Tweaking : Making the most of it.

Over the years I read a lot about tips and tricks to bring out the best of your system. Tweaking your system can be good fun.

On the web and in magazines you can pick up a lot of tips about improving the sound dramatically with simple tricks. When I tried these, a lot of them indeed made a sound difference. But was it really better? I don't mind spending a few bucks for experimenting with even the wildest idea's, so if some fly would have been able to report what it had seen in my listening rooms over the years, I think a lot of people would laugh.

Now , in all this I tried to listen as objectively as possible, and organise the experiments as a scientific experiment. Now do not get me wrong. I do not try to measure everything with some expensive electronic equipment. No, my two most important measuring instruments are sitting on the side of my head.

Anything I hear is there, anything i do not hear is not worth bothering about. A little bit strange for an engineer to think this way, but not less scientific. In my opinion, the audio domain is so difficult to measure that a lot can not be measured by an electronic instrument yet. So do not be surprised if you can not really explain some of it by normal physical or electronic laws. Welcome to the twilight zone !

Having said that, it has always been my goal to make sense of these experiments and device new theories that make them predictable. In some ways I am proud to say that in hindsight I was 10 years ahead of the industry. And maybe I even have some cards up my sleeve ;-)

In my tweaks category, you will find some "comon" high end knowledge that really works.
They might sound like hocus pocus, but for most there is a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Some can even be measured! ;-)

Enjoy

Defining my standard for a perfect system.

Before you start reading my statements about stereo systems, I feel that defining what I am looking for will help you understand. If you are looking for completely different things, it is likely that my advice on this blog will not help you at all. If you are looking for the same, chances are that you will find them useful.

Is it possible to make a system that sounds good for all people, for all kinds of music? Books have been written over the subject, and here is my cent's ...

Yes, I think it is possible to imagine a perfect system for all people provided that these people want to hear what the original sound recording sounded like. This is not always the case because in some dance music for example the sound is manipulated to obtain the maximal bass effect.
When I speak of the perfect system, it should only try to reproduce what was there when recording it, nothing less, nothing more... A system that does that would in theory suit everybody and all kinds of music.

This means that the only reference we really have is non-amplfied music. Every music lover will agree that that is something that is increasingly difficult to find. Almost all public performances are amplified these days, and therefore already coloured by the system that amplifies it before it reaches our ears. So the first obstacle in designing the perfect system is the absence of a universal reference. For dance lovers, this may be the sound of a high end PA system, for classic lovers it may be the unamplified sound of instruments in the acoustics of a concert hall.

Defining the goal to aim at is already difficult enough, but all people see it differently. Studying the way my customers listened to music made me see that every human being seems to experience sound in a slightly different way. If sound was light we would all see an extraordinary range of colors, but we would all be partly colorblind. This explains why there are so many tastes in music systems. In my opinion, it has nothing to do with the kind of music one listens to. But maybe the way your ears and brains work will determine the way one appreciates music and not the other way around. So the physical ability of your hearing system kind of determines your musical taste! Maybe I was lucky to see a subset of colours that most people see, so that I can judge systems based on a wide variety of criteria.

An other great influence on how people listen, is of course their listening experience and experience with music in general. Musicians listen to hifi in a different way than passive music fans. Dancers listen in a very different way too.
I once encountered a musician that told me that his 'top' musical experience was reading the music on paper! Other musicians had enough with a very basic system and imagined the rest...

Now my goal in Hi Fi is to experience the same pleasure listening to a system as when you listen in a concert hall, with your eyes closed. Some of the readers might say that this is evident but when you think about it, most of the industry is not really concentrating on that. Here is my list of key features starting from less important to most important:

1. Surround sound
   Ever heard sound coming from the side or the back in a concert hall? This is an other point low on my list of priorities. Making a perfect sounding stereo system is allready so difficult and expensive that i think I will never be able to afford the effort times 2,5...
2. Soundstage
   When you are in a concert hall, just try to close your eyes and locate every instrument exactly in the soundstage... Well? You might notice that a lot of High End systems are a lot better than this... To my taste a lot of systems exaggerate this pinpointing of the sound sources. Ever tried to pinpoint a bass in a concert hall? You are lucky if you can do that with an accuracy of ea few meters. So for me stereo image is not that high on the list.
   
