fas42

As 'threatened' in a comment in abraxalito's blog I'm going to kick off posting and linking to some samples of sound generated by myself, at the moment examples of replay on my system, recorded using a very basic technique.

I'll probably regret it, but I'm going to put up a rough and ready trial run, to give a smell of what I'm aiming at. It's full of problems, but it gives some good indicators of what I'm dealing with, and hopefully some feedback will help me for future runs.

The system is my 'dud' HT all-in-one setup, heavily tweaked, and the recording device is a Fujifilm S4000 camera, which does HD video rather nicely, with mono 44.1/16 audio thrown in - that's handy. To maximise sound quality and minimise card storage used, hopefully, the lens was covered while recording, yes, no pics! Unfortunately, signal to noise is poor and the automatic volume control keeps falling over its feet, but you can't get everything for that sort of money ...

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Well, as mentioned elsewhere checked out the first proper show we've had in decades, and in hindsight it has been a very worthwhile, educational experience. Not because I heard magic audio I've never heard before, but, because I then browsed a collection of other people's thoughts and takes on the various sounds heard at the event, on another, Australian, audio forum.

Which showed me that people are in very different spaces, as regards to what is considered, "proper sound". Obvious of course, but it still throws one, makes one question one's ideas and thinking on matters ... for a split second, at least ...

My personal take on the show is that there has been a very discernable improvement in the standard, or average, quality of sound of a normally assembled system which has had only a minimal amount of tweaking applied to optimise it. Problems that were obvious in previous such efforts were far less apparent, you didn't want to run screaming from...

This follows a suggestion from another member -- thanks, bear! -- to chronicle at least one journey in optimising sound. And, yes, it's not one of my efforts, because the way I do things is very messy: they look incredibly messy, full of false turnings and bits of "I wonder if this is actually doing anything positive now". Enough to get anyone watching closely thoroughly confused ...!!

The story is that a small music listening group kicked off, then faded away. But from that an ongoing exercise began, where a younger, very enthusiastic DIYer was happy to hear my feedback on what path to take with his system, and this has continued for a couple of years, with quite substantial, positive gains in sound quality, to this day.

So, to give a clearer picture of the angle I'm coming from I'll attempt, from memory, to list the steps taken, in fairly general terms, and what the various ups and downs in the process were ...

At the start, when I first...

I alluded to this in the first post on the thread, and it's worthwhile "defining" it a bit more.

Everybody would have a gut understanding as to what I mean, but what actually is it, and how do I measure it, to assess whether I've achieved it? There are the people who live and die by the conventional audio measurement yardsticks, and then there are the others who feel that these animals leave a lot to be desired. Again, look at the activity on the "Sound Quality Vs. Measurements" thread ...

Well, I'm pretty obviously in the latter camp, the standard numbers that an AP setup will pop up will mean very little, and since my project includes speakers the nightmare of getting meaningful distortion figures for the full path of the sound exists. So, I'll use the next best thing, my ears.

To make life easy here, I'll use a pretty accessible test object: the acoustic piano. We have one of those beasts in the listening area, my wife plays,...

By tnargs:

Most perceptive ...

Exactly so.

Possibly will improve the frame in some such fashion; and look at stronger coupling of the whole driver assembly to the carcase such that vibration is transferred in the most direct path to the surface the monitor is sitting on.

But these things will be only addressed after the electronics are sorted out, and I see how well the driver behaves itself at maximum SPLs.
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