Geoff, I'm sorry these recent threads are upsetting you, but calling those who are in the business liars is not very becoming. Instead of getting upset maybe you should apply your energy to referencing the pieces of music the listeners are talking about. I know I enjoy spending time with those who are giving the demos as they are usually able to explain some of the why's. Here's something I copied so people can take a look at one of the reasons many choose reel 2 reels over cassettes, but of course there are some very good cassette machines out there. For myself though, growing up on open reel is more to my personal taste.

tape speeds
____________________________________________

"Analog tape systems run at a variety of speeds depending on type. There are two basic types of audio tape: open reel and cassette.

The larger open reel-to-reel tapes typically run at 7½ inches per second (19 cm/s) and 15 inches per second (38 cm/s) -- the later being the professional standard. Occasionally, you may find analog machines set at 30 inches per second (76 cm/s). The fastest speeds are reserved for professional use because they have the greatest range due to less wow and flutter and greater frequency response. Wow is a relatively slow variation in the frequency of reproduced sound caused by slow speed variations in records, tape recorders, etc. Pitch fluctuations of one or two per second are classified as wow, while faster variations are called flutter. Wow and flutter are almost never an issue in digital recorders because tape speed has no direct effect on the pitch of the audio playback or recording.

The quality of sound decreases as speed is reduced. Reproduction quality also fades as speed decreases so that the slowest tape speed of 1⅞ inches per second (4.8 cm/s) is unsuitable for professional use. However, only a very sophisticated device can detect the difference between 15 inches per second and 7½ inches per second. For almost every kind of music one is just as good as the other. Also, a minimum of 7½ inches per second is required to physically cut or edit tape.

Cassette tapes on the other hand are much smaller in size. They typically run at 1⅞ inches per second (4.8 cm/s), however, some four track cassette devices run at 3¾ inches per second (9.5 cm/s)."
____________________________________________________

I disagree some with the statement about 7.5 vs 15, but from the speed side of things you can see why many tape snobs prefer open reel. I wasn't all that crazy about cassettes with the exception of making it easy for car audio and of course portables. Kinda hard to go jogging with an open reel. That said a couple of the companies became pretty high tech by designing decks that avoid some of the distortion that comes from cassette tape pads. Nakamichi is probably most well known for this technology in cassettes.

I also went up on youtube to find some simple videos on the basics of reel 2 reel recording for the beginer, and found this fairly simple and laid back one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BFWvku7jxs

There's tons of these videos, but I liked this one because you can see the difference between the open reel as compared to a cassette. Sometimes getting into something from the pro side makes more sense when getting into the playback side. I also liked his drawing of digital. Some people leave out the numbers to make digital look choppy compared to analog, but if you study digital from the info side these guys don't fool you.

anyway, enjoy

michael green
MGA/Roomtune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

That's nice, but nobody ever said cassette were the same thing as R2R. Duh! In fact I never mentioned R2R. You did. My proposition is and always was cassettes sound inherently better, more musical, than CDs. Perhaps if you'd stop drinking so much you would be able to keep up with the conversation.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

Your demons are showing again.

"Your demons are showing again."

Yes the certainly are! Geoff the OP is about referencing and that's exactly what everyone else is expecting it to be, excluding you. If you have something to add to the conversation of how Miles or other recordings sound and how they get there fine, but when you use these threads as something different than what they are intented for (which is often the case) they turn into you personal war on whatever.

If you think me talking about different sources and my listening is about you, your quite a bit off base, and again often out of line.

Relax, play some music and jump back in the OP and learn to lay off the trolling wars, is my advice.

It's like this my friend. When you are contributing to the topic it's all good and you give good comments like all of us do, but geoff there's no need for adding flames and spins to the mix, just enjoy the threads for what they are. With this particular thread I have totally enjoyed exploring "Kind of Blue" from a few different angles which is what I do. As well it allows me to see what others do and why. That's really all there is to it, no need for flames but the opposite I would think.

anyway, hope you join back in the fun of listening

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

You are the one who made it personal, with all the lies and mudslinging. So don't pretend to be the victim.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

ChrisS wrote:

Your demons are showing again.

Michael's man servant puts an actual sentence together.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

For listening references on "kind of blue" here's system one.

