# Question/Discussion?



## garysummers (Oct 25, 2010)

Do you think that frequent attendance at live music events better equips you to be a SQ judge? Why or why not?


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## BigRed (Aug 12, 2007)

yes  what does a sax really sound like? etc etc.

I have always been a fan of the possibility before any sound event, the judge listen to designated tracks from headphones before judging. It is just an idea to set a reference. Tonality has the largest points offering in most sanctioned sound competition organizations. I think this would help.

Staging could be layed out on a paper map.

Just throwing around some ideas Gary!


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## asota (Feb 7, 2011)

I've been to many "Live" events over the years and they all can have a different sound it all depends on the way the sound engineer sets it up. IMO the goal of a SQ car is to reproduce the recorded music as accurately as possible. The judge needs to be familiar with a accurate reproduction of the music such as some high quality neutral headphones or high quality studio monitors and judge your car on the differences.


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## ErinH (Feb 14, 2007)

the environment at the live shows plays an effect on what you hear. so, what a certain instrument sounds like to you at one venue may be different at another. Additionally, some bands tailor their live sound differently than others. They're not all created equal.
A live show may give you an idea of what you like, though (or don't like).
There's always a degree of subjectivity, regardless how much we try to quantify the objective. 

So, my answer: No, a live show wouldn't necessarily make you a more _objective _judge. 
Oh, PS: 
Gary, you going to make it to finals this year? I was 3rd behind you last year. Not competing this year (busy schedule). However, I had hoped to hear your car again for a bit longer this year if you make it out.

- Erin


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## jtaudioacc (Apr 6, 2010)

I recently went to Britney Spears and American Idol Live, I'm more than qualified!!  :laugh:

But seriously, some kind of reference is absolutely needed and should be at least someone agreed upon on what scores what. so scoring can hopefully be more consistent.


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## bmiller1 (Mar 7, 2010)

asota said:


> IMO the goal of a SQ car is to reproduce the recorded music as accurately as possible.


I agree with this. Even though the music is recorded one way, the equipment you're using to reproduce it may be skewing it one way or another. I think live events can kind of let you in on how the artist likes it to sound. Contingent of course that they are an artist that cares. I've seen plenty that don't.


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

YES! there is no replacement for hearing live music, especially live unamplified music.

the Goal in SQ competition is to recreate the medium as it was recorded. having 1st hand knowledge has a definite benefit when trying to recreate the performance. 

While many things can be manipulated in the final mix, sounds of instruments dont tend to change that dramatically. They arent changing the sound of a flute to sound like a harmonica.
Knowing what a real flute sounds like, the attack and decay of each note, the resonance and reverberation, the breath etc...

I agree with Jim as well-having a standardized reference for tonality is key to having judging consistency. This is something EMMA and now IASCA have done by using the German Maestro 8.35 as their training and reference "system".

one of the biggest problems that has plagued sound off judging since its inception is there has never been a standardized or accepted reference. Some Judges have Pro Audio backgrounds, some were former musicians, some were Home audio sales guys, some just old competitors etc....

home audiophile bass differs drastically IMO from what real bass sounds like. Home Theatre is much worse.


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## chefhow (Apr 29, 2007)

I think what needs to be discussed isnt so much live events and venues but the size of the venues and the quality of the shows. To see a concert in a 13K+ seat arena or 30K+ seat stadium with speakers hanging from the rafters, metal and concrete everywhere or no roof on it is pointless for anything other than entertainment. The volume involved is crazy, and the level of distortion is high, its not about quality its about quantity. 

A few months ago I sat for lunch with a sound engineer and my brother at a local arena after a sound check and asked him the quality vs quantity question in arenas and he laughed at me. We talked about the fact that the musicians understand that its impossible to recreate a studio experience and get the same sound so they offer a show to make up for it. Remember, 99% of the people that attend a concert of that size arent concerned or even thinking about sound quality. Its purely entertainment for them. Now a small intimate concert hall at a local HS or College, a small Orchestral hall, a non-amplified bar or club with an acoustic set; these are all a different animal and can be used as a reference assuming they are designed with acoustic treatments in the appropriate locations and the sound engineers producing the event know what they are doing. Saturday night my wife and I went out late with some friends after work and saw a 3 pc band which consisted of a 3pc drum kit, a standup bass and an acoustic guitar. They were in a small bar with nothing but the instruments and a mic for the singer, great experience and great raw sound. That isnt going to be recreated in a car but knowing how it should sound and how the raw instruments sound is KEY in what a judge should know. 

