Are you pretending to be dense? If so you’re doing an excellent job.
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So Geoff, it appears you keep going on both sides of this fence "is audio vibratory or not". There are like 3 or 4 threads you are on right now saying "kill vibrations", then someone comes up (me included) saying "audio is vibration if you kill it you won't hear anything". We are referring to all forms of audio along the audio pathway. I'm sorry my friend but how can you be on both sides of this fence and still make your points? If audio is not vibratory why would you need to isolate it? If it is vibratory and you kill it, it will not produce audio. When one goes up and reads these threads it's like watching someone playing on both sides of the tennis court. I'm definitely siding with glupson, audionuttoo, Tj and others on this one. Audio is vibration and if you kill it (anywhere in the audio chain) you're killing the sound itself. Michael Green |
Nope, same side. External vibration interferes with and distorts the electrical signal in wire. It does so whether the electrical signal is in the power cord, internal wiring, capacitors, transformers, speaker crossovers, speaker cables, interconnects, digital cable, what have you. As for the electrical signal in wire itself, it’s not (repeat not) vibrating. In an AC circuit it is alternating, but not vibrating. Follow? What you hear from the speakers under normal conditions is relatively distorted - unless you’ve taken steps to reduce or eliminate external sources of vibration in the audio system by incorporating a comprehensive program of vibration isolation and damping. That’s what I mean when I say, the only good vibration is a dead vibration. |
"As for the electrical signal itself, it’s not (repeat not) vibrating, but it is oscillating or alternating." Actually both oscillating and alternating are "Vibratory" according to our physics books. But using your Vibratory language if you killed the oscillating or alternating the sound would stop correct? mg |
Hi Geoff i just had a great listening and tuning session just now while commenting what i expreicned to Michael on what i did. Just to share what I did just now, I tuned the side walls and my floor by applying few pieces of wood beside the speaker stand and that brought out amazing image and better layering of my stage. I tensioned one of the bolts of my front wall and that brought out the stage more forward towards my listening spot. Now since you are a man of science and seems to be an amazing physicist would you care to comment on what is happening to my setup and tuning ? |
Hi Tj, great to see you! Tj said "Now since you are a man of science and seems to be an amazing physicist would you care to comment on what is happening to my setup and tuning ?" In all fairness to Geoff that would be a stretch I would think. When Tj and I do listening sessions we both have In-Room audio systems to do this with. Our rooms and systems are giant musical instruments that we sit inside and make whatever adjustments we wish. Not just acoustical, but speakers, electronics and the whole thing. As Geoff shares he no longer has a stereo to do any testing with as far as an in-room system goes. I don’t think Geoff has done any in-room testing for over some 15 or more years I believe. If I’m correct Geoff uses a Sony Walkman Cassette Playing with ear buds. I’m not saying this as a joke, but just that a portable cassette player to use as a referencing tool with a Tunable Room on the other end might be a little of a mismatch, especially in the feeling department but hey lets give it a try if you guys want. I'm certainly into referencing from my end. MG |
tjbhuler Hi Geoff i just had a great listening and tuning session just now while commenting what i expreicned (sic) to Michael on what i did. Just to share what I did just now, I tuned the side walls and my floor by applying few pieces of wood beside the speaker stand and that brought out amazing image and better layering of my stage. I tensioned one of the bolts of my front wall and that brought out the stage more forward towards my listening spot. Now since you are a man of science and seems to be an amazing physicist would you care to comment on what is happening to my setup and tuning ? >>>>I was kind of hoping you or Michael would explain it to me. So far all I see is a lot of hand waving. By the way, in case I haven’t been clear, I don’t doubt that some or many or even all of Tuning principles don’t work. What I have been saying is those principles don’t go far enough. You know, what the the myriad problems produced by seismic type vibration as well as acoustic vibration and vibration from transformers, capacitors, motors, etc. follow? You guys can dodge and weave, ignore, Pooh Pooh, attack, evade, dispute all you want. It’s no skin off my nose. The arguments from Tuners against vibration isolation are either non-existent or incorrect. But I’ve said this all before. Something is fundamentally wrong somewhere with the whole Tuning manifesto, I submit, since Tuners embrace vibration, and want vibration to be free to roam anywhere, whereas most of the rest of the world embraces killing vibration. You are kind of the Branch Davidians of vibration. 😛 there’s a space between us big enough to drive a truck through. 🚚 |
