An evening with Mike Lavigne

dbeau

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2018
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OKC,USA
I guess my error, but on the photo #17, I took the outside stacks of subs (4 each) to be REL 25s.
If not, what are they.
Thanks
 

Mike Lavigne

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Apr 25, 2010
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Ron Resnick

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Those are the OEM woofer towers for the EA MM7s.
 

stehno

Well-Known Member
Jul 5, 2014
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Salem, OR
It’s an integrated twin tower system. The outside towers are a stack of -4- 15” powered Subwoofers.

http://www.evolutionacoustics.com/loudspeakers/mm-series/mmseven/

Very nice home and incredible room and playback system, Mike. You are to be commended for your audio passion as you’re obviously an animal for things audio. :)

What I think is really cool about WhatBestForum.com is besides giving us opportunities like this to share not just our goals, strategies, philosophies, and knowledge, but also the end result or how all this culminates into our playback system’s performance and levels of musicality.

I’ve been playing with my iPhone XR and a Shure MV88 microphone over the past few months and I’m fairly impressed at how at least some of the fidelity of the in-room listening experience is retained at the iPhone, particularly the timbral accuracy, the ambient info, and overall detail. In fact, it just so happens that a week ago I recorded Miles Davis’ So What from standard issue Redbook so I uploaded it to Youtube this morning. See link below.

Though we have some minor volume differences otherwise, I think this may be a somewhat reasonable comparison between strategies, philosophies, technologies, investments, areas of significance, etc. resulting in a final playback presentation.

Some of the differences I see between our playback systems and environments at least for the So What recording include but are not limited to:
  1. Your analog vs My digital
  2. Your tube vs My solid state
  3. Your Class A amps vs My Class D amps
  4. Your active gain stage vs My passive volume attenuation
  5. Your copper ic’s and sc’s vs My silver ic’s and sc’s
  6. Your professionally designed custom listening room vs My kitchen converted to listening room
  7. Your custom acoustic treatments vs My lack of any acoustic treatments
  8. Your $800k - $1.2M investment (guessing) vs My $27k investment
  9. Your isolation transformers vs My passive, dedicated, bi-directional filtering line conditioners
  10. Your passive vibration isolation vs My mechanical resonant energy transfer
  11. Your active vibration isolation vs My mechanical resonant energy transfer
  12. Your total electrical and mechanical energy mgmt. investment ratio (10-15% ?) vs My 65% of entire system retail costs dedicated solely to managing these two energies.
  13. Your strategies / philosophies: (for you to complete) vs My strategies / philosophies: Nothing can compete with extreme forms of electrical and especially mechanical energy mgmt.. Hence, almost my entire focus is on absolutely minimizing distortions induced by these two energies and thus greatly lower the noise floor so that much more of the music info embedded in a given recording remains audible at the speaker.
IOW, with so many never-ending high-end audio controversial topics I list above, can any two playback systems, their rooms, and associated strategies and philosophies possibly be more diametrically opposed than this when seeking to achieve the greatest levels of musicality from our plyaback systems?

I suspect a decent set of headphones is necessary to sufficiently compare our in-room recordings. Although Davis’ So What wouldn’t be my first choice, I presume neither of our in-room recordings fully reflect the real potential musicality one hears when present in the listening room but hopefully both are in the ballpark.

 

Mike Lavigne

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 25, 2010
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John,

interesting.

clearly you gave your above post a great deal of thought, and i respect your serious approach to all these questions and points you make. i'll leave it for others to make judgments regarding your perspective on our approach differences. and i'm not asking for that.....only that.........respectfully; any points i might make would come off as defensive.

best regards,

Mike
 

Alrainbow

Well-Known Member
Dec 11, 2013
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John,

interesting.

clearly you gave your above post a great deal of thought, and i respect your serious approach to all these questions and points you make. i'll leave it for others to make judgments regarding your perspective on our approach differences. and i'm not asking for that.....only that.........respectfully; any points i might make would come off as defensive.

best regards,

Mike
Man you have patience.
 

