Bill333's System

MG steps in, sees Bill's up to something, hears Bill talk about an increase in soundstage, mg smiles and quietly leaves the room so Bill & Sweet Pea can listen in peace.

Good Job Bill   

any pics?

  

I've been listening to the TP21 for a few days now and have come to the following conclusions:

• If this amplifier isn't perfect, it's close enough to it as makes no difference.  I've never heard a clearer, more three dimensionally resolved amplifier in my system, or any other.  I believe I'm done looking for amplifiers.
  
• This amplifier sounds so good and is so easy to tune that I feel like a master of tuning.  A few simple moves, and you're there.
  
• It likes being suspended by three points - two at the back on the bridge where the circuit board goes out to meet the rear panel, and one at the front center.  For top tuning, I've had good luck using the blunt end of the tuning rod on the little heat sink in the middle of the board.
  

I don't know what this amplifier sounds like on other speakers, but on the 60s it has great control and authority throughout the frequency range.  I really think this is going to be a tuning standard, like the Magnavox.

When I was initially working with it, I was impressed with the sound, but thought it was missing some 'magic' in terms of listener involvement.  Since then, I've found that once you get the tuning right it's a stone groove.  I was listening last night to the Donovan Greatest Hits album (highlighted by Michael, above).  I knew I needed to go to bed, but I ended up listening to the entire album twice through because I just had to hear one more song...

Hi Bill & Tunees

pics required   

It's really hard to describe how it makes me feel when someone reaches a high point in their listening. My mind flashes back to hearing the quads upstairs with I think Red Wine and I believe Altmann (not sure) very untuned and very far from anything real (this was my view). Sound was in the speakers and there was a grouped line of frequencies that gathered in the middle of the stage horizontally. Although like with all stereo there was a fun sound with this and all the systems I have heard Bill bring in or send to me, but is this where the hobby ends? Bill has always talked about this certain sound, a pace to the music and emotion. Circling the camp a few times I have seen that excitement on his face, the hope that one day it will arrive. As we have worked much on the tone of his mechanics, and electrical there was always still something that was not lining up that I could hear in his voice and see on his face. Even though I have watched him grow tremendously as a listener there was still that thing that I knew he was needed to hear that would spell success. The fact that Bill is now tuning in the sound is a majorly different Bill that started years ago. He has become reborn and if the force is with Luke, I think the tune is finding Bill.

There are very few hobbies that we have a chance to experience that are so involved like the audiophile experience. Our minds tell us that there is an absolute sound out there, and it is somewhere in the recordings we pull off our shelves. Somewhere is the magic combo of parts and pieces and when they are found and tuned into harmony this magical place is there for us to explore. A love affair of connection to the artists as if they are sending us their own privite invition to their thoughts and message. There is nothing like it.

These messages I have found inside of the elegance of the simple. Simple takes on a new meaning to us who find the tune and learn how to use it. It's a form of purity in motion exquisite, beautiful, delicate and intricate. There's a sense of excellence and perfection in the simple. A sensitivity to discriminate and detect the most subtle nuances. The audio signal is a playground and when we are able to play with, nothing can stop us.

Nothing makes me happier than being a part of the discoveries we find within the tune. Pure, simple and telling.

  

being the master of your own system my friend, very proud of you

Here's some pictures of my setup:

Heellllooooo,

MG falls out of his seat   Followed by OH MY  Will Watson move over so I can move in  

This looks absolutely beautiful.

MG crawls back to his seat and attaches jaw back to skeletal structure.

Hi Bill333

Remarkable! This set up makes Sonic speechless.....the simplicity and the size of the TP21 and wiring in your system   

Congratulations!

Sonic

Hi Michael and Sonic,

I'm a little surprised you guys are so impressed.  Especially since there's a completely unnecessary component sitting in the middle of the system.    

Brownie points to anyone who can pick this component out of the pictures.

Hi Bill333

Its the simplicity of the TP21, how a digital amp can output 25W from something so small and what you are hearing. Yes, do elaborate what is the assembly in the middle for. I looked again and the cables can reach from the Magnazox to the Topping.

Sonic

Hi Sonic

Bill's using a extra set of volume controls. One of the mysterys "archer" has for us, but I have a thing about balance controls. Bill may have another reason but I have always found a lot of recordings leaning slightly to the left or right and I like the ability to do something about it rather than tuning the whole system.

But I'm interested to hear the story behind the mystery parts.

even so, isn't that setup sexy?

Who would have ever thought the maggie would be the biggest component in a system.