IMHO a judge should have a good understanding of the "fundamentals" of what an instrument sounds like in its raw form. How a balsa snare with natural skins sounds, a stand up bass differs from a solid body electric bass and how it resonates, how a hollow body Gretsch sounds vs a Les Paul and then how different pickups sound and effect it has on the sound the guitars produce. These are all EXTREMELY important in how you listen and they cant be reproduced in a large venue. What I like to do, and I have done this with Mic, is go to a small local venue, a couple of hundred seats at most, sit in the back, dead center, and listen, then move within the room and do the same thing and notice the differences. REALLY LISTEN to how a drum resonates, how a guitar echos and how a voice sounds based on where you are in the room. A well informed judge should go to a local music shop and talk to the guys/girls who work there, ask them to play for you if you dont know how to, ask them to play different types of the same instrument and then pick their brains. They love it and they open up to you and information just pours out and to you. 

Basically my answer is yes and no, it just depends upon the type of live show and how its produced.

Getting back to what Big Red and Mic said, there needs to be a reference, its there for EMMA and IASCA in the German Maestro head phones. They arent cheap but they arent expensive for what they are and they are required for judges in IASCA and EMMA and should be for MECA.


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## BigRed (Aug 12, 2007)

I should have clarified live unamplified sound. I am trying to arrange a quartet at our next so-cal meet so everybody can experience what these particular instruments sound like. I attended the la philharmonic and when I heard the triangle I realized we are ambitiously trying to recreate some very difficult sounds


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## chefhow (Apr 29, 2007)

Even better than a quartette, how about try to have your GTG at a local HS and convince the Marching Band instructor to let you guys have a listen during pratice. Hear the drum line, the horns and then both together.


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## michaelsil1 (May 24, 2007)

BigRed said:


> I should have clarified live unamplified sound. I am trying to arrange a quartet at our next so-cal meet so everybody can experience what these particular instruments sound like. I attended the la philharmonic and when I heard the triangle I realized we are ambitiously trying to recreate some very difficult sounds


Having listened to live non amplified venues (I believe) are essential to being a SQ judge.

I also think they should attend at least one live Classical Concert.


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## michaelsil1 (May 24, 2007)

I also think that Gary Summers should listen to other cars and give input!


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## Golden Ears (Jul 18, 2010)

I read a lot of useful information in these forms. And here is a question which I think I can accurately answer.

When I was 14, I began reading a periodical called the Abso!ute sound, which was a high fidelity publication based out of Seacliff, New York. I am now 48.

The publication dealt with very expensive audio equipment–but what's very interesting is that the editor Harry Pearson was one of the people who came up with the jargon that we use to describe what we hear. In fact he continues to do so to this day. Sound staging, continuousness, palpability, image focus and so on…

The name of the periodical, The Abso!ute Sound, was selected to define the quest of this particular magazine. Stereophile did not adopt the un-amplified music as a solid reference. Stereo Review did not either and relied on measurements that were often misleading to rank gear.

Here is my take on The Abso!ute Sound. Obviously, the more discerning your ears are the better you are able to tell recorded sound from live sound. Also it will be easier for you to tell what is wrong with a recording.

In my opinion, we learn to discern between sounds and sound that sound very similar when we are very young. In particular, we learn to listen to our parent’s voices. It is rather easy for a 4-year-old to pick his mother's voice out of a crowded room.

In fact, we are able to discern a great many voices–despite ones that sound similar. Even listening to the voices of identical twins... albeit closely, we can discern differences.

So in the midrange, we have an incredible ability to discern between differences. Particularly with familial voices.

We don't have as much of that when it comes to low frequencies or when it comes to extremely high frequencies.

We seem to be very susceptible to overtones and harmonics.

Some of them are very desirable–for instance personally I prefer the overtones of a Steinway grand as compared to that of the Yamaha (there are some Yamahas I do like) . The overtones impact me emotionally. 

But what is the sound of the Fender Stratocaster or a synthesizer? In fact, we don't really know what it sounds like.

The only chance we can ever have to know what these things might sound like, as if we created a playback system that was flawless for live instruments in their actual recording space, and then we were to feed that input from the Fender Stratocaster into that very same sound system. 

Even then, strange impedances might conspire to alter the sound of the Fender Stratocaster from what it really sounds like.

