It's the room stupid !
My reference CDs to tune my system. No systems I have heard, large or small can play all these disks with flying colours. The Rossini sonata here has one of the best recordings (pls reverse the polarity on CD but not the LP), the strings are wonderfully recorded but usually if play through a system whose owner is a jazz lover, you can almost be sure the strings will sound steely. The only Chinese CD here is wonderfully recorded with a very intimate vocal and acoustic guitars with decays (track 10) and very dynamic bass with bass drum (track 8), almost all systems, big or small can not play these 2 tracks with an impressive sound or proper control of the bass. Do you want me to bring these CDs over and point out what is exactly not quite right with your system ?
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PT has conveyed to me many fellow audiophiles were asking where have I been due to my absence from AE’s forum. Well, I must admit if you think I had taken a minor role in the T.V. series “ Without A Trace”, you’d probably be right as the recent financial turmoil has changed my priorities in life.
Back to hi-fi, I believe once in a while, we may face certain breakdowns (like in life), be it deterioration in sound quality or performance of our gear, and once these are suitably dealt with and fixed, we may later reach a higher level in sound reproduction. Very recently, I finally took the plunge of moving out of my beloved hi-fi abode and moved to a bigger place as I felt my previous room had reached its sonic limits, however, I left my old home with a feeling of trepidation as I know the new place will require a lot of acoustic treatment work in order to allow my big horns to sing freely.
Although my new place is much bigger in its overall area than my previous home, the listening area is actually smaller and because of “feng shui”, I have to place my speakers on the long end of the living room (much to my dismay afterwards) instead – this really posed a real challenge to me.
I was so busy with my life (crises management) these days and I only bothered to connect my system one week after moving in to the new home. The initial impression was of horror & shock, after playing the system for 5-10 minutes, I could not relate the sound my system was reproducing to the one I was so familiar with in my old home. To add insult to injury, my daughter quickly commented to me the sound she just heard was very different to the previous sound, in fact, she added it was VERY BAD (kids never lie !). Immediately, I said to myself, “that’s it, I will move my system to an industrial building so that I can do whatever I want & bugger the feng shui issue, period”.
Let me describe the exact sound I was hearing at that moment, it had no imaging, sound was blurred and muddled and the bass was slow and out of control, the only surprise was the tonality was very natural as I chose this place because it is a 40-year old building with very good acoustics & quiet background even in its bare stage. I calmed myself and reminded the primary reason why I chose this place was the serenity of the room and the outside view plus excellent feng shui, if I can overcome current outrageously poor sound, life will be near perfect.
I further reminded myself that I have the room tuning skills and the acoustic tuning devises at my disposal to ‘change’ the sound. First thing I did was to place the wooden diffusor in the middle of the back wall facing me, the image improved drastically, I was instantly gratified to conclude the appalling sound can be dealt with one step at a time. Many hours had passed (from Sat. morning to afternoon), I installed my many room tuning gadgets one at a time, each installation resulted in an incremental improvement. Honestly, I think it must be God’s help rather than my intuition, everything I did (90% of time) brought about an improvement in sound. When my wife returned home in the afternoon, she said the sound was NOT BAD but in fact better than my previous room, she was referring to the tonality and dimensionality of the sound (my daughter quickly informed her mum that the sound was not like this when I first turned on the system in the morning, in fact, it was literally unlistenable). We later attended a concert (I have been to many concerts this year so far) in the evening and I was pleasantly surprised to discern the tonality of the sound from the new room was closer to the live event than from my old room but there was still much more fine tuning work to be done in the coming days.
