Abbey Road Experience

I think we will pick up the Abbey Road Experience here since there has been interest from several people. I invite you to join in and ask questions and make observations.

I will not promise you that I will make this recording the way you want it to sound but I will show you how much is in this big soundstage recording.



here's where we left off

hi Sonic

For years I have encouraged people to get involved with me in listening. I'm glad you are doing so.

The very first thing I do when starting with Abbey Road is go to the 10th track to develop my starter stage. Keep in mind that I've been listening with no high frequency brightness which is my own personal thing but people may do what they wish. I like turning bright into air. Detail and bright are not the same thing at all in my book. if I ever hear bright I know that I've got blockage and this blockage is almost always caused from something in the system being too heavy.

got my ears on

So, I pop on 10 and with one 5 second adjustment on the canopy over the receiver I start listening. I have my tape measure by just so I can paint a little picture. The crickets (sounds like a big pond) are 35' wide and 25' deep start to finish. There is a very nice movement that happens with no jumps across the stage and not a cricket near the speakers ever. You can hear the tape loop stop and start midstage but it stays right in place. A good start. The crickets are very defined with a medium space around them. It definately puts me outside. The center of the cricket image is about 8' tall but this can be put anywhere height wise. I'll leave it where it is at cause I like it and move on. I start the song again and listen to the mallets hitting the cymbals. This song along with the rest of the recording is a panning masterpiece. This is demonstrated by the romantically paced cymbal hitting that goes on while the cymbals are paned along with the guitar. While the cricket starts his journey the instruments begin on the opposite side 10' left of center The first splash goes from left to right starting about 3' left of my left speaker and flows across the stage. As soon as it dies another hit of the cymbal starts, and this continues. The drums starting in the same general area also makes the soft gentle pan left to right. These are both very important cause they make the movement of the guitar very pleasing as they support the space and fill it with a sound wall deep and rich. Once the drums make it to the right side the stage is full of air and stays full to greet the vocals. But while your waiting you are taken away by the movement sweeping from side to side while staying very full. As soon as the drums arrive there are no holes in the stage anywhere. It's like sitting in a 3D movie. The bass stays very stable as the rest of the music moves. It's nice to go back to the bass once in a while to hear it deal with it's recording blips but who cares It's part of the fun.

So there you have it my first minute into the sun king.

BTW, at anytime if you hear something happen in the music that is cool let me know so if I don't get it I can make it happen. I love playing!

Did you know the Beatles White Album was one of the first big recordings that jumped from the 4 track machine to 8 tracks. You can hear George Martin put all eight to good use on Abbey Road.

Here's what I'm hearing on my own system on Sun King:

The crickets span 10' from right to left, and about 5' deep. Essentially, the width of the room and the depth of the room behind the speakers. The transition is smooth and not difficult to follow.

It took me a while to identify the cymbals in the mix. The cymbal and the guitar go through the same width and depth as the crickets, but starting on the opposite side. They seem to disappear at times- I don't think I'm getting enough clarity and low-level resolution to reveal them as continuous.

The soundstaging is actually very large and clear compared to any other system I've ever owned, even though it isn't extending much beyond the speakers or the room boundaries at the moment.

Great Bill, excellent!

How tall are the crickets and do they at any time go into the speakers?

Do you hear the panning back and forth with the guitar? How high is the guitar and how full?

When the instruments start on the left side do they start at the speaker or just left of the speaker?

Do they sound like they are starting in the speaker or just above it?

Hi Michael,

The crickets are 5' tall. As for whether they go into the speakers, I find that kind of hard to answer for the Quads. The Quads are 32" wide and 26" tall, so that encompasses a pretty large area. It doesn't usually sound like things are coming from the panels themselves- with the very start of the crickets, it sounds like it's about 6" to the right and a foot behind. As they move to the left they sound like they are behind the panel, rising in an arc towards the center of the room.

Yes, I definitely hear the panning of the guitar. At its full height in the center, it's about 4 feet. The fullness seems to be somewhat less than that of the bass guitar. From what I can hear, it starts out strongly and then seems to lower in volume after a few riffs.

When the instruments start out, they sound a few inches to the left of the speaker, and behind it a bit. Like the crickets, they transition across the speaker in a rising arc.

The instruments definitely do not start above the panel. They sound like they are at about 2/3 the height of the panel. Maybe this is the panel speaker equivalent of above the speaker?

