When I retired in 2000 I had nothing to do and lot s of time to do it in. I thought that music was interesting and that Id try getting a really good system and seeing if I enjoyed listening to music. I bought a series of NAD and Onkyo receivers and amps and a pair of Dunlavy SCIV. The sound was much better than Id heard in a system and I thought this was great. I bought hundreds of cd, listened to the masters and decided I really liked music, most music. I still dont really understand atonal or people yelling at each other. I used to think rap was what people did on doors and tables. Id like to keep my ignorance in place on that one.
Then one evening I was having dinner at my usual restaurant hangout and after drinking a bottle of wine with a man who lived a few doors down from the restaurant, he invited me to listen to his music system. I was stunned. He had a Levinson Amp (331) with Teal speakers and Meridian cd and preamp with silver cables.WOW! I was in love. Id never imagined that sound from a machine could be like that. I do owe Tony a thank you, for he showed me the light. A switch truly went on for me that night. Thank you.
After about ten minutes I realized that my ears hurt. I knew it was too bright, but ZAP!
I wanted to hear that clarity, that detail and I wanted to hear it for more than ten minutes without my ears hurting.
So, out went the receivers (actually I gave them to my three children) and in came Levinson gear. Since, Ive been through ten or so amps and a few speakers and a few cables, cd players and turntables.
Ive learned a lot of what works and whats smoke. In wine, everything you need to know about it is in the glass youre drinking, right now. Nope, you dont need to know the grape pickers name, nor the vintner, nor the name of the town, plot or mix of fruit.
You just need to know whats in your glass. TODAY. I suppose by now youve figured out that Ive tried a few glasses of wine. Yup. I stopped guessing how many bottles Ive participated in after the 50,000 mark. No, that wasnt yesterday. The benefit Ive found of getting old is that you cant remember when you stopped remembering.
Ive come to see audio in exactly the same light as wine. Im interested in what works, I can hear and I can feel. Once it takes an explanation to decide if its there, its not. If it feels like the music is wrong, lifeless, brittle, bright or skewed, toss the gear that caused it.
Around 2003 I bit the bullet and flipped for the design and engineering of a room by Rives Audio. It cost me the rebuild of our home. I could not find a single contractor willing to take on the room project. They clearly were so nervous about the details that they would not do it. On August 25, 2004 the room was nearly finished and the equipment was placed in it to hear what money can buy.
Its pretty damn good!
Its truly the best of everything Ive heard in equipment and design. I grant those others with similar situations that theres may be better rooms and sound, but I havent been to visit them and cant say from experience.
What stands out to me in and from my room is that it feels small. It is actually 247 feet long and 152 feed wide where the speakers are located. The ceiling runs from 91 to 116 at the peak. The walls are not parallel, nor is the ceiling with the floor. And it does feel small. I believe it a combination of the oversize chair on a platform along with the monster truck sized speakers. They are 76 tall and 30 deep. When I have the equipment along side the chair, there isnt much room to get past. I think Im going to make a change in the seating. There goes my retirement fund.
The technical side of the room is Von Schweikert VR11's, Two DarTZeel stereo amps tri-wired, EMM Labs DCC2,Emm Labs CDSD Jena Labs interconnects and speaker wires, Jena Labs with a separate electrical panel fed from the top of the main panel and a separate HVAC system with acoustical dampening. The room is a floating system by Kinetics and what you see is in fact floating on a separate floor four inches below the current floor. The walls were built on the floating floor producing substantial isolation from the rest of the house. The rooms below are treated as well. There is a lot of sheetrock hanging on our walls. Waaay too much.
Having the room designed by Rives produced a set of plans which my licensed architect reviewed and then added support for. We now have two steel beams and three wood beams supporting the floor below the floor.
Pertussons corollary to Murphys Law raised its ugly head and true to it, No job is so simple that it cant be done wrong. In spite of excellent design, engineering and effort, neither the construction manager nor those at Rives Audio ever asked each other if the plans they were each talking about were the same. They werent. Rives revised the plans and the contractor did not have them. Only months into the project when it became obvious that there were differences while on conference calls, did I learn that I wouldnt be having front bass traps and that the window was offset. The first question that should be asked between designer and contractor is, what version plans do you have?
