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Audio Discussions
Topic: There is much more to it.

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-08-2024
A year has passed since I moved to my new home at the Mass and New Hampshire border.  Last week, the setup of my listening room was complete. I am planning to record a video with my observations in regard to my new listening room.

MyRoom2024.jpg

Posted by Paul S on 05-08-2024
You must be so happy! Truly amazing that you have stayed with this through everything else you deal with! I guess I'll hold my questions until after I read and digest the upcoming video.

Best regards,
Paul S

Posted by rowuk on 05-08-2024
I am very interested in your observations. Moving a system is a major effort and even if you are familiar with each piece, its relationship to the room is dramatically different.

Posted by Bill on 05-09-2024
was there a few days ago. vThe improvements are something to behold. I thought my system sounded great, but had difficulty returning to mine after listening to his. Of course, the two ficus trees weren't there yet  so am unsure of the sounds now. i have heard all of his systems from his time in Boston, and this has surpassed all of them,

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-11-2024

Posted by Paul S on 05-12-2024
Again, Romy, nothing short of amazing that time, energy and focus came together for you! And good to hear that you are still getting Music from old CDs. I hope it goes just as smoothly for you when you turn back to LPs.

If you said anything about your 15" VitaVox in the video, I must  have missed it. What frequency range are you running them, and what is low-pass filter? Given your prejudices, I suppose the cabinets are sealed, so they can't go too deep? Are you using Milq to drive them? If so, how do you load 6C33Cs? I suppose that's the last leg before the IBs, so it would have to be working pretty well?

Of course I agree, the 500 lb. gorilla is definitely space, all right. With the cost and complexity of Trinnov, not to mention the need for related Musical program material, I doubt I will ever get anything that serious integrated in my own system. Fun to follow You and Bill, however, as you learn from each other. It will also be illuminating to find out how much Music there is to be extracted from existing home theater programing.

Best regards,
Paul S

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-13-2024
 Paul S wrote:
If you said anything about your 15" VitaVox in the video, I must  have missed it. What frequency range are you running them, and what is low-pass filter? Given your prejudices, I suppose the cabinets are sealed, so they can't go too deep? Are you using Milq to drive them? If so, how do you load 6C33Cs? I suppose that's the last leg before the IBs, so it would have to be working pretty well? .

I did not say anything about the 15" Vitavox as it did not change. The 15" Vitavox is a very important channel in my view. In this room, my upper bass horns with Fane 8 driver push down to 115Hz, driven by Milq’s channel B. They have a 60H high-pass filter to remove the ULF. The 15" Vitavox is sitting in a good, sealed enclosure left to me by my Remedios the Beauty project. They ran from my monster Milq LF Channal crossed at 78Hz (Chenal A on the schematics)    

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Site_Images/6-Chennal_Melquiades_DSET_Amplifier_Rev3.jpg

I said monster Milq LF Channel as when I built it, I meant to drive this channel all the way down, and therefore, I have in there a huge transformer with huge inductance and ½ ampere gap. It is not necessary for this channel for I do not want to make any changes in Milq. So, I have a speaker-level high-pass filter with large toroidal coils at 50Hz to remove the unwanted LF from the Vitavox driver. The sound of my Bass is mostly the sound of my 15" Vitavox drive in a sealed box. I have no problems with music with no infinite baffle ULF channels; it is nice and balanced. It is, of course, a bit shy with base and a bit drier than I would like it to be. The integration of the infinite baffle ULF sitting on the transition slope is a bitch and mostly VERY hard to get properly. In this room, it was good with no effort on my part. I am juts very lucky with it. Who knows, if I knew it, I would have known it earlier. I would divorce earlier… 😊
 Paul S wrote:
Of course I agree, the 500 lb. gorilla is definitely space, all right. With the cost and complexity of Trinnov, not to mention the need for related Musical program material, I doubt I will ever get anything that serious integrated in my own system. Fun to follow You and Bill, however, as you learn from each other. It will also be illuminating to find out how much Music there is to be extracted from existing home theater programing.