HI Bill

So here's what I'm basically getting.

You mean this is what you're hearing in your room?

That's similar to the pattern I hear also, except that everything at the far left and right sides is much lower because the Quads are so low.

Yes, this is my room only the image is bigger than I can draw. See how easy it is? The first step to real is right in front of you.

You now know a couple things about your present system without even going any further.

You know your system is in phase and able to produce the soundstage.

You know that either the speakers need to be raised or the speakers are causing blockage which can pull the stage down toward the speaker.

You also may be getting blockage from the equipment or the transfer.

You know that by the size of your stage it can be opened up more if you wish (making the instruments bigger).

But basically you can begin fine tuning the sound making it to your liking.

Here's something I recommend doing right off the top. Your using Type 2 cable or Type 3? If it is 3 change it to 2, if it is 2 go ahead and break the rules and set your speaker cable only directly on the floor and tell me what you here after an hour of playing or so.

Hi Michael,

I have type 3, so I'll change it to type 2 and let you know what I hear. The type 2 I have has never been used, so I will need to give it a break in period.

Okay, the Type 2 has been breaking in for a couple of days and the sound seems stable for a while now. This has been a wild ride and I often haven't known what to make of the sound, so I'm just going to start at the beginning.

There was one huge difference between the Type 2 and the Type 3, and that is frequency response. I had what, to my ears, sounded like a pretty balanced frequency response with the Type 3, but as soon as the Type 2 stabilized it was obvious that mid and high frequencies were MUCH more prominent than bass frequencies. The vocals and higher instruments of every song sounded much more forward, while bass was diminished and sometime inaudible. I remember playing Vince Guaraldi's 'Cast Your Fate To The Wind' and thinking, "I could have sworn there was a bass cello in this song. Where did it go?" The bass guitar on 'Sun King' from the Beatles' Abbey Road album was still there, but greatly diminished while the guitar sounded more prominent now. I no longer had trouble following the cymbal in the mix.

At the same time, music sounded much livelier and more present than it had with the Type 3. I'm not sure if that was due to the upper frequency emphasis, or if the Type 2 was just communicating the music better in some way. Careful listening to the first 60 seconds of Sun King showed that the soundstage was not any wider, but seemed to have gained a few feet of depth. Instruments seemed a little better delineated in the soundstage than they had with the Type 3. Brightness in the system did not seem to be any better or worse than it had with the Type 3. These were good things, but I didn't think I could live with the frequency response.

On a hunch, I brought my little wool Bokhara rug in and put it in the middle of the floor. To my surprise, this worked wonders on the bass response while doing no harm to the music at all. Previous attempts to use the rug in the room had sucked the dynamics out of the music, but not this time. Those of you who've been following my thread may remember that I said I had tested the rug and found it entirely beneficial. What I didn't mention in the thread is that I sent it out to be cleaned, and it came back all beautiful and fluffy. I put it in the room and it just killed the sound. Dead. So I removed it and left it to cover a bare spot on the basement floor, which is where it stayed until today. I guess it pays to have a rug closet as well as an equipment closet.

If a little dampening was good, maybe more was better? I put the cornertunes back up on the rear corners. This brought the bass even more forward and really made it pound, at the expense of diminishing the vocals and a certain overall 'fuzziness'. I pulled the cornertunes out and put a pair of 4"x30" tune strips in the rear wall seams. This seemed to strike a very good balance between bass response and liveliness. Music sounded satisfying with no parts glaringly over or under-emphasized.. The bass guitar and the guitar at the beginning of 'Sun King' now enjoy equal prominence in the mix.

Hi Bill

Great to see you on this journey! The Type 2 should be much more stable in a few days. Think of it, that few feet of wire made that big of a difference. Not to say good or bad but different. If you removed that much mass 1/3 from some of your other components the bass would balance out and you would hear a rush of air in the music. At the same time your components would become that much more tunable.

The best thing about what you did was you used another part of the audio trilogy to tune with. I think it's wonderful to see you tune the different parts together instead of staying on just one part. Our biggest mistakes come from heading in one direction too far and not being able to find our way back. Again, everything effects everything else and after a while we start seeing the effects something is going to have before we even do it. The big jumps become less beneficial and the little things we do give huge results.

After I know I have the basic picture in front of me and after I start playing with things and I start to be able to predict the outcome I know I can then begin the shaping of my sound. This is why I stay on one piece of music for so long. I do switch to have fun but returning to the development of sound is just as fun and fascinating.

