Let me list some
very basic conditions: 1. The music in
our room sounds drop dead gorgeous 2. five seconds
after closing of our eyes and listening we can visualize all
musicians and their instruments. We can follow each instrument and each
thread easily and we can enjoy the piece as a whole 3. We do not
have any clue that we listen to stereo not musicians (with
eyes closed) 4. When the
music is touchy we get goose bumps 5. When we
listen to good albums we continue all the way to the end and we finish
with an eargasm 6. We have zero
itch to tweak, sell, buy or upgrade. System becomes unimportant and
invisible 7. 10 out of 10
visitors, be it audiophiles or regulars, comment that they never heard
better music reproduction 8. The illusion
of "they are here" or better "I am there" is so
real it is truly scary. The room in our brain is totally replaced by
the perception of the recorded event. 9. The music
sounds fantastic at REALISTIC levels that means at the
sound level similar to the loudness at the original event (usually
this means bloody LOUD) 10. I
can't
think of point number ten just for the sake of having a nice round list
of 10.
How not to get to audio Nirvana
1. Read
all audio magazines. Especially cut through the writing straight to the
verdict. 2. Pay attention
to 5 star products only. 3. Invest in
shakti stones, spiked cones, snake oil, CD demagnetizers,
anti vibration platforms, cables that contain silver and gold, 4. Pay attention
to CD players which have lowest THD (total harmonic
distortion) and amplifiers which have highest damping factor above 1000 5. Regularly
visit your friendly dealer and without any strings
attached let him get you hooked on the latest Stereophile Recommended
Levinson 959.05 for 33 000 USD like a bargain 6. Fill your
room with bass traps, diffusers, and sound lenses 7. Move to the
basement and build a dedicated room isolated from family, friends,
relatives and fresh air. 8. Go to every
audio show you can 9. replace all
capacitors with Black Gates and all resistors with Vishays and all
diodes with Hexfreds IMMEDIATELY. 10. Play the
pink noise at max volume and leave the system on repeat for one week. 11. Buy a 10
KWatt pure sinus replicator generator and feed your system with proper
AC, and immediately the music will
just sound heavenly ... dead. The master guru in the magazine said that
the AC is really out of shape these days and that it is REALLY bad for
the system.
Now seriously,
here is how I see it:
1. Lets
concentrate on 3 key elements: CD source, amplifier and the
loudspeakers.
Concerning the
CD source - all has been said in the lampizator section. Just use any
decent tubed
player and if you can - use any decently built player which has
Philips TDA1541 or 1540 DAC chip, Burr Brown PCM56, PCM58, PCM61,
PCM63K,
PCM1702, PCM1704, 1738,
1794 or CS4327, CS 4397, 4398, or AD1862, 1865, AD1852,
etc.
and lampize it (tubify or valvolize if you wish). You can also buy a
dac that already has tubes like ZERO DAC
, SATCH DAC,
RAKK dac or Audionote DAC
2 or 3 or
any other decently proven kit like my Lampucera. You can get fabulous
DACS and all other
interesting tubed stuff from Hong Kong - here:
http://stores.ebay.de/eAudioguy-Online-Store. Especially the 1704 tubed
DAC for 299 euro or the newest (maybe RAKK clone?) Sweet
Sound DAC PCM 1798
. Or maybe such chinese player as this: CD
SHENGYA.
or SHANLING300.
You will find the gems in my pages about CD players.
Concerning the amps, I say the amps MUST be tubed, better SET than
Push Pull, better mono than stereo, and better balanced than SE. But it
is really down to the budget. What I can
recommend without hesitation is to get a Chinese
Music
Angel MA845 stereo SET amp with super
mighty 845 tubes like that: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5881639158&indexURL=3&photoDisplayType=2#ebayphotohosting or even here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130055454581&fromMakeTrack=true Or this is a
verified shop with lotsa goodies: http://stores.ebay.pl/Feedback-UpUpUp-99p-WinWinWin
or a similar amp like Music
Angel KT88.
It is superbly
built, looks great and sounds like 10 times its price,
at the time of writing - 600 USD plus shipping, tubes included. I could
live with this amp forever. Particularly the bass is AWESOME.
Nobody needs better amp seriously, unless you want a US made Cary 805
or something like that.
