Tuning a New World of Computer Audio Playback

As Sonic returns to Tuning post-Rooze (more on this shortly), here is something Mr Green talked about – a special Pressure Box.

Michael he say:

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.

Sonic wonders what this device looks like -- perhaps like one of Michael's passive subwoofers except the visible cone speaker is an ABR.

Greetings Michael and Zonees

Sonic finds the 12 days of testing the Rooze speaker placement valuable even if the setup itself did not work. I learnt some characteristics about the sound of my room which I can now Tune for – which Sonic has started with these steps.

Previously I had put up these pieces of MW and it worked (see my post on this thread of Aug 12, 2016):



Now that Sonic knows that my room sound is hard and harmonically bleached in characteristic, the next thing I to try is logically to get more warm wood tone by doing this, the wood being mounted in two areas with Pressure Zones, the weakening of which rolls off the bass sharply (see Michael’s explanation of this effect in my post of Sept 4, 2016 on this thread]:



A puzzlement that my notes show: Sonic has tried wood adhered to the walls in this area before but high up the walls near the ceiling wall seam and the result was effectively negligible.  And when Sonic tried wood lower down the wall at around the level ou now see, the effect of woodiness was more apparent. The upper wall zone is where all the untreated area and ringing is (it must be) yet wood lower down the walls work better. Michael – do you have an explanation for this?

Along the way, I changed the angling of the FS-DTs at the rear of the room because Sonic felt this placement increased the sense of Pressure round my listening chair.  

This “Pressure Sense” is beginning to appear to Sonic’s perception in addition to the “Tune Instinct” after Rotelguy and Michael's question if I could hear the Pressure Zones.  Though I have to say neither my Pressure Sense or Tune Instinct is by any measure infallible.

So the DecoTunes:



The first listening from these Tunes done over the last few days after the reversal of Rooze tells me that Sonic hears some wood  

Adequate settling must be done before assessing the change and improvement of course.

Sonic

Hi Sonic

My fingers are crossed for you hoping this is a positive direction. Sometimes plaster walls will react the opposite from walls that resonate with a fuller range. It's very possible that your mid-seam corners are more powerful than your uppers with the current setup. I'm guessing this might be because of the energy the bookcases are contributing.

With this setup it would be interesting to hear a floating tune above your head again, half way between the ceiling and the bookcase.

Greetings Michael

Michael said: “it would be interesting to hear a floating tune above your head again, half way between the ceiling and the bookcase.”
By floating Tune do you mean something additional to those two DecoTune boards that Sonic is hanging from the ceiling described in my May 26, 2016 post on this thread?  They are still up there when this experiment was carried out.

If this floating tune you are suggesting is additional to them, let me have a picture or some description of what you have in mind.

On the wood blocks, with 5 days of intensively heavy, though not round-the-clock, settling it seems to have a positive direction developing though Sonic will not define this as a success till past the 10 day point.

Hello tjbhuler

Yes renovations are nasty.  Stressful for you I am sure.

True you had no choice but to go balanced connections given your Audio Research amp. In concept the XLR plugs are physically better and Michael’s wire must have made things sound better than the audiophile cables even those you had to pay for with gold ingots.  

Greetings Zonees

Here is something counter-intuitive from Michael which Sonic found is true:

I asked Michael once back in Sept 2013 this question after hearing an audiophile make proclamations that the more solid the room walls, floor and ceiling the more extended and powerful the bass.  Mr Green’s reply made sense and has determined my Tuning tactic since:

1. Shouldn't hard rigid walls be good for bass? If the walls were flexible like drywall, won’t they flex and lose energy and cut the bass?

mg
*
The rule of pitch is when something is tightened the pitch goes up, when loosened it goes down. In playback terms you want to have mechanics that allow both. Rooms and instruments are pretty much the same. If you play a full body guitar the sound is going to be lower in tone whereas a thin tight guitar is going to pick up on mostly the sound of the strings and neck.

Pitch however should not be confused with frequency response. These are two different worlds and even if you have a room that measures in strong bass response it can still sound very thin. Frequency response is a measurement of cycles and pitch is speed and reaction of wave (sphere) formation. Frequencies don't give you attack and warmth. Pitch formation is what makes a note of a guitar different from a piano playing the same note.