To cut the very long story (6 weeks) short, moving from a proper acoustically-tuned room to a new room (before any treatment) is a real challenge to any audiophile and one needs to learn quickly to understand the acoustic disposition of the new environment and to dance with it instead of fighting it. I mean each room has its different room nodes i.e. frequency response and we must maximize its good points (make the overall sound bloom with the room) and minimize/reduce the nasty audio spectrum (harshness & boominess). My new place is very unique (it has pluses & minuses) that there are many large & small storage compartments surrounding the living & dinning rooms and over 1/4 of the sidewalls are decorated with wooden panels (with 40 years of aging), hence, I believe the natural tonality & dimensionality in sound are attributable to these 2 main features. It also has wonderful harmonic decays, lively sound and good dynamics – I can hear much more details (20-25% more). Either you can draw the right or wrong conclusion this new place has proper sound acoustics and my old place was “overdamped”, anyway, as they say in Zen, there is no past, no future but the present. I need to focus on how to yield better sound from my present listening environment and perhaps I may get closer to hi-fi nirvana which was not (and never will) possible from my old home.
Room acoustics in my opinion and observation, is the least understood discipline in the hi-fi world. I would like to borrow the 2 famous phrases “ Rome was not built in a day “ and “ There are many roads to Rome” to express my attitude to the art of room tuning. It is impossible to make a room sounding perfectly in a day or 2 as when you treat one part of the room, it will affect the air turbulence (music/sound is transmitted in the air) in other areas of your home as rooms, storage cupboards etc act as woofers, they allow air to move freely between them, so one needs to make pain sticking effort to treat each area of your home in order to enable air move as freely as possible as any blockage in certain parts of the room will make sound less natural.
Apart from free flowing of air, one needs to deal with the common subject of wall reflection, this is a well known fact and the audio industry has invented many gadgets to tackle the nasty aural effects caused by sound reflections in our room. Those with good ears can easily discern sound anomalies caused by 1st reflection & 2nd reflection will treat those areas successfully, those who can’t and have not dealt with these problems will be listening to “Reflections of my life” every time they turn on their hi-fi system.
I have treated the living, sitting rooms and its surrounding storage compartments thoroughly (with the help of my acoustics master 2 weeks ago), the 4 bedrooms, the 2 toilets, front door entrance, the many windows, walls and ceilings, fridge, kitchen and the 2 small rooms inside there. The sonic difference between before & after treatment was night & day. I have taken my old room for granted as the 4 years of constant fine tuning made hi-fi sound reproduction exciting and impressive to occasional visitors, one of the main reasons was I could play as loud as I wanted (100-110 decibels), however, the sound lacked the ultimate natural harmonic decays I was associated with the classical music I heard at concert halls.
In summary, once you have a prize collection of hi-fi gears, have your speakers bloomed with the room and your room adequately tuned acoustically, then you will hear the sound from your system containing the 5 elements of metal, wood, water, fire and earth (please refer to my write up on this topic last year). When you hear a cymbal, saxophone or triangle played through the speakers, the sound has the metallic texture with wonderful decays, violin or piano playing will give you the gloriously rich wooden overtone and airy feel, music coming out from your system should have the clear rhythm and beat, like live music (like water moving freely), the sound you hear is like a fire which has life and passion with dynamics and the sound carries weight (earth), the bass note is clearly audible and hit the floor, your thighs or your buttock. Once you have the abovementioned aural sensation when playing your system – you’ve got it man.
Although my present home still has some room resonance which I need to tackle when playing certain recordings (there are very minor bass booms which are only noticeable on some odd recordings), I am now enjoying the sound with its natural tonality and organic texture, I can easily follow the playing by individual musician or ensemble with ease. I hope after several more weeks of fine tuning, I can share my new found joy with some of my audiophile comrades who, like me, care more about the room acoustics and optimization of his sound system than constant equipment upgrades. So if you think you own a super duper hi-fi system and your equipments connected in the “ right polarity “ but your visitors are still criticizing its sound, then it must be the room, stupid !
N.B. this is one of several write ups I will be sharing with you in coming few weeks, next one will be my sharing on LP playback as I have found vinyl replay is the MOST difficult act in hi-fi as sound of everyone’s vinyl playing system is different, from highly musical to damn right out of tune – now what would you like to share with fellow audiophiles ?
