The Method of Tuning

25 years ago, the audio "experts" were telling folks to "kill the room". Of course you can’t really cut off a rooms acoustics. Can you imagine lol, if you some how turned off the room’s acoustics the room itself would collapse. There isn’t a home in all the Earth, that has walls, that doesn’t have pressure. On Earth pressure is an important energy conduit that helps to equalize the Earth’s surface. Yet the HEA’s trusty handbooks have said "kill the sound". The method of Tuning says "tune the pressure". The relationship between the speaker and room and the ear works the most efficient when they are all tuned together. Let me show you how this works.

I (RoomTune) took several bandrooms and did an experiment. We treated the bandrooms with regular direct absorption products and had the students hold a practice session. The sound wasn’t echoing anymore, but the music sounded dull, lifeless and it was hard to tune the instruments. It was also hard for the director to close his/hers eyes and point to the instruments that needed to be tuned up. We then took down the dampening panels and installed RoomTune. The room became sonically organized, more dynamic, and non-fatiguing, the students could now easily tune their instruments and when we did the close your eyes tests with the directors, they were able to point out any of the instruments. This was documented by UMI (united musical instruments).

When you place a speaker in a room, it takes on the character of that rooms "pressure". If you direct dampen that room you dampen the music content itself. It’s just like dampening the inside of a speaker. If you talk into a dampened speaker you will hear the sound of the fill material. Likewise if you walk up to an acoustical product using Guilford cloth or acoustical foam you will hear your voice dull. Same will happen if you talk into your stuffed cloth chair and sofa. And while your at it get down and talk to your padded carpet (don’t let your wife or friends see you). The same sound you hear your room’s fixtures soaking up are the same sounds that will be gone in your playback. Most rooms are like a variable version of LEDE, only it’s all around you. Your speakers, have been voiced to the factory’s dampening, diffusion, reflections, playback system and personal taste. If you have heavy stuffed speakers with not much sound when you tap on them, they are the most locked in sounding speakers and usually require more work finding the right place to put them per recording. They also are commonly the most revealing sounding "fixed" speakers on certain music but play fewer recordings, because they are so particularly voiced in. They can be heaven in the right room/right recording, and hell in the wrong/with the wrong.

Most of us have dealt with many different types of speakers in many different types of rooms and already know the obvious "the room/speaker/ear are all one". They all three are dependent on each other and are all three unique to every listener. When your at a buddies house or show and it sounds horrible just keep in mind to the next guy walking in it may sound the best he's ever heard. When you get past the "one sound system" stage in your hobby things start making more sense. One of the major realizations is listening subjectivity. When I hear someone say "that's a bad recording" or "that component sounds awful" I don't necessarily roll my eyes, but I'm thinking "to you". There's a few things in this hobby that I think are (no other way to put it) weird, and someone judging the sound for the next set of ears is one of them. That's absolutely a discussion for the beginners. You can be in this hobby for 50 years but if you make a judgement call for somebody else's hearing your in a different hobby than individual listening. Doesn't mean your wrong just doesn't make you right, for them.

On this thread you will see that tuning is for the individual. Maybe the rest of the room may enjoy an over all sound, but it doesn't have to be the case. Tuning is about being able to go anywhere.

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net

OK, ready? Now I need to cover this. This is a biggie and can change the hobby for you.

Folks ask me all the time why I choose what they would call "Mid-Fi" over High End. They get upset that I like the sound of inexpensive products over the mega buck ones. Well hopefully I can answer this with enough detail. Have you ever closed the door on your Maserati and realized you’ve just left the keys in the car? You walk around it scared to death your going to damage it getting back in. You notice you’ve left your phone in there as well. And your standing in a parking lot that you know if your wife finds out your going to be served.

Well, think about that for a minute. High end audio is full of folks who have never setup their system to the max. Their scared to death of the warranty being void, so they never undo the shipping state of the unit. There goes a third or even half of the performance. At best they plug & play their system together as if it does magic tricks, like tuning itself to the recording playing. And, after spending all that money don’t even dare to challenge the WAF. That’s called locking your keys and phone in the Maserati
and worried your wife will find you in that parking lot. Your thinking "well at least I have a class A recommended system". My friends (I say this as nice as possible) that’s not an active system able to play all music. That’s an audio museum that a few times a week gets taken out for a ride down virtually the same road every time.