3. Fidelity.
   I mean by this the ability to reproduce the sound of an instrument with all frequencies as they are live. This is important to a certain extent. Music must feel right. It does not make sense to listen to a grand piano if it sounds like a honky tonk. It is not the most important to me though. I am not really interested in hearing the difference between a Steinway and a Bosendorfer, if i am not able to here the difference between Azkenazy or Horowitz playing the piano or some beginner. Strangely some systems I heard did just that. Everything was there, but no feelings...
   
4. Transparancy.
   Now this is something I would like to have perfect. Did you notice how easy it is to follow every instruments sound amid of all the others. For example listen to a hobo even when it is not playing a solo. That is something most systems have difficulty to mimic. On a lot of systems background instruments disappear or reappear depending on the amount of foreground action going on. I call this the stage light effect. You can always only concentrate on the solo and the light focuses all instruments in turn.
   This quality is high on my list, because it allows me to discover new things every time I listen to a piece of music.
   
5. Musicality.
   What strikes me in a live performance is that I am moved by the music. I feel the emotion flowing... Sometimes I can not stand still.
   Copying this to perfection is maybe the most difficult of all. I heard a lot of very expensive systems that missed this completely, even though you could hear every note.
   This is my main focus because it gives me, and most of my customers the most pleasure.

This is it. You can now see what I mean when I say that even a mono system with a perfect musicality and transparancy would please me more than one with only a perfect surround sound stage.

In the next posts I will try to elaborate on how to find and select the best systems.
You can expect about one post a week, so just add an RSS link to this blog and watch out for changes.

Where to start ?

People often ask me what is the best way to achieve the best sound for the money.
Yes, even high end nuts do have a budget!
In the twenty years I am professionally involved with Hifi, I never encountered a customer with endless resources...

So the best advice I could give is:
"Balance the budget, and only believe your ears."

One of the most common mistakes is to spend almost the entire budget on the speakers. Yes, it appears like they are making a lot of difference. But even the best speaker can not make up for the losses in the signal before its input. Because speakers are the most visible part of a system, they often take more credit (or blame ) than they should.

The Hifi system is often talked of as a chain, and as anyone knows, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.... ? Not completely !
The Hifi system is not a chain, its strength is not measured by the weakest link, but it is more like this game you play at the scouts, where you pass on a messages from one person to another. Any information lost in a previous component will never be recovered!
It looks like an audio chain is only as good or bad as the sum of its losses.

Back to speakers... See the point? What good is it to try to recover a signal that is mutulated before it enters the speaker?

So what are the components that can influence the sound? Below, we list the basic components of any system. In the next posts we will explore each of them, and possibly split them up in subparts.

1. Recording : there is a whole book to write about how to make the perfect recording, but for a hifi chain the only thing that matters is the audio carrier (CD,LP,MP3) he holds in his hand.
2. Source : the CD player, turntable, mp3 player
3. Interconnect : the cable from source to amp
4. Amplifier : the integrated or pre-amp that drives the speakers
5. Speaker cable: cable from amp output to speaker
   
6. Speaker

As you can see you have control over 5 of these components when you buy a system, so try out each of them.

Next time you are visiting a shop to choose a new system, ask the sales guy what he is driving the speakers with. If you want to get the same result at home, you best bet is to take the whole setup home with you.

One last advice: avoid shops where they demonstrate 1.000€ speakers with 10.000€ on electronics. I have seen that happen! And it is a guarantee for disappointment after the sale.
If the sales person does not bring up the electronics as the main reason for the sound of such a system, he is trying to cheat.

So that is it folks. Next time I will discuss in more detail how to find your ideal system.
If you have any questions, or remarks, just let me know.