A new prince?

Ding dong ding dong, Christmas is less than a month to go. Boy! I love Christmas as we wind down the year. A shopping season has begun, yeah. Look what I've just bumped into; A new prince is born? Buchardt Audio S400. Now, I know that audiophiles are far from comprehensibly agreeable in any audio matter. Nevertheless, this's a small young company from Denmark founded by a young man, 30 years old Mads Brogaard Buchardt has rocked the audio media. No a lot of information to be found on their website; Buchardt Audio. To be honest, what they do isn't any different than the rest, designed in Denmark, outsourced the box manufacturing to China, assembled the speaker in Denmark and sells directly to the consumers worldwide. They are smart not to have the total assembly in China to prevent the design being copied and sell parallelly in another brand. To ship to the consumer worldwide, a home trial for 30 days and free return shipping if you're not happy, I'd say they are rather bold and risk-taking because there'll be some fellas who are not serious about ownership and take a free ride. Shipping isn't cheap and not to mention the heavy administrative work.

Well, being a new company you need to be bold and take chances, what more competing in an overcrowded and highly competitive market segment. They are head-on with the big boys with a global dealer network, KEF, Pro Ac, B&W, ATC, Harbeth, Dynaudio, Elac and others, to name a few. So, Buchardt Audio has to bang on excellent price-performance to beat the odds to chip away a slice of the market share. For all we know, the world will always have a place for high price-performance products. I'm a proponent of such product due to my upbringing, not everyone born rich. Nothing brings more excitement than this.

Strange enough, Buchardt Audio S400 resembles Amphion Argon 3S design in similar fashion, both spot a Constant Directivity Control waveguide tweeter, Buchardt sport a 6 in mid/woofer driver while Argon 3S a 6.5 in, both utilise a passive radiator except the placement of tweeter-mid/woofer driver. Both are the mirror image of each other. S400 employs silk dome tweeter, Argon Amphion Argon S3 titanium tweeter. See the price advantage when you cut the middleman, the bulk of saving goes to the consumers.

Buchardt S400, USD1895 per pair

Amphion Argon S3, USD2795 per pair

Buchardt Audio S400 was officially debuted in North West Audio, England on 23 Jun 2018. Looks really cool in black, a 0.74 in soft dome tweeter in CDC aluminium waveguide, a 6 in aluminium mid/woofer driver and 5 in x 9 in passive radiator in a 365 x 180 x 240 mm box. Speaker impedance is rated at 4 ohm, frequency response to range from 33 - 40.000 Hz +/- 3db. The figure is rather optimistic. Each speaker weights at 9kg. Buchardt Audio even published some measurements for the freaks, if you know what they mean in sound. No, you don't. 

Crossover components, air coil inductors

 Here's a teaser: https://www.facebook.com/685855514768848/posts/2068275149860204

Google Buchardt Audio S400 on youtube, there are some satisfied user reviews there. One of them even went as far to say S400 competes favourably against with Joseph Audio Pulsar with a MSRP USD7700, USD1895 per pair Buchardt Audio S400 is nonetheless super value. If my memory serves me well, Joseph Audio Pulsars were played in KLIAVS many years back in JW Marriot Hotel, they were driven by Gato Audio AMP-150 then. That system imaged like crazy, what more with a high-end sound to boot.

CE certification

So, my friend got super excited hearing the news and might just place an order with Buchardt Audio next year. I'm all sweaty because I'll be blamed for S400 misbehaviour. Not a spot to be, I gain nothing but everything to lose, me and my big mouth! Electronics wise, his amp has enough juice to crack S400. The question is how much better his sound will get, no one knows. In short, USD2000-3000 is the sweet spot price range for bookshelf monitor to attain a commendable performance, quality costs money. Technology advances, new is better than old.

Going gaga with PMC Fenestria

16th Nov 2018, I was cordially invited to the launching of PMC Fact series top of the line speaker, Fenestria at AV Design, the Malaysian distributor in downtown. My curiosity has got the better of me, I want to hear what Fenestria has in store and how its technologies have brought real improvement to the sound. If it's just an evolutionary refinement, I probably give it a pass.

From Fenestria design perspectives, they mark quite a departure from the conventional Fact series design. Not hard to see Fenestria was designed from the ground up, the attention to detail was unprecedented. Well, I'm not actually a new kid to audio, and neither an old dog. Arf-arf, you can't teach old dog new tricks. Likewise, I've certain expectations of what's to come. Paul Bayliss, PMC Business Development Manager revealed that the new creation has taken 5 years of research and development. Oliver Thomas, the son of PMC founder, Peter Thomas who has had a short stint at motorsport had his touch on the design, incorporated some techniques he learned from motorsport, particularly in the area of vibration control and aerodynamics. Audiophiles know resonance induces distortion too well and is unkind to music reproduction. New blood with new ideas, it's good for innovation. Drum roll, please... Fenestria is the fruition.

The physique of Fenestria is imposing, standing tall at 67-inch. The side concave phenolic panels on the speaker apart from visual effect making the speaker look wider or otherwise, a boring slim tall tower. For what it asked, it'll be a tough sell for the targeted consumers without the aesthetic appeal. Audiophiles who spend this much of money want a good look to exhibit individual taste and class. Killing two birds with one stone, the panels also fend off undesirable acoustic energies from getting to the speaker box. How cool is it that the speaker box breaths in an isolated space of its own. The side panels are detachable, they come in Tiger Ebony, Rich Walnut, White Silk and Graphite option to meet the interior decor requirement. PMC has got the wife acceptance factor covered.

Sonomex, the soft dome tweeters take over from 3.8kHz and upwards. Fenestria assigns the task to the midrange dome to handle 3.8kHz down to 380Hz, this solution accounts for a single driver like characteristic. No phasey midrange. It's a clever decision not to cross frequency in the 1-3kHz range, the most sensitive human hearing range based on Fletcher-Munson study. All highlights have led me to think PMC designs Fenestria around the midrange dome. Sweet.

Both tweeter and the midrange dome are enclosed in a metal enclosure, they're suspended in the air and decoupled from the boxes via silicone dampening. It's basically a baffle-less, a first in PMC history. Carbon fibre flat drivers were chosen for its stiffness, lightness and damping factor, most of all, store very little energy. Luminair assisted box houses two 6.5-inch drivers in the respective box, two individual boxes are arranged in mirror image of each other for bass production. Not missing out the massive crossover, hidden in a suspended plinth, another first in PMC too. Besides, the user could adjust tweeter and bass output to cater for different room requirement.

Phew! With all the groundbreaking technologies out of the way, we're interested to know if the sound measures up. But before that, let me quickly run through the system set up. The front end comprises of TAD D600 cd player and Bryston music streamer, TAD C2000 and M2500 amplification, connected via Wywire cables. (I hope I got the components right). The room is treated with GK Acoustics bass traps and all round vertical maple diffusers. The system synergy was good. Quite often you find a dealer succumbed to using the brands he carries to conduct a demo, well, a compromised synergy that couldn't pull off the demo convincingly sometimes. AV Design didn't make that mistake, they managed a successful showdown. Applause, gentlemen. It didn't go unnoticed that the system was meticulously set up by Joseph Ki. Paul told me that Joseph was using a laser guide to speaker positioning with an uncompromising tight tolerance. Image what you'll get with the tweeters precisely levelled, a phenomenon occurs. Good thing doesn't come easy. The guys behind the work deserve the credits.

Holy cow! The first thing that makes me go gaga was the mids when it breaks the silence. From a psychology view, my intuitive reaction in a way reflects my very own midrange deficiency. Pity me. Astonishingly, Fenestria mids blew me away with unprecedented openness, purity and cleanliness. Topping it all off with the right amount of meat to the bone, surprise, surprise. No nasality or cupping was audible. Remarkably free of box colouration even though technically speaking, it is housed in an enclosure. The sound is uncluttered to establish a class on its own. The vent on the enclosure is the key, it resolves the internal pressure build up. The reason is obvious as to why PMC uses the 6.5-inch driver and not any bigger driver as most audiophiles would want, its sound priority is to attain an impeccable coherency in the time domain. I weight coherency over wide-bandwidth, think the timeless Quad ESL-63 in that line of the speaker. What I heard was a sound with adequate warmth and a top to bottom seamless-ness, and with bass. Magnificent.