Because of this, the only true reference we have is that of live music in its actual performance venue.

When we can reproduce live music so it sounds like it's playing back accurately and indistinguishable from its actual performance venue–then we can say we have achieved the absolute sound.

As a child, my elementary school , Allen-Stevenson had an award-winning orchestra, we played for the President of the United States every year. There were also other talented musicians that would come and perform in our school auditorium–which had reasonably good acoustics thanks to incredibly heavy velvet drapes and the overall shape of the space.

As a child (not at all interested in music – in fact I failed Music for many years) these recitals were extremely boring and tedious , the sound of the piano, the sound of the flute, the sound of oboes the sound of French horns, the sound of tubas, the sound of kettledrums and the sound of violins…Were pounded into our brains. Like it or not, our synapses were branded with the reference of live music in live space without amplification.

Live music sent through amplification is no longer live. It becomes a processed representation of live music, one with the added distortion of microphones, amplifiers, poor quality sound reinforcement speakers, the distortions of the mixing board, poor cabling, as well as poor speaker placement, and often crap gain structure.

And I'm sure some of you would say that the way the performer wants you to hear the music is the way you should hear it. There is some truth to that, perhaps Carlos Santana doesn't feel you are listening to Santana unless you're hearing it through 65,000 Watts and 300 18" woofers. But that's not what he hears in the studio–and that's not what he's mastering for the studio, he's producing something he expects you to hear at home.

There was also a comment about bass frequencies– not being correct in terms of audiophile bass. I can assure it- audiophile bass can reproduce the real thing... there are just a few systems which can do this.

The Infinity Reference Standard V, The Martin Logan Statement prototype, (heard both of these) and perhaps the Nearfield Acoustics Pipedreams (haven't heard them). But certainly you aren't going to get real bass with mini monitors and a sub or some silly tower with 2 ten inch woofers. But it can be done..convincingly with a large format system capable of producing a coherent wave launch taller than the listener.

In terms of using headphones as a reference, I regularly host a headphone audio meet at my home in California. The current reference to which we compare everything else…is this:

Wadia 860x with Great Northern Sound Statement Level upgrade, Blue Hawaii Headphone amp- upgraded, and Stax Omega electrostatic headphones- (recabled I believe) 

It is interesting to note that these components are not the newest available... There are newer Wadia units, Newer Stax headphones (which we had to compare and failed in comparision), Newer competitive CD players and DACs, but this- we all agreed upon, is the current state of the art based on what is available. Audio pieces can be somewhat like musical instruments- there can be historic landmark pieces.


Headphones are easy to transport and this set up has gone to Southern California twice (Wadia was selected as best twice over the Accuphase) and Northern California meets and I believe Chicago's biggest meet. (at these two other meets an Accuphase was used instead which though not as good as the Wadia still bested all competition).

This would be a great reference. But also understand that a headphone is made for particular ears and ear shape- as the sound does bounce off ears a certain way- so for a judge to properly calibrate his listening experience- he would have to have pretty average shaped ears to fit inside these headphones. (In ear monitors excepted)

Speakers - while they suffer from sheer size and transfer function of the room- are far better at recreating the musical event. but might be impractical for car reference use- unless brought to a particular show and set up properly.

I've been involved with high end since I was 14. I actually hit audio nirvana- where I could create the live event at age 33. It is not easy. Home audiophiles have an easier time of changing their acoustics to suit their needs as well as the ability to move speakers at will.

Car people have issues with moving speakers around.. also..everything is different.

Sure...you could both have identical Honda civics... with the same amps, speakers and HU- but you may have damped your doors differently- or angled your drivers a bit differently or used the same crossover frequencies but different slopes- or different driver polarity... It just is not very comparable.

I look at it this way... car audio people at the SQ level are SPEAKER designers. They pick they type of enclosures for their speakers and difractions (door panels,a-pillars, dash with reflective lens effect..etc..), the transfer function layered is a function of the car they select- and the interior, leather , vinyl, or cloth seats, - the amount of dampening material they add and kind…. they may try to stiffen drivers support with better baffles, they pick crossover points, phase, and drivers to suit the off axis needs, They may even fiddle with different crossover components. They are building a speaker box for their speakers, which they will then play inside a small box (Their car). Roll down a window and its is almost a bandpass…lol.


