Tuning -- a lesson in learning to trust yourself

Hi TuneLand,

As I learn more and more about the art of tuning, the more I rely on my intuition rather than on just implementing something I read or saw in a picture. When it comes to acoustics, you must understand the basics of acoustics, the products, and how they work. There is no doubt about this. But, you must also be able to rely on your intuition to tell you how to refine your room acoustics.

I have experimented with two pressure zones in my room for over a year now and have found that the treatment of these two areas was definitely needed. The only question I had was what to put there. For some reason, I thought that ultimately a Sound Shutter in each of these locations would do the job. The way that I found what these two pressure zones were doing was to experiment with Floor Standing 48" PZCs (one at each zone) and by "moving" these PZCs into various positions, I could tell exactly what the zones were doing.

Since I didn't have the two Sound Shutters I needed, I used two Echo Tunes instead at these two pressure zones. You can see the two locations for these in the following diagram of my room out to the sides of the listening position, on the walls in the following diagram layout:



I got my two Sound Shutters today and something inside me said, "That’s where they go". I called Michael and asked his advice, which is always interesting to say the least. But, it really didn't matter about what he said because something inside me just said, "That's the place". So, I "temporarily" mounted them, one at a time, allowing them to tell my ears and body what they were doing to the sound. Well, I mounted the left one first, and the left wall, which was pretty transparent before, totally "vanished". On the right, as you see in the above and below diagrams, there is a "corner" around which I temporarily mounted the other Sound Shutter. I heard a similar effect. What I was surprised about though was not the location, but the "angle" in which they were oriented in order to produce the most dramatic sonic change to my liking.

Once satisfied these were the locations I was going to settle on for using these Sound Shutters, I permanently mounted them to their respective wall locations. It turned out that each had to be angled exactly 45 degrees toward the rear of the room for best sonic results. The sonic results were:

•A virtual "dotted" line of sound, which previously surrounded me, no longer had "dots" in it and was completely filled in.

•The soundstage was all around me, taller, bigger and had no "limits" as to where it started or where it was going to expand.

•The sound was extremely coherent once I found the right angle which, as I said, turned out to be 45 degrees.


One phenomenon I have yet to experience acoustically in my room and that is the loss of bass as a result of changing or tuning my PZCs or Sound Shutters. I have significantly changed the bass and even "reduced" it temporarily by rack placement and component tuning, but not acoustically. In this respect, I have been very fortunate. I have even lost the "envelope" as a result of moving around acoustical products, racks, listening position, or component tuning, but have always got it back.

But, now the sphere of sound was complete -- height, depth, width -- I was sitting in the middle of a sphere of sound as a result of this one small addition to my listening room with no “dotted” lines in the sphere. One other change I made, and this was totally Michael's idea, and that was to move the Echo Tunes to two other locations, which I did and can be seen in the following new diagram layout.

The lesson here is "let go", understand the tools, and follow your inner feelings when you tune. If you are truly in touch with yourself inside, you will know what I mean. You can just "feel" what is needed and this is something which cannot be taught through books, but can be learned through trusting yourself and your inner feelings when you are tuning. And, if you don't believe something will work, always remember, it will not work. You must believe in yourself and what you are doing. The worst that can happen? Either way, you will learn something. If your idea does not work out, you will still have learned something of value in tuning. If it does, you will have started to master tuning. The point is learn to trust yourself:








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Jim Bookhard