Nope, Auro 3D is very much my Yamaha reverberation logic. It does not need any “related Musical program material;” it works perfectly fine from a regular stereo signal. I heard that there are some specifically encoded Auro 3D programs, but I do not care about them.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-15-2024
I did a lot of listening lately and observed that there is something in my sounds that I do not like. Over the years, one of my primary indications of a properly built playback was the sentiments I'm getting from my recordings. One of them is the celebrated Giulini and Viena Brucker nine, first movement, the first crash. It is certainly not a perfect recording from a technical perspective, but musically, it is a spectacular interpretation and to my taste; no matter how many times I listen to this performance and how much I know each phrase in my heart, in a properly organized playback, the development, of this crush should be slower than I expect. It is hard to explain. I have my expectations in terms of slowness and the rate of expansion. What I expect is that it should be slower and more massive than what my expectations are. It is like Russian nuclear physicists who explored a 53-megaton bomb and reported that the fireball was expanded, and nobody knew when it stopped spending. With my current system I have a very good crush, but it expands exactly how I predict and how I feel it should be. This is wrong in my book. The proper expansion of Giulini’s crash should surprise me each time I listen to it. If not, then the playback is faulty.
 
Analyzing reasons for this and looking at the history of my installations, I need to admit the only proper rendering of this crash was in my Woburn house around 2010 after I built the midday horns. My system at that time had a very subtle trick that only one person who ever visited me recognized. My mid-base horn was slightly over-dumped by my amplification, making the sound very puffy and muddy. It was not auditable in normal music, but for Bruckner music, it produced an additional heaviness for low registers for bassoons, horns, trombones, and the rest of Bruckner's specialties during the high volumes. It would not even be called EQ but was slightly longer and extended decay in the middle bass but over dumped by the amp simultaneously. Only in that listening room, I had astonishing Bruckner crashes. I have an exemplary clean middle base right now, but I'm missing this heaviness, that chromatic overbearing payload coming with the mid base at high volumes. It is almost like I need some “dynamically distributed honk” at high volumes…
 
I'm not willing to build another 30-foot horn, but I am contemplating what I can do with my Midwest channel to get this performance. From a certain perspective, I would like my mid-base channel to be probably 2 dB louder. I can change the transformer to add gain. An additional option would be to use 215-in drivers instead of one, which will give me more gains, but then I would still need to change the transformer to ensure proper loading, and it would be a long game to play with it. I have plenty of 15-in bins that I am considering complementing my current mid-base channel and learning how it might work. The most interesting thing is that I might use other 15-in drivers to shape the lower knee of my mid base, for instance, Altec 515B. 
 
And finally, this is a completely crazy idea, making me super curious to experiment. I can take another base bin with a 15-in driver to drive it from a separate amplifier, and custom equalize it to produce the proper low register “clipping” distortions I need during my crushes. I know it is completely stupid for audio guys to claim that he wants to insert distortions, but I feel that in life sound when brass plays at maximum volumes, there are very specific distortions, almost clipping horn honk. I am afraid that my open baffle does not produce it. It might be an exciting experiment in this direction.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-16-2024
I spent many hours listening and experimenting, trying to change the signature of my mid-base channel. Everything that I'm trying suggest me that I am in at very right direction but I am still not server I would say freeze the system and do not touch anything. I know exactly what I'm trying to accomplish I'm in a way my objectives are slightly deviated from what I had above. That puffiness an upper bass is that I reported before was not an objective but a method. It was a method to achieve something that feel I can do without that mid base p puffiness. It is a completely different approach as in the case of the horn one way on another the 15-in driver was very much idling against the amplifier very output transformer was designed to work against 2.5R. that driver idling might be interesting itself but the driver was sitting inside of the back chamber. In my current case, the driver is suspended but significantly large volume of sealed box an impact of changing amplifier loading is completely different. It is unquestionally since dropping drivers impedance is superbly beneficial in my case, electrically and subjectively what I hear. However my objective right now changed, I can slow down my mid base by loading my amplifier harder and it is now produces a truly spectacular result about 4 15 in drivers I tried created the presentation of very fruitful direction but created also some alien harmonics. I have tried altec 515b, 515d, 416a and JBL 2215. I did not move all my drivers from Amy's house I have there more 15" Vitivaxes, 18 Sound and Altec 803 and I think JBL 2245 but I remember they were in bad shape. I think the compliment mine made base with another pair of Vitavoxes should do the trick but I cannot experiment with any another drivers as none of them I have more then a pair. I have six 15 Vitavoxe but they are 3 10/40 and 3 ak150, so they are different. From what I heard so far, and it is amazingly interesting I'll looking for now not truly slow my mid base, this will be done automatically but loading the Milq harder but rather making the mid-base never stop. It is almost as I want to increase its output by 2-3 db and drop high pass filter, making it deacaing at upper knee slower. I am almost there but I need this slow decay to be more connected harmonically with my rest of midrange. It is super excited time...

