Michael's System

I know that not every listener is able to be at home and have their system on all the time. My job however for the last several years and before off and on has been about the constant playing of music. I've had associates say boy he's pretty lazy and others then defend "no he's working" lol. It's true you come to my place any time in the last 30 years and if the music isn't on, and on all over you think something is wrong. When traveling, I even use to bring a mini system with me and setup in my room. Hearing music non-stop has taught me a lot and the guessing for me has become lessoned quite a bit because there is literally something about hearing it all. I don't mean this is the sense of all the equipment out there, cause to be honest that is something that for me has left the building in the high end sense. No I'm talking about sound itself and the sound of waves as they react to materials and conditions, and for me the biggie. The sound of pressure. Pressure not only out in the room or area but also the pressure in my own ear canels.

Inside of that canel is one of the biggest audiophile tweaks and we hardly ever look at it. Your canels are one of the most sensitive parts of your body it is in constant react mode, an amplifier with soft sounds, a protecter with load and a constant eq keeping you not only listening but also in control or making sure your body is able to balance itself while moving. Your ears are pressure miracles. They are the minds eye to space, are able to focus on sounds miles away like a camera and at a slpit second focus in all your brains activety on something inches away.

I have done so may experiments with both myself and workers over the years on how we effect the sound with our ears that it almost scares me to talk about it. I could see some analytical listeners out there never be able to listen again. Some of these tests are almost silly but have huge affects. I don't want to freak you out and ruin your listening tonight    but sometime when you are not going to get near your system make yourself burp or cough or blow your nose or put your fingers over your nose and pop your ears or yawn. No kidding, I've done this many times and maybe it is just me but I have been listening to a great session and yawned and the whole thing dulls out on me, and sometimes doesn't come back into open and clear for a while. there are other things I've had listeners do like turn around fast a few times then sit down and listen. Put your head between your legs and then try to listen after a while. All these things and a ton more will completely change a listening sesssion. Another, go take a shower, listen before you eat and after. Try to listen after going to a loud concert, or any concert without a break. Go listen outside to a marching band and go home and listen, drive in your car for 30 minutes and list goes on and on. Fact is there are so many things that can change the way your ear canels are receiving the pressure that if you do any of these and go directly into listening with your ears having a chance to find norm your listening is going to be way off.

If you learn how to work with your ear canels you can get to the point when you can tell if your hearing is with in the range of your personal norm, but in watching listeners I've seen very few actually practice good listening habbits. Do you know how many times I have gone to a listeners place or a show and people have thought I was a snob because I didn't go listen   . I'm trying to find "norm" so I give it a fair shake and their thinking I'm being whatever   . No, I've learned my "norm" and try the best I can to not play the guessing game, but instead wait till my ears feel right to me, and honestly sometimes that doesn't happen quickly. It very rarely happens in minutes for me, but when it does happen I can clearly hear it and very importantly feel it.

While writting this I wanted to experiment so just in the last 30 minutes I screwed up my own hearing by causing pressure in my ears by popping them. The first thing I noticed after doing this was even typing my head feels odd and irritated like someone is tapping on my head every time I hit the key. Next thing I noticed is the system went from warm to brittle in the upper mids and felt like I needed to turn it down for a while cause the sound was getting up inside of my head, like an echo inside of my skull. This could have easily happened in the listening room with a sneeze or cough or even clearly my throat. Am I too sensitive, maybe but this is the world I live in and I have come to notice just how sensitive not only pressure is in the room but also how my body and brain are a part of these listening events.

Hi guys

Well after 3 hours I went back in the listening room and things sound really warm and back to my norm. My ears feel relaxed and my listening mood is at a good place. I must say that the difference between when I was feeling the pressure on my ears and now the "norm", is a huge audio jump. I also have much more of a sense of fullness and can fall very quickly into the music and forgeting about the audio system. So much so that I had to try to think about getting my mind around writing this. I could have easily stayed in the room a while. Remarkable the difference between 3 hours ago and now. The sun will be going down in a couple of hours and I will attempt to remember to go back in and give a description.

Sitting here writting I also can think of directions I could go if I wanted to with the system and this particular recording. The interesting thing is this would not be done from a view of fixing but more of starting to explore different flavors and parts of the stage and focusing in on certain parts.