Upon up-close observation, I couldn't detect the driver aggressive excursion nor much air gushing out from Laminair during the playing. The bass was clean, taut and zippy to produce an overall dynamic presentation. On heavy orchestral pieces, the bass was well behaved and room-filled although I found slight standing waves and cloudiness at the front row seat, approximately 10 feet from the plane of the speakers. You get a bassy presentation seated too low. Anyway, the front row seat isn't great to my ears, too close to the speakers and too low in ear height. I lost a little of the highs intensity at off-axis listening too. OK, I'm being overly critical. Nevertheless, the bass punched above its weight in terms of power thanks to Advanced Transmission Line, one of the PMC proprietary technologies.

Peter, Paul and Mary's Puff the Magic Dragon and Shanondoah sang by don't know shone, the amount of low-level detail and ambience captured in the recording were well retrieved, not to mention the difficult Cantate Domino that Joseph had picked to play. The man must have done his homework. The cathedral ambience was vivid and surreal as if the priest asked me, "Do you like the sound?" "Without hesitation, I do." In turn, albeit with lesser fidelity material, James Tan played pop rock materials, the real man music with greater audience appeals. I couldn't find fault with them. How I wish that Fenestria could punch a little more and then again, didn't you know audiophiles know nothing about greed? Alas, I'm comparing them against speakers twice or thrice the price. In all fairness, Fenestria wasn't fully broken in. There's some hardness to sound that nothing a prolonged playing couldn't make them go away.

The above listening impression comes with a caveat, as I already mentioned, the seating position must be spot on. If these criteria are met, you'll be rewarded with a breathtaking sonic holographic, lateral and front to back layering if you get what I mean. Forget about big sweetspot, there's only one throne in the house. Moving forward, you kind of know a person sonic presentation signature if you heard long enough. Mine will be different, I've no doubts yours too. All of us are inclined to emphasize certain sonic features. Our set of priorities are different that makes audioing interesting.

To conclude, MRSP RM230K is not a small price. There're a number of competing speakers in a similar price range and it's an investment to think through and through. Nevertheless, Fenestria is high in my speaker wishlist if I have the money. It's a big IF, I'm a poor guy but James agreed to sell one speaker and the other when I save enough. What presents before me is a pair of speaker that's easy, almost too easy to get a decent sound out of the box, none like the frustrating four towers speaker system. What's more, Fenestria presents an easy load on the amplifier. I stick my neck out saying this, Fenestria has a midrange to die for. And now the dust had settled, I feel disheartened to return to my midrange.

Castle in the air

When I decide to write, I didn't want to write something common, boring, me-too nor to please anyone. It just not my style. Not just another review, please, the world isn't short of reviews of this sort. Succumb to no pressure, I write what pleases me. I want to write something brutally honest that soul-stirring, to self-reflect. Leave if you can't take it.

Foolish pride, I can't help taking a swipe at people's over-assertiveness. It is in sound we compete, not anything else. It is in the sound we compete, not a tastefully designed room. It is in the sound we compete, not state of the art equipment. It is in sound and sound alone we judge and determine which system is a nose ahead. If you can't get over equipment paranoia that you believe equipment and equipment alone will bring home glory, consumerism will eat you alive. You will end up with a closet full of equipment and still long for the perfect equipment. Castle in the air, I got to tell you here we have no shared value here. On hindsight, audioing is about you stringing equipment, cables and room acoustics together to produce a sound, that satisfies your musical sensual and of the highest fidelity you can. The sound of our system is, without a single doubt, up to the player to lose. Ignorance tops the rank, heading in the wrong direction. Not only the sound doesn't measure up in tandem to the cost of the system, but it also sounds like no other, nothing like what we all accustomed to. Why is it difficult to find a good sounding system? Some say the know don't have the money. Not entirely wrong though, I got to say. What more, no system sounds alike, that's the hard fact.

A friend gave me a tinkle says my recent FB posting on seniority and competency was stirring the hornet's nest. You know what they say about the parable of ginger. The older it gets, the more pungent it gets, corresponding to the older you get, the wiser you become. My argument; does one puts the time to good use or just merely passing time. A lacklustre effort is as good as hot air, seniority is hollow but another meaningless number. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that. What more with disparagement, to my dazzlement you're assassinating your character openly. Pretty stupid thing if you asked me. On the contrary, a person with compassion gets a lot of respects from me. Always be mindful, be self-less and wary of your actions that may affect others in a bad way, I keep reminding myself.

Not hard to notice that audiophiles are generally not pragmatic and unbelievably self-opinionated. For instance, I got snubbed for sharing a live performance experience, I was told so and so performance is better. Instead of confronting head to head, I went on to do research on reputable and reliable sites and my findings concluded that his mentioned artist isn't well regarded for that particular repertoire. Isn't that sounds a little too familiar? Has he listened enough to draw a conclusion? I think not. Furthermore, listening live and playback represents two different standards, what more I listened live from a perfect spot. I regular live performance that I know which seat to get. I get the goosebumps listening live every single time, not so with playback. For playback, recording quality weigh in here.

With a little short of 30 years in this hobby, I must admit the last few years of work has been more educational and productive than my first 20 years combined. What can I say, it is my learning curve. Wasted time and money in the early years, I am now in a better position to figure the audio jigsaw out. By constantly asking why, what, where and how confronting issuance, I reduce my chances of taking a wrong turn. Time and time, you addressed a problem, you have one less problem.

So, trying to make up for the lost time, I need to double effort. To learn quick, I need to be a sharpshooter. Relying on people for spoon feeding will be too slow, furthermore, people might not want to teach stuff. Roll up your sleeves, go on an on the job training. You get the hang of it before long. System scrutiny is my habit to determine the secrets of good sound. Most audio secrets are laid out in the open, I will decode and employ it on my system. Common sense sadly some have little, a little too little, answers most of the questions. What I have learned, I inclined to add a twist of my own things to it. And that's not enough, I expand and explore it to develop new applications. As of today, I got some tweaks I can proudly claim that they are original (not shared out openly). Most tweaks are a zero-sum game and as always with some exceptions, some tweaks you never figure their magic, I take them as it is anyway.

I know this sounds arrogant, a picture tells a system a lot, coming from experience. However, video clips are far from the truth since it is your device that is playing, your device electronic, your device speakers. Even on the same performance, on the same seating, the audiences perceive different sound since the performance remains a constant. Even the pro guys don't listen the same way. So, what do we have here, an opening to a diversity of sound? It corresponds to sound equipment with a vast diversity of sound in the marketplace. The irony is audiophiles could immediately recognize sonic colouration, a call for multilateralism perhaps?

Greater good

People learn different things at various stages of life, it all got to do with your surrounding and some say fate. Some learn at a much earlier time, some learn faster than the others and unfortunately, some never learn nothing at all. Thus, all of us will never begin at the same starting line.

It has been a while I have not posted, I needed a break and time to sort things out for myself. Time didn't slow me down on my audio. Rather quite the opposite, I have got more involved than before. Greater anticipation, with new thoughts, new perspectives, I'm all pumped up. I even surprised myself finding the energy to tweak. Sounds old, huh.

You know what, coming from an audio dealer, he said to me "Audiophiles today listen to coloration!" I was taken surprised, I didn't see it coming but on a second thought, could he be pulling a trick on me? My defence mechanism triggered. Play dumb and submission always works miraculously in an embarrassing situation. Anyhow, what he says didn't deter me from my goal. My intention is clear, my conscience is clear, how I'm to go about is clear. Get real, they, audio dealers need to make a living too. Blessed my equipment day is over, my urge is at new low. I don't read much reviews these days, the days who race to the first to know is over. Ironically, the day you stop reading reviews is the day you stop fertilizing your libidinous upgrade.

