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In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: Basic guide to advanced audio

Post Subject: Tweeter IntegrationPosted by Jorge on: 7/25/2011

Hello Haralanov,

It is hard to talk about sound, and define points: this is why the post is so long.

Most systems I have lisitened to that measure a flat response have exagerated high frequencies and usually the midbass is a little shy, this might be room dependant. Most measurements outside my own listening room have been with company, and we all agree. This is why the owner of the system must readjust levels to his liking: there is no point in listening to a flat system if you do no like the sound!

All these effects I am trying to describe, cannot be achieved just by automatic measuring, It would be great if that was possible!

The first point I try to describe as Perfect Resolution, should part from a system with good flat sound even though a little off, and not any huge peaks/dips. My system is +- 3db from 120 hz up. I have a small dip at 100 hz and a huge peak at 50 hz on one side.

I always hated tweeters, my intrusion into horns was done in order to be able to use a compression driver up high and never look at a tweeter again, I was wrong, the best you can do about tweeters is deal with them the best you can: I believe my system is seamlessly integrated most of the time, I have a close friend with a very good playback that lowers his tweeters everytime I visit, he is in his 60s and his high range hearing has declined a little, but for everything else he has a wonderful ear:

In order to give the correct credit for things; The first time I listened to all of these effects was at Romys old place, a few months before the move.
Needless to say I was overwelmed by the sound and could not grasp every effect I was listening at. I took me a couple of years of playing with my own system to start disecting some of what I heard. This write up is a memory of what I have noticed along the way. Yes his system has the Seamless Integrated Midrange, my system had it too at the time, and it was a nice surprise to find the same. All else I had never listened to!

With that sound in mind I started to drop all of the psychoacoustic barriers I could and started getting forward!

It seems you have achieved by yourself what I can only describe as the Sphere like soundtage:

"One of the most difficult things in audio (actually it is the most difficult of all) is to make the sound to come from the midrange channel axis, which have to "pull" the sound of the tweeter and to mix it perfectly within itself. It may take a lifetime to do this right, and sometimes lifetime is not enough… But once it is done right, most of the psychoacoustic barriers get crashed, so there is no bridge between you and the music, and the music content of the recordings injects directly in your mind, so directly, that you totally forget who you are and your mind becomes just part of the music and you even begin to feel you are composer of the reproduced music."

Yes this is what I am talking about and I am so glad you relate!

Maybe you even have the Harmonizing effect going on: When you play, say Mozart or Vivaldi, and all the instruments come toghether on the chorus in harmony, this harmonious sound sort of escapes the speakers and fill up the room, you can almost cut it with a knife! When I was at Romys place he played a piece with a lot of disonances, I think it was Wagner; The effect was gone, he noticed I was upset, so we commented that this greeat harmonic sound coming from the speakers was gone...

This I have managed in my room not as often as I would like, but in order to get to the next effect; Audio Boiling Point, your system needs to be harmonizing continually.

Now there are still levels of playback even at this very hard to achieve points. Like when you play a good Master dub on RTR tape, and then play a crummy CD on a 20 yeard old DAC in the same system. The effects are there, but not with the same resolution and detail. Lets say all the insturments are perefectly delineated, but the violins on one system sound like yamaha violins and on the other all of them sound like Stradivarius.
But please dont come to me yelling you get this sound on a single driver BLH!

This is Romys Original descrption of the Micro Boiling response ( I think some mistake happened, because its not there anymore, it was great)

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=14658#14658

This is my descrption of the time I got to it accidentally:

"There is a very scarce effect in nature I will try to explain, a sort of sense explosion. One of this happens sometimes in food tasting.

When you have a very tasty, very good cheese and you take a couple of bites and it grabs your tongue and its good, and you sort of get numb of all the strong taste, after that you take just a tip of a spoon of say orange marmalade and all of a sudden there is this taste explosion in your mouth, the cheese combines in a wonderful way with the sweet of the marmalade and maybe the acid of the orange and your taste buds vibrate. This happened to me just the other day for the first time with wine and food at a good friends house, we were having some good wine, very nice but not really special, when we sat for dinner, very good ravioli pasta with fresh tomatoes and basil with a wonderful simple salad, when I tasted the wine again this explosion of the spices combining with the wine flavor and alcohol was there, everyone at the table experienced the same thing.

It just happened to me with audio, I had hooked up a wonderful JBL 2490 driver to a 120 hz horn and was playing around with all the channels volumes and Xover points trying to make a cone speaker in a horn sound like the JBL driver, I kept getting up from my chair and rearranging the volume here and there and going back to listen until I noticed, it sounds good here, then all of the instruments sort of receded into one midrange sound, the extension sort of disappeared the highs were not present, they were there, but not evident, not shouting in your face, the bass seemed to be gone, it was not dragging around like a lot of systems I have heard, what is left is an Extended Midrange sound, I imagine it like Spherical, when the midrange is the center and the highs and lows are the poles, they are still there but part of a whole and only jump at you when they are called in, what is left is instruments resonating on all their chords and harmonics, vivid instruments just jumping out of the speakers. If we use the same Spherical analogy, you can visualize looking thruogh a lens and seeing evrything more clearly, but not bloated.

I got this just on one side of my playback, where the cone driver is, the side with the JBL driver is not explosive, it is not boiling, It does sound very nice, dynamic extended transparent any reviewers mumbo jumbo apply, but it is not explosive. I am pretty sure it is mainly because it is not time aligned, the JBL driver was and add on to an existing system and in order to make the throat of the horn smaller, some inches were added to the length and thus it is not aligned with the other drivers…. Such a ptiy! The components are there, the Nitroglycerin, the Gun powder the TNT, are mixed in waiting for the spark, but not aligned properly for the explosion sequence.

I was lucky enough to listen to Romys old system before the move, the system was in continual explosion, like a nuclear power plant just waiting to be excited by the music. It was the first time I ever heard such effect in audio, the boiling micro response, he describes it perfectly, I am just relating it to other senses, food, so it can be comprehended, it is so rare and it has such a force that I do believe it transcends the barrier of the senses…

I will take very careful measurements and notes of the set up in order to be able to keep it sounding, try to get the other channel to do it, and hopefully someday reproduce it again if it is lost! "

Jorge

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