Room W9'6" x D9' x H7'9"
MGA Tunable floor, one voiced wall covering window. Room Acoustic Treatment: RT Squares (so far)

Equipment MGA modded Sherwood 4105, MGA modded Magnavox 2300 CDP, MGA Brazilian Pine Platform, LTR Blocks

Speakers MGA Mini Mods, Viola Speaker Stands, Sonata Speaker Platforms, Brass & Zink MTD Spikes

Cables Picasso Type 1 interconnects, Bare Essence Type 1 Speaker Cable

There's more in the way of accessories, but this is the basic starting point.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

...from your nightmares, Geoffy, can you?

They haunt you even when you are awake, don't they?

Few words

Big sentence

It's for "life", isn't it, Geoffy...

Room W13' x D12' x H7'9"

MGA Tunable Room, Room Acoustic Treatment: RTCT, PZC & PZC-FS

Equipment MGA modded Jolida 301, MGA modded Magnavox 2300 CDP, Sonata Platform, LTR Blocks, AB1X1 and other MTD Cones, Poplar/Zinc Canopy

Speakers MGA Mandolin, Viola Speaker Stands, Sonata Speaker Platforms, Brass & Zink MTD Spikes

Cables Picasso Type 1 interconnects, Bare Essence Type 1 Speaker Cable

MGA BP Cable Grounds

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

ChrisS wrote:

Few words

Big sentence

It's for "life", isn't it, Geoffy...

If you can't control your hard on take a cold shower. If it lasts more than four hours see a doctor.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

Hi Guys

This isn't always the case (depends on the cabinet build and construction of the room), but if you are in a room 12' wide or less and you have bookshelf speakers here's a trick to get a deeper soundstage and increased tonal balance. Take your bookshelves and turn them sideways instead of up and down.

It's so easy to think of your speakers as a woofer on the bottom and tweeter on top, but if you have smaller bookshelf speakers you have 4 choices of placement to see which works best for your acoustical phasing and pressure amplification. Every speaker will be different, but many times people are listening to their speakers with the woofer and tweeter fighting the room instead of using the room. Sometimes when I'm listening I like my speakers set as close to the middle height wise, RoomTune to floor. Meaning, if you have CornerTunes or RT Squares and you measure the height, floor to tune, and you have the speakers on their sides within a few inches of that half way point, the room will often take over and the speakers will disappear. There are many benefits that come with this.

Now here's another one. I don't have furniture in my listening rooms besides my listening chair, but many of you are using your living rooms with several pieces of furniture. Again if you have bookshelf speakers, raise them above the plane of the furniture. Most of the time, people will have them at 26 to 34 inches when the speaker wants to be closer to 48 inches high or even more. Your speakers will usually perform their best when they are at the halfway point of your vertical acoustic pressure zone.

Remember speaker placement is not a 2 dimensional game, and many people who have designed their placement guides leave out a major part to the equation. The center of your acoustic space is not floor to ceiling if you have furniture.

Keep this in mind as well when shopping for speakers. If your floorstanding speakers have been designed in open space they are probably giving you one 3rd or less if they are in a room full of furniture. Bookshelves in open space can easily beat up on a floorstander with furniture in the room.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

What do you do for real relationships, Geoffy?

You know, with real people?

Is this it?

Call a cab.

Go home.

Get help.

Yes, I realize this speaker placement thing is like beating a dead horse but this is the perfect opening for me to point out again that trying to find the BEST LOCATIONS for two speakers in a room, ANY ROOM, is like trying to solve two simultaneous equations in three unknowns. And we all know how frustrating that can be. Now, I'm not saying with persistence and a lot of moving and listening, if that's your thing, you can find reasonably good locations for speakers in your room but without a methodology other than trial and error you will NEVER find that magic laocation where the sound is the best possible. Of course, as with anything else, speaker location all by itself is not a Silver Bullet and will not in itself solve all the woes that plague any given system. But I digress. So what is the sure fire methodology for finding the IDEAL SPEAKER LOCATIONS? Why, it's the XLO test CD, track 3, Out of Phase. It's only 25 seconds long but the most important track on the CD. The better one has dealt with room acoustics the more the voice on track 3 will sound like it's coming to you from all around your room, IT WILL HAVE NO APPARENT SOURCE. There should be no particular direction, certainly NOT from the speakers. When the sound is the most diffuse using Track 3 it will be the most focused and have the biggest soundstage when going back to normal IN PHASE operation. The other much overlooked tip is always start with the speakers closer together than you would normally position them since it's a awkward fact of life that most speakers sound better closer together than they do farther apart - you know, the way most people ASSUME they should be placed for wider and deeper soundstage. ;-)

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

Thank you for getting in touch with us on these topics. We at MGA/RoomTune are happy to be here and appreciate that your taking the time to read.