Issues arose during construction including isolating the steel columns and room below the audio room sonically from the audio room. One is my childrens living room and the other is the boiler room. Each has loud distracting noises in it. We used a hanging isolated ceiling in the living room to keep the psycho music and video from being heard upstairs. That works well. The boiler needs more isolation and we will build a room within the boiler room to isolate it from the HVAC for the audio room.
There are two prices to pay for huge speakers. One is the obvious lotsa money. The other is the speakers weigh in around 1000 pounds each, come in three shipping crates and need a couple of power lifters to install. Yes, call the gym first, before ordering to insure the availability of help. Our room is in the rear of the house which puts it ten feet above the driveway with no paved smooth walk to the rear. Problem! This problem needs to be addressed. It took five hours to install the speakers between bringing the six crates to the deck and actually hoisting them in place. The bookcase you see in the pictures is the actual door to the room. It is not a very wide opening and presents problems to bring in large objects. The speaker were tuned by Albert Von Schweikert and Kevin Malmgren. They measured the room and tuned and placed them in one night. Speaker placement is not critical, but position combined with seating position produces a variety of hall images.
I still am working on my vinyl setup and there are a few small details left in the room to do.
If youre crazy enough about audio and have the willingness and ability to make it happen, I recommend taking the plunge into extreme audio. Its a constant amazement that such beauty can be reproduced, for me (and you too).
Okay. Enough of the techno crap. I've finally gotten back to enjoying listening to music in the past week. I've been so caught up in the something is wrong business that I've hated being in the room for more than a few minutes. I really have thought that I wasn't part of the equipment is more important that the music bunch. Wow. Hard to see the forest through the trees. Sure I've got a list of details to complete. But only a few will make any difference in the sound and only one will make a difference to the music. Analog. It's time to make the VYGER hum or sell it.
I also need more qualified visitors. Don't have people to listen with. Got to call out the friends.
I started to write about more details that have been worked on, but erased it. I'll continue to update changes to the room and system, but not today.
I haven't bought any media in at least a year and I'm hungry for new music. It's time for me to start reading reviews of new recordings.
I have been listening to music a lot this week. The areas that need attention in my system are:
1. Satisfactory, non-reflective, non-resonant inner window with limited or no flex. 2. Tweak outlets for lowest sound floor and best dynamics 3. Tweak power cords for best sound and dynamics 4. Have SRA stands made for the DarTZeels 5. Have the stone shelf in center front of the room moved to the rear for the VPI-17 and replaced with a deeper shelf 6. Have CD racks made for the spaces below the wall panels on the side walls in front of the rear bass traps 7. Have baffle boxes made for the air returns to eliminate the machine fan noise. 8. Apply air seals to the bottom of the door 9. Have the book case door adjusted so that I can get out if it is shut. 10. Get the VYGER working or sell it 11. Get a DarTZeel pre-amp with phono-stage 12. Hang the top BAD ARC panels directly from the wall rather than sit it on top of the middle panel. 13. Bring 110 power to the side of the platform along with a computer network feed so that I can use my laptop in the room 14. Sort out the lighting so that it provides better accent mode for night listening 15. The CD unit needs to be raised 4 ½ to make clearance for a shelf to hold the VPI-17. 16. Install massive separate ground for the audio circuits 17. Add input fresh air feed to HVAC system
Other details that have changed recently: 1. Platform is ¾ plywood with center plywood supports, filled to the top with clean sand, trapped in the front and centered in the room. The carpet is the same as the rest of the room, 120 oz wool. The arms and shelves on the platform are cherry and were made for this and finished to match the chair. The rear legs of the chair were drilled and a dowel was inserted in each. The chair was centered on the platform and holes were drilled to match the dowels. The chair doesnt move and it appears to be free standing. There are recessed rails for the ottoman to slide in. The telephone line runs up through the arm supporting the table the telephone sits on. 2. Addition of the second guest chair 3. cleaned up the room 4. I use the room 5. I listen to music again 6. I am inviting friends over to listen
I removed the inner window which was three pieces of quarter inch glass in a metal track. It rattled and flexed. Without it the bass tightened up and the depth of the soundstage increased.
