Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences

Audio Federation High-Fidelity Audio Blog
 by Michael

Audio Frequency Charts

Thought it would be cool, and useful to collect useful charts. These first ones are to do with audio [sound] frequencies.

Another chart type of these charts that are targeting mixing engineers: For example this chart from Stereoklang (PDF).

Chip collection has some discussion about this chart as well.

The chart says frequencies from 200 to 300 Hz account for warmth. The person on Chip collection says it is instead frequencies under 80 Hz. I think what we all mean by warmth occurs at all frequencies except the extreme highs and lows and has to do with with amount of harmonic color being a wee bit more than called for and the decay of individual notes lasting just a wee bit longer than what is called for.

Here is an interactive Frequency Chart


[Click to visit another site that has this audio frequency ‘game’ application].

This chart also assigns names to parts of the frequency spectrum. ‘Chest Thump’ makes sense, but I wonder if for our purposes these charts are overly simplistic.

Great Dreams has some more esoteric sound frequency charts. Not sure how they calculated everything – but it makes for interesting discussion. They also assign colors to frequencies, which although different than assigning colors to components [which we have done here before] it is another exercise in expanding the Ultimate Musical Experience into something quite awesome.

CHAKRA ENERGY CENTERS OF OUR BODIES

CHAKRA FREQUENCY/MUSICAL NOTE
TRANSPERSONAL 273(1:15)C#(EARTH ORBIT 272)
CROWN 480(15:1)B
unknown 445(1:9)Bb (VENUS ORBIT 442)
THIRD EYE 448(14:1)A
PSYCHIC CENTER 416(13:1)Ab (URANUS ORBIT 415)
unknown 410(1:10)Ab-(VENUS SPIN 409)
unknown 372(1:11)G#(EARTH SPIN 378)
THROAT 384(12:1)G
THYMUS 352(11:1)F#
HEART 341(1:12)F
SOLAR PLEXUS 320(10:1)Eb
DIAPHRAGM 315(1:13)D#
unknown 293(1:14)D+(SATURN ORBIT 296)
POLARITY 288(9:1)D (MARS ORBIT 289)
ROOT 256(1:1)C

If you find other cool charts out there, send us a link or post a comment we’ll collect them here in this post.

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

Feng Shui – Audiophile Style

The setting where we listen is important to the enjoyment and appreciation of the music. How important? I think more important than what people, on average, think it is. In fact, I think it is very important.

Even if you typically close your eyes while listening – lingering smells of that fish dinner you had 2 days ago, or a hard chair, or your neighbors arguing in he background about whether to watch Kung Fu Panda or Return 2 Madagascar [both are great] – will affect how we are hearing what we are listening to.

Feng Shui as currently practiced seems to avoid the consideration of sound systems, sound quality and, in fact, basic listening room functionality, in their designs. Or maybe it is just practiced by people hostile to audiophiles. [after looking up more information, it appears to be a somewhat unstructured and undisciplined practice – its greatest asset seeming to be that it actually brings some kind of human aesthetic, livability, into what had been exclusively economically-driven decision making. In fact, we may switch to calling this Livability just to side-step some of the Feng Shui hype]

So what we will do, over several posts, is to try and come up with our own Feng Shui for our listening rooms.

Let’s start by listing some of the things that can make listening to high-end audio not quite as pleasant as it might otherwise be [in no specific order, and some people are really affected by some of these, and some of us are not]:

System

1. Visual Cable Spaghetti [oh, we are SO bad at this]
2. Cables one has to walk over
3. Dust bunny build-up [:-)]
4. A cluttered equipment rack
5. Equipment on the rack with different colored faceplates
6. Equipment on the rack with different colored LEDs
7. Equipment on the rack with LEDs
8. Unattractive or overly large speakers

Seating

This is something I really care about and Neli not so much.

1. Seating too high or low
2. Seating too soft or hard
3. Seating reclined too far or with bad lumbar support
4. Seating with a reflective surface up near the ears
5. Seating that allows sunshine to get in the eyes
6. Seating that faces away from an awesome view of some kind

View

We wrote about this before. Ever-changing nature views [or solid colors] seem to be preferable so that a person does not get completely bored with what they are looking at. [Yes, some people just listen in the dark, which is another option].

