by Michael

Forums

Spintricity has forums and I have been wondering about how to keep it from being a place I hate.

About 90% of all people we talk to actively hate the forums – by which they mean people running them and/or the people on them.

Which, if this is true in general, means that forums as such are really not very successful.

I have certainly imagined a forum that I would like to be able to visit – where people are nice, passionate about audio, think about things and share their thoughts freely…

*sigh*

People seem to like Facebook and MySpace. Young people I mean.

Perhaps forums should be organized around groups of self-selected people, like those two communities are. So the forum would actually consist of lots of tiny little forums …and no jerks would be allowed to stay long in your forum unless you wanted them to [because there is the possibility that we are all jerks at some level or another ;-)].

So we could, for an example, have a Jorma Prime Cable forum, where we could all talk about this cable, post new topics [threads] and discuss our experiences about this cable.

Or it could be more general, like The $4K A Meter And Above Cable forum.

I think this would be better than just, say, Cables [does anybody even have a cable forum, anywhere? Or am I forgetting…]. Or the Exotic SET Tube Amps forum instead of … the Amps forum like a few forums have.

You would probably want to participate in many… dozens… of forums… but you would NOT have to participate in the $100 and below cable blow-out forum unless you wanted to [or ones where there are so-called audiophiles who cannot hear the difference between cables]. Or between power cords [I know, I know, it is harder to hear differences in cables on some equipment that has a very strong sound of its own.. ].

So…

Here is your chance…

If you want a nice forum you can go to and chat as your amps warm up for the evening after the power has been out all day — a place you can find out ways to improve YOUR system, and not just read a could of bored guys chatting about nothing to each other adinfinitum… then speak up about what YOU would want at a place like this.

Because we can do just about anything… limited only by our imagination [which, although a significant limitation, is less so than the average human’s lemming tendencies to repeat the same mistake everyone else has made… vis-a-vis forums in this case]

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy / Spintricity 0 comments
 by Michael

Details, Details

For the longest time I would get so confused when I read someone posting that, say, the sound of Boulder solid-state amps had more detail than Edge solid-state amps, which I totally disagreed with [this was back when I believed everybody who posted about how something sounded had actually heard the darn thing. How innocent we all were about the side-effects of anonymity on the web in those good-old days].

I finally figured out that they were talking about the the ‘leading edge’ of the notes, combined with, in this case, less continuousness which made the notes ‘stand out’.

If we think about the sound as composed of many notes, and each of those notes having texture [dynamics of things happening inside the note] and harmonics, we can compare sounds to, say, sand on a beach.

You got your fine sand, you got your larger grains, which when large enough are ‘pebbles’. You got [depending on the beach] larger pebbles that eventually get so be as to be rocks [boulders, boulders would be like the cannon shots in the William Tell Overture]. Each one of these grains is a different shape, with bumps and different colors all over them.

OK.

The Edge amps have lots of finely grained sand detail [which we now call finesse – to get around the problem that people do not agree on just what detail *is*.] and the Boulder has pebbly detail.

The music has some of both [usually], large and small, and we can think of the sand->pebbles->rocks being dynamics and the color of their facets being harmonics/tone.

Solid-state equipment tends to reduce the beach to black and white and tube amps turn up the color saturation a bit. Solid-state equipment also shines a light on the beach like high-noon in death valley [the edges of the pebbles appear sharp, the find sand disappears into the background of white glare], tube equipment like, like, … ambient sunshine on a beach right after a rain just when rainbows are starting to come out [makes you think I like tubes better than solid-state, huh :-)].

[So far, we have only modeled sound and its harmonics and dynamics by comparing it to the visual appearance of a beach. We can also think about the experience of *listening* to sound with that of walking on the beach… some people want a nice soft sandy walk, some want a rougher, firmer walk. Some don’t care and are only getting exercise or going for a swim.]

We can think of playing music, then, as taking a yardstick and scraping it across the sand, larger pebbles being more dynamic than smaller, the colors of the pebbles representing different tones.

So, using these models…. we can [try to!] define:

Dynamic Resolution: Numbers of different sizes of sand that a system is capable of rendering – higher resolution systems are able to make a particulate of sand sound different than a slightly larger one, which would sound the same on a lower-resolution system. Note that this is often a function of the size of the grain: i.e. two boulders, one inch different in size may sound the same, but two pebbles, one inch different in size would sound different. The best systems are linear… if the pebbles, boulders are more than, say, 1% different in size, we can hear them.

Fractal Dynamic Resolution: The smallest size of a facets on a reference sized particulate of sand that a system is capable of rendering. We want linearity similar to that described above. This indicates the dynamic resolving capability of the system while it is already reproducing another dynamic. Very few systems can do this at all.

Harmonic Resolution and Fractal Harmonic Resolution: Similar to the above, but for tone [frequencies] instead of dynamics. The Lamm ML3 has really good Fractal Harmonic Resolution – it can render not only the colors of fine sand, but of their facets as well.