I am sure you had put enormous effort to tune the room. The picture clearly shows you have less damping in the new home than the old one. But a horn loading mid-range shooting direct soundwaves to the wall at the back of your listening position in such a short distance is not easy to deal with. It is better to use absorption to take care of this part. Maybe, I am wrong. Just some candid opinion.
That New version of Uchida-Mozart sonata is not listenable.
Looking forward to your write up on the Thales/Shilabe. It is not a bad idea to absorb if the backwall is too close to your listening position.
The room always will be the stumbling block and big rooms have their own different issues. But some of it can be minimized if the speakers are properly matched which in the case of Hong Kong with its generally smaller rooms invariably means, *smaller* speakers.
On top, many of the big multi-way speakers require a certain listening distance to cohere and begin sounding like a 'point source' rather than many different drivers. A small room will place one too close to the speaker and/or not allow the speaker to be placed far enough from the front wall.
My question would be why it is that from many photos on this site, one gets the impression that many an enthusiast earnest music lover in Hong Kong persistently pursues speakers which are patently too big for their spaces?
Smaller less expensive speakers in many cases would make far better performance *and* require less counter issues (acoustic remedies) to integrate into the intended listening space.
Why aren't such solutions pursued? Is it less prestigious?
I think I can answer this question well. I rather enjoy the sonic outcome of an underutilized speaker in a small room than a full maximazation of a smaller speaker in a small room. This is a personal perference. It may sound stupid to most but I enjoy it.
Just like I may not look well and fit with an armani suit but I enjoy the quality of materials wearing on my body. It is not about prestige. I don't have any prestigious feeling of buying any audio equipment. If I want prestige, I spend on watches, fashion and cars.
You poionts are well taken. It is logically presented. But most audiophiles are strangely wired internally with rare logic, including myself.
Just like someone who truly believes in ASI's resonator technology, but some others find it hard to accept. Franck Tchang told us with his resonator technology, all the wall will disappear, and small room will become big room. I think it can only happen at the conception level within the mind. But if your mind tells you to believe it, then let it be. But if you operate by logic, you can't understand anything.
My logical mind tells me straight a big speaker will not perform well in a small room. The other part of my mind said, "who cares about suboptimal performance?"
When consumerism is mixed with hard logics, what will you get? A group of audiophiles.
I am pleasantly surprised to read your feedback here and with due respect to the views you had expressed, I think it is both necessary & appropriate for me to put things in the right perspective so that readers (especially those who reside outside Hong Kong) are aware of what AE's customers (or at least some of them) are up to.
Although I can't speak for other audiophiles, my coming from as a hi-fi perfectionist is to strive for continuous improvement in sound reproduction. Since I had the pleasure of owning a pair of real full-range speakers 5 years ago (my first pair of hi-fi speakers was Kef's Cadenza in 1972), I was immediately aware of the pros & cons of such ownership (not prestige as there is a saying – if you have it, you don’t need to flaunt it). Pros were the sound possessed the weight & density of real music, one could hear literally "more" of everything and the dynamics were awesome - you had ear-witnessed how realistically loud my system could play when you came to my home, I dare say, at that time, you had never experienced this kind of sensation from any speaker system you had heard as there was no audible sound compression & nasty reflection. On the other hand, the cons could be just as immediate & offensive, if one is unable to acoustically treat the room successfully (like most rooms one hears at hi-fi shows & many audiophiles' rooms), then the sound is not pleasant experience to put it mildly.
I fully endorsed your point many folks in H.K. (or anywhere for that matter) have speakers far bigger than their listening area as most of them have acoustic problems, causing unpleasant sound. On the other hand, I have frequented many overseas audiophiles' homes with large listening rooms, the sound was equally bad, either there was problem in the bass or the big mega system lacked the true dynamics of real music. The point I am going to make & am sure it will offend everyone (because the truth sometimes does hurt), many of the audiophiles lack the skills in speaker placement (they are unable to let the speakers bloom with the room) and “all” the listening rooms I have been to have acoustic problems of some kind or the other. I commented to our acoustic mentor when I saw your old home in Cyprus with large glass windows and very hard surface, I knew right away, like many reviewers, although they have very sensitive ears and posses good knowledge in hi-fi gears, they lack the ultimate and most important room tuning skills to make the sound of their systems sound properly. The analogy I like to use is reviewers are "foodie", they can easily taste whether the food is good or not but they cannot cook ! No worries, your old room was transformed after a visit by Franck Tchang, he changed it from a previously unlistenable level (by Mr Zanden's standard) to a much more satisfying level (by Srajan's standard).
