Kingmaker

We are gifted with six senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and extrasensory perception. Not every man has an equal sense of reception. Me, terrible in smell and extrasensory perception, the spirit, you know. It does occur to me that we have different takes, each of us hears different things with the very same performance, don't we? Not to mention some are sensitive and less sensitive to a certain frequency bandwidth. Well, guess what is constant? The timbre of the said performance remains unchanged. Do we or do we not give leeway to our preference? In audio, some take sound in their our hands a little too far, I wouldn't do that, simply because timbre truthness is the kingmaker.

What's timbre truthness? In my definition, the sound that distinguishes the true colours of a musical instrument. Fidelity has always linked to engineering, the improvements of passive components have brought about greater fidelity, lower colouration and less loss. Compare with vintage gears, the modern gears are light-years of musical insights. Snubbing sentimentalism, romance, artificial warmth that not supposed to be there, the detail is precious and it costs money. I say to you, this is only the technological aspect of audio, there's more, not something the engineers completely understood. Phycoascoustics, flow dynamic, EMI, RFI perhaps? 

To satisfy those audiophiles who crave for "fake musicality", a warmish sound. Infusing distortion is a piece of cake as opposed to the reverse. Even the rack manufacturers claim racking is one of the audio components, they easily cost the price of an entry system! What say you?

The detail is one thing, articulation is another. Articulation is the single element that makes timbre truthness shines. High-end equipment churns out more inner details than mid-fi counterparts, the devil is in the detail. You may have detail but not articulation, but an articulate sound will always sound detailed. Articulation is a high-end property that eluded many audiophiles so to speak. A quick acid test, how long is your piano sustain last? Suffering tonal softening? Ambience retrieval? 

As much as I possibly can, I want maximum articulation. Your room acoustic dictates your articulation, right next to the phase and time coherence! Ill-treated, your room messes up articulation, particularly standing waves. This has been my playing field for quite some time now, I'm dealing with micro tuning. Within the room boundaries, you confront the mighty acoustic turbulences, the invincible foe. Bass traps and absorptive materials are not my preferred tuning option. Out of frying pan into the fire, they distort the sound, the bass, in particular, is castrated. They suck the life of bass. So, free your mind, think outside the box, think outside the oscilloscope or whatever man-made scopes there are. The truth is out there, seek and you shall find.

I was asked to help make a system sounds good the other weekend. An audiophile who tagged along jumped to conclusions, the speakers should be bi-wired. A typical audiophile, quick to judge. The first thing comes into the mind is to upgrade, how clever. Do your homework.

Let examine the sound of the system, it was a good thing that the system didn't suffer insufficient power issue. Yes, the sound was a mess with poor definition. No, bi-wiring is not the solution, absolutely not. Bi-wiring will pay with interest upon an already good system, not before! Firstly, we are not living in a perfect world when even the best system is not problem-free. We mustn't expect we could have everything is readily available for our disposal, we live with what we have. Desperate times desperate measures. Within the parameters thereof, the time and stage are set for you to show off your real capability to make a system sing. Your skill is put to the test. Resorting to hasten upgrade is sweeping the issue under the carpet. 

Life isn't fair, some make money shaking legs without having to sweat, some earn minimum wage, what can you do about it? Live with it! You save up your money in hope that someday you can afford it. What is there to shout about if everything is at your disposal? Any audiophiles, Tom Dick and Harry could do it. Ill advice will always be a piece of ill advice. Likewise, some listen but couldn't tune and rarely, those who tune don't know listening. I will add, a hypocrite couldn't tune and listen, all they know is inciting and boasting half baked story. You take a hypocrite seriously, the days of misfortune will one day fall on you. 

Within minutes of working, speaker placement, adjusting the tweaks, the owner signed off my job sheet. The improved sound silenced the critic, not a single cent is spent. The sound was not only opened up, so does the articulation. Whatever upgrade in future, the result will pay interest. 

Perhaps my employment of tonewood would attract criticisms. Tonewood is like tube-rolling but they work for me despite colourations, nice colourations. I've invested quite a bit in tonewood, no less than 5 species. Natural materials introduce natural sound. Like cotton shirt to our skin, cotton may not be the best material but you feel the coolness wearing it as opposed to wrinkle-free polyester. I have got one tonewood in my arsenal that would congeal the sparse imaging across the soundstage to pin-on-board imaging. Magically on voices, yeah! It's unbelievable though it's contradicting what I've said earlier. Also, I enhance reverberations with tonewood. Think room filled piano nuances, not manner where I walk in my house I'm happy with my piano repro, unashamedly.

