Natural Sound

[PeterA]

Seconded. Gorgeous system. Infinity nicer room to be in, if I may respectfully say so, now than when you had the big Magico's taking up the whole room. Those corner horns were made to measure!

Deliciously eccentric. Can't imagine what your wife thinks...actually I can - that room is yours to do with what you wish....

I'm very much enjoying this thread, and your journey. Thank you.

Hi Andrew,

You are most welcome and thank you for the kind comments. I completely agree about the room. It is a much more pleasant place in which to be, especially compared to the old configuration with all of the Tube Traps in the four front corners and speakers 1/3 out into the room. It is a small space but that old one was tiny. I envision more fires in the fireplace this winter, and scotch with friends late at night. I am just now beginning to get settled in.

I have often described my wife as a saint for putting up with both me and with this ludicrous hobby. We've all heard stories about golf widows, well she is an audio widow sadly, but now will likely spend a bit more time in the room with me. She even ordered a wooden coffee table (Butler's tray table) for in front of the sofa. I think she imagines silver tea service with girlfriends while the Grumiaux Trio plays in the background. Nothing would make me more happy that to be a butler sitting in the corner, smiling, serving tea to the ladies, and taking it all in.

I am enjoying documenting this system in these pages and its evolution, or rather revolution, from the old one. I suspect with some time I will quietly fade to simply enjoy the music like Tang and Rockitman seem to have done. It's a relaxing thought.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Peter, i didn't DARE even suggest putting my system in our main signature living space at the chapel. Nope, self-imposed exile into the attic for me.
So, yes, it's good your wife is "back in the room" Lol.

 

[PeterA]

Peter, i didn't DARE even suggest putting my system in our main signature living space at the chapel. Nope, self-imposed exile into the attic for me.
So, yes, it's good your wife is "back in the room" Lol.

Thanks Marc. I see these Vitavox speakers are early "lifestyle" type speakers, not audiophile monoliths that desire attention. They fit nicely in the corners and just play music in a very un-intrusive way. They are large but they somehow seem to simply fade away into the background when sitting in the room.

You are very fortunate to have such a large main space. I think such speakers would be fabulous in your chapel. Let the choir boys sing with the organ!

 

[jeff1225]

Is this you Peter?

 

[spiritofmusic]

Depends on the newspaper Lol.

 

[marty]

Is this you Peter?

Aren't the real questions here:
1) Why is this guy sitting facing the wrong way? (So no way it could be Peter)
2) Where is the other speaker?
3) Is she really a natural blonde?

 

[PeterA]

Is this you Peter?

Jeff, that is a great advertisement and I appreciate the sentiment. It is all about lifestyle. The British seem to grasp that, as I sit here watching Wimbledon. I would love to live in a house like that and be his age again. Beyond that, life is pretty good on this side of the pond. My wife is brunette.

 

[howiebrou]

Aren't the real questions here:
1) Why is this guy sitting facing the wrong way? (So no way it could be Peter)
2) Where is the other speaker?
3) Is she really a natural blonde?

Most likely an aeroplane blonde....

 

[spiritofmusic]

I'm sure her voice is the very epitome of natural sound itself. Dave's install secret sauce?

 

[morricab]

Is this you Peter?

Is that an ad out of an old Playboy magazine?

 

[morricab]

Aren't the real questions here:
1) Why is this guy sitting facing the wrong way? (So no way it could be Peter)
2) Where is the other speaker?
3) Is she really a natural blonde?

The answer to 1and 2 is because those are the world’s largest headphones and the other one is on the opposite side out of the picture. The answer to 3 is “who cares”.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Peter, it seems everyone loves, and no one can get over, how perfectly and beautifully those speakers fit naturally into the style of your living room. It looks literally like the speakers were custom-made for those corners and for your general decor!

 

[PeterA]

Peter, it seems everyone loves, and no one can get over, how perfectly and beautifully those speakers fit naturally into the style of your living room. It looks literally like the speakers were custom-made for those corners and for your general decor!

They do look nice in the room, though their true potential would more likely be heard in a much larger room with very high ceilings. In the interim, they are just fine.

 

[tima]

Most likely an aeroplane blonde....

Most likely an expensive blonde....

 

[spiritofmusic]

If only this woman knew that ALL the guy's cash was in his hifi.

