Romy the Cat wrote:

Haralanov, good post, clearly indicative to a person who uses single-driver speakers. :-)

Haralanov,

What you are experiencing in my view is an inconsistency and confusion between listening of playback presentation vs. content of musical message. I know that it is fashionable among audiophiles to claim “not listening to audio but listening music” but there is much more to it and in fact in my audio-life I met only 2 audio people who were able truly to do it. This confusion comes from your inability to differentiate your personal relation between better audio presentation and better audio sound. Sure, there is no need to differentiate it but the combination of better audio presentation and better audio sound need to be combined ONLY after a person can differentiate them. I think you need to stop soldering for a moment and stop to experiment with speaker suspension and practice some listening training.

The reality is that most of audio people have extremely poor listening intelligence when they deal with audio. Listening intelligence, something that I been stressing for years, is not considered a commodity in audio world because the industry can’t buy and sell it. So, as the result the majorly audio people not only have very poor audio listening intelligence but they do not even understand what listening intelligence might mean and how it might be used in audio. A developed listening intelligence however allows no-impediment transition and self-administration of listening attention between observations of audio and observations musical phenomena along with many other things…

Anyhow, closer to your case.  The problem of cause is not your drivers or amplifier and there is no way to defeat the problem by using better speaker of lift up your cables on elevators. The problem exists in a head of listener and it need to be addressed either by metal exercises or by very-extended listening practice with potent playback/music. If you feel that you were able to defeat the problem then it came to you with listening practice and presumably you did something right with your playback but it for sure took for you long time. You can only imagine how fast these processes would go if you do not use a single-driver speaker. My comment about the single-driver speaker is only partially humorous. Anyhow, there are much faster and in my view more effective techniques to deal with the problem. Let not talk about audio methods and look at the mental methods that I personally feel are much more effective.

Back in 2001-2002 is felt something similar. I did not define it as “River hitting a wall” but I rather I defined it as “going to beach and do not wet own feet in water”.  The point was that you can inhale sea smell; you can see the sea width; you can hear the sea sound but you can’t swim the sea. I was wondering why the interaction with music during live event takes place at higher rate than during playback. Sure during playback we do not have life music and we use pretty much sonic surrogate but we do the same when we swim in pool or in bath – it is not sea. We do not have sea experience when we are lying in bath but we have body and spirit satisfaction from it that might be to a degree equitable or compared to the satisfaction from sea.

Thinking about it and observing myself at that time I develop a methodology that very much helped to deal with what I was interested at that time. I called it “Fishing”. If you are at sea, than you being outside the see might throw into the see a fishing line and begin to feel the events that takes place inside the sea. I was playing with application of the same pattern to listening experience. Let me to explain how it works. You sit in front if your playback and play some music. It is very important at begging phase that the music shall be absolutely irrelevant to you. It might be ANY music or even the TV program. Do not forget that his is pure mind training not listening experience. So, you basically need not Music as a cultural event but you rather need sound of playback, ANY playback sound. Listening the sound you got you need to very clearly disassociate yourself from this sound. In your case it will be the very distinctly to convert your “invisible sound barrier” into a very tangible, and well defined barrier. In my case it was a very clear distinction between where I am (on a pier) and where sea is. Then in the sound that you are hearing you need to discover for beginning one single thing that you are attracted. It does not be even need to be a named thing but it need to be something that you like. Then you need in your mind to throw a fishing line toward to this “something”. You need literally visualize you holding in your hand fishing line and the hook of your line is firmly imbedded into the body of that “something” that you like. You might throw your like multiple times until you get the firm filling that you got it.  The interesting thing is that if you do the above then you will have in your hand the physical, material feeling of “something” that lives in music but now it has a reflection in your hands. Thin that you play cello naked and you in addition to hearing sound you feel the vibration of the cello deck on your skin. You can have multiple simultaneous fishing lines hooked to the different “something” and this will be fine. BTW, if you have established one fishing line then in my experience to add more lines at the same time is much easier.

So, what it is all about? For sure it is just a metal exercise but with proper practice you can get all of it done in your head within a second and as soon you hear music you can instantly “hook your fishing lines”. The idea is to have a PERSONAL FEELING and in a way a PERSONAL CONTROL over the played music. Very soon you would be willing to pull one or another fishing line connected to one or another aspect of played sound.  This will be time when you will develop your PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE PLAYED SOUND and you will start to build your playback only in accordance and in reflection to your own musical vision.

This was what I went over in 2002 and it is reflected in the Macondo page:

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

I do not use my “fishing techniques” for years as my listening awareness is (in my estimation) is well trained and I can engage music regardless what sound is, table radio or horrible car sound are very fine. Nowadays if I need to recognize what is wrong with sound and selectively to turn up my critical perception of audio then I do not need to activate my “fishing techniques” as I my perception has been trained. There were techniques, different than “fishing techniques” that I practiced in past but this is not the point. The point is that in your, Haralanov, particular case, if the barrier effect is something the bothers you, it might be very useful for you to practice my “fishing techniques” for a couple weeks. In my case it was “fishing techniques” in your case it might be something different – feel free to develop your own metaphors. The key is to develop some kind of mental exercise that will be BRIDGE BETWEEN YOUR SENSATIONS AND THE SONIC EVENTS OF PLAYBACK.  If you learn how to walk that bridge then you can add to sound of your playback a cultural component of greater music and then you just start the high-audio hobby. I am 44 and I have been practicing audio since 8 years old but I do feel that only in 2002-2003 I got proper understanding of what audio is all about: shaping and sustaining of that bridge in accordance with own creativity….

Anyhow, Haralanov, I think that after a 1-3 weeks of practicing some kind of craziness similar to my “fishing techniques” you will stop to acknowledge the problem with your sound barriers.