Ok folks

Lets work on tonal balance just for a second before moving on. You have by now located and followed to cymbals right? Well a way to know if your setup has got blockage in the upper mids highs is to look at the cymbals and hi hat.

The first cymbal hit is a ride that starts in with that group over to the left yet not up front but behind the drums bass and guitar. The splash is 3 feet wide and flows for about 8' toward the center and back to 10'as it fills out and dissolves into the stage. The next cymbal splashes to the right (on my setup) about 8' back and 8'wide to flow just to the outside of the room if your room ends at your speakers being close to the wall. The decay on this cymbal goes pretty deep in the stage I would say around 15' on some of the hits and a little less on others. The hi hat appears in front of this cymbal right of the center of it 3' behind the speakers and a little to the right of the speaker. On my setup I sometimes will bring the Hi Hat in front of the speaker but let's do the easy stuff first. The hi hat seems very real sized saying that it was probably close miked. Now here's the important part and the one that is tempting to lie or cheat on the test (there is no test). Almost all high end systems have a problem with brightness. Most times we call this detail but it is nothing more than a gathering of frequencies around the higher notes that are compressed. This is not detail but the absence of the full range of frequencies that are around the note. Detail is when you can hear the hit and the air around the hit as well. There are very few microphones designed to pick up just the hit and highs of an instrument like a cymbal and I guarantee you that they were not used on this recording.

Your typical recorded cymbal is going to start around 300hz -600hz and depending on the type of cymbal over 20khz in decay. Surprised? If your hearing these 3 cymbals at a higher frequency say around 2khz-3khz without hearing the lower splash you have a very typical form of signal blockage. Here's where you need to be very honest with yourself cause it will make or break the recording later on. All 3 of these cymbals have size to them. If you are hearing the cymbal sounding more tight on this song without a 2' feet splash on the hi hat and 5' and up splash on the other 2 let me know. Splash on a good setup will go both up and down hz wise as the cymbal grows. If your hearing the cymbals only go up in pitch let me know. This is a sign of dampening.

Cymbals are a foundation to listening so always pay attention to the splash as you listen as this will tell you why somethings are working or not working. Here's why I'm harping on this!!!!!! Cymbals in your recording can be used as your systems "equalizing tester". It's a trick that if you get it down and are always on the look out will help you keep your system from getting out of tonal balance. Cymbals I have found are better than any test CD. When I hear a cymbal shrink or head north on the scale I know I've got blockage building up and need to go rescue the frequencies in distress. It never fails!

Hey, Mr. Green,

This idea of brightness equals detail is similar to using a sharpness control on a TV. The "improved" image can trick our brains into thinking "My, what a razor sharp picture!" But, especially at extreme settings where halo-like lines begin to form around objects in the image, something is being added which doesn't belong. It does take some discipline to turn the sharpness control down or off completely and give yourself some time to acclimate to the image without the enhancement. Same goes for audio, although it looks like it's more complicated than turning down the treble, eh?

So do you have your cymbals on #10 right?

You better cause we're jumping from 10 to 2. If the cymbals are not right on #10 things will never be right on #2 which starts the opening with the drums. These simple few hits memorize cause they again will get you out of more jams than you can imagine. The drums on "Something" are top to bottom full range sounding with great skins but also a wonderful middle to the drum as well as bottom. The drums give you distinctive areas to listen to and you need to check them to see if they are in balance. If your system has blockage then you will only hear the skins of the drums with a tiny piece of the top of them. If your system is too loose then you will hear all air and no heads. I confess that sometimes I like to listen to the air of these over the skins. If your setup is low on mass you can make these drums go absolutely boomy with a little skin and shell which I personally love. Right now though for the sake of the journey the drums are set to match the cymbals on #10 which means they are very full and balanced with a lot of air inside and outside of the shells. Can you hear both the energy inside the drum shell and out side?

Hi Robert

Yes, very similar however with audio you will loose a big part of the frequency range because the frequencies are clustered together and don't allow a big part of the space to appear in the sound stage. This is why people end up with miniature size instruments when listening. Also this is why people talk about black holes being between instruments. The reality of this is that there is no empty space in the sound stage at all. The reason why they hear this black hole is because they have robbed part of the stage by letting it get caught up in these frequency clusters.

