Tuning and Recordings

Michael has the unique experience of being and having been on both sides of the spectrum -- that of the recording side and that of the playback side. What I find fascinating about all this is that there are other acoustical designers and companies, who are a part of high end audio, who proclaim to also have been on both sides.


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Describing The Tune is one thing but describing tuning is yet another. Putting them both together, WOW Exclamation. I've never really heard or seen anyone taking the time to break down the "signatures" of a recording before. I'm not sure why unless the recording process and the companies doing the recordings don't realize that they’re even in a bubble type atmosphere when they’re recording. Confused Confused You should be. It is very confusing. Let me try to explain. When you record (or play back, as far as that goes), there is a unique signature that is laid down on that recording. Inside of this signature is a reference to every square inch of sound pressure that went on inside the recording environment. Now stop and think about this for a second. With all the over dubbing and effects that are done on a recording, that is an enormous amount of information. More info than you can imagine. Then all that info gets stored on a recorder that again has its own signature, or thumbprint of the recording. By the time we play it back, it is like a sonic puzzle waiting to be put back together. Here's the mind blowing part and I think the part that has never been talked about in high end or any other part of this industry and maybe it’s because they don't know themselves to tell you.

This puzzle of info has to be put back into order or as we say, tuned, before you can hear the vastness of information that was laid down and is now being retrieved and replayed. Isn't this completely amazing? See if you can get your arms around this. It’s heavy, but so practical. Now you can see why all this equipment that you buy sounds so different. You have probably never heard anyone tell you this before. If you had, you probably would have looked at the high end side of this hobby a little different.


What fascinates me most about Michael’s post, and which he does not say, is the question in my mind of why are these other high end acoustical companies and acoustics experts not realizing that we, as consumers on the playback end, are not able to put this puzzle of pieces of the recording together as they are intended to be heard? I have heard of high end show demonstrations where a live musician plays, is recorded and is played back on a high end system and how all the reviewers are wowed over how realistic the playback is compared to the original. But, look closely at what I said. I used the word “musician” and I just as easily could have used the words “simplistic music” because it’s really when you get into things like Michael is talking about, where things are multi tracked and over dubbed, where the problem comes for us at home to reproduce all that has been recorded.

When you use variable tuning as a method of playing back recordings, one of the challenges is to find those frequencies in the music which are missing or “diluted” in your system. This is the key to the puzzle Michael is referring to and every system, no matter how expensive, has these missing or “diluted” frequencies in them. And, the challenge of tuning is to bring these frequencies into a cohesive harmonic balance for the entire recording. This is what may sound confusing or may even sound “impossible to do” to most audiophiles. But, after my experiences with tuning, I can assure you that this is not an impossible task. It is a little like looking for a needle in a haystack with the “needle” being the key to unlocking the recording, but it can be found.

The point I’m trying to make about tuning is that this cannot be accomplished with “fixed” tuning methods. By fixed tuning, I am referring to products which come in one size, one value and which cannot be varied to tune in the frequencies or diluted portions of the recordings that are “missing” in our systems. That’s why I do not recommend dampening because dampening can only remove frequencies – it cannot restore or bring them forth in the music. As a matter of fact, we cannot restore anything that has been totally removed, so I use the term “restore” in a manner in which I am referring to what is already there, present in the recording, but is not able to be reproduced in any given “fixed” tuned system. Fixed tuning may restore one thing, but will leave or even take others out. Dampening converts energy into heat, so once the energy is transformed into heat, it is not going to be able to be “restored” or converted back into the correct sound frequencies or at least high end audio companies have yet to figure out how to reverse the transformation of heat energy into acoustical energy that our system can correctly reproduce. Either way, I have yet to see a dampening acoustical product restore frequencies that have been removed from the music. If the acoustical companies which make dampening products would just start making these dampening products “tunable”, they would have a better chance of helping audiophiles reproduce their music because at least then the user would have the option of what frequencies the user wants to deal with rather than a fixed frequency tuning product that some manufacturer builds but has no idea as to what environment the product will be used and what frequencies will be present or which ones will not.

