Audiophile Musings: Picking Apart the Sound

Being a high-end audiophile means that you become critical of your system as time goes on. You hear things that other systems do and constantly compare what you hear to what yours does - or does not do. You either like or dislike the percieved difference. When you hear something you like, you entertain the possibility of adding it to your system.

Sound like familiar behavior? I bet it does. I am struggling with part of the band above 2,500 Hz in my Bozak speakers and although to others they sound fantastic, to me they sound off compared to the best systems in my sonic memory combined with what I know instruments really sound like. I am studying the issue and trying to decide how to put my concerns to rest. A week ago, after enough RTA measurements and enough analysis of the crossover network, I discovered a few things about the Bozak drivers that I overlooked in the past (yes, I too make mistakes).

The midrange driver has an aluminum dust cap along with its aluminum cone to improve dispersion and extend its bandwidth. It is this aluminum domed dust cap that is causing my distress and influencing the sound of the tweeters in their operating bandwidth. Rudy Bozak decided to use a first-order Butterworth crossover network to minimize phase issues and rightfully so. But the rising sound pressure after the crossover point indicates a mechanical resonance beyond the prresumed supression point that needs to be tackled if my ears are to be pacified.

I have two multimeters that read capacitance but none that read inductance, the two components used in passive crossover networks. So arriving in the mail last Friday was a new inductance meter and now I am set to redesign the Bozak network to suite my personal acoustic preferences. Hopefully over the next few months, I will succeed at this feat and tell you of my progress either good or bad, but with the holidays coinciding, the amount of time I have between getting my next book out and improving my system is VERY limited.

I have been pushing to get my next book out before Thanksgiving and I now realize that despite the fact that the first draft is written, the final product is still many weeks away. The new goal is for the pre-Christmas holiday and I am committed to making this happen. So I must take off a while from this blog and focus my attention on the book - a book about why we choose the things we do and how we can understand our patterns so we can make different choices.

There was a period in my life when Tony Robbins and other well-known professional coaches were my main pursuit and what I learned from them combined with my own insight is where this book has gone. It will be written to those who are unfamiliar with the workings of the conscious mind and want to figure out how to change things from a fresh perspective without getting into that heavy psychiatry realm. I hopeit will be a winner since I believe that everyone could benefit from understanding why we do the things we do.

Yours for higher fidelity,
Philip Rastocny

I do not use ads in this blog to help support my efforts. If you like what you are reading, please remember to reciprocate, My newest title is called Where, oh Where did the Star of Bethlehem Go? It’s an astronomer’s look at what this celestial object may have been, who the "Wise Men" were, and where they came from. Written in an investigative journalism style, it targets one star that has never been considered before and builds a solid case for its candidacy.

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Audiophile Musings

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Picking Apart the Sound

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