reason circuit designs for CD players react differently than tape or vinyl pre's. Is there more signal with digital? Is a question I have been asking for the last several years, and I'm leaning toward the answer being yes.

I love the sound of recording tape. It's very easy to listen to and extremely romantic. It's also a lot easier to playback than vinyl or CD's as far as tuning goes, if you are comparing stock to stock playback systems. Here's something that I have noticed with digital playbacks in general. They are extremely sensitive to circuit board layouts. And they are extremely sensitive to parts. DAC is an animal that goes far beyond numbers and I have come to respect them on a completely different level through our testing.

the code being played fig2



more on CD's
https://tuneland.forumotion.com/t269-how-do-cd-s-work

Again if your not tuning the Audio Code this means very little to you, however if you are practicing tuning there is a magic in CD's that once matched to the original code, goes further than any other plackback I have ever heard. I personally have only heard a handful of, maybe two handfuls of players that I feel have gotten pass the tilt of digital and have never heard any stock player do this successfully with more than a few recordings.

Tuning digital

Once you get to the source moving forward as a listener there are a few things to consider concerning the audio code. The first thing you are going to notice is vinyl has one sound, tape another and CD's yet another. For those of you who are audio purist, I think you need to give yourself a break. Playing back audio is an art and within that art you have to deal with physical properties. With both vinyl and tape there are bias settings to follow as a guide of EQing. They're not bullet proof by any means but were made to give you curves that are easier to playback. With digital things are a little different and engineers are and have been trying to find the best combo of numbers to give more of the info. My hat is totally off to digital designing. Even from the very first in and out of the studio I heard the potential happening.

Tuning digital part 2

As I was saying, and this is very important, materials have sound. When you listen to vinyl, you really are listening to vinyl (the actual material). Same with tape. This hobby for some weird reason tries to separate the recorded language from the physics of the materials that are involved. Build the exact same cap out of different types of plastic and guess what, each one of those caps will sound different from each other. Same goes for every material in the entire industry. I have more news for you. The materials used, make as big of a difference in the sound as the design function itself. When people dampen this is what happens. They're adding the sound of that material into the mix of the signal. You can't separate the sound of the materials from the audio signal.

People who say "kill vibrations" have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Show me one test in the history of this hobby where someone has gone in and showed where the signal stops and the sound of the materials start with dampening? Here's the deal. The materials are the audio signal. Copper has a sound, and silver has a sound, gold has a sound along with every material that is within the area of the signals dissipation. There's been a boo boo inside of this industry, and that is the math engineering has not got it's mind around the physics engineering. On one side you have this guy adding numbers together to formulas, but on the other side you have the way physics works. Numbers are designed to be clear cut whereas physics is designed to be a blending of.

You take water and make it cold, and pretty soon your going to have ice, but you set that ice in a glass filled with water and you can watch it turning back into water. Physics is all about the mingling of sciences. We live in a world where everything affects everything else. If you don't get this you can not understand audio or the audio code.

review of the four forces

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

Just like I showed you the model of the soundstage earlier and how it stretches out as far as it can, understanding the forces and physics mingle, can help you with the your sound. It's not a magical pathway that separates itself from the environment. The audio signal is by nature attracted to it's environment. That's the type of energy it is. It's like a dam being opened up with some of the water flowing and at the same time interacting to and becoming a part of what it is flowing through. The audio signal intermingles with the electromagnetic fields as if they were feeding off of each other. They're a part of the same family and are attracted. If you do research on the elecetromagnetic field you will find that it isn't stopped by solids but intermingles with them. Energies that have current flow are in the category of attraction, which means they are going to have a attractive or repeling intermingle with their surroundings.

Lets go back to that cap. Not only will that cap change sound with different materials but it will also change performance inside of different housings. It will change sound as it intermingles with other parts, it's stand offs and the board underneath it.

tuning digital 3


If you've been reading we've been starting to talk about the different sounds that parts have by the materials used to make them with, there is no separating the signal from the sound of the parts. Also in review the environment that the parts are in have as much affect. If you took all the parts out of your components and placed them in different chassis and locations you would notice a change in sound. How much of a change depends on the mass of the parts. During the TuneLand tests we took samples of players in all classes and compared them against each other stock, and through different stages of stripping them down and then eventually tuning them. What we found was the heaviest players (with the bigger parts put close together) played the least amount of different types of music. They were more or less stuck in a particular range. As we went down in mass and smaller transformers the music began to open up with greater dynamics. A wider range of music was also able to be played. This stayed fairly consistant all the way down to the lightest players.