Somehow in high end audio we made this solid wall theory into something it isn't. Truth is if a wall has the ability to vibrate in tones and pitches similar to an instrument it will produce that instrument*. Our goal is to find or make a room reproduce the full range and moods of the music. This is much easier with rooms that have flex and a certain amount of tonality built into the structure.

* Some might find this point made by Michael controversial -- see his debate with "inna" on Audiogon which Michael posted a link to yesterday. The audiophile mind thinks that anything that has its own "vibration and tones" will add these to the sound of the music (the Absolute Sound) and colour it.

Greetings Zonees

Two more days of music play and settling, and Sonic is hearing the wood blocks behaving nicely and a warmish woodiness is developing in the musick playback.  I must be too eager to pronounce a success yet since Sonic has known that sometimes I get an over warm sound like the tube equipment of yore which is terribly boring to listen to.

Of course, settling must take its path and the building of great systems take a life time.  It is a lifelong endeavour like in the case of the Western Electric system owned by Kei Ikeda-san and Richard S Burwen who designed this system from ground up:





Complex it certainly is, particularly compared to the simple systems we espouse here at Tuneland!





The designer and owner of this system himself.





According Mr Burwen, the room is built of solid concrete and designed to be very live, any standing waves broken up by non-parallel surfaces and a wavy ceiling.





And Sonic thought my room surfaces are hard.

Yet this is one of the systems, along with Kei Ikeda-san’s Western Electric set up, which defines the outer limits of audio systems.

All pictures from www.burwenaudio.com

Sonic

Hi Sonic

I know I need to reply but first I have to say I love these pictures.

Greetings Michael and Zonees

Sonic is now fairly certain that the Low Tone Redwood blocks on the front portions of my side are beneficial (they work very well actually), and they were an inspiration for Sonic to try something else that seems to be taking the Tune further ahead for this room and system!

First, let’s remember this is what the front wall looks like with all its Tune treatments:





Sonic acquired another pair of FS-DTs + stands and I took the two largest pieces of acoustic foam down from my front wall!





EXCELLENT!    

The sound is more real, transients are better, imaging sharper and the bass is tighter.  There is no Boo!, no ringing, well controlled.  Better is the low-end weight where when a symphony orchestra goes LOUD, Sonic can hear the weight like with the real thing! I can also by default now hear what Michael said about foam punching holes in the soundstage.

Ehh…do Sonic’s ears deceive me or is the bass tighter with a reduced quantity of foam on the walls?

Listening to Helen Callus and the New Zealand Symphony play Vaughan Williams’ and Wm Walton’s works for Solo Viola and Orchestra (ASV), Sonic has to say the “alto” sound of the viola which so many audiophile systems fail to produce correctly.

Also listened to Music of Makran – musick from the peoples from a place somewhere between the Indian sub-continent and the Arabian Peninsula. What Sonic hears is the weight of the orchestra resembles what I hear in the Hall of Konzerts (live) on Fridays and Saturdays.  Yeah    

After 24+ hours of settling this got good to the point that Sonic asked “shall I remove another two pieces of foam and see what happens…?”

Sonic tried this next:





This time MEGA FAIL!    

The BOO! came back with a vengeance, the room went midrangey (in Tune-understanding, shifted up) and a sustained ring that Sonic had banished a long time ago returned.

Michael – the pair of FS-DTs worked so well after removing the lower foam pieces.  What shall Sonic do next to allow the disposal of the next two foam pieces?  

I have access to a further four DecoTunes with their stands. What do you suggest so that Sonic can ultimately have no acoustic foam in this room?

BTW – if you look at the pictures you’ll see the Sound Shutters mounted on the front wall next to the window are folded flat parallel to the wall.  When they are set 90 degrees to the wall, the Honk/BOO!/Ringing gets worse.

What should Sonic do next?

My hope is to remove all the foam from my listening room which, after the removal of the lowest and largest pieces which the FS-DTs managed really well, there are four pieces remaining – two at mid-room height and two at the ceiling level.