Geoff says above

"The other much overlooked tip is always start with the speakers closer together than you would normally position them since it's a awkward fact of life that most speakers sound better closer together than they do farther apart - you know, the way most people ASSUME they should be placed for wider and deeper soundstage. ;-)"

mg

It doesn't appear that geoff is very up on tuning center stage "Pressure Zones" so it's probably a good time to start getting into Room Tuning.

I'll try to come back later on and get this rolling but here's a quick peek at the RT Deluxe.

http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/t301-roomtune-deluxe

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

Tuning until you're blue in the face listening a little and tuning a little, Michael's favorite pastime, will only guarantee that you find what I refer to as the local maximum. Without a real methodology, the one I recommend from Keith Johnson and Roger Skoff, one one that involves a 29 second out of phase track on the XLO Test CD, you will always be wondering, gee, am I there yet? And in fact you won't be there yet because trial and error only gets you so far. The XLO track guarantees that you will find the absolute maximum locations in a given room. With this methodology you are not guessing which is basically what Tuning gives you. There is ONE FIXED SET of speaker locations this is the absolute best. That's what happens when you solve a set of equations. You get a single answer, a FIXED answer. Hel-loo! The beauty of this method is not only is it perfect, it works for any room, even when you improve your system and or your room acoustics, redoing the out of phase track method will always find the absolute best speaker locations. So when Michael uses his Tuning system from the '80s you will obtain sound from the '80s. Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

Sometimes you've at least got to enjoy the entertainment this little old feller provides. At the beginning of the year he attacks me for being apart of the new innovation crowd (read our reports on the CES) http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/t278-ces-2015-las-vegas . Now he says I'm stuck in the 80's, which to be honest the 70's-now are pretty darn cool with me no matter where you choose to land. But here's the funny part. Look at geoff's home page http://machinadynamica.com/ to which he intitles "advanced audio concepts" and find that geoff's advanced concepts are you getting a portable FM radio, portable CD player (which he calls a dead technology) and a portable cassette player.

Also you gotta love a guy who comes to talk about room acoustics who doesn't even have an in-room stereo. Impressive geoff!

Thanks, but I think we're going to do this the RoomTune way :)

BTW, yes do buy Roger's product as he has been a friend of the "Tune" for many years and offers many useful tips to get started on your journey. Tom Miiller (TAS), Roger (XLO) and myself (RoomTune) have had good times tuning together. Two of the truly great personalities in the hobby who I have much respect for.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

Hello Listeners

Some of you in this hobby have become pretty close friends with your rooms, and others have faced an up hill battle. There are some systems that fit together like a glove and those who have them are as happy as can be. These room/system combos are few and far between. Some systems sound great on some recordings and other recordings you feel like throwing away. It's true that some of this might be recording or copy problems but to be honest you should be able to play almost any recording with at least some degree of success. With Room Tuning I have found maybe 10 recordings that I have not been able to play, and if you ask me to name them I doubt if I could. The reason for this is because I have always understood that the room is the biggest component in the audio chain, and even if you have a system that is average, the amount of info being put into your space is much more than you would think. Audio experts say that you are hearing maybe 10% of the recorded signal in your room. This leaves a ton of music on the table to be discovered. Room Tuning has become a popular tool to get that other 90%.

Where is that 90% hiding?

I think the most exciting part of this hobby is finding the music info. On other threads and on TuneLand I cover the audio code and how it works but lets talk about where the music is in your room. There are a few things to cover here, one being the acoustic dissipation factor: how far the vibrations travel before burning out. Another one is the room/mechanical contribution: everything that vibrates in the room, including the room and the rooms foundation. And the one I want to talk about tonight the pressure zones: organized sound pressure levels that form spherical units. In audio this is called loading.

here's the basics

Speaker stimulates soundwaves, soundwaves hit objects in the room causing laminar flow, laminar flow travels to where surfaces intersect, pressure from the intersections load the room. I rushed through this and you can look at the step by step on Tuneland, but the point I want to makes is this action and re-action happens very fast. It happens this fast because the space itself is "pre" energized (pressurized). Your room has been responding from the Earth's core tones and up ever since your house was built, and it just takes a slight action to immediately kick off this millisecond pressure activation. Snap, and that signal has done it's magic.

an important note

When your outside, sound pressure has this distance application because you pretty much have the ground and objects close or far away, but when you are in a pressurized area such as a house & listening room, everything within that dissipation area plays a part in what you hear. You are listening in your vary own unique mini concert hall, and how you shape the pressure in your space is going to give you your sound. You, your speakers and the listening area are one. Your speakers don't tell the room what to do, your room is the acoustical amplifier of your speakers. In other words your not hearing your speakers but the room's interpretation of the speakers, and or that speakers design application.