At the end of the testing before the tuning started the stripped players that were still standing were lower mass players from these companies. Rotel, Parasound, Toshiba, Magnavox, Marantz, Samsung, Sony, Multispec and a couple others that skip my memory. The first interesting part to this was that these units were each of the companies entry level products. The tuning of these products went on at TuneLand but also at sights around the world, you can view them and the testing on the TuneLand archive as well as the techo-zone.

Tuning for those who aren't familar goes like this. Most products get stripped to their core so there is the least amount of chassis interference unless the chassis has a good sound to it, which is rare, and with CD players we found to be more rare with metal chassis. There seemed to be something about metal that did not mix well with the dac chips. More on Chips in a minute. So the product has the fat removed and then transfer devices are put in place to interconnect the vibration (away from the unit) to a tuning board or boards where the variable tuning is done. So to put in a way that might make sense. Instead of dampening the unit to address the vibrations we put the vibration of the parts in-tune with each other. What we found was, even if you wanted little to no vibration it was far more exacting to apply pressure at certain points so that you could control with a lot more precision. What surprised us was how tunable parts are esspecially parts with standoff on ciruit boards.

For close to some 30 years now we have gone in and found how most of the parts you use in your circuits react with not only the other parts but also everything within the part or units environment. We've made the audio system into a musical instrument. The most remarkable thing was, in doing this I found that the audio code was specific to each and every recording. Not only can you setup things up for a general sound if you wish but you can dive into each recording and if you learn the tools fairly well have the "real space" of the recording come to life. It's almost scary when comparing it to regular boxed soundstaging.

But I want to get back to the digital. The reason why digital sounds tilted in the top end is not the CD at all but how the DAC and some of the other parts close by are tuned. The physical arrangement (positioning) for CD Players electronic parts are far more sensitive than tape players, and if the relationship between the parts and the circuit board are not done correctly there is a clusting that takes place in the highs, as well as a lack of dynamics from 1000-4000hz. The DAC chip is perhaps one of the most complexed vibratory parts that has come along in audio. Put in-tune and the highs are smooth and relaxed and the signal is more dynamic than any of the home playback sources.

I would hope as time moves forward that the high end audio would shift gears away from looks only and move toward making products based on our latest technologies. Honestly I don't know, but if they do the digital world has a completely different role to play in high end as truly a serious playback source.

As I develope my own tunable products I hope others take a look at what we are doing and try some of the technology. I do want to tell you though if you try something with no results it's on you if you don't ask. I have spent many years very focused on the audio code and can tell you, if you are only able to play certain music, your doing nothing short of robbing yourself of tons of enjoyment. It's your hobby and your ego, but the answer to the next level of high end listening is here if you wish to partake. I'm willing to do as much as I can to help if you are interested, and no LOL I do not think I'm better than anyone else, that's just old man pride talking when people say that.

Fact is when we saw high end turning away from physics and doing it without a clear vision of what the audio signal is I decided to not engage in a war that would take care of itself in time. For me seeing high end audio take a dump is something that I said would happen in "97" if they didn't start implimenting tuning. I said this to your reviewers and demo-ed it, but they had other plans with their economy I can only guess. I will say this though since Audio Magazine is no more. When I presented this to them, their feedback was "we can't review this cause you have designed products that you can make sound like any other product and our ads would get pulled". Doesn't sound like that worked out to well for them.

It's up to the industry to move forward, my job has been to get it to this place. Nay sayers, not really that big of deal as you can see. Spins and old technologies moving no where, trading this sound for that, and finally moving on.

But guys, it's here. You can setup a system that will play anything and put you right in the studio or hall. Soon products will come out that will have variable tuning as a builtin feature. My hope is that the designers will get shookup enough that they will design with the mechanics in mind this time around, instead of these audio prisons. If not I'm sure the listeners will turn quickly enough to lower priced products that have more on the physical ball at this particular point in listening history.

Greetings Zonees

Sonic has found out from experience that Mr Green is 100% right that you can adjust the tonal balance with the introduction of or removal of things in the listening room. Just with the addition of the Low Tone Redwood blocks under my speaker cables (see my thread on My Musical Journey), some bass are more emphatic in a musical (nice) way.

