During the 2002 CES, late at night, a friend of mine demonstrate me something that was tying to address for a few years. It was a very different “tone” form a loudspeaker or I would rather say a different relationship between reproduced and auditable tone. I intentionally do not mention the brand and specifics as I do not what to create a wave of the typical audio-idiots who after hearing about a “pitched model” will run to Hi-Fi store and brainlessly buy their new stupid “Messiah”…

So, under the influence of that 2002 CES event after years of thinking and experimenting I have developed an observation that there is ”another” way to teach loudspeakers to sound, let me to explain.

We use to pursue a loudspeaker as a machine that with higher possible fidelity reflect the fluctuation of voltages and frequencies in respect to input signal. There is nothing wrong with it. We pursue the best resonance-free box, the most submissive voice-coil and the most dictatorial amplifier - sure it is a good way to go. However, the voltage stream that an amplifier sends to speaker has little relation to sound. Amplifier does not handle Reality. The “Really” via microphones is converted into a stream of transverse waves and then processed according to the transverse algorithms.  Whatever we do in electric audio we do not deal with Sound in its original shape (Sound is a longitudinal wave) but we deal with mathematical equivalent of Sound (electricity is transverse wave). It is like stroking your Cat not with your hand but with remote controlled robotic arms… So, I was always wandering if it is possible to make audio methods to “talk” using the original language of Sound.

As some of you know a few years ago I “patented within my perception” my “The Beach Effect”. Many who heard it for me do not understand how important it is but I still feel that the derivations form the “The Beach Effect” is the key. The combination between “The Beach Effect”, between that 2002 CES demonstration, between my desire to teach audio to “speak Sound”, between some of my recent experiments and between few other factors made me to think there is “another way” to make loudspeaker to sing…

Sound is a vibration of subjects in air. Loudspeaker is a machine that produces pneumatic waves… so, why do not make a loudspeaker to vibrate in air? Oops!!! Think about it deeper: this Oops was a “giant leap for mankind” in term of audio. Everything that we know today about audio is not compatibles with this “Oops”. We believe that a perfect signal means a perfect result but it is not necessary true under umbrella of the “Oops”. In the world of “Oops” artificial mechanical subject resonate in open air and the perfect signal would not be a sign that mathematically reflect the source but rather the signal that being consumed by a “resonating object” would produce the “equitable infliction to listening awareness, that is very identical to the infliction of original sonic event” (according to “The Beach Effect”).

I know: for many it would be difficult to grasp what I am trying to say - let me to simplify the subjects a little.  In simplification what I am trying to say is not as revolutionary as I would like to present it as some of the “Oops” techniques were used in past. It might a subject of debate if the “Oops” techniques of past were used intestinally or accidentals (I insist that it was accidental) but some of the loudspeakers of 30s-60s were made with insultingly resonating enclosures. They were so flimsy and so resonating in term of today’s standards that it is not even funny. it is not secret that people “thoughtfully” trash them. Sure many of those crappy-made and super-resonating enclosures were junk but at the same time they were a phenomenal playground to learn something about the ways to use the “Oops” principles.

A last week I was trying to pitch something among those lines to the guys at Yahoo’s Tannoy Group:

”Still, I hardly view the Tannoy boxes (and when I say Tannoys I mean the sub 70s Tannoys as anything they did later is crap) as a "loudspeaker solution" but rather a "freakish musical instrument" that made upon very different principles, different then you and I have accustomed nowadays (after the bass-reflex-school of thinking become dominating). Sure, the resonances are bad but not for a deck of cello or for the deck of dibble bass that are made to create, magnify and to mange resonances instead of killing them. Interesting that "allowing resonances" was a common for many loudspeakers of 50s and 60s (some Tannoy, Vitavox, EV, Klangs and others…), it is not that those loudspeakers were necessary "better" (I do not like them personally) but they had own merit and own means to create sound. I spent quite a time running a generator against a very resonant vintage Tannoy box. It is so "ringy" that is even laughable. Then I just for a sake of experiment took a tension bar (and some other tools) and begin to remove a resonance by resonance. Sure the enclosure begun to response WAY more civilized but… the entire loudspeaker was becoming (with removing of each resonance) to sound WAY less musical.”