And a little while longer and as the nights darkness rolls in, not quite dark yet, even more of a difference though. It gets a little hard to describe cause I'm so use to the music but clearly there is a difference between day time listening and night listening.

A change of topics here but I want to thank my CES visitors for stopping by. Always nice to have you sit in my chair after visiting the show.

I think the most enjoyable part for me was seeing folks get up out of the chair and look behind them as if there were speakers in the back of the room. "no it's all coming out of those two tini things in the front".  

I think my headphonish stage took some by surprise and the fact that there was this big of a soundstage in this small of a room. "the room is full of sound" was the most common comment. I said as compared to what? "The stages of all the systems at the CES and Show were all in the front but sitting here it was all around me".

Sometimes it's really nice to hear how far from High End Audio I have come. And to be honest the set up to me is pretty so so cause I'm playing with some things. Would love to do a room at T.H.E. Show sometime.

Oh, and the faces when they see it is a Sherwood receiver. "That's a receiver right?" That's when I start to really smile and go downstairs outside and wait for them to come out and talk about it. It kinda goes, "so if I did this with my stuff it would do as good or better right?" My answer is why bother, sell your stuff get the receiver and spend your profit on music.

Sometimes I don't know if their happy that I showed them this or mad at me    I really do try to just have fun but so many have invested so much that they are almost going into a coma when they start thinking about all the money and years invested. At the same time I love seeing the newbies just wanting to sit there and enjoy. they have no idea nor do they care how little this cost, they are there for the music ride their friends told them they would have. It's always funny to me in a mixed crowd. Most people tell me they can't get their friends to stay and listen and I always have the opposite problem of them wanting to move in for a day or three. "just feed me under the door" their like   . I usually see 3 types of the ones who are glued to the chair. I'll go downstairs and come up after a while and their like eyes wide open looking around   or the ones that are like stone and don't look to be moving   then the third who is   .

What a hobby and I think someday it will get back on track and there will be a bunch of young listeners jamming. But we have got to let them know it doesn't have to be complicated and a fortune. My upstairs system that they listened to this week retail with all the tweaks would be about $2200.00-$2800.00.

Hi guys

Did a really fun configuration yesterday.

Well how can I even begin,

my system is clay in my hands. The bottom sounds pretty darn nice. Now it's time for the top tune.

After I put on the top tune I got my mind blown like everytime I have gone down this road in the past. I think it's very important that I offer gravity tuning and I do enjoy building transfer layers, but when I compare the two directly (top tuning vs no top tuning) it's kinda embarrassing. The resolution top tuning gives and the space is ridiculous    .  But let me point out again, if you do not have the lower tones where they are open you will be tuning in the mids and highs more than the bottom and you can run into trouble. It doesn't happen a lot for me to be honest cause I go after that bottom half right away. It doesn't have to be deep bottom it just has to be aligned.

After doing this I'm going to need to play cause the sound is actually too exact for me at the moment. I like a little slop with my music. I mean I enjoy listening to everything cut out like by lasor but for me It's almost too much. I'm going to spread the mid and upper harmonics out just a wee bit and add a warm bump to the bottom.

I'm tempted to let it settle more but last evening I got a fairly good idea where the system is going the Space Cones and AAB's in it. The 2 LT supports under were a success and this gives me a lot of confidence with all these combos.

One thing I left out was my coffee table design. Think I put drawings of this up somewhere. It's close to what I'm using now only raises things up a little higher. In my room I've been fortunate to have a nice high stage so putting in the higher design didn't distroy things but in the small room I don't think I want to go any higher than 12" to 14". I've become accustom to not looking at components in my rooms or at least having them low and out of the way. For me there's something clean about accoustical space being filled with only speakers and acoustical products if possible.