Today's information boom age doesn't make decision making any easier, you need an enormous filtrating power to weed out marketing hypes. These hypes work your mind if you're carelessly allow them to slip into your mind, they are clever marketing deceit. The real test is in the listening, always, never let others convince you it is not. The measurements and graphs stay on the paper, if your ears tell you not right, it is not right. Irresistible and irresponsible buying will see yourself ended up with things locked inside the closet collecting dusty. No enthusiasts is spared from it, sadly. However, as we collect more experience, we ought to better manage our expectations. You feel sorry for yourself if you don't.

Cuffed with low spending power, tweaking is naturally a poor man's audio venture. In many cases, a gradual climb of the audio ladder proved to be a good self check and balance than shooting straight to the highest-end. To begin with, you're clueless about what's highest fidelity. Never skip the basics, in any discipline. A solid foundation goes a long way.

Every audiophile has a strong inclination towards certain audio respects, I could smell it. Sadly, one trick pony these days is hard-pressed to woo your fellow audiophiles, let alone respect. I have been searching for new teachings since many years back, both local and overseas. Hey, Bruce Lee too, learned from many martial art teachers before he unveils his Jeet Kune Do. Be mindful, audio is never a classroom hobby 纸上谈兵. What is on paper stays on paper. For the most part, the engineers have already worked the equipment out. Is it by your mercy of hooking them up and sing makes you great? I don't think so. Blatantly, I don't see anything to shout about on your part buying a fancy system and hooking them up. Maybe perhaps you can make more money. Too easy, it is too easy, anything that's too easy, you don't get the credit. Einstein wouldn't be a genius if he can answer 1 + 1. You need to bring something "new" to the table. Cocooning your mind is not helping, rules are meant to be broken, sometimes.

Moving forward, you must understand the concept tweak on tweak. Pardon me, if I got it grammarly incorrect. It is all for the greater good. Literally, you are not done with only one tweak alone, your primary tweak is, often, to get rid of your glaring shortcoming at a great cost, a secondary tweak is required to reduce or compensate the side effects of the primary tweak. Eventually, your shortcomings will be mitigated if not totally gotten rid.

My work on audio energy is not documented and I don't intend to. We are dealing with acoustic energies of the sound. Read this Conservation of Energy on Wikipedia. There is a pattern how these energies behave corresponding to the frequency range. Their behavior is pretty consistent and produces repeated results, the foundation of science. Just because a subject never or seldom discussed, it doesn't mean it is not there. Do your due diligence. Not resting on my laurels, I have developed my own techniques to harvest them, making them work in favor to me.

From the selection of rack, to the equipment arrangement and down to chair type, nothing is spare. For tidbits, fabric chair is not a good choice, many overlooked the seating height. Ultimately, we got to ask ourselves a down to earth question, what do you set out to achieve? I want to reproduce a living acoustic experience in a room with minimal room influences. Small room equates small soundstage, this stereotype need to be broken.

Sight distracts listening. No, I'm not suggesting jolting your eye balls out, you got to manage the lighting. Listening in a brightly lighted room, a spoiler. Which live performance you attend held in a brightly lighted hall? The only light you can see in my room is the equipment indicator light. Even the tube glow bothers me.

A cohesive environment prepares you an optimal listening experience, you need to feel comfortable in it, unplug unused power cords that will, the least, deteriorates your audio performance. These are the examples of my studies that I will share with you, just only that. I don't want accused of SKL, loosely interpreted as Mr Know It All, of which I had been accused in my face many years ago, he didn't know who is who. A snob will always be a snob, just like a leopard never changes its spot. An owner of fancy equipment with a fat ego, I'm sure like to listen what he can do in a difficult room.

With many things done, my sound has the expressiveness and expansiveness belies my system cost. I don't let price point to be my excuse. Finesse meets power, tone wholesome is thorough, in-room wind noise is at new low, and with the right recording, I could feel myself being wrapped up with acoustic energy. Though this is with a caveat, coloration. I gladly take because studio recordings do not exhibit the natural airiness, I take it anyway.

I can't helped sneering at those who think they know bass, I'm talking about unamped bass. Amped bass is not my concern because they are electronically-fab and often overhanged if you know what I'm talking about. You never knew what is what, why bother. For listening pleasure, no problems. To serve as reference, no way. I shook my head listening to the synthesized bass of The music of Hans Zimmer played recently in Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. Synthetic came to my mind. With the volume boost, the amplified bass guitar in the orchestra rendered a somewhat dirty and woolly bass. The acoustic percussion fell short of generating the seismic visceral effect, I'm afraid. On pop songs, the recording engineer cranked up the gain at his will to create the drama and sensation. And you use that for reference? What more, no articulation to speak of, none like acoustic drums. Get out and check for yourself.

Seriously, I'm inching closer to the red line before receiving a smack from someone. Audio community is hostile, and I take no prisoners in my audio principals. I asked myself why should I bother to blog, it is not my business any way to tell others. Best to keep quiet and low profile. I don't do honest audio talk unless I think the other party can take it. No audiophiles like to look like an audiofool, truth always hurts. A little saving grace, that's the least I gladly give to avoid a sticky situation.

It crossed my mind numerous time if I should stop blogging. Perhaps, I should, I don't want myself to be overly exposed. Things certainly not looking good with some friends blowing my cover, aiyah. Well, personally, I got so excited that a sifu from abroad who took me under his wing, he will share with me some amazing tweaks. Have tested the water, and far from audio myth, his tweak has resulted one heck of performance leap on my system, ever. This tweak was leaked to some, they were totally blown away too. But what they have implemented is just a fraction of a great thing, quite far from the full potential. I worked my ass off executing this tweak on my system, my body took a beating, the restrictive space around my system doesn't help at all. This execution normally take days to complete, I took one. Impatient, I was born like that.

OK, 虚声, I'm out of word to translate this, is miraculously dealt with. This is not a sonic description people normally describe my sound, period. His tweak strangely remedied this hollowness or emptiness, blessing every note with an unprecedented weight and solidity. Let's not misconstrue this as forward midrange or bottom heavy of which tip the tonal balance scale. Thanks God, the liveliness and the lightness stay intact. As such, my system is now poised to take much more beating with composure. I'm closing this post with an icing on the cake, I have got a weapon that promises a game changer. Super excited. Til then, chao.

A cool idea

Who would have thought France to win the World Cup 2018? They were unbeaten in their road to the final to meet the eventual runner-up Croatia. They scored 4 - 2 to lift the prestigious World Cup for the second time in the history. Well done. Wimbledon 2018, the oldest tennis tournament which runs concurrently with the World Cup looks pale. Djokovic ended 15 months of trophic draught, came back from an injury to beat Anderson from South Africa convincingly. Too much tennis in a week for Anderson, he was made to play the second longest match against John Isner, holy cow! 6 hours 36 minutes, the third longest match in the history of tennis. The KLIAV organiser was diligent to start the show the following week.

The show has yet to commence at the time of this posting. 25th year anniversary so it seems. Boy! It will be tiring days into the weekend. Let tomorrow worry about itself, I have got enough worry already. Sorry if I'm repeating myself again, a well-balanced sound is a gold standard. Not heavy at the top or excessive bottom, resolution and musicality in perfect harmony. Let's nobody convince you otherwise. I brought this up to remind me as well because I got carried away with my desires sometimes. Because brightly lit up sound gives an insight of the recording, a new world of resolution comes forward while heavy bottom offers warmth and slows things. Right in the middle gets the best of both worlds, the line straight to sonic utopia. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points, the beginning and the end. There's a price to pay for stubbornness.

Many found to have individual sound preferences that would serve well in some music genres and less on the others. Build the strength of your system, that's the game that what I come to understand. Hence, we end up having a picky and coloured system that veer away from neutrality. Honestly, I wouldn't want to mess around with tonal balance too much. It goes without saying that neutral sounding is the way to go. Using voices to gauge tonal balance is a no-no, it is like letting your imagination goes wild. Don't you know that the recording engineer can do wonder on the voices? With no valid reference so to speak of, it is up to your interpretation. Religious interpretation is the classic example.