You need the full drum

It is a mistake in listening to tune your system to the skins of a drum and not the bottom tone of the shell. Some say "listen how tight those drums are" and they are just listening to the very top end of the drum scale. In a recording if you are only hearing the skin you are probably listening to 300 hz and up (way up) and missing most of the drum sound. When you are listening to a recording and you only hear the drum skin or head you know something is not right. Again microphones are picking up the whole sound of the drum so you should hear and see the whole drum.

here's a typical drum scale

Kick Drums – usually 80-150 Hz

Snares – usually 120-250 Hz

Floor Toms – usually 60-110 Hz
(most of the time the lowest drum tone)

Regular Toms – 100-600Hz (sometimes higher depending on the type of kit)

Hi Michael, Robert and Bill333

Sonic’s system is starting to image beyond the side walls! I am getting about 3 feet of extension outside the walls in the volume behind the speaker plane, but nothing in the plane of the speakers. I am hearing this now repeatedly on CDs such as Gimmell choral recordings and orchestral pieces like Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings (St Martin-in-the-Fields) and Michael Haydn’s string quintets.

How did Sonic work this out? Like in many things of the Tune, it was a number of things done that eventually settled to a good outcome. Sonic will elaborate on this in my next few posts but it involved significantly unloading the weight of the bookcases, ¼ loosening all interconnects and adjusting the reflectivity characteristics of the side doors. Wish it was, but no, the expansion of the acoustic did not come with a magic move of turning a DRT by ½ inch or a ¼ turn of a bolt on the rack and kapow! everything fell into place. There was work involved….

Now to answer Robert’s question: out of phase.

Sonic used a solo recording of a mezzo-soprano and another of minimal miked (blumlein most likely given its focus and narrowed tight imaging) recording of guitar and percussion for this test.

Mezzo: the sound went all round the listener as expected but it was a shallow ellipse from just ahead of the speakers and towards the back of the room. Imaging was poor and diffuse but I could visually image the singer anywhere within a 270 degree frontal arc. The sound did not go beyond the walls, ambience was truncated and sort of cone shaped. Height was ceiling to floor. Small movements of the head made large swings in image position.

Guitar/percussion – much the same effects except the transients made location easier and created what was “bad stereo”, some imaging and focus within the speaker plane and rear space. But diffuse, strange ambience, height, shallow behind the speaker plane.

Sounds like the out of phase signals were tracking the weight distribution in Sonic’s room with its rearward weight bias. Also the effect told me a lot about what the Tune and the gear could be doing. The PZCs, DRTs, Corner Tunes, EchoTunes, Shutters and baffles may be effectively introducing uncorrelated information into the sound field. Now this is good because uncorrelated info gives width, size and positioning information in the real world and in conventional stereo too. Which is possibly why the Tune, even out of phase, in Sonic’s system generated poor stereo instead of the total swimmy effect characteristic of out of phase systems. A note: for this test, my system was run with the subwoofer off. Sonic did not see this as an issue since I am driving the Magneplanars near full range using the x-30’s lowest hi-pass crossover point of 50 Hz.

Michael and Bill333 -- Here comes the Sun King:

The crickets, maybe a few large ones, are formed in a sphere about 4 feet wide. They start at the top of the Right speaker (at the top 1 foot of the 5.5 foot panel and up towards the ceiling). There are also hints of ambient mini crickets like a haze all round the room.

The crickets are pan potted and move to the Left as the cymbal and the guitars are pan potted to the Right.

As the piece progresses, the sphere of crickets moves Leftward at about 7 to 8 feet height across my room in the middle of the area behind my speakers, they don’t go to the front wall or arc upwards. When the crickets reach the middle of the room somewhere over the racks the chirping stops for an instant then starts again. The crickets keep moving – by now the cymbals and guitars have moved past the midpoint to the Right – and crickets go slightly above the Left speaker but do not sit on the panel….crickets next go forward of Left panel by a foot or two, then fades through the door.

The bass stays on the Left speaker, the cymbal and guitars are moving slightly behind the panels and speaker plane. The first cymbal crash goes to the sidewall and is distinct from the guitar.

Odd isn’t it that the three of us are hearing the same piece but getting such different impressions….

Views from Michael and Bill333?

Sonic

Hi Sonic

This is why I love doing this stuff. I've heard from some of the other guys as well and hopefully they will join in on the fun. The last few weeks have been beautiful here so I've had my door open to the outside day and night. I know this sounds terrible since I'm supposed to be concentrating right, but the changes in tuning have been so big that I have been pleasantly lazy I guess.