In most listening rooms untreated, your pressurized loading areas are actually louder than the output of your speakers, if measuring 2 feet from speaker face and two feet from the major room loading areas. Easy test, take the speaker outside and listen, bring it inside and listen to the room's amplification. In most rooms with medium flex (your average american drywalled room) your loudest loading area is the upper corner. This is usually (depending on room design) the intersection with the least interuptions and the most pressure output. Next comes the seams midway points (halfway between any corner intersections). This again will vary with room layout, but for practicle application it goes corners first, then largest midseam down to the smallest loading areas. Again this is in an average room with medium flex.

As Harry would say before being distracted never to return lol, "next up". Next up will be placement and staging.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

michael green wrote:

Sometimes you've at least got to enjoy the entertainment this little old feller provides. At the beginning of the year he attacks me for being apart of the new innovation crowd (read our reports on the CES) http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/t278-ces-2015-las-vegas . Now he says I'm stuck in the 80's, which to be honest the 70's-now are pretty darn cool with me no matter where you choose to land. But here's the funny part. Look at geoff's home page http://machinadynamica.com/ to which he intitles "advanced audio concepts" and find that geoff's advanced concepts are you getting a portable FM radio, portable CD player (which he calls a dead technology) and a portable cassette player.

Also you gotta love a guy who comes to talk about room acoustics who doesn't even have an in-room stereo. Impressive geoff!

Thanks, but I think we're going to do this the RoomTune way :)

BTW, yes do buy Roger's product as he has been a friend of the "Tune" for many years and offers many useful tips to get started on your journey. Tom Miiller (TAS), Roger (XLO) and myself (RoomTune) have had good times tuning together. Two of the truly great personalities in the hobby who I have much respect for.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

Seem the problem we have is that your memory for whatever set of reasons is on the blink. Either that or you deliberately mischaracterizations my statement, spin them around to fit your own agenda, or can't keep the facts straight in the various discussions we get into. Or all of the above. But just to straighten you out what I said about CDs was, not pay attention, that CDs were are dead sounding medium. See the difference? If you don't believe me go back and find what I actually said. And the context of why I would make such a harsh statement about CDs was my continuing 6 month long dialog on why tape sounds inherently superior to CDs. Just in case your memory is totally MIA. So, I refer to CDs as a dead medium because by and large - unless you treat the CDs and treat the player, you know, using damping and isolation, and the myriad other things that audiophiles (but not pro audio dudes pretending to be audiophiles) do as a matter of course, your CDs will sound bland, bombastic, boring, boomy, brassy, thin, hollow, atonal, monotonic, catatonic, discombobulated, wiry, strange, bloated, smeared, congealed, synthetic, disembodied, malignant, insufferable and blah. Furthermore, as I have also cautioned lo these last past 6 months, even the best laid plans of mice and audiophiles oft go awry. Which is why I usually prefer the humble cassette to CD because it is inherently more musical, more real, more ALIVE. Tape is inherently more coherent, more AIRY, more ENGAGING. I do not wish to listen to a dead format, one that sounds like paper mâché. I will tolerate a particular CD if it can approach the cassette's sound, the IDEAL sound. At the end of the day even the treated CD and treated CD player just can't get up to the heights of the humble cassette in terms of sheer musicality and believability. You can play the deny, deny, deny game all you wish, but you're only fueling my suspicion that you actually cannot hear. Which is a very bad condition for someone in the music business to have.

So, no, CDs are not a dead technology in the sense they are passé. They are a dead format in the sense they SOUND DEAD. This whole CD thing is in very bad shape and needs a lot of rest and recuperation. It's a vey sick puppy. Perhaps a long vacation.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
Home of the Teleportation Tweak

Michael wrote,

"Speaker stimulates soundwaves, soundwaves hit objects in the room causing laminar flow, laminar flow travels to where surfaces intersect, pressure from the intersections load the room. I rushed through this and you can look at the step by step on Tuneland, but the point I want to makes is this action and re-action happens very fast. It happens this fast because the space itself is "pre" energized (pressurized). Your room has been responding from the Earth's core tones and up ever since your house was built, and it just takes a slight action to immediately kick off this millisecond pressure activation. Snap, and that signal has done it's magic.