So, over the last several months I've had the chance to do a lot of different combos in the little room and haven't gotten stuck with any. There were times that I could see the balance tipping one way or another but it only took a little thought to get me back on path. The upstairs system is far easier to tune than the downstairs. I would have to say this is because of the wood vs tile floor. The upstairs gives almost an automatic stage if you do the basics. The tile floor needs all the wood it can get.

back to my current sound

Something that surpised me a little in the upstairs system with the redwood installation was the inner detail I gained with background vocals and air. You know how when we look/listen to air in the system it is kinda just there supporting the rest of the music? NOT, once again I can see that in every recording there is something very tangible in every square inch of the recorded space. Whether it be behind, off to the sides or in front there is no blank or even undefined sound in the stage. the Redwood has done this now with every system I have used it in when placed in the right spots in the system. It's almost like a magic stage filler. I'm sitting in my writting room listening to how nice and plump the sound is, that balloon about to pop sound. Recordings with snare drums are fantastic.

For some reason my rooms stage is almost perfect for listening to



I don't need to see a real size piano, this blown up version is just dandy with me. Vladimir known for playing lots of extra music in the studio gave us this great collection that was finally released in 93 by sony. These Horowitz "treasures" if you don't already have them were done between 62-72 (a great age in recording).

I know I need to get my butt outside today and sand or finish, but wanted to give a quicky about something that is rolling around in my head.

It gets mention on TuneLand but we always need to keep it in our thoughts when listening.

The industry plants in our heads so much how to stay away from vibrations at even being I tunee (the world of vibrations) we sometimes let it seep in and we stop realizing how the signal wants to show off and fully vibrate. I can promise you, if you have not yet found the magic of vibration mechanical, acoustical or electrical to it's fullest extent you are leaving music undiscovered. So much so that it will amaze and amuse you.

I was thinking about pressure boxes last night and was thinking about how GARP uses his SW10 subwoofer as one. I've found it to be a big help in bringing in the bass myself and at times have enjoyed it not hooked up as much as I did hooked up and playing. Not hooked up it even has more freedom to produce the vibrations.

When we think passive we can easily think non-playing but we should think of passive as "naturally" playing.

Ok, off to do some wood, but wanted to start this for me so if I get the brain flowing can come back to this thought which is extremely important in how we think of producing sound. We need to give passive it's due credit and learn how to use it.

In a perfect word all recordings would have the same musical cues and we would merely have to tune the system to a general sound. This is a myth that sends audiophiles on many of goose chase. I like to chase the music and not the system play it but more reveal it, but am I the "norm"? probably not   

In the last few posts I have mentioned how we and our bodies and our systems and our music all have their own variables. being aware of how variable we are can make huge plays as it comes to how we treat our systems. "signal is vibration, and vibration is sensitive" The slightest change can make the biggest difference to the sound. This is what I love, but it is also something that can get under the audiophile finger nails.

Here's something that might be helpful to keep in the back of the mind.

You know how I'm always talking about settle settle settle, well this is a huge key to great sound but most people don't listen to only one or two recordings a night and settling, although the best way to get the harmonics flowing, is many times something that should be thought of with each recording that has different constitutions as well as the over all sound.

let me explain

You put on a recording and it begins to cut it's signature pathway through the mechanical signal carrying conduits. Follow me? Every recording has a different language of vibration so everytime you put on something new it could sound very good with the system setup but you and I both know that something is different in the quality. Sometimes better than the recording before and sometimes we sit there saying "what happened". Many times if the piece of music we are playing before is simple then we put on something more complicated our systems seem like they are almost in shock. Or maybe it doesn't even need to be something more complicated, we just don't feel the vibratory connection and the music sounds like a new person just entered the room, not knowing the conversations content.

We look at our system and say "ok, now what do I do". Before jumping into change mode or judging mode stop and think a minute. I just put on a new piece and it may need to settle into it's groove like the last recording did.    I'm making that piece of music follow the same path that I have just created for the piece before, so I not only have to get it off of it's path, but the new piece also has to develop it's own space and dynamics. If the new piece of music does sound a little sterile and your going to start making moves (tunes) try this first. Go to something up chain and reset it. If you have a power strip, gentle raise it a hair and set it back down. I mean a hair, more like barely bumping it. Another thing you might do is, lift your top tuning and set it down again, just barely is all it takes.

A lot of times you don't have to do much to get a system to retrigger (reset) the harmonic flow. It may only take the slightest electron shake to begin the resettle. There are times I would reset all the transfer maybe a little or find the ones that work the best when resetting and go back to that one specifically and the magic is back. Remember our systems have always got gravity working on them and that means a force is pulling them down and never stops pulling on them. If you look at all the parts this is happening to and can picture the signal making it's way through the audio pathway it's not that far fetch to see that maybe what you are hearing is the signal is getting lost in someone elses path or having to work too hard to cut a new one.