Unfortunately that Group is not the place where people try to understand what others are trying to say. They have there a dozen or so local ever-presented idiots who pile up the new drivers into dead boxes, power them with mass-market consumer electronics behind the condoms of digitalis crossovers and being comfortably numbed that ready to insult anyone who will not blow this horn of brand devotion. As far as I concerned they are perfectly dead for my audio interest, but they are very much not alone – thier state of audio-thinning is very unfortunately common – why do you think I exercise for years the Presumption of Moronity (“Moron unless proved otherwise”) toward to audio people?

Anyhow, making loudspeakers as “active resonators” is out of mind not only for Morons. For instance a few weeks ago many of your read the thread about RAAL tweeter:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/LatestPosts.aspx?ThreadID=3766

The RAAL’s Alexander is very much not a Moron.He contemplating to make a dedicated MF ribbon that according to him will defeat any compression driver and he claim that he has an idea how it might be done (he allege also that no one ever did it in the way how it should be done). Well, the problem that I see in it is that a ribbon is too neutral and too colorless transducer. While Alexander was talking about the toneless tweeters it was OK but as soon we dive into the freakish world of MF then we deal with the damn tone on the radars. I hardly believe that anyone in audio know where “tone” comes from. So, I proposed to Alex to consider an idea of MF driver where in the back side ribbon will be an artificial, large, wood-made (?), resonating chamber. I meant to imitate guitar, or cello or a violin where strings will be substituted with ribbon. Alex poo-poo this idea and am sure he was laughing but I was very much serious as I feel that this thinking is very much affinity with my view of the “Oops” techniques where the “real and natural things to do natural activities to produce natural results”.

So, the readers open your mind a little and do you home work. There ARE very inconsequential movements in France and in Japan to make loudspeakers with incredibly resonant baffles.  It is very-very complex. It is also requires to BE SOMETHING INSTEAD OF TO KNOW SOMETHING as the results from naturally resonating “Oops” techniques  more reflects the master’s internal reference points  and intrans resonances.  A loudspeaker is not a machine after all but a musical instrument and all and you want a machine then buy BMW…..So, do you homework and try to learn how to make the speaker’s box to ring in a correct tonality  - it is what I call the “Deck with Crack” effects. Please report to this thread if you get any success as I would like to learn myself about mastering of these “Oops” techniques. Over the years I made a collection of the quite a number of different drivers that have material of their cone, suspensions  and some other characteristics very intriguingly cooperating with the driver ability ” to do tone”  in  resonant environment, so I would like to learn  more how I can USE my drivers....

During that 2002 CES it was not juts good “Deck with Crack” effects but it was so good that I still do remember that sound. I would tell you even more: I am experimenting now with Macondo applying some “Oops” techniques to its upper bass horn. I will report whet I get more conclusive results, so I hope you do.

Somebody “manuelgarcia66” wrote in the Yahoo Tannoy Group. I think it was the ONLY reply on SUBJECT among others that proposed that I was in ignorant troll who should not bother the forum:

"Iґve come to tannoys from different speakers-enclosures: Merlin, Quad, ESL, Magnepan, Coincident, Audio Note, etc
Each speaker-manufacturer-fashion has its owen flavour and its own  compromises

Modern fashion is highly resolving speakers, flat response, extension on both ends, etc. and I went that way.

My point on this changed when I bought a pair of Audio Note AN-Es. These speakers are resonant on the mid-upper bass Also they must be placed on the corners, or they sound dead and dull. They use the reverberant moods of the room to create a lively sound, loading it. You notice it specially in the left keys of the piano, acoustic double bass, cello, even in "thick" strings of the violin

The resonant way sure makes the speaker less accurate in the modern sense, but also more enjoyable for me
After all, my home is not a studio, I just listen to music for simple pleasure

I understand the point of the speaker (and the room interactions) as a musical instrument, more than another link in the chain If you consider the software as the player, electronics are the strings and the speaker-room is the soundboard

By the way, I like and love all kind of music, but I tend to choose the system listening to classical, small and big scale.

‘Michaelz’, I would like to know the answer myself but how to get those answers without spending a LOT of time and a LOT of money? I do not know…. I have quite plenty of phenomenal drivers that I would like to try but…  to try in what? I have no expertise on the subject and I feel that the people who might have the expertise would be out of audio universe.