Sonic

Hi Sonic

I'm glad to see the direction you have been going in, exciting isn't it.

sonic

"Michael – the pair of FS-DTs worked so well after removing the lower foam pieces.  What shall Sonic do next to allow the disposal of the next two foam pieces?"

mg

Go back to the foam and slowly remove it little by little (if you don't mind cutting it smaller) till you get to the exact size of foam needed to not fall into the bad sound. Once your there and pretty sure  lets do some material swaping and see how that particular zone likes to be treated with a wide selection of your recordings.

sonic

I have access to a further four DecoTunes with their stands. What do you suggest so that Sonic can ultimately have no acoustic foam in this room?

mg

I don't know, it depends on all the pressure zone's performances and you being able to recognize quickly when things are going in and out of tune.

BTW – if you look at the pictures you’ll see the Sound Shutters mounted on the front wall next to the window are folded flat parallel to the wall. When they are set 90 degrees to the wall, the Honk/BOO!/Ringing gets worse.

mg

Open them back up some, this time putting a tuning product on either side of them, like a block or tiny piece of foam or anything so you can get an idea of what the space on either side of the Shutter tells you about that particular pressure and laminar interaction.

Thanks Mr Green for the editing!

The full set of pictures are now up on Sonic's post of Friday Sept 30.

The first pix is the front of the room with all the foam.

The next two are with the lower pieces of foam removed and the pair of FS-DTs installed (notice that the MW boards are still hanging about in that area). This Tune succeeded well and gave Sonic the certainty that pursuing a non-foamed listening room might be a Good Thing.

The last two pictures are the front corners where the mid-wall height foam pieces had been removed. An experiment which failed.

Next up to try some of the tests that Michael suggested.

Tomorrow.....now doing some after-dinner listening to musick by Marin Marais.

Sonic

my pleasure

Hi Michael

Sonic started the experiment with the Sound Shutters on the front walls which Michael suggested in his post on Saturday Oct 1.

Everything else in the system was left the same – the foam is up as in Pix 2 and 3 in my Friday Sept 30 post.

The Experimental Method
I angled the two front-wall Shutters 30 degrees pointing towards the side walls (that is splayed apart).

Stuck two Michael Green Walnut 1 inch x 1 inch x ¼ inch Squares to the mid points of each Shutter, played musick at the same volume as whatever Sonic was listening to before.

Observations
With Walnut Squares stuck to the sides of the Shutters facing the corners – the soundstage concentrated more into the two front corners.  A very Right – Left sound with a weaker centre image

Then with Walnuts Squares stuck to the sides of the Shutters facing the centre of the room (angling unchanged) – centre fill improves yet the sound is Right – Left sounding but the centre image is OK.....

The effect of Walnut Squares stuck on the inside faces of the Shutters was less pronounced than when they were adhere to the sides facing the corners and side walls.  

Sonic didn't ever think that a small piece of wood could produce audible differences  

Evaluation
Adding a Walnut Square to either side of the front Shutters causes a Right - Left imaging. The effect is seriously pronounced when the Walnut Squares were on the sides of the Shutters facing the front corners/side walls, mild when the Walnut Squares were adhered to the sides facing the centre of the room.

In both cases, Sonic considered the sound resulting from this Tune to be not as balanced and natural presenting in soundstage effect as when there were no Walnut Squares adhered. So this Tune will not be retained but the results may help Michael understand more of Sonic's room.

Michael -- what does this tell you?

Sonic

Greetings Zonees

As Sonic waits for Michael's reply what his observations from my experiment with sticking a tiny piece of wood to my Sound Shutters, I have also been contemplating Michael’s idea to cut the acoustic foam on my walls a little at time to the point the sound quality degrades and then test different materials.

The thought of taking scissors to that foam is giving Sonic some pause presently given the cost of the foam (this is not the cheap stuff that some hifi stores sell for $20 for a 5 ft x 4 ft sheet) – this a well-known studio-grade foam, fire retardant, supposedly long-life etc.

I probably will get round to the cutting by sacrificing the pieces already taken down.

Till that starts, here is something that Mr Green told Sonic which I found to be true:

Michael says, "Try this sometime. Take the pillow [EchoTune, CornerTune, RT Square] and flatten the front panel inside of it. You will hear a different sound to the pillow. The RT Pillow relaxed sounds a lot different than the RT Pillow with the corners pulled tight. You can also put up the RT and after push your finger in the middle of it and listen to the difference."