The platform was a great improvement in focus and detail. Now my ears are at tweeter height.
The system has realistic live music feel for vocals and speach in most recordings.
I am back home for a few days and took the time to listen with one amp and both sets of speaker cables. The effect was to lessen the detail level below using one set of mono wires and the jumpers from Von Schweikerts. The ranges again were out of balance as with one set of wires.
Yes, in this case two sets of wires absolutely do not work on one amp channel of a DarTZeel. I'll be interested in comments as to the resistance and other reasons why.
The never ending saga ... when do you stop throwing money into the room and just enjoying music ???
Any sense of how the Dart's compare to your Tenors ?
In terms of the door gasket, I would check into the Zero acoustical jamb and automatic door bottom gaskets to get that sound tight seal around the door:
The RPG Bad arcs(who knew they had a special name for curved panels?) arrived and do make a difference with three on each side wall primary reflection point. Improved clarity, high excitement, less brightness. Specific observation is that there is a clear reflection off the inside window, which now needs to be fixed by replacing the interior window with a solid sheet of half inch safety glass at a -15 degree angle and install a blinds like lattice work in cherry to match the room. The reflection off the window and the ringing of the glass hopefully will dissappear. Another concern to be addressed is the air handler hum which needs two baffle boxes on the return air below the vents. The noise floor should be really low.
I will begin to address the separate ground soon. I believe a shovel and tinned copper pipe will be necessary.
The second pair of speaker cables arrived in the beginning of last week which left me a few days to listen prior to leaving for France. The second pair of Jena Pathfinders is bi-wired with a split 20" from the speaker end. Immediately after installing TWO amps with one channel for tweeters and the second channel for the bass modules(biwired)with splitters to three sets of binding posts in total per speaker with the use of a 50 ohm to 50 ohm jumper on the DarTZeels, there was a dramatic improvment in the size of and detail of the mids and bass. The sense of size was now equivalent to the upper mids and highs when I used one amp and one set of cables to the mids and jumpered the bass posts.
MES and JTINN asked me to try using one amp and running the same two pairs of cables on a single post to determine what the effect of using the second amp is. I will do so when I return this week.
I have yet to change outlets to Jena cryoed. I also am having a platform made to raise my chair 11.5" to bring my ears up to the center height of the tweeters. Amazing I oveerlooked the obvious and the cost of addressing stupidity.
Another detail is adding magnetic weatherstripping to seal the door into the room. Positive pressure! That's what I need more of!
The music is improving, with no end in sight. I still have to address a functional lp system. Clearly, I want a DarTZeel pre-amp with the 50 oops ohm cable. I wonder how I'm supposed to work this one out with both 50 ohm connectors already being used to bridge side to side. New problem for Herve.
More later in the saga of Eichengrun vs audio nirvana or... how insanity really manifests in the adult world of early retirement.
It's starting to become apparent that Tim isn't my friend. Moreover, it's clear you're not past your father anger issues. Sad. I thought that by now you'd have it together. Such hostility.
I can understand why you don't visit. Too great a chance of attack.
Thanks for the concern about my sex life. I wish that my wife shared it.
System edited: I've finally gotten real amps again! The two DarTZeel's are here. I'm a little short on cableing. Specifically, I'm awaiting a second pair of Pathfinder Speaker Cables with bi-wire splits 20" from the end to bridge the bass modules which are 33" apart on the speakers. There are three sets of binding posts per speaker. I will continue to feed the mid-range/tweeter module(center) with a single pair of Pathfinders fed from one channel of a DarTZeel stereo amp and will feed the bass modules with the second stereo channel of one amp per speaker. Jennifer Krock is making me a crossover for the DarTZeels so that one RCA feeds two channels. I really don't understand the deal, and should have them in hand shortly. Initial reaction. Open soundstage deeper detail, and wider physically with more saturation than the Tenors. Very high detail level and sense of touchable music. This is with one DarTZeel after one day breaking in. I am anticipating and frankly hoping that the second amp/second pair of speaker cables will have clear improvement. I'll be sure to confirm of reject my theory upon listening. I still do not have the VYGER up and runnig. Seems to be a pattern here. Yes, Tim, I finally am back home in NY. No, I won't tell everyone where I was. I'll tell you. Sh...