Now, on the personal ground, how far you go in your audio mileage depends on how far you push your system, how eager you want to betterment. Your attitude dictates your behaviour. It strikes me that we need to unlearn what you have learned to make way for relearning. We, many times, thought that we have learned enough and we ceased there, the real revelation is often sitting right at one corner waiting to be discovered. It's like lost and found. Aren't we inclined to restrict our search at one specific area where we think we might have left the lost item? Little do we know, our preoccupied mind restricted our search area, we kept searching within the parameters but unable to see things under our nose. Doesn't this sound a little too familiar? We see from a macro perspective and neglect the micro perspective. Does the devil is in the detail ring to you?

I risk angering audiophiles that most of the acclaimed systems sounded "acoustically dead"? The sound is slow and boring for my taste of classical music. The true intent of the music is tampered, that's the last thing you want to arrive at. Does it occur to you why many systems sounded awful with pop music? How many systems you heard could do pop music justice? Not many, huh? Why is our system picky about music repro? Missing is the whippiness, what more, the bass is slow and woolly. Poor jump factor. 

Airiness is a major component in sound. Sound is an energy in the way the soundwave propagates, it is not wrong to say the greater sound is derived by moving more air. In my view, a less airy sound is a sick system. All musical instruments move air, name me one which is not? The strings move air, the woodwind moves air, the percussion moves air and et cetera. Live recordings are airy, the crowd rocking the concert. Airiness brings about a righteous sound and ambience. And if your system doesn't exhibit this quality even with mediocre Blue Note jazz, you know something is not right. Our domestic sound repro should exhibit more airiness than what it is because our room generates some share of reverb. So, you now be careful with overly use of absorptive materials in your room.

To bring the sound to the next level, you need to have a well in-room guided airflow. Standing wave is not a guided airflow. Bass trap is not a guided airflow. Let the air works for you instead of fighting against it. Give it a thought, I will not elaborate further.

Let examine, vocal repro as per my observation, the love of the audiophiles here. It is a sad thing. The key to an amazing vocal repro is easy, a forward mids, an added warmth at the midrange and softened highs especially at the lower highs. A little box colouration would help to enhance the emotional department. Take a closer listen, there's nothing in the bass but a compromised articulation. To avoid bass intrusion into the mids, you either get a pair of bookshelf speakers or well-designed floorstanding speakers. I look more than that, the chestiness quality, the recording should have picked up this quality but not the repro. I'm a strong proponent of a simple system. The more boxes only mean the longer signal path and hence the greater signal loss. Sure you have more transformers to boost the signal but what is there to boost if the signal is lost? Any of you perceive articulation in low bass of the subwoofer?

On the contrary, the box colouration smears the timbre, throw off timing. Take for an instance, the plucking of a guitar. The zing is softened due to the rounded highs, the tone got thicken due to the warmness and smearing, the texture is distorted and the decay is shortlived. Worst of the lot, bass articulation, there's hardly any but a woolly bass with nothing in it. Look no further than double bass and cello, they don't sound vibrant. Whatmore, the snare drums don't sound like what they should. Thus, a reviewer must not be influenced by the music played, he should focus on sound quality even if he doesn't like the music played.

Resolution is precious, you couldn't create it. Take for an example, a UHD TV against a full HD TV, you could only do so much on full HD TV with a better power cord, a better HDMI cable and probably a power bank! An audio system with high-resolution will always sound lean for they sounded clean. They sound real, they are revealing and they don't sound sweet. My approach is to add a little tube flavour or resonance to add a tad colouration to it, it works. I'm talking about a smidgen amount of colouration, not a whole lot.

High-end audio is all about fidelity, nothing else but everything about fidelity. However, the market offers high-end pleasing sound system into the mix. They deploy tubes and transformers to add flavours to the sound. Well, if we take pro sound as a no-nonsense reference, these are not true sound. So, we must accept some degree of colourations to the sound. That's what the consumers want. Make something the consumers want or ship out. What I have observed and concluded, the majority of audiophiles prefer a sound with a twist. The tube guys, I mean the equipment with power tubes, took it to the extreme end of the spectrum. Tube noise is acceptable. Me? I'm a small tube guy.

My brand of the system is highly dynamic, fast, detailed, airy, energetic, uncompressed and produces a lively ambience. In short, a system that can swing effortlessly. Quiet as a mouse background? Pitch black backdrop? They are not my concern, I don't mind a little noise. Music isn't all about succulent voices, you will get bored soon enough. I want correct timbre. I listen to pop, jazz, soul and classical music, depending on the listening moods of the time. Thus, the mentioned sonic traits are pretty much universal.

There are two camps of audiophiles, a master and a slave. A master himself takes charge of the sound while a slave as the noun implied, a slave to audio equipment. The latter buy, buy, buy, they buy their way to sonic utopia. You can see that the latter is well to do people who can afford better things in life. The former is more of a poor man audiophile. When I throw this question to the fellow audiophiles which you want to be, something like wealth and wisdom, all of them wanted to be the fat wallet guy or the wealth guy. Smile. Life is so much simpler then but not all guys are born wealthy or inherited a family fortune or struck a lottery. I got nothing against them.