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In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: Basic guide to advanced audio

Post Subject: Wrong AnalogyPosted by Jorge on: 8/6/2011

I think we have been using the wrong analogy here, trying to compare sound to painting in the sense that it is not about adding things to sound as much as taking off.

I believe the right analogy would be sculpting: In order to get a good sound, one must take off material from a piece of stone in order to bring the instruments to life. As much as we take off, as much as we dig between the the strings of the guitar the better it will be able to come out.

Most bad systems are just big bunch of lard putting out something that resembles music, now trying to get detail and tone and harmonics out of that piece of lard would make us to dig inside that thing with a spoon and when you think you are getting somewere a big chuck of material just bends over on top of that and messes things further.

Carrara Marble is famous for its strength and maneuverability, you can go into detail inside the stone taking piece by piece off and making a perfect hand, a perfect torso, once the figure is out of the marble, as Michael Angelo used to say, the marble admits more work to be done to it, detailing of the sculpture starts, diggin in more between the arm and the body, making the fingers of the hand a little more skinny, making the bones of the knuckles to show. even a vein sliding through, I put in my mind right now Rodin´s sculpture The Kiss, and how the man´s hand is barely touching the women´s chubby thigh.

Bass is a big lard monster that will cover the beatiful shaping of sound, most systems, even very good ones, are like sculptures covered with excessive bass, and highs: This is what I mean when I mention the Seamless Extended Midrange. The fundamental tones of the instruments are more clear with a better tonal pallette and, belive it or not, with more dynamic bass undertones, when the volume of the bass channles are not flooding sound.

Tweeters are as dangerous as woofers, but I imagine high frequency flooding as extra spikes coming out of the sculpture, imagine this great female lovely belly protruding between the hip bones, and then a big spike of salt coming out next to the belly button, or an invasion of little cristals covering the face of our scultpture in some sort of solid acne you can sand off by just lowering the volume on your tweeters. This wont make your sound more dull, it will make the shapes and roundnesses of the muscles and the fatty deposits to show more clearly, letting you know where it is attached to the bone.

Sound wise this would mean that the instruments, whose fundamental frequencies are clearly in the midrange, will come out of your speakers as midrange sounding with the natural overtones of bass and highs, and not some big injection of tonal saturation.

Funny but I keep coming back to full range drivers, I think they are a great school of listening; say a Saba Green cone, it plays wonderful clean midrange frequencies with just enough bass overtones to make up the instrument, and just enough highs to bring it out; leaving the instrument unharmed by higher tones, so most instruments are played properly. Just dont ask real life dynamics and a full orchestra out of them.

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