‘Op.9’, here is a lead for your further thinking about your open baffles. Obviously they are not my type of speakers but some of the thinking of this French guy I find is in a progressive direction:

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/ocellia/calliope.html

I can not say anything further as I never heard those speakers.

Michaelz wrote:

I know that piano sound board is very expensive.  How ever, one can get brken old upright pianos for free, or for very little (except you need to have a truck to move them.  No clue for lack of time though:^)

Anyhow, for the rest, I would divulge (partially) what I’m dong now.  People who know me personally know that I have developed a freakish sensitively to bass reflex speakers. I would avoid saying at this thread anything negative about them I just would tell you that it can hear them a mile away. Put in front of me 100 speakers and I blindly will, even for another room, tell you (if electricity is good) that it was a sound of a vented box. (I have to admit that I have seen some better vents boxes that did “almost” good). So, somewhere in the mid of 2002 I suddenly turned my playback on and realized that I hear that “ported harmonics”. Surly, I did not have ported bass and I was much pissed as that “tone” enjoyed me tremendously. I spent a few days trying to figure out what in my playback made it, even change the tubes in my amps and changed the diet for my Cat. The “ported” nose was there and I had no idea what was it. Then one day it gone… and I changed nothing in my playback. I was pissed even more and I felt that somebody has trespasses my little backwards… and as you all know we Cats are very territorial creatures….

How big was my surprise when I learned what it was! It was my guitar, a regular acoustic guitar that when is it was left next to my sealed woofer towers inspected into my listening space those “ported harmonics”. OK, let consider the guitar as a secondary source of sound. In this case the “guitar” is not different then the walls of a light sealed box that is made to resonate. If so, then why I could not inject into the  sound my “perfect upper bass hors” (for instance) a “guitar” that would be tubes to produce the necessary to me “secondary resonances” only this time they will be very specific in the very targets direction?

It is all amazingly interesting but I wish I have in my disposal someone who could of explain me what the hell I am doing because to use the  knowledge of a sale-guy from Home Depot is not the best help to built an Audio Strad.

{How big was my surprise when I learned what it was! It was my guitar, a regular acoustic guitar that when is it was left next to my sealed woofer towers inspected into my listening space those “ported harmonics”. }

This reminds of something.  I wonder if the reason that recently my speakers make music more enjoyable is that there is now GuZheng placed in the middle of their front.

Michaelz wrote:

Where does this come from?

Michaelz wrote:

This reminds of something.  I wonder if the reason that recently my speakers make music more enjoyable is that there is now GuZheng placed in the middle of their front.

Yes, Paul, I got your points and I find them valid. It is hard to explain what I’m interested in. When I try to convey those ideas then to people are under faulty presumption that I looking for some custom coloration, like SPU or Tannoys form 50s had. Their romanticism and Dean Reed rubber-chewing voice are nice but it not what I an after, in fact it is what I do not like. I believe I know all those games and I know what kind pitfalls are possible in there. If to drop all BS and call the things with real names then I am after the very same things I always was after after: the Absolute Tone
 
I have written about the Absolute Tone in loudspeakers many times for instance here:

http://www.GoodSoundClub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=2784

http://www.GoodSoundClub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=1249

Romy the Cat wrote:

Michaelz wrote: Where does this come from? It coming from a danger that we all under what we think about those things. With all our desire to equate loudspeaker with a musical instrument this comparing might be juts figurative as a musical instrument deal with primary source of vibration but a loudspeaker deals with mathematical approximation of vibrations or with something that I call “event support”.  Michaelz wrote: This reminds of something.  I wonder if the reason that recently my speakers make music more enjoyable is that there is now GuZheng placed in the middle of their front. Isn’t it a good evidence that the secondary acoustic resonators might work beneficially? BTW I might be going into a dangers territory but … might I predict that you use an opened baffle loudspeakers? Rgs, the Cat

Well, since I made my Absolute Tone pitch I think people got a slightly wrong impression about I am looking for in THIS jornes and I think the readers of my site “get” the idea of “Absolute Tone” too one-dimensional. Let me to peal one layer down from the subject of Absolute Tone in Audio and illustrate what I meant by mentioning Absolute Tone in context the subjects of the given thread: how  USE of “Oops resonances”.