The problem with this approach is this: tone controls are logical and so are graphic EQs -- you know what effect you get from turning the knobs or pushing the sliders up and down.

What are the rules of "tuning by furniture"? Perhaps Mr Green can guide because to this day, for all the Tuning over eight years, Sonic cannot describe the rule/law behind the changes or be able answer questions like these:

a. my treble is rolled off -- what should I add/remove from my room and where in relation to the speakers and equipment?

b. my lower bass is rolled off but upper bass to prominent -- what should I add/remove from my room/where?

c. my midrange is weak, bass too strong but upper bass thin, tizzy treble -- what should i add/remove from my room/where?

Michael, are there rules/systems of logic to change the frequency balance of the sound by the addition/removal of things in the room?

Certainly when the high end threw away the Tone Controls from preamps and integrated amps audio may have entered its dark ages.

Sonic

\getting extra

Tonight I was reading a few blogs as well as the Stereophile forum, and the thing that jumps off the page at me is the lack of understanding what the audio code is and what affects that code. It is remarkable to me to watch an industry that still believes after all they have been through that a fixed system is going to play the music.

I would totally agree that one of the worst things audiophiles did were to get rid of tone controls, before learning the audio chain completely. Most audiophiles haven't a clue as to how powerful the room is, or the other energies. That's one part, the other part is audiophiles struggle with "Too Much". They're still making excuses for extra parts that hurt the signal that is trying to make it's way through the pathway. If we don't understand what trama the signal has to deal with we start to add things that we think are correct in theory without understanding what is happening.

The high end audio industry has always acted like it can push it's way through physics without facing or even using it. We have seen the failure as a result. There is so much more to the recording that we can get to if we aplly the nature of recordings and the recreating of them as each playing a part in the other.

First we need to get rid of some of the road blocks.



Here is a you tube on transformers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjwzpoCiF8A

Once a reader gets there it might be a good idea to look at a few other videos on transformers.

Also inductors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgwXkUt3XxQ

And I recommend an hour or so studying electromagnetism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bht9AJ1eNYc

Hi Michael and Zonees

Sonic likes the Saturday hi-fi emporium walk about. I meet friends for a bite, tour the salons, go analog digging (some are getting back into audio cassettes!) and occasionally exchange ideas with strangers. This round is something that helps Sonic regain sanity after a hectic week at work.

In reference to this thread, I got some observations that Michael might want to address because they have impact on the thinking of a company like M G Audio.

Randomly here we go:

a. audiophiles/high end listeners want to connect up their equipment and expect it to work with minimal input from them. Apart from the volume control and programme selectors they don't touch anything.

b. they may say they are discerning listeners but they are surprisingly reluctant to adjust anything that affects the sound. Like tone controls or cartridge loading switches.

c. no sense of the room and system having to work together to make music. One said, "damp the room totally then back off a bit"

For a market like this, how do we tell them they can tune their room by moving things in and out of it? So starting at the point of the Trilogy will confuse them. That is when they walk away. Their questions will be "if I wanted to raise the treble, what should I add? A table? If I wanted more bass should I bring in a cushion?" While Sonic has tuned my room and system to sound nice and beyond what hi-enders expect my equipment to do, I cannot answer these questions.

What do you think Michael -- how to create the dialog that leads to the Tune and adopters of the method?

Sonic

Hi Sonic

I've been thinking about your posts since I saw them, and think that much of the answer is a matter of mindset and mind conditioning of the audiophile.

There is a stuck attitude that the hobby has built around the equipment plug and play that they have somehow missed the message of what is actually producing the sound we hear. Sadly they have bought deeply into the golden calf myth, and until they learn what "the audio code" is in a way that makes at least a connection the answer of getting good and consistant sound for them will not come.

The answer is not going to be found with the stuck, that's for sure and honestly the tide will turn when it is suppose to. There will be a day the stuck audiophile will wake up and the hobby will have passed him by.

I sometimes get stuck in the thought of converting them, but this is a waste of my time when there are so many real music lovers out there to be turned on.

Shaping the Code, Not Forcing the Sound

I hope that people have taken the time to read through the thread so far. If you have then we are ready to start shaping things.