Sonic

Hi Sonic

Here's what I was referring to.

So that's what you meant Michael

Sonic thought you meant that the wood should be stuck on the blade of the Shutters.

That made a difference though which I reported here.

Ok, this is something to try.

However Sonic has made a change to my hanging DecoTunes by changing their hanging points so the DT panels are now hanging behind the Magneplanar 1.5QRs instead of hanging in front of the Panels.

If you wonder what Sonic is getting at, I suggest you go to Page 5 of this thread and look at the May 20 post. The pictures there show the DTs hanging above and forward of the panels. They are now mounted the other way, closer towards the front wall.

The change is good, working well with the wood blocks on forward parts of the side walls and the front wall control combination of: FS-PZC -- FS-DT -- FS-DRT -- FS-PZC -- FS-DRT -- FS-DT -- FS-PZC (across the wall).

The effect makes the room quieter and acoustically drier.

Good stuff these DecoTune boards

Greetings Zonees

Sonic is still looking reluctantly at the foam, perplexed about cutting it.

So I tried something Michael suggested. Go see Michael’s reply on this thread of Sept 24, 2016 where he said “With this setup it would be interesting to hear a floating tune above your head again, half way between the ceiling and the bookcase.”

Yes, this very easily done…(after Highway 61, B Dylan)….. using a DT panel, a guitar stand, a rod, some string and a small dumbbell to provide counter-weight  

Here it is:



Hey this is good, actually Very Good!        

For those Zonees wondering what Sonic meant about moving the hanging DTs behind the Magneplanar MG1.5QRs, here are pictures of the new placement of the hanging DTs in relation to the DT Ceiling Cloud:



With the DT floating over my head, Sonic gets the feeling that the “air of the recording” surrounds me more audibly, that the energy envelopment of the recording does not taper away from the area around the loudspeakers as you move towards the listening chair and behind it.  

A sense of acoustic envelopment is building round me, there is more energy in the room and it is a controlled energy. The instruments image at the front as they should be (at and behind the speaker-plane) but now I am immersed in the music's energy field, not just observing the generation of music from a distance.

The energy in the room is room filling, not just occupying the front half and tapering to the rear of the room.

On a Leo Kottke record, it sounds I am hearing the size of his 12-string guitar from the mike positioned right at the soundhole of the instrument. The acoustics of the room is full.

No BOO! There is more bass, extended and powerful on classical musick though on some rock recordings there are boom notes here and there but Sonic has not touched the subwoofer and crossover settings yet. Elsewhere the bass is tighter, bigger and hits harder. After learning from Michael, I see Boomy Notes as energy that can be tuned and redirected, not enemies that have to be exterminated with damping.  

The BOO! is properly controlled and now expands broader and fills the room – like a pressure balloon expanding evenly in all directions.

"Weight, Bigness, Acoustic Energy round me" are words that come to mind.

Sonic is now thinking of making this DT as a Ceiling Cloud a permanent fixture which is an attractive option!

Thanks Michael for this idea!      

Sonic will report how the settling goes over the next few days.

Sonic

Floating Tune Day 4

The room is quieter, a little less preamp volume control setting is required on some LPs, while the rest (particularly the FLAC files) require about the same setting of the Volume control as before.

Bass is more weighty and prominent on some recordings though within artistic suitability.

Brass has a richness and weight in addition to being piercing on high notes. Sonic likes how massed brass in orchestras and Big Bands sound.

The treble is better, sings in tune. Transients are not exaggerated yet impactful with rhythm drive to move the musick forward.

Listened to only LPs more often now, this evening Sonic heard: Bach's Cantatas, Cream Wheels of Fire (Record 1 only), Handel's recorder sonatas, Gustav Holst's a Fugal Overture, Sir Arnold Bax's Symphonic Poem, E Moeran's Sinfonietta. Great musick!  

Michael -- your thoughts and advice?

Greetings Zonees

As Sonic listens to the system settling nicely with the DecoTune overhead, a thought from Sonic on the RCA plugs:

You see the RCA has some flaws in its design. One of the worst being the Hot Pin makes contact before the Ground Pin leading to big speaker destroying BANGS! if the system is powered up.

