How should the bass be presented?

There is no question of the bass sound reproduced
from our hifi system has always being in the mind's
eye of most learned audiophiles to be/ should be
taut/tight/tuneful/with correct amount of decay &
no overhang whatsoever. So far so good? So what's
the big deal about the bass sound, as long as the
above are fulfilled or nearly there?!


However, to the audiophile community there is
still the question of preferences clouding the
thoughts & making some adjustments to the much
subjective(presumably it is) taste of like and
dislikes! As there are audiophiles who will
listen to bookshelf speakers with very little bass
and probably will continue to do so all their life.
And there are others who must have a pair of
floorstander speaker for their sonic diets!
Yet another even smaller group of listeners
who will and can only listen to their music
with subwoofer or subwoofers augmenting
the low registers and may even be the
lowest of frequencies that we could humanly
tolerate!


So we have different tastes and different
preferences and variously different hearing
acumens and ability. How about getting the
bass to sound closer to what we find in real
life events? (Now you are talking!) I now
throw a question to readers : Should the
bass sound be tuned to be close to or like
those of real events? Yes, no?


No! You say! We can never get there!
Alright then, how about a little bit of
excitements to entice our sonic diet?
How about some "chest hitting" bass?
(Are you nuts?) No! Seriously, we can
if we are willing to come up with the molah!
Actually, we can that is if we really want
those earth shaking bass! There are lots
of expensive hi end subwoofers out there
to choose. Make a google and one will find
plenty of brand types!


That seems easy enough, right?! Now here
comes the difficult part! How do audiophiles
tune the bass to get the 'chest hitting' bass
and at the same time have that bass sound
to be a important part of the soundstage?
I will let our readers here ponder for a while
with this idea. Please provide your comments
if you think it could be done!

A diy task: Refurbish a subwoofer unit

Though this task was performed and completed
in June 2010, it is only now that I could put
this as a blog entry( I mean diary entry)
The dismantle of the subwoofer was a nerve
wrecking event at the beginning, as most of the
circuits are placed at the bottom of the cabinet
and have to be removed in parts, but when I
got a hang of it, I picked up the momentum
to proceed at a faster pace. The several
minor tasks include removing dust from the
components, after I had removed the cover from
underneath the subwoofer unit as it's one
of down firing design. The unit a NEC
subwoofer of the 1970s period, definitely
needed a change of capacitors to the power
supply section, I have to decide if the
original specifications be changed to suit
the type of sound of today or retain the
same signature sound of that period.


Since this subwoofer is part of a pair
(I've 2 units of the same) and to be used
as a stereo pair after the refurbishment,
so I followed back the same component
change as the other earlier acquired
unit but previously used in a mono
configuration. The handiwork was pretty
tedious, as it required dexterity of both
hands, magnifying glasses, and a strong
light source to enable me to see what
I'm doing! And yes, even before the change
of the electronic components, the woofer
cones were worked on, the rubberised(not
rubber but of another material that akin
to rubber like feel) surrounds needed a
change, and my friend Uncle Chew a design
engineer supplied me with a glue that
do not harden with age, and one of several
methods to change the surround. I finally
incorporated some of his method with that
of my own, to get the job done.


The 12" driver I discovered was a JBL
driver with a pressed metal chassis and
not the cast iron chassis frame that JBL
enthusiasts liked so much. Anyway, after
the surround was replaced and double
checked for correct alignment, the new
electronic components were replaced and
the circuit assembly put back in place, and
left to stand for a short while before it's
incorporated into the multi subwoofer
system that I've been using all this while,
and then the final test, the powering up.
This is always the nervous part of any
redo of the system's component units!
The reality test!


All went well and the usual thoughts about
the unit to go thru the customary running in
for the new driver surround and electronic
components change, which I reckoned needed
a few hundred hours. Sure enough the sound
did change, but very subtle indeed! A couple
of months had passed since June! The sound
remained the same, more or less. So a simple
check on the tuning sufficed, and it's music
again! A word of caution though, those who
are diy challenged in this area, should not
attempt this without proper supervision from
the learned hifi & diy gurus.