Audiophiles caught themselves with luscious, creamy and super moistened sound, zooming into the voices while downplaying the timbre of the accompanying instruments. You screwed the timbre of the instruments. Troubles arise when you itchy backside wanting some music that you begin to show interest, kaboom, you have opened a can of worms. A wild goose chase begins. Sigh! This wisdom comes to me a little too late. I couldn't image me listening to this crap ten years ago, I was ignorant then. What can I say, willful ignorance is the voluntary misfortune. Accumulated wrong turns makes a man wise and humble. Time and time again, reality has a way to teach us.

Transforming my listening room into an acoustic mancave has been my long-term goal, a living acoustic mancave. Cool idea, isn't? This is exactly what I do differently than the herds, most audiophiles are a gearslut. They over obsessed with technologies and absorb all the marketing hypes the manufacturers throw at you. The equipment always gets the first blame when the thing is not going their way. Resonance, for instance, the most neglected element in audio. You ended up being the biggest loser if your equipment is not high-end enough. The money isn't enough to spend on vibration control. After years of optimization, I'm settled on my present system configuration. My system equilibrium has established. Yes, I'm sure there is better equipment out there but I'm not willing to break my piggy bank for the negative diminishing return. What more risking giving away on my precious tonal balance. In audio, there is seldom a perfect drop-in component. It requires a re-tuning. Always allow compensation.

Blacker background is a courtesy of low noise floor. Equipment, grounding, resonance, EMI, RFI, cable shielding and management constitute to the degree of blackness. Your work here will see the micro detail receiving a boost upon a black sonic backdrop. The notes complete in fullness, particularly in the bass region. Gone is the woolly bass. But one thing you can not have without; air conditioning. I can not imagine you can enjoy the music living with poor ventilation and the heat. Regulating the temperature is the first factor you should look at. Temperature and humidity affect the sound, the ideal temperature is 23-25 Celcius. Check this out. The wind noise is inevitable. It is negligible, I incorporate the noise into the sound, as an extension of the sound. High fan speed generates high air velocity, helps sound propagation. Check the reference. Crosswind? You go figure out yourself. As you crank up the volume, the wind noise will be thoroughly masked, they become inaudible. The better the propagation, the better the sound reach. My crazy thought is guiding the sound propagation, to allow a better airflow and eliminate chaos. Front loaded horn inspired me where the air motion is one directional. Aerodynamically shape, the airflow is to cut through the objects with the least noise.

Attention to detail rewards. That is if you can discern from the system. You can lie the world but the sound never lies. People might not know the hidden factors but they will discern sound quality almost instantly, who says you need a pair of trained ears?

A tiger or a cat?

I had a bowl of curry noodle for breakfast one morning. A meal that wake you up but as I grow older, I prefer something mild. Curry noodle is a twist of flavors, only in Malaysia and Singapore, I think. From India, comes curry powder while Chinese with their noodles, that you get when two mixed together. The rich culture of Malaysia gives thanks to the British who brought the Chinese and Indians in the early 19th century over here to work the mine and rubber plantation. Along with them, they brought their ethnicity and food, a cultural melting pot have come to pass. What exactly makes this bowl of delicacy different? A distinctive lemongrass aroma, going along with a rich and thick flavor. The best is relative. Its uniqueness draws patrons, likewise in audio too.

Every system is unique. I go as far to say you won't find two systems sounding identical. Hence, audio will never short of stories, gossip if you looked at the bad side. Without stories, the audio community will sick to death. Audiophiles like to express their individuality through sonic differentiation, let it be known of their taste. We love surprises, we long for surprises, we want to be surprised. One thing we ought to do, embrace sonic diversity even we may not like one's sound. Sonic homogeneity is a bad thing, thank goodness that's not happening.

Each listening opportunity offers implicit knowledge provided you know where and what to look for, period. Sometimes, the mistakes at the host's place give us the needed knock on the head that we should repeat the mistakes in our home turf. Time to reset, readjust and proceed. One ugly fact is that we sometimes undermine others via verbal or behavior unwittingly. My apology. To make your visit worthwhile, suck in new ideas and incorporates them into your system where you find fit. Ditch the stereotype of fault-finding mentality, uncalled self-esteem and big boy's attitude, you make yourself a bad name. Being tactful is score high in emotional quotient, you ought to know how to carry yourself. Integrity is doing the right thing even if no one is watching.

Confidence must have come from somewhere, mine comes from the efforts and time I devoted to my system. It is undeniable, high priced equipment possess a definite edge in sound quality, the devil is in the detail. Make your high priced equipment justified, they require a set of conditions to perform to its promise. For a start, pay attention to the interlink components, cables and resonance. Resonance is the devil to audio, no system will pull through. And my ears told me the right power cord does wonder to the sound. If you haven't look into this matter, procrastinate no more. What I derived from listening matters than what science trying to convince me otherwise, I care less what science says.

I know of no other ways to attain audio excellence than a series of refinements through critical listening, it helps to be a little creative. My exploration has been seeking the best synergy, power, acoustics and resonance, and of late EMI reduction in that particular order. I might show a sign of jaded, but the progress is never halted. An audio visit, a good one can instantly fire up my enthusiasm.

The EMI effects on sound is pronounceable, it introduces mask, muddy, fog and et cetera. The revelation comes only upon an execution. I have fought my acoustic uphill battle, time and time again, my new implementations dumbfounded me. Not until the addition of ground box, my system's transparency started to shows its fangs.

Often, transparency is misrepresented by leanness, lightweight and brittleness of which is obviously not the case. The half past six reviewers and the users share the blame for the fallacy. We used to listen to some hot shots with high-end system and take what they say without a second thought. time has passed, we have got wiser. In my view, transparency is better experienced than explained by attending a live unamplified music event at a close range. Word is inadequate. Attack, bite, lightness, decay, realism and etc are bundled in a low noise floor package. Transparency is a good thing, I can't have enough of it in my system. Absolute transparency is heaven. Seriously, this is a reality, not fiction and not something made up. Your job at least, to go find out. In our playback, I know the recording as a variable but don't let it becomes a hindrance. Too many doubts invite negativity. You stayed put with grand excuses.

Noise in the form of distortion shut out transparency. It can come from the equipment, power or the room. Now you know the stumbling blocks, get to work. You do what is necessary, transparency has its way to shine through.

The grid noise is a bad thing. There is no shortage of power filtration products in the market, don't you just love capitalism? They heard you. Grid noise asides, EMI imposes a lot of damages. I got to tell you, Schnerzinger Room Protector in one demo, blew me away. Dollar per dollar, the money on this thing makes more sound that high-end equipment! A pin drop is discernible, everything is laid bare before you. The detail comes so effortlessly as if you don't have to look out for it. A window of music has opened. An event like this casts a long-lasting impression. I tried to understand what Room Protector does what it does. It has lightened my idea light bulb, perhaps, this line of work would improve my transparency. Never try, never know. Seeking refuge in shielding, ground box and grounding wire, the sound improves at a various degree respectively. Not until the addition of some crystals, quite a lot of them, my transparency raises to new height. You bet I'm delighted.

To illustrate, take Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall, it is a fantastic live recording. Organic came into my mind, a proprietary of one take recording that maintain the music intact. Same music fabric, no stitching and joining. The performance is great and the sound equally is electrifying. The improved transparency accorded an abundance of nuances and air, so much more things heard. In audio terminology, more is better than less. His voice is husky and not smoothed, permeates through the noise from the crowd. The realistic depictions of drums and guitars, the crowd interactions have come together to conjure a "thereness". It was as if I was transported to the venue. I was spooked.

