See the whole Newsonic Story at: http://cosmicastronomy.com/newsonic.htm Standng on the edge of tomorrow. MONO in STEREO ! - First Week of January ------------------------------------------------------------- The title of this latest (and unplanned) experiment is an optical illusion, as you will see. What this means is the meaning of the title changes in a distinct way once you know the following. The reason why this somewhat facetious first paragragh is stated is because of a somewhat sneaky listening test which was used to verify a definately unusual and unexpected effect, which fooled a good listener. (The 'good listener' in question is an individual who has built stereo speakers from time to time over the past 35 years and has explored the potentials for so-called live room sound in large tower box speaker enclosures which operated without cross-overs or regard to any such thing as flat curve responses. One version in the mid 60's had 32 tweeters (size 4 inch) in each enclosure, which was a two faceted shell standing upright and was open backed), and curved outward like a satellite dish. (This 'good listener' was recently tested by a mobile public health hearing unit and found to have the hearing acumen of a piano tuner, which was noted by the testers, since the 'good listener' has turned 52 (middle aged). This latest experiment entitled MONO IN STEREO was done today in anticipation of seeing what might happen to MONO sound in view of environmentally tuned sonic excitements with the snowflakes in place. In the last three weeks things have been left much unchanged, and the setup has been used for pleasure as a reasonably fidelic sound system for listening to music. At the start the number of snowflakes and their positions were essentially unchanged from that described at the end of the file named SOUND1.TXT, under test descriptions titled 'FINAL TEST' and 'VIBRATING SNOWFLAKES'. I should mention however that changes have been made in terms of three new snowflake locations. Three more snowflakes are in use. Each is of the composite variety, a 12mm cartwheel glued with crazy glue in the upright arms of an 18mm cartwheel. (Their design is described in detail in the topic 'FINAL TEST' in file SOUND1.TXT). A composite snowflake is now tuned on a small inch wide ledge just over the kitchen counter roughly parallel to the sink but over to the side against the far back wall. Another is sitting atop the back of the stove in the kitchen just around the South corner from the opening to the dining area. And the third is perched on a small decorator ledge running a foot above the counter in the downstairs washroom. This small washroom is by the front door and up a corridor past the coat closet. In other words, the washroom snowflake is sitting in the far South/West corner of the condo's main floor, with the kitchen wall (and behind this wall to the washroom doorway) separating it from the table area and Getto Blaster in the dining area. Nevertheless, with the volume cranked up and listening closely, a favorable tuning position could be heard for this snowflake in the washroom. WHY MONO ? ------------------------------------------------------------- The intention was to see (in a sudden idea for curiosity sake) what effect on MONO sound all of the more than 90 tuned snowflakes might be causing using this Getto Blaster. The fact that something unusual might occur as a possibility, though not a necessity, is an idea which suddenly occurred in the middle of random thoughts while watching a TV movie. The idea occurred late at night and couldn't be tested until the next day. The system has never been tried in Mono up to this point, not even once. This is how far deep-entrenched universal thinking is regards Mono vrs Stereo sound. Why even THINK of testing an effect in Mono mode, when it is full time stereo that is the motivation behind the whole of the experimenting. The thinking was that since the snowflakes (as so tuned) are handily effecting the characteristics of sonic reproduction (ie. East/West, North/South, and Up/Down polarity factors in a sum total yielding a positive inter-phasing re-enforcement, or whatever you want to call it), then it might be assumed that original microphone(s), and/or speakers playing in Mono, may include captured but hidden audio characteristics in the sound stream conducive to room echo harmonics which could be teased forth by hyper fine tuning of the snowflakes into a RESUMED stereo effect, despite the fact that the reproducer sound system was technically operating in MONO. At least this was the philosophy behind taking a look at Mono. Before today's tests in Mono were started, the room and the snowflakes were tuned uphill to a reasonable fidelity level using the cassette tape called THE BEST OF THE MANHATTAN TRANSFER, which includes their version of Tuxedo Junction recorded live. (The Best of the Manhattan Transfer, Atlantic, XCS-19319). In this version of Tuxedo Junction, a huge live audience vigorously claps along on the on-beat with the music, and is the only tape around here which has such hand clapping lasting for the whole of the cut as well as long sessions of announcer effects shouted into the audience at the start and end of the music, recorded live, in concert. Typically in stereo system reproductions, the clapping of this huge audience, though it can be loud and distinct, is on time with the beat of the music, and the place of the clappers in the sound scene is more or less the same as the band, in a flat stereo wall which spreads East to West but is like a cyclorama, a flat canvas curtain, just back of the speakers. However these limitations have been dealt with and overcome by use of the snowflakes which have sonically retuned my environment to thus change the character of the way Tuxedo Junction sounds to the listener. Before trying the Mono, the room and the snowflakes had been carefully tuned to embrace the North/South polarity aspects of this music, so that the reverberating echo effects of the large audience's handclapping, along with the music, were obvious in a huge expanded front to back imaging. In this, the reverbating hand claps were coming back fully HALF a beat behind the beat of the music, welling forth from a huge region comprising the sound scene projecting far back into the sound image area behind the windows behind the table on which sits the Getto Blaster producing the sound stream. In other words, in images generated by the mind with the eyes closed, this powerful sound seemed to be welling forth from the depths of a very large auditorium or stadium. This expanded front to back imaging was done deliberately by me and taken beyond the point of previous tests using this cassette tape. This time the claps really did reverberate like the hands of a huge audience clapping, the opposite of a local clacking racket like the sound of bacon frying noisly in a fry pan. Front to back stage noises included the MC announcer screaming hysterically out there as a tiny figure in the distance, standing well foward to the front edge of the stage out in front of the band (actually further back behind my dining room windows with the announcer's back to me (the listener) in respect to how the microphones actually captured the announcer facing the audience), shouting from this long distance away into the far realms of the audience away from the band, all of this was also clear to hear or I couldn't have described it if not having heard the effects. The above mentioned 'good listener' was then called into my condo test area to listen to this effect, so as to duly note that irregardless of reasonable fidelity (or lack of it) the fact that a live audience and giant stage was definately out there, percieved in particular in the far distant foward position of the tiny announcer way out there on the front of the stage, and the delayed echoing of the thousands of hands clapping in clear reverb coming back over such long distance from far back into the giant sound image behind the windows, so as to take (properly) so long a time to propigate forward to the recording mikes and so to be properly a full HALF A BEAT out of synch lagging behind the music, just as such hand clappings ARE in a live performance with a large audience clapping. Tough to describe actually without being here in my condo. But also, the Left to Right separation was hightened, with instruments and singers clealy projecting their sound from either side of the stage, and the powerful electric bass was resonating away in the low notes in a way which dominated the power of the band. What was most noticable was that the singers clearly had recorded straight into mikes positioned right in front of them, with the audience (and announcer) behind the mikes, so (with your eyes closed) you could see the singers singing straight toward you. Whereas the announcer (being further forward on the stage, and behind the singer's mikes, and the announcer's mike used to project out to the audience was not recorded with any hard gain), and being picked up from behind the singer's mikes was clearly standing well BEHIND the singers and clearly had his back turned to me the listener. This was a very interesting sonic stereo effect, a kind of reverse stage setting right in the midst of the recording of a live performance. I had the musical instruments of the band spread out in front of me, not any one of them really point source distinct, the singers facing straight toward me each one of them distinctly point source and loudly distinct, the announcer turned away from me and also point source distinct but not loud, being so much farther away, and the audience facing toward me like a wide distant sea of hand clappers rolling backward far back into the windows. The 'good listener' readily complied by acknowledging without pause the fact that it was clear such imaging had been achieved and reasonably fidelic sonic effects were obvious, by using mass tuning objects such as the snowflakes to excite the mechanics of harmonic sound propigation itself, independent of the stereo hardware used to generate the sound stream. The 'good listener' was sent on their way, now that the stage had been set for "before and after" observation in case anything of interest was found regards playing around with any possible MONO effects in this sound system and the experimental external consequences regards the sound being reproduced in the room. Once again in a random listener test some hightened sonic qualities using Manhatten Tranfer's 'Tuxedo Junction' had been acknowledged, this by the 'good listener'. GETTING SET UP ------------------------------------------------------------- Getting direct Mono sound from cassette tapes played on the FISHER 8400 Getto Blaster turned out to be impossible since there does not seem to be a Mono setting when playing through the tape decks. 1. Since the position of the electronic consul of the Getto Blaster itself is crucial as a room tuneable object in these experiments, the position of the feet of the consul was first marked on the table so that the consul could be repositioned precisely after tipping it forward to play with the speaker leads. An attempt was tried to hook up both speaker box leads to the Left Speaker's wire terminals on the back of the consul. But all this did was produce a horrendous buzz with the volume off. Oops. 2. A second attempt was tried. This time the black lead from the Left speaker box was coupled into the black outlet for the Right speaker box, and visa versa. Not much changed. The overall sonics were much as before except a noticable peak and valley effect in the sonic volume could be heard merely by walking back and forth in front of the table. 3. At this point the wires were re-hooked properly and a different attempt tried. In that the FISHER 8400 Getto Blaster has an FM Stereo radio and FM Mono switch for the FM radio, the FM radio was turned on and switched to FM Mono mode. The collapse of stereo effect in music being played over the FM radio was immediate, just as expected, with the sound pretty well all suddenly bunching together from a same general region slightly back of and directly between the two speaker enclosures. It was the fact that the sound was slightly back of the table (back in the window) that gave a clue. I started playing with the snowflakes, tuning them to about the highest degree I could maintain with mere touching of the fingers in most cases, with the snowflakes parked upright sitting on honey. Some were moved around by slight iotas into better hot spot nodes which had opened up in the presence of the FM Mono mode. Overall, the tuning was made just about as tight as I could get it. By this, I was able to get the sound improved overall in FM Mono in terms of reasonable fidelity, and also had it spread out more Left to Right and to be more seemingly further back in the window to fill a larger sound area, but still with a generally consistent sound Left to Right but which changed slightly in characteristics as you moved back and forth in front of the table, for instance. And then another change was made using two more snowflakes, as follows. Under the table itself is a small two shelf end table on caster wheels used to store books and papers etc. Previously in later November some snowflakes had been tried in lower positions (on this small end table under the table), but were later removed at the time the snowflakes were all stood upright, in being found to then now impart a sharp high end distortion into the sound stream when under the table. However at this time, today, standing a single 18mm cartwheel snowflake in a hot spot on each of the two shelves under the table seemed to smooth out the overall quality of sound in the FM radio Mono mode (it was noticably improved). And then with a bit more fine tuning of several of the snowflakes around the room a new effect was brought in. In this new effect, some iota of separation between instruments could be said to be there though not dramatically. In the overall there was still a more or less consistent East/West conformity in the sound, the position of the instruments came generally from a larger sound area behind the windows whether standing in front of the Left or Right speaker. And when leaning near either speaker all of the sound could be heard to be coming from that speaker, with the wider spread of the consistent sound's effect being heard behind the windows only when standing back from the table. Mind you the sound spread could be said to range beyond the actual position of the speakers to the Left and Right. It was roomy. What was different is that the sound was coming forth from a sudden much larger area which rolled back into the distance behind the windows. Because of the lack of really good high fidelity, you couldn't say that the drums were coming from (say) 10 feet back, and a clarinet coming from (say) 5 feet back. But you could clearly hear distance projecting backward now, in the music of the FM Mono radio. So right away another test was tried, a very simple one. The set was turned back to cassette tape mode and the above mentioned tape of the Manhatten Transfer doing Tuxedo Junction was turned on. And the Right hand speaker was shut off, completely down to zero. Only the Left hand speaker was playing. What was the effect? This is what happened. The above mentioned 'good listener' was called back into the condo to the table and told in advance that in this test, the alignment was a little off so the listener would have to stand positioned in front of and back from the Left speaker. Which the listener did as I turned on the tape. After a few seconds the listener moved to the right by about a foot (to be now standing just to the right of the Left speaker and back by about 7 feet). After a moment the 'good listener' shrugged their shoulders and said "hmmm, not really much different than before. It sounds about the same, slightly different, but what the heck its about the same overall. So I said, "yeah, except its in Mono", and leaned over and brought in the Right hand speaker using the balance toggle. Instantly a hard loud highly distorted unpleasant sound kicked in, which I already knew was being caused in part by the two snowflakes under the table, and also by the retuning done when playing the FM radio in FM Mono mode. Back in stereo yes it was a much LOUDER sound, agreed, but not reasonably fidelic. All of the good effects vanished in an instant. The 'good listener' jumped back and exclaimed; "Whoah"! COMPLETELY FOOLED ------------------------------------------------------------- This otherwise experienced audio liker had been fooled completely by the non expectation that a single small plastic moulded speaker box sitting on the Left hand side of the table was producing a huge sound image, with apparent left to right instrument and vocalist seperation, and deeply projecting front to back (North/South) sonic characteristics with reasonable fidelity including solid deep grunting resonating bass, rock drums reverberating around the stage, and singers spread in an array loud and clear across the front of the stage, all being produced by a cheap 5 inch paper cone speaker in a single little box. In other words, snowflake tuning had re-excited hidden sonics which had been captured on different mikes but which were now being reproduced from a single Mono track only. The only real difference was that now the sound was homed more or less behind the single speaker source of the sound (Left speaker box), instead of arrayed behind the whole area behind the two speakers. Also the sound's East to West spread was not very wide, being about (say) 6 feet wide between maximum point source instruments, rather than (say) 15 or 20 feet wide. Also, an unusual change was that one speaker was producing what had otherwise taken both speakers to produce in terms of instruments featured through the Left hand vrs Right hand tracks. For instance in Tuxedo Junction by the Manhatten Transfer, the strongest bass originally had come through the Left speaker, whereas the cymbols of the drums originally had come mostly through the Right hand speaker. And without prior setup (in terms of the tuning of snowflakes), the higher sounds of the drum set via playing the Left speaker only, (a so-called strictly Mono potential) resulted in merely weakly audible drums and cymbols, hardly there, for instance. But not in the single box MONO IN STEREO results noted immediately above. Somehow, the drum kit (normally introduced in volume through the right channel), had become so amplified enough by cross harmonics and re-phased enhanced polarizations, that any less presence of the drums was not really noticed by the 'good listener' in terms of the overall stereo presence of the room reverberating to the live sonic performance of the whole band, reproduced in so called MONO by one small five inch paper cone speaker and two 1 inch metal capped tweeters, all in the one self contained plastic moulded speaker box. MANIFESTING THE IMPOSSIBLE ------------------------------------------------------------- The next day the setup had been recalibrated (snowflakes retuned) for full two speaker stereo, with still other differences in effects worth noting. It started with the throw of the balance toggle. Just for the heck of it, in trying the system in MONO while playing cassette tapes, it turned out that the Right hand MONO channel (Right speaker) now had the sound, the best stereo effects yet in MONO tests. Previously, the Right hand speaker had tended to have an unpleasant screech and to be indistinct in imaging in MONO. Yet now it was, ahem, real good. But the Left speaker was a complete dud in MONO. No. Nothing. Not a thing. When the Balance switch was toggled to the Left speaker only, it all disappeared, just a weak flat sound was concentrated entirely at the Left speaker box itself, no front to back imaging (depth) to speak of, and no Left to Right seperation in any of the instruments, and utterly no sense of 'live room' performance whatsover. It was in all ways exactly what you would expect of a MONO sound. On the other hand, the Right hand channel was very unusual for several reasons. For one thing the sound was manifesting to the right beyond the location of the Right speaker. It was in fact well spread out behind the window and wall and at least (say) 3 to 4 feet over to the right, which in the small confines of the Condo's dining room area is a very large, very noticable displacement. But also, the MONO in STEREO sound was generically good more or less throughout the entire listening area. It did not matter if I stood directly in front of the main sound image, or walked around, or stood well off to the left near the living room area. Or in the kitchen. In general, the sound was impressive no matter where I stood. These effects were not noticed during a test but merely when double checking to see what might be happening in MONO after a while of playing around with the idea of refocusing some of the snowflakes to a full face-on focus to the main sound source area behind the windows (rather than having all of the snowflakes turned end-wise and targeted in focus to the main sound area). CASCADING COLLAPSE INTO CHOAS - Major collapse. ------------------------------------------------------------- At this point something occurred which had not happened for over two months. The system suddenly collapsed completely. The bass (all of it) just suddenly faded out and vanished within a few notes and there it was, all I was getting was a weak Whump Whump Whump and weak Blat Blat Blat no matter what I did with the snowflakes. Now I was suddenly revved up in high gear with only one task in mind; to try and regain control of the bass end of the system. It took over half an hour and many different tapes before some sound began to filter through the noise and I could begin to hear faint bass sonics down there in the mess, some weak notes comprising bass. It was the next day before I was able to get the system recalibrated enough (by constant retuning and retuning of the snowflakes over and over again) to the point where I could begin to feel the snowflakes vibrating again in my fingertips. By this time ALL of the snowflakes had once again been refocused END-WISE to face the main sound source in the imaging area deep behind and spread out behind the windows. Several new snowflakes which had been set in various locations around the room during the MONO tests had now been removed, with a few new snowflakes put into new places. Once again I stress the extactness to which the tuning had once again become at this point. Just TOUCHING a snowflake was enough to get a dominate better effect in the sound in many instances. This TOUCH tuning level did not come in until after a long saga of careful torque tuning (twisting the snowflakes sliding back and forth on liquid honey by iotas with steely concentration and very steady fingertips). BOTTOM BASS ------------------------------------------------------------- And shortly after this point the bottom bass clicked in for the first time. In the middle of an orchestra playing modern music, (the theme song for Jesus Christ Superstar the rock opera), suddenly there opened up into the sound picture a whole new TONE in the bass drum, reverating with body felt power loud in the sound stream. You might think of it as throwing open a door and letting a soar of fresh air into a stuffy room. (On a tape called Golden Film Themes 2, Distribution Macey Inc., MCR-1720, World Records WRC4-2957). It is exactly as if a whole new octave of lower sound is turned on, when the bottom bass clicks in. Which brings me to one final comment about tuning. It seems an impression (it could be false but this is what I feel) that generally (in tuning) when hard strike sounds are clear such as drumming or afro-cuban drum effects, then orchestra and voice chorus sounds which usually well up and sustain, are somewhat snuffed or highly distorted, whereas when sounds which well up and stay steady are loud and clear, then hard strike sounds such as snare, side tom, and bass drum are tacky or pocky with no tone. The bottom bass mentioned immediately above is very noticable because when it comes in you can hear power and propigation delays in the reverberations of the bass drum (hang, in other words), and the same for power (rather than merely indicative tone) in the reverbations of the various sized side toms amplified by microphone as used by (for instance) a drummer playing in orchestrated rock style such as Jesus Christ Superstar which is a very demanding task for a little getto blaster system to try and produce with reasonble fidelity. It is not just symphonic in scope; a large part of this theme song is in the mode of hard strike playing, rather than sonorous (such as drawing bows across strings, or human chorus refrains which match (say) violins). For instance the vocals in Jesus Christ Superstar are also very hard push on the part of the rock singers. This distinct perception of a reverberating power goes on almost as a second kind of sound in the midst of stength and clarity in the steady resonances of human choral voices and sustained instruments which do not have hard strikes, when the snowflakes are tuned to the max. In other words, the perception of me the listener is that the bottom bass effect (in this system at least) is due to fidelic control of room echo effects rather than to any efficiency in the reproducing speakers, wherein the room echo reverberations become strong enough to overpower the distorting inefficiency of the speaker drivers. Quite the reverse of normal stereo theory thinking. The skill I think I have developed over five 1/2 months is in being able to tune in both kinds of sounds. For, at times, a good sonorous (sustained) music has become well tuned but it gets trashed out when putting on something with (say) loud drums or accoustic bass. The sonorous part of the sound stream becomes homongenously fuzzed and uniformly distorted. And at other times good well tuned loud drums start to muffle or distort and fade out when switching to a tape with loud symphonic type music such as motion picture themes. So the secret is to tune with both types of sound kind working harmoniously together enough not to clash or to interfere with the speaker cones. At times I have hit brief stabilities in which good to very good sound quality is present for a number of different kinds of tape qualities and music kinds. (And then touching a snowflake or two in going for the gold - something better - costs, and the good effects disappear, leading to a new round of tunings or tests). DYNAMICALLY UNSTABLE ------------------------------------------------------------- At this point the system is very dynamically unstable. For instance the bottom bass comes in, then it is gone, and then comes in again, with constant retuning and retuning of the snowflakes to overcome lesser effects which keep coming up as different tapes are tried. The usual problems are getting good hard strike responses (including strong bass) but loosing good sonorous effects such as humans singing in chorus along with violins, while trying to keep higher frequency distortions from suddenly appearing to spoil things upon the mere little torque twist or touch of a snowflake. Once again it is thought that a better designed (or more realistically accurate in terms of pure principle) sonic snowflake used for the mass tuning objects could dramatically improve the situation. A larger snowflake could help, I think. I should mention that there are only two snowflake rosettes in use in this current setup. These same two have been carried along through tests and listening since early December. There is a rosette with six upright snowflakes (and a seventh in the center) on the table on the outer side of each speaker. The rosette on the outer side of the Right speaker is composed of six 12mm upright snowflakes forming the hexagon image with an 18mm snowflake in the center. The other rosette has only 18mm snowflakes. In these rosettes, all of the snowflakes are focused toward the main sound image area and so are splayed left to right like cars in a drive-in theatre. Enough said. AIRFRAME - January 8, 1992 ------------------------------------------------------------- Another effect worth noting was tested and verified, today. The experiment began last evening with a clue provided by the second day's MONO in STEREO tests, of January 5, 1992. At that time, the greater stereo effected for the Right hand Mono speaker, noted above under the topic MANIFESTING THE IMPOSSIBLE, was gained by having some of the snowflakes turned sideways to be rotated by 90 degrees and thus tuned facing face-on to the main sound image area behind the windows. Then to regain control of the suddenly collapsed system (which meant having to get back everything resembling bass frequency responses), all of the sideways snowflakes were returned back to edge-wise focus and a few snowflakes were removed from the sound arena. As already reported, this worked. However, in turning the system on last evening to listen quietly to FM radio for background music, it was inevitable that the fingers got back into the act and started twisting and turning snowflakes again to try and achieve a better overall reasonable fidelity and increased gain in volume in this so-called 'quote' low volume setting. The volume switch with the FM radio playing in stereo mode was turned to about 13%. Well, some success, certainly, however, along the way it was noted that the famed 'open air' room effect was missing. That is, by walking through the kitchen and around the main floor of the condo, great differences in the quality of sound could be heard. In particular, in the kitchen the sound was diminished and weak and quite distorted, and in similar vein the sound quality was obviously badly deteriorated when in the living room area of the condo. The only place where the system was reasonably fidelic was when standing in the optimal place for usual stereo listening, ie., back from and between the two speakers. In this situation it was also noted that any MONO in STEREO effects had completely vanished. That is, in turning off either the Left or Hand hand speaker channels the sound instantly collapsed to the usual flat typically weak ineffectual sound typically associated with Mono, with muddy dulled sounds sourcing directly from either speaker box. So. It was thought that something rather dramatic had to be introduced at this point to try and get around what had seemed to become an impass, where in the impass, the intense hour of better/best tuning accuity seemed to have brought about an immediate focused maximum listening area between the speakers when standing back from the front of the table (in fact the so-called 'head in the vice' best listening area of any stereo set), but had stiffled most of the other impressive effects such as open air roominess in the characters of the sound (called around here the 'Airframe' effect). And had returned the Mono effects to total dud status. Also, the bottom bass range in the sound was gone once again. AIRFRAME SOLUTION - Two Snowflakes at a Hot Spot ------------------------------------------------------------- One thing which had been noticed during snowflake tuning tests over the past three days had been that some snowflakes were located in hot spots which were unmistakable, and that any deviation of the snowflake from that EXACT location and FOCUS, resulted in immediate loss of constructive effect. Just TOUCHING the snowflake could cause sound quality loss, with dedicated effort needed, touching the snowflake again and again, to try and regain the lost quality. A hot spot can be THAT critical. Whereas certain other locations were ambiguous. The snowflake could be slid around on the hot spot by small or large iotas with no instant loss of contructive effect but instead there would be some difficulty in telling just what constituted the difference between a better and best effect when tuning the snowflake at that hot spot. SNOWFLAKE PAIRS ------------------------------------------------------------- So something new was tried for the first time. This was to try TWO snowflakes at each such location. In this, a second snowflake was tried standing alongside the original, and sure enough some of the hot spots definately GAINED an improvement in the overall reasonable fidelity with a second snowflake. In these busier (dual) hot spots the second snowflake seemed to be best positioned standing alongside about 1/4 to 1/2 inch apart from the original. This time, when first trying a pair of snowflakes the effect was absolutely different. The first snowflake pair to be tried brought about an instant improvement in the overall sound. So did a second pair at another location. A third location, on the other hand, brought in an instant deterioration. So the task was obvious now, to try at different locations to hear what would happen with a second snowflake put in place as a partner sharing a hot spot. Putting in place a snowflake pair meant the simple act of sitting a snowflake on one then the other side of an existing snowflake and listening to hear which side had a better sonic response, or if there was a response for the better. Snowflake pairs had been tried before but had always resulted in an instant deterioration in sound quality, so the idea had never been pursued. But now, after a short time spent in new trials, there WAS something happening, enough that it was worthwhile playing with at length. At low volume (about 13% gain on the volume knob for FM radio and about 20% for tape cassette mode), an overall improvement in the whole of the fidelity range top to bottom was soon made obvious with the inclusion of snowflake pairs here and there around the dining room listening area. (It was late at night). Only a few hot spots actually proved to be enhanced with a snowflake pair. At the moment there are eight pairs, but by no means all possible snowflakes have been tried for partners. The impression is that most hot spots seem better as stand alones having only one snowflake in place. The result was that inexorably, the sound range was becoming more stable overall, with no more dramatic cutoffs in either the higher end or lower portions of the sound clicking in or out in an instant with the slightest tuning adjustment of one or another snowflake. But, something still tasted flat, so to speak. Specifically, there was not an open air tone in the drums. You could hear the snare and bass drums clearly enough but there was no tonal echos around the drum strikes which would otherwise give the drums the timbre of being played in a live room. SIDEWAYS SNOWFLAKES ------------------------------------------------------------- Thus sprang forth another idea. This was provided by the above mentioned 'clue' previously noted for the MONO in STEREO second day of tests (when the Right hand speaker had unexpectedly become extremely responsive to in-Mono stereo sonic effects momentarily before the catastrophic collapse of the whole system), where it had been found that getting a more reasonable timbre in the drums in the system playing in MONO had been gained by turning a few of the snowflakes sideways by 90 degrees to be facing face-on to the main sound image. So, what else but to try this idea with the new snowflakes which had been put into the dual hot spot locations. And, oh yes, it worked. As each such snowflake was turned sideways you could HEAR fidelic gain move in immediately into the overall sound stream. Some of the snowflakes did not respond when turned sideways, but those that did began to clarify the reasonable fidelity levels beyond anything achieved before through the whole months of experiments. It was not possible to try loud volume tests at this point because this is a low income condo with neighbors and a sleeping brother upstairs. So high volume testing was left until this afternoon, today. And so, today, when the system was first turned back on at 2 PM, and the volume turned up, the effects of last night's snowflake pair improvements was well, pretty good, not bad, but should be better. But not bad in fact. Hmmm? Otherwide, the bottom bass was missing. (Please note that higher volume at this point is with the volume knob somewhat higher than volume levels reported for high volume tests back in December). (Back then, higher volume was with the volume knob turned up to about 25 to 35%. Whereas today the same approximate volume level was occurring with the volume turned up to about 40 to 45%). To start trying to resolve the Hmmm?, snowflake tuning was tried by torgue twisting the flakes and even sliding them around on the hot spot nodal points, but with little effect in terms of any overall improvement. A little of this was gained but a little of that lost with each snowflake tried. A sort of stalemate. So, then, the ultimate in tedium seemed to be demanded. This is to go around and around the circle, retuning snowlakes into hyper fine focusing by touch tuning only, over and over again, around and around the 'quote' circle. After about 30 minutes some good improvements began to be detected, and suddenly, sure enough, a new stable sound range was achieved. A plateau. This was a much stronger, deeper, more powerfully resonant overall sound with more reasonable fidelity than ever before. And yes, bottom bass had crept back into the system. Only this time it had gradually crept in, until it was quite noticable rather than appearing in and out as had always been the case previously. Such hyper fine touch tuning had ever so gradually, inexorably, improved the overall result. One of the results of this is that the face-tuned snowflakes now sit typically forward or rearward alongside an edge-wise snowflake, standing at just about exactly parallel with the forward or rearward edge of the partner snowflake, and in all cases only about 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch away from the partner. In another change several snowflakes, of both 12mm and 18mm size, (stand alones - no partner) are also turned to be facing face-on to the main sound image area. An attempt along the way to try off-angle focusing, say, twisted by about 30 or 60 degrees rather than a full 90 degrees partitioned to the direction of the main sound image did not seem to yield any worthwhile gains in fact began to cause problems that were noticable right up front. So all tuning now is with the snowflakes focused to either a direct edge-on alignment, or a full 90 degree rotation, relative to the main sound image area. ANYTHING GAINED BY THIS ? ------------------------------------------------------------- This is what is now happening. More or less, it doesn't matter where in the main floor area of the condo you are, the sound is strong, clear, and resonant anywhere. In fact walking through the kitchen and around through the living room area back to the table does not result in any significant peaks and valleys in the sound level or in overall fidelity. There are of course slight effects noticed in terms of sonic qualities, but nothing of major significance. In other words, there seems to be no deteriorations in the sound anywhere in the whole of the main floor listening area. This is what we around here really call 'Aiframing', or the 'Airframe' principle. One thing noticed however is that the East to West sound spread is not so dramatic as in previous tests. In this new environment the sound image behind the windows is in a spread of (say) about 10 feet maximum and is concentrated more noticably well back out there in the area between the two speakers rather than noticably also extended well beyond the Left and Right arms of the speakers. What IS most noticable is the 'quote' AIRFRAME effect. The sounds have delayed ECHOS between the notes, and there is the presence of plenty of SPACE between the reverberating instruments. Things have 'hang' throughout the sound range. In particular the drums now have a sound like DRUMS sitting live in a room, even if the drums on some tapes sound like the mikes are sitting a foot or two from the vibrating skins, and all of the drums are still diminished in realistic power. It is definately NOT as if you were playing the drums. VERTICAL VIBRATIONS ------------------------------------------------------------- In unmistakable excitement, the table is now vibrating vigorously in certain areas of the table's surface and in general the whole of the table's surface has become alive with up and down vibration, as of this afternoon (January 8, 1992), after this latest tuning. At this same time, some of the snowflakes have begun to vibrate more vigrously than ever before, in fact more than enough to cause the fingertips to vibrate (move) as well when squeezing a vibrating snowflake. In a couple of the snowflakes those vibrations are STRONG enough to give an impression that the snowflake is being vibrated by a mechanical device so can't be snuffed out by gripping with the fingertips. This is entirely new, in terms of such a vibrating power, and points to a principle that proper and more effective sound reproduction has to be a product of excitement comprising both 1. Horizontal vibrations (provided by the vibrating drivers of a speaker's cone), and 2. Vertical vibrations (provided by the vibrating surface of the table and probably other arbitrary objects in the room). In conjunction, a combination of the two vibrations (up and down, and horizontal) is provided by the SNOWFLAKES, most of which are now vibrating openly in sonic nodal hot spots in a re-enforcing way with both horizontal and vertical vibration resonances causing accoustically constructive responses. SONIC LIGHTHOUSES ------------------------------------------------------------- The bottom bass effect is now back, as already mentioned. Bottom bass was not present when the system was first turned on this afternoon at 2 PM, but began to re-appear at the point where snowflake tuning was switched from torque focusing to touch tuning only, this afternoon. And the reason why such bottom bass resonances in the bass range have been so ephemeral, so intransigent over the duration of the past few days, is now perhaps obvious. At least this is an apparent thought which I assume makes logical sense. Specifically, the bass sound waves are long in length and so any so-called focusing of them has to be precise, due to an obvious lighthouse effect, wherein, with a lighthouse, the further from the lighthouse, the wider the light beam sweeps out an area with any slight turn of the lighthouse's beam. In tautological imagery, the circumpherence or distance between any two points touched by the sweeping lighthouse beam increases rapidly the further the sweep from the light source. Similarly for bass waves. Since they are long, only a minimum turn of a sonic focuser (the lighthouse beacon) can cause the wave to miss well to either side past an invisible sonic hot spot across the room, instead of hitting it right on the button. You could say that the snowflakes have to scatter sound wave reflections into assumed more harmonic moire pattern images, in reflecting the waves front to back, sideways, and up and down, through the room. And this can only be done by setting up (in metaphor) many dozens of lighthouses and then constantly refocusing their criss crossing light beams until the maximum many points where the beams can intersect and become brighter points of light are gained. Clearly, when distance is a factor, the focusing of the beams cannot be done by hand with single once only adjustments. It has to be done the tediuous way, by going back around the circle over and over again gradually re-adjusting the beams of light (reflected bass waves) until the focusing becomes tight enough that the bright spots of light begin to appear in the moire pattern of criss crossing points of action in the beams. The reflected