R's Music System

If one has followed the evolution(or development if u like to call it that) of friends' hifi system, one will be probably be amazed as to how the change of equipments could affect the sound so much! I have one such experience to document in this diary entry. I've followed my friend Mr.R, in my neighbourhood over a few years, to know this to be true! Then, the time of KEF floorstanders driven by Passlab amplifications and Classe CD source and now, Marantz sacd 1, Parasound preamp and parasound monoblocs driving a pair of Proac 3.8 speakers; depicted a very significant difference in the sound/music reproduction of those 2 time periods! As I recalled the big differences and gradual changes of the sound as the equipments get some further 'running in' , have me anticipating the possibility of much greater improvements of the the overall sound presentations and even more enjoyable listening sessions to come! From what I heard over the recent past few weeks when the changes to the sound of new replacement equipments started to be more apparent, I have to dismiss the idea of a quick writeup, but instead waited out to do a writeup till the sound gets even better!!! Now what I perceived of the sound presentation, was centred around the keyword: control. That good control all round, not superlative yet, maybe there will be more surprises to come, that I may not know yet. Maybe the gears could still show sign of greater improvements to come, as I could find more differences with each visits. signifcances of those room Pretty sure those room treatments (to be detailed in part 2 of this writeup) which were progressively put in place, contributed to the comfortable sound of the system. One matter is clear in my mind, room treatments do brings out more of the music! Mr.R being more of a music lover than a hifi enthusiast, is clearly shown with his choice of music spinned for his visitors. Very varied and nonetheless shows his love of music from his very large & impressive collection of CD based softwares of redbook CDs, SACDs and have many a visitor salivating over his many CD boxsets!!! And yes I know he also enjoys fine wines and good coffee. Alright, you have to ask, and what did I listen to with every listening sessions. You name it, Classicals, jazz, progressive rocks, country and western, music from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and some 90s. Each of the listening sessions, between an hour to sometimes 2 plus hours, were made up of a good cross section of various music genres. Almost always calling it a night followed with a supper session too. At the first ever listen session of the Parasound monoblocs, I asked specifically for the replay of the Dream of the Opera CD, followed by Fleetwood Mac's 'Dream' track, Tracy Chapman's "Baby Can I Hold You', Diana Krell's 'Look of Love', some Police tracks, some Karajan's work, Bob Marley and even Tsai Chin. The content of the music replayed, come as no surprise, good control at least as much as the Proac 3.8 could take it! If one don't go for that brute force test that is. The high, mid range & bass were more than sufficient for a not so overly aged person like myself. It will still take some much younger listeners to provide their views of the overall sound, to know if different age groups have listened to the same sound. At subsequent listening sessions, the listen materials were all different, still the system could hold the music together and the overall sonic presentations still provided those many enjoyable listening sessions and we have always set the sound loudness at a comfortable level for those many listening hours! And I am grateful to have The Wise One and Village Boy to keep me company during the many listening sessions and contributing to the discussions over supper.