On Joshua Bell with the academy Saint Martins in-the-field, conducted by Neville Marriner under Decca record, the sound of the violin stands out as a powered instrument. The glorious sound of Stradivari was further enhanced through the f-holes radiation, to give a penetrative sound that cuts through the air with commanding authority. The superlative high beat sound of Stradivari was phenomenon. Tone purity comes forward, the virtuosity of Bell lingers on in my head. I caved into the finest hour of musical realm. Hear it to believe. No, my system could not come close to the live sound phenomenon. But I figure my resolution (of my system) is no slouch, not overly tone make-up and bleaching. On the other two accounts, density and edge delineation, transparency explicit them in a grand way. Warm sound does not correlate to density, another common fallacy, it could be of "loose cotton", coarse and murmured while edge delineation shows none of the broad brushwork.

You can't separate the twins, transparency and spatiality, one way or the other. Spatiality introduces air around the images, the private space of respective images. No cramped stage, no suffocation, entering an enormous depth, width and height of the soundscape the recording has in store. The breathing of vocalist captivates every audiophile, even the non-audiophiles. On choral works, spatiality defines the meaning of grandiose (of the choral), especially in lateral and height dimension. Big sound is magically intriguing, an element that pulls you into the music.

A tiger or a cat? A tiger from the system hardware perspective, a cat in delivery or vice versa. I would go as far to say transparency is the single element that spells the quality across the entire bandwidth, it mercilessly highlights system fault too. The other being the effortlessness. A double edged sword. Handle with care.

A better audiophile

I want to get this off my chest, I'm a player, not a politician. Neither do I affiliate with any audio dealers nor any interest group. My main and only concern is pushing the limit of my system, doing my favourite things, that's all.

I'm going to tell you that audiophile top topics don't get much away from the reproduction of sound and the value proposition. We are spoil for choice and yes we do. Because we don't have a deep pocket, we can't have all but right down to make our choice that best serve us. For the rich, no time wasted and go straight after SOTA equipment. End of the story. But for the most of us, a high value is coveted and struggles to absorb high diminishing value. There are, some of us, in pursuit of pleasing sound that altogether a different topic. I'd like to make myself clear that I'm not an advocator of high priced audio that built on marketing perception.

Not resting on my laurel, I put up the sound up against live performance. It's the best reference I know, you can't go wrong with it. With a caveat, I'm well aware of the sound during the recording session differs from live performance but the premise is to produce the natural and believable sound. I simply cannot get past a fake sound or to expect an accurate sound from the playback. How could you know the discrepancy? Just how could you? Not many have the privilege of being presence during the recording session. I'm biting a bullet to admit the idea of accurate sound is flawed and unsubstantiated, a belief I once hold steadfast to. OK, shoot me!

The end justifies the means is the key to unlocking the sound/value of the system in most of the occasions. For instance, a high-end amp and a set of cheapo cables don't serve each other that well. At the end of the day, we must ask how real does it get. Similarly, take-home pay that undermines our spending power and the freedom where you want to spend it on. Furthermore, I don't see how you can allocate equal budget on audio component, one-third budget to the source, amp and speaker respectively.

If the measure of success is peace of mind, then, the measure of sound is how it moves you. A system evokes your emotions is a better system? Not so fast, partially correct. If only you know the truth of timbre, a struggle to convince myself of the sound is not a good sounding system. It isn't what it is! A luscious sound, sweeter and smoother than thou is liken to portrait over-editing, presents an unnatural hue of sound. It isn't what it is!

Not having my chip on my shoulder, my system responds to my tweaking fascinates me. Therein lies an opportunity that I could kind of reconcile my sound to a realistic sound, that's something to get excited about; a sound artisan. I feel great in self-realization. It drives me crazy hours of fine tuning and listening. My inspirations come from everywhere, it has become a world of my own. Keeping the worldliness of troubles and worries out, just me and my sound.

I found great joy in fine tuning, realizing the truth value of the audio components. Every cloud has a silver lining, wrong turns are inevitable. Time and time again, I found myself ditching the sound detrimental tweaks, reset and settle on a new matrix of tweaking. Am I going on a wild goose chase, I hope I'm not. Time will tell. Right at this moment, I'm at a place in my life right now feeling contented. Sound first before music, I confessed with reluctance but the distinction becomes blurred at times when the magic of music prevails, the sound takes the backseat. It has become less of the bother, draws no attention to itself.

Let's not be fooled by our conscious, all audiophiles are sound first. By that I mean they're critical with how the sound. And when an audiophile has done his time, he will appreciate the truth of timbre a little more. Being caught up with "the next big thing" has been a thing of the past. The promise of technology to radically raise the bar of sound is behind me. Audio advancement is progressive. Plug and play? Weighing specs than listening is a plain ignorance. Your mental block undermining the essence of fine-tuning.

Constraints, welcome to the world if you're not in the top 5%. Not only with a limited budget, a small room to boot, these are what I have to contend with. I shouldn't complain too much knowing some don't even have room to play. On the other side of the fence, I know some build their room to a golden ratio from the ground up. Sweet. Does it negate the need for room treatment? I guess not.

Small room renders a small soundstage, compromised bass extension and loudness limitation, that's the hard fact. No electronics can reverse these shortcomings, don't count on DSP. To some, DSP is cancerous. Notwithstanding, small room rewards you differently. Interestingly, near-field listening is a natural choice (in a small room). You capture the most direct sound, words, pure, detail and intimate.

Nonetheless, the inseparable time delay of direct and reflected sound in a small room takes a toll on the clarity of the sound. Standing waves masks clarity. To get good sound, combating standing waves becomes a primary vocation. Your sound reflects your approach with your acoustics. On the other hand, big boys with big room confront a different type of problems, yearning for bigger amps, bigger speakers and subwoofers to room filled with sound. Standing waves are not deluded either. For the sake of room-shaking sound, think big, they couldn't energise the room as effortless as do small room could. Big speakers are lazy by nature, they need volume to wake up from sleeping mode, particularly the bass drivers. To resolve this issue, an active bass driver gets the unanimous nod of approval.

However, loudness could be a nuisance because some music doesn't require to play loud. Space constraint in a small room is definitely adding insult to injury. Excessive loudness invites distortions and promotes tinnitus, the ringing in the ears potentially induces hearing loss over a period of time. Multidriver speakers better tasked to coupe with high SPL and minimise distortions because the workload is well distributed. It is all well and good but the design invites another problem; coherency. The talent of the designer is determined by his work on the crossover design. I believe that every system performs optimally at a magic volume where all drivers sing in perfect harmony. Beyond the volume, you know that the sound begins to go bizarre, namely the harden highs and incoherency. To cut the chase, I opined that a flawless 40Hz to 10kHz frequency range makes or breaks music integrity. Do not mess around with it.

Small room enjoys two clear advantages, power by leveraging on the room reinforcement, a 6dB gain and lesser distortions from playing softer. The sound receives a smidge thickening, courtesy of room colouration. Serious attention is required to counter this ill effect via a compensation order.

Presence, texture and intimacy. Presence is the "tangible-ability" of sound while the texture is the conveyance of the truth of timbre. Intimacy is the agent of emotional evocation. Small room did it a little better than a big room in regard to "reach out and touch" devoid of distanced sound as with big room. Intimacy develops a sound that speaks to the heart. For most of the audiophiles, they are sold on a system that does well on intimacy, they care less about the accuracy of sound reproduction.

Apart from intimacy, the dire enveloping effect is on every audiophile wish list. Small room does this in spades. Imagine submerged in a musical capsule at a greater scale. Intoxicating! You will be misled to into a larger room though the physical room accord an otherwise cognitive dissonance. In a vast musical landscape, you are treated with a sanctuary of musical realm. Picture this, an Atmos Dolby effect from a 2 channel system, cool. If there's anything big room couldn't produce, big room produces scale. If that doesn't excite you, I can't see any reasons you want a big system in a big room. Money talks, to hit fortissimo effortlessly serving rock and classical music without compression.

In reality, a system is judged by the court of public opinion. Even black can be ruled as white if the public thinks so, that's the tyranny of the majority. Live with it or isolate yourself from the audio society. In sound reproduction, our heart must be won over first. Room acoustics may prove to be the most difficult aspect of audio, not so. You will get the hang of it as time goes by. Start working on first reflection points, you'll be ended up a better audiophile. Cheers.