Hi Michael

It looks like the essence of the Simple System, which why I congratulated Bill333.

But why 4 pots?

I initially thought they were some sort of connector to extend cables that were not long enough.

I too like balance controls but not when implemented as R/L pots. That is the lazy way. Between a real balance control and twin pots, I prefer no balance control. But Sonic's ears agree that most recordings a just a spot off to the right or left.

Still Sonic thinks Bill333 has got something exceptional.

Sonic

Michael has been helping me out over the phone in my efforts to learn how to tune the room. I haven't been posting very frequently, so many of you may wonder what I've been doing with my room and my system. The truth is, I keep music playing in it 24/7 but I tend to get the tuning to a good place and then just leave it there for long periods of time.

Several days ago the feeling came to me that I could be enjoying my music more if I made some changes to the system. (Audiophilia!!) Harold (Coop) had visited a couple weeks ago, and he had made significant changes to the center panels in the tunable room walls. I wasn't sure if I liked what Harold did or not, but it was time to either leave it where Harold put it, put it back the way it was, or find somewhere in between that I like better.

Harold had loosened every screw in the four panels at the center of the walls to the point where the screw heads were no longer touching the wood - very loose! So I started by tightening up one panel and listening with Michael guiding and advising me over the phone. The album was Abbey Road, and I listened to Sun King over and over again to track the crickets and the sound of the various instruments. With some modest tightening I discovered that the volume and the sense of presence of the various instruments had increased.

After doing a couple of panels like this, I lucked into an acoustic I hadn't heard in years - the intense voice echo. All of a sudden, it sounded like my voice inside the room was coming back to me concentrated and amplified. Music sounded louder and more dynamic, but it was speaking inside the room that was the real shocker. My voice sounded much more prominent than in any ordinary room, but with a harmonic richness added to it. The last time I heard this effect was at Bill Wilkins' tunable room in Michigan many years ago. The acoustic in Bill's' room was far deeper than mine (it had at least 4 times the volume) but the 'voice of God' effect I heard there was the same phenomenon taken several steps farther than what I've achieved in my room so far. Things to work on...

Hi Bill333

I had a problem with "over ambience" in my room. Is this what you are getting?

Tell me, how are your Sun King crickets -- where do they start, how big are they and what is the arc they trace across the room?

You'll see Sonic has been having some adventures though I wish I had a Harold visit with Michael on the phone and my room will be done/maxed out in under a day rather than this years-long trek I am having to do.

Sonic

Also wanted to make a comment. I'm happy to hear Bill has been playing Traffic "low spark of the high heeled boys".

This is another great spacial recording and adds to the cool facter

Hi Sonic,

No, I don't think it's 'over ambience'.  I don't perceive the effect as unpleasant and it doesn't seem to be harming the music.

As far as the crickets go - well, that's been all over the map.  I've made scores of adjustments to the main panels on the walls, and it seems like the crickets are different almost every time.  In the best case scenarios, they start at the right rear corner and progress more or less smoothly in a wide circle all the way to the left rear corner.  More often, they get stuck somewhere on the left side of the room and don't make it all the way.  I haven't been able to really correlate what I'm doing with the panels to the behavior of the crickets.  Really, I just fiddle with the screws on a panel and then see what happens.  Sometimes the crickets are better, most times worse.  But when they go bad, they usually fix themselves if I let things settle for 10 minutes.

I think getting help from Michael would be a really good idea for you.  He seems to have a knack for figuring out what's going on, even though he's on the other end of the phone.  Maybe you could arrange a phone call with him?

Those darn crickets

Practice makes perfect doesn't it

One thing though is could you paint the picture for us of the crickets at their best again. I don't want people thinking the corners wouldn't let them go.

Also give an update.

I should probably have been more specific about some of the better cricket behavior.  There were times when the crickets faded out into the distance on the sides as well as times when they curved around to the back corner.  Sometimes images sound close to the walls, while other times they can extend quite a bit beyond the walls.

Overall, I've been pretty happy with the results of my room tuning.  There has been a general movement towards a bigger, more relaxed sound.  Images and halos are quite large with well-defined detail.  The distortion in the high frequencies, which has been the Achilles' heel of this system since the beginning has never been less and on most music is really not noticeable unless you're looking for it.

At this point, I'm going to let things settle a while and just listen to some different albums...