sound waves include both low and high frequency sounds since a snowflake being focused in the far rear corner of the living room area can handily effect the quality of sound in violins, as well as for a row of bass fiddles sawing away. For instance, in fact really good saxophone sound comes hand in hand with really good accoustic bass sound. When you improve the sound of the bass fiddle you also automatically improve the sound of a sax, for instance. This is a form of cross tuning of instrument harmonics you learn by experience. This sax/bass coupling was actually pointed out to me by the 'good listener' to clarify its existence as a fact. The secret is to get the positive and negative re-enforcing nodes in the sound's moire into a most focused imaging that re-establishes positive resonance abilities in the moire through all levels of main harmonics and sub harmonics and thus to most effectively reproduce the original signal inherent in the sound stream, irregardless of means of reproduction, or medias, or recording techniques. The quote 'moire' is the resultant pattern of sound which gets set up in an environment, originated from a sound generating source, after all room absorptions and reflections have come to their maximum effect. The 'moire' holds the principle image of the sound being sustained and harmonically resonated through the environment. This is a sort of trial definition which now forms a fundamental thinking philosophy towards understanding some of the more interesting natures in these sound experiments. In this romp through abstract philosophy it is the bass waves which have to be most exquisitely focused via the touch tuned snowflakes, to bring them into proper harmonious focus and thus get the 'quote' bottom bass effect, respecting the lighthouse beam principle in cross room focusing to its resultant maximum 'moire pattern' efficiency. (It is almost possible to imagine setting up a room saturated with lasers, and sonically tune a sound system therein with snowflake objects, then set a couple of truck tires on fire to let the room fill with smoke and then stand back and watch through a glass door to see if the laser can light up a moire pattern being produced by the sound stream with the saturating laser light picking up concentrations of smoke particles which may (or may not) be concentrating or at least be excited in the sonic hot spots of the sound stream. Maybe try fog instead of smoke. It can be imagined that lasers are sensitive enough to allow the optical detection of sonically vibrating hot spots in the fog appearing as blurrs in the laser light. But, who can know this until it is tried. This blurring is an obvious fact, in fact, that the snowflakes illuminated as floating in the air in the room are vibrating so fast as to be completely masked by the blurr. A solution might be to video, then slow the video down enough to see if vibrating snowflakes are in fact being illuminated. It may be necessary to run the video at an artificial superfast speed in order to be able to slow it down enough later to reveal any snowflake patterns illuminated by laser lights. A MONO SURPRISE ------------------------------------------------------------- As for MONO in STEREO effects, what a SURPRISE ! I have just tried the system now, turned it on and threw the switches. (5 PM, January 8, 1992), Now what I have is Mono in Stereo in BOTH....BOTH ! speakers. There is a volume difference between Stereo and Mono mode There is a volume difference between Stereo and Mono mode imaging is now there in either speaker by itself regardless. The only distinct difference is more volume running in full stereo. In fact, between either speaker the sound is not a great deal different, and not a great deal different in quality of sound than with the system running in full stereo. There is of course some differences due to which stereo channel is carrying particular instruments, but this channelling difference is not really all that obvious. Of course there is SOME difference between one and both speakers. But neither speaker is a dud in Mono, that's for sure. In particular there is no sudden flat collapse in the sound when the balance switch is toggled all the way to the Left or to the Right. To be truthful the Left hand speaker in Mono mode is lesser compared to the Right, in both higher and lower frequency signals, but otherwise it is about as stereoscopically SONIC and this is the first time for sure that both speakers are producing stereo sonics when playing in Mono mode. This is in sharp contrast to previous Mono in Stereo tests of a few days ago, where originally the Left speaker only was producing stereo sonics in Mono and the Right speaker was a complete dud in Mono, and then the next day the Right speaker was found to be producing even more striking stereo sonics in Mono and the Left speaker was even more of a dud. Now, today, both speakers are horking away with stereo sonics in Mono mode. Neither speaker is a dud at all in Mono. Hello. Here is a difference. In switching the FM radio to FM Mono mode, both speakers become stereo duds when tried as mono units. No sonics, no airframe, no sound enhancing echos, nothing at all that is likeable. It seems that two track overlaying now causes any sonic effects excited by the tuned snowflakes to cancel in two track mono playing mode. This time, some stereo sonic effects are heard when standing back in the most favorable typical listening area, between the two speakers, when in FM Mono mode and both speakers running, particularly the sense of depth behind the windows is still very well developed, but any such partial stereo sonic effects vanish in an instant when switching just to either speaker, in the FM Mono Left or Right speakers only. In this instance the combination of compiling both sources of sound waves into the same channels (FM Mono mode) causes a mutual cancellation of re-enforced stereo sonic effects otherwise set up via the snowflakes in the room. One new thing worth commenting on is that the snowflake rosette sitting on the table on the outer side of the Right speaker has been modified. It has a snowflake pair at the center of the rosette's hexagram, with one of the snowflakes turned 90 degrees in focusing to the main sound image area, and three 12mm snowflakes have been replaced by three 18mm snowflakes. At first, with this rosette, the smaller snowflakes had better apparent overall fidelity when used in this rosette but as of today the whole sound response seems stronger when larger snowflakes are used, particularly for bass responses. Though not in all cases. There are still some hot spots where smaller (12mm) snowflakes work better than larger ones (18mm). ROOM TUNING ------------------------------------------------------------- Unfortunately, room tuning is back in the picture again as a necessity. By this is meant that the bottom bass, and aspects of really good fidelity in the higher ranges of the sound, are directly dependent now on the explicit tuning (or lack of such tuning) for just about every object in the whole main floor area of the condo. Every arbitrary object has become a spoiler due to the hightened sonic sensitivity levels of the whole room (as if the room itself has become a loudspeaker with two point source generators within it (the two speaker boxes) providing the sound stream for a single room sized enclosure. You the listener are hence standing inside the main box of one giant accoustic loud speaker. In this, the tuning of the arbitrary objects in the room is to minimize each objects 'spoiler' effect even though the effect of moving or turning such objects around by iotas seems to be the reverse, to use such objects as favorable tuning devices. This is not the case. The objects are spoilers and tuning them simply is to reduce their spoiling effects to a minimum thus seeming to gain their maximum audio enhancement. This is because the whole of the environment seems to have become accutely harmonically sensitive, obviously more than ever before, because of the way some snowflakes have been partnered with two snowflakes (instead of one) forming a local configuration on certain nodals (sonic hot spot), and certain snowflakes are now tuned to be focused face-on by 90 degrees to the main sound area image. Room tuning of aribtrary objects includes both torque twisting and touch tuning. For instance a pencil lying beside one of the computers can be moved and torque twisted into a favorable harmonic place, and then touched ever so lightly to slink it into its most lively sonic response spot. The same is true of course for all of the snowflakes. WHY MERELY TOUCHING A SNOWFLAKE WORKS ------------------------------------------------------------- The reason why touch tuning has become so vital is that it seems the up and down vibrations due to the vibrating surface upon which sit the snowflakes has become crucial to the developement of positive re-enforcing harmonics in the room-filling giant moire pattern generated by the sound stream within the single main large enclosure called the room. Merely touching a snowflake can effect a snowflake's horizontal vibrating, and of course its precise focusing, but does not snuff out its up and down vibration. In similar arguements, any disturbance to the horizontal vibrations are kept at greatest minimum when the snowflake is merely touched, rather then gripped when tuning it. In further arguments, minimum touch tuning can allow for subtle vertical alignments to occur, in that the snowflakes are standing in honey and so can take miniscule leans to the left or right and still stay locked in position due to the honey. In which case, yet another aspect in the overall polarizing field of the sound stream is now self evident. This regards constructive interference pattern amplifications provided by the snowflakes and their particular shapes principled upon a six sided snowflake-like fractal type hexagram. Such shape allows for East/West (width), North/South (depth), Up/Down (height), phase polarized harmonics taking place with sonic excitement being provided by snowflakes located in every area of the main floor area of the condo including the washroom, also at different elevations both above and below the horizontal plane of the two speaker box sound sources, all effected by 60 degree flat-faced facets in the snowflakes, 120 degree chisled faced facets in the snowflakes, 90 degree rotations for the snowflakes, and miniscule tilt in the upright vertical stance which may be able to compensate for minor errors in the exactitudes of each snowflake's various hand filed facetings. THE FUTURE ------------------------------------------------------------- At this point I don't know what else to test. It seems now to be nothing more than a question of more improved reasonable fidelity, a prospect that may be viable with this present system (and setup) in that the overall fidelity top to bottom in the reproduction of all tapes tried seems to be better than it has ever been. At least this is the impression. (Bearing in mind that at anytime the ears can be easily fooled in the lack of real and obvious comparative A and B testing). On the other hand it wouldn't suprise me if I come to the point of being able to sense a far greater realm in high fidelity, but not be able to get it. This barrier limit could have several sources. The source of the sound stream itself (the Fisher Model 8400 Getto Blaster) may have an intrinisic limitation in what it can supply. Or the size of the room or its condo design characteristics may become an empirical limiter. Mainly though it could be a question of the shape of the snowflakes themselves, in that these are chisled to have hand filed facets which approximate 60 degree angles in six-sided embodiments but most of the filing is by eyeball and some of the facets have sharp chisled leading edges rather than flat surfaces, either of which (flat or chisled) may prove to be a re-enforcer of sound or a spoiler. This cause or effect may be possible to check out, given a differently designed snowflake's image as a mass object, and/or an improved means of dublicating such snowflakes with controllable accuracies. In fact the variables that are possible in chosing an improved design for a snowflake as a tuning object are (as you can guess) most wide open for speculation, at this point. DIFFICULTIES AND CONCLUSION ------------------------------------------------------------- If the so-called MONO IN STEREO descriptions sound like there were coming on a little strong, this is deliberate. Mainly, if anyone is intrigued enough to try such experimenting themselves, they should be encouraged into knowingly accepting hardships in advance but persevering by enticement of the goal into going beyond normal reasonable quick test levels hoping for immediate confirmation or denial, in that such testing may take patience and a willingness to fuss and fume over seeming intractable variables to get the darn thing tuned properly to produce worthwhile effects. In particular, getting any kind of East/West separation in point sources in Mono, or even an impression of such separation, is extremely hard, because if separation is there it is being done by accute harmonic facteted-tuning to the extreme, with subtle cross harmonics bouncing off the snowflakes facets in such a way as to become harmonically similar to cross harmonics that were present when the music was first recorded. I had made some deliberate effort, (in the first Mono In Stereo demonstration), to get some point source instrument separation into the picture to prove that the concept was possible. That was helped by the fact that there were a couple of Manhatten Transfer instruments and voices which were easy to move around into point source locations within the overall sound stream, comparatively speaking, probably due to the way these particular point sourcers were specifically recorded. I will qualify this by saying that after deliberate tuning, some separation was occuring in certain point source instruments and voices only, and that other instruments and voices remained in a consistent spread in the entire sound picture. This is different than stereo at its best, where all instruments are to some degree either point sources in the images of the sound, or are at least spread separately apart somewhat. However, as already said, in the Mono in Stereo product, some instruments were homongenous and others became point source separated, eventually. This could only be done by standing motionless, listening, as a snowflake was touched, or torque twisted, and listening for a long moment for the final response in the room. For sure this kind of tuning means making some gains in East/West sepearation very tiny bits at a time. I say I had noticable separation in the first Mono In Stereo test done, but had to expend a lot of slow breathing time pulling on stale air, concentrating on East/West separation before it become clear that some separation was there. All of the tests, not just Mono In Stereo effects or its East/West separation, have not been easy at any time. Time passes quickly as the results appear slowly, usually. And good results can vanish in an instant by a single bad grip or twist on a snowflake. An experiment described in the January, 1992 issue of Discovery Magazine, (PHOTON MOTEL, Page 51), tells of setup difficulties so extreme that the experiment either works, or doesn't, simply on the bases of touching a single small ball bearing in a container of many small ball bearings designed in the hope of capturing photons in a closed trap. The way the experimenters describe it, the slightest variation in the environment can allow photons to escape but when done just right (not an easy task at all, apparently) then photons are trapped, for the first time accomplished in an experiment. The gist of the article is that at this point the capturing of photons either occurs or it doesn't, and variables such as merely touching one ball bearing can cancel the capturing. As already noted everywhere I have found similar difficulties in the series of experiments described above. In particular, merely touching a snowflake could cause some improved high end fidelity to click in but some good bass sonics to click out in the same instant. And of course visa versa. (Mind you this Yin Yang obstacle seems to have finally become at least partially overcome as of the moment of placing of some snowflakes to a 90 degree alignment relative to the main sound image and using snowflake pairs at certain locations). Similarly for East to West separation, and for a North to South clean image in depth. Wide separation in the sound image has always been a kind of Yin Yang affair with no single technique definative for producing guaranteed width focusing responses. One also has to be patiently slowed if in a hurry, in that tuning a snowflake is a slow motion job wherein a change in sonic effect takes time to take full effect in spreading through the room. At times things can become so sensitive that two to three seconds can pass before an effect is fully sonic when handling a snowflake. Whereas in other instances just tapping a snowflake can cause an instant response. Sometimes tuning means merely touching one or a few snowflakes, nothing more. Generally, the tuning has to be done very slowly per snowflake while listening acutely to many subtle final changes in sound quality before deciding which in-tune effect is better or best. Also you may have to re-tune certain given snowflakes dozens of times when tightening up the clarity of some overall effect. Or to try and get rid of a sudden devastating bug. For instance in MONO tests it is easy to loose control of your system, with result that the bass becomes nothing but a meaningless rattle, not even a rumble, just a rattle or fuzz, or worse, and I mean awful, no bass whatsoever, and it can take a half hour or more of judiciously re-tuning of snowflakes just to get the bass stabilized enough to be workable again. The point behind this last remark is that nothing but a Blat Blat Blat for bass does not mean that a speaker or the speakers have blown. Rather it is merely a question of bad tuning of one or a few snowflakes which gangs up on the whole system to suddenly start distorting either as a rattle in parts of the bass range, or occasionally a total collapse of all bass effects into nothing but a Blat Blat Blat. But, as said, these effects can be tuned out by careful re-tuning of the snowflakes, which can include the removal, addition, or local repositioning of one or a few of them. WIDE WINDOW DIFFICULTIES ------------------------------------------------------------- Also, very wide East/West wide separation in full two speaker stereo I have found to be particularly tricky. You HAVE to listen very closely. For instance a clarinet could appear to be distinctly playing in a most noticable way (say) 5 or 6 feet and back by about 10 feet, way off to the left relative to the Left speaker, and then, by merely touching a snowflake, that separation would click right out and the clarinate would be oh, say, a little to the right of the Left speaker and merely somewhere in the left hand side of the orchestra, in a more normal and certainly less striking stereo embodiment. In further difficulties, with striking wide spread degrees of Left to Right separation, when for instance something is way out to the Left as a distinct sound source, and well back in the deeper regions back there, a clarinate (for instance) could be so very weak or distorted as to be hardly discernable in fact not noticed, or it could be made to be most loud and clear in reasonable fidelics. But to obtain good effects and reasonable fidelity such as this requires patience, patience, patience. For instance in one piece of music on a tape I use, (Frank Purcell, Digital Around The World, by ABLE, AB5 17065), at first you can sometimes seem to hear a bongo drum playing weakly way up there in the background of the higher end, until snowflake tuning eventually takes effect, and the so-seeming bongo turns out to be a GUITAR chattering away strongly using rhythm structures of a bongo player rather than lyrics of a guitar. When clearly heard there is no mistaking the bongo pitched guitar, and its major contribution to the music. In particular, at these levels of tuning everything in not just the dining room but the entire main floor of the Condo can become part of the tuning realm for the sound stream. For instance merely dropping an empty coffee cup on the kitchen counter could cause some good strong resonances in the bass end (or higher end) of the sound to disappear unnoticed until later when replaying a tape and wondering where the tone in a tympani drum went. Or how come, now, I can't hear the little bongos at all in a track from a cassette tape of Famous Film Themes. In keeping with this, one thing worth mentioning has been discovered in the last few days. Previously, a number of specific objects in the main floor's whole area were found to be particularly conducive to room tuning. For instance a triangular shaped plastic astray in the dining area by the opening to the kitchen was found to be particularly good for strengthening the bass range when positioned just right and turned just right, relative to the speakers. Also, a large empty 1.5 liter Coca Cola bottle was dropped onto a hot spot between the two speakers one day after mid December during some quick tests, to immediately produce a jump in the volume of the bass range. Also, a large rectangular shaped magnifying lense from a hand held 35mm slide projector, sitting on a small shelf on a table against the South wall of the dining area, was also found to impart a strong kick in the bass range when a flat side of the lense was turned to face the speakers correctly. Several other objects were similarly constantly a part of the entire main floor's tuning environment. However, during a recent round of distinctly accute tuning of the snowflakes it was found that room tuning of objects such as the ashtray was merely tuning out their distorting effect to a minimal level, and that the best tuning of all was to simply remove the objects from the environment. For instance moving the Coke bottle around by small iotas still effected the bass range for the better or worse by small iotas, but it was suddenly found that simply removing the Coke bottle resulted in an immediate improvement in the overall reasonable fidelity, with no loss now in the volume or power of the bass range. In other words, ever so gradually, arbitrary room objects such as the Coke bottle which had originally been used as sonic boosters had now become sonic spoilers, once a more precise fine tuning had been achieved by going back over the snowflakes again and again, gradually fine tuning them in more and more sonically conducive stable positions. At this point the snowflake objects themselves have become the dominate influence of the sound, independent of the speakers, or cones, or medias supplying the sound stream, and independent of arbitrary objects in the room. It only stands to reason that more reasonably accurate six sided (or related) mass tuning objects should lead directly to more striking sonic effects and levels of fidelity. At this point I have to presume that limitations spoiling the emergence of really striking levels of authentic instrument fidelity and true reproduction of their live room sonic nature (concider for example a grand piano heard when standing close up to it - these pianos are no cheap toys and definately can't be reproduced to full power by cheap speakers) is standing distortions caused by the shape of the snowflakes themselves currently in use. It should be possible to hear what a mike hears as when positioned only a few inches from the grand piano's strings while recording. What a final shape for such snowflakes (or six-sided based objects designed for maximum sonic re-enforcement) cannot be suggested at this point without the availablity of equipment and means to make and test a number of different designs to see which works best. In this, it cannot be said if different designs are needed for each kind of stereo set or speaker designs or medias used for the experimental sound stream, or whether one design will prove to be suitably universal for all such sound. I should mention once again the nature of the sound source used through the experiment. It is a Fisher Model 8400 Getto Blaster. Nothing has been touched in terms of electronics or the speakers. All is exactly as when unpacked from the cardboard carton from the store. The only arbitrary constant is that the equalizer toggles have all been pushed UP to the top and left on full power right from day one last August. This includes both the two bass range and two higher end range equalizer toggles. Tests that were tried with one or another of the higher end or bass end equalizer toggles eased off proved of no value. One other constant is that the SURROUND SOUND feature has been left OFF for most of the tests and experiments. In August the experiment was started with the SURROUND SOUND feature ON, since every trace of improved sound was needed to have something to work with. But along the way it was found that the SURROUND SOUND had started producing sour sounding echoes in early tuning attempts, and this artificiality is even more pronouned in the presence of sonic snowflakes. For that reason, only a few tests have been conducted with use of the SURROUND SOUND feature ON after it was turned OFF early in the fall. VERTICAL COMPONENT VIBRATION LIMITATIONS ------------------------------------------------------------- It has to be clearly noted here that vertical component vibrations can be like a viper with fangs at both ends (in the realm of this experiment) in that the vertical component vibrations contribute to higher frequency fidelity and to open air (airframe) sonic qualities, while at the same time smothering the bass range frequencies in a lesser effect, or so it seems. This assumption can be easily proved simply by placing the hands on the table and pressing down. If you want a lot more sudden big sound in the bass, then press down hard, but at the same time hear the upper ranges weaken and go somewhat flat. This could be due to the nature of short vrs long sound waves, where longer sound waves are not being re-enforced harmonically by the up/down shorter lengths of the vertical vibration component on the surface of the table whose range of possible inter-harmonic interplays may be limited by the material out of which the table is made, for instance. This problem could be due to the material (press board) out of which the table is made but the only way to know this for sure is to try tables made of different substances looking for substances that can sustain dramatically longer up and down resonances as well as remaining sonically excitable to short wave sound frequencies. Which also brings us back to a further remark regards 'quote' touch tuning of the snowflakes. Touch tuning, when done delicately, does not cause snuffing of the vertical component vibrations in respecting the table and its better/worse intrinsic sonic responsiveness, thus does not arbitrarily boost the bass ranges momentarily in a deceptive way while the snowflake is being tuned (which happens if the vertical vibrations are momentarily snuffed or interferred with during the tuning). It can be assumed that such a table can be involved in the sonics of the sound stream in any instance, no matter what kind of sound system is at work in the room. But specifically the snowflake mass object sonic tuners are enhancing to hightened levels the intrinisic vibrational components being imparted by the vibrating nature of the table, amplified through the small point source snowflakes back into the sound stream. They sit there jutting upright, vibrating up and down, as well as sideways, and back and forth. (Which helps explain why there can be certain particularly dynamic hot spots for snowflakes which co-incidentally also happen to be some of the most vigorously vibrating places on the table's surface. The result is, ergo, more long wavelength re-enforcable harmonic excitement in the vertical component vibration, hence more lively boosting of the bass and bottom bass qualities of the sound, which happens to be true for these locations, they are particularly important for supplying boosted bass ranges in these experiments). (If this last paragraph sounds long winded it sounds the same to me too. But let's face it at this point I am almost inventing words to try and put across information to the reader). (Concider that a few of the table's most vigorously vibrating locals are not the best sonic hot spots for putting snowflakes). THE TV SET ------------------------------------------------------------- One other variable in the environment has come to the fore. This is the TV set, sitting in the North West corner of the living room area. This is a 23 year old 24 inch Quasar color set with a small port on the lower right side for sound, produced via one small speaker, probably oval shaped in that its horizontal width cannot be larger than (say) 4 or 5 inches due to the small space of its location. In weeks past the sound of the TV set has improved dramatically, then diminished, on at least two occasions, each lasting in its better sound embodiment for several days. At first it was thought that greater sound could be due to some form of digitalizing expanded sound dynmanic techiques by modern TV stations in which aspects of the sound, particularly the lower end, can be enhanced by projecting small re-enforcing nodals into the sound stream so that sound enforcement occurs in the air external to the speaker source. Or so I have been told. However, it now seems that even if some channels are doing this, it cannot account for the dramatic changes in the nature of the good vrs bad sound which has occured at least twice in the past couple of weeks. It seems more than ever likely that such change in the quality of sound for the better has been due to the sound changing characteristics of the snowflakes, in tuning the whole room to a more lively accustically responsive environment. As of this evening, (January 8, 1992) the TV sound is muffled, with no tone whatsoever evident for bass levels of sound, and the sound source being unmistakably from the small portal at the lower right corner of the TV set. Whereas two nights ago the sound was much worse, being spitty, extremely hard to hear, with the speaker rattling in an irritating way in the presence of any kind of music. Dialogue was very hard to discern and in fact some attempts were made during the evening to try and improve the noise by moving a few arbitrary objects around in the room. Yet a couple of days prior to that the TV's sound had been generally so good that viewers in the room had been moved to remark that this must be due to the new digitalizing techniques which alleged are being used by some stations to, for instance, sonically create more bass in the air in the room. It was quite interesting to hear sort of deep booms coming from the TV, In the midst of audio clarity that was like breathing fresh air. Such TV sets otherwise have long been notorious for bad sound. At that specific time a few days back, one thing most noticable was that the sound for the TV could not be point source located. All of the sound came from an impressively large general sound image area encampassing the whole of the TV face and the larger wider space behind it. Nothing of the sound could be deemed to be coming directly from the little grid for the TV's Mono speaker. In overall effect the impression was easy to accept that somehow this sound had stereo sonic characteristics. Plus range. Even tones of tympany drums were sonically reverberative, with the tympani dynamics being obvious and most easy to listen to. Today however (January 8, 1992) the situation is entirely different. All of the sound is deemed to be projected from the little portal and is very muffled, though not deteriorated in terms of spitting and rasping or rattling. At the moment there is no spitting or rasp or rattle, but it is all a high pitched, flat, normal mono sound from an old worn out TV small speaker, with no roomy echos or airy effects, and no bass tone discernable at all in such as tympanis, which are merely dull weak high pitched dud strikes. Mind you, some sonics can be regained by room tuning a few arbitrary objects in the room, for instance by gathering up the daily newspaper on the floor, and repositioning an easy chair, and even repositioning a coffee cup. Thus, to say it again, it seems that various ways for snowflake tuning in a room can effect the nature of mechanical sound producing systems in the room in general, dramatically for the better or worse, such as has been happening with this 23 year old Quasar TV and its single tiny monoral speaker sitting over in the North West corner of the living room area kitty corner from the location of the Getto Blaster in the dining room area in this low rental condo. Yes and No changes in the sound quality coming from the TV set has been dramatic. In regard to the sound quality of a co-incidental sound source such as this old TV set in the corner, there may be an important mitigating circumstance, in which, rather than sonically tuning the whole room environment, the snowflakes may in fact merely be sonically SENSITIZING the environment, to where any arbitrary object can have a major influence in terms of either enhancing or spoiling the resonances of sound from random sources such as the TV set. This conjecture is supposed in that the snowflakes are focused specifically to fine tune the sounds of the Getto Blaster whose sonics eminate from a large main sound area behind the stereo speakers on the table. Whereas the TV's sound seems to be particularly sensitive to the position of just about anything in the room in the vacinity of the TV set. For instance at this moment, (3 AM January 9, 1992), the sound is much improved over earlier in the evening, on all TV channels. But only 1 hour earlier was even better than now. These changes seem to be due strictly to the rustle and bustle that goes on with daily living in which arbitrary objects are moved around more or less randomly in the room. Even where the small dog is lying has an effect, bless his heart, he often picks spots to lay where the change in sound is a definate clear cut improvement. This dog is learning how to acquiring very sensitive hearing. COMPARATIVE TESTS ------------------------------------------------------------- Such sonic sensitivity due to snowflake resonance tuning seems to foreclude being able to do any objective A vrs B comparative listening tests with two different stereo sets in the same room. For example, suppose a listening test was wanted between my system (as it sits here in my low rental condo) and (say) a so called really good even expensive stereo set, the testing would have to be done with the second set in a another place which is sealed and separate from my main floor of the condo. If set up also in my main floor area, the only tests for the second set would be subjective, seeing if the sound of the second set is excited, or harmed, or otherwise unchanged, by the presence of the sonic snowflakes. If two separate locations are for comparative listening tests, listening to different tapes on either set would not be so easy because of the delay in the hearing of responses as the listeners hurry back and forth between rooms carrying casette tapes or trying to remember which FM station was just heard. And subliminal false impressions caused by the LOOK of my room vrs the LOOK of another room which has the second set could influence certain listeners. On the other hand, having a second set or even other sets tested in my room which has the snowflake tuned Getto Blaster may have some revealing surprises. For instance, concider the following. THE FM RADIO ------------------------------------------------------------- I think there is something going on with the FM radio which has become obvious enough that I can take a chance and comment. I think that sonically tuning the sound stream with snowflakes is having a direct effect on the sound quality of different FM stations, and is causing a distinction in sound quality between certain FM stations vrs the sound stream of casette tapes. This is random in the FM band, not constant from one station to the next or one day to the next. If true, this could be due to different broadcasting or pre-filtering techniques used by different stations, or even different ways of pre-digitalizing of sound if this is what they do, even perhaps to different brand names of the equipment used to do similar kinds of digitalizing, in the presence of sonic exciter snowflakes. Whatever. What gives me this impression is an observed effect that tuning the snowflakes for advanced fidelity, listening to my favorite FM station, can result in some dramatically improved sound characteristics, including bottom bass, but these impressive qualities vanish when going back to casette tapes. I have to more or less start all over again tuning the snowflakes to get impressive status back again in the quality of sound when going back to playing the casette decks. On the other hand, cruising the FM dial with the system tuned to the ultimate for (say) casette tape listening, results in some stations booming through loud and clear, with other stations obviously diminished. For instance my favorite station always starts out diminished when first turning on the FM after tuning to casette tapes. In particular the station's bass range and specifically any bottom bass, usually starts out sluggish before being tuned. But this is not always true for certain other stations. When the FM is first turned on, some stations can be well advanced in terms of overall fidelity and very good bottom bass. But such goodness is by no means predictable, station to station. Even so, tuning my favorite station for best quality of sound results in a different selection of FM stations sounding better or worse when cruising the dial after. I have not gone to the effort of trying any definative tests regarding such seeming effects, due to the fact that the FM antenna on this Getto Blaster is not very efficient, and for much of the time the FM has weaknesses such as hiss or break up or fading on some or all of the stations, and at other times all stations are loud and clear, until the moment I decide to go for some acute listening tests and hiss starts in again. It seems a demonstration of Murphy's Law - the FM reception gets worse the moment I want it to get better. Some FM antenna effects can be due simply to where I am standing. No good. Not with this kind of grapple hanging around the ether. I tried adding a wire to the antenna but finally gave it up due to the fact that its presence was a major sound spoiler. I don't wish to create an impression that I was frustrated or aggravated by this situation. I took the poor antenna for granted and count myself lucky in the periods when the FM reception is good enough to work with. DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTS ------------------------------------------------------------- How about doing sonically tuned stereo experiments using snowflakes in an anechoic chamber? I don't know. I can't think of any reason why such experiments should work in view of the fact that room echo reflections are being absorbed into the sound absorbers of the chamber rather than bouncing back into the room to re-enforce a sonic moire pattern. Forget about sound waves bouncing back (impacting) against the drivers, this does not seem to be a deciding factor as far as I can determine. Impacting can of course be destructive - witness the reports of turbo roar and rattling involving bass notes, and even the sudden complete collapse of the whole system loosing response to any bass signals, and also higher frequency spitting, which I have duely noted in describing certain tests. On the other hand witness also that these impacting effects get tuned out by refocusing of the snowflakes. In thinking about it another other way, use of snowflake tuners in an anechoic chamber may in fact set up a whole new resonance pattern in the room that may get around the problem of reflection absorption in the chamber's walls, and so allow a whole new moire pattern comprising sonic reflections and resonances to establish between the snowflakes. Like I say, at this point, my answer would be maybe, maybe not. Try it, and see. HELPFUL HINTS IN TUNING ------------------------------------------------------------- Tuning may not be as easy as imaged without hands on testing. For one thing you may have to spend mucho time locating suitable sonic hot spots in the room for snowflakes or snowflake rosettes. Don't forget, the only way you can find them is by hearing their responses when sticking a finger or object into such a hot spot. And then, once some groundwork has been laid out via activating a number of hot spots, it may still be a question of going to the nth degree to fine tune what you've now got using those found hot spots. It is obvious that the environment will be filled with other hot spot centers which you can not see unless some scientific means is applied to, somehow, make them visible. In fact you can test this conjecture easily enough. Suppose you are using a getto blaster sitting on a table. Find a good location for placing a pair of drinking glasses uspide down on the table and put a snowflake on the top of each glass, and you might hear an immediate difference for the better in the overall quality of sound. You will have to move the snowflakes around slowly to find the best hot spot on each glass. This might bring in more in the higher ranges of sound, the lower ranges, the mid range, or combinations thereof. But, you should hear sonic qualities going uphill and downhill as you move the snowflakes around, or move the glasses around, slowly. You may have to use something like a small smear of honey to pin the snowflakes in place on the water glasses. In any case, if you hear a change for the better, you will have immediately learned a quick lesson in the art of how to hear differences in sonic effects when tuning via snowflakes. REGARDS ROOM TUNING - January 10, 1992, 2:30 PM. ------------------------------------------------------------- As has been reported several times, at times tuning of arbitrary objects in the room has become extremely important in the controlling of reasonable fidelity vrs high fidelity vrs diminished fidelity in the sound. At the start of a definative test just completed moments ago, room tuning was very much a part of the sonic picture. For instance a hexagonal made-in-China cheap ordinary lead pencil lying beside the telephone was involved. Five minutes were spent trying for better/best effects with this object and just touching one end of the pencil could cause something to subtly click in for the better but something else to click out for the worse. This is what I mean about the room having become so sensitive, with pairs of snowflakes in place and some snowflakes tuned to be focused face-on 90 degrees relative to other snowflakes. But, at this very moment, that same pencil has pretty well no effect, no matter what I do with it. What has happened is that within a few moments I have overcome the dominating influences of arbitrary room objects whose spoiling effects had to be tuned out physically by extact positioning, giving the illusion that they were sonic boosters. How, is as follows. SECRET ------------------------------------------------------------- And here it comes. Pssst! a secret test. This one is not going to be reported because it has latent commercial possibilities. A few minutes ago (2:30 PM, January 10, 1992), a test was imagined in advance, was