1. A boring view
2. A view lacking some kind of symmetry
3. A view that reminds us of other things we have to be doing [e.g. mowing the grass]

Ambiance

Choose an overall ambiance and try and be consistent:

a. Lap of luxury,
b. Rustic,
c. Modern,
d. Homey,
e. Comfortable,
f. Historical,
g. Theme-based [for example, covering the walls in Grateful Dead posters, or LPs, or Native American art or…]

Positioning

It is my supposition that getting to the listening chair is not as important as it might be in other applications [i.e.offices, where the dynamics between the person behind the desk and visitors coming and going is of primary importance] . This is because, like home theaters, one, generally, spends 99% of their time in the listening/viewing chairs and not coming and going from the room – so having the chair with its back to the door is appropriate [Livable] as well as functional.

Next… example turnkey Audiophile Feng Shui setups.

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

Robert Koprowski, at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, has designed an interesting speaker which has won several design awards in Poland. He sent us some information on it and we would like to pass it on to you all so 1) you can all see where new designs, and potentially new manufacturers, come from and 2) besides Silbatone, we haven’t seen any other horn speakers using the Manger drivers [although I believe theirs was more efficient)

Robert has applied for/received patents on the industrial design and seems to be eager to take the project further. If you want further information, please contact him at the email address below.

Transducer – 1.2 W05 MANGER MSW- MANGER MTC0803-8 ”
Impedance – 4 Ω
Operating Frequency – 25 Hz-20 kHz (+/-3 dB)
Efficiency – 86 dB 1W/1m Power – 100W
External Crossover division at – 150 Hz
Column weight – 40 kg and 21 kg crossover
Dimensions – 1.3 x 0.5 x 0.5 m
Skeleton enclosure – wood
Thickness of casing – 10-20mm

Anechoic chamber measurements: Accuracy: ± 1 dB 20 Hz to 10 kHz ± 2 dB from 10 to 20kHz Max SPL: 130 dB.

Robert Koprowski
Uniwersytet Slaski
Instytut Informatyki

e-mail : koprow (at) us.edu.pl
www: http://robert.frk.pl

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

And one song rules them all

Sometimes I hear a song on one of our systems here and I think “This song… THIS song makes it all worthwhile”.

Sometimes it is a song and sometimes it is an album.

Yesterday it was Dark Side of the Moon

It was on a somewhat modest system here these days: EMM Labs XDS1 into a EMM Labs PRE2 into the Audio Note Kegon amps on the Marten Coltrane Supreme speakers.

I attribute my overwhelming emotional response to the Kegons finally ‘settling in’ on these speakers and, primarily, that it has been my personal unfounded but hard to shake sneaking suspicion that the EMM Labs players were, like, DESIGNED to play this one SACD really, really well, ever since I first heard it on their old red-label CDSD/DCC2 back-in-the-day.

A lot of the power that this particular album has, for me, is that I heard it so darn many times growing up [still growing up, I know… or is that out? or gray? or comfortably numb?] that I can flash back to those days of hearing it, if one can call it that, on all sorts of inferior equipment and how, OMG, if I had only heard it like THIS back then, if I had only known just how awesome these songs really ARE…!

But there are other songs/albums that – by themselves – make this all worthwhile – and other reasons for their power over me.

Several months ago [or has it been a year already? Time is going by at warp speed, and warp 9 at that], it was a bootleg, and coincidentally Pink Floyd again – of one of their Meddle [i.e. Echos] tours. This was on a much more expensive Audio Note UK front end: CDT-Five transport, Fifth Element DAC and M9 Phono preamp.

In this case it was just the ability to hear this rare concert from the late 60s, hear the musical innovation and exploration that Pink Floyd was doing back then that just about nobody has equaled [except Miles Davis, who was also exploring the underpinnings of music at the same time, for awhile – Pangaea, Agharta, etc.. Oh! and the Grateful Dead – Dark Star etc. Can’t think of anybody else.], and hear it in such a manner as to be overwhelmingly confident that I am getting very close to the full impact of actually Being There.

In both these cases there was both an emotional and intellectual underpinning, as well as a historical perspective and the knowing that it really can’t sound much better than this – that tipped me over the edge. …

… where I think: it really was worth spending lots of dollar signs $$$, to me, JUST to hear this whenever I want, JUST to have these intense feelings, the joy and the awe, in my life..

We have talked about drug-like sound, and striving to get to those euphoric musical states of mind. This is that.