Unfortunately when you try to use big words you often step on your crank. Case in point, Laminar Flow. In fact, when moving air hits objects in the room it doesn't create laminar low. It actually creates the opposite effect, turbulent flow. An example of laminar flow is the movement of air over a smooth thin aircraft wing whereas some examples of turbulent flow is the movement of air around a bookcase, around speakers, over the corners and edges of a table, over the legs and arms of people in the room or around a chair. So, objects in the room actually interrupt the smooth flow of air. The opposite of laminar flow. In fact, what with reflected waves, interfering waves and other colliding waves in the room there is precious little laminar flow anywhere! You had us going for a while, though.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

Nope, I meant what I said "Laminar Flow". Your talking more of the transitional disturbances, but what I'm refering to are the established patterns found in a pressurized environment such as a listening room.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

michael green wrote:

Nope, I meant what I said "Laminar Flow". Your talking more of the transitional disturbances, but what I'm refering to are the established patterns found in a pressurized environment such as a listening room.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

Laminar flow is common only in cases in which the flow channel is relatively small, the fluid is moving slowly, and its viscosity is relatively high. Oil flow through a thin tube or blood flow through capillaries is laminar. Most other kinds of fluid flow are turbulent except near solid boundaries, where the flow is often laminar, especially in a thin layer just adjacent to the surface. If you insist on making up your own definitions for physics knock yourself out. It's mox nix to me.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

OK, thanks for your permission geoff. Next time I look to tweak with oil or blood I'll let you know. You know geoff, google is a great thing, it really is, but in designing it's best to "DO" and then go to google or where ever and look for what best words to use to explain yourself. I chose Laminar as it refered to a flat dispersion pattern. I chose flow as it refers to a constant stream of movement.

If I used your term "turbulent flow" that would be saying sound pressure was not an organized system. That being the case your saying sound is distortion, an interesting theory there geoffy boy seeing that the entire Earth is one of energies moving toward being in harmony and balance. Action as well as the counter re-action. Your saying that the system is not run off of a pendulum of order, geoff? I've been reading you saying the system is broken for coming up on two years now. The world is broken and you have the fix it. Sorry geoffy, but your negatives are what are out of bounds. The system is not some random scatter, but instead an extremely organized wheel in motion. Sound as well as all formative force sources opperate off of the orderly system known as being in tune. Energies that are displaced either head toward tuning, or conversion. This is what keeps them in motion and active. By your terms, someone would walk in a room and hear nothing but phase shifting without any amplification of order, and there are rooms that have this (to a degree), but most of the rooms we walk into there is an amplification, which is what sound pressure level is. If it wasn't organized geoff you would hear nothing at all.

Lastly, on the topic of my words. Laminar flow, pressure zones, roomtuning, mechanical transfer, cable grounding, extreme nearfield and a few more are ones I put on the map of audio and are used in the industry today. Sorry that I am a creator, geoff, but that's how it works. People innovate, design, create and the terms follow. It's those who have no creativity within them that are not able to make their words and terms known. I happen to have respect for terms like Schumann Resonances.

geoff says

"If you insist on making up your own definitions for physics knock yourself out. It's mox nix to me."

mg

Yes, I guess it would be, but you always have your goofy pictures to post. Quite the legacy you leave with us. Sony Walkman, goofy pics, ripoff reports, internet trolling and the intelligent chip.

But as you say

"I said it was going to be fun, I didn't say for who"

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

Your snide comments are nearly as funny as your physics. Air pressure is caused by the Random Motion of air molecules. Random, you know, the opposite of organized. There is NOTHING organized about it. The constructive and destructive interference of acoustic waves ensure that the air dynamics is random and continuously changing. You know, the OPPOSITE of organized. One reason why headphones listening is so accurate is that all of the room anomalies and dynamics are completely taken out of the equation. What you and many others struggle with for thirty years, controlling room anomalies, I eliminate in five minutes. This is what happens when YOU Stove Pipe for 30 years. Everything is topsy turvy. Me topsy, you turvy. You should have stayed in high school.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

Wow Mr. Kait, I didn't know notes were random!

Geoff said

"One reason why headphones listening is so accurate is that all of the room anomalies and dynamics are completely taken out of the equation. What you and many others struggle with for thirty years, controlling room anomalies, I eliminate in five minutes."

mg

This is excellent, I'll save this one lol. So Geoff Kait looks at room acoustics as random air pressure, golden! This being the case, a soundstage would be by chance at best. Here's where this gets fun concerning Mr. Kait. He says "in-room systems out soundstage headphones", and then he says headphones are more accurate.