set up, and worked perfectly. About twice the fidelity came immediately into the picture, particularly in the mid range of sound and in the bottom bass. We are now talking high fidelity potential for the first time, a fact duely noted by the 'good listener' whose ears had previously been called upon to verify that hearable stereoscopic-like sonics had been achieved in what should have been dud Mono sound coming from only one speaker. In this instance, today, high fidelity which now includes the more important qualities of open air ('Airframe') sonics and the feeling of being in the presence of live instruments being played in front of you, is definately at hand. However, to be in all ways fair, one diminished effect resulting from the test just completed has to be acknowledged. Exceptional wide spreads in the sound image reported for previous tests is no longer here. The high fidelity resulting sound is mostly centered between the area of the two speaker boxes, but, then, its stereo is highlighted by increased front to back imaging, with lots of depth receeding into the background of the sound image projecting behind the windows. Otherwise, this is a very likeable sound, AT LAST! MORE ! ------------------------------------------------------------- A half hour later. Aww, geez. Things are changing so fast around here it is almost not worth the effort of making reports. Now the WIDE WINDOW IS BACK! This time, with the added advantage of high fidelity, it is really back. What I am listening to right now is an outrageously bad (what WAS a really BAD) tape of the Beatles. Previously it was not worth the effort of using in sound tests because of its high pissing shrieking hot distortion and utterly no bass. But not now. I can play it FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME and it is a GOOD tape. In particular, this tape has snippets with the Beatles standing around talking and remarking and tuning up, with a small audience of spectators standing on the street below. What I am playing is the version of GET BACK which was recorded on the roof of the building outside the Abbey Lane studio the first time this tune was introduced to the public. You may as well imagine yourself standing around drinking coffee with the guys and gals on the roof, so distinct is the point source separation in the East/West and North/South polarity factors. This came about by the simply expediency of moving the speaker boxes back and forth into their strongest tuning positions. Previously, the North/South alignment of the speaker boxes had always been sensitive but not specific, for instance perhaps here, perhaps there, in a range of positions which seemed to be offering better or worse sound. Because the effect was so marginal, it had been a long time since the the speaker boxes were twist tuned to test out their responses. WHAT a DIFFERENCE this time, improvement was an instant blast. This time, when slowly turning the boxes, the BEST sound clicked in all of sudden with no mistake. The whole character of the sound dropped by many degrees in octave strength, and the whole of the imaging aspect clarified, with, in particular, East/West point sources of sound suddenly LEAPING into the outer regions beyond the Left and Right locations of the speaker boxes. AT LOUD VOLUMES ------------------------------------------------------------- At loud volume there is a lot to hear. However this is with the volume knob turned to 45%. In previous testing in the fall, (with 13 hexagon and Star of David rosettes in place and all snowflakes and 3mm filed beads lying on their side, with snowflakes focused to the center of their rosettes rather than to the main sound image area behind the window), loud volume meant LOUD, with the volume knob at (say) 45% and the volume so loud two people standing side by side could not hear each other even when shouting. At this moment such a loudness does not seem possible, in that turning up the volume knob does not seem to present any more useful volume. The sound gets a little hotter in the high end, is all. And people can talk quit easily even with a powerful sound image horking away. For instance people can talk sitting in the audience during a real symphony concert even when the orchestra is playing loud enough to vibrate ones clothing. But, of course, not necessarily so in a disco or up front at a rock concert. Badly compressed distorting volume levels can produce a wall of raw sound that is impossible to shout through. In these power driven raw sound situations its as if the sound images starts to become overlayed, as if two, three, maybe even four or more recurring complete sonic moire patterns start building up over top of each other in the environment, something like when a computer in the movies goes into a loop and starts rebuilding the same graphic image overlaying itself over and over again as the image begins to fill the screen with swelling image lines taking up the screen for instance, even as it inexorably blurrs. I have heard something like this in earlier tests done last fall, when, in high volume testing, cranking up the volume more caused the sound to start compressing, stiffling its fidelity even as new power in the raw noise (enough to ring the ears) squeezed out any other sound in the room. Noise became more powerful in the sound even as the sound itself was homogenously inexorably shrinking into a more pounding thump and shriek, beyond a certain point, when cranking up into higher volume levels of around 60 to 70%. A couple of times, audiophonic sound seemed to disappear into a single intense standing wave, which meant time to turn it down instantly. The power collapse into a standing wave does not seem to be happening, now, when turning up the volume past a certain point. In fact I can now run at a volume of (say) 75% and can tune snowflakes nicely and can hear myself talking without having to raise my voice drastically or shout. NEW QUESTIONS ABOUT THE MYSTERIOUS CATASTROPHIC COLLAPSE ------------------------------------------------------------- In coming back to a mystery that seems to cling to the thoughts like lint, something like a recurring overlaying in the sound pattern may have happened when the whole system suddenly collapsed as described in the reports on the second day's testing of Mono In Stereo effects. (See topic MAJOR COLLAPSE further above in this file). Or perhaps it was a sudden critical catastrophic breakup into interferring cross harmonics that occurred to cause this. It happened just after several snowflakes had been retuned and another was in the process of being retuned. Whatever the cause, that collapse was also met with a nearly complete reduction in sound volume. It was as if an imp had suddenly banished the Getto Blaster by magic replacing it in an instant with noise only an imp could admire. It was eerie to be intensly listening to the sound of a big orchestra while tuning a snowflake and suddenly having the whole bass range fade to nothing but weak whumps in the space of a couple of notes. The volume itself faded to nearly nothing. Everything had become squeezed out. Whatever did it, I can't say with any intelligence, other than in a wish to speculate one way and another. But, what's past is the past. What actually caused this collapse is still a mystery because there are so many variables to ask questions about. What is known is that in the first few weeks of experiments with this Getto Blaster, such intense collapse was more or less par for the course, and the challenge was to work past this obvious limitation in the Getto Blaster's ability to produce some reasonable fidelity, with any presence of deeper bass sonics, and to have decent higher end as well, the sought goals. (The Airframe presence and single speaker stereo effects were not even a part of the goals, at that time. Neither was the existence of a bottom bass in the music even suspected, when using such a simple sound system for the sound stream). What is such a BIG mystery is that the recent abrupt collapse back to a presumed normal state for the Getto Blaster occurred AFTER the goals had been met in the experiment, and everything was running at that moment in the full reverbations of room echos and bottom bass and deep imaging behind the windows, and the like. The fact that it was possible to bring back the full running system back into focus after the collapse, by retuning the snowflakes only, is testimony to the fact that it is the sonic snowflakes which are responsible for manifesting the tremendous sound coming from this Getto Blaster. TALK ABOUT STEREO IN MONO - January 11, 1992 ------------------------------------------------------------- And now comes another surpise. Yesterday, the MONO in STEREO effects of the experiments as of yesterday's tuning status was that both speaker boxes produced reasonable stereo-seeming effects in MONO, but that the Right hand speaker was producing more impressive results. The Left speaker box was not producing bottom bass in MONO, for instance, and its higher end was somewhat distorted. That was before. As of this moment (January 11, 1992, 4 PM) the situation is completely reversed. The Right hand speaker box is again producing reasonable stereo effects in MONO (still including bottom base). But... The LEFT hand speaker is horking away loud and clear, producing the best MONO in STEREO effects ever heard in this experiment. Agreed, a Left/Right imaging in the seeming stereo is not developed (no attempt was made to develope separation) but the dynamic sound range surrounding and behind the Left speaker box is very large indeed, and in particular in the area BETWEEN the two speaker boxes. So too is the audio quality of the powerful response to bottom bass, enhanced to a new found level of power and clarity. It is possible that the sound between the speaker boxes (officially it is actually sound that spreads to the right of the Left speaker box) is perhaps due to the fact that there are many snowflakes sitting around in that area and the snowflakes are setting up a responding resonance pattern floating in the air expanding well to the right of the physical sound source. This could also explain how it is possible to tease cross harmonic point source instrument separation out of a Mono track, because the floating image being awakened by the snowflakes includes hidden point source cross harmonics present in the original music when it was originally recorded. And these can be excited enough into becoming present after the fact, by effective resonance pattern re-imaging re-enforcing via the snowflakes, when being played back through a single track speaker. Ahem, err, ahh, if the idea sounds hairbrain try it yourself first before passing judgement. FOOLED AGAIN ------------------------------------------------------------- At any rate, this is quite a SATISFYING moment in the experiment. With this, it will be really easy to fool an unprepared listener that it is a stereo system playing. In fact it fooled the 'good listener' one more time, who should have been expecting it (but wasn't, due to the quality of sound), who had to ask to double check that the balance toggle was pushed all the way up to the top, so that the Left speaker box could ONLY be playing in Mono. Hmmm and hmmm, the 'good listener' kept saying while studying the best (and lesser) attributes of the dominating stereo effects in the full bodied sound hanging in the air in that huge area behind the vacinity of the Left hand speaker and rightward. You could walk around the listening area and through the kitchen with hardly a change in the music so good was its Airframe effect. Real fidelity itself was at its best ever, up to this point in the experiment. Meanwhile the Right speaker was parked on the table as a fake doing utterly nothing. You could haul out its speaker wires and let them hang there dangling their ends swinging slowly in the wind currents of the room, for all the difference it would make. You could have picked up the speaker box and put it on your head and strolled out of the room. Nothing would have changed in the giant picture of stereo sound coming from behind the windows in the dining room, all being produced by the one small moulded plastic Mono speaker box sitting on the left side of the table. But, this single speaker stereo effect is once again gone. The system has been retuned once more to full stereo sonics using both speakers (January 13, 1992) and the goal now is to see how much actual real high fidelity may be possible, given recent changes in the handling of snowflakes and improvements in the techniques of fine tuning. Its looking good. A casette tape of the Glen Grey orchestra playing big band swing (SM Capital Records 4XL 57219) has not been used much for sound tests because of its lack of bass and tendency for high pitched overall tone. However today the high pitch is gone and there is bottom bass echoing from the back regions of the band in the window. Talk about HANG in the drums. All that was needed to get drum volume from this tape was the right kind of resonance responses in the room. Some interesting things are going on. By playing around with snowflakes you can hear warbling in (for instance) a trumpet solo, with the warbling synchronized to the pulses of the bass fiddle, and then tune out the warble. I plan to play with this tape for awhile to see if I can boost the bottom bass, hence drums and bass drum, and improve the high fidelity through the sound spectrum including mid range. I have heard better things already; a touch of this, a touch of that; and believe more can be resolved into a true Hi Fi stereo system by continuing to use sonic snowflake tuning to rejuvinate and excite the sound stream. Significant wide spread between instruments and point sources in the sound picture is also easy to gain, as of this moment. A recording with good point source separation between certain instruments has helped in tests to verify that better overall fidelity and diminished subtle distortions clarified the sound picture, as better point source separation between certain instruments is focused into place. (The recording is Greig - Peer Gynt Suites Opus 46, by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Jonel Parlea, conductor. Brand name Allegro, ACS 8030). VOLUME AGAIN ------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, I must've done something right because I'm back down to a volume of 30 to 35% for casette tapes and it's almost too much to handle. Its not that more volume is not wanted. There is plenty available. Its that the volume now is as loud as it has ever been in terms of pure overall high fidelity responses in the whole of the sound stream and this is nice nice nice because original glimpses of insight are now starting to be affirmed in practice, in many ways, in this experiment. As more fidelity comes in, the volume inexorably has increased at the same setting, because more SOUND is being generated in the room. And all of the snowflakes are vibrating enough to tingle the fingertips. Oh, by the way, ahem, crow. I have gotten genuine High Fidelity in case anyone wants to ask. At the moment the system is pretty well settled on producing good fidelity, an upgrade from reasonable fidelity. But the future has been forecast in the sonic results in fine tuning of a particular tape. No lie, no exaggeration. The tape in question (The Spitfire Band, 10th Anniversary Album, by Tembo Music Canada, Inc., TMK-44-1) has a tune in particular named 'Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart'. This piece is characterized by a few instruments playing dominantly in the domain of the big swing band, with the drummer having freedom to play more at liberty, the whole thing something like the way Count Basie's orchestra used to do things, slow, with plenty of hang between notes. I went around and around the circle touch tuning the snowflakes and lo, it finally moved in, High Fidelity. Albeit lets call it a pretty good CHEAP Hi Fi rather than the very expensive kind. There is no belittling the result coaxed from this Getto Blaster designed by the manufacture for glitz and trinkets for trouts and kiddies, to blast minds in a psuedo experience, with raw noise shaking the ear canals and bending the tiny hairs inside permenently in a way the mass consumer now thinks is real. Hi Fi of any kind is not the purpose of such Getto Blasters. Now to be honest, the same fidelity was not there in cuts on this Spitfire Band tape in which the orchestra played heavy stuff, lots of instruments, lots of push. In these cuts there were pockets of sorry distortions. But in 'Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart' it was as clean as a whistle (though still not a true recreation of the empirical sound of each instrument in the flesh). Meanwhile, Something behind the wall next to the windows began to rattle in certain of the deeper bass notes, there was so much big band power and reverberating hang in the music when 'Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart' was playing. But.... GETTING AROUND COMPRESSION ------------------------------------------------------------- Other than accepting that a new semi-stable plateau in fidelity has been reached, it is still a yes/no situation. Different tapes are still responding in different ways. Tuning a tape of The 101 Strings Orchestra playing Western Themes can get around some of the compression used by the manufacturers to get all of those instruments squeezed into a sound that can be played through cheap transister radios for the mass consumer. Then when switching to another tape (Floyd Cramer, Almost Persuaded & Other Hits, RCA CK-2508) tuning is again needed to bring back high fidelity in accord with this full orchestra tape being mixed by the manufacturers for a discreet listening audience who would have major Hi Fi's in the house. YES? ------------------------------------------------------------- A point to make however, is that in running through a stack of bad and really bad tapes that have rarely been played here, all of them can now be quickly coaxed into producing reasonable fidelity. At last even a few of them have become very listenable, when tuned. Tuning may now only take a few minutes, rather than an hour or so, mainly by lightly touching or tapping about a dozen snowflakes, for instance when switching from tapes to FM radio and back to tapes. Also, I can now easily work around tapes compressed for transister play and can unravel some of the compression. I have not had enough uninterrupted time to see if it is possible to unravel a compressed tape to see if it can be coaxed into sounding like a tape produced for the audiophile market, but suspect that this could be possible, since the original sound in the recording studio has been captured by the mikes irregardless of what was done to the sound in later mixing by the manufacturers after capture. For instance, in a popular female vocalist singing a siren's love call on the FM radio, during the bridge when the push went up and more voice was coming from the singer, it was possible to coax apart the mix so that you could hear plain as day a second voice - which wasn't hers - an overdub, singing in counter harmony at a lower volume to give the extra push causing psuedo echo-like range to the bridge part of her singing. In the mix the two voices had been blended so cunningly that it sounded like one voice being given extra electronic effects. But that was not the case. The two voices became spread apart by snowflake tuning. The second female's voice was deeper (huskier and more contralto) and was finally filtered out of the background, unexpectedly, when playing around with the touch tuning of a few snowflakes. NO? ------------------------------------------------------------- More and more distinct is the reality that tuning out the worse on one tape can bring in the worse on another tape, meaning that recording techniques and medias are starting to stand out quite clearly in the differences easily heard between tapes and kinds of music. It is also possible to find a tuning range suitable for a number of different tapes and musics. Which brings the system in line with standard approaches in loudspeaker and stereo designs; one lowest common denominator offering highest overall fidelity for all applications. But such a tuned in status quo is not as good as any individual tuning for a given tape, or an FM station. And is not really a good sound for background listening. Too much minor irritation. Which means its time for one last comment. My supposition now is that the sonic snowflakes are also capable of tuning out sonic spoilers to a least minimum effect, and thus may be in fact themselves sonic spoilers, whose lesser effect vrs major boosting is an enhancing capability, due to the fact that the snowflakes also incorporate sonic dispersion principles that efficiently rebound in the reformation of moire patterns found in the original sound stream both before it is recorded and after. The moire pattern imagery is based on fractal six-sided steady state three dimensional geometry. It involves principles entirely co-existing within the matrixes set up by projecting compressional longtitudinal sound waves and the cross angled reflections and refractions of the waves as the sound pattern spreads to set up a moire pattern in a room. If a moire pattern of sound is in any way similar in behavior to moire patterns photographed as holograms created by lasers, then it is easy to understand why an object as small as the head of a pin can dramatically influence a bass range sonic (either to snuff it or enhance it), by moving the head of a pin through an area whose radius is no larger than the head of the pin itself. Comprehendo? Regards decompressing a compressed tape, anyone should be able to coax higher fidelity out of such compression, once they catch on to the tuning abilities inherent in sonically exciting mass objects such as the snowflakes I have designed and use here. In similar light, sonically tuned environments may prove useful up the line for being able to more usefully tell quality differences between kinds of recordings, medias, reproducings, and compression techniques in the business of sound. UPDATE - January 15, 1992 ------------------------------------------------------------- One thing not mentioned lately is that all testing is now done with the DBE (Dynamic Bass Expander) ON. What has happened is that gradually acquired tuning techniques have gotten around an earlier problem wherein the DBE tended to produce a sort of echoing effect that was unnaturual in the sound. But this is no longer the case. By the way the whole-room-sensitivity is back in the picture. A pencil on a nearby table can be a major spoiler depending on its exact position or lateral alignment facing (say) sideways to the main sound image. Even a bent paper clip on a shelf has better/worse position sensitivity. It also seems the whole system is more distinctly responsive to ambient temperature, pressure, and humidity changes. This has been suspected for awhile, and was finally demonstrated most clearly overnight. Yesterday as the system was shut off the temperature was above freezing, it had been raining, the humidity was high, and a blizzard was just starting to move in. The temperature dropped to deep arctic lows overnight and the moisture laden air dried up completely. In first turning on the system today, the sound was noticably hardened, shrill, with distortion throughout the sound range requiring a few minutes of fine tuning of snowflakes to bring back a reasonable fidelity into the system. This sort of thing has happened before. But this is the first time it occurred in a setting whose variables had been pinned down to the point of KNOWING that cold dry arctic air with pressure and humidity differences had changed major sonic characteristics in the room. The honey upon which sit the snowflakes has hardened, if an empirical arguement is needed to support a supposition that humidity can effect the sonic intunement of the snowflakes or rather, the sonic response sensitivity of a sonically vibrating room. By the way, I must have done something right today. I have just turned on the CD player with a disk of swing classics which have been digitalized for CD play. As previously reported in tests in files SOUND1.TXT through SOUND3.TXT, this CD disk has always been troublesome. In the main its bass has been a loose kind of rubbery detached floating low-gain boomer with no tone or scale and attempts to focus in some tone has led to rattle or complete snuffout of all bass. Today some low frequency boom is still around, but there is also volume gain, TONE, and SCALE in the bass. I didn't have to do a thing. I turned on the CD player and have the best sound yet heard for the CD disk. (Best Of The Big Bands, Vol. 1, AAD, Distributed by LDMI, S-4509). At least for some of the cuts. On the down side, you should hear the real mean slow rumbling booms and kablamos floating around in the air for bass in the Glen Miller Orchestra playing Pennsylvania 6-5000. It sounds TERRIBLE. Well, that's enough for THIS compact disk. Back to the FM radio. UPDATE - January 21, 1992 ---------------------------------------------------------------- An idea occurred to me today. This was a chance to try a new test in realizing that one variable which had not been pursued with any intelligence was the exact way in which snowflake controllers could be focused, relative to the sound stream. In this case, the idea was simply to turn all of the snowflakes into a parallel arrangement (in difference to the splay arrays currently in effect) to see what this might do to the sonic characters of sound from the Getto Blaster. The project was invoked by an increasingly frustrating inability over the past two days to achieve any kind of fidelic tuning beyond a certain point. In fact, the tuning had been progressing backwards for the two days, with the sonic qualities in the sound system inexorably deteriorating badly for the worse no matter what I did. The system was back in a state of collapse. Only this time it was not a sudden abrupt catastrophic collapse of a whole range of sound (as had earlier happened when the whole of the bass range vanished in a few seconds a couple of weeks ago). This time it was a slow and almost invisible deterioration, like mice nibbling away on an Italian's cheese stash. As just said, the deterioration had been slow but inexorable. First, the bottom bass had disappeared. And then shrills and distortions starting moving in permanently in the higher ranges. And then the middle ranges started to stiffle up, in strange sounding cross harmonics and sour sounding musics. And finally there was nothing to listen to all without stark discomfort. Already having turned some snowflakes by 90 degrees to be face-on to the sound image a couple of weeks back, I decided to try turning ALL of the snowflakes by 90 degrees to ALL be face tuned, since it was suddenly self evident that this was a distinct variable and should be tried. Soon after in starting this, it seemed I could hear that the BEST place to face the snowflakes was straight to the back wall, instead of splayed toward the main sound image behind the windows, after a turn of 90 degrees. HARD DRIVING PISTON VRS INVISIBLE POWER PUMPS ---------------------------------------------------------------- Right at the beginning, as the test got started, some immediate improvements seemed to arrive. So I kept on going, thinking maybe this was going to be the big one, finally. One thing noticed along the way was that during the time when about 2/3 of the snowflakes had been turned to face straight to the back wall (instead of splayed inward like cars in a drive-in theatre to focus behind the windows) the right speaker cone was driving in and out like a steam locomotive's piston. You could see its little center area punching in and out at high speed at near maximum throw as the speaker produced hard but unmusical bass responses and you could almost imagine the little voice coil trying to incandesce. But shortly thereafter, after fiddling with a few more of the snowflakes, the cone was absolutely stationary even though there was more deep bass and more powerful volume in the overall sound. There wasn't even a quiver in the cover over the voice coil so locked in stable had the cone become. This has been an impression maintained all along, that the most efficient operation for a speaker driver is when the cone is stationary. It implies that the forward and backward movement of the cone is being equalized (so to speak) by impacting returning sound waves from room reflections, the result being that the cone hardly seems to move at all (in fact so slightly that no visible motion can be seen by the eye) in order to most efficiently keep the sound stream re-enforced and rejuvinated as the speaker operates to keep pumping against the established momentums of the sound stream. It becomes a question of cause and effect in a sort of Law of Expanding returns, stated as: HIGHEST EFFICIENCY IS LEAST CHAOS IN THE GREATEST HARMONY, WITH MINIMUM ENERGY NEEDED TO SUSTAIN MAXIMUM HARMONY IN THE ABSENCE OF CHAOS. Another thing was noticed along the way. The right hand speaker had become particularly alive to MONO IN STEREO effects. In fact it was the best state yet in terms of overall fidelity, and open air clarity top to bottom in the sound range, plus in the wide spread of images sideways and rearward to comprise the main sound area, when playing by itself in Mono. However the Left hand speaker was a dud. And by the time all of the snowflakes had been carefully tuned into the 'facing-the-wall' alignment, there was no MONO IN STEREO effects to speak of, it was nothing. This was true for both speakers. That does not mean to say that other snowflakes, other speakers, other experimenters, may find the situation very different regards doing such a test (all snowflakes focused facing directly to the back wall, or partially so turned). (See topic: THEORY PROLOGUE - wave impact entropy vibrations at the start of the APPENDIX.2 file for more information on the nature of invisibly vibrating speaker cones and how this effects the sound stream). NOTICABLE EFFECTS IN PARALLEL TUNING ---------------------------------------------------------------- And so soon enough, all of the snowflakes were facing laterally straight to the back wall, including all of the snowflakes both edge-on, and those few still turned by 90 degrees relative to the rest. But definately no cigar. Three noticable effects were now apparent, compared to previous tests. 1. The sound inexorably became hardened and solid, like a disco sound, the more the snowflakes were fine tuned in this new alignment all uniformly parallel facing straight to the back wall. This includes snowflakes everywhere throughout the living room area including two on the TV set and the one snowflake under it. 2. But, also, the vibration disappeared. The snowflakes had stopped vibrating. So had the table, no vibration of any extent anywhere. 3. And the open air sonics, as in hearing a live instrument in a room, had vanished. There was no reverb (if that's the word) echoing sideways between (or behind) the instruments. At this point I deemed the test done, since the sonic result had finally come downhill all the way. And only that the sonic result was downhill all the way, was all that was learned from this test. Except for the fact that along the way the MONO IN STEREO effect for the Right hand speaker was greatly enhanced to be at its best yet. But, at that moment, any fidelity was in the system only when playing that speaker in Mono. BACK TO THE ORIGINAL SNOWFLAKE CONTROLLER FOCUS METHODS ---------------------------------------------------------------- The next day started immediately with me starting to tune the snowflakes out of the parallel arrangement back into splay array by twist turning them back again through 90 degrees or thereabouts. As I began to turn the snowflakes back to splay alignment all roughly focused to the main sound image area behind the windows, the open air sonics (the Airframe in the sound) inexorably started coming back into the room. It was like fresh air starting to pour into a solid musty feeling closet. In fact my sinuses began to clear, and I hadn't noticed they were stuffy. Along the way when turning the snowflakes back to splay alignments (roughly focused to the main sound image area behind the windows), is that a quick MONO IN STEREO test showed that the Right hand speaker was producing some MONO IN STEREO effects (nothing impressive) but the Left hand speaker at this moment was a complete DUD in Mono. Most complete DUD yet heard. There was NOTHING. The Left speaker gave only a tiny little sound, all issuing from the front of the speaker box itself. It was like holding a giant full weather balloon in the Right hand, and a soft soccer ball in the Left hand. When pushing the balance toggle all the way to the bottom (for the Right speaker), then all the way to the top (for the Left speaker), it was as different as expensive ear phones vrs an old telephone reciever, so bad was the dud state of the Left hand speaker. However, a few quick adjustments of a few snowflakes to boost the MONO IN STEREO range of the Right speaker; all done by tuning a few snowflakes on the Left side of the table and none on the Right; immediately brought some MONO IN STEREO effects to the Left speaker, but nothing impressive, just something there in the air. This avenue was not explored further, here. The intent had been simply to double check the Mono levels to see what was going on with a mixture of snowflake focuses, some tuned through a 90 degree rotation and straight to the back wall, and others again splay-tuned to the main sound image behind the window. As just reported, the Mono in Stereo effects were not impressive. After this, all of the snowflakes were retuned as fast as possible into inward splay focusing to the main sound image behind the window. COPING WITH THE SAME PROBLEM AGAIN UPDATE - January 22, 1992 ---------------------------------------------------------------- And now, once again, was the main problem of before. The system was unstable and I could not control the fidelity of the sound. And what little quality I had was inexorably starting to fade again the more I tuned. It quickly got to be nitty gritty time. This meant trying outside the limits concidered from previous tests to be constant standards. Three more of the snowflakes were turned by 90 degrees to be face-on to the main sound image, three of the snowflakes standing in partner with another snowflake were removed, and two of the partnered snowflakes were turned back from a 90 degree rotation to an edge-on focus on a parallel axis near the partner, trying to see what would happen, and the perception was that the overall sonic quality marginally improved with each change made. Nevertheless, a main problem still persisted. This is that in getting a really good higher end and midrange reponse, the bottom bass could be stiffled right out, it simply went away. But in getting bottom bass back, the upper end of the sound range would go into stridency, snuff, and strange cross harmonic distortions would instantly crop up. These problems soon began to resolve themselves as another effect now began to be noticed in attempting to re-gain tuning to the big open bottom bass. Bottom bass turned out to be a very subtle tuning at this stage. Tuning a snowflake could now make very small immediate differences in the apparent sound of the bass range, and it could take several seconds for the sound pattern to spread and rebuild through the room in nuances of such tuning, in many instances, it turns out. Oho! something was discovered: It is an UPPER level of sonics in the sound stream that is producing more impressive bottom bass effects. This UPPER level means the room's reflective responses. Here is what is meant by bottom bass. When the bottom bass is tuned in, the bass drum sounds like you are standing there listening where it is being struck, it no longer has a thump or thud quality but rather a strong tone-filled PUMP like a firm repercussion in the strike. This form of deeper repercussion takes a part of a second to expand and fill out in its full sound, just like a bass drum heard live when you are there listening to it. The same is even more so for a large low tuned tympani (kettle drum). However, when in the act of tuning a snowflake, this repercussive range may in certain instances be only subtely heard until the room has gained its formal response, and even then the nuance of change may be very subtle. Then, several snowflakes can be tuned, each adding a small subtle nuance to the repercussive range, until there you have it, it has suddenly opened up into a big clear plastic skinned kablammo booming and reverberating down there in the bass range, and clearly out there at a point source, in the huge sound image area behind the windows. At the same time, by tuning and waiting to hear the room's formal response, fidelity in the upper portions of the sound stream started to be repaired. But not predictably. Good things came, and went, as I went around and around the circle, tuning, retuning, hoping to coax out a little more fidelity here, and a little more there, by drips and drabs. DELIBERATELY BRINGING IN CROSS HARMONIC DISTORTIONS TO BE ABLE TO FOCUS THROUGH IT TO GET SOMETHING BETTER ---------------------------------------------------------------- Another thing which gradually became sort of definative during this tuning, is that sour music or a sense of phase harmonic distortions, which are easy to bring into the sound in this kind of tuning, seem to be in fact fidelity which is not properly focused. To elaborate, I started tuning some snowflakes to enhance this strange kind of distorting effect, and then began to find that by very subtle tunings, and waiting for the room to reach its final sonic resonse, that the strange cross harmonic distortions began to clarify into more precise audiophile reproductions of different instruments. Bear in mind that this is not an all-in-one form of tuning with the tuning of one snowflake producing a final miraculous cure to everything. This kind of tuning means getting a little bit of THIS, then a little of THAT, then a little bit more of THIS again, then some more of THAT. The point is that I had to deliberately CHOOSE to go into a region of more ridiculous interharmonic distortion, listening for a certain strange kind of echoing effect, before passing through this phase into a more phonetic overall result. And it worked. Let's not create an illusion of psychological hearing where the physics do not exist. This sound is NOT audiophile class at this moment as the system plays away. There is coloration, and certain ranges of sound are not sweet but have subtle distortions, and the high end range including cymbols and violins is not strongly amplified as it should be. Nevertheless there is a much more acceptable opened up hearing in the whole sound range top to bottom. In particular there is stuff heard in the troublesome lower midrange (for instance bass cellos), but this is not strongly developed at the moment. It has been far more developed in other tests and stages, but not at this stage with the bottom bass as developed as it is now as of this moment. Plenty good for background listening. At this point, the drivers of the speakers are immobile, no motion can be seen in the cones. And the snowflakes are again vibrating strongly at different rates of vigor around the room. Further, the locations on the table which have from time to time been the most vigrously vibrating are again vibrating with energy as strong as ever. One clue along the way was that the aforementioned strange harmonics could also include more clear-cut imaging separation between point source instruments. For instance a reasonably fidelic saxaphone somewhere near the middle of the sound picture could separate and move out far off into the depths of the far Left field, but become highly harmonically distorted. However, very wide separation was there, perhaps matching the actual degree of separation on all three axis (width, depth, and hight), when a large swing orchestra was being recorded. Typically, better fidelity tunings lost some of the striking separations, in taking advantage of the strange harmonics to nevertheless bring in more sonic 'Airframe' space both around and behind the instruments in the orchestra. At the same time, some striking unusual behaviors in the sound could be tested. For example, at one point, in tuning a snowflake sitting on the rearward end of a flat file cabinate immediately around the corner against the South wall of the living room by the kitchen doorway, it brought in image separation so spread apart that the Left part of the swing band orchestra could be heard coming from up front as normal, from the table. But the saxaphone section was coming entirely from around the back way; entirely around through the kitchen and out through the back other doorway to the distant back corner of the dining area, arriving all of it, through the kitchen from my Right, as I faced straight ahead to the Left end of the table. That is exactly how I heard it, that large section of the orchestra was coming entirely from my right side, around through the kitchen next to where I was standing tuning the snowflake at the file cabinate in the living room. Up went my ears FAST! I could instantly tell that this stereo section was coming from the right side of the orchestra, even though in this case ALL of that section's sound was wrapping around through the kitchen, the longest way possible, to get to me. At the same time, that sound was very clear because of the 'Airframe' effect. But this was an ephemeral event. I could bring in this eerie major displacement, or dissolve it, simply by turning the snowflake on the file cabinate by small iotas. ....Insert: I once also heard a helicopter starting to fly overhead. Startled, both the dog and I looked up simultaneously to the windows listening to the approaching helicopter. I went to the dining room windows to look out, but there was nothing there, the sky was clear. What I had heard was a momentary powerful deep whap whap whap which had momentarily started up then dissolved in a state of great instability while fine tuning the snowflake under the TV set. Both a chance tuning, and my body, had contributed to the sudden out of place standing wave generation which sounded just like the powerful beating blades of a helicopter.... After noting the 'displaced saxaphone section of orchestra effect' while standing at the file cabinate, I dissolved it and carried on with the job of hoping to obtain better listenable fidelity with a big bottom bass and good clarity top to bottom. As said, the intriguing orchestra section's total sonic wrapping was a brief event and I quickly passed over it. UPDATE - January 23, 1992 ---------------------------------------------------------------- I heard something new for the first time a few moments ago. There is a SECOND Upper Level response in the room, when tuning in the deeper bottom bass ranges. Specifically, I had already yesterday come to understand the 'Nuances' that occur after the fact, when tuning a snowflake, wherein if there is a sufficient pause when handling a snowflake, a nuance of the bottom bass expands into the sound stream after a moment's delay. This is what has been called the 'UPPER' Level in the sound, the resultant room response to a tuning. (Upper Level responses are mentioned in topic: COPING WITH THE SAME PROBLEM AGAIN, January 22, 1992, further above). Specifically a few moments ago, in tuning a snowflake, I heard a very strong nuance in more amplification in a bottom octave of the bottom bass, then hello, seconds later, as I waited frozen motionless, it faded again! What? I started testing accutely here, and realized that there IS without arguement a SECOND Upper Level response, which can come in a second or two later, on top of the first UPPER Level response. And now I believe this SECOND Upper Level response could be due to input from every vibrating solid object in the room, feeding back into the sound stream, and whose vibratings obviously take longer to get generated before becoming stablized. Hence there are THREE fundamental responses needing to be challenged when tuning a snowflake. 