So OP, I’m ready to do some listening. Yesterday I put on "Toys in the attic" by Aerosmith. This is a regular off the shelf CD and I’m playing it on my favorite CDP, which happens to be a very low mass player that Magnavox produced for several years. The system is totally mine with no brand names to mention except for mine, folks can check this out on the TuneLand Forum. I have my headphone setup cued up as well to do a few comparisons but this is mainly an in-room reference. Most of my Tuning references are done with in-room systems because when listening I want to feel the music while I listen to it. I use CDs for 3 reasons, one I love the sound of them, two a CDP is easy to tune and 3 the repeat button. For more serious referencing I might listen to the same recording for days leaving the player on repeat. mg |
I’m going to make some adjustments on the system, not because the music sounds bad, but to show how easy and effective Tuning Blocks and other wood pieces are when used. People have already mentioned several types of wood and so this is in addition to their uses. I usually don’t like doing the better or worst thing, that’s up to the listener. What I’m here to do is show the variables of Vibratory tuning. Before I jumped in I knew others would come up to give their experiences, or quote others, shoot in the dark or share their own listening experiences that were successful using wood. I look at the entire house or building as part of the mechanical system. The 4 fundamental Interactions tell us that everything affects (interacts) with everything else. That’s a pretty simple beginning guideline "there is no real isolation on a moving, magnetically charged planet". The audio debates on this sort of thing are amusing but if you back away from the surface for very long and then return you will find yourself in a different location. We live in motion from the day we are born till the day we fold up our listening ears and move on. One of the reasons why wood is so good for music is the way trees have been growing on our planet. A tree is the biggest live fiber that grows from beneath the Earths surface to the suns energy in a full range vibratory fashion. Trees grow in cycles as they reach out for the suns energy. They are natures watch like all natural materials. If you slice through a tree you will see natures cycles just like if you carve away the side of a mountain. It doesn’t take much to see that we are all living in time and all connected to, and a part of, energy. mg |
hope you don’t mind me doing this in several parts, works better for me When I got into designing audio products I focused more on metals, shapes, springs and other methods and materials, and the longer I was exploring the more I ran into issues that I ended up calling "energy blockage". I found that there are three main parts to energy movement, flow, resistance and interaction. I also discovered that energy interacts with mechanical conduits that pass energy in a way that is interactive with gravity, weak force, strong force and electromagnetism. All this is easy to look up or you can come to TuneLand where we looked it up for you and we’ve written about forever. When we look at a component or wire or any audio part it’s easy to think with our eyes and not think about the forces that make the system work. If we were to put on our "field & wave" glasses we would see a lot more going on than what our eyes are seeing alone. That space between us and those components and parts are full of interactive forces. If we looked inside those components we would see the same thing, and if we looked at a micro level we would still see the same thing, tons of interacting energy. What do these forces affect in audio? Everything about audio falls right in the crosshairs of the 4 interactions. And these 4 interactions are in in-ter-change with the audio signal non-stop. You can change the interaction, you can convert it to another form but you can't get rid of it. Space inside of our atmosphere must stay in full mode. You're not going to create a black hole with no interaction when it comes to the AC of an audio system. When you make a change to the interaction you are also making a change to the sound. The sound (audio) is part of the interaction. There is no separation between audio and the forces, they are one and the same. If you take the forces out of audio there would be no sound. mg |