Happy days

Happy days are eats well, sleeps well. Oh my God, sounds like a pig except for you know, being the butchered part. Happy days are everything goes according to plan. No surprises, I don't like surprises. Surprises give me the uncertainty, my heart isn't strong to take the shocks. Happy days are you're in good health. You're free from sickness and you're agile. You lose health, you lose everything in life. Long life without health is a torture. All hard earned money, years of saving goes to medical treatment, just like that. It's ok if you're treated, what if you aren't. Commercial hospitals have been known to milk the patients dry. Happy days are a happy marriage, to co-exist under the one roof.

Happy days are you have attained the desired sound for you had been working on it for so long. Tears of joy. I asked myself to describe my dream sound, specifically. I'm sorry (for you) if you couldn't make your description because chances are you either don't know or self-deceiving. And I don't pick the description from the air, I got inspired by the unamplified sound of classical music.

Thereafter, I go down to fine-tuning. I opined that two aspects (of sound) will irk you, there're highs, specifically lower treble and bass around 60 to100Hz. The former shouts at you while the latter smears the critical mids.

I'm going to touch on the lower treble today. Reaping the benefits from my classical music exposure, the highs from the real thing possess that feathery lightness and godspeed immediacy. They never sounded heavy and draggy. Sadly, this exquisite quality has been eluded me either I wasn't aware of it or I was caught up in other aspects of sound. In light of this awakening, I wasted no time to work on it.

Firstly, I revisited the tweaks that work for me well in the past, took them down and listened critically. True as I suspected, some of them attenuated the echo, nevertheless, they also sucked the life out of the music. They staged unnatural highs with a degree of curtailment. Out they go. I tuned it with a carefully selected precious wood. These wood are hard to come by, they enhanced the ambience beautifully. The sound was delightfully light, I tried them at a few positions and settled down.

On to the crunch test, I played Best of Kokua Festival by Jack Johnson and Friends under Bushfire Records. This is a fantastic live recording, the recording quality is commendable; sounded as natural as can be. Wonderful airspace audible around the guitar, the playing is nimble, the plucking is snappy but what's more enticing is the quality of the highs, I get the sense of relaxed and absolute freedom. The tones last with an extended decay of hundreds of millisecond.

To affirm to my findings, I pop in Maria Joao Pires plays Frederic Chopin Nocturnes under DG Records, this is considered a reference recording by many critics I soon understand why. She plays them with an unbelievable sense of sensuality and lightness. Again, I heard the piano notes exhibiting a similar relaxed and free quality I got from the earlier CD. It renders the realism of piano I wouldn't dare to dream of a couple months ago. Her rendition of Chopin affords a cognitive room to reflect the feelings and the moods so driven by the composition. I'm beginning to understand the critics' approval of The Poet of the piano, a style so sharply contrasts to Franz List which a rivalry at the time between both pianists.

In tandem with the highs rejuvenation, I noticed that the soundstage in lateral, width and height dimensional noticeably expanded on the highly popular George Bizet's Habanera, a beloved aria from Carmen opera. I have grown to love Grace Bumbry, the American African mezzo-soprano flirting. She has a creamy grain-free voice to boot. The sound has flanked both speakers caught me unprepared for it. With the expanded width, the spatial localisation has never been more "stand alone" to allow blooming, a magnificent air surrounding an object. We know that the singing, strings, brass and woodwinds exhibit the exhaling characteristics that give that distinctive airiness. Audibly, singing and woodwinds present a more point source properties. In addition, the backstage was also lighted up to present a sizeable performance stage making an opera a wonderful aural treat.

I know an idiotic audiophile who uses movie sound effects to calibrate the sound of his system. At one point, cranked a cello play at 100dB and guess what, distortions. I know my lines. His sarcasm doesn't reflect himself an educated individual, I carry no balls because my livelihood doesn't depend on him. His recent attack on me, shooting down others' opinions of all sorts. Can you believe it? Even Mr Trump, the most powerful man on earth listens to his advisors and think tank. I have caught him self-contradictory in many occasions, like seeking out opinions from his buddies and dealers. He seems to have all the answers to hardware, he knows it all. If not getting opinions from others, how the hell he knows if he hasn't owned them, what do you think? Your guess is as good as mine.

The irony of the situation, the visitors recognise my works on his system during a home audition. That's my not opinion anyway. As he proves to be funny with me, I challenged him to remove all my tweaks from his system if he has that little dignity in him to do so. In actual fact, I doubt that he will. Shame on him. He who knows who I'm talking about feels the pinch. My works there generate no profit so to speak of, for a friend sake. When a grape turns sour, you throw it into a dustbin. As wealthy as he is, a person who makes big money, took him three months to pay three hundred ringgit for my tweaks.

Therefore, take my advice, stop being a good sport. High-end system gets to pay more, that's how it should be. Because these people take thing for granted. Appreciative? Think again. I hold back giving out the secrets of my tweaks. Those who know me know my character. Don't do it for free, if you want to, get them pay for your intellectual works or otherwise don't bother. They wouldn't have called you if they know. Make them spend, it helps the retail industry anyway.

Step up your game

Everybody should have at least a dream, through thick and thin. Big dream or small dream, doesn't matter, a living reason for you get out of bed to greet every morning. Life will be high and dry, life will be suck.

I dreamt of a good music making system within my capacity, my room and my budget. Fueled by my motivation, my mind is constantly thinking and talking about sound. Eager for the breakthrough, I keep pushing the limit of my system. It doesn't break my spirit for my system costs peanut. I also realized that perfection doesn't exist in audio regardless the price. So, how to make the best of it? Although some disagree with my audio means, that's alright with me. Only one thing I ask, please do your share of homework and not comes up full of hot air.

With God's blessing, I'm slowly moving up the ladder of fidelity at my pace. I couldn't be happier with things now. How can one quicken learning process? Sure you can fly to the destination but at the expense of missing out the experience of the journey. Audio works in a similar fashion, doesn't it? Have you found yourself stranded with a change in the audio variables? Keep changing equipment until the cow comes home but has the cow come home yet?

Big boys have the spending power, the perfect room and the clean power. If you're destined to be the one born with a silver spoon, so be it. If you're not, live your life like the majority. Work your way up, face the music and to make ends meet. I have to live with what I can afford. No doubt, my relative low price point system compromises in fidelity. I also realized that perfection doesn't exist in audio. So, how to make the best of it? First and foremost, be smart enough to avoid making silly mistakes. If your preamp and amp don't match, you're screwed. If your amp is underpowered, you're screwed. Your speakers too big for your room, you're screwed. Don't push your luck. Do your due diligence prior buying, buy products that don't give much away in terms performance. Hardware alone doesn't get you there, acoustics is. Acoustics is the kingmaker, it holds the key to a dreamlike sound, lest not forget about this. Your time and money are better spent here, the yield is higher than what you could have imagined. So, a better system could have leveraged on good acoustics, like a fish takes to water. I kid you not, step up your game in acoustics.

I know, audiophiles often are judgemental for their own good. Their exposure and experience are not conclusive, sadly. They tend to pin everything down with the pricing of the hardware. High price correlates with high performance, the world thinks that way too. So, it isn't coincident that they brush low-end systems aside. They have seen and heard it before, they claimed. Asian audiophiles, in particular, want prestige and glamour. Big brands sell. Size and weight matter, and the high price is prerequisite. Adding these up, you get an abnormal D curve that bends the law of demand. Cheers, the manufacturers drink to that! European audiophiles are more sensible, they questioned the price tag.

I snubbed the typical high-end, mid-end and low-end sound stereotype per price branding. The diminishing value, the considerably more money spent, you would not run very far away in performance. However, many will disagree with me. What can I say, gear-fetishism get our mind mixed up. It is, nonetheless, a perfect self-serving esteem booster. Sure enough, I will be cursed saying that. "Can you afford XXX in this lifetime?" A TKO question, rings the bell, throw in the towel.

