Words From the Wise

"You can't cheat an honest man" applies well to audio consumerism.

- You will never know or have heard everything. Always be willing to be proven "not entirely correct."

- All good music is about life; its passions, pleasures, tragedies, unrequited longings, joys, loves and pains. So be willing to grant that all musical genres have something to say worth listening to.

- Sometimes the artist DOES know what he's doing better than you do. As Mel Brooks once said, "I'm the performer, you are the audience. I outrank you."

- Before you REALLY listen to planars for the first time, be warned they can be more addictive than narcotics. ;)

- Your tastes and hearing were not acquired in a lesser school than that other guy's. Be willing to politely speak your mind no matter if you are a majority of one.

- Bose is bad, but not that much worse than a lot of lo- & mid-fi gear out there at a similar price point.

- Almost every mistake you're thinking of making has already been painfully made by someone earlier. Most folks on Audiogon are gently trying to keep you from their historical errors.

- It's reproduced music, nothing more or less. No one in audiophilia is going to die over it. So have a good time.

Before going nuts, as I have many times, go back to the basics . Simple things. Don't keep your components too close together, especially amp and preamp, keep your digital on a seperate circut, install dedicated 20 amp lines for your power amp and most important dont have your interconnects and power cords tangled, or bent. You can spend zillions on cables, but if their all bent and not coming straight out of the back of your unit {some of us use wall units with small holes, push a component back, and dont realize the stress we are putting on the cords} then your system will be inconsistent. Remind yourself to check all interconnects are firmly in place and all cords are flowing freely. Sounds simple, but sometimes we miss the obvious.

learn the differences between speakers first. this is where the largest differences lie. just for fun, hook up one speaker out of phase with the other so you know what it sounds like. this is done by reversing the + and - connections to one speaker. switch the preamp or receiver to mono (if there is that option) or turn on an AM radio station. the sound should emanate from directly between the speakers. out of phase, it seems to jump from speaker to speaker as you move form side to side.
an ultimate test is to face the speakers at each other form about an inch away form each other. in phase, youll hear sound, out of phase, the sound will nearly disappear. btw. this arrangement can be used to break in new speakers for hours or days.
putting the speakers out of phase is a sneaky technique of unscrupulous dealers to make one sound 'spacey'.
start to focus on certain areas of sound like the sound of cymbals. youve heard them live, how do they compare? is the voice clear and can you tell the difference between bass guitar and kick drum?
do the instruments seem locked to the speakers or float between them and have different distances of apparent depth? after youve chosen speakers and listened to them awhile at home, start listening for distortion when you turn things up. this is when you realize the need for more power. dont get into the wire controversy until you've gotten some experience under your belt and you have separate components.
thats enough for starters.
......regards......tr

1. Use your ears rather than placing too much trust in measurement tool.
2. Be minimal. Over design of an acoustic space is the cardinal sin of acoustics.
3. Think "outside the box". Listen to advice from professionals, but always remeber that the numbers are only a prediction of probable room response. They may (or may not) reflect reality.
4. Think long and hard before implementing any specific treatments. As a professional acoustician (Physics Degree) and an audio engineer for over 25 years, I start a design by first thinking of every possible approach to take with a specific room. I then begin SUBTRACTING the over-kill until I arrive at a solution that is the least working solution. I am a firm adherent to Occam's Razor.
5. I then add treatments symetricaly around the space to fitted one at a time, and LISTEN to the results at each point. I have found tools such as the Techron TEF instument invaluable, but no substitute for the human ear.

BTW, even with all of the other tools at my desposal, I have found the CARACAD program to be an excellent tool for assement of a rooms probable acoustic signature. Of course, I am helped in this by having a professionals understanding of the acoustical properties of materials, and as such, have made extensive use of the materials editor function of the CARACAD program. If you do not have the proper grounding in Physics, be very careful, and judicious in your use of this powerful tool, because an error in the data you supply will make the predictions meaningless.

For the money, however, it is the best software for this purpose I have ever used or reviewed.

Regards,

D. Terry Hazelrig(CEO/Chief Acoustic Engineer)
Timescape/Diyacoustics
152 Dexter Circle
Madison, Al. 35757-8005
Email: timescape100@knology.net