Time to start a new chapter I think
Why did I do it? What did I do? This is my story.
On page 1, I touched on my beginnings in the hobby up until the dream of having a purpose built listening room built and later getting the chance to populate it with lots of good stuff. I think it time to go into a little more detail. To be honest I was pretty darned happy and could have stayed exactly where I was. That is until one uneventful day that I got curious about what my fellow hobbyists had on their wish lists. It would have been strange if I just came out and asked so I figured I’d start the thread by making a list of my own. Uh-oh. There was A LOT on that list. This was, here
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?22140-The-Future, stamp says Christmas Season 2016. By March of 2017, I had become speaker-less as the self fulfilling prophecy had taken a life of its own.
While the list was generated out of top of mind, I later asked myself why these items made up the list and why others that came later made it on there, albeit unpublished. Between March of 2017 and a scant week and a day ago, I had a lot of time to look inward and organize my thoughts.
From the very beginning, my philosophy had been really simple. If I could get rid of the nasty stuff, only the good will remain. In hindsight, no it wasn’t simple nor was it easy. Going back to the very beginning there was always one quote that stuck with me. I’ve probably mangled it over the years too! I would always remember what my Uncle Johnny used to say as quoted from Peter Walker, for every song there is a correct volume. Well, something like that, you get the drift. In a weird way it was like Walker telling me, you’ll know it when you hear it, like some sort of Audio, Yoda Force Ghost. We all pretty much “know” it every time we go and listen to our music, but I’ll be darned if something didn’t always have me coming crashing back to Earth. It had become such a given that I never even thought about it, but back in the back of my mind, it had been steering me in one particular direction. The volume control.
Of all the things that bother me most, nothing has taken me out of the moment more often than having to ride the volume control. I never had Walker’s right volume for an entire piece of classical music. This led me on a quest for ever more usable dynamic range. This manifested itself over the last two decades. The first thing I did back in 2002 was to go and see what other guys were doing. At that time, I had what could be considered a good system but I felt boxed in. I was all CD so I said to myself, let’s go visit some people with good turntables and carts. What’s with tubes? What’s with SETs? What’s with Planars? On and on I went, making lifelong friends along the way and imprinting in me the positive traits that my new friends enjoyed for me to try and hopefully emulate.
Into the rabbit hole went I. Here’s where I went from music lover to crazy person. How crazy? When the time came that we could build our own house, this is what I told my architect. I want a basement with these dimensions, build everything else around that. Yes, THAT crazy.
The very first step, the foundation if you will allow the pun, I knew would be acoustical and mechanical. In the original thread it detailed my goals and benchmarks. I wanted the room to respond as a topnotch recording as opposed to control or mastering space. So, what to do? I hired the man that did our soundstages of course. Tried and tested with flying colors. I wanted it both quiet and alive, thus starting the pattern of attempts at breaking established dichotomies. With the room built and the system safely transplanted I certainly heard the improvement a good space brings. It also whispered silently what was amiss.
To be continued…….here
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?25874-JackD201-Version-2-0
