I feel bad for speaker manufacturers

When I look at threads that are started here sometimes the thing that pops into my mind is "how old are you". Trying to apply yesterday’s paradigms in today’s market doesn’t fit. Senior citizen discount day is cool but it’s a world of it’s own. Keep in mind I’m not saying there are fewer in-room listeners today cause there are more. What I am saying is, listeners today are not trophy collectors vs the years in the past. In todays world the music, game, show or movie performance is the trophy not how big of a faceplate you can fit in the room or how exotic a speaker looks.

The 70's,80's and 90's were a ton of fun for speakers, and audio in general, but now is a new age just as exciting (even more) but don't look for the old paradigms to fit in with our modern world. HEA from the late 90's up till the age of low mass was probably the least popular age. It never made the generation jump.

Michael Green

Hi bdp24

Please give us an example recording. thanks

MG

But here’s a funny, maybe the most.

Kosst teaming up with bdp says "You ever see a violin with a hunk of metal you turn to tune it? That’s how Mikey’s work."

Well lol yes, that’s exactly how you tune an instrument. At least when we Tuned instruments in my 1st grade music class and everyone since that’s how they do it. You literally turn whatever material is being used. And, another funny, yes you do this to make stable fundamentals and harmonics. Make more resonance or less, it’s how we all tune. I’m surprised you guys don’t know how tuning works.

MG

Sorry kosst I usually don’t answer trolling but this was too funny to let you and your friend get by with. You 2 can get back to your BS rants again lol.

I’ve never seen an audio product that wasn’t Tunable, just some more variable than others, so to me it’s comical that some folks here get so mad when someone else makes an adjustment to their sound.

That's like someone throwing a 1st grade fit over someone adjusting the tuning peg on any stringed instrument.

MG

Hi bdp24

It looks like you're asking about a couple of topics here. High Mass/ Low Mass and Variable/ Fixed tuning.

"Question: What makes any of the above loudspeakers "high mass"? In what sense? The drivers in ESL and magnetic-planar loudspeakers, and the driver's support structures, are lower in mass than the dynamic drivers and their "tunable" enclosures, are they not? So are the excellent Vandersteen Balsa Wood-structure drivers, and the "enclosures" they are mounted in."

and

""Tune" a loudspeaker to do what? Allow more resonance? Great idea! Musical instruments are tunable for a very good reason---they play notes. The notes are either correct (in tune), or they are not (out of tune). A loudspeaker cannot be "tuned" to achieve an isolated, desired effect, unless the loudspeaker was designed without a target objective. Is reproduced sound now suddenly a purely subjective matter? "Tune" a loudspeaker to play a certain recording "better"? And retune it for another recording?"

If you wish to step outside of your BS slogan mode, I'm sure you'll find Tunees willing to share with you here. Would that be of interest?

MG

This is a key statement

"Baskin Robbins flavorizing…."

The entire playback profession and hobby is "flavorizing". As well none of us have the same listening. It's all about the variables.

Michael Green

http://www.michaelgreenaudio.net/

Hi magnaryder1

You've mentioned some of my favs too.

MG

Thank you Tammy!

Michael

I don't see anything about audio as being hard to understand. You get it or you don't. I also don't see anything about listening as being all that tough either, you do or you don't.

mg

"I'd expect nothing less from you than such a simplistic answer. There's nothing simple or intuitive about Helmholtz resonance or the transconductance of a transistor. There's nothing simple or intuitive about listening for that matter, either."

I've known many people in music and audio that struggle with the concepts and I think that's why I've been doing nothing but music and audio my whole life as a profession. Mechanics and audio comes very natural for me. It's not something I have ever had to do much brain twisting over, it literally is something you know or you don't for those of us who are able to see audio from in between the lines. Combined with schooling it can be a breeze.

This might make some unhappy to hear that it comes easy to me and others but it is what it is. Arguing on an internet forum over what someone can or can not do is a little off the beaten path for me and is why I look at some of these posters as maybe a little on the funny side.

Michael Green

http://www.michaelgreenaudio.net/

Hi Kosst, well it might go a little deeper than that LOL.

I don't get so involved in the threads arguing here because of a few factors, and these are why I keep things simple here and spend most of my time pointing to more involved threads on TuneLand.

for example

On this forum when you ask to do actual lab testing in real time with real in-room systems the people who come up doing the most "talking" scatter. Do you know that over the past 5 years of posting on HEA forums when it comes time to set up testing labs with the folks who do all this talking not one of them has opted to do real time testing or listening evaluations. Some here have been "talking" in-room systems that don't even have an in-room system of their own. Others only use a keyboard to do their sharing and evaluating with no graphs, charts or testing  to share.

I will love to be more technically involved here when this place becomes more real time oriented.

Michael Green

http://www.michaelgreenaudio.net/

"It’s NOT something "you do you don’t". I suspect your simplistic understanding of the physics of music is what leads you to think rotating knobs and blocks of wood in a box constitutes tuning. The only means known to effectively tune an instrument or enclosure are to manipulate it’s mass, size, or tension, none of which rotating blocks of wood in a box actually do."