Next time you get a little stuck when putting on a new piece of music think about what is contributing to the signals pathway both electrically and the other two and make a little change (reset) somewhere and see what it does to the music. My bet is you'll find a pet retrigger that you like and when you hear your music get that sterile sound you will be able to make this adjustment and save yourself days of looking at what you need to replace in your system   

Most importantly, get to know yourself and get to know your systems flow. Take the time to find out each "gate" and it's character.

Hi Michael

You are right about the difference in recordings and how the system goes into a kind of shock when going to a complex piece of music after simple ones.

I heard this recently when I was playing recorder musick for hours (at most complex it was an ensemble of recorders SATB), most of the time it was one recorder, usually an F instrument with a viol (cello) and clavecin accompanying. Then go to a Hindemith symphony and the system takes a while to recover. It sounds blatty and thin at first. By the end of one LP side, things stabilize but unfortunately the LP is over before full stabilization occurs. In a two LP set, the second sound nice. Anyway Sonic plays lots of stuff on a listening evening on a calm Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Usually I try to plan a programme of sorts covering a mix of baroque, classical, modern classical like Boulez, Cage and Stockhausen, jazz and occasionally rock. Not all on the same evening unless Sonic has time to listen from 7pm to 4 am. Which does happen happily.

Sonic will try the reset you recommend -- lift the mains strip just a fraction of an inch.

Sonic

This weekend was an interesting one for me. I was a little on the impatient side as I looked at all the wood products that I want to get done for everyone. I spent time listening in between sanding and finishing and curing. Mostly to guitar and piano on the mini mod. I drifted off into speaker world and played back in my head comments that folks have been making about speakers they would like to have. I got hung up on a couple of issues many based on amps they were using and it made me start looking for drivers to use. I have to confess that the ones I have tried over the past 3 years have made me dissatisfied in the newer designs and more wishing the old school offered more. The more I looked online the more my ears kept getting pulled into the room for a listen. I would then go back downstairs and do a little, then back up to the music and internet. As this was going on my mind started to piece together some thoughts, so I went to my saw and started cutting and looking and eventually playing. I went into my room and sat. That hardwood baffle board really does sound great and these simple drivers are able to come to life with it. Maybe my search for a driver was not that far away cause I was hearing things that really tickled me, and yes my search for the paper driver will continue, but it is fairly remarkable that this very simple poly does so much, esspecially when mated to the "real" wood.

you see

I want so bad to make a musical instrument, and although I love the sound of music ply my desire to listen to hardwood (soft wood really) is driving me mad. These latest platforms are taking my mind and ears to a place that is so musical it's hard to think of anything else. I had to do a search on a speaker that someone had brought up to me a couple of days ago. A speaker that recieves so much press and I have listened to it a few times and checked out it's design and materials used and also need for setup requirements, and honestly it about turned my stomach. So much money and so little return sadly. And what bugged me the most was the reference to these are built like instruments. A comment I made years ago, like roomtuning, and although people used the words the end results are nothing like a musical instrument. I worked with UMI and believe me a musical instrument is made to produce and amplify vibrations and create musical structures.

  

The more I read and listened and worked on the wood the more my mind started telling me that no one is going to invest in my speaker until they begin to truly understand and how far off is that, really? If they had a musical instrument in front of them would they even know it? The Music Ply 60 is probably the closest thing to an instrument and they need to be made again.

but

Even though I know this to be true and can make them even better because of the curing I do now and with this knowledge I am more intune, still this thing is in me that is screaming hardwood (both heart and sap) as it is in nature then voiced, it's something that speaks to me loudly.

i know

I know that if I make speakers from glueups there could be trouble, but what if I use a front baffle board that doesn't have the cracking problem, and what if the rest of the speaker was made from planks and by's? A speaker made of all grained wood.

  

What if the inside was tuned as well as the outside. Not over tuned (fixed) but done in a way that was variable, but practicle. A front baffle board that was the most fullrange wood and thin and had a support system of the sounds I have been enjoying in my tuning. Magic Wood, Brazilian Pine, Argentine Pine, Redwood (Low Tone). If I had this I would be in heaven.