Dynamic Detail [ability to change direction]: the cleanliness of the beach [i.e. how much mud :-)]. Is that yardstick we are using make some good THWACK sounds as we hit things, or does it kind of slide up and over them. Again we want this to be linear – to behave the same for larger rocks and tiny particles of sand. Otherwise certain dynamics [horns anybody?] and frequencies [tipped up midrange anybody?] are over / under-emphasized. [We, Neli esp. usually calls this ‘light on its feet’. Most people referring to detail are talking about only the leading edge this very small set of dynamic changes somewhere between micro-dynamics and macro-dynamics – i..e kind of small sized next to slightly but noticeably larger pebbles. Not sand, and not rocks].

Dynamic Control [accuracy]: the ability to accurately trace the edges of the sand/pebble/boulder [what we usually call the note envelope]. That yardstick traces the pebbles up and over, without going too high, without pushing the pebble down into the sound … AND without jumping down too quick and missing tracing all the detail on the other side.

Fractal Detail and Fractal Control. Same as the above two, but for facets. The Audio Note Kegon Balanced amps are great at Fractal Dynamic Control.

Harmonic Detail and Harmonic Control: and Harmonic Fractal Detail and Harmonic Fractal Control: same as above, but for tone [frequencies].

See, we all knew that the reproduction of music was a beach.. 🙂

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Lamm / Philosophy 0 comments
 by Michael

How to Make a Successful Show System

Looking at the the rooms that sounded good at this years 2008 CES show, one might wonder, if one has the time to wonder about things, if there are any commonalities between the rooms that sounded musical [by which we mean a system that is engaging and has an audiophile performance commensurate with the price].

But, looking at the rooms…

We CAN say that a lot of old wives tales [just who WERE those old wives, anyway?] and rules of thumb are not really rules that people should be paying a whole lot of attention to.

For example:

* Always use small speakers in a small room, and big speakers in a big room.

But the huge Evolution Acoustics speakers sounded just fine thank you in a tiny room, and the Classic Audio Productions horn speakers sounded darn good in the Atma-sphere room, and similarly the Hansens [though this year they did bring a somewhat smaller speaker]. Now, mind you, they didn’t try and turn the systems all The WAy UP – not while I was there – and I am sure they could overload the room just fine. But that capability can also be a real plus when you think about certain genres of music that can use a little volume. On the other hand, the Cessaro speakers in the Zanden room did feel a little too large – that the room was impacting too much on the music.

It seems much more true that small speakers in a large room do not fill the room satisfactorily – though the little Magicos can do well [you just need to drive the poop out of them] and many small speakers in the best of show rooms filled their side of the room quite nicely indeed.

OK, what other rules can we throw away 🙂

* It costs a lot of money to make a great sounding system

This one is easy. It takes a lot of money to make a great PERFORMING system, one that is at the leading edge of humanity’s ability to reproduce music, one that has all of the audiophile attributes associated with the ‘high-end’. But if someone just wants to enjoy listening to music on a system that sounds good – that is not embarrassingly offensive – that was not built by people just trying to put out product without any thought to the performance that CAN be achieved at their asking price – then this is possible at all price points.

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And then there are rules that do seem to always apply [it is so like life to have some rules that work and some that are more flaky].

* Its hard to make a system sound good when the source equipment is severely compromised with respect to the rest of the equipment.

Many rooms had problems associated with source equipment that was almost an insult to the listeners – almost a ‘no one cares about how it is going to sound’ attitude. They used everything from DVD players to CD carousel players to iPods to laptops with cheap soundcards. EEEEwwwwww!!! They sounded… how shall we put it…. severely compromised.

This rule really is: Source components won’t Make a system, but they Can break it.

* Things like cables, equipment racks, power cords, etc. rarely make or break a system.

These are really ways to refine a system and get the most out of it as one can. But at a show – this level of attention to detail is appreciated, but systems can sound good at shows with cables and racks that we would not be caught dead using here.

* It is the amp / speaker combo that determines in large part what the system will sound like. This is what Makes a system.

If this ain’t right – well, might as well go home. Luckily a lot of combinations do work.

Sure would be nice though for some exhibitors to realize that their combo does Not work and try something different one of these years.

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Shows are one great laboratory where one has a lot of experiments running at once – about 233+ of them.

OK, I’ll add to this list if we come up with some more lessons learned. A lot of the lessons have to do with training the ear – learning how things sound… low efficiency speakers, different kinds of solid-state amps, different kinds of speaker cabinets, different kinds of cables and… on and on.

The thing, for me, at this years show was being able to tell if the exhibitors paid attention to the details of system configuration. No, I probably couldn’t do this blind, but with the help of looking at a system, I think I can now hear how there are fewer problems in some systems, that they played with things enough, optimized things to a point where a lot of the things wrong with other people’s systems – things that one just accepts at a show like room problems, vibration-induced congestion, etc. were reduced quite a bit if the exhibitors spent some time on system setup.

Again, this didn’t Make or Break the system, perhaps, not going to turn a sleeper system into a Standout, but it did make the systems more enjoyable – and more likely to get on the Best of Show list when perhaps otherwise they would otherwise just be mediocre and kind of annoying.

in CES 2008 / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy / Show Reports 0 comments