December 2019

Great Audiophile Gift Ideas For The 2019 Holiday Season
Enjoy the Music.com celebrates our 14th annual gift ideas to give your audiophile!

Soundoctor Test / Setup CD Version 2.7.2

  With this CD you are in for a unique audio experience! This CD represents more than 35 years research into the best methodology for the easiest and most comprehensive subwoofer integration and system alignment, including speaker imaging by Barry Ober. Barry says you will get results where everything before has been disappointing or a failure. If you have been frustrated because you have a subwoofer and "it never integrates properly" or "the bass is always muddy and/or boomy" then you have come to the right place.

Version 2.7.2 has been redone in both track order and content from the earlier versions. These frequencies are all digitally generated in Wavelab and the CD is manually recorded (burned) individually, at a slow speed for the highest possible quality. This CD also has free bonus music partial sample tracks on it. There's also a new unique BLIP test, and dual white noise tracks, one "in" phase, one "out" of phase (polarity).

The OVERALL setup procedure for any sound system is:
a) Room acoustics
b) Mains placement and alignment
c) Sub placement
e) Sub integration with a two-channel system (if you have that)
f) Sub integration with Home Theater / Surround system (if you have that)

Subwoofer Placement
You actually have three places to put a sub (or subs).
1) where you think it / they should go
2) where your spouse tells you to put them
3) where they ACTUALLY belong.

Sub placement is far more critical than most people would like to believe. Even though the bass wavelengths are long, (an 80Hz wave is 14 feet long) a one foot difference in sub placement might amaze you. Please do not obsess about flat response in a living room. It is essentially not possible.

Here is an empirical test you can do which requires no test equipment and it can be done at any time, whether or not your sub is in a good or bad position: Play any sine wave freq, (for example 70Hz). Now walk completely across your room right in front of your chair from the left wall to the right wall. Notice all the peaks and dips (holes). Your room is a five-dimensional grid. Every frequency has peaks and nulls at every different spot within your room. Scary, isn't it?

In two-channel 'stereo', says Barry Ober of Soundoctor, there is often a very tight relationship between the bass notes (coming out of the sub) and their harmonic structure (coming out of the mains). For example, a kick drum has a fundamental around 60Hz; a sub-harmonic component an octave down (therefore around 30Hz); and a series of both even and odd harmonics extending up to 8000Hz. Your mechanism of hearing feels the fundamentals (which are coming from the sub) and localizes the harmonics (which are coming from your main speakers). All of this is most apparent in well recorded acoustic bass (perhaps jazz) and cello (perhaps classical) music. If the phase relationship of the sub(s) are set correctly, even if the subs are behind you in the room you will perceive the "musician playing the bass" to be in the front of the room where he/she belongs.

Pretty much the best $18 you will ever spend on your system. This CD helps you to correctly integrate subwoofer(s) for best impulse response. It also includes free tech support vial email or phone too.

Recommended by Enjoy the Music.com's Steven R. Rochlin.

You can purchase the Soundoctor's Test / Setup CD Version 2.7.2 for $18 at this link.

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