Miracles in Audio, by luck, by good choices,by design or by tweaking...

Give me a week ....
 I am tired ....😊

And i must think about the explanation... I am not an acoustician and my device work, cost nothing to do, but i must take my time to better understanding why....

I will take the mate  you was kindly offering me....

I settle for his name:  "Helmholtz mechanical  front wave timing equalizer " this describe perfectly what it does....

My deepest  respect and friendly wishes...

My last device in acoustic control:

THE HELMHOLTZ MECHANICAL EQUALIZER







If you own a room only for your audio system "mechanical equalization" is for me superior to electronical one in many aspects ....



Acoustic of irregular or difficult small normal room obey and react to sound in a different way than a theater, or than an ideally acoustically designed audio rrom... Geometry, topology and content matters.... The mechanical equalizer was a cheap way in money to design my own audio room without the need to reconstruct my room...Passive absorbing, reflecting, and diffusive materials, even well balanced are not enough sometimes...Especially in 13 feet, irregular, but square room with 2 windows and with a complex acoustic content.... We must accomodate the response of the room to the speakers not only the speakers to the room... The mechanical equalizer can do the 2 function at the same time without modifying the basic parameters of the speakers directly and according to the specific structure of the user...The different pressures new zones created by the equalizer itself are intermediary between the speakers responses and the room responses in the 2 directions, because the pipes grid begin with a few inches straws from the speakers and increase in lenght to 8 feet high, like observed an astute observer, oldhvymec ,the organ tuning pipe in a church...

We can call the Helmholtz mechanical equalizer, a "silent organ" indeed and i called it so indeed in my first post about it in my thread...

It seems that human ears react better to first wavefront of relatively "large" bandwith called a " voice timbre" in any room location not to a precise test frequency signal one after the others, like a microphone feeding it back to a correcting program for only one very narrow location in milllimeters...

Then i succeeded to correct my room with materials passive treatment but mainly with an Helmholtz "mechanical equalizer" calibrated by the the first wavefront of sound created by the specific timing of the frequencies of early and late reflections adding themselves to the direct waves from the speakers and coming also from the waves modified themselves by their near 80 crossings of the different zones pressure of my room each one second...

This mechanical equalizer is made, not of bottles like the original one, but of tubes and pipes, sometimes one inserted in an another thinner one, with a short or longer neck(various type of straws) which length i tuned with hearing and listening experiments... It takes me a week and perhaps 50 hours to tune the 23 tubes and pipes....Location is important... All refining parameters were dictated by sound like a piano tuner use his ears and are implemented by diagonal cuts in section of various diameter of straws inserted in one another....I used transparent tape to seal the mouth and i insert thinner straw in a new hole if necessary like in a telescopic stick...

I also use "the golden section ratio" in 3 set of 3 pipes among all the other singular 13 tubes and pipes... My longer tube is 8 feet long under my 81/2 feet ceiling.... Correcting these 9 pipes together was the more easy part , they were very impactful ...I also used 5 smaller pipes of various size near the tweeter of one speaker (3) and near the bass driver of the other speaker (2) to create a more audible first wavefront signal without changing the basic identical parameters of the speakers but only their response to the room but not their frequency response more their first wavefront timing response... It worked marvellously.... It was my adding modification of these 2 pieces few inches, near each speaker, the tweeter for one and the bass driver for the other, creating then asymmetrically 2 different front waves from the speakers, it was this modification which is my personal characterization and adaptation from the original Helmholtz mechanical equalizer before the invention of the speakers itself....

I say all that because Helmholtz was able to set a room without DSP better than DSP... WHY?

We forget that, and we called DSP a progress and it is one indeed for "precise" measurements of a tested frequency in relation with a "precise" location in millimeters...

BUT we forgot that human ears is used to hear not a frequency alone, but a wavefront constituted of many frequencies together, usually a human vocal timbre, and we forgot that a room must be tested for itself not from and for a precise location in millimeter mainly ... And a room is not a set of passive bouncing walls waiting for the tested emitted frequency anyway, but an enclosure for the human voice, and an heterogeneous set of variable presssure zones, with the tubes and pipes being some of them...

The mechanical equalizer work on all audible frequencies not only on bass like many think, and they work at same time from near listening location and regular location in the room...not from an ideal "imaging spot" that is never an ideal spot anyway, the ideal spot is not made only for "imaging" but also for the " listener envelopment" factor ....The belief that near listening shield us from the room problems is completely erroneous in "small" room...

DSP is and could be a marvellous tool, but those who think that he can replace human ears must wait that new learning neural algorithm implement it in an A.I. expert system... Soon it will be done.... But the cost will be high.... In few years tough we will use it...

For now my ears is the main tool and it is enough...

It is a good thing also to learn acoustic by ears not by equations mainly or only and applying them without thinking....Acoustic is a fluid flowing poetry and geometry for the ears, not first a computer program...

I am not a scientist at all.... All that is my experiences only and could be wrongly explained .... But here we describe our own experience and i tried....

Cost: peanuts, all is made from straws and discarded plumber and copper pipes and tubes in my basement....

Result: the best sound i ever listen to in a small stereo system with ALL my musical files... Sound fills the room with sometimes, relatively to the original mic recording, voices or instruments around me and even sometimes coming from the back of my head... Impossible to going back to my 7 headphones that i put in a drawer.....

Electronic design is the smaller half part of audiophile experience, the bigger half and most important part is ACOUSTIC.....

The goal is reached when your room acoustical paricularities, beingnow in controls, are no more an impediment to the sound original choices of the recording engineer with his microphones locations and choices in the original live event...

Your room is able to RECREATE in his own particular way the original acoustic atmosphere...

In the beginning of my testing and tuning my room i used piano, hapsichord timbre recording, after that brass and strings orchestra and choral pieces...