The odd thing is that car guys are essentially trying to make a stereo sound good in a tile bathroom with furniture and carpeting. That’s is one hell of a challenge! Add to that a motor and an off center listening position and road noise and wind noise, and perhaps unstable line voltage… it is daunting. Not to mention that a strong pressure wave in the car made by a sub might (in my theory) press in Midrange cones and tweeter domes causing a new type of distortion relative to cars. There is a solution to this. Also cars go up and down over hills possibly changing internal pressure which could end up (in a mountain scenario) leaving a voice coil pushed forward in a sealed sub box. (I have solutions for this and still use a sealed enclosure).

What I can offer is this.. you need a reference to have as a goal. A reference that can be reproduced *without* electronics. So live music unamplified must be that reference. Only then will you be able to know what a fender Stratocaster really might sound like…AFTER you have been able to flawlessly reproduce Yo-yo Ma's Cello, a 1733 Montagnana that costs 2,000,000. The goal should not be to reproduce a $400 cello- likely easier to do..., though it could be argued if you could perfectly reproduce your mother’s voice- or the voice discernable from that of a twin… you’d be pretty close. Certainly the wider the frequency range you reproduce accurately figure into this. A pipe organ- and harp might cover a lot of the spectrum. The issue is that we have a lot of familiarity with voices….particularly those of the people we speak with the most often.

I am not a religious man- but I did spend time in church (at school and boarding school) - and knowing what a real church organ sounds like – one run by wind with huge pipes, and a real cathedral space, can give you an idea of just how difficult it is to reproduce what we are trying to do. Some boarding schools still have great organs as do some colleges. But a visit to a church can give you a decent reference. It’s free.

It is hard to hear unamplified music. My Girlfriends Father helped start the Reno Symphony. I had the best seats possible- his seats, on July 4th. And you can imagine how horrified I was to hear EVERYTHING AMPLIFIED. Frankly through those PA speakers…I would have had a better experience listening at home on my reference system. It was not longer a musical performance. Merely a visual spectacle with marginal sound. (btw I am not a classical fanatic..)

Boston Symphony hall is a decent hall which is unamplified. Carnagie hall used to be good- but ruined their acoustics when several things happened.. (they got a bigger coat check – thus removing some of the absorptive ability from the audience …and women stopped wearing huge furs, and they removed a huge sound absorbing circular drape above the stage and changed the seating..they ruined it.. You’ll see this in the TED talk link. Two of my family members played there- a singer Elisabeth Oei and a pianist Betty Hwang. My cousin, married Carmen Lundy who was nominated for Jazz performer of the year.. So I have a good live reference in her too. I keep her CD’s in my car as a reference. I do not think really close mic’d recordings are good however as a reference because the levels are so askew. Like whispering voice booms over a rock guitar..(unnatural). One odd reference for voice. I dated a girl whose mother was a famous broadway singer (wife of Frank Loessser - who wrote Guys and dolls and lots of other things) his daughter Emily arguably, had a better singing voice than her mom- and Emily used to sing for me. They have payed Broadway together. I miss her voice.

Aspen’s music tent in the summer is a great choice. They do not amplify the music at all….unless there is heavy rain.

Listening to music from your school marching band… well that might be a waste…mostly because the instrument quality, and skill is often poor and you will be training your ears on a lame reference..like using a clock radio as your reference.

The recording space.. or performance space is also a big part of what you hear… it is important for the acoustics of the recording space to match the music. In fact as performance spaces change… the music changes to take advantage of the attributes of the performance space.

Certainly Roman amphitheaters took advantage of the acoustics and music that sounds good with those acoustics has an advantage to become more popular over time in that venue. 

For example. If you were to play punk rock in a church it would sound awful because the space is too reverberant. Also… if you were to stuff a church choir into a closet it would sound dreadful. So when you go to hear live music… try to hear it in the acoustic environment that compliments rather than detracts from it… or again.. youa re training for a bad reference. So for example… listening to the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston's Symphony hall is a great experience, but listening to them at Boston’s Hatchshell on the Charles River amplified July 4th s not a great reference, and neither is hearing them in an open field in Western Massachusetts in the Bershires in Tanglewood. It is cool to see John Williams conduct.

David Byrne of the talking heads explains this a bit better.

David Byrne: How architecture helped music evolve - YouTube

And yes he talks about car audio. 