The RCA connection should have been designed so that Ground connects first and breaks last. There is modern variation of the RCA with a spring loaded sleeve that allows this to happen. Sonic recalls that it is the Neutrik NF2CB/2 connectors.

Then too, the Maximum and Minimum manufacturing tolerances for RCA male and female plugs are pretty rough so if you got Max+Max or Min+Min or somewhere between things are OK but if you get a MIN-MAX or MAX-MIN combo, you either end up with a loose connection that crimping the Ground collar will not help or a fit that is so tight that in extracting the plug, the twisting might break something.

Sonic

Nuggets from Michael

Here is something Mr Green posted in December 2014 about acoustic foam in response to Sonic’s questions/observations:

“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 somewhere, 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 sudden 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 somehow. 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.

Now this is not to say that a piece of foam cannot 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 directly 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."

Greetings Zonees!

As the Ceiling Cloud settled 9 days, Sonic finds that there is a compression of the soundstage height evident. The height dimension now does not feel as unbounded, like the ceiling over the musick has come lower.



As logical next step, Sonic tried this – I took another DecoTune and hung it in front of the room as a Ceiling Cloud:



In this case, after a 24-hour period of settling, this Tune gave Sonic the feeling that this forward Ceiling Cloud also compressed the height of the soundstage and to a greater extent than the one overhead of the listening seat.  The two overhead DTs gave a clean sound and some nice harmonic tones but the limiting of height is a drawback. With the forward Ceiling Cloud, the projection of instruments and voices is also weakened.

While the forward Ceiling Cloud was up, Sonic attempted a removal of the upper foam panels.  This picture is only representative:



I thought the forward Ceiling Cloud will allow this by removing any ringing, that the additional liveness from the removal of the foam will balance the effect of the two Ceiling Clouds out . It did not.  The upper front wall went HOooNK badly. The BOO! was again a Fail.

Music now had a pronounced overhang that made listening fatiguing given the smearing and overhang. The sound was clear and very alive though the overhang and smearing made adoption of this route of Tuning impossible.  It is the same thing happens when the lower foam pieces are removed.

Dejectedly Sonic put the foam back up.  It seems it might be a hard reality that these four pieces of foam need to be up on my front wall to control BOO! and HOooNK!  

When will Sonic be ever rid of this foam....?  

Following Michael’s principle I am working towards a simple system and the foam just complicates things and given my post of yesterday, foam adds a sound of its own. Nevertheless Sonic’s system is not that complex.

If you want complex, look at this: Mighty perplexing Tatsuyoshi Moriyama’s crossovers networks, readjust and returned home from Lenco Heaven 2016, Belgium. Design by Mr. Yoshiyuki Naganuma "Kanno seisakusho".



That’s my favourite the audiophiles – the great Japanese collectors and designers    

Sonic

Sonic spoke too fast about removing the overhead DecoTune

Last night, Sonic played Tchaikovsky’s Symphony 1 (Winter Dreams) – Moscow Radio Large Orchestra, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky cond. Melodiya Stereo LP.

The massed strings were hard, shrill and had a projection that was not like the real thing at all, though the bass was very realistic in scale and weight. Then a Purcell LP played next resolved the case clear – the room/system sound was better with the overhead DecoTune than without it.

Sonic quickly put the guitar stand + DecoTune contraption up on the BookCase Wall over my head and let settling occur by playing digital files. This evening, Sonic switched to LPs starting with the Melodiya disc played back at the same volume control setting.

Got to say the turntable in both cases settled by rotating for some hours and the cartridge warmed up by silent play of a “beater LP” as digital files were listened to (turntables and cartridges need settling to sound their normal selves).

This is more like it The strings now have the natural sheen of the real thing, the projective “edge”. Don’t get Sonic wrong, violins and violas have an edge when played and this “edge” give the instruments their projection, yet hifi systems distort this “edge”, either distorting it or shifting it in frequency to a place where it sounds electronic.

On the Symphony 1 LP, the bass is good enough, actually just as good as last evening. There is now no sense of tracing distortion when the orchestra goes loud. The sound of the strings and massed brass is more harmonically complex than Sonic observed last evening.