Yes, some of AE's clients homes (and many other audiophiles’ room to be fair) still have “severe” room acoustic problems (they either don’t notice it or unable to treat it) but the standard of sound reproduction among a few of them has improved drastically. After spending over 4 years in learning room acoustics fm our mentor, I think I have now come of age. In my subjective opinion, the sound of my present system is easily 50% better than what you had heard in your last visit many years ago. Franck came over to my place 2 weeks ago, he only made about 10% changes and commented that the overall sound in my new abode was better than my old place (exactly what my wife and I had remarked after the acoustic treatment). Perhaps my above statement still needs more qualification, a good sounding system (either with full-range large speakers or mid-sized speakers ) should posses the following qualities : the speakers irrespective whether they are placed in the middle of the room or near the back wall should completely "disappear" from the listener - the sound should come from everywhere surrounding the speakers and on certain good recordings, the sound should extend to both sides of the side walls. The sound must posses the “natural” tonality when either soft or loud music is being played The sound must posses the 5 elements of metal, wood, water, fire and earth, in addition, it must have the natural transparency & dimensionality of real music, giving you the “ illusion “, on certain very well recorded medium, you are actually hearing the real thing in front of you. Now, I sometimes listen to music with my eyes closed (just like you), the aural sensation is like sitting in the 3rd or 5th row of a concert hall.
Last but not least, I have constantly come across from the letters forum in the U.S. and U.K. magazines of readers complaining to the editor that its reviewers were testing too many expensive gears they would never in their life time consider of owning, like Ferrari or Porsche. I belong to a group of crazy (but not ignorant) audiophiles who will go the extremes (like those risking their lives to conquer the Everest - most people can't comprehend why they want to do that, right) in the quest of reaching or getting closer to hi-fi nirvana (sadly, most never succeed). It is not the outcome but the hi-fi journey we have embarked all these years, with both good and bad experiences we enjoyed so much that keeps us going. To many of us, the biggest limitation in the “art” of hi-fi reproduction is room acoustics because in my observation, almost all of us ultimately fail, is our inability to treat our room acoustics successfully. Perhaps I can use the analogy as an amateur guitarist, how can I play lovely tunes if the 6 strings are not properly tuned (pun intended here) or what would a magnificent Stradivarius (like a fancy Ferrari) sound if the 4 strings are not properly tuned and in the wrong hands (rich old folks but poor drivers). I have the pleasure of sitting next to a prize-winning amateur racing car driver in a Ferrari & Porsche in H.K. and the joy & thrills of the speed and road handling made me fully understood why some crazy car enthusiasts want to own these high performance cars.
Srajan, if there is ever an opportunity for your to make a 2nd visit to H.K. in the near future, you are most welcome to come to my place and some other AE's clients (but not all of them) too, I hope you will be pleasantly surprised this time, why it is absolutely okay for some crazy folks in H.K. who are using very large speakers in their small rooms, as once your hear the sound, you will yield to disbelief and say to yourself, yes, it works and it may well be the best sound you have ever experienced. Unless we keep an open mind, let our pride and prejudice not getting in our way, we can never reach a higher plain in one's life. In ending, I would like to borrow a saying " life is a journey, travel it well " and kindly allow me to repeat myself again – it’s the room stupid !
Your hi-fi comrade and 6moons.com reader,
Mr Z
I forgot ask you during the dinner. I like to use Uchida’s Mozart sonata to test how a system carry music. How do you use this record for testing?