I can hear the tone and music purity in my head.

Today, I began my speaker journey.

The 82's and 102's taught me a lot. And the Mini Mods got me to a more understanding place with baffle boards. The "big news" for me though is the recent combos of wood are giving something that makes this trip seem more realistic because there is something in that tone that I have never heard before and always wanted to. Something that is closer to the sound of music, the sound of "real" instruments. I'm wondering if maybe the reason why the last few speaker thoughts never set root, even though there was a finished pair of the 82 and 102 done, was because they didn't go far enough beyond the 60 sound to take me where I knew in my mind I needed to go. Those 60's are something else, but what am I hearing in those Platforms that takes me even further inside of this music? I have to know. Even if it stops with me, I have to know.

Today I took some of my pieces of voiced wood to the lumberyard and the guys were nice enough to let me do my crazy thing again. I was able to listen to many different planks, which if I decide to talk about my designing as I do it (don't know if I will) you will understand why this makes a difference. Anyway, this gave me a chance to compare tones and different pieces and types. I'm certain that I am on to something here but making the proto type speaker is going to tell me lots more.

Let me start with my idea for what I may call the Music 6.



I'm not sure this will end up being the driver/baffle configuration but it's where I'm starting. I'm also not sure anyone has ever done a 13.5" X 13.5" X 7.5" OD before, and I'm quite certain a 12" X 12" X .25" front and rear baffle has never been done. The concept is to build resonance much like a guitar or cello body, with the front and back sounding boards being bigger than the sides.

For those who say "no way, it will rattle"    , take a look at the front to back tuning bar. The baffle is also framed out giving it some independance from the side walls. The sides are attached to the baffle frame not the baffle directly. This design is all about transfer but doing it without dulling the front panel.

The front and back may be .25" but the sides, top and bottom are just shy of .75". The thickest part of the cabinet is 1.25" in the front and back corners with the sides dropping to inside of .75" and the front and back .25".

Well, I guess no one will really be surprised by this   but the music6's are taking on a life of their own. Today I was forced by the light rain to be inside, so while getting a room setup for finishing off some stuff, I began to play, and play, till the tone and tune started to lead me to a place that felt so much like an instrument that I sat there and had to pick my own mouth off of the floor.

The 6's are not suppose to be bookshelf speakers at all, but a combo of everything I've been doing. This didn't come together till I completed the first cabinet then every thing came rushing at me like a biblical dream. WOW   a real musical instrument. The drawings I did some time ago have stayed in my head and the sound of the 82's and 102's haunt me, but still there was something in my brain that said gravity, and I need to go beyond gravity.

The Low Tone has taught me so much and the light weight combos have been a dream and as this keeps playing in my head and home the parts and pieces keep jumping out at me to build something no one has come close to, or at least "this close to". I was pretty WOWed by the sound of this cabinet when the pieces actually got connected. This is something beyond what I have done in the sense that the dryness of the area as made these pieces create a tonality blend that even feels like a cello.

the tone

I can only describe the tone as the true tone of a musical instrument. It almost scares me to be this close, and I have to say if I wouldn't have heard those platforms I wouldn't have known what to do. I've been circling the camp for a long time but here it is, something I can feel and hear. If speakers would have been built this way all along this industry would be so different.

a look



These will of course sit on top of the matching platform (above) and I can't imagine making these without that platform.

Now I'm mad   

People who don't know me or see me do it can't really get what I do when I follow the transfer path. Sometimes you can do it by looking but as you put things together they start to speak and tell you how they want to work. As I was putting the music 6 together I started to feel like "darnit", these aren't going to work in my room, but that's my luck   . I need to listen so nearfield (my choice) that the door is going to be in the way of me making the move I want to, at least on the right speaker. I'll work around it (always do) but the way I'm seeing things and hearing them the music6 is probably going to want to transfer out the side tuning boards instead of the bottom tuners. I could be wrong about this but probably not. This means that the speakers tuning bars will probably go, one at the top right under the main cab then half way down will be two bars, then at the bottom back to one bar with the legs being attached on either side of that bar. This of course will be something figured out in the listening but in my tapping test watching the flow this is more than likely the way to go.



