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Some Questions for Uncle Ray
Over the past few weeks, I had the luxury of many experienced listeners coming to help fine tune the system. I still have some unanswered questions in my mind and need some help from you.
Q1 Positioning of Cello
Two experienced listener told me that the Cello should be sitting on the floor. That means the bottom of the Cello should be somewhat level with my feet. If not, the Cello seems like hanging in the air. This can be done by reducing the toe-in angle of the speaker or through adjusting the distance of the tweeter on the speakers. However, if I achieved this, another group of listeners said on most LIVE recordings, the vocal seems like lying down on the floor to sing. How can I reconcile their differences? Both of them seems to have the right argument.
Q2 Can it be the case that AC noises/Ground noises would blend with Hall Ambience? As a result, filtering of noises means hall ambience details will be reduced as well? This is a point raised by your Tidal comrade - Alecy.
Q1 Positioning of Cello
Two experienced listener told me that the Cello should be sitting on the floor. That means the bottom of the Cello should be somewhat level with my feet. If not, the Cello seems like hanging in the air. This can be done by reducing the toe-in angle of the speaker or through adjusting the distance of the tweeter on the speakers. However, if I achieved this, another group of listeners said on most LIVE recordings, the vocal seems like lying down on the floor to sing. How can I reconcile their differences? Both of them seems to have the right argument.
Q2 Can it be the case that AC noises/Ground noises would blend with Hall Ambience? As a result, filtering of noises means hall ambience details will be reduced as well? This is a point raised by your Tidal comrade - Alecy.
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Cello has a spike and usally sound come from somewhat level with yr knee.....from d record i heard, i felt yr hight position is quite perfect(why sitting on the floor???) Anyway, Good Question, i want to know more too.
(Acturally, I found simular question too, cello sound same level with piano...but too lazy to tunning.)
No.1
Positioning/Size of Cello
The Cello should be a few inches above the floor. Most cello recording are done in close range. I do not recommend to use mercury recording e.g. Janos Starker as a reference to checking the positioning/size because they were really recorded in too close range. When the recording is done this way, the body of the Cello always steals the spotlight. A real Cello, is not that big in physical size. In certain range, it actually sounds similar to viola and even violin. Don't just focus on the body. That also depends on the equipment and the room as well (if the room has a hollow structure above, then most likely the soundstage is higher than normal). When Wavac 833 was driving the Sunray, the Cello body was always much bigger than normal. A simple swap to any amp will reveal which amp is more correct. But there is a strong subjective listening preference here.
For my own sake, the height of the soundstage is not too much of a concern because the Tidal Sunray has the most accurate phasing. The proportion of instruments size relative to each other is the most accurate amongst all speakers that I have heard. But I do feel that it is better to use the positioning of Cello to determine the height of the soundstage because a Cello must sit on the floor to be played by the cellist; whereas the height of the stage of the live recordings varies from place to place. A common perception of audiophiles is they always want high soundstage; well whatever when it comes to preference, logic doesn't apply.
Hello Alecy, how are you doing with your Tidal suite? Can you tame it? No hard work, no good sound especially we are in the Tidal camp.
Let me try to answer your question by logics.
Unlike speaker cable, interconnect cables and digital cables, the AC is cable not directly on the signal path. The reason why AC cable affects the performance of the system so much is because it "indirectly" affects the resolution through minimization of AC noises. (Speed, and damping factor as well - let's forget this for a moment) Lower AC noise floor allows you to hear more details which are already there carried by your beloved cables. Again, the AC cable is not in the signal path. If we agree this point, we can continue the discussion.
What we hear in the concert hall is a mixture of the fundamental tone, harmonic decay in conjunction with the hall sound. That means the very first tone played by the violinist say in the Cultural Center is already a complete blending amongst the fundamental tone and the subsequent interaction between the decays and the hall acoustics - they cannot be separated. We can describe the reproduction of sound in sequential processes. But when it happens in real time, they just can't be separated.
A badly designed AC conditioning can screw up the system because the transformers inside can generate new mechanical/electrical noises; i.e. while some of noises are eliminated, they introduced new noises and spread to other components most of the time through the ground of the AC cables. If other components are not well designed, these noises will quite possibly go into the signal cables, and then there is a direct influence on signal in this case.
A good AC conditioning such as Wavac AC-1 (my conditioning) will always retain the liveliness of the overall atmosphere, more revelation of the tonal color, more of everything. I do not have experiences of hall sound reduction. The temporal pause of the pianst, allows me to fell the silence/acoustics property of the hall and I truly feel the hall acoustics is better appreciated this way. AC noises mess up the tonality, mess up our senses, confuse real harmonics, lessen control on low frequency. Without AC conditioning or the Troy, the temporal pause are that apparent, making the lyrical development grossing over and that's real bad. Mr.DV describes how he felt in this regard. I need not repeat.
I can understand a short swap back to the wall socket or some power bar will render a feeling of hearing more of something. That's right - that something is noises. AC noises has a tendency to attack tonal color in the mid range/high frequency. Just like I used to love the sound of "glasses" in the old days because my acoustics are surrounded by glasses. I mistakenly treat reflection of glasses as details/information. When I go inside any treated room, I felt loss of information.
When we are used to listening to AC noises for so long, a reduction of them may take some time to adjust. But the Wavac is such a superb AC conditioning device, I wonder this adjustment time will take more than 10 minutes. My Zanden 2000p/5000s are always plugged in there in the past 2 years.
My Wavac AC-1 conditioning dated back more than 2 years. It is a better buy than the 833 if I look it back for what it does for me.