But, mechanical energy is easily converted into acoustical energy just as electrical energy is easily converted into acoustical energy as we all know and experience from our current rooms and systems and which is why products like Sound Shutters, PZCs, Harmonic Feet, MTDs, and the tunable loudspeakers can give the types of listening experience that they do. We can maintain as much of the energy in the system as is possible with these types of products.

And, keep in mind the relationship between mass and the laws of physics. Mass absorbs and stores energy which eventually will get turned into heat. The higher the mass, the more energy will get stored in parts of a component and the more energy will get turned into heat. This is why we talk about using lightweight components so much here on TuneLand. They allow us to maintain as much energy as is possible that is in our system.

By the time the audio signal has been reproduced and reaches your ear, how much of it is still there in YOUR system? I know how much is left in mine, but do you know how much is left in yours or have you ever even thought about this? I say that I know how much is left in mine because I am still uncovering layers of information, through tuning, that I did not hear 4 or 5 years ago on the same recordings. And, I’m not just talking about “balance” of frequencies, but also the amount of information that is on recordings that I have that only variable tuning has allowed me to hear for the first time.

What an experience it is to take even one of my better recordings, tune that recording in, and sit back and listen to things that astound me even more than before when I thought I was really enjoying this particular piece of recording artistry. Bad recordings really don’t exist. Bad engineering does though and even that can at the very least be made enjoyable, it requires tuning in these recordings quite differently than your better recordings. Have you ever heard a recording that the engineer actually changed the polarity of the cables/wires in the recording process by mistake? And, have you been able to electrically and acoustically reverse this polarity anomaly in the recording using the tuning methods you currently use or do you only have the polarity button available to you on your CD player or the ability to swap the speaker cables? But, with variable acoustics, you can go much further in “restoring” this recording to sound as good as it can possibly sound. And, keep in mind that there will also be “parts” of the same track which may have been recorded using opposite polarities. This is why the whole playback phenomenon is what Michael refers to as a puzzle that we, as users, are left with to unravel and put back together. At least with variable tuning, we have our best shot at getting this puzzle put together properly or as best as can be done in our homes. With fixed tuning methods, you haven’t got a chance with these types of recording tracks with mixed polarities played back even close to being listenable and enjoyable.

Vinyl playback can be very enjoyable and I enjoy my analog front end, but it is a “compromise”, at best, for every recording in my collection. I would need a whole slew of turntables with different tonearms, cartridges, anti skate, VTA, azimuth, and SRA settings for each LP and each recording on each LP to just retrieve the information from the grooves properly and correctly. Now that would be real analog playback! But, it would also be for too expensive for me to be able to afford. It’s enough of a pain to have to get up every 20 minutes and flip over an LP album just to play the other side Very Happy, much less to readjust a tonearm for each LP. But, this is the only proper way to play back an LP. Otherwise, every analog setup is a series of compromises that the user must decide upon which he is willing to accept. This cannot be helped because, as users, we have no control over the recording process.

But, I do wonder what goes through the minds of high end manufacturers. Do they not realize how helpless we are as consumers and at the mercy of those who give us our music? We will always have to tune, just like a musician will always have to tune his or her instrument before a performance for each performance and each venue, but we will be able to tune a lot easier when the recording industry also adopts variable tuning in the recording process so that they at least give us a fighting chance with our systems at home unless, like turntables, we are willing to accept a set of our own chosen compromises for playback in our digital front end systems also. Personally, I want my music to sound "right" and I will take the time to make it enjoyable because when it's enjoyable, I am able to float away to another place wherever the music takes me and variale tuning is the only way to achieve this. The video industry is even farther along than the audio industry with tuning methods such as those employed through ISF calibration or the simple user setups to allow us to variably "tune" the picture setup of our TVs. Other industries have gotten this (auto, motorcycles, aerospace, instruments, telecommunications, ect.) and it's time the audio and music industries followed suit and realized that the only way to build products properly for consumers is through using variable tuning in the manufacturing process and in the end products.
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Jim Bookhard