I'm sensitive to value and refused to pay a single cent more than I'd have to without a justification. My typical question is how much money goes to the circuitry design under the hood and the attention to the detail. Revolutionary circuitry, customised components, attention to detail and aesthetic sound fabulous. Serviceability and the cost should be your concern, you don't want to find your head to be on a chopping board when you seek servicing. Branding has a value, let face it. It is easier to flip in the used market. Just me, I put down a figure as to how much these factors enhance the performance.

The setting up skills determine a good or a mediocre sounding system. You can go the basic route, do nothing more than hooking up the cables or the back-breaking meticulous set up. Inevitably, the people come to expect great things from a high-end system. Poor setting up skill is likened your car running on flat tyres. Acoustic and tweaking together opens a world of possibilities.

Aesthetic shouldn't override the performance. Non-audiophiles are first to fall into the aesthetic and gadgets trap. What's up with wife acceptance factor? Get yourself a room (if you can), isolate the noise and get the system out of her sight. We, Asians believe that audioing is a selfish pass time. Two in a room, a conversation will begin. There's only one sweet spot in a room, you either be on it or not. Not cool to have a system in a common living room with a TV as a centerpiece. But life sucks sometimes.

In pursuit of my personal mission, live sound reproduction, I take no chances resting on my laurels but to get my ears accustomed to live sound. There's no other way. Talk is cheap. From my live sound experience, I deride my humble several conclusions. One, the depth of sound, some call it timbral richness. It depicts the ripples of sound permeating from a point source, from the beginning, follows closely behind the gradual dissipating ringing in the darkness. The darkness takes over. No smearing and wobbling. The notes of the acoustic guitar plucking are exemplary. Your ability to discern the tone modulations probably lasted for 3-4 seconds, allowing you to hear the depth. Given a good composition, these note modulations reach deep within and touches the soul. As such, pipa, guqin and guzheng, very zen sound that possess the necessary ingredients to settle your unrest soul.

Two, there's a feathery lightness to the sound. Not bright, lightweight, nor harsh. No dragging that hampers the impeccable start and stop immediacy. Subtleties, nuances and airiness. Picture this, the warm morning light is beaming through your window unveiling the clouds of dust. The dust is the subtleties and nuances.

Central Europe was the cradle of classical music, centuries-old of listening culture. They know music. It takes time like the great rivers bring about human civilisations. The fertile lands cultivate agriculture activities, before long, downstream and trading activities. Then the road comes, the school comes, the bank comes, the maritime. I couldn't stress more on knowing what to listen.

Third, the absence of electrical buzz. As natural as it is, the extraordinary transparency lay everything bare before your eyes/ears. You see no veils, you hear no veils. This is not the case with reproduced sound, there's always a thin masking over the sound. I'm not naive to deny that. I had done a little work on this aspect and I don't dare to say I have totally removed it but significantly dealt with. No sir, because time and time again I was made to eat my words. Solid localization, the individual instruments were steadfast in holding their ground without being drowned in the jamming. Thereness is strong. Are you still me?

Fourth, the retrieval of the ambience. The crowd interactions with the artist, you couldn't beat that. Vividness is the word, a vehicle that transports you to another dimension of time and space. Your troubles are in the back of your mind. Shall I say more?



Over the past couple of months, I have grown more and more aware of tempi. Believe it, we're subconsciously aware of timing, we kind of anticipating an event (in music) to take place. Music is metered by the timing or beat. Timing serves as the thread of a bracelet that holds the beads closely together. Time precision. We feel awkward with offbeat timing that throws off the rhythm, as such, the music loses the composure, loses its magic, particularly on pop, jazz and classical. However, it is not so critical on the slow numbers. The timing accords the rightness of music and also the catalyst of adrenaline of the music.

It seems that I'm blowing my own trumpet at times. No time to be wasted on a boring sounding system, I wanted to enjoy good sound. Upholding the above sonic principals, I worked my sound in adherence to my belief in sound. My personal goal is trying to duplicate the "sound" experience in the comfort of my own home. The constant question I often asked myself is "How real does my reproduced sound get?". Hardware gets you halfway there, power supply, cabling, isolation, acoustic and some might even throw the racking in. What I stressed is enjoy the journey, it will enrich you with knowledge and experience.

Recording format

You sow what you plant pretty sums up everything in audio. Your attention to power and cabling will be highly rewarded in the quality of playback, most audiophiles will not go the extra mile after power and acoustics, they stop short at the media dynamic compression that hampers the joy of listening.

An uncompressed media is all worthwhile. I go afar that the reissue is a pain in the neck. If care is not taken to obtain the uncompressed media, you stand to lose the detail of the recording. No matter what you do, you will never recover what is lost in the signal. Burnt copy from an original copy is cheap but suffer a loss of detail, of course, if you care about the quality of playback. Thus, it is worth your effort to search for the uncompressed particularly those tracks you're emotionally connected to.

Often, I'm caught in a dilemma between performance and recording. On one hand, I wanted a good performance, but on the other hand, I wanted a clean and natural recording. But if push comes to shove, the performance will come on top. It's a love-hate thing. Granted, there are quite a significant number of good performance, poor recording particularly classical recordings in the early era.

Chinese recordings? Unnaturally equalised, with a noticeable boost in the lower treble to highlight presence and details. This has lent me to assume that this trick would work great on the low-resolution systems on the mediocre system, given their relatively low income per capita. However, this will throw off the balance of the sound and if you used these recording to tune your system, your system stands to go terribly wrong. The other issue I often encounter with the recordings, the western recordings are not excluded, are the phase issue. This is something the recording industry has to do a little more on standardizations, phase and loudness where some recordings are way over to top in loudness while others went to opposite polar. In addition, we, the listener is being screwed with the loudness war since the early 90s. Wiki explains that modern recordings that use extreme dynamic range compression and other measures to increase loudness, therefore, can sacrifice sound quality to loudness. The extreme dynamic and details have been clipped. See the video below.

This is the ugly side of digitals. Take a look at http://dr.loudness-war.info, key in your search album. Take Michael Jackson's Thriller, for example, the world's best selling album by a far margin. It recorded 47.3 million copies sold worldwide. http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=michael+jackson&album=thriller shows that the list of reissues of horrible dynamic compression indicated with red and yellow ratings. Vinyl of the same title is superior. So, do your check before you buy even though some claimed that some remastered vinyl is better than first pressing vinyl.

The tone is all that much better if the digital recording is done with AAD or ADD, I could discern the difference. A is the acronym for Analog and D is digital. The first alphabet represents the master format, mixing format follows and the last is digital transfer. Modern recordings now are digitally recorded due to low cost and irony that we, the audiophiles on the receiving end trying to squeeze every musical information out from the recording.

In general, it is so easy to be misled that the same-titled CDs produce an identical sound, it is not. Just key in your favourite artist and album title, you will see the result. Ironically, see what Wiki says "Despite the lower dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratios a vinyl or tape record can achieve in theory (>60-80 dB versus 90-96 dB for CD recordings), vinyl records may still be preferred for their greater dynamic. 

We are being screwed for the promise of new technologies time and time again. The audio industry is constantly looking for new growth to reap a profit. Vinyl had returned, R2R has returned, CD transport has returned, what say you?

Close Encounter

My first ever ballet performance as an audience took place on Feb 2, 2018. I knew it will be spectacular to watch, I was prompted to buy the tickets in the early season to get good seats than stand to regret. Habitually, I set a reminder on my phone calendar once the ticket booked, the rest leave it to time to do its thing. Before long, the time has come.

Entering the majestic orchestra hall, what do I know. We were in the first row, they had removed 6 rows of seating to make way for the orchestra, ballet takes the main stage. How excited I was, one, imagine 3 feet close encounter with the playing members, I could have shaken hand with the co-principal cellist, Csaba Koros who was right in front of me. He's a Hungarian nationality with a macho look and a pony-tail styling, very artist-looking. You can't miss him. Secondly, we shared the same stage with the orchestra with only a row of seats as a barricade. Getting to hear the orchestra playing at ear level doesn't happen that often, on the same listening height as with my system. Hallelujah!