The great thing about recordings are they have the ability to be shaped. From my view point this is not distorting the signal, but more exploring the different parts of it. Distortion comes in when you put something into oscillilative imbalance and happen to judge the signal while the spheres are out of tune. It's important to note that the closer you get your mechanical conduits to vibrating in harmony the more they want to be in that pattern.

In-tune is following an existing pattern or developing one, and distortion is random noise that has not been developed. In other words distortion is energy that has not been able to fix or attach itself to a usable value. It doesn't fit. Distortion is like having a puzzle piece from a different puzzle and we're trying to make it fit into a puzzle it doesn't belong to. It keeps trying to fit but because it doesn't it goes into a random disorder.



So you could say that distortion is something in sound that doesn't have anywhere to go or something to belong to. The act of tuning is about putting things in place and letting them fit (be a part of) their natural order.



Tuning is not something to take you further from the truth but closer to it. And when you find that helper (tool) and put it into play with the other variables you can open up a whole other dimension. And that next dimension is able to be seen with all of it's variables and still work. This is where 3D and layering comes in.



You see the pieces all still fit and belong and are completely intact, but they are also variable within that completeness. Sound and audio is a great mingler because of it's particular range of cycles. Where as light are reflections sound is waves.

Isn't it great, you are sitting in a 3D playground of your hearing and feeling senses. Again this is why I push "play it simple". You don't need to complicate something that is so willing to fit together. This is where high end audio went way off course. When they should have been making things that fit in our playground of acoustics they built an industry based on forcing itself, and in doing this things may get close at times but never really fit.

There's a major difference between forced sound and effortless sound.



Great sound is not nearly as tough as some make it, and here's that big problem again. High end audio has been teaching things from the wrong end. They should be starting with the bare minimums on the electronic side of things and making the room into something that works naturaly. "the natural amplifier" BUT, they got things all turned around and built systems so out of tune (along with their speakers)that their thinking is that "if I kill (remove) the room, I will have a straight line of sound coming at me". Problem is sound, as I said above, is not a line or a reflection but waves.

When you think of sound as something to fight, it will never fit  You have to think of sound as something that is made to fit naturally not forced. Look at your system and what is being forced. I promise you if your not getting effortless sound you are forcing your signal somewhere in the chain.

Also thought I would share a little on the Electromagnetic fields that influence the signal. Hope this paints the picture.
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So let me show you something

See the harmonics around the Earth earlier? The same thing happens with your parts.



Every part is creating an electromagnetic field and taking on other parts EMF's.

If you looked at a wire within it's electromagnetic fields it would be something like this.



Once physics is put into action there is no way to separate the conduit, current, audio code and fields. They are now all one and dependent.
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I pulled this from my electromagnetic field thread https://tuneland.forumotion.com/t212-electromagnetics-the-fields-we-live-in

when I record

You always hear me talking about how important space is, and that the soundstage is the most important part to this industry and hobby. Let me take you inside the space itself for a minute so you can see how it works.

Most recordings out there have two stages mixed into one soundstage.

one is the live room, usually rooms



the other is the electronic stage



The simple version works like this.

Let's say I want to grab the space of



and



and



as my live spaces. My mic patterns and space is going to give me the overall 3D space and air. In reality this space is usually 360 all around you but you can't hear this in the control room because of the speakers being setup frontal and ussually not in the greatest of acoustics playback wise. Sometimes you might use your headphones though to reference the space around, but I like to reference in a well tuned room with my stereo setup. Unfortunately for me, I would need to build a studio of my own again to reference the playback how I personally like it, but getting a studio and it's engineers to spend the time it takes to do my level of referencing would take a small miracle. This is why you don't see me on a lot of recordings. By the time I would have started my own sessions, engineers were already on the "time is money" clock, but who knows   maybe my for fun retirement plan. Still, working within their structures was enough to explore.

back to my way

After I layout my space, I go back through and layout my "green" space (electronically created). I call it green space because it reminds me of a green room for video and I can add, cut and space whatever I want in there. In my recording mind the space looks like this to me.



And when the stage is painted there's tons of layering and depth.



Playing back a soundstage is almost like falling into it, with everything all around. Still in front if you have it setup that way, but also not this line of image that stops at the speakers plane. More layers that are way in a distance, up to you and past you flowing yet extremely detailed.