Now he says the stereo business has been stove piping for 30 years, and stereo is nothing more than producing random waves. So geoff, this is what your going with, your final answer?

So let me get this straight, for almost two years now you and May have been talking to me/us here as a united front, and all this time your point is that stereo acoustics is un-organized random energy? You said "There is NOTHING organized about it." So again to be "accurate", according to Geoff Kait, this hobby and industry has not been listening to a soundstage? Has not been listening to organized musical reproductions?

Well Mr. Kait I'm thinking that based on this info you have provided, your claiming that in-room stereo listening is a scam of sorts. This is interesting indeed. We should probably start out with stereo equipment recalls immediately.

You say you wrote testing proceedures for the military and worked for NASA? Hmmm....lol. I'm thinking you have misplaced your intelligent chip. Now if you'll kindly excuse us, we would like to get back to listening.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

If you guys can read your way past geoff lol, we can move forward.

So your room since it's construction has been forming patterns of the full range of cycles. As the physics mature in your space, so do these patterns. If you emptied out your room in a short time with some guidance you could figure out some key things to it's sound. You can visit TuneLand for a more descriptive view, but let me break down a typical rectangular room for you let's say W12' L14' H8', drywall on wood studs, second story in mid USA. Lets say your paint is eggshell in texture and you have a berber rug in the middle of your hardwood floor. Your ceiling is lightly textured (stumped). You have one window with wood blinds. If you have this room your in great shape! When you walk into this room your voice is greeted with between a 2 and 3 db gain. Remember I'm talking drywall and wood not plaster. Plaster this same size responds some what different, but we can talk about that later as well. Now I can tell you something about this room without ever being there. How? Magic, JK. I've done a ton of these rooms first hand and have gotten to know them quite well. Plus when we do test rooms we test different materials.

Ok, ready to start. Take out the rug. Bring a dehumidifier into the room and set it at 35. Give it a day or two. Now take it out, and lets take a field trip. Lets say your door is in the corner. Walk inside the room and stand in the middle. Now go in any direction you wish, lets go straight ahead. While your talking as you step toward the wall your voice in the center will be big, then a dip, then a rise again as you get closer to the wall. Do this same thing starting again in the middle and slowly walk toward the 4 walls. Notice how the wall with the window sounds different from the other 3 but still big, dip, big. Now lets go real slow. Face a corner. Start in the middle, go slow, your voice starts big, dip, tiny rise, dip and big again as you go from the center to the corner. What you are listening to are "pressure zones" and yes, they are organized lol. Now while your in the corner facing it, raise you head and talk into the upper corner. That's called upper corner loading. Stoop down to about half way between top and bottom in the corner and you will hear mid-seam loading. Go ahead and walk around the room and get use to the pressure zones, the sounds of each one and how powerful they are.

next

Bring back in the rug, and do the same tests. This time around we'll add one more test. Get down close to the floor in the center of the room and talk into the rug. Slowly rise up while talking and listen to the difference between dead and live. There will be a place between the rug and the ceiling that you will like the sound of the best. Make a mental note of this. Now, lets go back to our middle to wall and middle to corner tests. Again big (not as big because of the rug) dip, and rise. If when you go from big to dip and back to rise and it sounds weird at the dip, you probably have the wrong rug type for the room. We don't want to through the room into phasing problems, instead we want to voice the room.

So you found a good sounding rug, excellent, lets move on. Make note that you may end up with no rug at all when this is over.

next

Bring in a receiver and basic CDP, and a simple set of speakers and your listening chair. With this construction don't be surprised if you like your head close to the wall, but we'll cover that later as well, I want to do a basic stage tune for you first. So start with your chair almost to the wall behind you, put your speakers at the half way point in the room spread pretty far apart. Maybe about a foot from the side walls. Sounds disembodied right, but with the right rug not so bad. Lets tune things. I'm going to use my product to do this you can play with whatever floats your boat :) have fun is the name of the game.

