The Whole World Is Music

You are a composer, an instrument, a performing artist, and the music.

The link between music and mathematics has been pointed out before. The schematics in the picture can be used for composing music!

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Music and home

For me, music has served as the single basis for continuity in my life; perhaps that’s why I want to keep it in my home. For my final years, I have a home and a loving wife, but I know it too well that I am on borrowed time.

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Sometimes, the whole is more than the total of its parts. A music system is a good example, in which case, the whole can easily end up worse than the total of its parts.

Most of my articles employ analogies in order to demonstrate my point. This time, I am using my familiarity with building a good sound system for music or for a home theater to show that everything is connected, and the weakest link is what most decisively determines the outcome. After all, I used to build my speakers and amplifiers at the age of 17, and have been a devoted listener of music (movies came in later, when I started to teach Communication in 1998).

Even if you don’t care for building “the perfect music system,” you might still derive some satisfaction from carrying on with thinking along or, from digressing into realms I couldn’t even fathom. It’s your life, after all. Still, looking forward to your observations!

Sound and Music

Those, who can hear the difference between power cords as well as interconnect cables in blind tests, as I can, are aware that the whole chain matters from your power source to the drivers in your speakers. Still, even the most tone-deaf listener can hear the difference between a good and a bad recording. In life, some people can notice nuances, but everyone notices fundamentally good and bad things.

Cables, amplifiers, speakers, and sound sources

Power cables provide transmission capacity for power consumption, just like the water can flow much more quietly in a wider riverbed, assuming the water has the same volume per minute. The same applies to speaker cables, where you can save a buck or two (for instance, I am using two Audioquest Type II cables on each of my speakers, and the sound quality is probably better than single Type IVs would deliver).

In general, if your run-of-the-mill amplifier picks up 600 Watts, you can expect a total of about 400 on the outputs (unless you are using a Type 4, that is, a digital amplifier that still costs about $3k for good quality, and 10-20 years ago, digital amps were a lot more expensive or, if you went for the cheap stuff, audibly inferior).

In order to prevent distortion in a home theater amplifier, you might want to consider using an amp that picks up somewhere around 900 Watts of more, because it will not have to exert itself for normal use. Your speakers should also be capable of delivering about 30% more than the power you use to drive them (moreover, even the type and quality of the electric condensers in the crossovers in the speakers and in the power supplies of your equipment make a difference; manufacturers chronically pinch a penny by using smaller capacitors on power supplies). Still, speakers need a minimum amount of power to drive them in order to deliver decent sound, so a powerhouse will not fit for “night listening.” Consequently, the end user must select the amplifier and the speakers according to the overall usage; there is no one-size-fit-all solution.

Spending an arm and a leg on cables is not going to transform your system into what it is not, and it’s always the poorest link in the chain that affects sound quality the most. A good cable doesn’t have to break the bank, but you surely cannot buy one for ten bucks, either. For those, who cannot hear the difference, it’s only a waste of money.

And don’t forget the most important part of your system: the sound source. CDs and DVDs sound absolutely miserable compared to a Blu-Ray (TM) source on a decent player.

Using a digital RCA or an optical interconnect cable is usually cheaper for the same sound quality than analogue RCA cables, because you need two of the latter, and the same manufacturer will most likely double the price for the same quality for a pair of analogue, as opposed to a single digital one. MP3 and other compressed formats sound lousy and it will stay that way even on a 30-million-dollar system. Even using uncompressed sound doesn’t cover the problem, because more often than not, the devil is in the recording. Sorry, good sound engineers are hard to come by, and even the best cannot fully compensate for a music hall with poor acoustics...

For subs and interconnect cables, the sweet spot in the market is probably the one represented by SVS, but that’s a matter of taste.

A clean power source makes a lot of difference, but in an urban environment, chances are extremely meager that a power conditioner will completely solve the problem of a noisy power line, because the power source fluctuates based on usage on the same transformer, generating several types of disturbing signals that make their way around the power conditioner. In an urban environment, all the fuses and the wall wiring should be replaced and their capacity doubled, which might even be illegal, especially in rental properties. A good, oversized power conditioner can still make a lot of difference, but only as long as it can handle a lot more traffic than the one in use. Otherwise, it will hamper the dynamics and the upper harmonics are also likely to be affected.

If the grounding in the house is messed up, it picks up interfering signals from all over the place. Nothing, short of having good grounding installed, will fix that.