1. IMMEDIATE: When a snowflake is touched there is usually an immediate response for the better or worse. At times, as previously reported, the response can be instant enough to be a kick of sound clicking instantly in or out, or an instrument instantly jumping to a new place in the picture of sound in the giant sound image behind the windows. 2. UPPER Level: This is after a delay, when room echo responses enter in and a nuance of change for the better or worse enters the sound stream. It can be a subtle swell in a range of sound, or the overall volume level, or a sudden new hearing in a lower octave in the bottom bass, or harder higher frequency distortions, or combinations thereof. 3. OUTER Level: This is after the second delay, when vibrating solid objects start to stablize at their new rate of vibration, imparting a firm final ingredient into the room's responses. This can either snuff the gain made in the sonics by the UPPER Level response. Or, if done just right, imparts a further fidelic gain in the overall sound range. It is in learning the existence of, and quickly thereafter learning some control of, this third response, which has as of this moment been producing the best overall fidelic sound (top to bottom) produced for this experimental stereo sound system yet to date. I had to put one new snowflake in place by the outer Right side at the rear of the Right speaker to get to the real good stuff in sound being reported in the paragraph immediately above. And now, here is an update report: The sound quality is carrying from tape to tape, and from tape cassette to the FM stereo radio. It is the first time that such continuity between medias has been so well stablized. At this moment, everything in the environment is vibrating to some degree. For example a roll of paper towel on the kitchen counter, and a cluster of bananas on the kitchen counter, can both be felt to be vibrating in the power pulses of the bass notes. And there is, finally, plenty of bottom bass boom with ample reverberation and headroom down there, with room to play around, i.e. tuning a bit of this, or that, without loosing the bottom bass. I'm back to a large volume with the volume knob set to 35% only. In fact, at the moment this is the loudest the sound has ever been at a volume of 35%, more than enough to have to raise our voices in talking with someone standing nearby listening. Granted, once again, this is not audiophile, in that instruments expecially higher frequency ones, do not sound authentic as they would sound if played in the flesh, live in the room. There is distinct coloration, though not as much as before. The coloration is much like saying that a grand piano sounds like it is being played as a large electronic keyboard. And there is a degree of hotness in sounds such as from alto saxes and clarinetes. And holy smoke EVERY arbitrary object in the environment is now responsive to touch, more than ever before. A piece of paper on the kitchen table can do more harm than you want to believe unless it is made to lay just perfectly and nowhere else. I know this from having moved the paper, then had the great anti joy of having to move the paper back to the exact spot, while waiting to show a demonstration of this particular exact setup and sound improvements to an individual due at the condo within the half hour. Which of course is a fundamental problem if wishing for a good system to listen to for background music with a low powered sound generating system such as the Fisher 8400 Getto Blaster. And living, so to speak, right at home inside your loudspeaker, the loudspeaker now comprising the whole of the environment, with me walking around in it. In fact anything touched in the environment can be a major spoiler, so the system as it sits at the moment is extremely unstable, a very tenuous thread holds together all of the factors of the tuning and the slightest disturbance can throw it out of whack. Also, the fidelic quality of my favorite FM station seems to be drifting back and forth subtely and slowly. At times the bottom bass can be powerful enough to vibrate even the upstairs rooms of the condo, where the whole system can be heard almost as loud and clear upstairs in the back rooms. And at other times the sound has drifted into higher end distortion and muffled bottom bass, then the sound drifts back into real strong clear stuff. On the other hand, a long standing goal has just been achieved. This is in finally being able to make sonic sense of the noise known as Peer Gynt Suite's 'In The Hall Of The Mountain King'. (This recording is: Grieg - Peer Gynt Suites, Opus 46, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Jonel Perles conductor. Allegro, ACS 8030). In past tests it has been possible to get reasonable fidelity for this tape including strong resonant bass fiddles and tympanis, but 'The Hall Of The Mountain King' itself has ALWAYS been nothing but a collapse into dirty noise and an abrupt big drop in volume. Too much information at once for the system to handle. I had always thought the abrupt drop in volume was due to the recording, or mix engineers, deliberately dropping the volume for this tail end particularly super whole orchestra passage. But this turns out not to be the case. The volume drop had been in my system. Yesterday, some testing was done to try and get something out of this piece and there was certain clarifications in such as tympanis, but different parts of the recording throughout the sound range kept breaking up and the final super passage would collapse into a jumble of distortions even if there was still some volume in the passage as it crapped on to the very end. However, today, in trying 'The Hall Of The Mountain King', the system sailed right through the passages with NO breaking up of the sound. The bass fiddles stayed strong and resonant throughout, and the final passage was passed through without any part of the passage collapsing. It was (no question) somewhat distorted, and was heaving around almost to the breaking point. But ALL of the information was THERE right through to the end. In fact I was able to hear that the final crescendo includes TWO different tympanis being hammered fast by the percussionist. Once again, there has to be criticism with no ultimate boast. The good news is that, in particular, in the final passage, there was distortion, but no breaking up of the sound, for example. And, did the low tone bass fiddles ever grunt and resonate away, welling up powerfully in volley after volley out of the main sound image areas behind the windows, when playing 'In The Hall Of The Mountain King'. The Left to Right wide spread of the orchestra was also extremely well defined, with point source instrument locations well off into the rear Left and Right rear of the whole image area. It is impressive, I have to say. The bad news is that the final tympani crescendo rattled the speakers slightly as well as not being fully sonic in terms of full tympani tones and timbre for instance, and in not being able to hear cellos or violins with real phonic clarity, for example. And some of the brass sections were more like just indications, not brilliently clearified for sure. This is during the final frenzied few seconds of this music. The good news was that it did in fact stay in focus right to the very end, despite obvious hardships being endured by the stereo system. Nevertheless, an empirical mechanical variable has been proven: that snowflake image tuning can work around severe distortions either on a media (such as the tape) or native inability of a stereo system to handle it (the Fisher 8400 Getto Blaster), and by unravelling the empirical complications (by intuning of THREE levels of room responses) produce a reasonable reproduction of an otherwise severely distortioned sound stream. Thereby re-affirming that hexagonal factal (snowflake) imagery constitutes an inherent principle in the propigation of sound, which operates linked-in via controller means (the mass object snowflakes) to establish a steady state complex moire pattern of sonic attributes in a room, wherein certain parts of the invisible hexagonal fractal images comprise points of positive re-enforcement, and others comprise points of negative cancellation, all under vigorous rigorous organization. This goes past the traditional concept of circular concentric rings of simple positive and negative re-inforcement on a 360 degree spherical basis, where all sound is supposedly entirely due to lineally radiating propigating up and down longtitudinal compression waves. The longtitudinal compression waves generate the sound stream, but the final characteristics of the resulting sound itself are due to final formation of a steady state room filling moire pattern in a three dimensional display which is simultaneously responsive on all axis of length, width, and depth. This is true for both live sound production, (for instance me talking to you in a room), and after the fact reproduction (after recording) via various medias such as tape, CD player, or radio, using loudspeakers and electronics, etc. Once again, the three basic levels of response are: 1. IMMEDIATE Level: What happens when the sound issuing from a sound source, directly encounters a snowflake controller (and also other mass objects in the environment). 2. UPPER Level: What happens after room reflections and reverberations synch in, including cross harmonic echo effects. 3. OUTER Level: What happens when resulting vibrations in random solid objects in the environment finally stablize in the power of the sound stream to produce a constant responsive resultant effect, with the solid's vibrations kicking the sound sonics in a re-enforcing way similar to the way a solidly pumping speaker cone (no visible piston throw) more powerfully seems to energize the total pattern of sound. ELABORATING A PREVIOUS REMARK - January 24, 1992. --------------------------------------------------------------- Getting back to a previous remark made in topic; UPDATE - Janaury 23, 1992: The observation that a grand piano was sounding like a giant electronic keyboard has validity from a different point of view. I suspect that in instances where a piano has been recorded with a microphone (or mikes) thrust right into the piano close to the vibrating piano strings, then it will not be possible to get an audiophile response in a stereo system to truthfully recreate the sound the piano makes as if being played live in a room with you the listener in the flesh positioned somewhere back from the piano, hearing it. The very best reproduction of the piano would be exactly what you would hear if your head was thrust under the open top and your ear cocked to the vibrating strings. In other words you would hear what the microphone hears, because this is exactly what the microphone hears when recording the piano. In this, the microphone will be picking up ambiant vibrations coming from other strings in a very wide band of resonances which are spread out left to right in a very wide proximity array from all of the strings actually being activated by piano notes. The very wide spread would include symphathetic resonances in harmonic activity (think of India Sitars if wondering about sympathetic resonances), plus other lingering notes of the piano which are fading out but are not gone completely and are still producing sound which the mike will pick up. Notwithstanding that when in an audience, the piano is then a small local point source object up in front of you, but when your head is positioned under the open top of a grand piano and hovering right over the strings, the piano has then become a major orchestra as a self contained instrument whose wide band sonic width is at least as wide as the piano's soundboard itself, which can be very wide indeed in terms of proportionate distances on either side of your ears when so close up. Without doubt a piano sounds very different when listened to right close up to its strings. For instance, when back from the piano as a listener, notes can fade fast as more notes are played. But with the head thrust right there by the strings, there is far more to hear in the notes that hang around as they fade, these can be clearly heard when close to the piano strings but are too faint to be heard when standing back in the audience. All of this in a reproduction system such as the system being used for experiments in my Condo, means that I have to account for this close-proximity wide spread ambience for pianos, which is due to the recording mikes. I have learned some things to listen for. It means that instead of trying to tune a jazz tape (in which the piano has obviously been miked close to the strings), for an overall reasonable facimily for such a grand piano I must instead tune for wide spread cross harmonic echoes and overtones, like seeking a blurred spectrum line instead of one that is singly precise per given note. The blurred spectrum line holds all of the cross harmonic information picked up by the mike, of course. In consequence to this, bottom bass power, and other fidelities, are dramatically enhanced when the wide band (blurred spectrum) piano effect is sought in the snowflake tuning techniques being used by me to get more faithful reproduction. What I have to try to achieve in a faithfull reproduction, is the sound I hear if my head was thrust under the open lid of the grand piano and my ear cocked at the vibrating strings. In specific reference to the above remarks regarding pianos, the example has been brought into clear cut thought, in using a tape entitled: THE AHMAD JAHMAL TRIO 'THE AWAKENING', MCA IMPULSE 1, HX PRO B NR, MCAC 5644. If not actually recorded with the mikes hovering right over the vibrating strings, the mikes were at least far closer to the soundboard than was the player, Ahmad Jahmal. Cross harmonic influences in the sonic pressures would be evident even in the use of close proximity mikes designed to ignore sounds from distant sources. And this thinking is what has allowed me to finally start coaxing some real reasonable piano fidelity and drum set sonics out of this tape, as of today, January 24, 1992. In point of fact, the powerful hard driving bass fiddle is not rattling the speakers, for the first time. And very strong hits, when the drummer, piano, and bass, all hit the same note hard simultaneously, is not causing the system to momentarily crap. Both these lessers were always present whenever previously playing this tape. But no longer are they there, today. UPDATE - January 25, 1992, 2:30 AM. --------------------------------------------------------------- In point of fact sound testing can be addictive, sort of. At this hour, while working on the writing of these reports, the stereo system is on FM stereo radio tuned to my favorite station. Five minutes in tuning the room has brought in a very enjoyable background music. Room tuning in this specific moment has meant adjusting a cardboard carton of our computer software anti-virus packages on the table near the Left speaker, a utility knife on a table to the right beside me at the computer, a felt point writing pen on a table beside me to the Left, a coffee cup on a small stand beside me to the right, and a couple of other small things also on the small stand, with the sound system on a table behind me to the Left. In carefully tuning these few objects, and touching not a single snowflake, I have brought in a very enjoyable music to listen too. Let me elaborate. Ten years ago I owned a pair of ADS audiophile speakers. These cost $750 the pair at a quality large stereo store whose wares included tapes, LP's, the whole works. The speakers (and all of the Hi Fi gear) were eventually sold to finance other things. I bought the ADS speakers because I liked the sound. If you were listening for certain things you would not be impressed with these ADS speakers, but for simple enjoyable listening they were likeable without reservation, and people who heard them remarked how likeable they sounded. So it is, here with the sound sytem as it now sits, playing. I like the sound. Technically, there is this happening: there is bottom base extending down through more than one octave below the usual, and the volume control is set at 20% (which is not loud since a brother is sleeping upstairs). Yet I can feel vibrations in the wooden doors of the kitchen cupboards, and in a roll of paper towel on the kitchen counter. These vibrations are teasing the fingertips with each bass note in the music. Not having anything else for comparison, I don't honestly know if ANY sound system playing at the same volume would produce the same vibrations. I just tried music on the TV at a similar volume and can't say I detected any vibrations in the environment (using fingertips) other than in the immediate vacinity of the TV set. On the other hand on the TV set itself I can detect vibrations in the fingertips when playing the stereo system. This may mean something to some readers, then again, perhaps not. It doesn't mean much to me other than to expect that solid objects should be noticably vibrating in the bass notes at long distances from the sound source playing at low volume, in the operation of extremely inefficient very small speaker cones, whose deeper bass is being externally inherently enhanced through excitement by reflective redirections of sonic properties by hexagonal shaped fractal tuning devices, (the snowflakes), as well as some solid's sonic vibrations anti-spoiler input gained by room tuning random and arbitrary objects in the environment. In elaborating on previous remarks regarding deliberate tuning via working in through sour sounding cross harmonic distortions, such a tuning has just occurred, involving the FM stereo radio. On came a piece of music with a strange warbly sour sound in the midrange. In carefully tuning (repositioning) the felt nibbed pen on the table beside me to the Left, the sour cross harmonic suddenly clicked out, to be replaced by a very clear (albeit audibly weak) piano, playing in the middle of the music. I could say it serves to further demonstrate that I am not playing imaginary physics with sound with these sonic experiments. However, you can't believe me except on faith, unless you were here to hear the same thing I did when the piano clicked in, by me merely moving a felt tipped writing pen by about a centimeter or so where it lies on a table. This is a common kind of pen, the kind you buy cheap for less than a dollar in any corner store. ALREADY FAMILIAR --------------------------------------------------------------- Actually, anyone who owns an FM stereo tuner that is not quartz locked, will be analogously familiar already with some of the parameters and techniques in the kind of tunings I have been doing here. This is where the device's dial for FM tuning has to be moved back and forth through a station's frequency to bring in the best FM stereo response. The FM bands are always narrowly precise, but wide rather than instantly IN, instantly OUT. Somewhere through this bandwidth is where the best fidelity for the station is found, by very careful, very slow, tuning, using the FM radio's tuner. And at times, the tuning has to be re-adjusted when the sound diminishes or distorts when the two stereo bands drift back and forth sometimes maximally in synch, and sometimes not, as the station broadcasts. This is the very reason why Quartz Locked FM tuning was developed in the first place, to reduce the tendency for FM to drift in and out of focus and to make it precisely easy to locate the most powerful signal for the station at any time. In my case, with the getto blaster sound system, and controller snowflakes stationed around the environment acting as sonic tuners, differences in sound quality can creep in for a number of reasons, for instance when the base board heaters switch on and the temperature goes up in the immediate vacinity of the table upon which sits the sound source. Not to mention the dog. This little friend moves around the room and lays down, and when he does, so does some better or worse sound of the TV set. Another chance variable is if the honey on which a snowflake sits grows hard enough that the snowflake breaks free of the sticky bond to the solidly vibrating surface, this can have a spoiling effect in the quality of sound, because when unpinned the snowflake may be bouncing up and down randomly in chance titillations from the vibrating surface, but when pinned down the snowflake will be locked in an explicit Up/Down piston mode of vibration in direct synch with the surface's vibrations. And so constructive effect with the snowflake can be immediately regained when the old dried dab is wiped away and a dab of fresh honey is smeared on the surface and the snowflake again pinned down. .... I honestly don't know at this moment if a solidly pinned snowflake is better or worse than one that is pinned, but more able to vibrate sideways, in soft honey. UPDATE - January 25, 1992. --------------------------------------------------- Right now, surface vibrations can be strong enough to propel away or knock over any snowflake (on the table's more vigorously vibrating surfaces) that isn't pinned down with honey. This is with the system being played at 30% to 35% volume. By the way, there is another thing I can mention for the first time. Right now I can hear overtones ringing beyond just the main strike sound on a ride cymbol being played by the drummer in the Spitfire Swing Band. It means I am starting to get sonic resonances stablized in the very higher frequencies of the sound stream, for the very first time. This open air overtone ring in the cymbol is something I thought I could never get with this sound system, given that there has to be limits somewhere as to what this whole system can finally do. Rather than pushing more energy into the higher frequency ranges of the generating system, the far better reverberating sonics in the cymbols seems to have been gained by having pulled down the whole body of sound range in pitch and tone, with the cymbols now partly manifesting in a new way, whose manifestation is coming from more resonantly enhancive excitements in the activity of the tuned environment, so this is causing cymbols to be more natural sounding than before. Oddly enough, the little tweeter that produces the sound for the 23 year old Quasar 24 inch TV set over in the back corner of the living room has always had an ability for producing some delicious ringing overtones in cymbols in music. So there is more to the gaining of overtone ringing in the cymbols coming through the getto blaster than perhaps I have been able to comment on going back two paragraphs above. The fact that a cheapo TV mono speaker is doing it, says that that speaker has inherent capability to do so, which my Fisher 8400 Getto Blaster does not. In which case, I have mechanically contructed an entirely independant external means to get these cymbol ring overtones coaxed out of the sound stream, by using the snowflakes, and, in this instance, by about twenty minutes spent in carefully touch tuning random solid small objects here and there in the whole room environment. The ringing overtone in cymbols was not at this time being sought. (I was investigating greater overall fidelity). It happened that suddenly there it was, the cymbol ringing away in a nice range of overtones for a more authentic and open air sound, as a next track started to play on the tape. It sounded more delicious, that was obvious. Prior to this, cymbols even when reasonably undistorted or even loud and distinct, had always typically had an artificial sound in my experimental system, as if generated electronically by the kind of modern devices which have a keyboard and a selection of push buttons for automatically generating extra musical effects, like a Casio or Yamaha home keyboard. My system's delicious new ingredient in the transience of the big band's ride cymbol was a nice surprise because it had not been missed in any way that represented a challenge. I always knew and had also said that the cymbols didn't sound authentic but had long thought in terms of getting more sound of cymbol and less cymbol distortion but not obvious ringing impressive overtones in a deeper sound overall for any given cymbol. Mind you, this extra transience in the sound of cymbols is not well controlled. Sometimes it is there and sometimes not, as I play through different tapes and as time passes. About two hours after first hearing the new transience in the ride cymbol, I put the same big band track back on the system and as you might expect, there was quite a bit less of the transience than before, but even at that moment I could get some more back by fiddling with a snowflake, or a pencil lying on a table, or a piece of paper. It turns out that transience in the sound of cymbols can be particularly under the influence of miniscule disturbances in the sonic focus of the whole sound stream. Which means it may be particularly hard to control, given the kind of crude controllers I have been using to effect the sound stream and of course the very crude generating source for the sound steam itself (the getto blaster). BIGGER HEXAGONAL FRACTAL (SNOWFLAKE) CONTROLLERS UPDATE - January 26, 1992 --------------------------------------------------------------- Today I was able to gain more firm control of the bottom bass, plus as well, more able control of transient cross harmonic echos whose fidelity when sharpened leads to a more authentic open air live room ambience (Airframe) in the sound stream. This gain was made by the use of larger snowflakes, in principle. This is not an actual larger snowflake, it is actually thirteen snowflakes bonded together with Gell Crazy Glue into a hexagon geometric snowflake array, using seven single snowflakes to create a single large six sided object, then six more snowflakes attached to the outer circumpherence. A few of these, which take time to make, were tried in tests over the months with inconclusive results and hence have never been mentioned in this documentation. This afternoon it happened that one of them fell from a cupboard shelf in the kitchen and broke into two fragments. Well, what else but to try the pieces as resonance controllers. Sure enough, as the first piece was carefully positioned in front of the Right hand speaker (a reasonable guess as to where to try it) an immediate expansion in bottom bass octaves of the sound instantly opened up. The octaves were already there but their sonic qualities were very faint and muffled and not booming at that moment. The second multiple snowflake fragment was tried standing up in front of the Left hand speaker, and an improvement was again immediate, this time in more listenable fidelity in the whole of the sound stream sonic range, rather than another boost in the volume and open air tone of the bottom bass, for instance. With this improved fidelity also came an immediate cancelling of many of a number of minor cross harmonic distortions that had been forcing more tests intended to try to gain a truly likeable sound that would stay reasonably stable for background listening. When these cross harmonics cleared out, it was only a matter of just a few minutes to be able to bring forth a much clearer and more openly sonic live kind of sound than before achieved, since this time it was also much more fidelic, all things concidered. And, okay, for the moment it seems there has been some stablization. The system has been running for three hours as background music and has not caused any hard to handle frustrations in listening. The system still needs improving, if this is possible. But as it sits right now it isn't a source of annoyance with a compulsive need to change it. In contrast, the sound of the TV set in the back corner of the living now seems almost intolerable, in comparison, bearing in mind that it is being sonically kicked in the ass by a factor of, say, 300% due to the sonic controller snowflakes in the environment and so has a much better sound than the manufacturer originally intended. IT IS BETTER WITH THE DBE (DYNAMIC BASS EXPANDER) OFF January 26, 1992 --------------------------------------------------------------- Oho! A pleasant surprise. What a difference. In the December start of a brand new round of experiments (at the time when the snowflakes were uniformly stood upright on end), there was no question that the DBE (Dynamic Bass Expander) of the getto blaster was better ON. In fact I couldn't work with it OFF because there was no bass or higher end to work with. About this has been mentioned somewhere earlier above when pointing out that all sonic tests since then were being done with the DBE turned ON, at least, I think so. This has changed. Now there is no question; there is far more bass plus better higher end fidelity with the DBE (Dynamic Bass Expander) OFF. To repeat, there is no comparison between bass with the DBE ON and OFF. The bass is far better with the DBE OFF. Period. I don't know when this change in sound quality between ON and OFF occurred. It seems that along the way somewhere during the past few days I had turned the DBE OFF, and after walking around listening, came right back and started adjusting snowflakes, rather than turning the DBE back ON first. And so this change in fundamental mechanics in the sound stream's generator source passed quietly by completely blanked from the mind, like when you step on the gas to start driving your car and only then realize you forgot to start the motor. Serendipidous is the only word to describe such an oversight. This afternoon I spotted that the DBE was OFF and reacted; "Hey, how long has THISSS thing been off"? And in pushing in the DBE button to turn it ON, a whole higher end screetchy distortion swept into the sound stream, even as most of the big bottom bass which I now have in place VANISHED. So much for the Dynamic Bass Expander. It works no more. It was like a blaring radio being squeezed in a vice while still blaring. That's how far more the system sounds improved now, with the Dynamic Bass Expander turned OFF. It turns out that the experiments have been able to work around the stereo system itself and are now producing a greater Dynamic Bass Expansion from an entirely different principle. Of course sonic tests are now being done with the DBE turned OFF. In terms of fidelity, instruments which didn't rely on bass responses have always sounded more natural with the DBE turned off so this discovery has been a great gain in enthusiasm towards the experiments and its most recent tests, done without any artificial DBE to spoil things. This includes the tests described in the topic immediately above titled: BIGGER HEXAGONAL FRACTAL (SNOWFLAKE) CONTROLLERS. ABSURBLY SENSITIVE ENVIRONMENT Update continued - January 26, 1992. --------------------------------------------------------------- A ridiculous thing is that over the past few days, the tuning controller scene has become so object sensitive that every snowflake has become a major spoiler, noticably spoiling the sonic atmosphere if the snowflake is not PERFECTLY positioned in its controller contributing sonic focus in a hot spot. Let me declare that a so-said PERFECT sonic focus in not by hard wired fundamental principles. Instead, this is where snowflakes are tried and tested in different hot spots around the environment, and where they seem to contribute to the quality of sound, this becomes their location. Certain locations have become resident hot spots that haven't changed over several months. On the other hand some locations seem to be hot spots for a good sounding snowflake and then later the snowflake has to be removed. Increasingly, any snowflake that has a contributing effect seems to be sitting in a critical hot spot requiring 'Perfect' tuning. PERFECT tuning means the best I can seem to get at that location. Testing which leads to a PERFECT sonic focus is by first twist turning a snowflake on its hot spot by small iotas, and then finally simply touching it to get its maximum effect as a combined resonance controller and vibration expander, where it continues to be double checked again and again as the days pass. Even accidently just making contact with such a 'Perfectly' tuned snowflake can sometimes cause a whole bunch of good stuff in the music to vanish in a instant, like prizes in a lotto when the numbers are read. Something similar can be said for arbitrary and random room objects. Random objects can be said to be those that come and go during the daily cycle of living in the environment. Coffee cups, pieces of paper, etc., these are what you could call 'random'. Whereas 'arbitrary' objects can be said to be those that sit somewhere in a more or less permanent location, such as the two computers, the TV set, objects on books shelves, unused cassette tapes, etc. For example, a dictionary placed on the table beside my computer caused my brother to come downstairs and note that he had heard the higher end become distorted and wondered what I might have done. This was today, this afternoon. Placing the dictionary back in its previous place dissolved the distortion. The whole question of extreme sensitivity to unprincipled ordinary objects may be academic, in that a sneaking suspician I have is that most if not all detectable chaos from randon room object's per their imperfect yearning for pure fidelity might be put out of their misery with more powerful or more fidelic speakers used as the sound generating source. It is suspected that given a better class of speakers, the sound such speakers generate might input enough at the source to overcome interferences (or most interferences) caused by meaningless shaped solid objects reflecting sonically any which way in the environment. Enough said. There is a point to all of the above pantings about sensitivity levels in sonic distrupters. It points to the reality that sonic sound in an enviroment when at its best is a result of a huge number of variables all of which must be working harmonious together to get more powerful positive resonant activities. A slight disturbance in this powerful scene can cause a cascade into chaos. EXTRA SENSITIVE SNOWFLAKES - cont. January 26, 1992. --------------------------------------------------------------- There is a small handful of snowflakes scattered around the environment, each of which has become extraodinarily sensitive regards tuning one or another distinct characterisitic in the attributes comprising the finished sonic picture of the sound I hear in this experimental adventure. In particular, one snowflake sitting on the forward Left edge on the top row of bookshelves against the opposite wall facing the stereo system, has seemingly taken on the task of being a major controller for the quality of higher frequency strike response sonics. In detail, this particular snowflakes can make a snare drum deliver dull thumps or poks, or to respond with tone filled resonances when struck, by how the snowflake responds when it is merely touched in a simple way, as in tapping it, as in tapping a bee on a flower to see if the bee moves or not. It is particularly good for sharpening the tone of bongos and timbales. In fact I invariably test it out to see if there is improvement to be had whenever a piece of music featuring bongos or timbales comes on. Several snowflakes that run in a line along the back of the table, muffle, or bring in more tone into the bottom bass octaves, depending on how they respond when touched or tapped. There is a single snowflake sitting on the upper shelf against the South wall over my main computer. This is a particularly troublesome critter because of what it does. Removing this snowflake is definitately a mistake. So there this snowflake sits in that sonic hot spot. What it does is impart certain levels of improved control into the sonic atmosphere (a little more bottom bass, for instance). But also at the same time it can amplify defects in the sound. In other words, its not to say it increases distortion, rather it amplifies distortions already existing. So this particular snowflake has to be babied with great diligence when testing it, so as to get some controller gain, while trying to leave out amplification of any distortions. A SENSITIVE ROSETTE - cont. January 26, 1992. --------------------------------------------------------------- As further examples of sensitivity, the snowflake rosette stationed at the outer Left side of the Left hand speaker, seems to have a great deal to due with high fidelity itself in the overall sound picture. To handle this rosette's snowflakes means to listen for very minor yet significant improvements in THIS or THAT. but not to expect something big to click IN or OUT, and not to expect a sudden big swelling into a booming bass range, or whatever. Everything these rosette snowflakes do when handled is a subtle contribution that can accumulate for the better when listening carefully, or for the worse if I'm asleep while pretending to be conscious, (meaning for starters if I am standing daydreaming in some quiet private thought internally apart in dual instead of in a state of single minded attention concentrating on the task without interruption for as long as it takes to do a tuning test). This particular rosette is actually a modern remake of an original rosette that was the second ever tried, and when it originally came into being was the entry point into consciously uncovering that sonic properties were being matrixed by principles inherent in six sided geometry. (To re-iterate previous definitions, a 'rosette' is said to be a hexagon image, with snowflakes positioned at each main nodal point comprising the hexagon's six sided symmetry, such that six snowflakes form a circumpherence, and a seventh snowflake sits at the point of center. A rosette can also include the image of a Star of David). Only two rosettes are in use at the present time. There is one on the table beyond the outer Right side of the Right hand speaker. And the above mentioned rosette is sitting to the Left on the table beyond the Left hand speaker. Both rosettes are simple six sided hexagrams, consisting of seven snowflakes positioned at key nodal points comprising the hexagram. (A Star of David image is not being used in either rosette, or anywhere else in the experiment at this moment). The two rosettes are not symmetrically identical. The Left hand rosette is about two inches further forward on the table and has a slightly larger diameter. No single snowflake in the Left side rosette seems to hold a sonic blueprint for delivering or cancelling a particular range of sound, or of images in the instrumentational picture in the giant sound image picture behind the windows. And yet, fussing with these seven rosette-arrayed snowflakes improves or diminishes tones and timbres in the sound quality of different instruments and voices throughout the sound range. Each change is subtle, so testing has to be done with baited breath and extremely steady fingertips. Tests in this rosette cannot be hurried. The only reason I am mentioning these things (critical particular snowflakes) is in the advent that anyone else gets absorbed into some similar kind of sonic experiments. Then they may appreciate the notes and comments I have just made in the above paragraphs, as being in the form of helpful hints and clues to illuminate insights faster than I got them. NEW KIND OF TUNING CONTROLLER HANDLING TECHNIQUES -------------------------------------------------- Continued, January 26, 1992. Anyway, I am starting to become once again hard at work on a new challenge, bringing forth more and more of the second octave which has begun to appear down below in the deep bottom bass range. It means I have to patiently learn and aquire new tuning techniques to understand what some responses are actually doing, in order to isolate more constructive vrs destructive variables and how to enter into the new handling of abrupt major and minor shifts in the sound stream in sensing in advance what is going to happen two or three seconds later after a response initiates. At this stage, the frenetic pace has slowed to a crawl. This means touching a snowflake, pacing around for five or so minutes, then taking a chance and touching another snowflake sonic controller. And so it has been going over the past four hours. SENSITIVE MOBILE TUNERS Cont. January 28, 1992. --------------------------------- One effect that is now established beyond question is that I can tune in MORE bass and higher end fidelity without, than with, the DBE function ON. And yet, after a few minutes or hours effort I can have the situation entirely reversed, with a more obviously bass end and overall fidelity with the DBE function ON. One thing I have noticed is that when my environmentally tuned Bass Exapansion is in place with the DBE function OFF, and the system is obvious superior, when the DBE function is turned ON there is an immediate dissapearance and dysfunction in the bass, and the whole bass range continues to slowly deteriorate for several seconds after. I take this slowly fading over the hill vanishing to be due to the sonic responses which are being imparted by the vibrating solid random objects throughout the environment, whose total contributory element gets clashed and has to change as the DBE function is switched ON to suddenly impart a different character in the wave forms being issued from the generator source (the loudspeaker boxes), wherein the difference in character is not friendly to the harmonic yearns being satisfied up to that moment by the vibrations of solids in the sound stream. The delayed wave pulses being released by the DBE Function obviously fall out of synch with the whole room's resonances, at that moment. LIVE ROOM SOUND AMBIANCE COLLAPSES WITH THE DBE FUNCTION ON January 29, 1992. ----------------------------------------------------------- Taking advantage of this awareness, I can report something else. Right now I have the system calibrated to where there are a lot of transient echoes moving back and forth around back there in the giant image of sound behind the windows. The FM stereo is tuned to my favorite FM station - swing, big band, big singers, no rock. I have the tuner dial carefully tuned for maximum stereo signal, and the volume knob has been slowly turned back and forth through a tiny range above or below about 1% change in volume setting to come into a maximum likeable effect, in which the volume of both speakers seem to be at their most harmoneous cross reflecting equalization. This is with the volume control at about 24% gain. At this moment I am rather pleased with the sound. And now for a report on the system's DBE function (Dynamic Bass Expander). When the DBE function is turned ON, the boomy echos in the bottom bass fade out, the higher end turns high pitched and shrilly. And the open air transient echos in the whole sound picture collapses. The change is obviousx, as much as in an ordinary stereo set switching from stereo to Mono. In my system (at this moment) the collapse can be described by a different analogy. I can say that a western singer sounds like he is standing in front of me with his band arrayed on the stage surrounding, not unlike me standing in a night club with cotton in my ears, when the DBE function is OFF. The cotton is