But the last tuning was made also with Kurt Weill - Die Dreigroschenoper with Lotte Lenya the version of 1958...

The mic choices in this recording and the way the voices are often coming completely "IN" my ears from right and left or from the back of my head  has revealed to me the accuracy of my final tuning of the mechanical equalizer with pin point imaging, in a large soundstage over the speakers, BUT MAINLY of a " listener envelopment" acoustical factor better than in  all my headphones or at least on par with them but always a better natural living sound...All that with natural timbre, because the original timbre "envelope" perception of the instrument is linked to a better balance in your actual room between all the acoustical cues generating, imaging, soundstage, listener envelopment, apparent source width, etc

I think i am done with acoustical controls now.....

I proved to myself my point about the importance of the controls over the three working embeddings dimensions in any audio systen: mechanical. electrical and acoustical...

Anybody could do better than me but at a much higher cost, at peanuts cost i doubt that someone could improve it a lot.... All my devices are peanut cost modified when bought like the S.G. grid or homemade like my "golden plates" or my mechanical equalizer...






Dont upgrade embed everything reightfully before....

A single straw can kill ot acoustically ressuscitate a room....

I just compared the same song of a singer on my 500 bucks system and in my controlled room with something 1/4 of a million or 1/2 millions bucks system...For sure it is not a direct comparison...but even if it is impossible to compare 2 audio system qualitywise if the comparison is at a distance, it is possible to compare one which is detailed and musical with one which is detailed BUT not musical and in which tonal timbre are unnatural and this even at distance like in this case because nevermind the distance the better of the 2 will stay better and the worst will stay worst EVEN if we listen to it through the better one.... It is enough for me anyway....i know that i will stay with my actual audio system ...


All those who think that audiophile sound come first from the gear design are in error.... The main factor are the 3 working embeddings dimensions, especially the acoustic.... If we think rationally about audio it is only common sense....But i never realized myself that simple truth till these days and will have never realize it if i had all the money to upgrade in a chase of the moon search for Hi-FI.... Acoustic control MAY and CAN cost nothing and it is the most singular powerful factor.... NO UPGRADE AT ANY COST can replace the room factor....OK i Am tired to repeat my mantra, those who will listen to it will benefit , the others will throw money never knowing where is the peak of the mountain....

i will summarize in this way this comparizon between the costly system and mine: A very detailed sound is good BUT details without a fluid natural softness and without a natural tonal timbre for the singer voice not only it is fatiguing but unbearable for me EVEN if i listend to it through my own system.... If i was in this room i will probably have an heart attack.... But incredibly many people consider this "sound" very good because even it is not musical at all it is like a microscope...But it is an illusion, a decetion, i own all these details already in my sound but integrated in a musically natural way.... It is like comparing the Worst S.S. with the best tubes amplifier....My impression is my system catch the same details than the pricey system but in a more musical flowing way but mark my word i dont denigrate this costly excellent system , IT IS THE ROOM and THE ELECTRICAL GRID of the owner which is not controlled that give a so bad soiund for my ears i know it not his gear.......... The problem of this costly system is not the gear quality, it is top, it is the embeddings probably the electrical and the acoustical one especially... I know nobody will believe my impression, i will not believe it myself if i was not listening to it right now.... My 500 bucks system will need NO upgrade in the future if it does not break....My goal is reached with this Helmholtz mechanical Eq.
😁😁😁😁😁😁😊😊😊😊😊

I can safely say that the controlled of the 3 embeddings of a system, especially the room control is more important than the price of ANY system....

My mechanical equalizer is my best device.....

I am done with the frantic search to create an Hi-Fi system for the poor....Its done....my system is absolutely not the best there is and i will never boast about it, but i am very proud of my devices controls at peanutrs cost and my discovery of the main importance of these embeddings controls thats all.... I will go mute....

My best to all......

The only way to explain why so much people are convinced that the best way to obtain S.Q. is ONLY OR MAINLY moving toward costly upgrades is social conformity by market conditioning practice ...

I was thinking exactly that 7 years ago, i was convinced that without costly gear no one can pretend to great musical sound quality.... And i was very angry and frustrated because i cannot afforded my dreamed gear at all.... It was in fact a great luck for me indeed...

This frustration turn me on a mission to satisfy myself.... The rest of the story is in this "vuts" thread with all my experiments, sometimes crazy, sometimes less crazy and a few times very very good...Especially my use of dissymetric compression of springs boxes, my golden plates and my Mechanical Helmholtz equalizer....

The famous 1950 experiment of Solomon Asch explain evrything we must kmow about social conformity....

The link is here:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html

All actors, engineers that work hard to create good products, the consumers that bought them, the reviewers that sells them all are of good faith, they are only convinced that the "shorter"line in Ash experiment is the "longest/" one, for the same reason, autocondinioning to conform to the general collective opinion.... S.Q. is linearly related to increasingly better electronic design, and linearly related to prices....

It is all wrong.... The way we seat a system in our room IS the main factor and the cost could be peanuts...I called that the controls over the 3 working dimensiuons of any audio system.... All reader already know my "song"...😁😊

The acoustic control overpower anything in the S.Q. increase.... Lesson learned by myself....But the father of acoustic Helmholtz already know that before the invention of modern audio.... He invent modern room control....


For sure being not an idiot i dont affirm that all speakers, dac, or amplifiers for example are equal in quality...I only affirm that pick 3 "relatively good" pieces of  gear between these three elements, and embed them rightfully and compare the same  3 elements in the same non controllerd environment this time and it will be a night and day differences; almost impossible to erase this difference in S.Q.   with an upgrade, with a second upgrade, or even a third upgrade.... You cannot avoid or replace the embeddings controls with a piece of gear or many pieces....Especially the acoustical one....



My best to all.....