Take a CornerTune and go to one of your front corners. Make sure the barricade side is facing you. Talk into the corner, and then hold the product up :) I know :) when you put the CornTune up you can hear the other corners sound off while your voice in this corner became nice and balanced. Nice start! Go put on a piece of music and listen to the before and after. Do the next corner, and next till all four are controlled. Walk around and do your voice tests again. In the middle big (but not as before) dip, and now when you get to the corner your voice is more in your chest and cleaner.

next

I'm taking an EchoTune and placing it on the wall directly across from me in the middle where the wall meets the ceiling. So now there are 4 CT's and one EchoTune up. Music goes on, and all of a sudden the center stage began to fill in, even with the speakers way apart. Put another Echotune up, this time on one of the side walls all the way up (wall meets ceiling) in the middle between the cornertunes. Check out the guide http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/t57-roomtune-acoustical-treatment . Be sure to walk around to get to know how well you are controlling the pressure zones, as well sit down and listen to the changes. Put up the rest of the tunes the way you see in the guide, and listen to how your room has been transformed into a far more accurate space.

now the fun begins

Once you decide if you want that rug after all or not and feel that the room is at a point of balance you can next go after the soundstage.

I like to start with two but if you want to get started with one RT Deluxe, RTD2 or PZCFS, or again whatever product you choose. Place the Floorstander Acoustical product where the front EchoTune is, and pulled out from the wall some. The most popular one is the RoomTune Deluxe http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/t301-roomtune-deluxe . And as I said most listeners use two or even three of them in the front stage area. I like bringing mine out from the front wall a little and start with a V shape, and if you look at systems on Tuneland you'll see a ton of setups to give you ideas.

At this point you can play with the listening fields to see which one suits you best. You might like to listen far field (speakers close to the front wall) mid field (speakers close to the third of the room front to back). Note: most of the time listeners who listen mid-field place their chair a third the way off the back wall and speakers a third off the front wall. Near-field (placing the speakers at mid room or slightly closer to the listeners wall. And finally extreme near-field which in a well tuned room is the speakers spread far apart and around 3 feet or even less from the center plane of the speakers to the listeners ears.

For example: with an extreme nearfield setup using tunes. The chair against the back wall speakers between 9 and 10 feet apart. Speakers around 3 to 4 feet from the listeners wall, the loading origins tuned and the center stage Floorstanding acoustical treaments working with the speaker placement and the room above, there should be no soundstage holes at all.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

Everyone here has made up a completely new definition for the word "reference",although I can't figure out what it is.
A reference audio system is one to which the sound of all other systems is compared for quality. Robert Harley of TAS owns a reference system. No one on this forum owns a reference system.

Yeah, now the fun begins if you happen to have AAD or are a compulsive obsessive. Why make things SO complicated? Oh, I forgot that's what Tunees do. By the way, should I say Tunees or Tuners? Oh, never mind.

Hey, I just thought of another advantage to headphones - they don't give you a bad case of the heebie jeebies. You just turn it on and listen. None of this running around like a monkey on crack.

Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica

Hope you had a good vacation!

Hi readers, so to recap

In room two I have my fav CDP the 2300, power Jolida, speakers Mandolin, MGA Cables, MGA Platforms all the way around, RoomTune TunePak and two RT Deluxe. I have the speakers far apart and it's 4 feet from my ears to the center plane.

Have to confess, I have moved from Miles to "Nnenna Freelon Listen", but if there are questions about So What or my systems, I'll be happy to jump back in to Miles mode.

Have Fun!

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

I have enjoyed reading this thread Ron & MG.

Hi Ron

My speakers in room 2 are 12" from the side walls 10' apart.

I made a slight adjustment last night that was fun. I wanted to put more distance between the vocals and first layer of instruments (listening to Hall & Oates). I did this by widening the V on the RT Deluxe, inching them toward me and placing an EchoTune on the ceiling above my head about 2' infront of my ears. With the tune above me I could set the vocals as close as a foot in front of me to about 12 feet away. Very easy stuff and a ton of flexibility.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

Hi Ron

I believe you might have missed the context. I was talking about rooms full of furniture.

here's what I said

"Now here's another one. I don't have furniture in my listening rooms besides my listening chair, but many of you are using your living rooms with several pieces of furniture. Again if you have bookshelf speakers, raise them above the plane of the furniture."

speaker heights

Also I might add, that many of these clients who have these speakers have asked us to design them speaker platforms.

Saying this, any person taking this hobby seriously should always consult their expert before doing tweaks. This doesn't necessarily mean your store, or your reviewer, or even the manufacturer, but someone who understands your particular system and listening space.

for example

"Ringing is the unwanted oscillation in an object or signal and it needs to be damped to stop it from sounding like a bell."