Hi Everyone,

It's been a while since I posted and a lot has been happening, so I'd like to bring people up to date.  As you may know, Michael has been working on a second version of the room designed to fix the issues I've been having with 'cement sound' getting in to the structure, as well as take advantage of the new low tone redwood that Michael is making.  The floor is now ready and will be shipping any day now, so my current room had to be disassembled to make way for the new floor, and eventually the new walls and ceiling of what will be Bill's tunable room 2.0.  The upshot of it is that I no longer have a room or a system and I won't for at least another several months.   I thought I would be able to set up a temporary system in the loft, but my wife is having none of it.  So I really have no stereo system at all.

The good news is that this has given me a chance to review where I've been and where I'm going with audio for the last year or two.  The short and long of it is that I really have not found what I'm looking for.  My posts on this thread tend to highlight exciting moments and major 'finds', but the larger truth of the situation is that I have spent far more time reading books, watching TV, and playing video games than I ever did listening to music.  I really do love music, so why the disparity?  The truth is that I got excited about the sound I was getting from time to time, but it never really held me for more than a couple days.  Something has been missing.

A few pages back, I wrote that 'If this amplifier [the Topping TP21] isn't perfect, it's close enough to it as makes no difference'.  I'll stand by that statement, but the problem is that for my listening tastes perfect amplification may not be what the doctor ordered.  The combination of the Topping and the Magnavox is like a magnifying glass that lets you see every minute detail of the recording, but that picture show just wasn't enough to keep me coming back after a while.  The interesting thing about it is that this effect has been constant for quite a while and over a range of very different amplifiers.  There are three main amplifiers I've used over the last two years: the Topping TP21, the Sherwood, and the Elekit TU-879S tube amp.  The Topping is a class D digital amplifier, the Sherwood is a  nicely implemented solid state circuit, and the Elekit is a single ended pentode tube amp.  Three completely different amplifier topologies, but the same results in terms of listening enjoyment.  Maybe more important is what hasn't changed during that period: the Magnavox.

So I about jumped out of my chair when I read this over on Michael's thread:

Quote :

One thing about digital for me is, when it crosses over into sterile and tilted I lose my interest quickly. The Maggie version does a great job of complementing other components and speakers and other conditions whereas the FUNAI makes it's statement a little more known. Call me mellow yellow, but as time marches on the ole ears want to take it easy on the highs and lean toward warmth and for me even to the point of lush with that very believable body that the 2100 and 2300 provide.

Even though I enjoy the FUNAI the Maggie is like coming home to a nice cozy fire on a winter day. For myself it's the best digital I have ever heard.

If you just substitute Magnavox for 'FUNAI', this statement really reflects exactly how I've felt about the Magnavox from day one.  I love the resolution, but there just isn't enough warmth there to keep me interested.  (For 'Maggie', substitute - something else, I don't know what.)

Maybe something about my taste in musical instruments can throw some light on this.  A few years ago, I had an interest in learning to play the guitar.  Ok, it was mostly brought on by playing Rocksmith   , but after  a while I thought it would be nice to have an acoustic.  I spent months going around to different guitar stores, playing and listening to dozens, if not hundreds, of guitars.  Most of them I found unappealing, including nearly all of the most expensive ones.  Martins may be appealing to some folks, but they really don't do it for me.  Then one day, I saw a funny looking brown guitar on the wall and decided to give it a listen.  Within 30 seconds, I knew I had to buy it.  It had a richness of tone, a depth, and a purity of sound that I had never heard before.  I didn't even know what the name of it was until after I got it home, but it turned out to be a Breedlove Mahogany Passport:



If you know guitars, you know that mahogany is the warmest sounding of all the woods commonly used for guitar construction.  The warmth and richness is really key to what I enjoy about the sound of that guitar.  I still don't know how to play, but I keep the guitar in a common area of the house and every couple of days, I sit down and strum some chords or pick out a simple tune.  I'm not really playing music, but the sound of the guitar itself is so pleasant that I keep coming back to it again and again.

I'm thinking that that is the kind of sound that I need in my system to keep me coming back day after day.  The question is, how to get that without sacrificing other areas of the sound?  I want both warmth and musicality, but at the same time I hate it if I feel like anything is being veiled from me.  As an aside, this is the reason I've never liked preamps.  I always feel like I'm one step closer to the music when I take one out, but I crave the tonal richness and solidity that a good preamp gives.  I'm not sure how to resolve that.  If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them.