 

[PeterA]

ddk’s Visit to Boston

David Karmeli came to visit me a few days ago to finish setting up my new system and to fine tune the sound. I asked him some months ago to come and visit and his reply was, "Do you think you can stop me?" I guess I did not know him well enough then. David cares about excellent service and friendships. He wants to make sure his clients are happy, but I think more important than that: it is his nature to do things to the best of his ability. This means excellence at every level: the gear, the set up and the follow up service.

David was on the East Coast and took some time away from his family vacation to come and hear my system. I think of this as a complete Karmeli system and perhaps the only one apart from his three in Utah. David found my turntable in Japan and then sold me the electronics and speakers, one group at a time, over the last six months. As the crates and pallets of gear began to arrive, so did the voltage converter, more power cords, an SUT and extra phono cable, a full set of replacement tubes, a vintage MM cartridge, a turntable tachometer, and the speaker cables and interconnects. The cartridge alignment and set up tools are also his. The vdH cartridges were mine, but they have gone back to the Netherlands many times for modifications and adjustments based on discussions with David, my own listening feedback, and email exchanges with Mr. van den Hul. David sells vintage turntables, speakers, and Lamm electronics. He sells his own AS 2000 turntable and Nothing Racks directly. He will also get vdH and other specific cartridges.

The new rack is my own creation but specific design details were discussed extensively and modified with David’s input. Aside from the traditional dark wood aesthetic, it shares the design principles of his Nothing Racks: add or remove “nothing” from the sound. The only element of the system that was not from David was the one long balanced IC connecting the Lamm LL1 to the ML2, but more about that later.

I picked David up at the train station on Wednesday afternoon. After a brief reunion, he got straight to work. "1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3." David started repeating these numbers out loud from the moment he walked into the room. He was listening for the reflections. About a minute later, he declared the best location for the listening seat and said that one speaker should move to the other outside corner of the room. Oh boy, this was going to be interesting....

I told him that the copper water pipes in the corner leading up to the radiator in our bedroom upstairs could be moved, but it would be a real hassle. I also told him that my wife's parents’ secretary is an important piece of furniture and it could not be removed from the room to accommodate the new speaker location. Interestingly, Jim Smith made a similar comment about that left sidewall being better for the speakers but given the room's use, we simply could not configure it as they both suggested. This is where my wife would draw the line. And I like it more symmetrical around the fireplace anyway. In the end, I think the sound is glorious, er Natural. David is satisfied with the sound of what was once his system and now relocated to another home, and all is well.

"1-2-3" continued as David moved to the sides of the fireplace near the speakers. “1-2-3.” It took him just a few minutes to understand the sound of the room and I suspect he quickly realized what needed to be addressed acoustically. We sat down to listen to some music. David’s approach to assessing a system and room is rather unique.

 

[PeterA]

David told me to simply pick any LP from the few I had in the room and start playing it. Almost all other people I know travel with samples of their music to friends' systems, audio shows, and dealerships. Jim Smith is well known for his playlist to which he listens and makes set up or “system voicing” adjustments. People bring a familiar reference with them to assess the sound of systems. I can only presume they are comparing what they hear from a new and different system to a familiar and preferred reference. But here is the key: that reference is a recording as perceived and played through a known system. This familiar reproduced reference becomes the basis for all assessments.

David has the opposite approach. His reference is the natural sound of unamplified music as he remembers it and as it sounded to him from an actual live experience. He wants the system that he is fine-tuning to sound like an actual violin, not like the sound of some reproduced violin through some other system. As long as the recording is decent, he takes what he hears and compares that new sound to how he knows those instruments and voices sound in real life. It seems like a subtle difference, but having now witnessed his approach, it is significant distinction.

That distinction seems to be one aspect of his evaluations. The other is how small changes sound relative to each other. Moving the seat an inch, changing a cable, altering the angles of the blinds, he asks himself does each of these changes sound more natural or less natural than it did before. It is all about how natural something sounds, not how some reproduced music sounds on one system versus another system. And it is all about using one’s own ears and memory rather than measuring instruments.