Posted by Paul S on 05-16-2024
I have the CD but didn't get a chance to listen to the B9 effects you mentioned yet, but all the 515Bs and 15" Vitavox I have heard were in larger vented boxes. I think of the dryness you told of as part of pushing a paper driver down in a sealed box. Not sure how low you want to get with this channel, but agree that removing the high-pass filter seems like a place to start to slow cut-off, providing the driver/amp can do it at all. While the "efficiency" increases with multiple LF drivers, so does mms and back EMF the amp sees. Have you ever tried an 18" , which should easily meet your upper bass at 115 Hz? Might be easier and less combing with 1 driver/channel? Will you do mock-up with (DSP) plate amps, including "programable" amps? I always said I would do this but wound up buying someone else's proven project instead of continuing with my "stacks".

Best regards,
Paul S

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-18-2024
I think I discovered something news that I never heard of. Again I do a lot of listening and lot of thinking, and while I'm experimenting with different operation parameter of my mid-bass I semi accidental caught one configuration that make me to think from completely different perspective. Experimenting with drivers, with amplifier loading and integration all of its sound in the entire Macodo sound and in the sound of listening room I caught a very interesting setting that hugely advanced my playback in very astonishing direction. Bill practice teachers the importance of space and I am fully subscribe it. One of the most important benefits of proper space reproduction is completely collapsing of Sound stage as a concept. This entire definition does not exist anymore. Which is good, right. However, what I discovered is that very precisely organizing mid base, in a very deliberate fashion I got control over density of a space. In my view it is completely different subject matter that has no relativity to frequency responses or anything else. 

I know that it is completely irrelevant post lost among billions pages of Internet. However, what I am proposing here is in the way revolutionary. Not a lot of people and not a lot of system can look deep in it as there are very few multichannel multi-arm systems which organized with her listening objectives and with high listening consciousness. Below are some explanations. 

As I was listening I decided to discard absolutely anything in terms of musical presentation and focus solely on one subject. Any context of a large and very well organized orchestras, I was focusing on transition of sonic phrasealogy between the sections. Good orchestras do this transition in unique way. My objective were to make this transition as smooth as possible but at the same time as expressive as possible for each group. Hereudio is where is a loading of Milq bass channel combined with a very specific dialing of volumes are super essential tools. While I was playing physics I got a sudden click, a sudden avalanche like escalation of this specific effect. The result was that a transition between one section to another subtle stop to have Sonic meaning and become to have aesthetical meaning. That was absolutely huge. The complex low level mid-based transitios of Mahler and Richard Strauss suddenly begin to make sense. Not making sense overall but making sense in audio.  