System edited: I installed two RPG Bad panels at the primary reflection point for the side walls (2'x2'each). Since the speakers are so tall, I ordered one more for each wall. I expect that should do the magic, for now.
What a great looking room and system. I am a motorsport nut myself and that is great that you race. I was with AutoThority Performance Engineering for many years when younger and had the pleasure of building and driving many high end modified Porsches and BMWs. What a blast!
I've learned the tune that my '90Spice Cosworth sounds and I hum it rather often. It brings smiles to my face.
I have driven it for the last time, having moved on to the Nissan R88C with a twin turbo 3.5 liter. So, now I have to learn a new theme song. whoosh whoosh...
I overlooked your system because I'm prejudiced toward line source dipoles. The JM Labs Grand Utopia being a notable exception. Even if that turntable sounded like crap it is an industrial peice of art. Even though I am stereo nut, one of the best sounds I have ever heard is a finely tuned race car winding through the gears. I wish I had kept Mazda RX7-R1'92. Don't forget the music.
Carl Zapp was over today to bring the RPG diffusion panels. We spent a few hours listening to SACDs and CDs. When he left, I installed the panels two feet up from the floor and four feet high by two feet wide. It is remarkable how the bass tightened up and the mids became more distinct. I will purchase two more so that I begin at one foot off the floor and go up to seven feet.
Great treatment for the sidewall primary reflection.
I did my usual. I had decided a while back not to buy another Rockport Serius. I asked Jonathan Tinn his advice and he was really bullish on the SME30 for good reasons; simplicity, build quality, sound quality, manufacturer reliability, and then he got a VYGER in trade. He had heard glowing reports in the same league as the SME and the Rockport and as usual, he had it on hand. SO...
It is very similar in theory to the Serius II excepting the stand. Now, I've heard the pump was silent. Not quite. If it can't be, it's gone. My room was way too much effort to listen to a pump for a turntable.
Congratulations on having almost survived this process. Amazing what we will put ourselves through sometimes. Just curious with respect to one point, what made you choose the Vyger over the SME 30? My only experience with either is at CES which tells me very little. My own turntable is a Rockport.
The Audio Aero is back and I'm glad. But, compared to the CDSD/DCC2 it's simply slow, fat, bloated and second class. Shocking to realize, given how good it really is and how we depended on it as state of the art until so recently. I doubt there would be any debate as to the relative differences here in person.
The Tenors and not in operation and I'm waiting for them.
System edited: I now have the VYGER, am awaiting a loan of phono stage and have my CDSD. The digital is very good. I still need a quality real ground for the room electric panel. I will be getting the replacement panels for the side wall reflection points tomorrow and will replace the panels. Then the inner window replacement with interior wood slat arrangement is all that's required. It's very good and getting better. Can't wait to report on the vinyl. Bill E
It's been over a month ... Just wondering how the room is shaping up and how the room is sounding ? Have you completed the room treatment ? Are the Tenors back in operation ? Have you switched to the Audio Aero, or did you ever get a CDSD ?
Hang in there! After all and despite short-comings, the system /room combo is at stratospheric level compared to most of what's installed out there (certainly compared to mine:)). Cheers
The room was measured and analyzed last week. Frankly, I thought I was done with analysis a long, long time ago. Some things never change...
Two things need to be changed. The windows in the center resonate(the inner one) and the side wall reflections at the primary points need treatment.
The fix is to install other windows/solid thick sheet of tempered glass at an angle to eliminate reflection and then include a slat system to break up the sound.
The side reflections need an absorbtive/diffusive panel which is commercially available.
I've begun to work on these.
I've decided to buy a V.Y.G.E.R Indian rather than the SME 30 and ordered it. I'm not decided on phono-stages and will begin to demo them. My Audio Aero has been shipped back after repair and I'm going to listen to real music again.
Naturally, one of the Tenor amps blew hard wired fuses and needs a technician to repair it.
I don't know in other rooms. I had a 8 x 9 foot similar density carpet which simply was too lively. The area of the back of the room is 15 x 15. Also there is synthetic horsehair padding. Huge difference.