Ever sit there one day and listen and everything sounds great and the next day you listen and everything sounds horrible? Well besides you changing everything else also changed. Go from a sun shiny day to a rainy one and back and you will get a good dose of audio interaction with the forces. Do the same from night listening to day listening, or seasonal listening or one of thousands of interactions and you will experience the system sounding different. Want to know how much of the recording you’re actually hearing? The easy way is to go from the live room of a recording studio and listen and then go home and listen to see if the recording is the same size. If you do this most of the time you will be shocked at how much smaller the soundstage is from your home system as compared to your live experience, with the exception of close miking. In most cases you are maybe hearing 1/10 of the actual recorded info on a typical stereo setup (at any price). Ever sit there and am amazed to hear this incredibly huge soundstage that goes past any boundary in your room? You’ve probably just got a lot closer to the real size of the recording. How did that happen? The audio signal was more in-tune with the energy surrounding the info. Take that same recording around to your different friends systems and guess what. The stage might be as big on them but more than likely that same recording will be different sizes on each system. You can do this back and forth from system to system and you will find that some of the big stages on your system will be smaller on theirs and some of the big stages on theirs will be smaller on yours. MG |
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When you get to the place in your hobby that you start to realize the audio signal’s interacting with every thing around it a new hobby begins from that point on. Most people I see going down this new path usually go the dampening route for a while because the changes are so obvious. After a while though they start finding that they can’t play as many recordings as they once did. The system will sound very detailed and musical on some recordings but far less forgiving on others. First thing we want to do is blame recordings but in time we’ll do something that gets us thinking more. Usually we’ll get to a place where we realized we have been cutting out parts of the recorded signal by squeezing the life out of the mechanical pathway. When the reality hits we start to understand that the audio signal and the physics of everything around and through it are actually a part of it. That’s when it’s time to take a look at the sound of wood and what it can do musically to the system. Rubber squeezes, metal sends but wood has a balance to it that is fuller range. The wrong fuller range can be disaster and the sound can get pitchy sounding on you quickly. Super hard woods are going to sound more like cones but can be tricky. Using a combo of cones springs and wood can be pretty cool once you figure out how to avoid field distortion. The possibilities of voicing your audio signal is endless but it doesn’t happen over night and more than likely you are going to get stuck a few times till you figure out how to tune the three parts to your system in harmony (electrical mechanical and acoustical). For this reason I usually start with a wood type that is fuller range and work on voicing the sound of that wood. Brazilian Pine Western Red Cedar Redwood are all medium to lower tone woods and a safe starting place. Once you get the basics down then you can move more toward fine tuning. If you’re not going to go the full wood route yet or have a different material rack you might want to start with springs and play with wood slivers for the top of the spring and bottom. This will give you some tonal adjustability. You can also do the same thing with cones, a sliver of wood on top and one on the bottom. MG |
There’s a lot of equivocation or sloppy use of language in audio marketing. For instance, look at Mapleshade’s loose description of its Tonearm Resonance Control Kit: "The physics are simple: bonding our 28g brass "mini Heavyhat" to the top of the headshell kills the resonances in the cartridge/headshell structure..." This language is misleading. The brass weight changes the resonant frequency, it doesn’t kill the resonances. To be fair, a few paragraphs later Mapleshade says that the device is used to "reduce higher frequency resonances in the headshell..." which is more correct. It would be even more correct to say that it lowers the resonant frequency, i.e., where "lower" means not the amplitude but the Hz. Likewise, our friend geoffkait often misuses words and commits fallacies of equivocation. It’s no big deal, except that his posts serve to benight rather than to enlighten the reader. I'm not a physicist, but nevertheless even I know these simple things. |
Jburidan Likewise, our friend geoffkait often misuses words and commits fallacies of equivocation. It’s no big deal, except that his posts serve to benight rather than to enlighten the reader. I’m not a physicist, but nevertheless even I know these simple things. >>>>I haven’t misused a word since 1975. Most likely the culprit is miscomprehension on your part. Have you given any consideration to going back to school for a physics refresh? Nothing is written unless I say it’s written. “If I could explain it to the average Palooka they wouldn’t have given me the Nobel prize.” |