You made me go back and look at my crickets. The path that my crickets take is so big that I could listen to it for a year or so before I found things I'm sure. It's that wide! So anyway I shut the outside door and sure enough there are other crickets in there, but mine were a little different from what you were getting it still seems. I will have to play with this and see just how big this cricket thing really is. I've taken this recording all the way out to a 360 sound before so maybe if I get my evaluation stuff done I can setup a couple of systems and let one just settle forever. Another thing that is cool about settling is that 360 thing where you can hear the piece all over the place. I have a sense of this right now but it would be silly for me to pretend that this can really happen until a great deal of settling sat in and gave me a real deal picture.

Still on the crickets

My crickets don't seem to be in a circle but more of a sense of an area. Kinda like somebody recorded them out in the field and brought them in to be put in a recording. Meaning when the song starts you are aware of a whole stage (field) and it's presence but things are moving within that space. The crickets even though moving in that 3 to 4 feet area that is in motion across the stage still feel like they are in a much bigger picture.

So of course I went back into the room and tightened things up a little by going to a different canopy board and transfer rod. Also changed out my support rods. I immediately felt like I was in a controlled environment. Fun, but controlled as if there was someone telling me what was going on instead of it just happening. I felt like I was listening to very expensive audio gear, very detailed and thick. The life to the music was replaced by a feel of electronics. I no longer felt I was out in the field with crickets but more in the studio with studio monitors. My stage was still bigger than the stage I hear you 2 talk about but it was certainly different in the sense of more defined lines as apposed to flowing movements and maybe that is even the wrong word because all the movement was there. I'm listening to this but in the back of my mind I'm thinking what is missing. I've heard this sound before and there is something that is just not taking me personally there. This is when I did my stand up off to the side listening test, and sure enough the music was in the speakers instead of casting the image into the room.

I put my setup back into low mass mode and found it right away. Life, I don't know how to describe it other than the space was filled with life, movement, not uncontrolled either this was a movement that gave a great presence and dynamic range to the music that I was missing with the more controlled sound of the heavier transfer parts. I stood up and went to the side of my speakers and there it was like someone threw the sound stage in place like magic even with me standing right in front of the right speaker.

At this point if you guys don't mind would you stand up off the the side of your speakers and tell me what you hear?

Hey, everybody,

I might as well join in the fun. Since we are grooving and comparing notes on a recording from 1969, I officially declare this to be a
TUNE-IN!

So, I got myself a copy of "Abbey Road" and here is what is happening in my room.


Sun King 1 crickets by ozonerman, on Flickr
First, the crickets. The "main cricket" starts off just behind the right speaker and strolls over to just past the left side of the TV screen, where it angles upward a bit and becomes slightly diffuse. No real depth or height; pretty much what the line indicates. The X marks the spot where the "distant cricket" chirps at least twice.


Sun King 1 vocals and instruments by ozonerman, on Flickr
The stationary bass plays off the wall, about a foot in front of the left speaker, where the sliding door meets the wall. The stationary guitar sits on the front right edge of the entertainment center. The panned guitar goes from where the stationary bass is on the left, but stops at the panel of the right speaker. The drum, cymbal and hi-hat combo start immediately behind the left speaker and pan over to the right speaker, where the bass takes on more girth. I do feel some chest thump action from the drum, which doubles on the left speaker towards the end of the track. The organ comes in about a foot right of center. The Beatles vocals are left of center, but slightly diffuse.

"Hi Michael

Left out one point on Sun King -- apart from the main Chorus of Crickets that moves Right to Left, there is also another group of crickets chirping at a lower pitch (almost "ribbit, ribbit") and at a lower level in rthe mix. The spatial position of this bunch of crickets is more diffuse and harder to localise. Also if I focus on the main group-chirp and try to follow it as it is panpotted, I get less feel of a large space of the insects than if I looked to the centre or Left when the crickets start...

Cymbals - on my system, they sure don't sound like high pitched tin plates. The lower pitched "bong" and some spread spatially is present. Only thing is the cymbals don't have enough of that beautiful expanding shimmer that goes on up and up the frequency range.....I can hear this when live drums are played in front of me. I can also hear a softly played cymbal "activating" the acoustic of the studio, defining the space, such as Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, in the opening seconds of "So What" -- the ride cymbal starts soft where it defines the space on the Right then picks in volume and the beat as the famous riff progresses over the first bars of the piece.