As I called this event I begin to recalibrate whole system in the respect to my mid-based channel. I was able drop output of my tweeters  by 2 DB and ULF by 4 db. The sound become truly hypnotizing and in the way radioactive. I literally do not want to measure anything or even touch anything as it is so interesting. All the time date was changing the dynamic parameters of mid-base. Is now I am running 2 Vitavox 15 inch drivers, connected in parallel. They have roughly 6R impedance. I crank my Milg's output stage to full 60 watt and I have transformer which designed to work against 2.5R. the Vitavoxes are sitting behind 78 HZ first order filter.  One Vitavox seat in 4 cubic feet box and another 10 cubic feet. The large box is wooden, well dumped. The small box is made from some kind of amazing material that from my prospective sound superbly interesting without any dumping. It is some kind of plastic reinforced wood, I am not sure what it is. It is unquestionally the most interesting RJ results that I ever had.

Another very interesting result is that somehow this very precisely dial density of mid bass opened a truly new definition of space, I still use my Yamaha reverberation channels. In presentations that you have space is unquestionably better but it is not always useful. What do I mean that orchestra played in very realistic space but the space between me as a listener and orchestra as an event producer clearly exist and always like eventless vacuum. It greatly improve quality of perception of entire musical event but it is clearly eventless space. With my current results somehow each particle of space actually works. It is very strange feeling can I still do not completely understand it but it is always like an hologram where each small piece of the hologram contains the information about entire image. 

That is completely new way of playback organization and I really look forward to discover what is all mean and where it came from.

Posted by Paul S on 05-18-2024
Nothing like Musical results to prove audio concepts! Congratulations! As far as I am concerned, that you are getting this from stereo CDs is Icing on The Cake! I hope it holds up and that answers pour forth as you tweek and fiddle with the variables.

Best regards,
Paul S

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-18-2024

Nothing like Musical results to prove audio concepts. It sounds about right but not exactly. I don't think results are musical. Music itself is just a media to convey via our sensory more higher aesthetical ethical and to a certain degree conscious self-reflective experiences. Musicians do they are the tool available in is there exposures and they have truly immense amount of possibilities and capacities. In audio video this exceptional and narrow set of interfaces that we use as expressive tools where we very moderately emphasize or subdue certain elements of performance. Elsa, and it is frequently overlooked things in audio, we do not listen music of performances in our listening rooms. We're here the efforts of our playbacks to reproduce it and that is very very different things. I never agree with people who feel that they try at home reproduce the same sounds they heard during live performances. I found this objective is completely silly. Over the years I'm preaching to my side that during live performances we do not hear sound. We acknowledge our perception of sound and let our mind and spirit to go alone with this. There is a school of thinking which suggests that if we imitate identical sound during playback then our mind and spirit will experience the same journey. I never subscribed this belief. I recognize live sound and playback sound are completely different forces. Yes they have the same payload and have the same music but the impact methods are slightly different. 



Make a simple experiment. Play your single loudspeaker, whatever it is. And take a piece of cardboard like 20 by 20 in, place it behind one of your ear and extend of your arm and trying to find a location when you have in-phase reflection caught by your ear. Soon on a later you will have almost like a hit in your head when suddenly phases align and you suddenly begin to experience multi-dimensional effect. You clearly will acknowledge but you're listening consciousness that it is a huge impact upon you but it will be no musical event. It will be an event purely upon your listening consciousness. In audio, we have many many many many many many tools available in our disposal to do two different things. First is to remove from playback sound different alien forces which come from horrible operations at our electron mechanical conversion of sound waves usually brings to the listening process. And the second one is to modulate very explicit psycho acoustical impacts to a listener but applying our deliberate and well positioned listening algorithms. If all of its subordinated with you're listening creative objectives then it is where truly high end audio is truly begin. The keyword in all of us is creative. Most of the people who believe who practice high and are there they are not active creators of musical experiences. They are trying to entertain themselves with different sounds trying to recuperate on return for investment. There is nothing wrong with that. It is better than shoot cocaine and drink vodka. However, those people because they do not want to create new listening consciousness they do not have any creative result. There are some people out there who do actively investigate own mind and all listening perception in respect two actions of on hands by moving those damn speakers and changing cable elevators. Those people practice completely different audio and listening there probablys is always superbly interesting, regardless how good or bad they are playback sounds. Listening those playbacks is like a read somebody diaries. Over my entire audio life I have only two people who ever came to my listening room, listened it, and that playback did not sound well is that specific vintage, then look at me and told me I know what you are trying to do. One of them is dead now. 



