MacGyver

If there is someone who going to save you from falling for audio fallacies, it will be you. Smarter out smarts the smart, get it? The only way to avoid this is to be a learned. Nobody fools a learned.

Everybody has a big day in their life. April 21 marks a special day in my audio calendar. I had achieved an important audio break, which triggers a butterfly effect. Though there may have been many mini breaks along the way, and this crucial break leads to another.

Tuning is attention to detail, it is even more difficult than opening a safe.  Like alpha numeric code, you seek the right code. Some tweaks work along with some and some against some, some require some to reduce, some require realignment, that's one. Some tweaks make you wonder if you need them at all. Some left you clueless why they are there. That's the difficult one. Many acoustic related mysteries remain a mystery.

I'm do not tweak blindly. Some tweaks do not last a month. Knowing what and when is enough is important. Room is the biggest element in audio. Having said that do you need to tweak even you have a perfect golden ratio room? Food for thought. The Taiwanese guru's Creative Tuning inspires me, a tuning technique amplifying positive energies or curtailing the negative one. By altering frequency peak and valley, you turn these energies into your sonic advantage. Honestly, I have not fully acquired the skills, it requires extraordinary abilities, a gifted sensorial organ to feel the energies. For instance, some can feel the presence of 30 khz even it is out of our hearing range. So, mine considered pseudo version.

Voices are never my sound check. If you have a penchant for warm, succulent voices, the temptation to more succulent voices is inevitable, hence, tend to turn a violin to a viola. Sonic roundness in trade of dynamic is never my agenda! My friends were intrigued by my tireless tuning, the right word is meticulosity and fact is there is so much work. Each tuning is a routine of test and verification via a variety of familiar music, this is to ensure the sound is of honest sonic intent across the board. How do you know the sound is correct? This opens a big debate, individual interpretation. Even different seat in a hall grants a different sound, what more different music hall. Doing so, our "feel right" mind is always quick to make presumption ahead of our hearing. We must always keep presumption in check, and I had been a victim in many past occasions. Listening on the next occasion only to find my presumption is a false. Knowing what to listen helps too.

In his very own words, the guru says "the bass must have the capabilities to dig deep, not coming right at you. Tight bass, not bloated. Mids must possess the balance of density, body, huskiness, and far from thin and dry. Graceful, with sheen and relaxed highs." Sounds alright to me. He achieves his end via four techniques, harvesting the energies, resonance coefficients employment, power management and cable matching. His supernatural hearing and years of field tuning experience are his priceless tool.

His teachings taught me sonic linearity, no bumps and dips. And classical music is the way to go for reviewing purpose. My focus now is sound linearity and coherency from 30 hz to 12 khz frequency response range, well within our hearing range. If there is a presence of boominess, the bass will be bloated and excessive energies. Presence of midrange bloom will induce masking, eats up details and airiness. This instigates dullness and robs music life. Without the right mids to substantiate, highs will be bright and over the top. Believe me, you don't stand a chance to survive 30 minutes of listening! Butterflies in the stomach.

Initially, I was receiving his teachings with a pinch of salt. However, it doesn't take long for me to submit to his teachings. He is truly Audio MacGyver in my book and the very reason that draw me to Taiwan. Some of his teachings are against common audio wisdom but then again, all roads lead to Rome. I have to retrieved some of my old thoughts to make way for his wisdom. He has proven himself in many occasions, winning accolades from his friends and customers. One even goes as far saying, anything he lays his hands on will sound great! Big word. Many agreed that he has the extraordinary ability to feel the energy which is difficult for us to emulate. My friends can't wait to meet him when he told that he will come on a sponsored trip in hope that he can pass down the tuning knowledge to me. Jokingly, they will whack me if I exclude them! Barbaric friends.

Back to tuning work, since unknown when, my intuition tells that there is an imbalance energies in my room. Everyone does. This can be easily gone unnoticed, I had been trying to remedy it without much success. It is like a mini black hole. It sucks everything you throw at them, a hindrance to the next level of audio performance.

Despite all that, music takes centre stage. Pioneer S1EX is a mid size floorstand speaker, they are at the most behave like a big stand mount speaker, nothing their imposing physique suggest. I need to change the resonance coefficient in my room a bit. My attention diverted to the back wall, the arrangement of my seating, leg rest, side chair, bookshelves, sort out the CDs, the stuff I placed at the back wall to see if these make a difference. No luck.

Out of the sudden, I noticed a change in sound by moving my side chair away. Little did I know, I had opened an energy valve in my room, a new flow of energies. The "suffocating" feeling somewhat vanished, I had myself perplexed!

Jumping for joy, I pulled out Cantate Domino by Proprius record, my all time test disc from the shelve. This CD is known for its complex but beautifully arranged composition, harmonic richness, spatiality, awesome spectral bottom end and ambiance abundance. Over cranking the volume, the cramped soundstage is inevitable. At a right volume, every audiophile virtue you ever want to hear from this CD is fully manifested. I sat there amazed, I was transported to the scene. The ambiance filled the room, spellbound. This church atmospheric experience was like none before in this room.

The challenging exuberant pipe organ is never easy to reproduce. Albeit at a smaller scale, S1EX could honestly reproduce the pipe organ with top to bottom transparency (this is a week after the break). Gentle rolled off without any strange anomalies are a blessing in disguise indeed for midsize speaker. The bass rolled off sooner, that's to be expected. I'm happy that the pipe organ retained its intact within S1EX audible frequencies.

Ironically, the Power Brick charm shone even more. Caution, Power Bricks can drive you crazy. In a good room, they speaks up even more. And tuning becomes increasingly addictive because the result motivates. I am excited with the new found. When things go smoothly, expect a pitfall.

Months ago, my system got tripped by Eva Cassidy's Kathy's Song. The plucking of strings invites the unwelcome boominess, my room goes banana. Hence, you can say that Kathy's Song sort of haunt me even though Eva Cassidy is one of my favorite artists. I was embarrassed and I got to stand where I fell.

Today, I declare that I have vanquished this drawback, whew.... Everything is under control. Eva had a powerful voice and her upper register was strong and bold. You need a pair of good tweeters to reproduce her expressive highs, suppressive on mediocre tweeters. You know, going all the way. In this regard, I am happy that my Beryllium tweeters did not disappoint, no splashy reverb and hollowness.

Eva's works have simple arrangement and with plenty of guitar plucking, I could hear the steely strings and rich overtones as it was a closed microphone placement. Definitely not nylon strings. I couldn't tell if the guitar was a Gibson, Taylor or whatever but it was a Guild Songbird acoustic guitar after I checked on the net. The strings are always crisp and guitar body resonance is clearly rendered. I heard the sound hole, soundboard and guitar body. No much of bass in her works.

Truth to be told, I did a lot of things to arrive where I am now. The dynamic reached a new height, for the first time, I get to feel the music. Yes, my skin feels the music. Opsss.... silly me, I forgot to remove a tweak. It robs the liveliness and energies of my system upon second listen. My friend comment reminded me of the tweak. I shall keep mum about the tweak because it will give negative impact to the company.

As many things in life, you do not go overboard. My music experience have me realized that I am coming to an end of tweaking business. I am really starting to enjoy the music.