I pulled out my original copy of Carl White’s first record. David heard it in Utah. It was one of the LPs I brought with me with I visited him. There was something off. The trumpet was not as open and natural sounding as it could be. The voice was a bit phase-y. Madfloyd had commented on this in one of his posts and speculated that it might be the sound bouncing off of the fireplace’s sidewalls. I was not so sure about the issue or its cause, but David heard it immediately.

David had brought with him a suitcase full of wires, long and short ICs and speaker cables. He is obviously very familiar with all of the gear and how it should sound, but he was not sure how it would sound in my room, so he came prepared to make adjustments. He has sent me everything in the system, but the room was an unknown, and one pair of ICs was no his. He pulled out a long pair of new unknown ICs, super thin and with non fancy connectors and plugged them in to replace the DIY pair I commissioned and liked in my old system. The change in sound was immediate and dramatic.

The slight lack of focus or phase issue that David and Ian heard was now completely gone. I could now hear what they were talking about. I was quite surprised that this one cable switch could make such a difference, but David seemed to have suspected this was the cause. In fact, he had not heard these new cables before, they were just one of three he brought, but what a pleasant surprise.

 

[PeterA]

We then moved onto diagnosing a slight hum from one of the channels. At 105 dB, one can imagine that these speakers reveal any noise in the system. David did some tests and ruled out the amps and then the preamps. The issue was likely one channel of the phono stage, one of the two phono cables, or the cartridge. We replaced a phono cable with another NOS SME phono cable. We also replaced David's new, long ICs with another pair from the suitcase. These were familiar to David, and the sound improved further. The hum diminished and all that remained was a very slight tube rush at high volume which is to be expected.

David seemed satisfied with the sound and now had an understanding of the room, the system, and the sonic contribution of the old rack. He asked if I wanted to break it all down, install the new rack, and hook up all of the components and cables. This all happened as I was getting ready to make some dinner.

I photographed the empty rack for the furniture maker. We then installed the very heavy steel plates on each shelf and I took more photographs. Based on what David had heard earlier that afternoon, he suggested lessoning the amount of dampening under each steel plate. We also inserted some different materials under the thick plates for the turntable and motor. We tapped and compared the resonances of each plate. When David declared his satisfaction, we installed the components.

I have not discussed this with David, but I think the new rack and amp stands sound better than the old ones. They certainly look better in the room and serve their function well providing support and enough ventilation. They also do not seem to add or remove much information or color the sound of the system, but David would have a better idea of that knowing these components so well.

I should have already known that when Jim Smith or David comes to do set up, one must block the time and devote himself to the task without interruption. The dinner suffered. It was getting late and one daughter left missing the dinner because she had plans with friends. The artichokes and pasta were ready, but the oven failed to heat up. I had turned the wrong knob in my rush to preheat the oven. The steaks having already been seared, cooled down in the cold oven. My wife, David, and I ate the rest of the dinner as the steaks cooked, then finished the meat with some wine. David is an avid and excellent cook, so after witnessing my decidedly mediocre system set up skills, I treated David to a decidedly mediocre dinner. It was time to move back to the listening room.

David and I installed the last of the gear and cables and sat down to some music. The house is small, so my wife went to the third floor for some sleep and my other daughter stayed up in her room on the second floor while we played records. We listened and discussed the sound. The evening ended with some enjoyable listening and a discussion about the strategy for the next day.

David was staying at one of the six yacht clubs in our small town. I chose this one because it is a short walk through a seaside park to my house. David walked over the next morning, had a cup of coffee and we got to work. We started by replacing the two old amp stands with the new ones that match the rack. We also changed the interface between the wooden bases and the floor. We then spent the rest of the morning fine tuning the cartridge and playing around with some more room acoustics. The vdH Colibri Master Signature that came back as a Grand Cru and was now modified once more with a different suspension, magnet, and fewer windings resulting in the lower output to 0.25 mV for this new high efficiency system. It has 80 hours on it. It is similar sounding to David’s vdH Colibri, so he knew what to listen for. It is the best of the new Colibris that I have heard in my system.

 

[PeterA]

Not only was I humbled by the lack of recognition that my original long IC cable was causing harm to the sound of the system, but my cartridge set up was pretty far off. The arm was too high in back. David adjusted alignment and then fine-tuned the VTA using his unique approach – simply listening for natural sound, adjusting the height with cards, one or two at a time until we got to a zone where it sounded natural.