But… it was one of those REALLY good trips [,man :-)].

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

CES 2012 … and the CES 2011 Show Report

The CES 2011 Show Report … new style… is now over in the galleries:

CES 2011 Home Audio Show Report

This is where the CES 2012 show report will be, in addition to being also here on this blog.

Let us know what you think!

Only got a little over a month to go… still gotta get my flu shot [always seems like a good idea before rubbing elbows with 140,00 other people with uncertain hygienic habits. So all you who are also going, you may want to consider this as well…].

We will not be exhibiting at CES this year. Audio Note will also not be exhibiting at CES this year.

This means that Neli will be free and able to hobnob with the industry bigwigs while I, I get to lug my 50 lb. camera around trying to take several million photos and expose my ears to all sorts of slings and arrows of outrageous fortune 😉

Can’t wait!

in CES 2011 / CES 2012 / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Show Reports 1 comments
 by Michael

Das Racist

I think these guys have started something new in ‘music’ – it is highly visual, however, and very reference-heavy with a kind of mix-tape approach culled from society as a whole and not just other people’s music.

It is like Funkadelic meets Sun Ra meets Y2K. I do not think audiophiles in general will appreciate this genre so much. Just sayin’… 🙂

Yes, I did see them first on Conan [so it does translate to a live presentation… people switching instruments with each other at random during the song, a Michael Jackson looka-sounda-like, etc.].

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

CDs (and LPs !) and their future…

In case y’all didn’t notice, we are moving to a future where all music content is going to be downloaded, not bought at a store [and not stored on your local computer]. One fundamental way this will change how we buy music that there will no longer be used music available at prices much less than the price paid for new music.

There is [currently] no concept of USED digital content.

I first came across this disconnect when wondering why people were buying Kindles at $79 when Kindle books cost $18 while at the same time they can buy the best books of all time for $1 to, say, $8… used. And then later sell them. Same is true for music – I can buy the best music albums in the world for $1 to say, $3 while kids are buying music at $1 a song, about $20/album [yes, I have to search a bit to find cheap LPs and CDs – no immediate gratification here]. AND, I can sell it later.

Getting albums for $1 allows us to explore new music, find things we might like, and equally valid, things we do not.

In the digital world you can sample music cuts at Amazon and spend $1 for the full cut, or subscribe to Spotify, Pandora etc. and hear music in a hit-and-miss kind of way because of various listening restrictions [the dunderheaded RIAA are as retarded as they are evil – funny how often these two things go hand-in-hand.].

Content will then be moving to a 100% subscription-based service… but will you be able to play music for your friends, or will the RIAA police come to your door and arrest you for illegal sharing of THEIR content? Don’t know.

Spotify wants all your friends to subscribe to their service, and then Facebook wants you to listen to music on Facebook that your friends listen to, but not at the same time. turntable.fm allows you to listen to music at the same time, but with strangers who are picking the music you will hear.

This is all fun and all – and the peer-sensitive teens and 20-somethings are eating it up, but the 1) real solid social aspects of listening to the same music with other people in the same room and 2) the real artistic/aesthetic aspects of actually hearing all of the music the musician is playing, these require 1) a stereo system and 2) a decent source of high-res content aka, currently, a CD or LP.

So eventually the RIAA will figure this out [yeah right, no time soon] and try to outlaw CDs and LPs [I bet they are successful too] or, maybe, try to buy up the entire used CD and LP market [I’ll sell them my part of it for a cool $100M].

At least, that is how I am currently seeing things. Admittedly, things are still in flux out there and Accurate Predictions is an oxymoron 😉

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Sounding Off 0 comments
 by Michael

Another Extreme System Sighting – Acapella Sphaeron Excalibur

Another sighting of an extreme system [thanks, Florian :-)].

This time an Acapella Spharon Excalibur horn speaker, their statement speaker, which has the bass horn built into the wall behind the main speakers. These speakers are for sale on Audiodoo for around $173,251.00 (new $400,000).

The amp in the picture is the Unison Research 845 Absolute integrated in a white custom finish. I believe Acapella is the distributor for these amps within Germany.

Love the clean modern look of the room – all the white that perfectly matches the white of the speakers. These speakers are on consignment and being sold by a dealer – but can’t tell for certain if this is a dealer showroom or someone’s home.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Sightings 0 comments