So, what I am saying that it is highly possible that the effect that I discovered might open a Pandora box to a new expressive tool. I don't have a name for this but let's forsake of conversation call it overly precise mid base modulation.. I do not know what in my mid-base might so huge difference. It is volume, is it tone, is it contrast, is it integration aspects. The impact is there and I would be very curious to learn why it's happening.


Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-19-2024

I put kids to bed and was listening at night at low level. The idea which was spinning in my head was the following. Okay I have good result but why and what does it mean? Was it a precise mid bass dialing to the rest of my system, to my ulf channel, to my specific listening room or it was all together projected to that specific amplification loading? I actually I have no answer. 



Another very interesting idea that percolated my mind was a relationship between speed of midbass and density of midbass. Let's take the best mid bass I heard outside of what I do and outside of horns domain. The honor would go to large Wilsons driven by first generation of Lamm ML2. It is important to know that it should be large Wilson, starting from Grand Slams, the small Wilsons are not interesting. I did not hear newest large Wilsons but I heard Alexandria with ML2, supposedly properly installed by Wilsons own people. If we discard lower base which is absolutely not appropriate for this price range they did superbly interesting job in mid base. It was super high contrast, surprisingly dynamic for low 90's dB sensitivity. However even then, without knowing what I know now, I detected that this spectacular mid base was always spectacular. It sounded like each orchestra get converted  into Chicago under Sir Georg Solti and each piece of music was flooded with overly errected brass. It was very impressive but in the end of the day it was still on algorithmic signature ever present in music.


Even then, and it was years back I was wondering how to able to teach watch Wilson's to be able to play mid-bass. I think I wrote about it at my website many years ago. Most of the midbass out there are just tubby single monochronic note. Wilsons did something remarkable introducing contrast and dynamics of mid base in thier large models. I have absolutely no idea how they did it but they did. Since it is always have this super impressive character I presume that they super idel driver via a crossover. In my topologist since I have active amplification to each channel I am able to make loading of the driver more accurately, permitting it be able to play slow if music calls upon it. Also, in my situations at twins of my 15-in Vitavoxes complemented above this my upper base horn. Does it have anything to do with anything? 


Now it is important note. To properly research. To get proper answer to all those questions and to convert an accidental success to organized theory how mid-passing playback should function is a matter of couple years research and experiments. It is certainly not what I am trying to do. Also, it is important to note that I did not use any methodology proper methods to navigate my efforts. Even now I refuse to make an elementary frequency sweep of my playback. I certainly will but at this point I do not want it to de:rail my thinking. That new characteristics of midwives density, the impact and the importance of it in a playback configuration come as a purely accidental discovery. The most important is to understand that since it is accidental Discovery I do not proclaim that the result I got the best implementation of midbass density as a concept. I just do not know at this point. I have the result but what this result mean it is still not clear to me.


Posted by Paul S on 05-19-2024
A lot to digest here, Romy. I think the problem for Wilson, and most other “high-end manufacturers”, for that matter, is that they have to sell them, and they are looking for something that makes their brand “stand out”. And who’s impressed? This seems to go back to your observations about the aesthetic that guides the listener in the first place. Wherever the Music exists in the first place, there can be little doubt that for many sound system consumers it’s a matter of playing with sound effects. All fine and OK, I suppose, to each his own and all that. But I like to think of GSC as an oasis of ”evolved listening” via hi-fi. The thing about “own sound” is, it ultimately limits expression, and it tends to wear thin.