If to dissect Absolute Tone on the methodologically handle-able ingrates then it will be many components in that salad.  In context of this thread I would mention juts two of the ingredients: vowelness and bubbleness (welcome to my language). The definitions that I use very far from conventional - get use to. They are unconventional because I did not learn/read about them but invented them and they reflect to how it understand and how hear the things….

Vowelness describes harmonic infliction to a note and has a lot to do with a parabola with which a tone rolls to its pitch. Why “vowelness”? Because vowelness is about injection of different vowels into other vowels.  The vowels themselves are “pure tones” and they are characterized by open configuration of vocal tract, so that there is no build-up of air pressure above the glottis. A person with healthy breathing has a perfect inner-references and a clear cognitive recognition of vowels. Any coloration of vowels is a coloration! I had many people were pissed on me because I did not like their bass-horns or subwoofers juts after a few seconds of listening. They accused be for not spending enough time and rush with my negative judgment. What those people do not get is that I know (in most cases) what I’m listening while I listen. I care less how “fast” those subwoofers were and the very first thing I need in LF section is to be able to render vowels without colorations (Ironically the “vowelness” has practically no relation to room response and it is almost exclusively the topology of LF topology). What I mean that “e” should not have “o” in it any “u” should not have “opened a” in it. Russians even more lucky as then have an amassing vowel “ы”, which it superbly useful to assess the LF sections…. Anyhow, I think you got the picture… and what you GOT IS NOT WHAT I AM PROPOSING to deal with the “Oops Techniques”. Sure what I describe in this paragraph is a large part of “Absolute Tone” but it is NOT what I am after in CONTEXT OF THIS THREAD. What I am after is the Absolute Tone’s bubbleability.

The bubbleness of sound is an ability of Absolute Tone demonstrates a high rate of bubbleability. Let I give you an association. Pretend you put a pot with a gallon on water on over and the water begin to boil. As you see the small bubbles of air begin to build up under the bottom of the pot and they run up to surface. Then, while the water is boiling, you increase the temperature of heaters and you see now that the bubbles begun more intensely and more aggressively rash to the surface. The very same is with Sound. The Tone is a Tone but beside the Tone there are those bubbles that are popping up at surface of Sound and burst like microscopic explosives. These bubbly explosives do not affect Tone but they affect the Radioactivity of Sound ™ of the force with which Sound injects itself into listener’s skin and mind.  This bubbleness is what I am targeting with the notions of “Oops techniques” or as Rony Weissman brilliantly descried: “cellos were extremely hairy”. (BTW, the bubbleness is where the S2 is uncontestable emperor)

So, the direction I a looking is slightly opposite then juts use the wood of musical instilments. I formulated VERY EXACTLY and I know VERY PRECISELY what kind “noise” I need to overlay over Sound in odder to get that feeling of bubbleness. I juts have no idea what would be able to produced that “noise” in context of horns. So, what I would be interested would be most likely very far for what musical instilments do and is more aligned with the affords of the folks who record noises for cinema films ….

RonyWeissman wrote:

I heard the Audio Note AN-Es, they were pushed back into the cornes in specially prepared room and they wer very interesting. Dynamics were world class, cellos were extremely hairy, piano left hand was tremendous, everything you said. Still, the electronics are not the strings (apologies to Duchamp) . You have to hear through the electronics , and these speakers highlighted the electronics for me.

Chirag wrote:

The only things I can come up with is the possibility of using musical friendly woods (not that i have a clue what the difference between oak and cedar could be) that resonate sensitively just enough to produce a musically motivating charm, but not enough to get in the way.  Some combination of MDF and wood is just simple enough to work.

I was under impression that you are in Chicago. Anyhow, I am coming to very interesting conclusions - I’m not kidding. The wrapping up how to instigate that sense of bubbleness are very stimulating and it might be accomplished by ridiculously simplistic means. I would like do not report the premature results at this point but what I have discovered so far suggests that using musical friendly woods is absolutely irrelevant.  The only thing that I apologetic is that I personally do not need any speakers and therefore I would not be going for rendering the concept in a full scale loudspeaker.  It shame… If I have in Boston a speaker manufacturer with senses, ability to discriminate results and a desire to make something REALLY interesting then it might be an exciting playground and quite possibly very beneficial for his commercial sound.