B's Vintage Setup

One sunday afternoon, blog master, Kenneth, Uncle Chew and myself, visited a friend with some vintage gears(for the purpose of this write up,only the gears in used were mentioned) that we were not familiar with. The setup was placed in the spacious living hall of the house, which was just about in many of opinions to be generally suitable for speakers of that size. However, I thought this could be flexible and one has to listen to be very sure, though general opinions point towards empirical experiences and proven practical knowledge that big speakers should be placed in large rooms. The speakers, a model of infinity series the Q2, from the late seventies period, and a sound typical of that time.The speakers appeared to be in the first instance different from modern day design. First the number of tweeters that were on each speakers, 3 pieces of ribbon tweeters, front firing to the listeners and 1 more firing from the back of each speaker! Arranged in a vertical array with each piece individually angled inwards to the middle between the speakers, seemingly able to cater for several choices of listening positions along a dividing line between the speakers. Besides the ribbon tweeters there were 2 more dome tweeters also firing front to the listeners and common beliefs has it that the dome tweeters would work over a lower frequency range from those of the ribbon tweeters and probably into the midrange too, as indication has it, there is a single midrange driver that could have complimented the tweeter arrangement design. A bigger woofer cone type 15 inch driver, one each to each speaker cabinets, completed the arrangement of drivers and tweeters combination. The cabinets in it's original form and aged over the many years of different ownerships, dark wood coloured and probably some wood polish or wood oil may bring back the good look to the wood veneer. A back firing port covered with a speaker cloth indicates that the speaker placement could make for careful choices and may influence how the speakers may sound with different placements. We did some test listens as the visit was a fact finding visit which the owner kindly accomodated. We listened to a jazz sampler courtesy of Interglobal music and the 'Dream of Opera' CD which I may have mentioned in the write up of visits to other music lover's music room. Not to confuse readers about how the music sounded, my personal choice of descriptions will not be provided here, as different persons in their music or hifi journey conceived good sounding presentations to be utterly different from each other. So the opening drum sound of track 6 of the Dream of Opera cd will have different meanings to different persons. So to some a drum sound is just a drum sound, to some others who may have moved on to be able to perceived the skin of the drum and how that skin vibrate and how the subsequent resonating low hz would sound like, and to some others it may be again with some ever more slight differences, and again there will be some who have not reached this level and may not be able to perceived the sonics or otherwise too subtle to be perceived yet or that the perceptions of low frequencies may be a very personal choice, and how low the low bass one wants may dictate the choice of listening materials. We have a choice of amplifications between a preamp unit plus the Odyssey power amp and a vintage Yamaha integrated amplifier CA2010. Both of which we tried, and both sounded just as good. However we unanimously preferred the vintage speakers with the vintage amplifier as the colourations (called it distortion, ifyo u like it) add to the flavour of the music for that afternoon's listening session. It would probably have been different at another listening sessions with some other listening materials. As we listened to some vocals besides some jazz and some chinese music. We even tried listening at different listening positions, middle of the hall and all the way to the back wall, which we thought the presentations of which to be different, depending on personal choices. That afternoon we looked for a 'comfortable' music presentation and a listening session that we can call 'enjoyable' and not a loudness test, and hence look into rearranging the speaker placement(the owner asked us to do the placement for him anyway) and looked at the choices of listening spots. We did found one but it wasn't what the owner would call his ideal choice. So we worked out something he could like and suggested he listen for a while to see if he will like it and could listen over a long listen session.

Consensus on a good sounding system

How often do we need to agree upon if a setup sounded good to one's hearing? The answer would be probably not! As human we can't agree upon anything, in fact nothing at all, unless we are signatories to an agreement! So will an arbitration by say 10 or even 100 learned & experienced audiophiles to listen to a setup(which could only be conducted at different times), be or would be able to judge if a setup to be considered good sounding, if even at all? Again probably not! Why is it so difficult to even judge if a setup sounded good enough to meet some of the important hifi parameters of good sound? Personal preferences, prejudices, likes and dislikes, used to a certain signature sound, and not used to other types of presentations?


Do you think that experienced audiophiles could provide some insights into this 'All Time Arguments' as to why different persons would perceived the sound reproduction of a system to various degree of excellence or lack of it for that matter? We have seen/read arguments some even out of hand in some blogs, forums and mailing lists, as to what quality of sound constituted.
Will there be a sort of ISO for music/sound reproductions in the near future?

BIG AND BRASSY– KLPAC Symphonic Band concert

BIG AND BRASSY celebrates the diversity of band music with an eclectic programme that will be brought to life by the 40-strong klpac Symphonic Band under the baton of Music Director & Resident Conductor, Bruce Lee, and Guest Conductor, Mitsuo Nonami.

Sit back and enjoy this wonderful journey that will take you from classical pieces like Mozart’s The Magic Flute rarely heard in band repertoire to almost forgotten band favourites ......like Incantation and Dance and to Broadway numbers like Seventy Six Trombones. In addition, the Tsun Jin Choir under the guidance of Wong Wai Quan will also be performing Cantate Dominum, Chinese folk song Alamuhan and I See You from the epic motion picture Avatar with the band.