So historically….. beyond live music into amplified music. 
Jazz and Big band sounded great on low wattage tube sets.
Adolph Hitler used lots of horns at his Rallies because they were efficient and played loud and he chose music to suit these horns.
At one time… watts were really expensive. Home stereos were mono consoles.. So if you were to play Ludacris on a 1970 transistor radio.. all the impact would be lost. But vocal harmony-like the Beatles sound ok on small radios and console stereos and on car stereos from the 1960’s as do the Monkeys, the Dave Clark 5 etc.. 

Later as cheap Japanese electronics came in… along with horrible clipping and distortion, bands that were not as adversely affected by this distortion became even more popular than they were in the 1960’s - Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Hendrix, The Rolling Stones. 

The theme then was bigger speakers and bigger solid state amps…Rock was raw and had impact. The baby boomers ruled.. back then and stereo sales were brisk. You could only spend money on cars, food, drugs and music. And the music rose to this.

MTV nearly killed music- and audio. As this was the new medium, the TV. And because of this… the music had to sound good on TV’s . So the 1980’s synthesized music started to get a foothold. The Human League, Howard Jones, Wang Chung, Soft Cell, Devo, Tom Tom club, etc.. Also night clubs became popular whose systems sounded good with house music.

Then Bose came along with small speakers that our bitchy wives demanded. The Sub and Satellite 5.1 surround systems. Now- there was no mid bass. So bass guitar, tom toms, and to some extent harmonic voices were de-emphaiszed. Leaving the door open for Rap with its strong bass line and Hip hop. More of the lyrics were spoken…sadly because these ****ty little speakers with tiny midranges were awful at reproducing singers voices.

And Today, were see one other genre…doing well.. in part because ipod ear buds do not reproduce good bass but do well with simpler folk music and folk rock.

One other person asks if it is bad to have the singer appear on his hood singing.. I say.. if that is what it sounded like.. then it should be that way. We should be striving to reproduce the recorded venue as well as the recorded artist.

This can be hard. Certainly you can imagine that you could reproduce a small quartet recorded in open air- in a larger room with speakers. But to reproduce a choir or stadium rock concert in something the size of a closet (our cars) might seem more daunting… but I can assure you… it is possible.. just like we can put on headphones and be transported. We just need to control the transfer function of the car as its sonic space signature will get layered upon the recorded venue. The key is to de-emphasize the sound of the car’s acoustics as compared to the recorded venue. So Lets go back to stuffing a choir in a bathroom. If we put some decent speakers in a bathroom…no matter how expensive.. they will sound like crap because the acoustics of the bathroom will certainly override the acoustic space of the recorded music. So we must work to making that environment less reflective if we are to hear the music.

Reflections… mess with us. Ever notice how you can get a headache quickly from dining in a reflective restaurant environment despite it not being all that loud –as compared to being in a boat with a much louder engine? Our brain evolved to locate and identify sounds precisely… our ears are shaped so we can tell if the twig that the bear or lion stepped on (that is trying to eat us) is in front or behind us. We evolved hunting and being hunted...hearing was survival.

If you were to have Mike Tyson bite off your ears…. You would have a hard time figuring out of the bear was in front of you or behind you. Our outer ears help us localize and identify sound. Our brains are like computers figuring out time delays, the comb filter of our head and the inter-aural time delay to find where things are as well as the roll off of high frequencies. When we are in that loud reflective restaurant… our brain goes into overdrive trying to figure out the noise… and it can’t---- so we leave with a headache- that my friends is true listener fatigue.. While instead, for comparison sake, riding on Donzi boat going 80mph just leaves us feeling exhilarated..maybe with a bit of ringing in our ears… but *no headache* because our brain was not getting fried using every bit of its auditory computing power trying to figure things out an localize things and make sense of nonsense like in the loud restaurant. 

So the less distortion, and the more identifiable the instruments- their overtones, harmonics, timbre, and the more accurate staging (And mind you you can over enhance sound staging which can be another type of distortion- which people can get overly hooked on… its one of audios dead ends) the less listener fatigue we will have the less of a headache, and the more enjoyment we will get from our music.

Sorry that this did not come out as organized as I would have liked.... but I hope it helps you guys. I just wish I could share the audio nirvana of accurate reproduction with installers everywhere..so they would not be basing their reference on Metallica's latest stadium live album on a shelf system bought from Best Buy. I think the car audio engineers at Harmon International might be some of the few who have this option....but sadly...arbitrary price points probably restrict them from executing their best effort.


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## rawdawg (Apr 27, 2007)

Woah... Nice read, there.