the non-authenticity and diminisher against total live performance presence unlike my ears operating at their peak wide open capacity. I mean to create the image of a distinctly live sound presence (despite colorations) in my current system at this very moment, vrs a lack of totally authentic live sound power but without much distortion. Ie. sonic differences with, or without, cotton in my ears. In contrast, when I turn ON the DBE function, that enhanced live room sonic characteristic of the music collapses and it sounds just like an ordinary stereo set sitting in a room. The contrast effects the front to back imaging as well. When the DBE function is OFF (at this moment) I can stand looking around at various places to the giant sound image, listening to point source instrument locations both closer to the front and farther to the back in the giant sound image, as well as to the Left and Right well beyond the up front tiny location of the speaker boxes. In contrast, with the DBE function ON, I now have to cock an ear to hear where certain things are coming from. I can hear that there is front to back echoing in the stereo image but can't tell how far back something is until I have listened long enough to begin to interpret it. Can you picture what I mean? With the DBE function OFF I can look around to see how well the point sources are defined and can easily listen for small pockets of local distortion here or there all around the huge giant vibrating sonic stereo picture image well out hehind (beyond) the windows. With the DBE function ON, I must concentrate in listening long enough to be able to interpret many things, and there is distortion everywhere in the sound stream, not withstanding that the roomy bottom bass is gone. FM OUT-OF-PHASE CROSS CHANNEL DISTORTION CAUSING HISS YES/NO ? Update - January 29, 1992. --------------------------------------------------------------- But here is the other fact which I am just getting to now, having used the whole of the last few paragraphs to set the stage for this report: At the moment the DBE function is switched ON, the sound system begins to HISS LIKE HELL. Now, normally, I would have thought the hiss is ordinary out-of-phase FM tuning, or so-called FM frequency drift. But this is not the case, at this moment. If the hiss IS from out of phase FM channeling, then I have worked around it and dissolved it (or are somehow cancelling it out) using my acquired hyper fine tuning skills, in coaxing more responsive performances out of the environment using sonic snowflake controllers. IF the HISS with the DBE function ON is NOT out of phase FM signal, then I don't know for sure WHAT it is, but suspect it would have to do with the present behavior of the DBE function's electronic delayed wave kick releasing, and how this results in performance in the sonically tuned environment at this moment. ....I have just done a double check and hear one thing for sure perhaps as probable cause. It is that the hiss may be higher frequency cross harmonic distortions. To double check the first idea I have just done another double check. I put on a cassette tape and switched the DBE function ON and OFF a few times and what do you think I found? There is no hiss either way. No hiss comes in when the DBE function is turned ON when playing a cassette deck, even though the higher end of the sound still gets shrilly and the bottom bass fades. (This getto blaster has two cassette decks. The right hand deck is intrinsically more fidelic than the left). So you electronic engineers and audio scientists take note, here is a HISSING mystery that may be intriguing enough to give you a challenge. Since I am not a technical scientist by instinct I won't be pursing the question except by chance found insights, but certainly know individuals who are now listening to any tests I may want to show them regards how my sound system is performing things like Mono in Stereo effects, or with the DBE function ON or OFF, who in hearing the HISS come and go in the FM radio would find this situation of FM hiss coming ON or OFF through the DBE Function very interesting. The hiss effects noted for DBE I am sure will not be present in my system for ever after. I am sure the performance will inevitably alter as day to day living goes on in my environment, and that later if I look for HISS vrs NO HISS with the DBE ON or OFF, I may not hear ANY change toward or away from abundant hiss. Mostly, during the past couple of days, there is no hiss, and a couple of times I have heard the profound silence which comes when there is no hiss at all. But this also is in fluctuation. Sometimes all I have to do is to shift my body position by a few inches to hear a faint presence of hiss again. A ROLL OF TAPE IS ENOUGH TO CHANGE THE ACTION OF THE DBE FUNCTION January 29, 1992. ----------------------------------------------------------------- There IS something else. It is not something I would normally report, but is something I would show someone else if they were here. It relates straight back to the question of improved vrs diminished performance with the DBE function either ON or OFF. In this case the whole sonic and ambiance live sounding parameters of the sound system has changed from better with the DBE turned OFF, to better with the DBE function ON. It is a momentary occurrance, chanced upon in the normal passing of things. I am including a remark about it only because if anyone reading is interested in what I have been reporting, this may be another clue, perhaps a more vital one, in trying to understand from a physicist's point of view some of the things that are going on in these experiments in Stereo and Mono sourced sound reproduction. So here is a special report. By chance, in looking through some trays for a microphone jack adapter, I placed a mostly used roll of plumber's heating duct tape on the top shelf of the book shelves against the dining area wall opposite the table. A few moments later I spotted the roll of tape sitting there and got it out of the way by tossing it into a tray on the kitchen table. Meanwhile the cassette tape (which was ON) had run to the end and nothing was playing. After finishing my preambles I came into the dining area and started the other side of the tape. And then stood back thinking, what's happened to the sound? Its different, quite different. What's happened? Then I remembered the used roll of heating duct tape and got it and put back into the exact same spot on the shelf and after a few seconds of fussing and fiddling had the missing sound all back again. Regained was bigger, more open sonics in the spaces between the instruments in the band, but also, more fidelity in each of the higher sounding instruments, plus more roomy echoing in the bottom base. When I said the sound had been different when it had changed, it certainly had. Two points to this short story. First, the used roll of heater duct tape is round, with a cross sectional diameter of eight and one quarter cms, and a tape roll width of four and one quarter cms. So as you can see it is bigger as a mass object than the snowflake sonic controllers I use and certainly of an entirely different physics in its topological shape. And then, just out of curiousity, I double checked the DBE function once again, and found that the sound quality (except for some slight fading in the bottom bass) was actually much better with the DBE function turned ON. When the DBE function was turned ON, more volume came into the sound stream and the giant sonic picture behind the windows opened up even more. This was in entire converse to any prior tests during the previous two hours, in which the sonic picture behind the windows could collapse with the DBE Function turned ON with as much analogous change as in the collapse between stereo and mono sound in switching back and forth in ordinary stereo systems. And then, when I removed the roll of tape, the reverse was again back in effect, no question whatever that everything was better with the DBE function OFF. I have to qualify that when the roll of tape was in place there was more hot point distortions in the sound stream and some loss of bottom bass though not as noticable. What was so different is that the picturable sonic spread in the giant sound image behind the windows opened up even more and it was clearer to to hear different things than with the DBE function OFF, even though the hot point distortions were making the listening a lot more irritable with the DBE function ON. In fact even with the DBE function OFF, there were irritating hot point distortions hurting the listening, which is why I once again removed the roll of tape from the shelf again, no longer able to stand its irritating effects. But, then, along came my brother from upstairs to say he had just heard something change for the worse. So the roll of tape is back on the shelf, and now I have things tuned so that the sound is better with the DBE Function OFF. As a final addendum to the above passages, I now have a tape of the sound track for DICK TRACY playing on the system. In all tests previous, this Dick Tracy tape had been a constant battle with infidelities, sounding hot, distorted, electronic, squeezed, which I had always presumed was due to the fact that it is digitally enhanced. In fact I have not had it on at all for more than three months. A moment ago I fished through the tape box and stuck it on, for background music while writing in this document here at the computer. Say, wait a minute, what tape IS THIS, I haven't ever heard it before, it was sounding so good. So I went and took a look and lo and behold it is the DICK TRACY tape and I have to say, musically, ignoring the lyrics, it is a very nice orchestral play in music. I could not help myself but to immediately try an A to B comparison with the DBE function OFF and ON. Even more slight amazement is the degree to which the whole sonic presence collapses when the DBE function is turned ON. At first with the DBE Function turned ON, I had to try listening to see if the sound had collapsed all the way to true Mono, such was the all around abrupt collapse. But Mono is not the case, it is still stereo because I can hear an instrument over here between the speakers to the Left, and a singer over there between the speakers to the Right. And have to listen long enough to form an interpretation as to whether any of those sound locations are also falling back beyond the window sill of the windows behind the table. And conclude that however these changes are being effected, the fact that such effects are so noticably enhanced is due to some kind of quality of the digitalization of the tape, or in the way it was studio recorded, mixed, and compressed, or combinations thereof. Anyway, if I ignore the lyrics, I LIKE this music which is the DICK TRACY sound track. Didn't much like it before, until today. INTERPLAY OF GIGANTIC CRYSTAL-LIKE ALIGNMENTS January 29, 1992. --------------------------------------------- This experiment seems like it might want to go on forever. Obvious I have some sort of momentarily stable paramaterizing in the tuning of the environment which is now capable of revealing strikingly noticable effects in a number of different ways, all further pointing out the fact that such effects are being manufactured entirely outside of the stereo set (the getto blaster - see how I am now starting to change my thinking attitude about this machine) and are being brought into focus in the outside enviroment beyond the speaker cone's wave form generation and what is influencing the speaker cones behind the scenes in the electricity of the component electronics. Here is what I have just heard. It occurred to me to try out Mono in Stereo effects, using this fabulously improved DICK TRACY sound track tape. The test is so very easy. All I have to do is throw the balance toggle all the way Up and Down for the Left and Right speakers, and so hear the Mono in Stereo effects from either speaker, which didn't surprise me, with about twice the volume regained when throwing the toggle back to the middle for both speakers, which also didn't surprise me. What surprised me is WHAT happened after I turned the DBE function ON and tried the same things. There was far more open air room sonic effects and fidelity than ever before in Mono in Stereo trials, effecting both speakers, in particular the Left hand speaker, which had hardly not really ever been more impressive than the Right hand speaker when testing Mono in Stereo effects, up until today. Boy oh boy this is really getting satisfying. What I have just done is double checked the Mono in Stereo effects for Left to Right imaging to see what was happening and this is what I have just learned not a moment ago. When standing directly before the Right or Left hand speaker, its sound is in a narrow channel (or tunnel) receeding directly behind the speaker into the back wall area of the dining room. In the case of the Right hand speaker, if sidestepping to the Left by about one foot sideways, a sudden great difference in the stereo sound kicks it. I can clearly hear deliberate point source instruments. At first I thought it must be to due to parallax, in being able to see (hear) from the side of the point sources of instruments in a trigonometric right angle triangle to behind the speaker box. But then another instrument clicked in, well to the Right of the Right hand speaker box, and well back into the sonic picture behind the window. This new body of sound that had begun to appear was also different because its location seems to be below the level of the Right hand speaker box where it sits on the table, in other words the location is also dropped down behind and below the horizon so to speak, but not as a barrier, it is with me looking down and over into that downward area, (which would physically be outside toward the ground in the yard beyond the wall, toward the Right fence). Holy smoke! this is really fantastic. Of course I couldn't write something without taking the precaution of double checking again to make sure I hadn't imagined it. To be sure, there was no imagination involved. For a moment I had the system turned OFF to do a few things. I went back and turned the system back on (the Mono was already pre-set for the Right hand speaker), and stayed put. And this is what I actually heard. A bass instrument was playing down behind the other computer which sits about two feet over from the Right hand speaker. A way off in the background angling up in the air at about a 15 degree tangent from the speaker were police whistles and sirens way out there in the background. The singer was hollering urgently away in a sound cavity at just about straight behind the Right hand speaker. And then another sound clicked in, this is ricky ticky drum stick rackets tapping out busy rhythms on a piece of wood, and IT came into place way up in the air and away out there in the perferal background around whereabouts the other police whistle and sirens were perferating around, only in this case the busy ticking wood block rhythm was at the end of a line just about running parallel from my right arm if I raised my right arm like a semaphor pointing to it. Boy oh boy I have to admit that the 'real life' ingredients put there in the out on the open street sound track simulation on this tape is really impressive, now that I can hear so MUCH of it without concluding that it was ALL done in a studio with a guy standing here at a table and another guy there at a table, both blowing whistles and making rackets on cue. I think the recording mikes were taken right out there into the street and turned on and THAT'S where at least some of these special effects were recorded, even if simulated in a giant sound lab so that the police sirens are a special sound source and not sirens by payees vigorously cranking handles of old devices on a table in a sound booth. You could swear that some police sirens were actually echoing from around corners up the street a ways. This is supposed to be what you can hear when standing on a busy late night street corner in downtown New York City and indeed you can hear it. I have no doubt that sonically I am standing at the interection looking around to see what is going on with all that excitement rushing around this street corner. You have NO idea how interesting this is. Because now for the first time I have abundant demonstration that it is possible to coax wide spread East to West separation in point source locations of exact and specific instruments or detailed added special effects, all of these being coaxed from a single sound track playing in Mono. Mind you, this whole thing is like big sonic snowflakes are floating hear and there in the air. Minor shifts in position, by no more than an inch or two, can cause the East/West sound wall to alter dramatically or even more or less to collapse completely. For example the busy ricky ticking drum stick rhythm can seem to come down to a level in the same area as the male singer, and a police siren can seem to come from down below table level toward the gound about out there where the bass is coming from behind the computer. On the other hand, by moving the head by no more than a few inches the busy ricky ticky drum strick rhythms leaps up and out into the air high over my head and out in front of me, and the police siren can leap up into the air and move far back along an upward angled tangent into the far back regions of space out there in the environment to the right beyond my condo. I am seeing here incredible phase shift polarities operating here along tangental angled lines radiating in space at tilted angles, such as looking up to the Moon to the Right, looking down and behind the computer immediately to the Right, looking up and out immediately in front of me to the top of the pine tree outside the yard, and now seeing a bird (marking current location of the ricky tick busy drum rhythm) hovering in the air halfway between me and out toward the top of the pine tree. AS IF SEVERAL COMMENTATORS ARE BOUNCING AROUND LIKE DIFFERENT ACTORS THAT COME AND GO IN AN INSTANT WHEN THE SPOTLIGHT HITS. January 29, 1992. ------------------------------------------------------------- I made a mistake here. On second looking, I can plainly see (hear) that the voice (a commentator rather than a singer) on a track I am listening too is definately bouncing around and changing, like there are several different commentators taking turns waiting in the background to come suddenly popping into the open here and there and up and down around a stage set, as when a spotlight is switched on, then off, for each to appear. (The track is 'DICK TRACY', Side two; distributed by WEA Music Company of Canada; SIRE, 92 62364 CR). To hear the gallery of different commentators, I had to believe someone else's remarks who chose to listen accutely enough and move around in a state of deep perception enough to hear these things and pass on their remarks to me. You see, I had missed a couple of things the listener began to point out in a later brief conversation where for the first time I was disputing a listener's comments. I thought the listener had it wrong. (In fact it fooled the 'good listener yet one more time'. In fact the listener finally went over to the Left hand speaker and asked why he couldn't seem to hear anything, even after I had told him several times that the effects he was hearing were being entirely generated from a single Mono mode speaker. The 'good listener' stood for a moment looking at the Left hand speaker than quietly asked; 'why isn't it working'. At this moment the DBE Function was OFF. We had been throwing the DBE Function ON and OFF listening for different sonic responses). One of the things when I later found myself disputing for the worse was my mistaken thought in hasty first quick impression that the commentator's voice was being more or less sustained behind the Right hand speaker, and had thought the commentator was the same person, even if the voice was going through quick changes and colorations, as if listening on a pocket radio, then through walkman earphones, then here in the sound experiments. On both counts I was very lapse in observing the physical environment in detail. It left nothing else for me to do however but to immediately go and check for myself, because this listener has not yet made a mistake in anything I've chosen to show or demonstrate. For me I had to move slowly around, both Left and Right, and In and Out, slowly listening and pausing at positions of greatest change, and sure enough I also had the correct picture, as had been pointed out by the Good Listener. The correct picture is as follows: For a fact the sound of the news commentator's voice is in no way issuing from a position more or less sustained immediately behind the Right hand speaker. In no way is this true. At times commentating can be well down there at an outward aiming tangent in a down angle toward and beyond, behind the second computer which sits to the right on another table alongside the Right hand speaker. And after another minor shift in listening position (whereupon some fireflys as if being held in a sonic freeze frame are released from the freeze frame to clip cycling through the air to new locations and then are sonically freeze framed again), the voice of the commentating sounding like a certainly different person, is up there out in the air, at an up angle off back in the air farther back to the right over back toward the corner of the intersection where the police sirens are wailing in the background as if up the street and around the corner. Here you can hear a different commentator's voice continuing the comments. And then, after another shift in listening position, the commentating leaps across to yet another different sounding voice being done by an entirely different actor, now appearing over to the left, sort of under where the busy ricky ticky drums sticks are tapping from nowhere up in the air out there in an upward line aiming toward the top of the trees outside the fence immediately in front of me. And so on. Don't forget, given no change in position, given full proper stereo embodiment, there is only the voice of PRINCE the musician doing all of the commentating, in a voice which doesn't change one iota front to back through the whole piece of the sound track. But not now, not here in this Mono embodiment. The voice is definately bouncing around in fractionating images which click change as I move around, like several different actors waiting for the spotlight to throw on them to start commentating on cue. You of course realize that this four way crystal faceting fracturing nature in the sonic picture is not in anyway authentic to the 'correct' sound image which gells into place the instant the other (Left hand speaker is switched ON) restoring the system to proper stereo generated by two speakers sitting apart playing two different tracks in full stereo. For instance all of the fracturing (as far as could be determined by listening, is along angles of refraction, rather than in any horizontal or vertical straight line alignments. Everything, here, has angles, like a tinker toy's three dimensional geometry tipped at a hard angle. Do you see the kind of imaging I am exactly specifying right now at this moment? Have you ever heard anyone specify such imaging before, either in listening to them talk, or in reading their columns or literature? If not? then concider I must be telling the truth because no one has ever given such a sound imaging description before in relation to a small, inexpensive, home stereo set, and in particular when the set is playing in MONO, through one speaker channel only. I think my mind was momentarily blown. I'm sure I was in awe. Believe me, I was not expecting this, Not At All. As already said, the sound imaging is totally false, of course, in that its patterns are being fractionated enormously just as if looking though a cut glass crystal and seeing everything inside shift around in clicks as the different facetings link up and disappear along different alignments as the glass is turned. Or at least the sound imaging can be made to be totally false in distinct point source fractinatings just by me shifting my observer's position around by iotas of no more than one to three feet in and out of phases in an exceeding tight spectrum of peaks and valleys in the sound stream of the environment. The whole thing relating to this sound imaging definately has the jitters. Let's say it is like a box full of fireflies being tossed out into the air of the night, with each firefly producing a particular point source of sound, freezing framing all of the fireflys for instants or moments in time to listen to them, until they are momentary released from the freeze frame to fly around out there the open air to new locations, with freeze frame pauses capturing their stationary new sonic locations long enough to be observed and studied until the brake handle is released and the fireflies are free to fly around wildly some more for a second or two as I move to a new location. (Fireflies are very slow flyers. Picture then fireflies hyped on pep pills, so changing their positions fast). This is how rapid the staccato is in this tight spectrum effect, noticed when moving laterally back and forth sideways, or forward and back, by small iotas and listening to rapid fluctuations in positions and fidelities of different point source sounds as they flit and re-scatter at almost random willy nilly, entirely out of synch with the original stereo wide wall sound image intended by the manufactures and musicians who produced this tape of the DICK TRACY sound track for mass home stereo consumption. The degrees of interfacings are in the form of diagonal quadralateral angles with sound sources whizzing around to different places in and out, up and down, here and there, not East to West, or North to South, but at the cross angles of reflection, as if a TRANSPARENT Rubics Cube has been taken and rotated from its normal cubic square box profile in front of you to be turned both horizontally and vertically until a front corner became superimposed over its diagonally symmetrically opposite corner as seen through the Cube and so is superimposed over the forwardmost corner, wherein all facetings of the transparent Rubics cube are now perceptually shifted from lateral side to side horizontal plus front to back alignments along the same flat planes into the depth axis, to be now all facetings combined along tangental angles that radiate up and down back and forth through the depth dimension of space even as they cross radiate from nearby lower corner to upward rear corners and so on, in the third dimension, in a new cube and sphere with 30 and 60 degree angles its main features. MACROCOSMIC BLOWUPS OF MICROCOSMIC ACTIVITIES ? January 29, 1992. ----------------------------------------------- Do you know what I think. I think I have just tapped the fundamental internal resources of crystal-like structures in the molecular interplays of the sonically responding vibrating medias in the enviroment itself, whether it be air, or solids, or both combined into a new pattern. I can't say which lattice workings, inner or outer, of molecular crystaline levels are being redrawn from out of the microcosm into the open out here in the macrocosmic universe, if this is what is actually happening. I am only making a guess, but one which I think is reasonable enough for the moment. I think what I am road mapping here is some molecular crystal interplays involved in sonic wave form resonses magnified from the quantum molecular realms themselves, expanded right up here and out into the open into cosmic proportions. This interplay in a moire pattern of sound involving criss cross angular connects in all directions, if it exists, is starting to be revealed in detail here right out in the open, if this is what is happening in the giant sound image behind my dining room windows. Its as if sound has become a gigantic atomic microscope. Here is why I might think this. If, in leaning toward the table in any direction, for instance to throw the balance toggle switch, the whole of this huge matrixed interplay of gigantic crystal-like alignments, instantly collapses to small point source locations immediately swimming around the wave form generating source of the sound stream, for instance right up and even into the Right hand speaker box. For example, that's where the busy ricky ticky drum stick rhythm moved to when I leaned forward to throw the balance toggle but was only part way to the toggle when the ricky tick jumped through space, from on high just to the Left out there toward the top of the pine tree, to land inside the little moulded plastic box speaker enclosure down there to the Right inside, on the table. When moving laterally back and forth sideways by an inch or two at a time, I can hear point source locations of sound leap back and forth out there in the giant sound picture. The only thing that seems to be all the time constant is perhaps the bass, coming from behind the same generalized location down below behind the computer to the Right of the Right speaker box, which is the generating source of the Mono sound. This may be only partially true. For sure, it is the higher frequency point source sounds that leap around most dramatically and the lower frequency bass sounds which tend to be sluggish in their movings around. Which makes sense in a weird sort of logic concidering long longtitudinal bass waves having to regroup in synch, vrs peppery short length higher frequency oscillating waves quickly finding new partners in a shifted sonic lattice picture according to the point of location of the observer, and perhaps even the input of the observer's body itself. Cough sorry. It is no different whatever than hearing peaks and valleys in the performance of high fidelity stereo speakers in a quality stereo store when walking back and forth slowly in front of them while they play, except in this instance, the peak and valley effects are instant and magnified to huge proportions in terms of miniscule moves needed to hear the peak and valley's changes, boosted by enormous differences in volumes of sound in one location in the sound picture to another as major volume producing instruments or point source sound sources abruptly jump around, all portraying busy actions on a Dick Tracy streetcorner. In terms of DBE functional inputs, these effects are still obviously there with the DBE function turned OFF, but were not noticed in the first quick done-in-a-second A to B comparison tests, because with the DBE function OFF the sounds take more time to move around and relocate, and the brilliency full-of-hot-light clarity of precise point source locations is not nearly so easily heard with the DBE function OFF, in this momentary stable sonic setup I have in this room. I mean stable because I haven't wanted to change it for at least a couple of hours to now. Notwithstanding that the effects with the DBE Function ON are in a very hot sound stream. Audiophile it is not, but garbage it is not either. And to repeat once again, ALL of the above reported effects immediately vanish the moment the system is resumed to full stereo with both speakers working. In terms of the system working in Mono, a more precise point source locating potential for higher frequency sounds with the DBE function ON is not more pleasant, it is less pleasant, but it is easier to quickly hear any sonic changes in the lattice fabrics of the fractionating sound characteristics in the entire sonic pattern of the huge sound image, the crystal lattice structure. In summary, with the DBE function OFF, the fidelity and listenabilty of these reported effects produced in Mono mode is improved, as is the bottom bass, but things take time to make their shifts before gelling in their new locations, and the lack of white hot colorated brilliancy in the higher frequency point source sound sources is not nearly so immediately apparant, you don't hear so easily as changes in location leap and click into new places in an instant as you do with the DBE function ON. With the DBE function ON, sound originating in the Right hand mono speaker becomes instantly hot and bright, for instance the kind of sound difference one might hear in comparing a JVC getto blaster against a similar priced Fisher getto blaster in a large warehouse-like environment of a major discount price stereo dealer. ....The salesperson insists that that hot irritating but brillient sound of the JVC getto blaster is not a problem because that getto blaster will sound fantastic in the living room of a small two room apartment, since his friend has one and it sounds fantastic. Whereas the Fisher device sounds far better where it sits on the showroom shelf, roomier, more open air, more bass. And then it sounds like absolute hell when you bring it home and unpack it from the carton. Which is what happened to me when I initiated these experiments last August. No WAY in the world was I going to listen to THAT kind of racket. And hence, the experiments started, leading inexporably non stop to today. The point to this is that the Mono track sound I have been raving about in the past few paragraphs, coming from one tiny five inch paper cone speaker driver, is different between DBE function switch ON vrs OFF in a way just about exactly comparable to the brillient hot vrs smooth luke warm differences between an expensive JVC getto blaster I once tested in a showroom doing an A to B comparison with a similar priced Fisher getto blaster model, to confirm deciding to go with the Fisher model. The other problem in making such a decision is that there was no other money anywhere that could sift through the cracks to allow me to get something different if the Fisher getto blaster didn't work out. Which it didn't, it failed miserably when set up at home. Which left me no choice but to try and somehow improve its performance here at home with it sitting on a workbench-like table in the dining area. In other words I got sucker punched when buying a stereo set. The rule is that you are suppose to be able to test a new set in your home environment for a day or two before forking the cash but in dealing with giant discount retailers, the cash is forked forever before you ever have your hands on the packing crate. So this I hope explains in full how come it is that I actually happen to be doing sound tests with this particular Fisher getto blaster stereo system in the utmost lazy way, in the total comfort and convience of doing it in my own home, a low rental run down condo. THE DICK TRACY SOUND TRACK PHENOMENA ------------------------------------ Another listener played with the effects for over an hour. This listener also played with the ricky ticky drum stick rhythm, sticking it here, then 'click' sticking it somewhere else in the other side of the window. This listener also noticed that the lead singer kept moving around at a dizzying rate of peter pan reappearances just by moving the listener's body around a bit, an effect I missed. This listener also noticed that the lead singer's voice (actually not a singer but a news-like commentator in this track) could be made to change character enough that it seemed like a number of different commentators were taking turns, also an effect I missed first time around. This listener was even more amazed than was I, in finding the effects so totally unexpected, after 35 years in playing off and on with experimental designs for speakers of one kind and another, including for a pyschedlic band as well as for audiophile stereo systems. I was not so amazed in expecting something like the Dick Tracy sound track phenomena. What did amaze me was in having a temporary room tune co-incidentally set up in such a way that the moire patterns housings for the sound stream were stable enough to allow the effects to be played with at will for several hours without a breakdown. For a fact, within a few moments after deeming that enough had been tested regards the Dick Tracy sound track phenomena, a few snowflakes were re-adjusted and it was no longer possible to hear the 'leaping firefly' effects in unmistable ways. NOT PERFECT MONO - 'SURROUND SOUND' SENDS TINY SIGNAL TO OTHER SPEAKER ---------------------------------- Oh ho ho! Did I ever get fooled. Talk about the classic crank who finds that cough in the ointment is causing the mysterious 'growth in the sterile jar' phenomena, and not something from the ether. The above proclaimed Dick Tracy sound track phenomena effects were not 100% pure Mono In Stereo, after all. There is about a 10% gain being fed into the stereo system's opposite channel's speaker box when this stereo system's 'SURROUND SOUND' function is turned ON. Somewhere along the way it had been turned ON and left ON by accident, unobserved. All of the above described Dick Tracy sound track effects only occurred with unmistakable clarity when the SURROUND SOUND Function was in fact ON, and so was using this 10% other speaker volume. As already mentioned, the effects were also occurring with the DBE function OFF, but each such effect would have to be studied by a listener to determine what actually was happening as the effects occurred. Whereas with the DBE function ON, the effects were instantaneous, precise, loud, and clear, in impact vibrations resonance stackings as if like lightning strikes seen soundlessly in yellow-white, blue-white, and green-white very near ultraviolet light frequencies, so to speak. Only in this case you could hear the resulting attacks as point sources themselves, if soundless ultraviolet lightning can be a good image-seen analogy. (Have you ever seen such lightning, leaping soundlessly in very short stabs between lower nearby clouds? I have). How the fact that the SURROUND SOUND function was dramatically enhancing the Dick Tracy sound track effects by sneaking in an unnoticed 10% equivalent low volume to the other speaker, which was assumed to have been deader'n a doornail, is a short story in itself, as follows: The next day, tests were been further done with Mono In Stereo effects in principle, using the RIGHT hand speaker in Mono, listening to anything at hand, radio, tape, when along the way it was noticed that SOMETHING, just a trace of sound, could be heard in the supposed inoperative LEFT hand speaker box. The thought was that this could be some sort of sympathetic resonance response momentarily effecting the other (Left) speaker. About half an hour later, traces of sound in the so-called inoperative speaker were much more noticable, heard by the simply expediency of leaning the ear toward the speaker box and listening while the system was playing in supposed Mono through the Right speaker. About 15 minutes later, tunings amongst the snowflakes had stablized enough trace gains in the dormant speaker that its playing was quite audible even at a distance from the speaker. It had become so audible that the instincts simply reacted and said, 'no, wait a minute, this CAN'T be due to sympathetic resonances'. So a quick A and B test was done, throwing the stereo balance all the way to the Left hand speaker, and then back to the Right hand speaker. No question that the supposed inoperative Left speaker was leaking sound, estimated to be at about 10% the volume of the other speaker when either speaker was switched to supposed full Mono. Same for the Right speaker, assumed to be dormant when off. It wasn't. So THIS was a mystery in itself, how come the stereo balance toggle had broken down over, say, a two day period, and was now leaking stuff into the supposed shut OFF speaker. Well, as it happens, later in the day snowflake room tuning tests had evolved to where the stereo system was again functioning clearly at its best with the DBE function OFF. Along the way a quick test was done to see what was happening with Mono In Stereo effects. And lo and behold, the so-called inoperative speaker was like it wasn't even plugged in at all when shut OFF. Not even a sound of silence was coming forth from it. It was OFF without question. Oh golly, what the heck is THIS?. That's when it was learned that trace sounds are being sent to both speakers regardless of the stereo balance setting when the SURROUND SOUND Function is ON. So what had been happening is that every so often I had been stabbing at the SURROUND SOUND button, instead of the DBE button. Intuitive logic merely guided the fingertip to the SURROUND SOUND button to switch it ON then OFF to do the test that told the truth. Now that the brain was tipped off, you could hear the difference in an instant, and what a suprise. In the meantime, Mono In Stereo tests had boosted things coming from the Right hand speaker to such an extent, stereo wise, that it fooled the Good Listener (who happened to chance by) yet one more time, when the Good Listener paused to comment on how much improved the overall sound of the stereo system was becoming and had no idea at that moment that only one speaker was doing all the hustle. This was with the SURROUND SOUND Function OFF and the other speaker was completely silent. Which meant that so-called Mono In Stereo effects are valid all the way back to a single speaker only and things like the SURROUND SOUND function are not needed to get such effects. The existence of Mono In Stereo effects (at least with this Fisher 8400 model getto blaster stereo set) is a fact I can proclaim without having to cringe in the glares and blares of disbelievers and false headlines. IS IT TRUE MONO, OR NOT ----------------------- In light of the fact that about a 10% signal in the opposite speaker happens with the SURROUND SOUND function ON, which contributed to the amazing Dick Tracy sound track phenomena, it had occurred to me that all Mono In Stereo experiments may have been mechanically naturally boosted in an impressive seeming way due to another reason, even though the SURROUND SOUND function was OFF and no signal at all was being heard through an absolutely soundless inoperative opposite speaker. This other 'natural' mechanical reason could be said to have been perhaps due to the fact of two other tiny one inch tweeters along with the main five inch driver in each speaker box. So that even when only one speaker is playing, in Mono, and the other speaker is totally inoperative, that the Mono in Stereo enhancement effect may be due to, shall we say, sonic charges interplaying between the three tweeter drivers within the one speaker box. The mind may tend to say yes. Or perhaps. This is not known until further tested, for instance by disconnecting the two small one inch tweeters. But another phenomena says no, this is true Mono In Stereo, despite the fact that three drivers are generating the sound from the one Mono sound stream source (the single speaker box). This other phenomena is the TV set, sitting over in the corner of the condo, kitty corner opposite across the room from the sound table in the dining area. This particular TV set has open slots along the back of its cabinate, which definately is a contributor in letting some of its little speaker's audio signals port out the back of the TV set. At times, depending on how the room is tuned at any given moment, the sound for the TV can be dramatically accelerated. This means, instead of the TV set's sound issuing forth weakly with usual raspy high pitched rattle, distortion, and pissiness from a small portal in the lower right corner of the TV, the sound has moved up and out into a rather huge rather openly something fidelic sound source area across the screen and around the TV, and ballooning out into the air behind the TV set. When this is happening it is impossible to tell where the TV's sound is coming from in terms of any point source location. It can seem to be anywhere across the screen, and back into the big beyond in