Hi Bill

My take might be slightly different, but while reading the first thing that popped into my head is the feeling I get when I move from the bottom floor of a house to the top. I'm speaking some about wooden floor joists, but even in my moves from 10th floor apt to that penthouse, the times I did this in my life everything changed as if someone handed me an extra chapter of warmth. This has happened to me in homes and condos alike. I can get the magic to happen on the bottom floors but it's much easier to take advantage of lightest part of a building.

It is indeed a great sounding guitar.

Bill333 wrote:

Hi Everyone,

It's been a while since I posted and a lot has been happening, so I'd like to bring people up to date.  As you may know, Michael has been working on a second version of the room designed to fix the issues I've been having with 'cement sound' getting in to the structure, as well as take advantage of the new low tone redwood that Michael is making.  The floor is now ready and will be shipping any day now, so my current room had to be disassembled to make way for the new floor, and eventually the new walls and ceiling of what will be Bill's tunable room 2.0.  The upshot of it is that I no longer have a room or a system and I won't for at least another several months.   I thought I would be able to set up a temporary system in the loft, but my wife is having none of it.  So I really have no stereo system at all.

The good news is that this has given me a chance to review where I've been and where I'm going with audio for the last year or two.  The short and long of it is that I really have not found what I'm looking for.  My posts on this thread tend to highlight exciting moments and major 'finds', but the larger truth of the situation is that I have spent far more time reading books, watching TV, and playing video games than I ever did listening to music.  I really do love music, so why the disparity?  The truth is that I got excited about the sound I was getting from time to time, but it never really held me for more than a couple days.  Something has been missing.

A few pages back, I wrote that 'If this amplifier [the Topping TP21] isn't perfect, it's close enough to it as makes no difference'.  I'll stand by that statement, but the problem is that for my listening tastes perfect amplification may not be what the doctor ordered.  The combination of the Topping and the Magnavox is like a magnifying glass that lets you see every minute detail of the recording, but that picture show just wasn't enough to keep me coming back after a while.  The interesting thing about it is that this effect has been constant for quite a while and over a range of very different amplifiers.  There are three main amplifiers I've used over the last two years: the Topping TP21, the Sherwood, and the Elekit TU-879S tube amp.  The Topping is a class D digital amplifier, the Sherwood is a  nicely implemented solid state circuit, and the Elekit is a single ended pentode tube amp.  Three completely different amplifier topologies, but the same results in terms of listening enjoyment.  Maybe more important is what hasn't changed during that period: the Magnavox.

So I about jumped out of my chair when I read this over on Michael's thread:

Quote :

One thing about digital for me is, when it crosses over into sterile and tilted I lose my interest quickly. The Maggie version does a great job of complementing other components and speakers and other conditions whereas the FUNAI makes it's statement a little more known. Call me mellow yellow, but as time marches on the ole ears want to take it easy on the highs and lean toward warmth and for me even to the point of lush with that very believable body that the 2100 and 2300 provide.

Even though I enjoy the FUNAI the Maggie is like coming home to a nice cozy fire on a winter day. For myself it's the best digital I have ever heard.

If you just substitute Magnavox for 'FUNAI', this statement really reflects exactly how I've felt about the Magnavox from day one.  I love the resolution, but there just isn't enough warmth there to keep me interested.  (For 'Maggie', substitute - something else, I don't know what.)

Maybe something about my taste in musical instruments can throw some light on this.  A few years ago, I had an interest in learning to play the guitar.  Ok, it was mostly brought on by playing Rocksmith   , but after  a while I thought it would be nice to have an acoustic.  I spent months going around to different guitar stores, playing and listening to dozens, if not hundreds, of guitars.  Most of them I found unappealing, including nearly all of the most expensive ones.  Martins may be appealing to some folks, but they really don't do it for me.  Then one day, I saw a funny looking brown guitar on the wall and decided to give it a listen.  Within 30 seconds, I knew I had to buy it.  It had a richness of tone, a depth, and a purity of sound that I had never heard before.  I didn't even know what the name of it was until after I got it home, but it turned out to be a Breedlove Mahogany Passport:



If you know guitars, you know that mahogany is the warmest sounding of all the woods commonly used for guitar construction.  The warmth and richness is really key to what I enjoy about the sound of that guitar.  I still don't know how to play, but I keep the guitar in a common area of the house and every couple of days, I sit down and strum some chords or pick out a simple tune.  I'm not really playing music, but the sound of the guitar itself is so pleasant that I keep coming back to it again and again.