Also make a note: those having me do platforms might want to have me make the bottom supports for the spikes into planks instead of smaller boards. I've switched from internal angles to squares, and now for platforms over the small sizes from squares to Brazilian planks. This gives you more tone and flexibility. Platforms under let say 20" X 20" your cool with the squares but over that go with the planks.

Ok, take a look at these transfers. below is a side view

I drew in the bars with dots so you could see them.

Hi Guys

here's my world the last couple of weeks

dry/sand/finish/cure

dry/sand/finish/cure

dry/sand/finish/cure

And, do a little posting on Stereophile   

But tonight it felt so good to put on this generic smooth jazz recording and smile. What I was pleasantly surprised with is it didn't sound half bad. Usually that digital top end in many mod-jazz recordings is so sterile that it sounds like cans being dragged behind a car after the wedding, but not listening to this type of music in a while shocked the heck out of me as I could hear the redwood and my window cover made out of music ply take over some of the sound. Even songs that had that over the top digital convertion that took place back in the early 80's through mid 90's was almost listenable (almost). OR, is some of this because I have not listened to this for so long that when I did play it, it was on other CD players?? Has the warmth of the maggie improved things that much? Whatever the case I have to admit a music form I have not visited in a long time has kinda got my ears in a happy place.

Does this mean I might even break out the Shefield Labs? Hmmm

This week started out in listening "I don't know", and ended up with smiles    

I'm not sure why my ears never went down the REO Speedwagon trip before but to me there is a certain group of bands that for some reason I viewed but never really fell into their trap.

Being in a live concert mood was the best thing that ever happened to REO in my collection.



At first I started off with this thin no account sound that I was probably going to be moved on from until I hear a splash of something that caught my attention and made me decide to use it as a settling CD. I'm glad I did   

About a half hour ago I put my second recording of their's on. Will I like it? I have no idea but the live recording once settled moved me into the crowd and that was a nice trip.

A long exhausting week, and looking at my system thinking about what I need to do to test some things is too much for me to proccess right now. For the last week I've kinda been letting the system play the music and to be honest with every CD I keep thinking I'm getting further from my personal happy zone. I have a list in my mind to do and tweak, and I know what will happen when I do it but do I want to make these big jumps (do I have the energy). So instead I've let the system acted like any other and let it tell me what it wants to sound like. I read the Stereophile forum and can see the limits in the systems there and talk to people and see the limits and decided enough is enough. I didn't make systems to play the music, I made systems to let the music play.

First I started with Dark Side then after letting it burn in my taste changed and I needed my Bowie. Oh no, your going to go from Pink F to DB    Yep, right into the fire with David's "Tonight".



He made two recordings with this same style "Let's Dance" and "Tonight". If you put either one of these on you may like the music but things will sound Mid-Fi Popish unless you tune in the codes. They are recordings that one, you must have the bass, and two, you must have a liquid stage. If not they will sound like two flattened tin cans and at first that's what I had. Try either of these on your typical high end system and watch the systems fall apart into a tinky tanky sound. Having a chance to hear them though in the "tunable room" and tuning them in I know the magic they have and if you even get a piece of it there is a richness hidden inside of the effects that can put you in a state of headphonish madness. When you arrive it's impossible to leave your seat unless you can't accept that this is audiophile listening cause it is outside the box. You see audiophiles want us to stay in the box but we know better   . We know that the box is only one choice and if a recording is tuned into it's code it comes to life in a way we don't hear the industry talk about. Finding the code is by far my favorite way to listen and as much fun as it can be to recording jump, finding the code is a new chapter.

Reading sonics posts I see he has been playing the block game, a fun one indeed and one I enjoy as well obviously. As I sat there listening my mind was telling me to explore under the transformer. I had it voiced with Magic Wood and was getting ready to go outboard with the transformer but before doing this I wanted to learn more tricks for those not wanting to make the outboard jump. For me I go back and forth from one style of listening to another trying to put myself in as many tuning situations as I can so if I meet someone at a particular state of tuning I have some idea of where they are. So seeing where sonic, Andy and Bill are before I jump outside I changed out the Magic Wood for a LT Block (it fits perfect in the space BTW) and KA-POW, liquid. And the bottom dropped way past where it was.