the relatively huge audio balloon behind the TV set. Furthermore, at times the TV set is able to produce sound track material on par with a reasonably inexpensive stereo set, lots of leg room in the bass, and plenty of head room and reasonable fidelity in the higher end. But this is a very transient expansion in sound which comes and goes with no predictablity. It means, though, that watching, say, Star Trek The Next Generation, on a given TV channel, one day can be difficult because the station's audio signal is so bad, weak, and distorted, and the next day the station's audio signal can be big and solid. This is not merely that station whose audio signal can vary to such extremes, all stations can so vary up and down at the same time. This is interesting, because there is only one small tweeter driving the whole of the TV's sound stream, therefore these touches of Mono In Stereo effects for the TV set are from a true 'single driver only' Mono source of sound. This Quasar TV set is 23 years old. It is obvious here that the sonic snowflake controlling tuners are effectively jumping the sound of the TV set, as well as controlling the sound stream of my experiment on the opposite side of the main floor of my low rental condo. Which serves to point a finger back to the stereo system's Mono In Stereo effects over in the dining room area. It is felt at this moment that these are genuine, and are not being psuedo induced by cross play between each speaker's three different tweeters functioning in the 'so-called' Mono speaker box of the sound system. Regards the TV set's interesting sound, another variable which can be specified is that such improved audio quality for this 23 year old 24 inch Quasar TV is not due to carrier fluctuations in the incoming cable to the TV. Merely moving a coffee cup or ornimental ashtray around on the hardwood floor can make or break the best of the better sound in an instant depending on where the object is moved to or positioned, just as it is with the stereo system itself over in the dining room area which can at times be extremely sensitive to inputs from random objects and such object's exact miniscule sensitive locations in a room. So this takes us right back to 'Airframing', and sonic tuning of the room, which intrinsically must effect all sound generating sources in a room, and not just the stereo set for which the sonic room tuning was maximized. QUICK NOTES ------------------------ A few remarks typed into this file; the reason for typing them are forgotten. ....And at times when doing tuning tests, noticable hiss will start to move in until inevitably I will stop and have to see if I can adjust a snowflake or two to try and supress the hiss. Supression is not easy since at first it is usually accompanied by increases in distortion or loss of bottom bass or other incidents, where, then, after, it is a question of working over a few snowflakes again to try and regain the lost fidelity. The above remarks regards tuning out HISS are not relevant to the subject of performance of the DBE function when turned ON or OFF and playing FM radio. But this is not the final word regards the DBE function. I have had along the way, little difference (but won't say no difference at all) between sound with the DBE function ON or OFF. So therefore there must be some sympathetic similarities in the nature of delayed wave pulse releases (DBE ON) and pure direct wave pulse releases (DBE OFF). Otherwise, the system invariably sounds better one way or the other (DBE ON or OFF). In the last while, the system had become stable to the point where it is always sounding better with the DBE function OFF. Which is a particularly interesting aspect since the bottom bass is so much more powerfull, lower, and fidelic, with the DBE Function OFF, even though DBE stands for 'Dynamic Bass Expander'. A lot can be said about snowflake sonic tuning controllers in tuning a room to expand the bass, but I'm not going to try and fake information to say it. I don't know enough about this. Tuning now includes miniscule adjustments of the two speaker boxes, simply a touch here or there on either box, or sometimes a slight pressure applied one way or the other is enough to fade or bring in more fidelity, not at all unlike the same act as having to fine tune an FM stereo station using the getto blaster's FM tuning dial. In similar kind also, setting the volume has now become a routine act to do whenever changing the volume level is needed in switching from, say, tape casettes to the FM tuner. There is a volume difference of about 15% louder for the FM stereo than for the cassette tape decks. Tuning the volume can be very subtle indeed, perhaps by no more than 1% or less in a touch on the volume control. This seems to equalize the volume level between either speaker in peaks and valleys. For instance in doing this I typically listen to the Left hand speaker for point source instruments to disappear or appear in the giant sound image, with the instrument always behind the Left hand speaker. The same is actually true, in also volume tuning the performance of a speaker in Mono. A similar technique is from time to time now being used by me to fine tune the speaker boxes. For instance in tapping or touching the Right hand speaker I box I can be listening for whole overall effect, or in special instances the coming or fading of trace extra sounds from the Left hand speaker where the trace adds elements in the clarity of point source instruments in the giant picture of sound behind the windows. Sometimes it will be something else, a better sonically echoing sound in a drummer's cymbol for instance, which can be amplified or squeezed by miniscule adjustments of a speaker box, even if (for example) the drum set is located in the Right regions of the giant sound picture, but where I can hear traces of the drummer's cymbol in the vacinity of the Left hand speaker until I stand well away from the speakers wherein the cymbol moves back into the giant sound image in correct position as a point source instrument. The traces can be amplified in a useable way by exquisitely touching tuning a speaker box. I can move in a better quality of sound by quite a bit, in fact. Even though, in doing it, I might chance to cancel out an even more desirable effect, say, in the bottom bass regions of sound and not notice it until moments later waiting for bottom bass to come up in a passage of music and wondering what happened when there is sludge in some of the purer tones I heard only moments before. Etc. Etc. THE FM TUNER CONTROL KNOB ITSELF AS A SPOILER January 29, 1992. --------------------------------------------- I have just at this moment done a double check, turning the FM tuner control knob by miniscule changes Left or Right, and can find a position where overall fidelity top to bottom is improved, including more obvious deeper bottom bass. How I found this out is that at first I momentarily forgot my place and thought I was on an FM station, then found it was a cassette being played instead. (This tape features a large orchestra playing 'Golden Latin Favorites', manufactured by Madacy Inc, Canada, MCR 1717). The importance here is that fine tuning the FM tuner control knob is being done while playing a cassette tape. The change in quality of sound by minisculely twist tuning the FM radio dial knob while playing the cassette deck is the same in effect to tuning in the best fidelity of an FM radio station by twisting back and forth through the tuning dial's tuning range. Only in this current instance, the effect is small, and the tuning range is EXTREMELY narrowly precise. The only remark I might offer as to why, is that there are finger ridges carved in tiny grooves on the FM tuner knob, and I suppose these in a combination of several dozen tiny straight line vertical grooves are actually focusing into the sound stream in a very tight way, not unlike as if they represent bands of spectrum in the sound and the minuscule touch tuning is focusing the spectrum band in and out of maximum harmonic enhancement. Actually, this would be a counter effect, tuning out to the minimum the tuner dial's spoiling effect. SENSITIVE miniscule/macrocosmic proportions --------------------------------------------- Another kink in the wrinkled fabrics of this experiment has told of its presence in more lusting ways. This is the consul of the stereo system itself, the guts which contain the electronics of the getto blaster. It sits right in the middle of the sound stream, between the two speaker boxes, and has finally in the last couple of days, taken on some rather noteworthy Personality of its own. Specifically, its position at the minuscule level has become critically important. I can deepen the bass, or fade some bass, or muffle some bass, or distort some higher end, or even do exquisite things like cancel sideways compression echos to such an extent that things like latin american sticks being struck in rhythm can become entirely fidelitic as a point source instrument even as the drummer tapping a high hat of cymbols also gells into a precise place in the sound picture. To try and let you see what this means, a tack tack somewhere in the left regions of the sound image can suddenly consolidate into a beautifully toned wood block being struck so point source distinct you might think you could walk to it, as I merely TOUCH the consul with two hands and pretend to move it, then step back, noticing the new change consolidated into effect. Boast boast and boast, so what of it? Well all of this occurs by the mere expediency of simply touching the consul. I don't mean shifting it around by a few cms or less in displacement, I mean tapping it here, or there, or apply a little pressure nowhere enough to cause it to actually move. You can think of gripping a butterfly's wings so lightly as to not cause any disturbance of the wing's colorful powders as it sits on a flower sipping nectar. I now have to deal with this. How come so sensitive? I don't know for sure. I can think that the consul is a big object festooned with many buttons and small levers and cracks and cubby holes, each one of which can have as much sonic impact as a bent paper clip lying on the table in the system's extremes in leveling out to sonic sensitivy. In this, tunings within a micrometer range within the width of, say, the Balance Toggle sticking out on the consul, can be itemized as a reasonable concept, because the micrometer range in terms of space is little different than the ranges being carved out in space by a sonic snowflake tuning controller device. On the other hand, that the Balance Toggle lever (as an example) is attached to the frame of a relatively giant object in comparison, is an entirely different physics, from a fundamentalist's point of view. It boils down to a question of just what is the bottom line? Is the move by micrometer amounts of the Balance Toggle sticking out, (or perhaps it is the DBE button's bulge, or perhaps the sonic cavity behind the consul where the speaker leads are stored), the infrastructural bottom line, with a touch of the consul strictly an unimportant means to achieve it? Or is the fact that the whole consul giant space occupier represented by the consul's bulk is also part of the physical equation when the, say, Balance Toggle moves through a micro meter range as the consul moves. I think that the giant bulk size of the consul is the fundamental bottom line when attempting to understand just what kind of sonic properties in the existence of sound are being tickled into presence in the consciousness, here. It means that sound excitement, particularly in its most normal embodiment of all in small home stereo systems, has more to offer by empirical observations than sound tests in a lab gained merely by placing a sound generating box by this wall, or that, then after listening going back to the workbench and reaching for another speaker cone or pair of plyers while all the time muttering in fury over the balkiness of so-called bass waves whose compression nodes are many feet apart. That kind of testing is in an oblivious outer larger area of observation which is obviously of cosmic class (macrocosmic), rather than microscopic or even atomic. And yet, since the barrier into micrometer research has already been penetrated by being able to adjust a bulk (the electronic consul) measuring a foot across, three quarters of a foot high, and roughly three quarters of a foot deep, by displacement of no more than one one hundreth of an inch (maybe even by only one thousandth of an inch) which can cause a point source energy source {a wood block being softly struck by a musician} or even a large composite of great energy {the bottom bass range of a popular singer's large orchestra} to collapse at once into chaos, is very interesting indeed when it comes to intriguing standouts called curiousity in physics. It makes one think that sonic controls down to the borderline if not actually making it across the borderline into quantum atomic levels of activity, should be possible in eventual pursuit of the nature of sound to the nth degree, if my intuitive hunches are correct. LIVE ROOM AMBIANCE IN MONO --------------------------------------------------------------- In an outer modelling, I can think of a framework of sonic propigations made of spider web silk which is not bonded in fixed locations like a spider's web. So ANY disturbance can effect the resonances of certain strands, or cause a number of strands to abruptly collapse into a tangle of chaos, causing a local snuffout, or an instrument to distort, or disappear, for instance. The tangle would supposedly occur at the point of irritation, for instance right where an offender obstacle is located. And this would effect the way back wave reflections scatter or disperse resultingly through the environment. Yet I know a spider silk network of coherent spider silk strands floating sustained in space with no spider's glue bonding the points of intersection is not the accurate model. It is only a poor metaphor and can be nothing more, only serving to help see how mechanics might be operating in thought pictures as patterns of interconnect sound waves. The spider web metaphor can be expanded to suggest that an ordinary large circular spider web, when pulled on one strand, distorts into a moire, and returns to normal when the tug is released. If the tug is pinned down, then the moire becomes that web's steady state. If another strand snaps when the first strand is tugged, the moire is different, and releasing the tug does not return the web to original normal, a distorted return of the web becomes noticed. Energy pulses, in particularly sustained and stable hot and cold points of energy excitement, are quite a different venue, to try and use as models in an inner mode via any pictures in consciousness. Inner mode modelling is actually via analogy, which has to be in terms of being able to see fractal snowflake-like images based on Star of David geometry principles bound within six-sided hexagrams, due to the occurrence that six sided solid mass tuning objects can be so successfully used, either singly or arrayed in symmetrical six sided clusters (called rosettes in this document), either embodiment being usefully conducive to positive yield experiments which have progressed ahead so far already as to yield stereo effects from a mono generating source so effectively that it fools anyone who listens. I don't mean can fool, I mean fools, period. No one who has listened to a Mono in Stereo test in my low rental condo has ever guessed the sound they were hearing could only be clinically defined as Mono, since only one piston driven 5 inch paper cone speaker was generating the whole of the giant body of sound they were hearing. And nothing whatever had been tampered with in the electronics or within the cabinates. So all the 5 inch paper cone speaker was doing was providing a release of useable wave forms into the environment. (I have to mention there are also two 1 inch tiny tweeters in each speaker box). In terms of purer principle, snowflakes have a parallel property repeated, which is found in these solid mass tuning objects used as many small controller devices in this experiment. Specifically, naturally occurring snowflakes are always surrounded by a frame consisting of a six sided hexagon, whether the frame is physically evident (such as by borders made of a different substance than outside the frame), or not. And if miss-tuning gets so bad, then the whole system can and will cascade at once into partial chaos. Snowflakes as called forth by the weather person on TV and thermal turbulence in the clouds, can have Stars of David in them, but also always have at least some part of its construction inevitably made to be revealed as an image of a solid hexagram, inherent somewhere within its leafy six sided shape, even if the hexagon is a very small one seen only at the very center nub of the snowflake. Most snowflakes have in fact two hexagrams, a smaller rotated within the larger by 30 degrees, creating an intrinsic 12-sided hexagram shell. What is clearly seen is that the hexagon is made of a different substance, ice, whereas, the fractal leaves are made of air which separate the fingers of the six sided star-like figure. The point is I find that snowflakes are a reasonably good modelling analogy as to what is going on in the moire pattern of sound, at least to the extent that bad sound can been kicked uphill and remain stably resonanating at improved responses where it stays put as a constant in an environment, for a period of time. CASCADES INTO CHAOS --------------------------------------------------------------- In the metaphor model, a sudden collapse into partial chaos would occur if, say, a spider web strand snapped after a miniscule tuning ajustment because it was suddenly no longer being sustained by a particular sound ingredient such that the strand flies loose and starts to tangle with nearby strands causing a tangle to start forming in the otherwise perfect pure pictures of the sound stream, causing an element of the sound stream to cascade into choas, either resulting in a sudden distortion, or vanishing out of existence. However, this kind of modelling would never be easy to handle, due to the sheer amount of mathematical equations needed to handle the variables constituting the result natures of such chaos. On the other hand the analogy model, based on 'snowflake' geometries, can offer an intuively useful picture even to the untrained, mathematically non-adept, average thinker. In the snowflake analogy scene, a miniscule tuning adjustment could cause a piece recurring here and there throughout the whole of the sonic resonanating moire pattern (seething and pulsating snowflakes filling the whole air with fractal geometry resonances), resulting in a sound stream ingredient to simply disappear at once from the picture. To be more accute, an existing energy excited fractal image nested within the recurring patterns of the overall moire could change shape, hence restablizing the final resulting quality, in the perfection seeking harmony trying to avoid chaos, of the sound stream. In the first example (the snowflake vanished from the moire pattern, all of its recurrence everywhere no longer appear), this will result in an instant collapse toward chaos of that particular energy vibration the snowflake fractal portion represented. In the second example (the snowflake changing to a new shape throughout all of its occurrences in the moire pattern - the spider web with pulled strand analogy) this would result in a change in quality of sound either towards distortion or toward improved pure fidelity, ie, either cascading toward chaos, or (in reverse of entropy) ascending toward perfect harmony. In this later case where greater harmony is the result the change in the image of the fractal snowflake is a harmonic re-enforcer of other energy nodes existing within the moire pattern, and this can ultimately evolve toward a state of grace comprising only totally perfect harmony. Change toward better could represent a pulled spider web strand being released, allowing the whole moire (or that significant portion) to return more toward a full and pure hexagram shape. EARLIES DAYS --------------------------------------------------------------- In the earliest days of this experiment last August in 1991 I was using any objects I could find with six sided shapes to try and gain some predictable or incrementally gained controls in the sound stream. Objects tried included such commonly found items as six sided nuts, and lug nuts for car or truck tires, and six sided ring collars from the rummage bins of plumming discards, or electronic bargain boxes where I found thinner six sided colars used to screw switches (small) or cables (larger) to the backs of high tech devices such as a broken Radio Shack stereo tuner. I found in those days the six sided rings almost impossible to position if too thin, yet could do interesting things with the sound stream and could easily be used to bring in any reasonable fidelity or stable controlling that was useable. However, they presented real problems in how to set them upright or whatever on the table. Whereas the solid mass six sided beads (bought as 'cartwheels' in hobby stores) offered immediate relief, once I figured out how to file them into a responsive shape enough to start getting incremental gains in overall reasonable fidelity, until finally the first level of stable and predictable control after I started using them. Via a long story, this led to the discovery of the first hexagram rosette, a principle which could be make of seven six sided objects. The creation of a second rosette (the one still sitting to the Left of the Left hand speaker) was in fact PREDICTED IN ADVANCE, and its immediate contribution once it was brought into existence was without question met, as incremental gain kept increasing jump by jump as each next bead was placed into position in the rosette. (The original rosette was created of small 3mm beads and was later reconstructed using six sided sonic snowflakes. One other aspect of solid mass tuning controllers shaped in principle like snowflakes has another characteristic which is clear and precise, and this is that the solid object shoves aside a partial vacuum when put in place (it displaces pure air that formally occupied that space). From the other side of the point of view, the solid object internally is resonating all the way down to its atomic lattice structures, which for most solid materials in existence on the earth are crystaline in nature. Good day one and all. THAT'S IT. THE EXPERIMENTING REPORT IS OVER. --------------------------------------------------------------- January 29, 1992. Finished. NO MORE TO REPORT ------------------------------------------------------------- In a closing remark, audiophiles and professional audio specialists should not waste their time chewing on eschews over anything I may have said (or not said) in the reports of these amateur home experiments. In particular they would only need to ask me one or two questions to know that I am not and do not claim to be in any way on sparing terms with specialists who have sold audio in high end stores or have researched in audio corporation labs. I don't have the language to compete. I've done the whole thing for fun and curiosity and have learned a great number of things I was not consciously thinking of before the experiments began. It is principles in the propigation of sound and fascimily transmission of characteristics called sonics being studied and explored here, not the design of a new loudspeaker. At this moment, 98 snowflakes are being used to tune the system. 8 are in snowflake pairs. 14 snowflakes are turned face-on by 90 degrees facing the windows. And there are two additional 'giant' pieces in use, these being fragment pieces from a shattered large hexagram array, one of the fragment pieces has five snowflakes glued together and the other contains four snowflakes. The fact that the fragments work is going to motivate me to take time to make new versions. These ones will be glued together in a slightly different arrangement And both will be identical. The changes I expect will be a sonic improvement. AHEM, NO AIRFRAME - January 30, 1992. In the meantime I haven't gotten around to making any other giant snowflakes. ------------------------------------------------------------- Well, well, well. I learned something new today. Starting yesterday evening I decided to try experimentally testing another variable, and so began to twist turn all of the snowflakes to splay outward, instead of inward, when focused. Here is what turned outward means: In all previous experiments the snowflakes would end up focused toward a distant imaginary center point, far back in the giant sound image behind the windows, just like little cars all turned toward the distant screen in a drive-in theater. The difference this time is I started turning all of the snowflakes so their tails would be uniformly focused the other way, toward me the listener in the room, as if all of the little cars suddenly shifted to point to a movie goer at the rear of the drive-in theater. Actually I have to correct a false impression here. Since I was walking around through the place, tuning, it was not to me that the snowflakes were being newly focused, it was to the spot where I would be standing if in the so-called maximum listening position was centered between the speakers. Actually, the real credo in this new tuning was to qualities in sound which came and went as the snowflakes were being twist tuned back and forth into their new alignments, with editorial easing off to boot, since not all of the snowflakes were ending up universally splayed to a rigorous new formula operated by eyeball. This is the first time I dropped the rigorous eyeball editor in trying out universal alignments effecting all of the snowflakes thoughout the system. This time it was where they seemed to sound the best, which was drawing the bottom line, and some snowflakes could end up aligned helter skelter. I have to say that at the first, as the new test got underway, the results seemed to be a good decision, especially in terms of higher fidelity as one after another of annoying constant small pockets of distortion started to disappear as snowflakes were turned anew, and at the same time more and more fidelity kept moving into the bass range. For instance on a tape of the 101 Strings Orchestra playing Duke Ellington compositions it became clear the bass rythms on some of the tracks was by a battery of bass fiddles ronking away in rhythm, rather than by standup accoustic bass, or electric bass and ampifyer. I had long suspected this, but now knew for certain. After several hours, I was starting to become pleased with the effort, though not of course really satisfied. I could now listen to the sound system in the background as I worked on something else on the ever friendly computer, but couldn't seem to be at peace listening to it directly. I couldn't tell what was urging at my ears, bothering me. And then I did something I sometimes do when testing something new, and this is to go upstairs to the far back room and listen up there in the middle of it for a moment or two for overall effect in sound quality. That is because usually I can hear things more or less at the same volume as downstairs since the volume hardly changes upstairs. But upstairs, some of the small distortions most immediately up front downstairs are gone by the time the sound reaches the upstairs back room. But not this time. Just now, when I went up the stairs and along the corridor and opened the door to step into this back room, by the time I stepped in through door the sound from downstairs was gone completely! All I could do was hardly tell that the getto blaster was turned on, hearing it through the floor directly below. It could have been the TV at very low volume. The sound wasn't completely out. But it was down to no more than what you have always heard with the stereo playing at middle volume downstairs in a recreation room and you are upstairs working on projects somewhere else in a big house. In days past, I had been doing the upstairs sound tests because the sound volume was hardly diminished upstairs by the time the sound stream arrived into this upstairs workroom in the far back corner of the second floor of the condo. The volume was almost as loud and clear as when standing downstairs right in front of the stereo system, in past days. In past days, to do quick listening tests upstairs I never had to raise the volume first. So here, suddenly, I discover something brand new, because of the total collapse in the carrying distance of the sound. The so-called 'Airframe' effect had been creeping into the tests in a good way bit by bit, all along over the weeks, as things kept being marginally improved sonically by the tests and experiments. Yet all along I didn't know that 'Airframing' had become so essential an ingredient, to such a fundamental degree, in the overall sound being pursued in the experiment. Now here is proof in the pudding. This is that I have just successfully (though unwittingly) tuned the 'Airframe' out of the system entirely, through use of external mechanical means, ie, the snowflake controllers, as it turns out, heard instantly when I went upstairs and stepped through the room's doorway as the last of the sound from downstairs dimmed to just about nothing. Oho, I thought, That is a BIGGGGGG difference. NO VOLUME VRS DISTANCE PHYSICS EQUATION WILL WORK - January 30, 1992. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- At this moment, there is no 'Airframing' at all in this sound system, with the snowflakes twist tuned anew in every location in the environment. As an example, in moving from the dining area into the kitchen, by the time you get to the kitchen table behind the wall of the kitchen, the sound stream has diminished to where you can't hear anything clearly, its a volume drop by about 70% in comparison to the system's optimal volume center spot which is gained only by standing in the middle of the dining area centered out front between the two little speaker boxes. This optimal spot is also new, because there just simply wasn't any such thing yesterday, but today most snowflakes are turned edge on toward it. In the new snowflake controlled sonic environment, the fastest volume drop off is occurring in the bass range, with mid ranges such as the piano the last to get real dim when walking around the main floor environment of the Condo. So it seems maybe some physics has been changed. Well, this idea isn't true. Its not physics, its resulting responses that has been changed in the presence of, or current non-existence of, the so-called 'airframing' effect. All the 'airframing' does as a property is in vastly more effeciently distrubute all of the sound around to different places in the environment. So that the original physics equations still hold, in terms of the volume of sound diminishing directly as the result of proportionate distance away from a sound generating source. Remove all of the 'Airframe' causing sonic controller snowflakes in my experiment, and the physics equations would probably be true for raw sound wave pulses coming from the generators. DRAMATICALLY DIMINISHED CARRYING EFFECT ------------------------------------------------------------- Its more true than I thought. As just said the new focusing tuning experiment had just been started in the last day and actually since I am momentarily working on something else on the computer very little time has been spent either away from the computer, or walking around the main floor environment with the stereo system playing. In walking around now there is very much in the way of peak and valley in the volume level between here and the kitchen or far corner of the living room, or main floor washroom, or the upstairs rooms. At the moment there is no 'airframe' with carrying power in the sound stream. In this absence of 'airframe', it is clear some sort of MECHANICS EQUATION could be written for the current rate at which the volume rapidly drops off away from the sound source. But previously, when the 'airframe' property was tuned at its maximum effect, no such equation could have been written at all, since the volume didn't drop off at all, until for instance you actually stepped across the threshold of the main floor washroom which is far back along the corridor in the far back corner behind the kitchen wall of the Condo, and even then, this volume did not really drop off until suddenly it dropped the moment the door was closed down to about one and a half inches, but even so you could still hear most of the sound range clearly, even with the washroom door closed. The sound seemed to come right through the walls without seeing the plaster. At this moment, all volume is gone before reaching the washroom door. The only thing left to hear is that the stereo set is turned on, and playing faint weak, noise. The immediate project is to get the snowflakes turned back to their drive-in theater alignment (all focused standing up edge on toward the drive in theatre screen) to bring the 'airframe' property back into the sound stream. As I said, today I learned something. TESTING OTHER SOUND SYSTEMS ? ------------------------------------------------------------- It certainly is obvious that effects reported during the duration of this experiment are peculiar to this room and peculiar to the FISHER Model 8400 Getto Blaster and its particular kind of speakers. Attempting the same kind of an experiment with another kind of sound system in another room will undoubtedly be met with difficulties that may be insurmountable with any of the tuning techniques described in this experiment, in which creative ineguity will have to find other ways. And then again maybe not. It may be that any kind of sound system in any kind of room can be so tuned, with the right kind of patience, using what I have on hand at the present time. QUICK HOME EXPERIMENT Update - February 5, 1992. --------------------------------------------------------------- Here is an experiment you can easily try in your own home with your stereo set. It may or may not work for you. Who knows what variables are around your place. The object of the experiment is to show that more expanded, intuned, sonic responses may be coaxed out of your system playing in Mono. 888888888 A caution first. Don't get caught off guard by any setting or button on your machine that may leak some signal across to the inoperating speaker when the other is working in Mono. Make sure that the inoperative speaker is utterly silent. That way you are guaranteed that you are handling real things in the engineering of so-called Mono sound. Also, probably the best way to test is to simply crank the balance lever all the way to the Left or Right hand speaker. You can test your system prior to the experiment by listening to see which speaker has the best all over sound in Mono. This point can vary, for instance one vrs another FM station may be sounding better on one or the other speaker via Mono. The same goes for tapes. Some you may find better sounding through the Left hand speaker, and others through the Right. Don't worry about the absence of bass, or cymbols, this can be improved enough by room tuning to be impressive if your Mono experiment works. The experiment is simply to open and close cupboard doors, and drawers, and move around any object which has an open resonating cavity such as a jar, cup, bowl, in fact any open cavity object which happens to be sitting around in the environment. Also, you may also find that topological toroids may be particularly sensitive to exact location, for instance a roll of tape sitting around somewhere, spend some time with this, moving it around by miniscules so slight they hardly amount to more than just a slight touch of pressure from a finger. The same may be said for circular objects such as glasses from the cupboard, pencil jar, art object, whatever. Objects with handles such as frypan, saucepan, coffee cup, can also take an extra moment testing to see which way the object sounds best according to where the handle points. Most such objects mentioned above are actually grevious spoilers, but can with deft care be sleazed into some position where their spoiler effects are diminished to be least apparent, which axiomatically means to result in the object actually seeming to respond by giving a better all around sound. Don't be a pinhead. Don't just yank open a cupboard door, and slam it shut if nothing seems to happen. You will be keenly listening for very subtle variables in the characteristics of the sound coming from a Mono speaker. So, open the door slowly, and move it slowly through a wide range, all the way to full open, and back, and test this VERY slowly for a few times till you think you know where it sounds the best, then leave it there, even if full open, or nearly closed. Then try another door. Do the same with all doors that lead to rooms. Doors wide open or nearly so should work best. (Even more so, set at a 30 degree angle from being fully open). The changes in overall sound gradually accumulates through a number of faint changes until somewhere it should become unmistakably obvious that you have tuned your way into an entirely new different sounding kind of Mono, at least, if this in fact will happen to work in your environment using your particular kind of stereo set. The same kind of superior care is true for all of the things you may try in going for exciting sonic tuning of your room. One thing you should be able to hear that wasn't there before is 'Airframing' even if slight you will thus hear it and thus know that a thing called 'Airframing' can exist, and whats more, be coaxed out of pure Mono sound which should be nothing but a local source in space resonating as one simple sound cavity around the source speaker. If you achieve any 'Airframing' at all, you should be able to walk around your environment and hear far more of the sound stream carry with you, wrapping around walls and corners. Furthermore, the sound cavity itself around the speaker source may be expanded, even to the effect of moving up and beyond into the roomier back area behind the speaker source, even if a wall is there. Don't be dismayed if you reach a critical point in your endeavours, particular when going back around and retuning small objects, and different parts of the sound start to seem to click in an out in an instant, or different precise frequencies quickly get distorted, than just as quickly smooth out again, as you touch something. These are a couple of the main things you'll have to learn how to handle by practicing how to listen with an open mind. Keep in mind always the respondings of the bass, this may come and go as an almost intangible presence until your play settup is stablized. A fragile intangible bass will be particularly present if, say, you are using the Right hand speaker and the Left hand speaker normally carries the major bass signal for that music. So you will be able to strengthen its Right channel signal gained to a powerful kind, but since there may not be much to work with in the bass signal to begin with, you will have to dance around with it with great care until the dancefloor itself comes out of the earthquake zone and turns solid, so to speak. When playing with the bass, you may or may not find in your home environment that the bass (and other signals) can take a moment to readjust and settle into a new response after you do something. Waiting three or four seconds before hearing the final change will not be uncommon. Opening the cupboard doors opens up more sound cavities to resonate in the sound steam, an effect which seems to work in a very constructive way when coaxing a new kind of sound out of a single Mono playing speaker. If things start to heave around, breaking up and heaving back and forth like floes on a river during spring breakup, all you need to do is turn up more volume. It gives more boost to the energy of the sound waves saturating the room, for instance into the open cupboard cavities, and the heaving should immediately subside. Also, test your volume as you turn it up. Things may get so critical that volume itself becomes a line to cross in positive re-enforement and negative cancellation, so that the sound might just fade out almost completely to nothing before suddenly accelarating (jumping) ahead into a much louder volume, as you move the volume control up through very small, and I mean very small, increases around the range of better higher volume sound which you will surely find playing with the volume control. So, one last thing you need to have ready before trying the experiment. Make sure anyone who might object is sent to the motion picture theater or elsewhere, since you may have to go into rather loud volume to get the new dynamic sound stablized. On the other hand, if you are lucky enough to have someone assist, someone to listen for A and B responses as you try things, all the better. Famous drummers often make jokes when being interviewed on TV about 'this is really playing the room' as they go around the studio vigorously playing everything in sight with a pair of drumsticks. In your case, you are tuning the room, rather than your stereo, or the FM radio, or your speakers. You are tuning the room. If it can work in your environment, you should be able to learn a lot of suprising and astonishing things about so-called MONO sound in a very short period of time. Have fun. In Divine Order. Greydon Moore. Ottawa, Ontario, February 6, 1992. FINALLY ARRIVED Update - February 6, 1992 (evening). --------------------------------------------------------------- At this moment room tuning has become a 50/50 proposition. About 50% percent of the effective tuning is to stationary random arbitrary objects around the environment. And the other 50% tuning is via sonic snowflake controllers, done after some arbitrary room objects have been tuned again, and again. This new technique has led very quickly into some rather satisfying results in the whole quality of sound my system is now starting to produce, I must say. It is not outside of competition with reasonably good home stereo systems as of this moment. As a background listener it is more than enough. As a system to play to LISTEN to good music, it has finally ARRIVED. Point source instrument separation is now very accute. A violin playing by itself far off and way into the back corner of the far Left field can be tuned to become very clear now, and very precisely there, in fact it seems to have become rather easy just to touch a snowflake here, or there, and hear instruments consolidate into even more point source preciseness and at the same time hear its playing grow in volume and clarify. LOWER PITCH MAKES IT IN ALL WAYS BETTER Update - February 6, 1992 (evening). --------------------------------------------------------------- Most importantly, I have finally gotten rid of a high pitched imposition which had always been present in the sound of the stereo system. Today I learned how to listen for something new. This new thing, is, in carefully tuning any given snowflake, I listened most of all for any drop in pitch, even if it also meant a drop in sonic volume. This is a particular experimental variable that actually worked, from start to finish. The more I tuned different snowflakes for lower pitch, the more the pitch inexorably dropped. Until finally after a long haul, in the space of a few moments a whole bunch of new things suddenly gelled into the sound stream and more volume came back, with more fidelity, more open air sonics (Airframe), more open wide spread and far distant point sources of precise instruments, and