michaelgreenaudio When you get to the place in your hobby that you start to realize the audio signal’s interacting with every thing around it a new hobby begins from that point on. >>>>Next step: get to the place in your hobby that you start to realize the audio signal’s interacting with the vibration that’s all around it. Then an even newer hobby begins from that point. There’s always another hill to climb. 🤗 Quick question: Did you ever consider why the sound improves when you take the big ol transformer out of the chassis and put it elsewhere in the room? You don’t think it’s just a question of lower mass, do you? 😳 First passenger, slightly inebriated, looking out the aircraft window: Hey, look, those people down there look like ants. Second passenger: Those are ants, pal. We haven’t left the ground yet. |
Hi Jburidan, well said! Almost have my chores done for the day so I want to get started on the referencing. My reference is not the system but the recording itself. First rough listen to "toys" I knew a couple of moves I would make right away. Took me all of 60 seconds to move my chair out a little from the SAM wall behind me and move the speakers forward about 3". Soon as I did this the "digital" sound was gone. I say digital sound because that's what many call the brittle sound when they play CDs. Fact is CDs don't sound brittle at all, it's the system playing the CD that creates this sound. CDs are an extremely accurate source and can require slightly different chair and speaker placement that can be needed as much as per recording. Most of the time not but when that certain cluster on the top end is heard it usually means the relationship between the speaker and back wall placement are off some. This is a cue for folks wanting to see how their setup is doing. As soon as the highs are tamed you will notice that your stage grew. Mid to higher sounds that were playing in the speakers now miss the physical speaker placement. The disappearing act may not be completely over but we are on our way. MG be back in a little |
When it comes to vibrations and topics touched here, one more time. Audio/sound is vibration. No vibration=no sound. Is anyone really disagreeing with that? The issue that geoffkait, and maybe someone else, is clumsily bringing up is influence of some other environmental vibrations on those "pure" sound vibrations. They surely exist, try listening to music with or without jackhammering in the vicinity and notice the difference. Now, I will not go into how (un)noticeable tectonic movements would be during a movement of an amplified symphony. One is promoting adjusting the sound for better by applying "controlled" vibrations while the other one is, more or less, saying that any extra vibration will undoubtedly influence the sound in a negative way. I can see that guessing, or gaining enough experience for a reasonably accurate educated guess, may be a tedious and time-consuming project when applying those "controlled/desired" vibrations. I cannot see why any external vibration introduced to a system has to be negative. It is all about personal perception, after all and that one is hard to quantify. So, no vibration is no sound. At the same time, additional/environmental vibrations are best when they are dead, if your goal is absolutely pristine signal coming from whatever source there is. It is just that you may not like it, after all. |
All my equipment sits on its own bamboo butcher block from IKEA. Between the component and shelf I use a mix of Daedalus DiD isolation devices and Cardas myrtle blocks that I’ve modified by using a spade bit drilling out enough to place steel bearings - 4 small first then one larger bearing that supports the bottom of each component. I’m very happy with the results and have spent a lot of time experimenting and listening. On the power amp I use hockey pucks between it and it’s bamboo butcher block. Rack is made with all-thread, continuous threaded rod legs and 1 1/2” thick baltic birch shelves. |
Mg said : When you get to the place in your hobby that you start to realize the audio signal’s interacting with every thing around it a new hobby begins from that point on. Most people I see going down this new path usually go the dampening route for a while because the changes are so obvious. After a while though they start finding that they can’t play as many recordings as they once did. The system will sound very detailed and musical on some recordings but far less forgiving on others. This is the exact observation I had during my early days in this hobby. Lucky me your methodes brought my system to another level and now implementing that same vibes to your speaker has brought me to very happy place indeed. |
glubson The issue that geoffkait, and maybe someone else, is clumsily bringing up is influence of some other environmental vibrations on those "pure" sound vibrations. They surely exist, try listening to music with or without jackhammering in the vicinity and notice the difference. Now, I will not go into how (un)noticeable tectonic movements would be during a movement of an amplified symphony. >>>>It all depends on whether you buy into the proposition that electrical signals in wire are vibrations. Apparently you do. It also depends on whether you buy into the proposition that the electrical signals in wire cannot be affected by vibrations from the floor, the acoustic waves or motors and such. Apparently you do. I’m rather shocked that you guys aren’t familiar with mechanical feedback. That’s the squealing you hear when the speaker cabinet vibration distorts the front