I'm thinking that that is the kind of sound that I need in my system to keep me coming back day after day.  The question is, how to get that without sacrificing other areas of the sound?  I want both warmth and musicality, but at the same time I hate it if I feel like anything is being veiled from me.  As an aside, this is the reason I've never liked preamps.  I always feel like I'm one step closer to the music when I take one out, but I crave the tonal richness and solidity that a good preamp gives.  I'm not sure how to resolve that.  If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them.

Hello Bill

I enjoyed reading your letter but had to take pause at one of your comment's, " perfect amplifier, or close to perfect " .
I'm sure you meant it as a figure of speech as we all know the perfect amp or for that matter perfect component doesn't exist. I like to think of it more as, the amp is a good fit for the system, room, type of music being played, expected volume level etc. Over the past 35 odd years I've run the gauntlet of amplifier choices and technologies. In the main system I'm on my four generation of Mark Levinson amp, currently using a #532. There's just something about the firm but not over bearing quality of bass. It makes all other amps I've tried in the main system sound a bit unmoored in comparison. That being said the Mac MC2000 that is being used in my vintage system is close to ideal in the tube based system, and the Ayre integrated works well in system number three ( garage system ). I spent countless hours finding just the right components for each system but when one of these amp's is switched to one of the other systems it's easy to see/hear it's faults.
I guess my point is, no matter how good an amp is it's nothing without the right associated equipment and set up in a room thats correspondingly tuned.

Regards Tim

Quote :

Hello Bill

I enjoyed reading your letter but had to take pause at one of your comment's, " perfect amplifier, or close to perfect " .
I'm sure you meant it as a figure of speech as we all know the perfect amp or for that matter perfect component doesn't exist. I like to think of it more as, the amp is a good fit for the system, room, type of music being played, expected volume level etc. Over the past 35 odd years I've run the gauntlet of amplifier choices and technologies. In the main system I'm on my four generation of Mark Levinson amp, currently using a #532. There's just something about the firm but not over bearing quality of bass. It makes all other amps I've tried in the main system sound a bit unmoored in comparison. That being said the Mac MC2000 that is being used in my vintage system is close to ideal in the tube based system, and the Ayre integrated works well in system number three ( garage system ). I spent countless hours finding just the right components for each system but when one of these amp's is switched to one of the other systems it's easy to see/hear it's faults.
I guess my point is, no matter how good an amp is it's nothing without the right associated equipment and set up in a room thats correspondingly tuned.

Regards Tim

Of course.

Hello Bill333

Good wishes for 2015!

I am glad to read your post which is a counterpoint to my experience. Right now Sonic is enjoying musick in my system and in the recent days I been listening to much more musick (analog mostly as it has become my primary medium) in any 24-hour time space than I can remember. I have Mr Green to thank for this!

Tell me about your experience with Martin Guitars – did you try the Herringbone HD-28V? Also how would characterize Mahogany compared to Rosewood?

I find my HD-28s with Rosewood back and sides sound very deep yet with a bright treble than make for a wonderful guitar, more harmonically complex compared to the Mahogany D-18s. But I find the Martins a bit harder to play without a lot of rehearsal time and exercise compared to my Taylor.

In a performance, I find myself being a bit more reserved with the Martins and more running at the edge of my ability with my Taylor. I dunno something tells me I might go further in playing musick with a spruce top/rosewood back and sides Taylor dreadnaught… but somehow I love that Martin sound. Is it because I see CSNY playing D-45s, Johnny Cash with his heavily inlaid D-28, Martin Carthy with his bashed up 000-18?

I tried jammin’ with a Gibson J200…it sounded heavy and I had to work hard to get sound out of it….I think of Rev Gary Davis’ records…how did he play like that when Sonic doesn’t think he could have changed strings every week?

Sonic

Hi Michael,

I have no doubt I'd have better tonality if I put the room up in the second floor loft of the house.  Unfortunately, my wife is never, ever going to let that happen so the basement is what I have to work with.  Even if I could, the loft has no soundproofing from the rest of the house, so I wouldn't be able to keep music on 24/7 like I do downstairs.  And it's  a much more distant run from the electrical box.  So nothing is perfect.  I do think the new underfloor suspension of the room will go a long way towards solving the high frequency problems I've had.  Hopefully, that and the redwood framing will introduce a warmer tonality in general.

In any case, I'm not entirely sure that this is only about warmth.  If it was, it could be easily fixed with room correction software in the digital domain and I may give that a try at some point just to see what kind of difference it makes.  The biggest part of the problem is that I have no 'known good' standard to compare with, so I am really just guessing at what the problem is and how to fix it.  If I had, or even had heard,  a system that really did it for me I think I could zero in on what was different pretty quickly.  As it is, I am reading widely, thinking up different theories and lining up things to try out.  Are these sideways adventures?  I'm sure many of them are, but I know of no other way to get to the bottom of a difficult problem.  

