Room treatments

 I guess I would have to give the most credit here to Mr. Michael Green of Room Tunes fame for popularizing room acoustic panels for the masses. These were mentioned in the same breath as Monster Cable back in the mid '80s. I still have a pair of Room Tunes (above) and Corner Tunes in my studio. He is still in business today :

                                                  http://www.michaelgreenaudio.com/

                                        The competition  followed, ASC with their Tube traps,

     Aurulex and numerous other companies with their sculpted foam sheets and corner pieces, and Echo Busters which are very similar to Michael's designs. There are literally hundreds of these companies making this sort of thing today, mainly for recording studios, but they can cure significant problems in your room (echos,delays,boomy bass, etc). Try before you buy applies here, and many tend to overdo things by using them to excess.

All in all, it's just another (VPI) brick in the wall.....

Other resonance tuning devices besides feet- this has had quite a following and a reasonable bit of demand- the magic VPI brick. When placed strategically on a component , this eliminates hum and stray magnetic fields from a component that otherwise might hum- probably because it doesn't know the words. (Bad joke, I know, I have used it before). Since the advent of the toroidal transformers in power supplies this has not been as much of an issue,they used to be mainly constructed from iron plates.

The Tekna Sonic vibration dampers that you attach to the backs of your speakers, Totem Beaks (which look like tiptoes but are actually placed on top of the speakers),  Mpingo dots, Shakti Stones, and several other offerings.

The Magic Brick is the only classic one so far that has truly endured the test of time. It helped establish VPI, which is now a huge analog company.

More tears

Almost everybody who is into this hobby gets at least a little emotional occasionally when they play a certain special piece of music.

  I mentioned this when Donna Summers passed a few months ago.

 Tonight it was Dan Fogelberg,  (I know, I am showing my age).

Between the Leader of the Band and Another Old Lang Syne  it got to me, all teary eyed.

 Not sure if it was the memories of my father or a previous girlfriend, spent some time  dialing it  in right, and the emotions set in.

System sounds good, good reference recording, great engineering, and a great set of production values!


When things are right, they are right..... you know it when you get emotional.........

Other feats (feets?)

With the advent of the spikes and Tiptoes came other methods of coupling/isolating components. Sorbothane   became somewhat common with companies like Audioquest, and a myriad of options appeared. The Q foot, Big Feet, Discwasher Footers, and Vibapods, to name a few. Some people were setting their speakers on cinder blocks, all kinds of tweeks were born. A more elaborate measure would be the isolation bases, shelves that were placed under a component to ward off all sorts of bad karma. Bright Star, Black Diamond Racing, and numerous other companies charged as much or more than you would pay for an actual component!

Speaking of speaker spikes

Or had I spoke, spat, spit, in spades?

 In the early eighties a guy by the name of Steve McCormick of Mod Squad invented an aluminum cone known as the "Tip Toe". These were quite radical in their day, causing many an audiophile to scratch their head. At $5 each, these were not cheap in early eighties dollars, I must confess to being an early adopter based on the way they looked under components. Tip Toes went rampant, there were dedicated threaded versions for specific components like Sota turntables, and of course the other Mod Squad components like the Phono Drive, Line Drive, etc.  The imitators soon came, Sumiko Counter Feet (joke intended? A blatant attempt by a Japanese company to rip off an American one?) Today, just about everyone including Parts Express offers their own version of these. They have been placed under everything from turntables to speakers, not convinced they make anything sound better, but again I like the way they look.

 Some of the companies that actually made some headway in improving the original Tip Toe design would include Black Diamond Racing (high tech carbon fibre resonance analysis with all of their products) and German Physics tone cones , a combination cone/spike used on many high end speakers throughout the '80s. as oem equipment. I could probaly mention 100 other cone/spike manufacturers in existence today, but I won't. Need to hold your attention span. But anyway, official credit goes to Steve McCormick  for starting it all with the Tip Toe.

Tweaks Tweaks and more Tweaks

I have referred to various tweaks and enhancements on and off over the past year, and have promised to elaborate. The following few entries will describe some of the classic and famous (or infamous) enhancements and band aids that have made audio history. I will try to maintain an unbiased description of each, I am definitely not the snake oil type. While some of these admittedly invoke sarcasm, others have passed the test of time and have become very commonplace. Speaker spikes, for example have appeared on just about every currently offered high quality floor standing speaker or speaker stand from your favorite hifi salon to Best Buy. Power conditioners are also an accepted enhancement that defines a new(ish) component category, and I won't discuss these here. Anyway, here we go!

My various incarnations of home brew speakers

Over the past few years the putterer in me has surfaced, and I have played with building a few high efficiency horn designs. I have been mainly inspired by the German Avant Gardes, of course I can't afford them.

 The top three photos are one of my most recent efforts, a Fostex FE 208  full range 7'' driver with banana pulp paper and Planet 10 phase plugs mounted in a 24'' Atlas stadium horn. I recently swapped the Fostex out for some older full range JBL alnicos, the model number escapes me at the moment.

A lady that I worked for gave me the metal racks, actually for clothing displays in her accessory store. The top arms came right out, and these ended up looking pretty cool. The black backs are actually waste baskets! I obviously used these with a sub. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.........

  The bottom four pictures kind of started the whole thing, a pair of fibreglass planters from Home Depot that I painted and mounted some Altec  compression drivers on the back of. These are sitting on Altec Santana cabinets with JBL professional 15s, again the model number escapes me. An Apt 80 tweeter also mounted in the cabinet added sparkle. Eventually I mounted the Fostex drivers in these, and the whole system was biamped. Triodes on the tops, Chiro on the bottoms, professional two way crossover. this sounded very powerful, and was quite flexible.

   The problem was I couldn't stop fidgeting with it! Every record I changed the levels just a little, raised or lowered the crossover point by a few hz, just could never leave it alone!


I still have all or most of this stuff laying around if I ever want to pick up where I left off. Sound like Avant Gardes? Probably not, I have never heard them.


    Like I said, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.........