If you're not the problem

The modern world drives pace and innovations. Conventional audio sites are taking the beating, losing out to sites with audio visual aids. Audio review should not be read as a novel. We sometimes take a couple of minutes off from work reading reviews and it has to be quick. We have grown impatient reading long reviews, you know who and could not fully grasp what the reviewer trying to say sometimes. Blame it on interpretation. Thanks to the power of internet which brings things closer to us with audio visual aids. For the first time, audio visual aids eliminate hearsay, guesswork and biased opinions. Despite the limitations, namely reproduction of soundstage and bass, I believe audio visual technology will continue to improve its delivery in near future.

Spending is a big part of audioing, the fun dies when the funding stop. However, most of us are not blessed that we could buy whatever we want. We don't print money like US Federal Reserves. But sometimes, we need to go through a passage like some wise men to be a learned. Look beyond what you see, being tight forces us to improvise. A blessing in disguise?

Resting on my laurels, certainly not. I am in a quest to find the balance of high fidelity and musicality. Basically, all tunings are centered at first reflection points. Things settled nicely for me, though I do feel having little clues to move in. O yes! Audio is built upon a trinity, hardware, acoustics and yourself. Given the assumption that you're not the problem and all things being equal, hence, this makes an open game. A world class system meets a bad room, what do you get? A world class system in a first rate room by a lost audiophile? Hypothetically speaking.

For long, audio folks could not agree upon the thin line that separate hi fidelity and musicality. The issue lies at the highs. Technologies enable us to 100 kHz, a territory far beyond our human hearing. That's not a problem if the highs are well behaved in 3 kHz to 20 kHz range where and when the tweeters kick in. But the markets now offer speakers with over enthusiastic highs, somewhat splashy in nature in order to establish greater fidelity perception. And if care is not taken to select a suitable cable, you can imagine the catastrophe. Losing face for Asian is a big thing. Harsh highs make me uneasy, especially on violin. The screeching of the bow sawing the strings, the sterile sound sends chills to my bone. Acceptable standard is a minimum 30 minutes listening at the sweet spot. Short listening always gives non comprehensive system depiction, therefore by default, show goers must not drop sentence and straight away reject the systems.

What is musicality? In my own word, a sonic property that trigger the release of endorphins and make one response to music. You could be nodding your head, humming along, foot tapping or even doing some dance moves, all kind of behaviours that deemed a little off by ordinary folks. Music stirs emotions that is the language of music. Naturalness is the key ingredient, a smooth decay requires a lot of work. Surgical precision is uncalled for, it will then becomes mechanical. Unapologetically, I fall into an unorthodox school of audio, a strong emphasis on overtones articulation. As such, I worked my room to preserve optimum overtones wholeness. Harmonic richness paints the sound.

Musicality weaves sounds in a single piece of fabric, a quality of continuity. It has colours and it has depth too. The rounded highs I deliberately tweaked are not at all loss. A gain in texture department is a delightful surprise on saxophone, keyboard, percussion and voices. All these instruments sprung to life from the backstage, with intangible oomph.... with mass. This is good news though the shrillness of my brass as if has been shortened, is still acceptable though. Nursing musicality back into my system has marked an important milestone in my audio pilgrimage.

Objective technical superiority doesn't always guarantee emotion evocation, that why most audio equipment requires subjective listening as the final inspection before placing them on the shelves. Similarly, it isn't hard to explain some folks still holding on to vintage gears for their golden hue of inoffensive sound.

Tori Amos's debut album, Little Earthquakes 1991 is mostly out of audio folks' radar. What can I say; this is a non audiophile label recording gem. Piano and drum take centerstage in this album. And yet, this album begs you to crank up the volume. Track three, "Silent all these year" is a hit song. Tori plays Bosendorfer piano exclusively, the magnificence of Bosendorfer couldn't better exhibited. The tone, the weight and prowess, ahhh........... brilliant. Piano is deemed to be a difficult instrument to replay due to the complex harmonics. Even mixing engineer could not lay a hand editing it. The reverberations of strings does not pose any out of this world's problem, but the wood resonance of the piano body, the majestic of grand piano. The piano body breeds assuring notes, it too stamps the authority. The somewhat holographic piano there-ness before my eyes get me excited all over again.

"Precious things" is a pop rock. The ferocious drum play is electric, my heartbeat ran away with the tempo of the drum. The accorded resounding harmonics, a complex blend of sub harmonics resonating in a barrel with each drum skin moving front and back. I could almost hear the Qi, the air motion.

Overtones distinguish a Bosendorfer from Steinway or Yamaha. Yamaha is the most popular piano in pop music for its bright and vibrant sound. Bosendorfer is totally a different beast, the highs might be slightly dull but the tone weight is far more fervent.

So, room tuning is my poor man audioing. And I enjoy every minute of it. Wrapping up this, enjoy the amazing brush play.