NorthStar

Member
Feb 8, 2011
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Any serious passionate audiophile needs to have a great amount of patience, it's part of the hobby.

By the way, a simple observation; in the music video just above (Miles Davis - So What), on the left side there is a red lighting constantly blinking.

Listening in the dark could help concentrate on the music playing, like closing our eyes @ live music concerts. I don't close my eyes @ live venues in general; I could but I just don't.
@ home it's the same.

Do you guys all close your eyes @ live music venues and close the lights completely @ home with your stereo sound systems? Dimming the lights @ night that I do, all the time, and almost completely when watching films. For music listening only, dimming only.
In movie theaters yes they turn the lights off.
 
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Taiko Audio

Industry Expert
Feb 10, 2017
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taikoaudio.com
I suspect a decent set of headphones is necessary to sufficiently compare our in-room recordings.

Thank you for the interesting contribution but I there's nothing to compare here.

These recordings do not capture even a fraction of the system's performance for too many reasons to go into.

They are for entertainment purposes and they do a nice job at capturing the ambiance in Mike's room.
 

Alrainbow

Well-Known Member
Dec 11, 2013
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In the past I used headphones as a reference and tool. But as I corrected the many wrongs in my speaker rig it now seems they are just a tool.
Headphones are not even close at the level of a good speaker rig. For anyone who thinks not they have not heard a great speaker rig setup well.
 
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Hieukm

Well-Known Member
Oct 2, 2016
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105
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Very nice home and incredible room and playback system, Mike. You are to be commended for your audio passion as you’re obviously an animal for things audio. :)

What I think is really cool about WhatBestForum.com is besides giving us opportunities like this to share not just our goals, strategies, philosophies, and knowledge, but also the end result or how all this culminates into our playback system’s performance and levels of musicality.

I’ve been playing with my iPhone XR and a Shure MV88 microphone over the past few months and I’m fairly impressed at how at least some of the fidelity of the in-room listening experience is retained at the iPhone, particularly the timbral accuracy, the ambient info, and overall detail. In fact, it just so happens that a week ago I recorded Miles Davis’ So What from standard issue Redbook so I uploaded it to Youtube this morning. See link below.

Though we have some minor volume differences otherwise, I think this may be a somewhat reasonable comparison between strategies, philosophies, technologies, investments, areas of significance, etc. resulting in a final playback presentation.

Some of the differences I see between our playback systems and environments at least for the So What recording include but are not limited to:
  1. Your analog vs My digital
  2. Your tube vs My solid state
  3. Your Class A amps vs My Class D amps
  4. Your active gain stage vs My passive volume attenuation
  5. Your copper ic’s and sc’s vs My silver ic’s and sc’s
  6. Your professionally designed custom listening room vs My kitchen converted to listening room
  7. Your custom acoustic treatments vs My lack of any acoustic treatments
  8. Your $800k - $1.2M investment (guessing) vs My $27k investment
  9. Your isolation transformers vs My passive, dedicated, bi-directional filtering line conditioners
  10. Your passive vibration isolation vs My mechanical resonant energy transfer
  11. Your active vibration isolation vs My mechanical resonant energy transfer
  12. Your total electrical and mechanical energy mgmt. investment ratio (10-15% ?) vs My 65% of entire system retail costs dedicated solely to managing these two energies.
  13. Your strategies / philosophies: (for you to complete) vs My strategies / philosophies: Nothing can compete with extreme forms of electrical and especially mechanical energy mgmt.. Hence, almost my entire focus is on absolutely minimizing distortions induced by these two energies and thus greatly lower the noise floor so that much more of the music info embedded in a given recording remains audible at the speaker.
IOW, with so many never-ending high-end audio controversial topics I list above, can any two playback systems, their rooms, and associated strategies and philosophies possibly be more diametrically opposed than this when seeking to achieve the greatest levels of musicality from our plyaback systems?