more bottom bass, much much more, all coalescing into place within a few minutes as a new stable plateau in the sound stream was finally found in the focusing experiments. The whole pitch of the music is down by who can say how much, by more than a whole octave? It is like taking the spectrum of an audio meter's graphic output in peaks and spikes and valleys, and shifting the entire pattern leftward in toto toward the lower end of the sprectrum. Very nice. It is another suspician confirmed. I had always thought it should be possible to get rid of the screaming poors troubling the sound stream, once some sort of stabilized plateau was well founded, so that upon this, more accute testing going for a totally different sonic effect in the snowflake tuning responses, could drop down the overall pitch in the sound stream. It turns out, the intuitive hunch was correct. TWO KINDS OF MOIRE PATTERNS Update - February 6, 1992 (evening). --------------------------------------------------------------- There has to be at least two kinds of moire patterns at work to produce this advanced level of sonic responses in the environment. The two moires start as individual patterns, one which materializes in the air, and that which materializes in solid materials such as the table, the walls, and any objects in the environment. The two moires then interract, with some of the image pictals of the air based moire being picked up by the moires for different solid resonators, and some part(s) of the solid resonator moires being picked up and merged into the coherent moire pattern of the air, which is how the two entirely different kind of sonic resonating realms coalasce in force to start working most harmoniously together in acts of rejuvination and reinforcement, and in the harmonious cancellations of chaos. An observed verification of the above 'merged moire' conjecture is in the fact that snowflakes can break free of their grip to the vibrating solid surface when the honey pinning them down becomes too brittle and the snowflake snaps free so the snowflake looses its best resonating input by now having an impure vibration not perfectly in synch to the hard surface upon which it sits, a problem instantly cured by dabbing fresh honey and re-cementing the snowflake. Also, at times, sound has been heard to come clearly through walls and through the floor to upstairs at almost the volume being heard out in the main listening environment. One thing I should mention is that during the day, to improve overall fidelity, I systematically tested then turned all of the 90 degree facing snowflakes back into splay alignment, re-focused to the general sound image area behind the windows. I say general, because some of the snowflakes were left more or less left facing the back wall. And only six of the 'in parallel' double snowflakes are still in place. FM HISS - POOF! GONE! Update - February 6, 1992, evening). --------------------------------------------------------------- For the last two days my system has been plagued with FM hiss. In fact my favorite FM station has not been playable at all, due to the amount of hiss and roar that moves in on it in any attempt to play it. The hiss got worse or better depending on where I paused for a moment, moving around the environment, but it was always there, for the past two days. I thought it was the built in antenna. This evening another station was tuned in and was listenable, but had some degree of noticable steady hiss. This is how I got rid of it. I moved the dog's carpet by about 1/2 an inch. Okay, no, I did not finally donate my intelligence to the dog's carpet. The following is for real a fact in real time. An occasional listener to my system had a few minutes ago noticed the FM hiss and remarked this is something you always get with FM, and sometimes it gets worse, they added, as if I didn't know, but actually just to remind me not to overlook the obvious, something everybody has known since FM was first invented. I chose to remark that I had been forming an opinion that some FM hiss, if not all of it, was environmentally caused after the fact, after the signals from the stereo system had been issued into the environment. Away went the listener. Whereupon I happened to noticed that the dog's carpet, which lies under the Left end of the table upon which sits the stereo system, was partly askew. this is the kind of rolled flat piece of carpet a dog gets gradually torn apart digging a nest over a couple of years, and right at this moment part of the carpet's top layer was clumped. So what else was there to do. I immediately stooped down and straightened out the clump. Whereupon most of the FM hiss vanished, leaving only a trace. So I tugged a corner of the carpet, moving it by about 1/2 an inch. Whereupon the rest of the hiss vanished. It was profoundly silent. There was just a slight high frequency pressure in the air to hint that hiss had existed. I turned to my favorite FM station, and there it was, back again as loud and clear as ever, after being entirely impossible for two whole days, including tonight just a few moments earlier. It seems that something in the tunings over the past, say, three days, had set up something that was interracting with the dog's shaggy carpet. Now, isn't that a shaggy carpet story. The moral is, that as far as I'm concerned, most, if not all, FM hiss, is caused by super high frequency sonic feedback occilations in your enviroment, and comes into existence after the FM's signal is issued forth into the environment through the speakers. The hiss is not in the FM signal itself, or if it is, can be eliminated by room tuning. WHAT IS REALLY NOT EVER GOING TO CHANGE, IF ANYTHING Update - February 7, 1992, 2:30 AM. --------------------------------------------------------------- The story with the FM is not yet over. A moment ago I decided to give a tweek to one snowflake, (the only one I have been tweeking tonight) to see if I can get better sound while my favorite FM station plays. At the very instant I reached toward the snowflake, the FM station vanished completely, and then, about five seconds later, reappeared as I moved slightly back. So I reached for the snowflake from long distance and in a single tap on its top a whole jump in sound accelarated into the sound stream. But this was not enough. As I moved back and away, toward the Left, the Right hand speaker dipped out completely for a couple of seconds, then came back. And then going back to the Left wall and sitting at the computer again, the announcer came on, and this was an announcer unlike you have ever heard, as if two announcers were sharing the same wave guide, talking alternating in rapid alternate peices of vibration back and forth, resulting in a strange, lower, almost science fiction-like, almost jack hammering deep voice, which returned to normal as soon as I moved my body to the left a little, sitting on an office chair at the computer. As things sit now, there is a real good FM sound at low volume, almost. It is slowly drifting around as I type, sometimes loud and clear and audiophile, sometimes high pitched and a long distance off, sometimes warping into strange sour distortions, then clarifying again into nice clean low volume sound, as I move around at the computer keyboard in the simplest ways. This FM room tuning is definately unstable. But it is also definately HISS free except when a squeeze momentarily moves in and some of the 'in the vice' has a faint almost not there hiss. I suspect this is super high frequency stuff most all of it above the audible sound range for humans. As I sit typing, moving, I can get the bass to disconbobulate, to open up to start flubbing around in boomy indistinct olympic indoor swimming pool faint echoings, then tighten up properly again. It sounds like some glee crazed engineers are playing with sonic dials following the moment by moment seizures of their illusion trips, in my FM music. Sure, that's wildly exaggerated. Its only god getting absorbed with my experiment. Oho you should hear the strange super deep super roomy slow motion rubbery kaboomo's that are the de-stablized bass in an orchestral instrumental piece playing at the moment. Now its back to normal. All I did was move my head by about an inch. It is not my ears. It is not my mind. My head itself is at this moment a super sensitive sonic instrument the way this room is tuned at this very moment in time. The slightest motion of my head and it can become a major spoiler in the sound stream. It's that simple, not hard to understand at all. In fact here is proof. In leaving the dining area the sound immediately stablizes into good high fidelity. At the moment this is heard for a moderate low volume of about 19% on the volume knob. In moving into the kitchen the heard volume diminishes by about half in decibels, then stays at that level no matter where else I move to. For instance it is at exactly the same decibel level all the way up the back hall into the main floor washroom behind the wall of the kitchen. The Airfame is back, not to the same extent as before, say a week and a half ago, but definately more than in the past few days. And the sound quite clearly can be heard coming through the floor itself in one of the upstairs rooms directly over the stereo set. Its as if I have intuned solid matter moires into more positive responses. And so on it goes. Now that something listenable has been gained in this stereo system, it is easy to listen to a lot of different things, all of it speaking volumes about what hasn't been known, or reasonably concidered, in the realms of sound generation and re-enforcements in an environment. For instance, did anyone ever concider that good though limited stereo effects could be coaxed out of Mono sound? I mention this because I have just turned off the Right hand speaker, and really good listening quality stereo is coming from the Left hand speaker. It would fool anyone coming into this room. What they would claim to be hearing is good stereo, more than good enough for background listening at semi low volume. (There as an obvious but not rejectable lack of real quality East to West wide spread image separation. The lack of such would not be really noticed unless listening to, say, a symphony orchestra). And all of it is coming from only one speaker, working in Mono. Furthermore, all of the above strange intransient fragile driftings in and around a quasy point of stability in the FM radio is gone when going to Mono. The music is totally stable again, from the single Mono source, the Left hand speaker. The only thing really different is the Airframe power is down, the decibels in the sound stream has dropped by about 75% by the time you walk into the main floor washroom, in Mono. And some of the highest and lowest end frequencies fade out as you walk through the kitchen. Otherwise who cares. I am going to leave it just as is and keep working on the computer, writing these comments and editing these documents. Life goes on, every evolving, ever expanding. So does knowledge of sound. So get busy, everybody, there's lots of work to do to clear up the dismal diabolical noise called sound in today's industry, and the music it has produced because of the raw consciousness numbing distortion called rock music, and getto blasters, and so on. The problem is senseless racket everywhere and it has been destoying peace of mind long enough. Its time to end the blight now. Let start hearing music that can grow and expand enough in higher harmonic impact to become Cosmic, genuinely Cosmic. We can have such better sound if we want it. I do. I don't want anything else. There, I've got it off my chest. R. S. L. February 7, 1992. Peace, Power, and Plenty. AHEM Update - February 7, 1992, 4:30 AM. --------------------------------------------------------------- Okay. I couldn't keep my hands of it. The result of casual playing around over two hours is something more to report. If I go into the kitchen and stand by the sink, looking through the door into the dining room area, the stereo sound is coming from the whole giant sound range in behind the windows of the dining room. The sound expands beyond the bounds of both speaker boxes sitting on the table. It is a very wide image floating in the air there. The sound we are talking about is slightly muffled throughout its sound range, but otherwise reasonably fidelic. If I come in and sit down at the computer, the sound is from behind me in the room, over in the vacinity of the Left hand speaker and beyond back behind the drawn drapes of the patio doors. If I get up and move toward the center of the dining area the sound becomes more fidelic and centers generally in the giant sound image behind the windows, but hoves to the Left if I move back and forth slowly in a small central area in the dining room. It is only when I proceed to the vacinity of approaching being in front of the Left hand speaker that the sound focalizes into a narrow range receeding back in the distance behind the Left hand speaker. As you have guessed, this is still a Mono experiment. The spreading of the sound image to fool a listener completely when in the kitchen was done by, amongst other things, opening a couple of the kitchen cupboard doors slighty, and room tuning a few random and arbitary objects here and there in the environment, including on the kitchen table. Something which seems to have contributed to moving the sound stream image so far over into the main huge area behind the dining room windows is a wide carboard display box sitting at the rear end of the flat file cabinate around the corner against the South wall of the living room. When this flat open display walled cardboard box was turned slightly, its slightly raised back wall seems to have baffled the sound coming straight at it from the Left hand speaker, over to enter the entire embrace of the huge sound image area, and the overall fidelity improved in a leap as the sound source image landed in its new home. Image how I am going to be able to fool the good listener completely this time around. I am sure that by now, (now suspect), the good listener if coming into the condo straight into the kitchen is not going to for even a second suspect that this could possibly ever be monoral sound. Lets wait till day and find out. THIS I am looking forward to. Later... Well, maybe not today. I got greedy. Started playing around with the demo instead of going to sleep. Er, ah, the ah, demo has been sort of gradually decaying ever since. Right now I don't know exactly what I've got. There can be most definately East to West correct stereo imaging separation, in Mono, but when this is in place, the sound is so wickedly squeezed and distorted I wouldn't want to play it for anybody. Let's see what today brings. If I can bring forth sound, AND the full East to West stereo imaging, in Mono, then I will tell you how I did it. I think I know (now) how it can be done. Don't forget, the bottom line in this kind of fine tuning is that the ears are only about five inches apart when listening to sound from a Mono generating source, and thus this kind of intrinsic observer separation (the ears) is a very narrow window to try and focus through using objects in an environment to spread the sound apart, to get a very wide separation in sound, for instance, say, 50 feet, for a symphony orchestra recorded authentically live. February 7, 1992, 4:45 AM. Update: - February 7, 1992, 3:30 PM. --------------------------------------------------------------- This time, a test fooled me the unfoolable completely. After a good sleep I was up and ready to go again. Since no one was home I was able to crank up the volume and play again with what seemed to be East West stereo separation in a symphony orchestra playing George Gershwin's 'An American In Paris'. (George Gershwin's 'An American In Paris', by the American Radio Symphony Orchestra, H. Brown, Conductor, and marketed by Allegro, ACS 8034). I am using this tape because the point source instrument separation is so authentically wide spread in the way the orchestra was recorded. The soloists were not milked for best listener's pleasure up front, all of the soloists appear popping here and there as they actually played throughout the orchestra. It happened that it only took a moment to set things up (at higher volume) to see that East West stereo separation for a single speaker playing in Mono was happening. It was the Left hand speaker playing. What happened is I switched to the Right hand speaker to see what might be happening there, it was suprisingly fidelic and stereo-like. Then I got distracted making a cup of coffee, and boosting the fidelity a bit via some casual room tuning of a few objects. Then I thought to double check my settup for East West stereo separation. I went back to my key listening position, just inside the kitchen door, and listened, then did a couple of minor tuning adjustments in the kitchen's environment, then listened some more, and adjusted a bit more, then concluded that the effects were not quite what I had before in terms of East West point source instrument separations but, overall, the whole wide open stereo effect was better then ever. In particular, the main bass fiddle stuff was coming from away around the corner over by the Left hand speaker. Then I discovered it was the Right hand speaker, still playing in Mono, not the Left hand speaker. This had fooled me completely. In the whole of the last few minutes I was listening solely for responses assumed issuing from the Left hand speaker around the corner and way over to the Left in the dining room area. So how about that. A change had come into the stereo system during the night, and today. Earlier last night, when first turning to Mono in Stereo, the Righ hand speaker's response was not sufficient to bother trying, it was most dudworthy. And now, today, I have wide spread East to West stereo separation in both speaker boxes playing in Mono, and didn't even have to experiment to get it. I must mention that the point source instrument locations are authentic, the same as heard in full stereo. Nice. --------------------------------------------------------------- STEREO IN MONO EXCITEMEMT --------------------------------------------------------------- HOW WIDE EAST/WEST STEREO SEPARATION HAS BEEN DONE USING ONLY A SINGLE SPEAKER BOX PLAYING IN MONO Update: - February 7, 1992, 4:30 PM. --------------------------------------------------------------- It turns out to be a question of baffles, at least in my ordinary condo home environment. To start with (with the Left hand speaker playing in Mono), by standing in the vacinity of the kitchen sink, and facing straight ahead to the sound image area behind the dining room windows, through the kitchen doorway, I could hear traces of the right side of the orchestra playing correctly in the Right side of the giant sound area behind the windows, and the bass fiddles ronking away correctly far to the Left beyond the Left bound of the Left hand speaker box. In further explanation, I never touched a sonic snowflake in getting setup, or later. It was all done through room controllable random variables. This (above) is a quick summary. Overall it took several hours of work to get this far. The work consisted mainly of opening and closing kitchen cupboard doors by small amounts to create echo cavities in the cupboards. Only, say, five doors were needed, each open, say, by about one half inch to an inch and a half. Another door was fully open. By carefully opening or closing such a cupboard door I could hear phantom instruments appear correctly in the right hand area of the huge sound image behind the windows, in about as much stereo separation East to West I have been hearing with the orchestra playing in full stereo. Sometimes, however, the phantom instrument could be so weak as to be hardly audible in comparison to the instrument's full loud and clear performance in full stereo with the Right hand channel inputing the instrument's main gain. The goal was simply to demonstrate that any point source East/West separation could be managed, thereby demonstrating a mechanics in principle, to prove that a stereo separating capacity and hence a technology in Mono sound was possible. So this goal has been met with flying colors. But, you wouldn't believe the lack of pure fidelity which could come with such separations. I should note that in having played around with room variable parameters, the 'open air' extra quality in the airframing effect in the Mono sound has been totally snuffed along the way. At the start, earlier last evening, when first turning on the Left hand speaker in Mono, the so-called 'Open Air' Airframe quality in the sound was not noticably diminished in switching from stereo to Mono sound, but later, the loss of airframe was instantly obvious in the switching. How the airframe was lost I don't know except perhaps the specific way the kitchen cupboard doors were being used for baffles. The music tended to sound compressed, as if electronically doctored. I don't know how else to describe it. Certainly there was space, and timbre, and even reasonable fidelity at times, but the open space 'Airframe' effect was entirely missing, heard in an instant simply by switching ON the SURROUND SOUND function, which passes about a 10% stereo gain to the other speaker. The further constraint is that the listener's position is critical when hearing wide East to West point source instrument separation. The sound stream (in this experiment as just completed) is very hot and cold in terms of wide width stereo peaks and valleys. A displacement by about half a foot by the observer could make or break the effect. Furthermore, unless a best quality sonic hot spot was found by the observer, the East West separation could fold, that is, a point source instrument could be overlayed over the sound area surrounding the issuing Mono speaker, as well as appearing as a phantom, say, nine feet over to the right in its correct orchestral place in the huge sound image behind the dining room windows. By minutely adjusting the listening position, the instrument could be heard to become truly only issuing from the Right side of the orchestra as a true point source. Furthermore, the listener could only hear the wide spread stereo separation when in the kitchen standing in the vacinity of the sink and stove. Otherwise any point source image separation would be too indistinct to claim with any certainty. On the other hand, the East West point source instrument seperation issuing from the Right hand speaker playing in Mono, could be heard from two different locations. One is in the same local area as before, in the vacinity of the kitchen sink. The other was over in the living room area of the condo, around the corner of the North kitchen wall and back by the vacinity of the large flat-against-the-wall filing cabinate. In this position both the fidelity of the music and point source instrument separation could be very good, it sounded like a much larger orchestra playing overall in a much larger resonating environmemt, like in a big sound studio rather than a small supper club, for instance. Except that the whole quality of sound was still compressed, not open air as if a live performance. Its like a wall of thin glass between you and a live performance. Remove the wall of glass and the performance instantly becomes more real time sounding. It means that some of the Stereo recreation in Mono is via amplified resonances through the moire pattern of the solid materials in the room, since the sonic quality is something like what is heard through glass, or the materials of a wall in a night club before you enter the main area. Two other effects worth mentioning were noticed during the night while playing my favorite FM radio. On one piece of music, a female vocal with orchestra in background, and a drum set far to the Left in the original orchestra East/West instrument separation, was so good when I the listener was standing in the vacinity of the kitchen sink and the Left hand speaker was playing in Mono, that the drummer's ride cymbol came only from far around the corner into the dining room area and away off into the rear corner behind the Left hand speaker, while the vocalist was more or less in front of me, and some of the orchestral instrumentations were ghosting off to the right at an angle further into the huge sound image area straight in front of me behind the dining room windows. This wide spread orchestra around the singer was almost illusionary, because the separation could come and go simply by the displacement of my ears caused by breathing and casually moving around relaxed as you stand, which people normally do. However, the distinct drummer's ride cymbol always came without a break echoing from the same area around the corner into the dining room and far over to the Left behind the farthest away (Left hand) speaker. And during this whole time, lasting for more than an hour till I hit the hay, The announcer's voice, when on he came between tracks, was always away around the corner and over by the Left hand speaker, even if the music just being played was spread out in a huge sound image arrayed correctly in front of me in the right hand area behind the dining room windows. So you see what has been happening. Music has been baffling around the kitchen/dining room walls, reflecting in from both large room areas and portals into the kitchen, concentrating with most positive constructive effect in the vacinity of the kitchen sink by the South wall of the kitchen. In terms of the announcer, this would be a single mike being used in the studio so it was always reproduced centered at the huge sound area behind the Left hand speaker. That is, even though expanded due to ambiant room echos in the studio as the announcer spoke, since it was only one mike centered in front of the announcer, this was how it was being reproduced through my Mono stereo recreation. This constant away-around-the-corner-and-out-of-site sourcing for the announcer's voice was quite a dramatic effect. That is about the sum of it. A plastic coffee cup lid from a thermos bottle was carefully tuned in its position on the kitchen counter leftward of the kitchen sink, when it was found that the exact position of the cup's handle sticking out could make or break the clear cut appearance of a point source instrument consolidating into focus correctly in the right hand side of the giant sound image behind the dining room windows. A triangular shaped ornimental ashtry with slightly curved rather than straight sides was found to also further boost the clarity of point source instruments focused correctly into the right hand side of the giant sound image behind the windows, and in fact could also add in some fidelity boost if positioned correctly on a small utility stand sitting by the doorway to the kitchen near the computer. That is about enough for details, which surely become boring when you start shouting enough. I hope I have given you enough details to give you a picture of how certain things were done to get wide spread authentic East West separation in a Mono playing speaker, ignoring the lack of impressive high fidelity and the very tight, very narrow focused areas where the listener had to stand (as if the ears were pinned in clamps) to hear the separation effects without question. The main mechanical advantage was in using baffles (the kitchen cupboard doors) and reflectivity, (the kitchen walls, plus two doorways into the kitchen so that sound could come reflecting from both the Left and Right sides of the environment into the kitchen. The reason why the ' American In Paris' cassette tape was so useful in this Mono In Stereo authentic East/West point source instrument demonstration is that it was recorded as an authentic recreation of the symphony orchestra as the orchestra was actually playing. Soloists appearing on the tape are located exactly as where they stand or play a solo when playing in the symphony. Another symphony orchestra tape I have used in past tests is quite different. This is the Peer Gynt Suit tape already mentioned in describing other conditions. In this recording, the soloists all seem to appear at center stage, as if each was separately miked and the sound engineers mixed each soloist to make them appear as if standing directly in front of the conductor. Furthermore, major sections of the whole orchestra when dominantly playing, were also mixed so as to seem centered for the listener's personal pleasure. For instance, tympanis, or ronking bass fiddle batteries, all uniformly seem to issue from the back rows of the orchestra directly to the rear facing the conductor, whereas in actual symphany performances these batteries of instruments are always spread transversally abounding in wide East to West separations. I mention this only because this particular Pier Gynt recording would not have been a good one for attempting full stereo authentic spacial separation using a Mono playing speaker, whereas the 'American In Paris' tape couldn't be better to work with. R. S. L. February 7, 1992, 5:00 PM. LIVE ROOM AMBIANCE IN MONO ----------------------------------------------------------------- Update: - February 8, 1992, 3:45 PM. I have lucked in. In attempting to tune in a greater fidelity for the full operating stereo system, I have just found that in switching to the Right hand speaker only, there is greater fidelity! greater quality of tone in all of the instruments, in a female singer, male singer, in deeper lower octaves of the bottom bass, and whatever, when the system is played in 100% Mono through the Right hand speaker, where of course it is only using the right hand stereo track for the sound stream. In most recent previous writings, (at the end of file: Newsound.6, describing tests and result revealing a heard stereophonic East/West separation achieved for a Mono playing speaker's sound steam), all reported adverse effects such as compression, squeezing, snuffing, muffling, instability, and so on, including total collapse of any live room presence, have all been summarily dissolved from the sound steam for the Right hand speaker currently playing 100% in Mono, at this moment in time. As the only quality that might be concidered adverse, any of the strong bodies of sound usually imparted in Decibel level gain into the sound stream via the Left hand speaker, is only slightly being inputed, or merely weakly present, as a carry over recorded as transient echos on the right hand stereo track for the Right hand speaker. Therefore the presence of those bodies of sound are more fragile, rather than strong and obvious. Otherwise, this single speaker Stereophonic demonstration is a very strong and stable performance in the overall. One thing you must understand. The stereophonic reality in the Mono sound is very much a 'head in the vice' phenomena. You have to seek and find the hot spots, and then stand absolutely motionless to hear the BEST East/West separation, not even breathing to spoil it at its best. And don't be decieved by my enthusiastic proclamations. This East/West stereo separation is nothing like what you could hear in any quality stereo dealer's showroom. Yet I think it demonstrates a major technological breakthrough. Who would have ever thought Mono sound could be authentically separated (baffle refracted hence time delayed) into its component stereo spread apart sound sources. TIME DELAY BAFFLES (kitchen cupboard doors) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Kitchen cupboard doors and small layabout random objects have been deliberately tuned to be used as baffles causing time delay effects in parts of the sound stream. The time delay seems to be able to rejuvinate subliminal sound waves that travel sidways from one side of an orchestra and then reflect into the Mono mikes from the other side of the environment. These waves could come in from any direction other than the point source. You get the picture. I expect these are the carrier waves of the stereo signals captured in Mono mikes. To help you get an image, with the baffle effects it takes longer (for instance) for the right-most stereo signals to wrap all the way around the outer kitchen walls to the Left, through the living room area, and back through the kitchen, and back out the Right side kitchen doorway to the sound window to link up with the stereo signals already in place in the Right hand area of the sound window, thus seeming to come into focused clarity slightly delayed behind the sounds issuing forth directly from the signal generating Mono speaker in the dining area itself, just enough time delay for some of the signal strength to also radiate from elsewhere to link up, in an energy re-enforcing way, out to the Right to be heard authentically apart out there, in the air out in the farther Right side of the sound picture behind the dining room windows. Time delay reflector baffles would include anything in the environment, such as a dinner plate upright in the dish rack, books or binders on the kitchen table or on the bookshelves, whatever. It is symmetrically the same for Left hand point source stereo signal regeneration. This time the sound steam basics wrap around through the kitchen Leftward and out through the living room area, to synchronize in a time delay with their master templates in the Left hand regions to the Left behind the windows, thus distinctly rejuvinating their re-enforcing energy strength as point source factors further to the Left in the giant sound image area. When cranking up the volume, the Left hand speaker at this moment also leaps to a life of its own in Mono. With the Left hand speaker playing in Mono, here is what is happening. In this case, deep distant bottom bass booms can be heard as a distinct and separate point source area echoing from around the corner, well out of sight to the Left in the dining room area, when standing in the kitchen, back from the Right doorway and facing straight ahead to the right side of the huge sound image. If or whether such stereophonics can be generated without, for instance, kitchen walls themselves as baffles, I cannot say. The fact that it has been done in this experiment in a low rental condo I think speaks loud and clear for stereo technology inherent in Monoral signals. TESTING THE STEREOPHONIC EFFECTS ---------------------------------------- In testing this suprise Mono special delivery gift, there is no comparison regards the DBE Function (Dynamic Bass Expander) either ON or OFF, The DBE Function is OFF. Any attempts to make a comparison with the DBE Function ON are meaningless. There is nothing whatever worth listening to when the DBE Function (Dynamic Bass Expander) is turned ON. In other words, I have arrived at another, higher level, more advanced, stable PLATEAU, in the sound experiments. In this case, it seems to be even more of a REAL high level because of the Mono. In Mono, even the good fidelity over the stereo system playing in full stereo, is dramatically improved, when the system is switched to Mono, playing through the Right hand speaker. At the moment, the system is at modestly high volume. This means loud enough that two talkers have to raise their voices to be heard standing talking to each other, but the sound level is not obnoxious, no more obnoxious than standing close to the area where a live good band is playing with kindness in a night club. TWO KINDS OF MOIRE PATTERNS COMPRISE THE RESPONSIVE ENVIRONMENT ----------------------------------------------------------------- In fact several quick tests have just confirmed a few interesting things, using this Mono clarified sound to verify them. One of the things you may NOT like to hear (or most like to hear, depending on your fundamental thinking) is that full stereophonic sound (two source generators operating as a stereo speaker pair) may in fact be less fidelic in mechanical properties, than true open stereophonic sound from a 100% Mono single speaker generating a stereophonic source). More about this last remark is elaborated in the following discussions. Firstly, there are TWO kinds of moire patterns which handle the resulting sound of a generating source issuing into an environment. (Further discussions in cross referencing to this subject are found in the Document titled: APPENDIX.2, under the topic: THEORY PROLOGUE - wave impact entropy vibrations). In the two kinds of moires, in order to get really good authentic sounding responses from solid strike instruments such as percussions, the solid matter responses of the environment in particular have to be under proper resonance controls via correct tuning, for the solid matter type moires to be able to harmoniously synchronize their originating then resulting patterns and so merge constructively finally with the air moire. So there are actually THREE kinds of moires, summarize as follows: 1. AIR (The moire pattern which forms in the transparant gaseous media of the air). 2. SOLIDS (The individual and varied moire patterns which form in vibrating solid medias, such as the surface of a table, a coffe cup in the kitchen, each little sonic snowflake controller). 3. COMBINED (The final combined interplays and harmonic re-enforcements which gell as the two different kinds of moire patterns merge into one overall third sonic response effecting the air, and a fourth counterpart in return from the air moire effecting solid matter, in which parts of the AIR moire have become harmonically infused into the solid matter moires, and again visa versa, until the whole of the sonic patterning stablizes. COMMENT: Perhaps the incidence of purer fidelic sound via a 100% Mono sound source is easy to understand, in light of the existence of TWO basically very different kinds of moire patterns which intrinsically comprise the whole of the audible sound stream and its total range in higher and lower ocataves of sound. Only the TWO kinds of moire responses are involved if only ONE Mono speaker is supplying the source of the sound stream, ie., air, and solids. If TWO speakers are supplying the sound stream, then there has to be TWO distinct moires for each of the two different moire kinds (air and solid), one for each speaker and its location, whereupon there has to be a correct merging of FOUR distinctly different moire pattern responses, which have to be re-enforced and rejuvinated to interact most harmoniously with each other to produce the best quality of sound available, concidering the ambiant variables such as the environment, the source media such as cassette tape or FM radio, and the sound source generators themselves (the speakers). You can see the problem; sort of FOUR times the work to overcome obstacles toward pure and perfect sound that stablizes to become most interactively constructively harmonious at all levels possible with the environment, countercouched by the fact that two speaker generating sources are issuing more excitement energy into the environment. Mono sound is mechanically so much easier for vibrating material to handle, when transient inharmonics and chaos's can be involved in such fragile settings as the living area of a cluttered low rental condo. TWO CHARACTER QUALITIES IN THE 'AIRFRAME' EFFECT --------------------------------------------------------------- Update: - February 8, 1992, 4:30 PM. At this moment the FM radio is ON, tuned to my favorite FM station. This station broadcasts 'easy listening' music featuring mainly female or male vocalists with large orchestra backgrounds. Every so often the station alternates with a large orchestral popular music venue or track, and every so often something modern by lyrical rather than trashy or chaotic musicians is played. This kind of music, vocals with large (even symphonic) orchestral backgrounds, has made it possible to easily do a few A and B comparative listening tests, to confirm some opinions, which have been confirmed and are now estabished. Specifically: There are TWO kinds of effects which can be called 'AIRFRAME'. 1. LONG DISTANCE TRANSMISSION That which allows the sound to carry far distances, far outside the realms of physics equations discussed in terms of diminished volume as the square of the distance. 'Airframe' effects have been heard to carry hundreds of feet out a door and up a long corridor, and around the corner, in the second floor Auditorium of the National Research Council Building on Sussex Street in Ottawa, with a pair of small enclosure loudspeakers using only one eight inch driver and a five inch tweeter in each enclosure, where the quote 'airframe' effect for which the speakers had been designed, produced high fidelity sound that wrapped out of the auditorium door into the large corridor, and at a continuously systained volume level out in the corridor, could be heard just as clear all the way up to the end of the long corridor and around the corner to another wing of the building. (Circ. 1985). This is how the first quality in 'airframe' character can work. It is efficiency in being able to transport sound over very long distances. In my home experiments, this long distance carry character means the sound could wrap up the stairs and right into back rooms upstairs in my Condo, with no meaningful deterioration in fidelity level or volume. At the moment, this quality is not hightened, for instance the volume gain in terms of Decibel levels has dropped by about 50% by the time you enter the main floor washroom. And the volume level has dropped by about 70% by the time you reach the top of the stairs, with the fidelity quality diminishing to a very low level as well. There are two reasons why I think may be the cause of the disappearance of the major 'airframe' (long distance carrying) effect. A. All of the snowflakes have been twist turned to face end-on toward the giant sound image area behind the dining room windows, or toward the back wall. Only one is still turned in a 90 degree alignment, this one sits on the corner of the TV set kitty corner across in the room at the back of the living room area. B. Many of the snowflakes are aligned toward the back wall, instead of all being splay aligned to an imaginary focal point deep to the rear recesses of the giant sound image picture behind the dining room windows. At the same time, along the way sometime in the past few days, two other giant snowflake fragments were stood leaning against corners of each speaker box, in an attempt to see if these could cause fractionating of Mono sound into more audible stereo separation. More fractionating did not seem to be apparent. One effect these giant fragments had was to immediately suppress the 'Airframe's' long distance carrying capacity. 