Comments on my cymbals....?

Sonic"

Hi Sonic

The frogs (which is what they sound like for me) are far behind the crickets in my stage. Maybe 5 to 10' back behind the crickets. I believe that this part of the song is a tape loop that is played twice while being panned. I haven't paid enough attention to see if it is the same loop but you can definately hear the stop and start of the tape. Because I have my soundstage set up so big anything that happens in the song seems to play into the space even if it has it's own spot in the stage. I don't mean to imply that it bleeds but more catches your attention as small things (or big things) happen in a big space. This happens to me anytime I listen to tape. The sense of the recordings on tape are so full.

Cymbals

Now what Sonic says here is so important and all need to take note of this. "they sure don't sound like high pitched tin plates". I hear more people try to talk their way out of the sound of cymbals not realizing that a cymbal can save the sound of the recording as a whole. "bong" is right on the money!! It's not this tinky tiny splash or crash that makes a cymbal special to us in a recording but the space of full range impact and the decay. Even in the studio from what I have been a part of people don't realize how profound the development of harmonics and decay of a cymbal is. Last night I opened up my system as much as I could get it without getting ridiculous. The splashes of the cymbals on Sun King opened up much more than I thought they would. I'll have to go in and measure them. And let me say this if people follow along with this type of thread and let me know they are I will spend time doing this on other pieces of music. For example tonight I was thinking about doing one called "exploring Bye Bye Blackbird". This is a recording by Keith Jarrett that I have used for years when doing cymbal tuning in a system. Cut #5 "for Miles" is a great example of what Sonic is talking about. I haven't listened to "Kind of Blue" in a while but need to. Not only for cymbals but serious horn tonality and great brush action and so much.

At this point the only thing I would push for with Bill333's setup and Sonic's is look for ways to keep opening up the size of stage. The more I open up my stage the more I find in the way of content and the more I can go after stuff when someone points out something that I may have missed in the recording and believe me there is a lot to miss when we are talking about information. These types of threads will show us how much there is in a recording that many over look and just plain miss. For myself it is fascinating when someone brings up something for me to go explore. In audiophile terms I have seen people get defencive over parts and pieces in the music and they throw out terms like distortion or is that real when ever they get threatened but I think it is very healthy to explore areas that someone else hears. In my book it's not right or wrong but instead the never ending journey of learning about the process and delivery. After these many years of tuning I can say without a doubt that I feel more like the student of the art than the conqueror of it. I love when someone is hearing something new and I can go back and find it as well or when I run across something that I never knew was there. To me that's a big part of the magic of being an audiophile.

thanks for the fun!

Hi Robert

Glad to see you join in. The fun times begin.

Sonic brought up a point that is worthy of noting about different re-mastering of Abbey Road so I thought I should put this up for a reference.

"In my book it is never truly apples and apples. However, I use the original sound recordings by EMI, re-mastered 1987 by EMI. There are several re-masters that are interesting but for this walk I'm using this one as my source."

Please feel free to share other mixes as this only adds to the fun.

Hi guys

Haven't posted on the Abbey Road Experience in a while but after Drewsters last posting on the CD I thought I should visit the pages here.

Last week I went off on a side track that took me into Brian Eno land along with Bryan Ferry. I didn't realize it I took my system in a very weird direction and at the end of things had some of the stage sitting on my lap as well as all round my head. A fascinating journey especially when it started with Classical. Finally I wanted to come into what I call for my room target. There really is no target but for me this is always a fun starting place. Yes,I'm talking about Abbey Road. After some pretty big moves I shaped Abbey back into it's spacial oneness. What I didn't figure on though was what I had done the last week to the bass. The other recordings codes must have been shifted up cause the bass now for this recording is more than full. It is big and round and pregnant. If this was any other recording I would pull the plug, or even any one coming to listen to my system but for me in my own little private madhouse I am locked into Paul's bass. It almost sounds studio-ish it is so plump. I have recordings of real studio (pre dynamic cut) and almost never put them on unless the volume is turned down to nothing and still then keep an eye on sub-sonics. Paul's bass sounds very much like this but without any sub-sonic overload. it makes me wonder if before the mix if he had this sound going on in the studio. the definition is staggering and pin point but it is also so full that it makes me forget about the rest of the recording.

Yet another view of this magnificent work of art.

Hi Guys

Time to revisit the Abbey Road experience.