Any loss of soundstage height is irrelevant given that tone of the orchestra is now closer to what I remember Sonic hears in the Concert Hall.

A Question to Myself: Our hifi systems will never be perfect. Why do I not focus on what the system is doing right and not think about what the sound is short of

Conclusion: Sonic goes back to things as they are described in my post of October 7 on this thread. Michael’s instinct to ask about the Tune overhead and the result is spot on. No doubt about it now. Soon to make the fixture stable and permanent.

An Observation: Michael, Sonic sees the new pictures of you with the long beard – very distinguished.

Sonic

A Question to Myself: Our hifi systems will never be perfect. Why do I not focus on what the system is doing right and not think about what the sound is short of Question ?

Hi Sonic

A big lesson to learn. Every recording has it's own unique recorded code.

sonic

Conclusion: Sonic goes back to things as they are described in my post of October 7 on this thread. Michael’s instinct to ask about the Tune overhead and the result is spot on. No doubt about it now. Soon to make the fixture stable and permanent.

mg

Another step closer to finding the adjustments you can trust to control this variable hobby my friend.

sonic

An Observation: Michael, Sonic sees the new pictures of you with the long beard – very distinguished.

mg

Something I have also tried to fit in, in my life, is donating my hair. My hair has always grown extremely fast and I have grown it down to my feet before. Because of this I've grown it very long, then cut it off, then grown it very long again. As I have aged, I've tried to show pictures (for promotion reasons) that show the longer hair look. Around "08" I made a stupid move   , I didn't do a photo shoot before cutting and donating the hair. I could have kicked myself again and again but I couldn't glue it back on   .

Waiting for this latest crop to grow in has certainly changed the image. Hopefully the oldman Michael   doesn't shock too many  



photos taken 10/14/2016

I kinda like the Gandalf look for me as the older version, thanks for the comment

DecoTune Overhead Again – Day 3

This is better. The sound is again relaxing and musical. Notes played by instruments are sounding more complex – more than just a tone but a cluster of a fundamental + harmonics and occasionally sub-harmonics to make up a note that has character.

The room is a bit quieter. The bass has expansiveness. Bass guitar is not just a slightly metallic low note but each note, each string has their own tonal characteristics.

Playing a recording of Michael Haydn’s Divertimenti and Notturnos (Anner Bylsma, l’Archibudelli) and the sounds are rich and large without being overwhelming. By the way, that is Joseph Haydn’s brother, no mean composer himself.

The sound is more Here than There.

Sonic

A Question Sonic asked Michael in August 2014

Do the doors to our rooms isolate the room to some degree or is there no isolation at all?

This is a troubling idea -- the windows of our rooms open to the wide world...the other side of our listening room doors may open to all sorts of spaces or to the outdoors.

So are doors isolation devices or even if they are closed, the spaces beyond affect the sound?

Then if we live in an multi-storied building what about the apartments to above and below us?

The answer Michael gave to Sonic’s question: I have kept my door open so I can use the other space, but I don't always do this type of thing. Doors are usually great resonators, and using them as variable ports is cool, but it doesn't always work. They do some isolation depending on the door itself.

Remember last year when I stayed at the summer place? When I opened up the door to the outside and got it at the right angle my soundstage exploded in size. Huge side to side.

So are doors isolation devices or even if they are closed, the spaces beyond affect the sound?

Then if we live in an multi-storied building what about the apartments to above and below us?

all part of the fun

But

Your room is so big you have plenty of energy to play with in there.

DecoTune Overhead Again -- Day 6

Progress    It seems there are more harmonics -- while the benefits of this Tune can be heard throughout the whole frequency range, Sonic notices the size and weight of the acoustic bass particularly when bowed. I can feel sub-harmonics in some musick.

Also Sonic finds the sounds of the Viola and Cello playing alongside each other with overlapping ranges is very nice – the two instruments sound with different girths and sizes!

A move towards realism indeed!

Here are four fascinating pictures of a Japanese system that Sonic found at monoandstereo.com.



That room acoustic treatment is perplexing is it not?  Wonder what the music sounds like.

Sonic

Hi Sonic

Most of these systems sound like they look.