Referring back to "retro-fitted", under-floor shoring in finished rooms, such as basements, I forgot to mention something I have run into a few times, in "traffic areas".  This is the disintegration of the drywall ceiling board that almost invariably winds up between the bottom of the floor joists and the top of retro-fitted support beams.  When this occurs, it can be cured by using temp shores to lower semi-permanent beams, cutting out problem drywall areas, and fitting solid shims between the beam tops and joist bottoms.  Expanding foam can be injected to seal between shims and adjacent drywall.

The second "forgotten" item is that  man-made, "architectual" or "engineered", joists also have a "disadvantage".  This is the fact that floor systems using them tend to vibrate and "transmit vibration" well up into MF.  There are too many ways to deal with this to get into it here, but the initial rule of thumb is to avoid "over-tightening" re-shores, especially when dealing with "hollow" (drywalled, uninsulated) engineered floor cavities.  In a nutshell, especially with these systems, there is often a fine line between LF damping and MF enabling.

Paul S

Romy the Cat wrote:

This mooring a brilliant idea hit me. Instead of the pale and un-spicy while foam the boars me I will use a completely different idea. I so got hooked on it that I ordered the parts already.  A few post above I made a post “Spectacularly cheap, pretty and effective.” about the new Kanuf brown fiberglass tubes.  The picture does not make justice to them – in real world they look spectacular. So, my new brilliant idea is to get rid all my acoustic treatment on this wall: And to replace it with a ccustom-made organ-like pipes, made from Kanuf brown fiberglass tubes. I mean I will build the organ like pattern, with a combination of the tube of different size and different diameters. The Kanuf brown unfinished pipes looks spectacular ion my room. The only concern I have is that the top of the type will be at the same level as the exit of horn mouth – so I naturally would like the types do not make any Helmholtz resonating; otherwise I would need to close the types. I very much like the idea as it will kill all HF reflection and very dramatically randomize MF. It might also superbly cool looking. I will be hanging a few “trunks” of the Kanuf brown fiberglass tubes under the center ridge of the cathedral selling  as well. The color of the Kanuf unfinished brown fiberglass tubes is very good matching with the color or my furniture and my carpet. Do not be too bound with the ugly plan-drawing I made. I do anticipate a very-very positive esthetic and caustic outcome of this attempt. The Pussy.

I very much like this configuration. There is one minor moment that I note – the HF absorption become less affective with temperature in the run under 60F. I think it is not a big deal to keep it above 60 as below 60F to be in the room is not particularly comfortable.

There is no negative health impact that I observe. Until I touch the pipes with my bare hands I fee nothing and since the pipes are sitting on the walls I do not touch them. It looks like the “carbuncles” do not drop from the walls themselves.

My original version had no leafs but it was a bit too boring scene. I added some leafs here and there and it sparkled the wall up and made a very good balance to the wall across with the leafs-loaded “bronze” clock. I also fell that some leafs made the reflection patter more random.

Looking at the all of it ornamentation I can’t deny that all of it look very gay. Furthermore, looking at the fun I had inventing and doing all of it I begun to question if I was a gay. However, the pictures that I took this morning do not convey the true lay of the land. The room’s sides have red mahogany feel and the bare walls feel screamingly empty.

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Site_Images/NewRoom_AcousticTreatment_3.JPG

The foliage color is very good come along with mahogany, not to mention that foliage colors are my favorite colors. This is very much what I like, the decadence colors of dilapidating walls mixed with despair and decay. If any better place then like this to play Bruckner?

I meant to have this post as a separate thread in the “Playback Listing section “– the “load” of it is well-deserve it but then I decided that it would be too easy for the readers of my site. The subject of this post is well related to results of my midbass horn project, so I will damp it right here.

As the midbass horn project is over then there is one subject that I would like to add to the evaluation of the results. The midbass horn I am getting now is exceptional in my view, it is good itself and it is very well calibrated. It has no overly moist feeling of the best vintage drivers while having good forceful tone, it has phenomenal extension that perceptional goes lower then 42Hz, I can go a lot over many positive aspects of my midbass sound but I would like to point out not the numerous positive aspects but one major negative aspect that resulted the whole project. Nope the “major negative aspect” is not the Above-Behind positioning of my midbass horns – I do not consider it as a problem at all. The “major negative aspect” is that my new playback inhalation lost ability to moderate importance with width. To explain it I need to disclose one of many “secrets weapons” I used in my old listing room.

In my old listing room the bass towers were positioned outside the Macondo MF islands, right on the time aligned-radios from listing position. Also do not forgers that in old room the midbass was coming from those bass towers as it was 73Hz first order low-pass crossover. The sound was very good and it was very “controlling”. Controlling is not condoled, Controlling means that Sound has active impact to listener, subordinating listing attention when it necessary. You need to read the Macondo page to understand what and why I was trying to do it:

http://www.romythecat.com/MacondoAcousticSystem.aspx

Some people who where allowed in my listening room did reported that in my room Sound was very authoritative and when necessary Sound was grabbing the listener attention and completely subordinates it belong itself. There were a few purely by design moments that were responsible for that and one of them was the fact the in my old system I was a control a “dynamic” control over the width of music presentation.