I have some experience with cartridge set up, but I was not even in this zone. I suspect many audiophiles do not get close. I witnessed this in Utah but clearly needed another tutorial. Once in this zone, David told me, “Now we are going to go ‘beyond’”, a reference to what is best, above and beyond the merely excellent. The system sounded great at that point, but playing with the next few cards, up or down 1-3 cards for a range of about 5 cards in VTA height adjustments, the magic started to happen. We then got to one position and went again up and down by one more. David told me what to listen for and the improvement was clear. I heard it change in very subtle but important ways. These slight differences in VTA, once in the natural zone, were another example of different degrees of Natural Sound, but when the best height was reached, the sound was truly exceptional.

With the system optimized and doing what it was supposed to do, we continued to fine tune room acoustics. I asked for David’s opinion about how the sound changed as I adjusted the angles of the wooden shutter slats in the three windows. We played around with this quite a bit. The system was now revealing enough that we could hear the slightest changes in these angles. And most surprising, when the two windows on the back wall were both adjusted to the same angle, the effect was too much, so we settled on the side window fully closed with the slats reflecting the sound down to the floor with the rug absorption. This was more closely matched to the opposite wall that was solid plaster without a window. Then one of the back windows was adjusted the same way, but the window slats closest to the door are more open. The sound reflects off the glass and the wooden slats and bounces back into the room a bit.

With my old system, the sound was more damped, less alive. It was also more forced or pushed through the system. I angled the slats up toward the low ceiling to liven up the space and add energy to the sound. This was a good effect. With the new system that is much more lively, less restricted, and more open sounding, the added reflections off the window louvers and to the ceiling was too much. It needed to be tuned down and redirected toward the floor. Even subtle changes in angle are now audible where they were not before. This was a very interesting development. The window closest to the door can now be used as a subtle tone control when the angle is adjusted.

 

[PeterA]

Once the cartridge was properly set up and the room was sounding quite good, a local friend and member cdk84, who likely knows my system evolution better than anyone, stopped by to meet David, listen to some music and to have lunch with us. After lunch, we came back to listen some more. We played some solo piano music, some Art Pepper big band, Muddy Waters, and Sonny Boy Williamson. It was a blast as the music simply flowed forth. It was a brief visit but I think he enjoyed the sound very much. He enjoyed meeting David, but we needed to do some more work, so he left.

David wanted to try an idea he had about the sidewalls of the fireplace, so we drove to Home Depot. I was reminded of our trip to HD when I visited him in Utah to try to address some room issues with the Vitavoxs in his small room. We bought some rigid foam panels and cut them into different widths. We placed them against the fireplace walls in various locations and tried the different sizes. The sound definitely changed, but it was not an improvement. I was quietly relieved not to have to change anything, but I would have added some sheetrock over the foam, built a frame around it all, painted them and hung them up if they in fact improved the sound.

With that experiment completed, we moved on to setting up an Ortofon A85 SPU that Jeffrey_T had graciously let me borrow for an indefinite time. Late that afternoon, Madfloyd stopped by to listen for a while, and we were soon joined by Al M. After some music, the four of us went out to a local restaurant for dinner. Ian had to leave, but Al came back and we listened to some more records.

Another evening of music lasting later than usual, my poor wife went up to the third floor again. Al commented on how much better the system sounded and David agreed. They were serious and having fun, but again, I was humbled by just how poor my prior set up sounded compared to the potential of this system. They knew it too. This is the value that someone like ddk can bring to a system. We said good evening to Al, and I walked David back to his room.

The next morning we finished setting up the Ortofon SPU and we made two final changes to the room. I brought in the metal screen for the fireplace and I removed a towel covering the glass from my wife’s secretary. I was a bit surprised that with the improvements to the set up, these changes did not seem to affect the overall sound. David declared his satisfaction with the sound of the system and we were finished. David was happy and I learned a lot.

David worked on my system Wednesday afternoon and evening, all day Thursday, and then finished on Friday morning. It was a very enjoyable few days and with all humility, I must say the system has been transformed by David’s expertise.

It is hard to describe the sound and how it changed over the three days. It is certainly more dynamic and present in the room. The tone is more beautiful and the timbre is more correct. The music comes more to life in the room and it simply sounds more right. This is natural sound to me.

We listened mostly to these three LPs to assess progress: