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Friday, May 1, 2009

The secret unveiled: Roman Bessnow's DPoLS, speakers Imbedded Macro Positioning and playback in-wide-phase to room or the Quest for AEZ;-)


I consider the reading of some essay Roman Bessnow wrote in his Romy the Cat/GoodSoundClub forum to be among the best speculations ever written on audio and music reproduction, period.
That's possibily due to the mix of new and old world personal history, heritage, culture, skills and habits... but, well, what Roman did was far, FAR away and deeper than the usually empty hype-oriented typical audio chatting available everywhere... his hinting toward an ideal goal in musical enjoyment is nor crytpic neither snobbish, but, IMO, sincerely aimed to promote such an apparently difficult task: the better possible sound AND musical involvement and enjoyment while listening, BETTER, while experiencing Music at home...
I carefully read, digested and mumbled around several pages of his superb forum, where he passionately spend zillions world in trying to distillate a concept which is - very Zen-like - understandable in full ONLY if experienced, at least, one time in the life;-)
Very, very simplified, the practice of moving speakers around in the music-room, searching, as also a mainstream audio-guru - David Wilson of WAMM, WATT and Puppy's fame - suggests, calling it "Zone of Neutrality" or the location where the speakers interact less with the boundaries of the room... Roman calls this "Zone of Maximum Partiality", when acoustic system is organically imbedded into the imperfections of the room itself, taking advantage of the imperfections, thus converting these into advantages.
While mr. Wilson is afraid of room boundaries and feels there are "better rooms", Roman didn't think there are "bad rooms"...
Wilson looks for a neutral zone outside of which a room booms... Roman seeks for the boomiest zone outside of which... nothing happens.
While, always going ahead in DW vs. RB opinions, DW sweet-spot is about 3 inches sized, RB's is, with same speakers and careful set-up, a walkable space... and so and so on...
The above apparently obscure different, contrastating opinions bring us to a clearer place... please read further...
The above mentioned relatively-wide bandwidth "agilest" spot (the walkable space) in your room, will not be a spot but rather a quite large space.
It's very difficult to make a generalization about its size, but generally this quite "large bloomy space" would be a space equal to something between 1/8 and 1/12th of the room dimensions.
Roman (as myself - it's time to discover my own feeling) calls this large bloomy space as "Acoustical Erogenous Zone" (AEZ) of our listening room and obtains it moving the spakers, one at a time, where the 80hz to 500hz, the "Melody Range" driver/speaker, being AEZ-linked to room, gains its maximum potential "in" the room and "with" the room.
It's something not subtle and much cheaper than any gears swapping you can imagine! The speakers must be "inside" the AEZ: this way our artificial room-transducers (speakers) are in-phase with the very nature and essence - i.e. size, materials, pro & con - of the music room and then on, they do not work against each other.
Roman insists that if our "Melody Range" channels/ways (or a live instrument, as well...) are in AEZ, then they are capable of truly WONDERFUL things by "TURNING THE ENTIRE ROOM ON" - i.e. you cannot accomplish it with better speakers or better amps.
Diving in dangerous, yet pleasant territories, Roman says that driving our room with loudspeakers from "outside" AEZ location, is like pleasing different parts of a female body - it gives positive and effective atomic (meaning individual, isolated) effects to her gratification. However, only performing ALL necessary "actions" on women fabled;-) G-spot, some (lucky) woman will reach not atomic, BUT a FULL BODY REACTION.
The Melody Range lodging a room from AEZ is much more akin in hitting the G-spot of our music/listening room and allows us to get a VERY different and evolved result of the room loading, that's simply unimaginable if you drive same room "outside" of AEZ!

So, beside some difficulties in making an acceptable synopsis of Roman's stream of consciousness, that's plainly said, what I obtained in my humble 25 sq. metres music/listening room: the sensation of listening to a Musical Room, not speakers in a room to accomplish aesthetics or easy living or WAF... friends which listened to my elucubrations about "walking among musicians", "looking at the bottom of the violinist", the "speakers disappearing" and the "huge, organized time/music bubble, respecting instruments and voices recorded sizes and informations", and last but not least, the lysergic mass of "organized details", interwoving each other, without overdistracting or loosing the moving qualities of musical message... well, they had to experience with their own ears and senses to understand and believe me.
This is DPoLS, in glorious "Gotorama" and analog full-bloom, the best possible sound in a given room... that's what I'm grooving-in since some months ago, when I possibly - sort-of - sold my soul to the Devil or something... or, maybe, it was I dreamed and followed this ideal of sonic aesthetics I wasn't aware of... a beauty including quality and enjoyment, where the several complications involved in musical reproduction at home is ONLY a medium, so not paramount per se, like top musicians do not shows pain or stress also in most difficult playing, instead only giving "Music" to the listener. Simple, isn't it?!?!

Thanks Roman... myself and, as I hope, many others, owe to you A LOT... for teaching with simple words and hinting a path with an out-of-the-choir cristal-clear voice.

... like in '50s B-movie: "Romy vs. the Morons", Music by Miklos Rozsa;-)))))))))

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks for sharing this. I know too little about audio, but I do appreciate Romy's distinct, sui-generis voice on all topics Audio-related and otherwise.

His taste in literature isn't bad either. Wish we could hear him wax philosophical sometime about Garcia Marquez's Macondo.