In my book if something is ringing like a bell, it's a flawed design or bad room acoustic design. No speaker should ring like a bell no matter how high you put it. Ringing is caused by a group of frequencies clustering causing beaming. This is the opposite from natural soundwave dispersion.

here's a simple test you can do, we did

Take an acoustical guitar and play it at different heights. listen to how the soundwaves react in the room. Now put your speakers on and play an acoustical guitar. If they beam or start ringing like a bell yet the guitar didn't, this means the speaker is over damped or constricted in the original design. That might make some designer mad, but to me this just shows how far we as an industry need to go. I for example design and build free resonant speakers. They feel and sound very much like the instruments they are playing and you can place them virtually any where in the room you like. No toe in required.

Ron, I know your new to this, but keep in mind that many high end audio designers are learning their way just like you are. Many of the stories you hear are told to fit the design right or wrong. Take a common sense approach. Why would you fire a speaker that beams into your furniture?

I hope you don't see me as wanting to argue, just trying to give you a different view to consider.

One more thing I would like you to do and think about if you would. Go to bing and type in "recording studio control room'. How high are these speakers? Are they ringing?

BTW I have speaker designs at many different heights, but part of my job is to help the client find the one that best suits their environment and practices. So I'm glad you pointed out about the 48" but I was making this suggestion as something to try if there is furniture in the room not stating it dogmatically.

Just some thoughts my friend.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/

Hi Ron

We do use box enclosures http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/t72-mga-speakers .

Ron said

"Point being, most recording studio consoles are setup to be NEAR FIELD monitors, is that not correct?"

mg

This is why I wanted you to look for yourself. Speaker positions in studios cover the gamut, from far field to extreme neirfield. Many studios have multiple speaker settings so they are able to take guess-ta-ments on staging. Headphones, the truck outside, playback rooms and friends houses as well as "reference rooms" are all used to come up with staging. Just depends on the project and type of equipment used and of course the engineers skills and temperment.

Ron

"Not to continue to be a Devil's Advocate, but with a recording studio, you are comparing apples to oranges."

mg

Not really. Fact is every system is completely different from every other system. Comparing a living room with cabinets to a basement with panels is easily as different as a studio using boxes and a home using boxes. In fact in that case there might be more incommon with the studio and the living room. This hobby from start to finish probably has more variables than any other hobby, because one your using a room and no two rooms sound alike, two there are thousands of system combos which all respond differently everytime their put in a new set of conditions, and thirdly (maybe most importantly) no two recordings are engineered or sound the same. So saying apples and oranges in this industry and hobby....you get my meaning.

Ron

"My home setup; by which now you've seen pictures in addition to detailed descriptions, is neither a recording studio nor setup for nearfield listening."

mg

Yep saw it, pretty cozy looking.

Ron

"Maybe I am missing your intent...it almost seems like you are suggesting something is amiss with my speaker placement, general thinking about speaker placement, or choice of manufacturer."

mg

Nah, don't think that. Try to remember that I'm paid to look at and design systems, halls and studios all day long. When I get off this thread I switch my mind into a completely different mode cause on this forum I'm basically here to recruit listeners for tuning, but when I leave here I'm being asked to take someones system further than where it is. Do I spot a bunch of stuff that would take your system to a different place? Of course, that's what I do, but don't confuse that with you as a listener enjoying your system. Two different worlds.

Earlier today I was working on a "tunable room", getting a tuning board ready for someone in Ecuador, answering someone in Singapore, receiving a fresh batch of speaker cabinets to voice, and...the list is long :) So when I see a system here it depends on what mode I am in and how much time I have to think about it. It's not like I'm one audiophile sizing up another. You have a job. Well this is my job 24/7 and has been since my first concert with Bowie. Well back even further really cause I did the blue grass thing (cousin is the late Doc Watson) when I was 13. So my view is somewhat different than the typical audiophile. I did and do the sound gig as my life's work and study. What I'm trying to say is I'm doing both, looking at what your setup could be if you decided to go nuts, and enjoying you as a fellow listener with your own unique set of conditions, system and ears.

Ron

"But please don't beat around the bush"

mg

Honestly Ron, you have a cool setup and it looks pretty relaxing, and most of all I see you enjoying the hobby of listening yet I also see that audiophile bug biting. You asked about the Crown, which I want to answer when I get time. Another thing is I've had your system (kinda). I was a dealer for the products you have and know them and their designers fairly well from a product point of view. Do I have suggestions? Sure I do and started to write them last night when I was pulled away by a "Tunee" and needed to switch my mind to their system.

And with that the phone rings LOL, never ends!

I'll try to get back with some thoughts on the crown.

have a great weekend

michael green
MGA/RoomTune
http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/