As with your other statements of questioning I’ve shown the forum here that Tuning is exactly what we do and have seen other users come up to verify. The great thing is when those folks here ask questions to attempt to disprove it ends up proving and ultimately leads listeners to the "tune", which of course is my goal.

kosst said

"The only means known to effectively tune an instrument or enclosure are to manipulate it’s mass, size, or tension, none of which rotating blocks of wood in a box actually do."

mg

If you look at the Tuning Bar Technology I use in speaker designing you will see there is a Tuning Bar that runs from one side of the cabinet to the other. I make several types of Tuning Bars at several pitches and tonal range. Kosst above mentions "tension" which is a huge part of my designing. From the outside of the speaker you can see the Tuning Bolts on either sides of the cabinet and in different places on different designs. On the inside are female threaded stationary bars. Going from one side to the other it goes like this. Tuning Bolt, washer (or other Tuning voicer), outside cabinet wall, soft pulp (or other material), inside cabinet wall. Then the bar runs to the other side doing the reverse. Bar, innerwall, pulp, outerwall washer and bolt head. Folks can see the construction on TuneLand with pictures and diagrams and more explanation of the tone and timbre controlling, but to answer Kosst’s comments yes as the Tuning Bolts are threaded into the internal Tuning Bar.  One can apply more or less tension to adjust the tone of the cabinet. These speakers literally are acoustical instruments.

Nothing spins on the inside as kosst has alluded, but that's ok I understand this is a new technology for him and he is exploring this like anyone else. I also do want you to know kosst, I appreciate Q&As that have relevance to topics and more than happy to have you come to TuneLand to discuss things on a deeper level. The Agon forum is not really a technical forum, but that shouldn't stop people from visiting both sites to see how deep someone may want to go. It's all good and even though some start off as doubting toms at first it's fun when the commonalities start to happen.

Michael Green

http://www.michaelgreenaudio.net/

"My problem with speakers is that too few suppliers offer something that is unique and beautiful enough to be shown off yet integrated into the living room."

My conversations with clients and reviewers have been exactly along these lines over the last year. Recently clients and couple of reviewers have brought my speakers into their places and have given me the feedback that every speaker designer dies to hear. Unique, logical, cost effective and sexy. It's interesting to have been getting high end home designers calling along with reviewers telling me want they have been wanting me to do. Just really started with the most recent Rev6 craze. "creating a huge soundstage twice the size of my Sonus with such a small box" is one that I don't mind saying because it is published by someone else. The same comments have been made in reference to several super costly HEA brands vs the new Rev line. The instrument looking and sounding speaker is starting to be asked for by private mini show sponsors. We're doing those mini shows now and am excited for the feedback to continue. We have been seeing HEA run it's course of male fatal attraction for many years and the corner is being turned by the smaller size Class D movement and also the streaming revolution. For me this is perfect timing and I believe I'm not alone by any means. Big soundstages with smaller low mass boxes and the move toward tunable technology, pretty darn sweet and it's the industry who is asking for it, that's nice!

Michael Green

http://www.michaelgreenaudio.net/

"So, show me the example where rotating a block of wood in a box measurably alters it’s acoustic properties, please."

an interesting an unexpected conversation

Just got off the phone with a reviewer who is getting ready for more of my products to write about. He happened upon this thread and had some questions for me and interesting comments.

From his point of view these threads need to be ultimately troll free if they are ever going to be helpful for the, as he said, "real audiophile". He had some choice words toward the trolls but also said that he feels readers are probably more discerning than we give them credit for. It was an 1.5 hour talk and he filled my ears with encouraging thoughts. What was interesting is he brought up the trolling happening here without me ever saying a word. He wasn’t surprised to hear me blow off these few and complimented me on my "cool".

One thing he said which I thought was interesting is when the troll comes up and makes a misstatement and then continues to repeat themselves it gives the opportunity for me to share the designing with accuracy. For example in the case of the Tuning Bar Technology this reviewer now has a better understanding of the hows and whys of the design and process as compared to before. Obviously we don’t have rotating blocks of wood inside of our speakers so the whole "premise" (reviewers word) of the troll is false, but he went on to say that the good press I get and will be getting is even more noticeable because of the attention the troll has highlighted.

Kind of a reverse psychology thing. The trolls are having a reversed effect on the readers. It was also interesting to be asked how my speaker and wire sells have been. When I shared they have been up and growing he pointed out that audiophiles are like bloodhounds, if a troll attacks a designer these days on public forums the reader is more apt to explore the product in question.

I’ve always wondered about this since I started posting over on Stereophile and now here, cause when I get trolled here it has always been followed by increased sales and very positive client reviews.

I don’t know I just enjoy listening & designing and find some of these forum type events as fascinating to a degree.

hope everyone has a great weekend!

Michael Green

http://www.michaelgreenaudio.net/

Oh not so bad kosst, it appears you chose not to look very far.

There are 2 forums. They are slowly being integrated together, the TuneLand has 1092496 members and TuneLand technozone has 521. There are currently 71 people at this moment reading the forums.

If you would like I could give a running tally weekly on Agon for you. I make up about 5% of the posting on both forums. I wish I had time to post more but one has to do what they can in these short 24/7s we are given.

On the speakers, it appears you have never designed a tunable speaker.

Michael Green

http://www.michaelgreenaudio.net/

Hi Whitethorn

I'm a big fan of Saul Marantz and Jon Dahlquist, as well John Bowers.

MG