You said your take was slightly different.  What are you thinking?

Hi Sonic,

You clearly know a lot more about guitars than I do. Unfortunately, I can't tell you what models I tried as I never really looked at that information when I was trying them. I would just walk into the room at the back of the store where they kept the expensive guitars and start taking them off the wall and trying them. I liked some more than others, but none of them very much, and certainly not for the money being asked.

I'm interested in what you did to your system that got you back in the listening seat?

WOW WOW

Look at all these posts

I listened almost all night to some of the CD's Harold picked up for me. Man did I miss them, thanks

First off, it was great to see the healthy exchanges up here. Some very good points were made.

"You said your take was slightly different.  What are you thinking?"

I found that once I got the simple system at your place, be it the Pioneer Maggie or Sherwood Maggie, I could do about anything I wanted. I don't think your problems are equipment based, I think there experience based, along with some construction issues.

You got a tool in there that was too complicated for you, and honestly with the frame design (making the room portable) it gave so many points of tuning that you never got a chance to figure out what each piece and part could do.

When I got in your room, I looked at things completely different than you did. I put on a piece of music, heard the cues, and began to go after them first by opening them up and then dialing them to different places. Donovan for example. A recording freshly thrown on which sounded cold weak and stuck, but after some tuning finding it's audio code the magic started to happen, and after a little more time flowing around me.

When Herns got to your room he as well got to his place quickly with the recording he was using which I believe was Love Potion #9. Harold told me he also got to a good place fast.

I could have easily lived with that room in that space and yes even with that floor. Why? Because the tools I understood and knew their potential. The difference between the other listeners and you are they are not you. The room spoke to them and they instinctively knew what to do. Your approach was slightly different, not wrong just different. It's very much like the guitar you have. The tone is there but until you learn how to play it, it will only produce the sound and not the song. The portable tunable room was something you never learned to play.

When I came to your place the last couple of times I would sit there and go where I wanted to easily. Not where I would have taken it if I had time but to the place where I knew I could get there. Then I would think "how do we get Bill to that place". First thing was to understand that you have a sound in your head that you want that may or may not be the recordings purpose, still doable, but it was like you wanted the music to bend a certain way to get you to reach that place of comfort. I would know when you were there because of the times you would stop after a song and sit there a while reflecting upon the feeling. You would come out of the room with a huge smile and say "can it even get any better than this". I also got the calls of help from you, and could see that you needed the room to be far more simple than it was with fewer parts. You needed something that would play itself a little more, and you work a little less. There were also some shifting problems that pushed the room toward one wall and corner, and one more problem, the sound of the floor.

the construction

Part of the problem was you not taking the time to learn the room, but thinking about it (which I did countless hours of) two things came to me and made sense.

One was the room was put together and shuffled around from time to time causing the room to push and pull in one direction. The room was pushing against the one side and corner and the attempts to fortify were bandaids and not fixes. This explains why the room would shift up in pitch after settling. I believe that as the panels got loosened and then sat a while the room would stress to that one corner. In my visits the room would settle down like it was suppose to but I would always get a call about things shifting up again and that would puzzle me. The room was not designed to shift up but down. Harmonics were suppose to grow not shrink and based on what you were telling me I was picturing them shrinking.

the concrete floor

I do not like the sound of concrete and think that with the floor being only 2x4's with only shims between the frames and this concrete, the sound of the bedrock and concrete was making their way up into the structure. Thinking about it more I believe the lean of the room was doing the most harm but putting the room up on a joist design and going from the cured 2x4 to 2x6 LTR hung on pine framing, sitting on PDF super low tone beams with levelers resting on brazilian pine footers, well bye bye concrete floor  , this makes me pretty darn excited

Going from portable, not really squared the way it should have been when installed, sitting directly on shims and concrete, to what is heading Bill's way is hitting the lotery.

the tunable learning curve

Having the most advanced listening room in the world in someones place is pretty interesting for me to watch. It's the opposite from anything fixed sounding that we make excuses about because we are not able to visualize the signal on it's terms. It literally can go anywhere and reveal more of the recording than anyone in this industry has ever experienced before. The room together with the platforms allows us to see deeply into the eyes of any electronic components used.

I really can't wait to start working on mine here and having people come spend time with me instead of me going to them again.