I suspect a decent set of headphones is necessary to sufficiently compare our in-room recordings. Although Davis’ So What wouldn’t be my first choice, I presume neither of our in-room recordings fully reflect the real potential musicality one hears when present in the listening room but hopefully both are in the ballpark.


Only listen to this system 5sec through my iphone i can tell your digital is low-end. There is no tone, decay, no dynamic. The soundstage is not deep. You got bass node problem in your room. Your room probably over damp too. You need new source. You probably has not any grounding in your system.
 

Alrainbow

Well-Known Member
Dec 11, 2013
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Guys lets slow down and stop acting like kids
First off to have mike L here and him sharing his room and sound of it is pretty high on my bucket list. If mike says something lets think well before we reply.
We can have alt views i have as well. But we should not push it to a bash.
I have never been to his room but read his posts to learn. And for some who post as I read them I'm shocked.
As for the so what c 0628 video it's comical one can hear grounding or stage depth lol.
What I do hear is an odd sound in timbre again it's a video.
Mike has a video on you tube of the allman bros live at the Fillmore east. Even on my iPhone and it into my car system it's a big wow way aboveboard for a video sound. Whom even captured that wow man. As for what's missing in it damn I wish I was there.
 
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rockitman

Member Sponsor
Sep 20, 2011
7,097
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Northern NY
Very nice home and incredible room and playback system, Mike. You are to be commended for your audio passion as you’re obviously an animal for things audio. :)

What I think is really cool about WhatBestForum.com is besides giving us opportunities like this to share not just our goals, strategies, philosophies, and knowledge, but also the end result or how all this culminates into our playback system’s performance and levels of musicality.

I’ve been playing with my iPhone XR and a Shure MV88 microphone over the past few months and I’m fairly impressed at how at least some of the fidelity of the in-room listening experience is retained at the iPhone, particularly the timbral accuracy, the ambient info, and overall detail. In fact, it just so happens that a week ago I recorded Miles Davis’ So What from standard issue Redbook so I uploaded it to Youtube this morning. See link below.

A Bit OT: I have been using this mic to record (24bit/48Hz) many live shows over the past year...both amplified and acoustic. It does a great job and is very stealth.
 

Audiophile Bill

Well-Known Member
Mar 23, 2015
4,293
4,093
675
Guys lets slow down and stop acting like kids
First off to have mike L here and him sharing his room and sound of it is pretty high on my bucket list. If mike says something lets think well before we reply.
We can have alt views i have as well. But we should not push it to a bash.
I have never been to his room but read his posts to learn. And for some who post as I read them I'm shocked.
As for the so what c 0628 video it's comical one can hear grounding or stage depth lol.
What I do hear is an odd sound in timbre again it's a video.
Mike has a video on you tube of the allman bros live at the Fillmore east. Even on my iPhone and it into my car system it's a big wow way aboveboard for a video sound. Whom even captured that wow man. As for what's missing in it damn I wish I was there.

The post above refers not to Mike’s system but the other bloke, Stehno
 

Alrainbow

Well-Known Member
Dec 11, 2013
3,189
1,387
450
A Bit OT: I have been using this mic to record (24bit/48Hz) many live shows over the past year...both amplified and acoustic. It does a great job and is very stealth.
I'll bet the 24 bit depth is in part why. It has a much lower noise floor and allows more layering
 

Ron Resnick

Site Co-Owner, Administrator
Jan 24, 2015
16,017
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Beverly Hills, CA
Do you like listening to music with headphones Al, Mike, everyone?

"I don't play in the dark." :):cool::D

Do you know dark games?

No, I never listen to music on headphones.
 

Alrainbow

Well-Known Member
Dec 11, 2013
3,189
1,387
450
I have about 60k in headphones easy maybe more
They have there place and as good as they are there not in the same universe as my IRS V rig now. I use them as tools to compare music in adjusting my rig and digital end
 

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