With your plug-in equipment, it can be a problem that some manufacturers do not observe proper polarity for their products (they reverse the ground and the phase on two-pronged units), which usually disturbs the sound image. The fuzzy signal is measurable, but the loss/improvement is also audible, when switching the two poles.

Room acoustics is the most common culprit in sound deterioration, but in many cases, you have only one place to designate to your speakers. As even the most expensive speakers cannot beat physics, prudent planning can save you a lot of trouble. Ideally, the sound source must come from one point from each speaker, so some speaker designs are not even to be considered, because the dispersion they produce is uncontrollable and speakers interfere differently at various frequencies, resulting in a vibrating, unsteady sound image. While membrane surface makes a lot of difference in the amount of air the speaker drivers move, audible bass is limited by the distance the sound can travel in a direct line from your sub-woofer. (That’s why the “Loudness” button was invented half a century ago, but it only messes up the sound image, because it artificially boosts frequencies around 100-120Hz.) Buying something you cannot hear is an obvious overkill, although you might enjoy how the bass is moving the curtains or makes the whole house resonate. :)

Buying everything from the same manufacturer as a system might or might not work, because manufacturers have to consider materials, component availability, and pricing just as much as the sound quality of the end product, while making sure that their higher-priced ones sound better than their cheaper ones. On the other hand, trying to explore every tiny detail in your link is time-consuming and expensive to the point that it could take many lifetimes, even if new products were not coming out all the time. To add insult to injury, besides the limitations on the components by physics, everybody’s hearing is unique, so taking other people’s advice on how “good” a product sounds can be a frustrating experience.

Checking out sound in stores doesn’t work well, with the possible exception of comparing different products, because your final listening environment determines the way your system sounds by about 30 percent.

For home theater, consider getting an electrostatic center speaker, because about 70% of the sound comes out of it in movies. Sometimes you can find a good deal on a used one. A good electrostatic produces natural, balanced sound, raising the quality of your listening experience over most dynamic speakers. Still, there is also a trick for better center sound: use two center speakers a turn them slightly to both sides (mind the degrees that the midrange/tweeter can cover) for more even sound dispersion.

Most three-way speakers sound better than two-way ones, but they cost extra. Also, crossover frequencies must be observed: most human voice must come through the midrange driver, which is hard to accomplish with dynamic drivers. This is when electrostatic cannot be beaten. Obviously, a three-way speaker whose crossover frequencies are 330/2200 sounds more natural than one with 800/3000.

Using headphones can save you a lot of time and money, assuming you are not aiming at a $50k tube amp and the matching electrostatic headphones. The cheapest comparable sound comes from “planar headphones.” They start around $100 and the limit, as usual, is the sky. All headphones sound better with a dedicated headphone amplifier, and the interconnect cables as well as the headphone cable make quite a bit of audible difference. Even USB cables that connect your computer with the DAC improve or hamper the sound. DACs can come separately or combined with the headphone amplifier, but some of them already produce enough volume to be heard just fine on a pair of sensitive headphones. Balanced or unbalanced outputs are a personal choice. As long as your headphone amp has both outputs, all you have to do is experiment with the headphone cables. The power source and the power supply used for your DAC/amp can also make a lot of difference. Choosing open or closed headphones is also up to you. Open ones allow your ears to air and tend to be more comfortable (planar ones tend to be open, but not exclusively), while closed ones keep out some of the ambient noise and people around you hear a lot less of your music. Either way, there are lot fewer components to check out and you can buy the cheapest good sound for a lot less than for your whole-room sound system.

The good news

The good news is that the brain tends to correct poor sound. I am not sure how far that is responsible for audiophile’s saying that your equipment has to be burnt in, but in my experience, it is certain that analogue electronics seem to have the capability to adjust to each other that, after 100-150 hours of operation, can bring about quite a bit of improvement in sound.

Conclusion:

You are a composer, when it comes to living your own life.

You are an instrument, playing out music that has never existed before you, and never will, after your departure. Heraclitus, around 500 BC, already noted, “You cannot step into the same river twice.”

You are a performing artist, because no matter what you do, affects everything else around, including yourself.

You are the music in an ineffable theater of the absurd. According to the physical law of everything constantly losing energy (the law of atrophy can be applied to the Universe) and no perpetuum mobile can be constructed, this world, including you, shouldn’t exist, yet both the world and you do.

The music in which I can participate, will never be perfect, because I am not perfect, but it can be still beautiful and even more useful than all the world’s computers an AIs combined. And it is…