Hi TuneLand

Wanted to give you the news that the TuneLand archives are back up and running.

www.tuneland.info

enjoy the reading   

Hi Guys

Having a fun time with Harold at my place. This morning was some live recordings and now we have moved on to Robin Trower (Bridge)   .

Last night I was pulled into the sound a couple of times and had to change the music or there would be no sleep. I switched to Debbie Harry, but in a different way than people usually think of her (blondie).



This recording is a blast, a twist from typical jazz but serious jazz none the less.

Today is back to some music I can test the space on so I can get ready to check some really light weight LT Redwood.

Harold should be here any minute   

Oh oh Alabam



This week I'm playing with some different flavors of LT Redwood Tuning Blocks from some pieces of wood that was so dry that it was actually dry rotting. Pretty crazy really on one side it is dry rot, then goes into light, and then darker red. Weird to look at but it seems that the range is even bigger than the ones that are more one color. I will be testing these against some pure light weight ones to see how it goes.

Harvest is sounding pretty dag gone good right now but there is more to come in the next couple of days.

Hi Guys

Been a fun week of listening, and now I'm ready to dive into some of your threads and see what's been going on.

  

Thanks Michael and Harold for help Sonic get a better idea of what a Tuned system sounds like by referencing Harvest. Sonic now has some kind of picture in my head why people who hear Michael's system are stunned beyond words.

Thanks Sonic

You know what's funny, I threw on Neil cause I couldn't find my Johnny Cash "when the man comes around". Harold heard this sounding great on some high end systems and I wanted to show him the difference this Cash recording does when going more 3D. I didn't know Harvest was going to go so 3D, but was glad to hear so much diversity that I never really explored before.

I think this is why I may spend so much time on one recording. There are so many angles to look at, and it is like each part of them, if you let play long enough, will expose all these inner secrets. I also like when the system settles and changes cause it brings out different instruments to feature if you know what I mean. I'm so use to it that I really don't mind when a system is in an inbetween settling moment cause I know this is a sign of it heading somewhere and this can be as fun as the end result to me (if there ever is an end result). Like right now on Harvest I'm hearing the sound go from extremely analytical to a fuller range sound, where the mid harmonics are moving in and taking over. The acoustic is going from strings to body. If I would have been wearing my audiophile hat at the time it started to change I would have tried to fix something, but because I let it go I now am hearing this ultra smooth version of "a needle" where two days ago it was more of a super focused version, but to me was wanting a little body that I now have. All the songs sound different then two days ago, and that's ok with me. I understand and accept the moment aspect and respect it for what it is and enjoy it. I have become a move ahead type of listener over the years and enjoy not so much going back to a sound but more explore new "adventures" I call them. Like, I have had a blast hearing these Speaker Platforms (will be talking about this) breaking in cause in doing so I'm hearing Neil's playing from so many different tones and shapes and it's wonderful to get the different moods out of this. Which one is real? Who cares, they're all on the recording and all fun.

Hi Listeners

If you remember a while back I talked about the difference in the way each of us hear. The last 4 people who have listened to my system in my little room I noticed that I have a listening pattern that was different from all 4. It almost scared me, but then became a cool thing to put in my book of recall. It was all space related and I learned that I have a sweet spot that I tune to that I didn't know about cause it was me listening to suit me and not others listening the way I do. I'm not sure if I do this in bigger rooms but in my last 3 smaller rooms when bringing the stage over and past my head and into the back, for others listening it's a fine line between the sound being all around and the vocals and parts of the stage actually being behind the listener. What's interesting is this is a vertical thing I am doing as well as horizontal. As you know I like to be in the soundstage as to me this sounds more "correct" than a frontal only stage. Frontal only to me is a little limited when it comes to movement and flow. I always look at the front stage thing and it doesn't take long before I feel disconnected with the real world. I feel like the world is going on and I'm making this little space to live in, instead of the recording become a part of the real world, which to me adds much more of a sense of being there. I want to feel the artist being in the next room, then me being in the same room, then me being inside the recording itself. So even though I have made my sound so that I can successfully listen to it wherever I am, I also in my smaller rooms have made a sweetspot that is specific to my ears. Interesting  This isn't good or bad just something I noticed.