Ballet dance is the culture product of France and Russian. What do I know about ballet? Zero, I'll admit to that. From what I gathered from the brochure, Ballet of Armenia was founded 1933, is considered one of the best ballet from the former Soviet Union. They have performed quite intensively throughout European. A grand dancehall decorated the stage backdrop appeared before me, with a little help of the projector. The dancehall illustrated a noble European of fine and exquisite interior architectural. Visually appealing, raising up to the occasion. 

The familiarity of The Nutcracker tune opened the performance, the ballerinos and ballerinas took the stage. Scene after scene, dance repertoire after dance repertoire, colourful cultural costume, our eyes were glued to the stage. Lest not forget we're the audiophile, however, the music took the back seat. The burst of visual and aural information had my brain two minded of which I should sink in. 

How on earth the ballerina stands on her toes? Torturing ouch! The elegance of the dance was indescribable though they could work on the tidiness and timing a bit better. Then, I guess this is their first performance here and they may not get over the jitters. They will get better in the coming performances. The physics of the ballerinas and ballerinos are the perfect human specimen. They must have had at least ten years of training to be able to perform on stage on this scale. Their performing life is short, very physically demanding repertoire after the aerobatic. A serious injury would easily put out a performer's career. This is hard work, only relatively low income ex-Soviet Union would endeavour this art form. In terms of GDP per capita, Armenia achieves sub USD4,000, Malaysia sub USD10,000. Armenia is located in Asia, to the east border is Turkey, to the north is Georgia. 

The most memorable dance for me was the classic choreography of four little swans intertwined during The Sleeping Beauty. Excuse my ignorance. Needless to say, the ballet performance was an eye-opener to me because I haven't seen the world as much as some others do. I'm no much a dance guy.

The sound of the orchestra was thoroughly more oomph, more speed, more vigorous, more energetic than usual. I concluded coming down two factors, the distance and secondly they are on solid ground, cement floor. Pity that the orchestra has to cramp into a space constraint, with restricted movement. Picture this, timpani was situated in the left doorway. I occasionally bent slightly forward to grasp the tunes from the cello. This performance was identical to the highly rave and sought after RCA Victor titled The Royal Ballet conducted by Ernest Ansermet less the visual sensation. The last I heard, this LP price has soared to RM4000. So, what present before me is a big bargain.

Helplessly, no matter how hard I try to get rid of the mist, I always find the sound from our systems is inevitably covered by a thin mist, all systems regardless of any format of media at any price suffer the same setback. Just that some fare better than the rest. O please, spare me your look. Hindering the absolute transparency, the penetrative quality has been somewhat eluded from our system. Probably, planar speakers could fare slightly better due to lack of box colouration, provided narrow bandwidth isn't a concern. But they're not spared from the plague of sonic mist.

Forgive my bluntness, no systems on earth come close to the sound I hear from the live performance. Its naturalness strikes me squarely, no edge delineation, no pinpoint, no soundstage, no chestiness, no standing waves and what not. Listening experience in the hall is like taking a musical sabbatical immersion in a space and time of its own. Listening to music is a joy. The sound has the free-flowing and spontaneous quality that hard to copy in our playback. Naturally, I fervently seek for this quality in our playback. The quicker I sink into the music, the least wrongs the system inherits. Besides, the immediacy is also another signature even though it shouldn't pose much problem in modern equipment. Live performance is the better place to self-educate tone colour and purity, you need to reinforce the righteous tones on a periodical basis. Tonelogy is not what you can learn from your system, your friends' systems nor your friends' friends' systems, unfortunately.

AVD product launching

I was honoured to be invited to participate the launching of new products brought to Malaysian soil on 26 Jan 2018. The launching was slightly delayed to roughly 3.00pm, started with a short sweet speech from James Tan. A humble beginning, AV Design was incorporated in 1993. It was operated from second-floor office floor above an auto workshop. This year marks 25th years anniversary in business, something worth celebrating as with our KLAV in tandem. 25 years is a long time.

From left, Joseph Ki, James Tan and Tony

James took the opportunity to announce that Joseph Ki, widely known as Jo Ki, the man who founded the unofficial Rogers LS3/5a group, coming on board as a director. Jo has been responsible for the interior design of the previous outlet in Rohas and now new outlet, Boulevard Business Park. AV Design has been a reputable home theatre entertainment solution provider in town, James is ambitious to take on the two-channel system seriously with the appointment of Jo Ki. Something is bound to happen. AV Design is now in a better position to provide a complete mid to high-end two-channel system package, namely, hardware, acoustic solution and room design.

Time for the new products, PMC Cor analogue amplifier. Tony, Sales Manager went on to brief us on PMC electronics. PMC is not new on amplification technology, they have been doing amplification for over twenty-five years experience under their belt, primarily for pro sound industry.

Cor as in Portuguese means heart, soul and mind. Rated 95 watt at 8-ohm or 140 watt at 4-ohm integrated amplifier, dressed in a ribbed box and an oversized volume knob, the design looks as utilitarian as can get. Timeless. Cor brought back Japanese old school tone control features, the slide motor allow left-right balance, treble and bass adjustment that will come handy in various room shapes.

We were played three tracks of various music genre to give a glimpse of Cor's sound perspectives. I didn't get the sweet spot for the demo but got an opportunity for a serious listen afterwards. The system comprises of Bryston music streamer, Cor integrated amp driving PMC 25.26 (RM46,800 per pair).

The system is placed in an open area with a right opening, in spite of that, my listening impression has been positive. No grain, no hardened notes, offering a clear view into the music. A thumb up to acoustic treatment. The sound was clean, exquisite and detailed, there were no hints of boom. Credits to Jo for his set up efforts, PMC 25.26s were imaging ghostly. The highs were tangible! For a little more than RM31,800 price tag, Cor joins the bandwagon of mid-market integrated amplifiers. Cor is the natural choice for its transducer.

PMC 25.26

Read http://www.the-ear.net/review-hardware/pm-cor-integrated-amplifier

Next up, Syzygy Acoustics. These are subs for music, should excite some of the bass enthusiasts. Wait til you hear this, Syzygy subs are wi-fi able and wired providing the flexibility of connection. It equips with BLE app and SoundSculpt Technology (DSP) to boot, offer a smooth bass response.

There are four variants in the range, starting from

Syzygy SLF 800, 8in driver, 200 watt, 34-200Hz, BLE app and bass reflex design, MRSP RM2500, optional WRM TX1 transmitter RM470
Syzygy SLF 820, 8in driver, 400 watt, 30-200Hz, BLE app and bass reflex design, comes with digital room correction, MRSP RM3700
Syzygy SLF 850, 10in driver, 1000 watt, 24-200Hz, BLE app and acoustic suspension design, comes with digital room correction, MRSP RM4900
Syzygy SLF 870, 12in driver, 1000 watt, 20-200Hz, BLE app and acoustic suspension design, comes with digital room correction, MRSP RM5990

Driven by a Pioneer AV amp, a single Syzygy SLF 800 in this room, mating PCM 25.21 in a room 14' x 20' (my best guesstimate). The sound was noticeably beefen. The speed of the sub is remarkable.

With BLE app, the owner could sync automatically with the system. For the capable, they can opt for manual tuning, like Q factor, phase degree, dB roll off, delay and fading to manipulate the bass curve.

You can opt for duo subs for optimal stereo performance. Intoxicating just to think about it. AV Design has three dedicated rooms, one for home theatre and two for the two-channel system.

A review by The Absolute Sound on Syzygy SLF870 by Vade Forrester on Sep 11th, 2017.
You may want to read http://www.tonepublications .com/review/syzygy-slf-870-subwoofer/ and http://www.cepro.com/article/review_syzygy_slf_850_subwoofer_sound_quality_calibration

This is the home theatre room.

The equipment is nestled in a hidden compartment.

This is the TAD room.

The clever use of absorption and reflection.

For further info, visit http://www.avdesigns.com.my