Having an expensive system, has very little to do with sound performance. Please no tomatoes! Don’t get me wrong, that system may very well be the best audio system in the world.....in the designer’s home, with the designer’s ears, with the designer’s favorite music. And, before you shoot me, maybe you happen to have the same hearing, home designer and favorite music collection (as your designer), but what if it comes up that there is the slightest of chances you want to be able to focus on the hall of that live recording just a little bit more than the acoustical guitar? You know it’s on the recording, cause you’ve heard it before. Are you going to plug in another amp, move your speakers all over the place, change out the cables, feet....? The question is really, what if you had an infinitely variable system? For myself, I don’t need components with big over built chassis, I don’t need heavy dampened speakers, I don’t need huge crossovers to fix my complicated drivers. I don’t need thick cables to carry the fragile signal or stands made out of space age materials. I certainly don’t need huge capacitors and transformers (I’m only using 1 cap in my speakers). I don’t need to keep adding dampening materials to my room. The brakes squeal till the car comes to a halt, Wait A Minute! Why do I need a complicated system if audio isn’t that complicated?

My friends we have completely over built this hobby into a plug & play nightmare. HEA has gone way overboard and turn the hobby into EE fix it’s. They’re not needed! If you think about it, they’re not even wanted. We’ve got guys who only understand amps dictating to guys who only know speakers, playing in rooms that are over dampened, with equipment that only has one volume control trying to play recordings that all are recorded differently. And to boot we all have different hearing. It’s not complicated that we need, it’s simplicity. If you have a variably tunable simple system, you will out perform that Maserati sitting in that parking lot, every time.

The big overbuilt HEA is fun, it's cool, it's manly, it's also not needed to get great sound and to play more music. In fact the over build fix it part of the hobby has taken over the hobby itself. All of these complicated crossovers wouldn't be needed if the room and speakers worked together. You can see the logic here right? The reason folks are leaving the HEA part of the audiophile hobby is because they are finding that simplicity with a variable method out performed their expensive system. Like I've been saying this is happening in real time. The more people convert to simplicity and control over their hobby, the more they are moving away from pricy band aids.

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net

On this thread it's time to compare 2 systems to see who's would be the best at playback.

System (A) or system (T)

System A consists of any combination of discrete componentry plus "factory tuned" speakers we choose with a $1,000.000.00 limit.

System T consist of a limit of $200.00 for receiver or integrated amp, $50.00 for CDP. $6,000.00 for tunable speaker/sub combo and another $6,000.00 for wires, cables, platforms, tuning blocks and acoustical treatments.

A couple of times on this forum comments have been made that there is no way the budget system can out perform the all class A million dollar all star system, but in doing the actual setups over the last 20 years system "T" has been chosen over 90% of the time (the 10% never took the challenge serious).

Your thinking "how can this be"? Well look back at what an audio system is. An audio playback system is an electrical, mechanical and acoustical audio chain (including environment), that host a variable signal. The signal itself is tunable because it is being hosted by physical conduits. When you have a system that is variably tunable playing a variable signal you are able to "tune" the system in to the signal, and the signal into the system. It works just like tuning instruments. When your looking at strictly performance, the best sounding componentry are the pieces that get along with the fundamental forces and not against them. A system for example that is in-tune and 3db up doesn't need over built crossovers, or chassis or heavy parts, it simply needs to play and play in-tune with the recorded code. If you tune your system to your recording and room, you will have an accurate reproduction of the performance.

HEA's version of playing music isn't necessarily the highest level of performance. In fact in most cases the HEA mega over built high buck systems have limitations that you don't find with "system T" types. One of these limits is when we are dealing with signal/field interactions. Another one is vibratory structure matching. And a huge one is speaker/room interfacing. HEA created a world that isn't needed to playback recordings more accurately and musical. Remember, not too long ago folks were saying "Kill Vibrations", "make a dead room" and "shield magnetic fields". All of these subtract from a recording's signal. These aren't necessarily bad things if your trying to focus in on a particular part of the recorded code, but if your wanting to open up that same recording you will need to be able to go in the opposite direction. In other words we're squeezing and opened up the signal to give different results in our soundstage. But where HEA went overboard is when they made units that squeezed the signal so much that it started creating sonic holes in the soundstage among other problems. In the end of all the squeezing you end up only being able to play fewer and fewer recordings with a believable sound.

You can take these same recordings and put them on a low mass system and tune them in to the point where you can virtually create any size stage you want and as well as much focus as you wish.

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net