Mentor and protégé will be reunited in this upcoming concert once again. BIG AND BRASSY promises to bring you on a fascinating musical journey. For more information, please visit www.klpac.org.

Presenter: KLPAC
Conductors: Bruce Lee & Mitsuo Nonami
Artistic Director: Joe Hasham OAM
Executive Producer: Dato’ Faridah Merican
Featuring: klpac Symphonic Band
Guest Choir: Tsun Jin High School Choir

Show Details
Date: 13 November(Sat) @ 8.30pm ; 14 November(Sun) @ 3.00pm
Venue: Pentas 1, The Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPAC)
Sentul Park, Jalan Strachan, off Jalan Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (location map & directions available on www.klpac.org)
Ticket Price: RM35 / RM23 (students & the disabled)

Box Office
Call / Walk In: klpac @ Sentul Park (03 4047 9000) or The Actors Studio @ Lot 10 (03 2142 2009 / 2143 2009)
Walk In only: Axcess HQ (Jln. Semangat) & 1-Utama outlet

That Vintage Feel part 4: The Music Must Go On

Listening to a piece of hifi equipments inserted in a hifi system, is mostly about evaluation of sound reproduction, yes no? What then of listening to just music irrespective of whether one is listening in a car, in the office or at home? Many would call it 'just listen to the music' or 'just enjoy the music', never mind the hardware. So most of the time I would over the time I know Koo. Until much more recently, it's listening to the music mostly and some friendly chit chat thereafter the music sessions. Of course we do enjoy the music listening sessions as much as the chatting over a hot cup of tea or coffee. A brief account of the listening sessions will more or less make up for the remaining writing of this diary entry of visiting Koo's music room. Why didn't I call it 'hifi cave' (?) because to Koo and his regular visitors it's always about music. With the exception of those first and perhaps second time visitors who came in from the 'hifi jungle' out there to see and explore and to make comparative inferences, and only to find out that they may have forgotten about the music and the enjoyment of music!!!! Over the years, I have listened to a GRP's big band swing CD, from the time of the open baffles thru the single drivers to the now vintage pair of Isophon bookshelf speakers. It's only now that the enjoyment of listening to this cd that I felt myself immersed in the music much more than I first listen to it many many years ago! The changes in the setup has brought out more of the music enjoyments. One other CD that I particularly like is Nina Simone's "Forbidden fruit", and I especially like the track 'Golden earrings'! I wouldn't go thru the listening sessions without a listen to this track! I was introduced by Koo to Aretha Franklin's Gospel singing when I was mesmerised by the shouting and singing style from the recordings of her 'Amazing Grace' 2cd album. I certainly could sit thru & listen to the whole works if not for the limited time spend each time in front of Koo's music machine! So I have got to get this album to listen at my own time. This album portrays her gospel singing and much of the church venue ambience was captured pretty well on this album as it's a live recording. She would sing right to the top of her voice and shouting most of the way yet holding up well with the background singing, hand clappings and people murmuring and at times shouting phrases after phrases with praises for God. On the lighter side I have listen to Judy Collins, Neil Diamond, Neil Young and even the more sombre Leonard Cohen. I especially enjoyed listening to the Weavers and Harry Belafonte live at the Carnegie Hall. Even with rarity such as the Clancy Brothers, and the much popular Peter, Paul and Mary. If this aren't enough, Koo would even finished off the listening proper with some classical music from Reiner, Heifetz, Anne Sophie Mutter - Karajan and even more recently from works conducted by Ernest Ansermet. And occasionally Koo would obliged with my request of tracks from Bread, Eagles and even Jennifer Wearne! And much to my surprise recently he even entertain my request to replay track 6 from the "Dream of the Opera" which I perceived as quite listenable with good control of the bass contents though I felt not the best I have heard and I have heard even worst! I still felt he has done well with the setup though not really an expensive system. Isn't the meaning of expensive rather ambiguous to different people?