Best regards,
Paul S

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-19-2024
I brought today a local audio guy to show off my new playback... Playing for him now...

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-19-2024
Okay, I got today myself so much needed ego boost. My local audio guy was listening a track and a half and then jump from his chair ask me to stop music at quite angrily asked me: how's the hell you did it? I kind of like it.

Posted by anthony on 05-20-2024
A fascinating commentary Romy.  

I need to get my act together and implement my midbass channel. Unfortunately, my room is not happy with midbass produced in the vicinity of Macondo with broad cancellations in that range but I think will be fine in a time-aligned position behind the listening chair.  Worth a shot.  There are three pair of 15" Vitavox here and two pair of spare cones so can make them all the same model variant of leave them mixed between K15/40 and AK150.

Which leads me to the point of my message.  Vitavox are able to produce new cones for your 15" drivers, so should you be inclined it is possible to make them all the same variant.

Cheers,
Anthony

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-20-2024
What's the response you have from your upper base horn? That would say a lot about how active that spot is for mid base. Is this location in your room is not good that it is very unfortunately but nothing can be done. Of course in your case, in case of multichannels and multi amplification you can rectified by volume. It is not the same if the room is lucky but it is what it is. If you have 15 in drivers then you certainly can make experiment. It's not necessary need to be Vitavox. Get any drivers from 50- 60s which made with paper cone and have paper suspension. Do not go for low resonant frequency, 40 or 50 hertz is perfectly fine. Get on eBay 20x20x20 sealed box with 15" hole. It should cost you around 70 bucks. Do not necessarily go for larger enclosure as you on the driver to be acoustically suspended. You can go 1.5 times larger buckets would be maximum. Now I am not kidding, do not invest in any fence enclosure. There are on the bay zillions of the company who sell subwoofers boxes for cars. One of the company produce enclosure that they call q-bomb or q sound or something like this. They are right sizes boxes and they not carpeted by covered with some kind of semi glossy, texttured black finish. I do not think they are rude but some kind of would like plastic, or whatever it is. The key is that they sound surprisingly well. No dumping, no parallone, no wool, just naked driver. Connected to bass channel of Milq, I do not know what your output transformer but if something along mine then you should be all set. If you have not enough volume from midbass then add another section in parallel. You will need drive your low frequency section later on from another power amplifier but at this point I strongly suggest you do not listen the base section but make your mid-base direct radiator to work properly. You needs to get Midwest to be little bit in your face but in your case you will be able to go away with this because at the upper knee it runs perfect time consistent first order filter and it will melt beautifully whole system, whole drivers together in the one homogeneous expression. You might find them that you need to slightly roll off your tweeters. It is hard to explain but if you had proper volume of this in your face effect then you will stop here the excessiveness of midbass and you will be literally swimming in the sound. You can get 8r 20 w load and load your bus channel to it. Then you can with very high precision dial in the exact volume of your mid base. If you want I can pitch to you a few trucks that you might want to listen for the mid-based evaluation. Pay attention, I constantly talk about mid-based but it's reality you will be improving mid-based upper base and the most important lower mid-range. The long tail of your mid-based driver at the upper knee is the key in my view. You need to add as much as possible meet to the Bone until it become little bit heavy and then you need to dial half to one DB down. Of course it's all will depend from the quality of your driver and from specifics of your room.

Posted by anthony on 05-20-2024
Both UB Horn roll off circa 130Hz in room.  There are a couple of rough MDF boxes here that I knocked up from spare sheet a while back.  Have not tested them specifically at the intended spot behind me but running around with a microphone shows those problem frequencies high at that location.  Probably need to get no lower than 40-50Hz with the midbass so was planning on using the Injection Channel from Melquiades and the Lundahl transformer, at least to start.  We will see.  The guy that wound my bass channel transformer is no longer doing it so if I go custom it will be with someone new (to me).

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