Talk but not walk?

Someone just mentioned Franck Tchang’s Acoustic Resonators. I mentioned them the other day while discussing mapping the 3D space of the room for sound pressure levels in connection with a number of room acoustics solutions. Since we are discussing pressure zones, sound pressure and air it might be worthwhile to take a gander at what the Stereo Times article says about the Acoustic Resonators. I am posting excerpts from the Stereo Times article below. The entire article can be found at,

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/francktchang/resonators.html

Franck Tchang Acoustic Resonators (review at Stereo Times), excerpts

“The resonators also become focal points for intense overtone radiation. That is denser at their points of origin than in the surrounding air. As directional organs, our ears key into these radiation sources and our acoustic perception of the space we’re in is altered. Again, no music needs to be played to sense this spatial overlay. Speech will do, or the sound of our own foot fall. Being completely passive, the resonators can only be activated by received energy. As HF modulators, a full-range input obviously isn’t needed. Franck Tchang has used a spectrum analyzer to corroborate this action up to 3GHz. By affecting the ordinary acoustic damping through adding parallel values from the resonators, original HF content reappears. It becomes audible again and rebalanced against the LF energies. Treble decays improve and the subjective impression of audible space deepens. The resonators equalize air pressure differentials and can be installed in a fridge, mailbox or outside a room. Distance will not affect their efficaciousness. That’s quite a fatal blow to common sense but there it is according to the maestro. Franck has treated recording studios, performance venues, bars, living spaces and entire buildings. His demand as an expert tuning maestro is growing. That brings to mind Combak Corp.’s Kiuchi-San who enjoys a similar reputation in Japan.

The moment you think air exchange where an entire building is submerged in, permeated and surrounded by air (except under the foundation of course), the picture begins to focus. That’s how these resonators defy distance. They’re equalizing the ocean of air that surround us, rechanneling certain turbulences, sync’ing up patterns. If you’ve got a massive geometry-induced pressure zone outside your house for example -- an area where gusty winds get trapped to apply structural pressure -- relieving this pressure must have an audible effect inside. It’s all connected. The mind cracker is simply the clash of scale. Big pressure, tiny devices. LF issues, HF solution. That’s where the mind hangs up. We’ve become conditioned to equate acoustic treatments with <300Hz attacks. That means bass traps. It means huge Helmholz resonators as notch filters. It means giant absorbers and diffusors. Time and again we’ve been told that low frequencies require large devices to counteract. That’s why Rives developed an elaborate in-ceiling address. The ceiling tends to be the biggest blank surface in a room. If high enough, you can hang in a faux ceiling and hide your monster traps in-between.

Think about it. If you sound proof a room by sealing it shut, you increase its internal air pressures the moment music starts. You’re effectively making the room smaller than it was before. That compounds the issue. It’s out of phase with Franck’s views. His isn’t a brute force approach. It isn’t about dominating and straight-jacketing nature. It’s about helping
acoustical energies flow again. It’s about dissipating clusters so that like water which always finds its own level, air pressures level out and equalize. This is a franck response: "I view my room as a bass guitar body, the resonators like strings and the air movement as the player’s hand." According to him and how far I can follow thus far, excess LF energy gets converted to HF radiation by making his resonators work. Work means getting them to oscillate. These devices are passive. They’re not perpetuum mobiles. To keep ringing, the resonators must continue to consume acoustical energy in their environment. However, they’re not drains. Energy isn’t killed by absorption or damping (actually, heat conversion to be technically correct). Acoustic System simply upsamples energy from lower to higher octaves. Bass energy enters the resonators. They oscillate. The resonator in turn puts out harmonics. LF goes in, HF comes out. That seems terribly oversimplified of course. Doubters will point at the fixed resonant frequency of the tiny oscillator and wonder how things add up.“

costco-emoji wrote,

“And just like good ole’ Roger, it looks like Mike is loosing his cool under scrutiny and resorting to sophomoric insults and attacks. It’s rather pathetic.”

>>>Whoa! Hey, didn’t he get the memo? I was under the distinct impression you are supposed to be the only one who’s permitted to resort to sophomoric insults and attacks. What’s up with that?

Speaking of vibrating capacitors and chassis covers, allow me to point out one of the dumbest things ever in all of audio is the bad habit all amplifier designers and manufacturers have of bolting down the large transformers to the amplifier chassis. I mean, come on people! Yes I realize transformers must be bolted down for shipping purposes. But the vibrating transformers should be decoupled from the chassis rather than strongly coupled to it. The best results will be achieved by isolating the entire amplifier from the  transformer, even removing the transformer. The transformer can be decoupled using rubber grommets and loosening up the boots or removing them entirely. The transformer can be placed on viscoelastic squares of even placed on springs. But keeping them bolted down is like shooting yourself in the foot. Capacitors vibrate in operation so they should all be isolated from the printed circuit boards, etc. as well, or damped. It’s not really rocket science. 🚀