Having
already
the CD and amp, we can start building good speakers
This requires
only minor wood working skills or help of a friendly carpenter. The speakers
need to be three-ways, with minimalistic cross-overs, no
horns, no boxes, no mini monitors, no subs, no active systems, no 5
ways, no transmission lines. None of the above. We just need to mount
three sensitive paper
drivers on
baffles and that's all.
What is
difficult is getting bass right.
There are 3
levels of dealing with audio nirvana bass: Level
A - top -
to build the brick wall construction - this is for
people who build new houses or simply decor their old one and decided
to finish once and forever the bass problems. Just CUT the b/s and do
it
properly.
Level B is what
I did - I build the so called infinite baffles made of
bookshelves and I put them in room corners. This solution has many
advantages: - the bass is
completely free of boooom, overhang, and any dirty artefacts - the bass does
not resonate in the room, does not wake the standing waves - the bass is
infinitely low without any huge box that dominates the room. - it can't get
stolen - the books are
good for your brain and look so "intelligent" in the room - books are
heavy and soft and dampen baffle vibrations - books have
uneven depths so act as a diffusers for midrange and high sound from
behind of the midrange baffles - shelves are
perpendicular to the bass baffle and stiffen it strongly - this is the
best bass money can buy.
Level C Is the
compromise - bass is in a big box (over 100 litres) and only
mids and highs are on an open baffle, a la projects 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11 Because 18 inch
bass driver is really huge, for visual reasons we mount it on the inner
side ala project 10. The bass reflex
pipe can face forward. Speakers are with bass drivers inward
facing.
The drivers:
best drivers would be 15 inch alnico, but if you can't
afford them - get generic 18 inch bass drivers with alu cast baskets
like
Alphard RW1800. seen above. http://www.alphard.pl/ or here: http://www.elektroland.com.pl/index.php/cPath/53_54_125?osCsid=6348d62d0 The alphard
driver is built equally well as JBL pro series and costs
100 USD a piece. Unbelievable. We use them in P11 and I must say that
it is the best bass I ever heard except Altec Lansing but that's
entirely different story. Please FORGET the 8 inch, 10 inch and 12 inch
bass drivers. Size DOES matter. For the ebay
surfers - you can almost never find pairs of 15 inch
alnico bass, but you can find them as singles. Don't worry - they do
not need to be the same. They are air moving pistons and it is okay if
one
is from one manufacturer and the other from another manufacturer, if it
has slightly different look and
parameters. It will be anyway INFINITELY better bass than from 20 000
USD Sonus Faber. Singles alnico can be found for as little as 50 Euro.
But probably the alphard route is a more elegant one.
MIDRANGE The most
critical for quality of reproduction is the midrange driver. If
midrange is wrong, nothing else matters.
Fortunately it is very easy to achieve.
We need a piece of wood, 130 cm tall x 40 cm wide. We mount the
high driver
at 100 cm height and the midrange just above it. That is all we need. The driver must
be: a) made of pure
cellulose (paper) b) have alnico
magnet c) have 20 cm in
size, or at least from 18 to 23. It can be oval. If you can find
one, the horn full range drivers are good midranges like from Lowther
or Fostex.
The alnico 10 cm
paper works just great for me, but only the one with
open back baskets. Ribbons are great but pricey. Revelator ring tweeter
is also great. But I would seriously stick to the 10 cm SABA alnico
paper tweeter. Nobody needs a better tweeter.
So basically we
came to copy of
P12
which is 101 dB/W/m
sensitive and plays realistic levels at which you cant hear the person
shouting next to you and the amplifier outputs only circa 0,8 watt in
average, 1 watt peak. Yes, we DON'T
NEED powerful amps. Nobody needs 100 watts. Especially
that if the first watt is crap, who
cares about 99 more of them.
Having all elements
what we need to address is the
room placement. The system must
be left-to-right symmetrical in the room. The speakers
should be 1 meter from rear wall (except bass which sits on the rear
wall). The speakers may be 10 degrees toed in. The listener is in DEAD
CENTER of
the symmetry axis. The listener's head and speakers form
a equilateral triangle with 60 degrees angles and equal sides. The room should
be reasonably well filled with furniture, a small carpet between
listener and speakers is good.
That's all.
That's all what is important, forget the rest. A nice
addition in my room is a coffee table for holding the wine and 8 linear
meters of CD's on the shelves.
Ooops, the picture proves how many times I managed to wet my pants
while listening)