end electronics. Gee whiz, isn’t that one of the first things beginner audio scouts learn when they start getting audio merit badges? If I didn’t viddy it with my own eyes 👀 I wouldn’t have believed it! Come on, guys! Let’s take the case that the audio signal IS a vibration, which it isn’t, but I’m going to humor you guys for a second. Even if the electrical signal IS vibrating don’t you think external vibration would affect the signal? Here’s an example. - consider the case of a car going down the highway with two (2) sets of shock absorbers for each wheel, one on top of the other. The external vibrations produced by the road surface would produce an extremely bumpy ride, not a smoother ride, as the two spring systems for each wheel would interfere with each other. It would be total chaos. |
I, actually, did not think much about electrical signal but focused on sound as movement of air or some other medium. Something that eventually interacts with one’s ears (just before it gets translated into electrical signal). That is easily the most prominent part of sound transmission and, I would guess, the one that can be impacted most easily and dramatically. Still, even if considering electricity sensitive to vibration and agreeing it could be influenced by outside vibrations, it is hard to understand why all of those influences must have negative impact on the final perception of the sound. On the purity of the source signal is understandable, sort of, but on an individual’s preferences not so much. With some luck/practice, there is a chance one would prefer the final sound and that is what, it seems to me, michaelgreen is promoting. An anechoic chamber is not the most pleasant place to be. |
"consider the case of a car going down the highway with two (2) sets of shock absorbers for each wheel, one on top of the other."Not the best comparison, although understandable one. Shock absorbers are not exactly springs anymore and much more physics goes into their construction these days. Including electrical charge at times. If they were just springs, two would make it an unpleasant, probably nauseating, ride. If there was only one, it may be better, but if you shorten and shorten that one, it may end up being bumpier again. It is about just the right amount. So the comparison may be a good one, after all. Some vibrations may enhance final sound although too many may deteriorate it. If I understand michaelgreen’s approach, it is about "controlled application" of vibrations or some similar description of it. It does not come across as "give me all the vibrations you can and it will be great". Maybe I am wrong. |
Back to Aerosmith. After getting done some running around I've made it back to my place and am ready to see where I might want to go with the sound of Toys in the attic. The speaker and chair move have settled in and I can hear the stability of this soundstage. To give an idea of the general size the stage is about 8 to 9 feet tall and extends all the way down to the floor. This is great cause there is some great cymbal work on this recording and the end of percussive action has a nice round expansion. The stage is about 20 feet wide and front to back is about 18 feet (14 feet in front of me and 4 feet behind me). I've decided I wanted that 70's tube sound so I've moved the LTR Tuning Blocks almost to the edges of the CDP with the grain of the wood running front to back. This is a common setting for me when I'm doing Deutsche Grammophon type classical listening. The similarities between some classic rock system settings and many of the classical pieces from DG, Phillips and London can be uncanny at times and one cool thing about a Tunable system in general is almost no recording sound bad, you just have to get used to certain adjustments if you want to really get that stage where you want it. running in for a listen |
glubson, please try to keep up with the conversation. I’ve been talking about the electrical signal, not the final acoustic signal. I trust you don’t think the final acoustic signal is not dependent on what comes before, you know, the electrical signal in the power cord, in the electronics, in the transformer, in the fuse, in the interconnects, in the DAC, CD player or turntable, and speaker cables. I don’t think anyone can be that obtuse. Not even you. No offense. |
Well, I was planning on doing a couple of tuning moves, but I really like this presentation and I’m going to take it in instead of changing it. Maybe when I put on the next recording if there is something I want to change I can describe what I did from this recording to that but for now I think I’m just going to groove on this more. mg |