It happens with mammals that anything more important is always associated with larger size (Thos I do not think that most important female would be larger). The bigger is that more important, value, more prominent, mode dominating…. We raise our voice, we built huge churches, we compose large symphonies…. We subconsciousnessly presume that larger menace more notable. Then we have a playback.  A playback has own presentational width and then sound goes deeper… Suddenly playback opens itself up and begins to sound much larger. Technically we know that all that happens was the lateral source got shifted from Macondo MF horn to the wider-positioned woofer towers.  Perceptional the little walls of the stage are collapsed and Sound hit a listener with a width of upon ocean. Observing my guests at that time I always sow them to raise their heads a bit, I caught ma to do the same. This was very telling as there was no vertical shift of sound but they raise their heads. We, the mammals do it in face of superiority; after all we place our Gods to the sky not under ground….

The point of all of it is that in my room the location of my woofer toward was super beneficial as it was setting a perfect balance between volume, size and LF extension. The chosen crossover and the position of the midbass sections was very much the key to moderate the balance between the Width of presentation and the Importance of musical statement. That was great but unfortunately I do not have it anymore in my new room.

In my new room my new playback plays constant Width. It is superbly accurate and it is in way this is more proper way to play music. The 99.999999999% of playback out do the same and no one consider it bad. Well, my arrogances shall have some justification and frankly speaking after 10 year of using my Width-Importance modulation I feel a bit too un-stimulated listening my Width-Importance-constant playback. This is what I been figuring with me for a few weeks. I have considered putting some side-channels to add the Width-Importance modulations. I do not do it, yet, but I know that I will be thinking about it.

So, the “major negative aspect” of my new room is that it play like most of other playbacks with no lateral offset when Sound goes lower.  To do it properly I would need to position my midbass horns at “perfect” locations:

http://www.romythecat.com/Site_Images/Perfect_room.JPG

… which is absolutely not accomplishable in my new room. Still, I know how it “might” be and as time goo by I might try to invent something that would do the same effect by different or by the same means….

Yes, to add the last touch of personality to my room I need to put something on the roof  and I have found a wonderful option:

http://www.americansale.com/Products/6-Airblown-Inflatable-Black-Cat__454643.aspx

I think that nuances with phases synchronization from multiple channels is the last thing that I need to do in my room. I mend the aspects that were exposed in the few recent posts about the practical binaural nature of sound at HF

http://www.romythecat.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=15014#15014

My carpenter assures me that a table can’t be placed on 4 legs and always 3 legs are load caring. If it so then I have a table with 14 legs. Sure not all of the legs would care the load identically but the association is very similar.

As last night a friend of my noted “the idiotic yellow driver speakers do not have those problems….”

zanon wrote:

…. I have a sound bar for my TV which manipulates phase so you can pick between the audio seeming to come from a wider source, or from a focused point source. So, for your action movie set it on wide, and for your period piece, set it on focused. I don't know how it does this, but I think it would be an interesting trick for an amp or pre-amp to do. So the question goes from "am I in phase" to "is phase creating the effects I want it to create"?

Paul S wrote:

Funny that people think that phase issues just go away with so-called "FR" drivers, which have their own electrical and mechanical phase problems.  Of course it doesn't get any "better" with multi-way, multi-amped mega systems... I have wondered for a long time if the real problem is the "magnification" of phase issues, which simply become more and more apparent according to where they are on the "Problem Totem Pole".  Once we get to a certain point, phase issues can really become quite maddening.  I think of the Wilson installation experts patiently pushing those behemoths around and tweeking X/Os and driver levels, and I imagine that at a certain point they are just watching the clients, waiting for the "OK". Sure, we want to take phase "seriously".  But past a certain point, what the Hell can you do?  Like any hi-fi connundrum, it pays to keep your wits about you and remember what it is you're really after. Paul S

el`Ol wrote:

I stopped believing in phase as the most important cause of coherence when I listened to the Lithophon Miracle and believed to hear exactly the opposite of what I am used to with cone/dome speakers: woofers that dynamically don't keep up with the tweeter. Bought a pair of tweeters, crossed with 12 dB at 5 kHz and realized that's still fullrange enough for me.

AOK_Farmer wrote:

Romy, I don't see a wine rack in the view of the speakers. I believe that the wine needs music to age properly, just as we do. A dark cellar is said to have advantages but the fish down there are albinos. Perhaps some research into how the music of Schnittke affects the flavour of an aging Cote Rotie is in order. Or the long term influence of the 45 Hz horn on the development of bouquet of a Chenin Blanc. You really should set up that experiment.