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## Golden Ears (Jul 18, 2010)

cajunner said:


> snipped...
> Almost as if the doo-*** era existed as an interim pause, between the soon to be Motown and the previous era's piano/torch/folk offerings... this paucity of good playback equipment meant that dynamics were traded for harmony, and today we are overloaded with the ability to punch the gut with rock beats, we are now shaking brain matter in the quest to revel in the moment of auditory elevation...


and we have the gear to do this.... but like how movies today focus more on casting and explosions to entertain than a great story line.... much of todays music relies less on composition and good music theory and rests on the beat alone.

IMHO what happens when playback gear is lacking in one area...it steers the popularity of music towards the type of music that is least affected by the lacking areas. Because for the most part...everything else is more noticeably lacking to our brains (ie truncated bass does not compute on a compact transistorized radio)...whether you are an audiophile or not.

But there are different ways to listen to music. IMHO

Some people listen primarily to composition and because that is their connection- they can tolerate a poor playback system more easily than others. They may have studied great composers for instance on low fi systems and been hooked on composition to better enjoy the music.

Then... what I have always found fascinating.. is that many top musicians have crappy sound systems. Perhaps because their reference... THE REAL THING...fills their need so much better that they give up on audio... but I also think they listen to the order of the notes and identify notes ..like when they hear a note...say d minor or any other note- they can identify it on any system.. and move one at that point not dwelling too long on analyzing the decay and overtones because they are already onto the next note themselves. *They don't need or require hi-end gear* because of this.. they hear and enjoy music differently- and can compose in their head in part because of this. Maybe that is why Beethoven wrote some great work after he was deaf.

About 15 years ago... I was in Connecticut with my family- my cousin ran off to join the Stuttgart Ballet in Germany as a dancer when she was 16... she married the concert Pianist for the Ballet, Glen. Our family was playing with a childrens toy...called Merlin which had lights that lit in a sequence and you would try to repeat the sequence. Glen did it with his eyes closed the first time he tried with zero mistakes.. just memorized the long note sequence..blew us away... he just perceives things differently than other people would as a top musician.

I have almost no musical talent. I Dj'ed for while... didn't even beat mix.. in the 1980's. It was an excuse to buy Bryston amplifiers, nice pre-amps, and so on.

I don't read music, never have been able to play an instrument, but was always fascinated with creating that sonic illusion. I have a good ear for matching systems- but their are plenty out there who do this for a living who are way better than me...like any top speaker designer Stewart Tyler (Pro-Ac), Arnie Nudell (older..Infinity Systems, Genesis), Kevin Voecks (Revel, Harmon International), Stewart Chapman Jones (Chapman Loudpspeakers), Mark Eldridge, Earl Zausmer (his BMW), and so on... I only am good at making the magic happen...like taking gear and making it work together to optimize it. I think it is akin to having a box of telescope optics in a box ...in a room full of random mirrors- ie noise inducing brightness and reflections, and trying to make a telescope without an outer case...work perfectly. We focus sound instead of light.

Having a great reference should be one of the first things Judges should have before judging. 

I've thought that car audio is perhaps the ultimate in nearfield listening (except for headphones...lol...) so perhaps a really good Nearfield rig (mini monitors, sub, and a great source) ... which is sort of portable would be good... but I do find that nearfield rigs by nature of their few drivers suffer from compression... which of course car audio suffers from as well.

This costs money...even a reasonable one like 

Quad ESL -63’s with tube amps, and a Linn turntable playing Emerson Lake and palmers “take a pebble” (fine so long as there is no heavy bass content)

or 


ProAc Response 1sc biwired with Audio Research VT mark 2, Target mf 24 stands (lead shot filled), Wadia 861, Ray Charles “God Bless America” (good only for small ensembles of well recorded music)

While not the be all end all reference... likely they would play much better than what judges currently use for a reference. These are bass light though... but for staging and image focus and so on... they would be much better than what people have now...

Still it is expensive...

Here is a less expensive solution...


What we should shoot for is a live reference- perhaps have a meet in the parking lot of a very high quality piano store...or a a church ..and record listen to and record the live music and then try to reproduce that in our cars as a tuning exercise. (I am not a church nut... I just think that those instruments have broad frequency response.)

Of course recording expertise is important.. but being in Socal... there have got to be some of these people available...

Just thinking of a way to advance this reference a bit in somewhat practical terms that can be done for little or no money.


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