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Who is more obsessive compulsive, tweakers or Tuners? Let’s take maple platforms (boards) for example. You got your air dried maple from Mapleshade. You got your maple with grain running vertically and maple with grain running horizontally. There are varying thicknesses of maple, the thicker maple boards resisting bending forces better than thinner maple boards. There’s also the tricky issues of mounting the maple board and mounting the component on the maple or other material. So, what is the best way to mount the maple board and the component? The best way to mount the maple board (or any material) and the component is extremely hard cones. The harder the cones the better the sound - fuller, more open, more natural. As it turns out materials like aluminum 2.75 and carbon fiber and brass 3.0 and hardwood are actually relatively soft, on the Mohs scale of Hardness, where diamond is a perfect 10. Lead is 1.75. An excellent choice for cone material would be hardened high carbon steel 7-8 (like my Machina Dynamica springs) or NASA grade ceramic 9.5, both of which are quite high on the Mohs scale of Hardness. And we haven’t even talked about using springs with maple boards. The final frontier. |
Glubson, there are steel coil springs, steel leaf springs, gas shocks, oil filled gas shocks, air springs. They’re all springs. To qualify as a spring they have to behave as a spring. And they certainly do behave as springs - otherwise they wouldn’t work. Proof by inspection. 🤗 I don’t mind running a class on remedial physics. |
geoffkait, I get it. You simply do not get it. Your comparison of whatever with car shock absorbers was unfortunate choice as car shock absorbers have changed/developed since 1965. Proof by inspection. Much more goes into them than a semantic game of the word "springs" would make you believe. Your example is quite good when oversimplified, thinking of two coil springs on top of each other and ignoring the fact that less of a spring will yield similarly unpleasant result. When picking and choosing, try to make sure you do not leave out something important. With understanding of your misunderstanding, but continuing the word game you play not-so-well, I would like to remind you that there are no sound waves at all. They do not exist. Can you wrap your thoughts about that? Hint: take a physiology book, Wikipedia will make you confused. As it frequently has. |
midareff135 No wood here. I use sorbathane feet, spikes, lead weights and such. >>>>>You might want to peruse what I wrote earlier today here regarding Hard and Soft materials for use in audio situations. |
While an Anechoic Chamber is a great place to analyze sound and sometimes benificial in some aspects of recording - not such a great environment to listen to a live performance, as is completely dead and sterile. The floor in my listen room is carpeted, with heavy acustic drapes on the wall behind the speakers and otherwise normal furnishing - sofa, recliner, coffee table etc. My system is set up on a relatively cheep, but sturdy 3 shelf rack, I have had great success using grade A, 2" slab cut, Black Walnut boards (approximately 18W x 15D) isolated from the rack shelves with 1/4" felt/rubber iso pads. The components are coupled to the boards using brass cones, with a thin felt disc between the base of cones and component. I agree with what Michael and others have said, while taking care of unwanted resonance is important, we can sometimes go too far - live music, in its' real environment, is full of resonance and texture, not dead and sterile. Am plenty happy with my system, rack and room as they are now. I could have spent a lot more money to get the same or lesser results and as is - my system, in my room, has just the right balance of detail and clarity with enough fullness and lushness to be musical and engaging......Jim |
As far as spikes go I like brass, zinc and some mild steel. I’m not crazy about the sound of too much hard material in the system, to easy to get frequency clusters and stage holes with harder materials. I’m cautious about the sound of Maple. Maple is the Aluminum of the wood world. Sometimes I will use Maple or Aluminum for Tuning bars but that’s only with certain woods or sizes of side boards on speakers, rare for me though. With cones, Brass blends are my fav. Not always 360 but 360 is a great standard to start with. Doing Copper/Zinc alloy blending can get pretty expensive. 360 is so great because you can play with speeds (turn) and different shapes easy. I should give this tip as well if folks are using the brass cones (mine or others). If you’re using Brass cones and you’re finding the highs still a little too forward or brittle, take 220 grit sand paper and gently sand the end of the cone tip just barely and it will smooth out the transfer. You can do this same trick on your other cone types as well, just be careful to only do this on the tip or top surface. If you do this with the main part of the cone you can screw things up. And always sand in the direction of the turn and in circles, don’t do side to side sanding on metals. Since I have moved to the desert I find myself blending less metals and curing more wood. LTR has been a major hit for me and I can voice the wood to different grades, and that goes a long way in helping folks get those missing tones they’ve been hunting for. There’s lots to look into when using any material and shapes and the only way to come up with a formula is to jump in and do it. Folks who just throw out material names without giving a formula of use are not very accurate. But if you talk to someone who has takin the time to play around they can help you. Michael Green |