2. LIVE PERFORMANCE SOUND On the other hand, a second quality of character in the 'Airframe' effect, has been hightened to a greater degree than ever before in my experiment as it currently sits playing on the large work table in the dining area of my low rental condo. A simple test done more than once to double check, has confirmed the following quality; that stepping in the condo door from the corridor, sounds like you are stepping into a night club with a live band playing up front and just around the corner on stage. This, don't forget, is in 100% Mono, playing from the Right hand speaker. In resuming FULL stereo (both speakers working), when stepping through the front door, the 'stepping into a room with a live band playing' effect is not as good. In fact up by the front door there is a fair amount of distortion in the sound stream, which clarifies as you come around into the main sound listening area in the dining area of the condo. So there you have it. 100% Mono has won the contest, both thumbs up, as of this moment. In terms of authentic East/West separation of any kind in the Mono sound, there it is, then isn't, depending entirely on where you happen to stand in the environment. Even in the main listening area of the dining area, you can hear wide Left/Right point source instrument separations if you take the trouble to find a good hot spot in the peaks and valleys of stereo separation hot spots, to hear that East/West separation is a fact of life in the music. The East/West separation is easier to hear in the kitchen, or around the corner and back into the living room area where you also have to find the hot spots for full stereo East/West separation, but they are easier to find by far. Mind you, this is no real easy task. Even your breathing can throw your ears out of the stereo sonic hot spot, so you definately have to stand still with baited breath to hear the East/West wide width stereo. The North/South depth separation in the stereo image is also well developed, and stable. It doesn't much matter where you stand in the environment to hear the sonic echoing that gives authentic live sound depth to the stereo quality in a huge atmosphere of sound. As for live room effects, the 'Airframe' effect is such that when walking into the room from the corridor outside, it is not really any different than when walking into any club and coming through an outer area before coming into the club's main sound chamber, there is always a slight indistinctness as to true East/West separation of instruments in a band playing alive back there somewhere in a stage area, in a club's main inner chamber, as well as maybe a slight muffling effect caused by some barrier between you and the stage, even if its merely a partial glass walled partition separating you from the Club's big main chamber where all of the musical action happens. This is topologically not really any different than in my condo. Right off the bat, as you step in the front door, you can hear that a band is playing and its source is beyond the kitchen door, it is up around the corner in the dining area. You can even hear that some of the sound is coming from further around the corner, and some other parts of the sound are coming from nearer the corner, in Mono. In my case, any slightly muffled quality heard as you step in the front door could be due to any tiny levels of distortion still in the sound. I know this, because the more the sound has been fidelity clarified over the weeks, the more the, shall we say, 'thin glass wall partial barrier' effect has been eliminated, leading to more and more degrees of 'live in the room' sound. So I accept on faith that if eliminating all subtle distortions, there would be no muffling in the whole presence of the music detected from further away, as for instance stepping in through the front door of the condo. SUMMING UP ------------------- In summing up another sonic characteristic, it is not until you come into exposure to the main sound exciter chamber in the dining area that the full North/South imaging in terms of 'penetrating far back into the stereo window' becomes more apparent, for instance. This is true for both tests, with the system playing in full stereo, and in 100% Mono only through the Right hand speaker. At this moment, the sound when playing the Right hand speaker in 100% Mono is superior in all ways to the sound when both speakers are playing at so-called true two-speaker FULL stereophonic proficiency. In terms of overall success in going for a hi fi sound in my stereo system, the hi fi sound is better than it has ever been before up to this moment. There is no question of that. (I know I keep saying that, because each time I say that its true, as of that moment, and more so now). It just happens that the hi fi qualities in the stereo system happen to be so much more superior on all counts when the system is playing in 100% Mono through the right hand speaker. (Except for stable East/West imaging, which is spotty through many hot and cold East/West separation stereophonic hot spots in the environment, and even then, the actual EAST/WEST separation is not propeller head fantastic). HOW THIS STEREO QUALITY MONO WAS TUNED ---------------------------------------------- Tuning was done to several random objects in the environment, and a handful of snowflakes were meticulously tuned to gain what has become the Mono stereophonic qualities described immediately above. The tuning was actually done with the stereo system running at FULL stereo with both speakers working. The Mono amazement was discovered to be completely alive, up and running already, after the fact of the tuning. Firstly, a few snowflakes sitting to the inside right of the Left hand speaker, were retuned to a more exact splay alignment directed to some imaginary far distant focal point behind the dining area windows. Prior to this turning, these snowflakes (four of them) had been remaining twist tuned from a prior experiment a few days earlier to be turned outward away from the main sound image area behind the windows, marginally even further outward away from the back wall. What was found in twist turning them inward to a splay alignment was that the carrying quality in the music's 'Airframe' response was enhanced. That is, the sound carried better into the main floor washroom, with, say, only a 35% drop in decibel level as you entered the washroom (instead of, say, a 50% drop). However, the overall fidelity had also dropped by an easily perceptable degree in the main sound chamber in the dining area. And in particular, the East/West wide image of the music had also collapsed into a most bunched up cluster sandwiched between the two stereo speakers themselves, but still well displayed into the depths behind the dining area windows. So carefull testing was done anew, this time twist turning the four snowflakes back, but only until they arrived pointing more or less straight back to the wall, whereupon in fussing and fuming over them with great care, a sudden new consolidation in greater sonic range, power, and fidelity, welled up out into the open in the sound stream. At this point, the East/West wide stereo separation was back, as wide as it had ever been, with even more acute point source acumen, and more overall fidelity, than ever before. Instruments were point sourcing well beyond the Left and Right bounds of the speaker boxes themselves, and well back into the depths behind the windows and the patio doors. Upon this, four other troublesome snowflakes were touched tuned to a higher degree of sonic fidelity. Whereupon, the system was switched to Mono as a quick on the spot test. Whereupon it was discovered that the system was now performing in its current hightened energy exciting level of Stereophonic impact, fidelity, and transient positive reproduction of factual point source sound locations in the sound stream as you moved around to find the East/West sonic hot spots, in Mono. So that just about summarizes it up to the minute. If anything further crops up worth reporting, I will report it. Otherwise concider that this is goodbye and the book is being closed for the time being. In Divine Order. Greydon Moore. Ottawa, Ontario, February 8, 1992. Peace, Power, and Plenty. WHAT IS CAUSING FM HISS ?? - February 8, 1992 --------------------------------------------------------------- Update: In picking up on some remarks made in NEWSOUND.6 under the topic: FM HISS - POOF! GONE! , I am still going to reserve judgement, but hedge a bet toward such hiss as being caused by the environment, rather than by the FM antenna, (which has been kept untelescoped and clipped in place at the back of the consul). In doing some snowflake tuning, when my hand was inserted to an area at the rear and immediately to the Left of the consul to tune a few snowflakes, FM hiss would move right in and become a roar. Later (after quite a bit of tuning around the environment) there was no FM hiss or roar with my hand in the same area. And then, within moments after a few snowflakes in the far distant environment were twist tuned and touch tuned, FM hiss was back with my hand in the area next to the Left rear of the consul. And then, a short time later, after a few more snowflake were tuned around the environment, the FM hiss was again gone. This here again, gone again, here, gone, aspect of hiss makes me tend to believe it is environmentally caused and not the antenna. I certainly expect the source of the cause is something in the signal coming from the FM station, no question of that. What is in question is whether its manifestation in the sound stream is caused by poor or weak FM signal. Or is it due to improper harmonic main-tuning in the sonic atmosphere of the environment itself. I tend to favor this second option, according to what I have been able to hear in terms of tuning out the HISS by the mere simplest tunings or just touch tunings of a few sonic snowflakes here and there in the environment itself. LAST MINUTE UPDATE - February 9, 1992. ------------------------------------------------------------- It is 3:51 AM, and I have not been able to keep my hands off the system as I proof read these documents. The quick summary of what this means is as follows: We are back to low volume, since a brother is upstairs sleeping. The FM is tuned to my favorite station, and volume is set to its usual low volume setting of about 12% gain. What is so unusual is the volume of the sound itself has just been boosted to about what I have been hearing recently with the volume at about 18% to 23% for modest high volume FM listening. The gain in decibel level seems to have been entirely through superior fine tuning of the environment. It could mean that the whole system is suddenly more efficient. Oddly enough, as more volume came into the sound stream in the last few minutes, more fidelity also came in. This is the first time that the so called background listening level has been free of the hardships of rubbery or indistinct bass, which comes and goes through different musics, at low volume, and transient stridency in the higher end also coming and going for different musics. At this moment all of the fidelity is good, and in particular the lower bass is loud and strong. My saving grace is that the sound is not carrying very far, its impact will be diminished right down by the time it reaches the upstairs room where my brother is sleeping. So I do not expect I shall have to turn down this volume further. I don't know if the boosted basic decibel level is due to the FM station's engineers cranking up some knobs, or the Ontario Hydro finding some free fuel to fire up an extra generator. To double check, I have just switched to a cassette deck and played a tape. It too is much higher in volume. Usually nothing worthy can be heard playing a tape with the volume set to 12%. For tapes late at night for low volume listening, I usually turn the reostat up to about 20% to 25%. However tonight, 12% for the tape is almost enough to make me think about a cranky sleepy brother wondering why I've got the sound so loud. After all, concideration is the bottom line in any harmonious relationships anywhere. So, this new gradually emerged loud volume is NOT the FM station broadcasting a stronger signal. It is either the Hydro Company sending more juice through the wires. Or it is me, tuning more juice into the environment. I think it is juice in the environment which is doing the job. By the way, I'm sure you are wondering as was I, so I've just double checked the Mono situation. Sure enough. It is excellent. Well, actually, not all that good in plain old fashioned out in the open East/West stereo imaging, but otherwise verrry interesting. Somehow, there is hardly any difference in sound quality, or level of volume, in switching from full two speaker stereo to the Righ hand speaker in 100% Mono. But the Left hand speaker is still almost a dud. Hardly any volume, and no airframe to speak of, and most of all no listenable fidelity. This stereophonic Mono situation is not an illusion, the SURROUND SOUND Function is OFF, so not a thing is leaking through to the inoperative Left hand speaker when the stereo balance is toggled to the Right speaker only. I may as well cut the speaker leads and open the patio door and toss the Left hand speaker out in the snow then close the patio door, for all the difference it will make to the stereo I am listening to at this minute, albiet the greater wide image is unstable. TUNING THE CRACKS -------------------------- One thing I did in the random casual room tunings done over the last hour, was find out that any packed objects such as books or computer diskette boxes, if they can be spread slightly apart rather than packed tightly together, the little bit of separation between them can act as a sound cavity to resonate in a positive contribution with some of the more subtle (even subliminal) cross harmonic frequencies in the sound, leading to more pure fidelity, hence to more open air (Airframe) live sound sonic qualities. As for the packed objects, all they need is a crack between them, say about a sixteenth of an inch, to about a quarter of an inch, for improvement in sonic quality in the sound stream to be noticable. A word of friendly advice about tuning cracks. You have to get the thing tuned just about perfectly right or the crack can become a major spoiler. More friendly advice about tuning the cracks. You can overdo it. It seems if cracks are tuned too precisely, your sound can begin to destablized and start to fragment and fracture. One other thing I did in the last hour, in tipping forward the consul to pull out a microphone which was tucked behind there a few days ago for some recording tests, the consul landed about a full inch forward on its footings than before, and hey did it sound better. So there it now is, touched tuned into a higher positive (much less spoiling) contribution. Trouble is, I'm still playing around with the environment as I write this, and oops am starting to loose the bottom bass. I don't know where its going to, but its inexorably fading away. Tomorrow I'll have to get busy at high volume and get those booms back. How, will be by going over the same stuff in room tuning I have just gone over, and see if I can find out what I have done to make something or some things a spoiler. Is there more to find out about this stereo system and its room tuned environment? UPDATE - February 9, 1992 (Day) ------------------------------------------------------------- Holy toledo. What's gone wrong. I've just spent most of the afternoon trying to tune back in the bottom bass. I've got some of it, but the double below octaves I used to hear on a couple of tape tracks... nothing. Plus real hockey fidelity. Where does it go? Where does the fidelity go? Right now I don't have anything I can show to anybody and I don't know where the sound went. I've been retuning and retuning snowflakes around and around the circle, and have got back some stuff compared to what I had as I turned on the system today. But no question that it's nothing like what I've had, even in just the last 24 hours. Where does it go? Is it the baseboard electric heater under the table? It comes on, dry air and hot temperature melts the system. It turns off. Cold air solidifies the system, right out of focus. I sometimes think so. But if the heat from the baseboards, how come such a change, is the whole system that fragile. I really don't know. Could it be humidity in the air? Today it is very cold outside and the air is very dry. The first time I got a stable bottom bass (in January) there was a warm spell with rain and fog hanging around for two days in the middle of a subarctic cold spell. Could this extra humidity be a factor? I don't know. Yesterday it was almost melting, today its super cold outside. At the moment, the giant sound image behind the windows is very unstable, sound seems to dip and rebound and bounce along in refocused areas out there as I move back and forth through the room, and merely moving my head sitting at the computer can bring in much worse, much better fidelity, to my ears in an instant. However, yesterday afternoon, the whole of the giant sound image behind the windows was extremely stable. How good things can come and ago so surreptitiously has always been a problem in these ongoing tests and experiments. Sometimes I can think ahead and close in on a variable and solve a deterioration. For instance this afternoon I moved the consol back to its previous position and recovered some of the bass range at high volume but only got back something, not a great deal in fidelity or extra range. Not good enough, just a marginal improvement in a variable. Another variable, suddenly remembered was that last evening I had twist turned the one snowflake sitting in a 90 face on alignment, to an edge-on focus to the main sound area. I have now turned this one snowflake (sitting on the TV set) back to a 90 degree alignment and there has been a noticable recovery in the stability of the bass range in the music being played. One thing I did notice more clearly today is more facts about HISS. I was playing the same tape over and over and at times in the silences between tracks I could hear faint hiss, and at other times the profound silence in the total absence of any hiss. But this (the silence) kept coming and going. Nowhere did the hiss get loud enough to be a challenge. What did I do to get the profound silence? Who knows. All I did was go around and around the race track tuning snowflakes. Which snowflakes...? Which area of the environment...? I don't know. So sometimes I can't figure things out, at times not at all. This is one of those times. Where did the sound go? I've got it restored enough for good background listening, but nowhere good enough to stand back with my hands in my pockets and let a listener listen. Who knows, maybe tomorrow something will transpire and the system will be better than ever. I hope so. I am getting real anti-encouraged with this constant game playing the unstable system keeps throwing at me. However, that is the price of curiousity and challenge. Anyway, here's some news. The electric bass heaters have just come on and heat is issuing from under the table, and the sound has hardened up, is more brittle sounding, plus the whole of its pitch has gone up by a noticable degree in the sound range. Its quite a bit less fidelic all of a sudden. So, therefore, my system is demonstrated to be so fragile that higher air temperature can be a major spoiler. UPDATE - February 9, 1992 (late evening). ------------------------------------------------------------- Anyway, here's some further good news. In playing around just a bit with a few snowflakes and some room tunable random objects I got the big open sound of drums being played live. It came back into the sound stream all of a sudden, big, roomy, echoing percussion sounds, rather than flat thuds. This is true for both small percussion instruments and bass drums. Also with it came back much of the heaving breathing pulsing lower end in the bass I have had for instance when symphony was playing yesterday. However, tonight I got into the sound stream something more, this time I somehow got rid of a whole bunch of minor cross harmonic sour or weird overtones effecting certain parts of the sound stream off and on. Tonight those strange subtle out of phases are gone. PREDICTING A VARIABLE ----------------------------- I also got more tone into the percussions with one step. In thinking about prior remarks regarding Air plus Solid moire patterns both contributing to the resulting sound stream, I played with the antenna at the back of the consul. It turned out that if lifted to be free of its clamps it became Air excitement responsive, and then if moved just enough to touch one of its clamps, it also became solid matter responsive (virbations from the consul itself) and here was gained a sudden noticable boost in the tone and percussive echoing of such as drums. In fact, what could be described when the antenna was deliberately unclipped and set to touch one of its clamps, is that after a few seconds later, in came a huge dimensional increase in the sonic open air quality, and clarity in the depth of sound in both the high end and the bass range, confirming an opinion that solid matter holds certain parts of the sonic blueprint for best all around sound. A listener happened by just now and has commented that what they are hearing is certainly the most listenable ever, and I agree, I am starting to LIKE this sound, at modest high volume. But, the stereophonic Mono play is not impressive. There is something coming through the Right hand speaker, but it is distorted and the bass end is muffled this time, and once again the Left hand speaker by itself is issuing nothing worth listening to. Still the DBE Function (Dynamic Bass Expander) turned ON is absolutely ridiculous, so it is OFF. What all this means in a two paragraph summary is that no great major breakthrough to a new super audiophile hi fi system can be engineered by you at home or in a lab, perhaps it can. I am not suggesting this has happened. If you come up with something real good, and marketable, all the better. For me, this whole series of tests and transitory experiments has been to explore principles and mechanics in the nature of sound. Finally, I have no doubt that this spare time experiment is coming to an draw. Goodby. R. S. L. February 9, 1992 Peace, Joy, and Happiness. MYSTERIOUS SONIC LIGHTS IN THE WALLS --------------------------------------------------------------------- Update: - February 10, 1992, 1:00 PM. Something new was just learned today. There is an 'airframe' quality of open air live sound resonance which comes into the music after a certain high volume, which can be sustained as the volume is slowly reduced to a certain point, at which the 'Airframe' quality snuffs out and becomes muffled, whereafter the volume has to be turned back up to the previous higher setting to re-activate the 'airframe' quality in the sound stream. This seems to be a mechanical principle relating to vibrating characteristics in substance, rather than a mere property of sound wave propigation. At the moment the higher energy resonance is activated, the volume level also seems to take a jump to more sound. In other words, the volume gain is not smooth but increases in peaks and valleys when slowly turning up the volume of my stereo system as it currently sits on the table in the dining area of my condo. This is particularly true when playing a tape on the cassette deck. I suspect that the vibrating characteristics of SOLID matter are involved in this peculiar 'airframe' sustained force, in that the muffling, when it comes in after the hearing of the excitement becomes lost, is mainly in the areas of percussion and deep bass sounds, which as far as I can conclude are dominantly the sonic inputs of solid matter vibrations. It may be Also/Or that at the lower cutoff plateau, there is no longer enough power in the sonic signal to inveigle the sound stream properly into the cracks and cavities of the environment. These would include cracks between books on a bookshelf, and resonance cavities such as the inner of a kitchen cupboard with the cupboard door partly open. Specifically, the tone and percussiveness of percussion instruments winks out and the sounds of percussion become dull thuds when the cutoff (lower) volume threshold is reached. Other things in the sound stream also abruptly deteriorate as well, of course. This would not be worth notice if the higher sonic excitement quality abruptly came and went in passing back and forth through the same point in the volume. But this is not the case. There is a 'Dead Band' phenomena involved: a percentage range in volume through which this phenomena is active, initiated at the higher end of the range, and cancelled at the lower end of the range. (The scientific definition for 'Dead Band' is given under topic 'Definitions' further below at the end of this NEWSOUND.7 document). TESTING THE PHENOMENA ------------------------- To test this lingering sonic activity phenomena, I started with the FM radio tuned to my favorite station, and slowly turned up the volume control, starting from 0%. When the volume gain reached about 20%, a new, more fully tonal and strongly developed, deeper ranged 'airframe' sonic quality moved into the sound stream. I then slowly started turning down the volume control. This new more open air ingredient snuffed out and became dull and muffled, when the volume reached 15%. Turning down the volume further did not alter the muffle, it was there for good. In slowly turning the volume back up, the higher excitement sonics came back into the sound stream when the volume control again reached 20%, and then faded again when the volume reached 15% when being slowly turned back down. In other words, the excitement, once activated, was staying sustained below its activation threshold, once activated, and then cut off at a lower threshold of volume power (at a lower precise descible level). The same phenomena was observed when playing a cassette tape. Only this time (I think this is a technical factor of my Fisher getto blaster device itself), more volume was needed, taken through a wider HIGH/LOW range, for the phenomena. Using the cassette tape, the most noticable higher excitement sonics came in when the volume control reached about 35%, and faded when the volume control (being slowly turned down) reached about 25%. Its as if the higher excitement in the sonics can be percieved as lights which start to glow in the sonic hot spots of solid matter, for instance the tables and the walls, the lights become excited after a certain stronger power in the volume is reached, and the lights continue to glow and stay excited via some sort of intrinsic re-enforcement property, until the generating source of power drops below a certain level (volume is turned down) whereup the lights snuff out. In terms of sonics, the sound becomes muffled and the 'airframe' effect disappears. (Sorry about the jargon but this appears to be a very scientific area and I don't have that kind of language. So try and bear with me in patience and I'll try not to sound like a science fiction writer hedging a bet). This raises some interesting questions in physics. What is in the substance fabrics of matter so that it has properties which can hold the excitement (the sonic lights) alive through a reduced power in the volume level? What can keep re-energizing the lights despite the volume power being reduced? It may not be a mysterious input from, ahem cough, ethers, or worse. It could well be that some power normally conducive to louder volume in the sound stream is being used to keep the sonic lights excited, (resulting in a slightly reduced heard volume that you wouldn't normally be aware of), until the lower 'quantum-like' plateau is reached, whereupon the sonic lights wink out and the sound becomes muffled through lack of enough re-enforcing energy from the sound generating source to keep the lights radiating. BETTER TUNING OF EAST/WEST SEPARATION ----------------------------------------------------------------- Update: - February 11, 1992 A snowflake focused from long distance edge-on to an imaginary focal point deep in the distance behind the windows, seems to definately improve point source imaging of single instruments, particularly in terms of precise clear sonic hot spots well to the Left and Right arms of the speaker boxes and well back into depth. On the other hand even just one snowflake rotated by 90 degrees to focus to the main sound image face on, seems to dramatically improve the power and depth and stability of the bottom bass and deeper bottom bass octaves of the sound stream, but at the same time seems to subtely blurr the outer bounds of the clear cut East/West imaging. For instance a violin originally being heard miles out in the depths of the Left hand field, can move and reappear closer to the Left hand speaker box, when, say, a snowflake on the TV set back in the living room corner is turned to a 90 degree alignment. SONIC RECURRANCES (Principles in sonic manifestations) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Update: - February 12, 1992. I have just observed an 'Airframe' audiophonic effect worth commenting on. It is a sort of abrupt recurrancing at long distance. But first, some background. Starting late last evening, I have been working (and again today) with trying to restore the 'Airframe' long distance carrying effect in the music. This is in keeping in mind several of the more effective snowflake tuning techniques I have learned in the past few weeks. In particular I am keeping an open ear to the different LEVELS of response (three levels) which can finally effect the sound as any given snowflake is touch or twist tuned. The levels are Air, Solids, Combined, sonic moire patterns. In keeping with this, I have twist tuned all of the snowflakes back into a splay array, focused to an imaginary focal point well back in the depths of the dining area windows behind the stereo table. The re-twist tuning includes all snowflakes that were tuned straight to the back wall, these have all been turned back to edge-on focus, including a single 90 degree snowflake which had been kept on the top of the distant TV set over in the back corner of the living room area. It too is now in an edge-on splay focus. At first, I had thought that the uniform splay with edge-on tuning focusing would cause some collapse in the wide window East/West stereo imaging display behind the windows. But this has not been the case. It has turned out that a very wide image separation in precice point source sound locals is possible for different instruments, and in fact the whole stereo presence of any orchestra or kind of sound can be improved by quite a bit over what was in place yesterday afternoon. A moment ago I did a usual preambulatory check of the sound stream, walking through the kitchen and living room area and back into the dining room area listening to changes in both sonic quality and distance carrying characteristics in the sound stream's so-called 'Airframing'. On both counts, the 'airframing' has been quite improved in the walk through the kitchen and living room areas. There are slight local peaks and valleys in the sound's volume, nothing major, and the 'open air live presence' phonic sound clarity in the 'Airframe' is in fact holding up uniformly no matter where I walked. Just some dulling of 'live room' sound walking through the center part of the kitchen, but no change in the bass or higher end ranges. Except for the main floor washroom. In walking down the corridor there was a large drop in volume and all of the sonic qualities of the sound stream muffled up or faded. Until walking into the washroom itself, whereupon most of the muffling opened up again into 'airframe' live sound clarity as did the sonic range itself, top to bottom, as a new image of sound seemed to spring to life in a presence I could sort of hear in the washroom itself as I walked in the door. However the volume that came back peaked at about 20% in decibel levels below the original out in the dining room area. What was instantly learned, is that the washroom chamber has become a secondary sound resonating cavity, with the sound image from the main sound image area behind the windows in the dining area becoming re-amplified, rejuvinated, re-excited heard long distance in the local environment of the washroom chamber itself, after the fact of reduction in powers in the sound stream along the corridor to the washroom. At least, this secondary resonating characteristic in the sonic cavity of the washroom is in effect for this precise moment. In previous tests, say three weeks ago, the sonic 'Airframe' effect was pretty well constant no matter where in the enviroment I happened to walk to, including the two rooms far back at the upstairs rear of my condo. See subject: 'DRAMATICALLY DIMINISHED CARRYING EFFECT' under topic: 'NO VOLUME VRS DISTANCE PHYSICS EQUATION WILL WORK - January 30, 1992' in file: NEWSOUND.6. Back at that time, the sound in the washroom was just about as loud and clear the same as anywhere else in the main floor of the condo. It wasn't until the door was actually closed down to about one and a half inches that the volume and quality took a major drop, and even then, with the door closed, the remaining sound seemed to come right through the walls as if the plaster was transparent. (I now understand that this is due to a particularly well developed secondary positive tuning aspect of solid matter's resonance responses to excitement by the sound stream). As already mentioned further back in these records, that particular 'coming through solid walls' kind of sound was completely gone from the washroom for a while, and is now here again, but muffled, only partially resumed. With the washroom door closed I can still hear all of the sound range top to bottom, but it is all muffled because the open air quality is entirely gone. The point of noting this is that, at one time, say three weeks ago, the solid matter responses had been snowflake tuned to allow some of the open air character in the sound stream's 'Airframing' to also come right through the walls of the main floor washroom. Maybe I shall be able to get this quality back into the airstream. I don't know. What was different in those days, say two/three weeks ago, was that some of the snowflakes were twist tuned to a 90 degree face on alignment to the main sound imaging area behind the dining room windows. And there were more snowflakes in place, including some parallel pairs no longer in use. (In the last half day I have pulled six snowflakes and tossed them into a tray on the kitchen table. Also, at least half a dozen snowflakes have been slightly repositioned within the past half day. I have also pulled the two giant snowflake fragments that were leaning against the speaker boxes. It turns out that with the new uniform splay alignment focused to an imaginary focal point behind the windows these fragments had become major spoilers. The mostly used roll of duct tape sitting on the top row of the bookshelf has also been removed). (Furthermore, only two snowflake pairs now remain still close together as a parallel pair. One pair is on the front lip of the window ledge in the middle up above and behind the central area of the stereo settup. The other pair is on the table, sitting about three quarters of a foot out in front of the Right hand speaker). It now seems that any artificiality against pure snowflake single mass object controllers is not liked by the sound stream. Only one giant fragment, of 11 snowflakes, leaning sideways at a 90 degree angle against an aluminum window frame above the table, is the only remaining giant fragment. RECURRANCING PRINCIPLE ---------------------------- In the above cited example of a sound image springing to life anew in the acoustic chamber of my main floor washroom, this in fact is a fundamental physics principle known as recurrancing. In this current case, the principle of recurrancing has two distinct properties. The 'recurred live sound' and volume of the sound stream is recurring as a brightened enhanced image in a new heard presence within the washroom, beyond a carrier channel or tunnel (the corridor). While at the same time the originating source of the signal, the distant huge sound image behind the dining room area windows, (far away up the corridor and around the corner, through the living room area, around the corner into the L-shaped dining room area), is also in rejuvination when heard from this specific far distant location in the washroom. Hence there are two local properties in this recurrancing phenomena, relative to the observer. 1. Relative to the observer, the originating image is being raised up anew to be distinctly known as the source of of the image out there at long distance in the dining room area. 2. And a recurring nearby image is being generated anew in a source long distance from the originating signals, inside my main floor washroom. (Hints of quantum tunnelling by electrons are popping up in unnuedoes all the way through this as modelling possibilities in this discussion about sonic recurrancing properties). RECURRANCING SPECULATION ------------------------------ I don't know if it would ever be possible to new-tune these phonic experiments to such an extent that only a sonic image recurring here in the main floor washroom would be the sole image heard, as if the sound stream was originating somewhere in the washroom itself, and the huge main image of sound out in the dining room area would now NOT be heard at all. If this were the case (the originating huge image source not heard at all, only its long distance recurrancing is manifesting) this would allude analogously to certain kinds of fundamental recurrancing principles which have always been a part of theoretical domains in fundamental high energy particle physics labs and researches, especially where families of particles of specific same properties but different mass energies seem to 'recurr' in particle collisions and cascading decay experiments. For further reading see in APPENDIX.2 topic: THEORY PROLOGUE - wave impact entropy vibrations: for a discussion on two kinds of collapses into chaos which can be tested using sound systems, one an abrupt instant collapse, the other a series of degenerations through plateaus, which have an alludable similarity to different kinds of particle creations and decays, either through complete collapses, or through a series of decay modes, depending on the kinds of particles involved in different high energy physics experiments. RECURRANCING IS SYMMETRICAL FOR BOTH MONO AND STEREO SOUND --------------------------------------------------------------- In the above scenerario, it is not the original generating source of the sonic signals that is in question (regards any recurrancing in kind), in that the originating generating signal is that which strictly issues from both of (or either one of) the speaker boxes. For that matter, the appearance of any kind of sound image out in the air between or apart from the issuing speakers themselves, is a recurrancing, manifesting through sonic principles. Picture that a really good stereo set has an image of sound in the air behind the separated pair of speakers. This can only occur when recurrancing of energy principles is in effect. Both speakers either as a stereo pair, or each in Mono, have to be acknowledged in being an either/or issuing source, since the reappearance of a re-excited huge main sound image is even more NOTICABLE in my washroom when either the Left hand or Right hand speaker is playing in 100% MONO. In fact, at this moment, both Left and Right hand speakers are performing very well in Mono, in fact there is hardly a drop in volume when switching the balance toggle from full stereo to Right hand speaker only, and the fidelity is in some ways better in Mono through either Left or Right Mono speakers then in full two speaker stereo. Therefore the question of original issuing of the sound steam er stream cannot be a factor relating to the existence of stereo speaker pairs only, when it comes to discussing recurrances in sound images. The 'issuing source' itself is not in question. It is the 'first dominant' recurrancing of, and enhanced exciting of, the issuing signal into a huge sonic stereo image sweeping through space out in the area behind the dining area windows. This is true for either 100% Mono one speaker sound, or full stereo two-speaker sound. In this 'first stage' in recurrances of inherent sonic patterns, any sound issuing from the two generating sources (or single speaker generating source if a Mono) is not in concideration at all, from a listener's (observer's) point of view. Even though, in a laboratory frame of reference, the signal generating speaker source(s) is the fundamental cause of any resulting phenomenas (such as the first occurred built up resonating occurrance of image details in the huge stereo image sound area behind the dining room windows, hence behind the issuing speaker(s) generator source. So, four kinds of recurrancing of precise information has just been specified in the above reports, and the 'Speculation'. 1. Original issuing generator source (the speakers themselves or single speaker if a Mono) in which no characteristics of stereo quality can be heard in the sound stream issuing straight from the generating source(s), for instance with the ear or measuring instruments held close to the issuing oriface of the speaker(s). 2. A first dominant image occurance, in the form of the huge dynamic stereo image formed anywhere at some distance from the generating speaker(s) source(s) per se. In one aspect, this first dominant image is a legitimate genuine recurrancing of the original issued sonic patterns, since its manifesting is in an area where the speaker generators are not. 3. A second recurrance of the first dominant image, for instance to long distance in my main floor washroom, is also a distinct physics, in which instance the first dominant image is also heard, to be re-excited in the presence of this recurring 'second dominant image' as a recurring of the first, only this time recurring as a second dominant image at a long distance, in my main floor washroom. 4. A SPECULATED sole recurrance of the first dominant image, again in my main floor washroom, only this time the first dominant recurring image in the huge stereo sound image behind the dining room windows, would NOT be heard. Another facet in the nature of recurrancings has already been tested and reported. This is where the huge main sound image behind the windows is always heard, but is diminished to the point of being almost non-existent by the time the observer has reached local inside the main floor washroom. In this prior situtation, there was no recurring image of any quality or kind being excited into manifestation inside the accoustic, sonic cavity, or vibratory, environment of the washroom. What was reported was that the whole of the sound from the dining room area had dimmed and faded to just about nothing by the time I had reached the washroom door in walking around listening to what was happening in the whole of the environment. In other words, a speculation can be that the long distance information carrying characteristics (the 'airframe' property) will have been damped out completely by hexagram snowflake tuning in the sonically tuned main floor environment. ....In converse to a complete snuff out, a few quick tests in the washroom demonstrated that with suitable patience and hard work, it might be possible by using baffle techniques to cause a re-creation of the sound image to re-appear in the washroom so to seem as if the washroom itself was a main image area source for the sound, in other words to appear as if the sound was being played in the washroom itself, and not just wrapping and echoing from a distance into there. FURTHER READING --------------------------------------------------------------- THEORY PROLOGUE - wave impact entropy vibrations in the APPENDIX.2 file, goes into more extensive examination of the question of 'impact vibrations' on speaker cones and how this contributes to stronger sonic reproduction for a sound stream, vrs chaos, and abrupt cascades into chaos. February 12, 1992. Peace Joy and Happiness. DEFINITIONS ------------------------------------------------------------- Two scientific terms which seem to allude to phenomena cited above in the topic: MYSTERIOUS SONIC LIGHTS IN THE WALLS are defined in the Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia. The main term is 'DEAD BAND (Instrument)': The range through which an input can be varied without initiating a response. Dead Band is usually expressed in percent of span. This entry is cross referenced to: 'HYSTERESIS (Instrument)', in the Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia. DONE Greydon Moore. February 13, 1992 NEXT FILE...............