Covid Without The Covid! - May 2025

Take a step forward (or quit being afraid)

I have been remiss in writing a monthly blog although it has been on my mind.  I have been, like many, watching and reading the news and thinking about my place in it.  It was only recently that all the pieces fell into place.

With the way news is being handled, it is causing many people to crawl into a corner.  The news has become a mirror of political campaigns or visa-versa.

  Yet, we all are pretty disgusted with political advertising as it is always negative and what's wrong with the other person.  We are all relieved when elections are over because we don't have to listen to it any longer.  Oddly enough, however, common news is given a passing grade when the very same type of negativism needs to be followed.  

Years ago, as many of you know, my wife began to suffer from a genetic heart disease known as Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (or HCM).  Notwithstanding all the attempts to fix the problems (which required multiple surgeries), it began to fail.  This required a heart transplant which she received Thanksgiving Day, 2020. In the 4 years following that event, Deb eventually forced into retirement by her employer as she no longer had the steady hands needed to draw blood.  This was caused by the medications to prevent rejection.  In addition to this, over the next four years, she nearly died 8 or 9 times.

Through this, I made about 65 trips to the Cleveland Clinic from Virginia to be at her side not knowing the outcome. It was difficult on both of us.  Yet, through this all, a seed was planted.

Shortly after she was "retired" Deb began to plan her future and decided to pursue the path of being a social worker to help other transplant families.  As Covid protocols were still rampant, she chose Mary Baldwin University of Viginia as they offered on-line courses.  Working with them, they pieced together a path using credits she had previously earned nearly 40 years ago from another university combined with their program. 

Over the next few 2 ½ years Deb worked away on getting this degree and in the process held a GPA of 3.98 with honors.  In April of 2024, her transplanted heart began to fail.  The Cleveland Clinic offered the chance at a second heart transplant.  So, amazingly, while she was lying in bed from that time to August 21st, Deb continued to work away at earning her degree.  I, for my part, continued all the support necessary to run a farm, keep a household and run Audible Elegance which I have been visiting when I can. I made multiple trips during that time to continue the emotional support. On May 18th, she graduated from Mary Baldwin with her degree.  She plans more....  

Debbie's Graduation May 18th 2025

So, why write about this?  It is because she could have chosen to crawl into the corner and eventually die.  She not only chose to live but to see to others who are on this path.  It is, for both the patient and caretaker, not always an easy path.  She stood up and chose life.  It took 43 years to graduate and she did it after so many of life's distractions. 

Most recently she has been declared legally blind as a result of all the trauma her body has been through.  She has lost peripheral vision.  I am now her transportation to the future.  We are not giving up, we are not hiding in a corner.  We are looking forward. 

So, indeed it saddens me when I see perfectly healthy people crawling into the corner afraid to live life.  Afraid to enjoy the things of life, afraid to bring things into the life for enjoyment, afraid of what tomorrow may bring.  Well, from my experience, I can only say to you is to live life, enjoy life, and quit being afraid of tomorrow.  

-Lou

Understanding ASC Tube Traps - March 2025

I received another question from a patron on our YouTube channel regarding one of several videos about using ASC Tube Traps. I thought I'd share the inquiry and a follow-up discussion:

"I'm sorry Lou but, I can be rather "basic" in my understanding about some aspects of audio reproduction. What do they do, for whom - what condition might they be needed? I'm assuming booming resonance in corners? If/when I ever get that, it's only when playing vinyl at high, high volumes (which I rarely use). I won't get any of that with my CD player."

The Standard ASC Tube Traps

Let me address your basic understanding from a different angle. The human ear locks in on the loudest (highest amplitude) sound for both location and understanding. When there are two sources (or more) of a sound, understanding may be difficult and it's location undetectable. Thus, when you are trying to talk across a gymnasium, for example, it is difficult to both understand and to know where the sound is coming from. As you walk closer to each other, there will become a moment when both "lock" in. That is because the direct sound (speech) is louder than the first reflections.

In both stereo and home theater, there is a steering logic. In stereo, it is provided by the difference in the arrival time of the sound recorded. In home theater, this is also true but there is also intentional delays to create the effects of things moving sonically. Where devices like ASC tube traps and others come into play is dealing with these reflections or imbalances in frequencies affecting both the clarity and location of the sound. The most common ones addressed are known as first reflections.

Think of sound coming out of the speaker and bouncing off the side wall like a billiard ball hitting the first rail. Thus, some form of control is used at that point to reduce (absorb) the amplitude of that signal. It is easy to find these points by sitting in your listening position and having someone move a mirror down the side walls until you can see the face of the speaker reflected in the mirror. That's a first reflection point. What many people forget, by the way, is that the same thing happens off of ceilings and floors.

Where devices like the ASC Traps come into play, which by the way was first created by Bell Laboratories, is providing a variable adjustment to the absorption or reflective needs. This is done by a tube with a slot in it and depending upon the specific frequency range targeted, the trap diameter changes. Smaller diameters address higher frequencies than say large diameter ones. Conversely, the larger the diameter, the less effective they are at higher frequencies. This is because each frequency has a known length to form a complete wave. Flat panel devices, say office dividers, are very narrow in the range they work and there is no changing their effect. That's why such things are used in call centers so that you don't hear other voices.

Does their "effect" depend upon volume? Not really although volume may make it more obvious. But rooms full of reflections usually disrupt both the sense of stereo imagery and the steering of sound in home theaters. Many original THX certified speakers, for example, specifically controlled vertical dispersion to avoid reflections off the ceiling (principally) or the floor. In theaters, it is quite common to have some form of damping material on the side walls to avoid those first reflections for any location in the theater.

The biggest risk of such devices is a combination of over-damping a room and/or not addressing the right frequency where the problem exists. In a funny sort of way, that's why many equalizers in home usually looked like a smile. They knew they had a problem but did not know how to fix it and sometimes it is the room itself.  Going about it without understanding what is wrong is like constantly adding things to a soup where you end up with a large pot is distasteful goo. 

Hope this helps you see (hear) the picture a bit better.

-Lou

The Cost of LISTENING to Accountants - February 2025

We recently received a comment from our YouTube Channel from a patron about one of our former product offerings:

"Focal Naim really got into some kind of freefall in overall quality (not the product, the brand itself) over the last couple of years. It is like they do not realise that you need goods on stock, or at least available to begin with and even worse, once the product is in the customeres hands - the support is nonexisting nowadys. This is not a hyperbole, this is a reality in europe. Their service department does not even reply or can maintain a somewhat reasonable pace of doing so, if they choose to reply at all. This is not a one dealer problem, this is a brand problem and the worst part - outside of a very few other makes, they are not much worse than most other brands. It is sad to see and by no means limited to the very small island of "Hifiworld", but we are here for the hifi aspect."

An absolutely brilliant series of observations which go further into the reality of the situation that we chose to leave behind. These sort of problems were once the domain of circuit board replacement designs but now has started to reach into the component level designs.

We have experienced, more and more, where the dealer is put in the crosshairs of customer dissatisfaction when we have no control over service and support at all. For years, unseen by our customers, I spent a lot of time researching for companies that provided excellent support as part of the purchase price of the product.

We bore a fair amount of expense in making sure our customers product fulfilled the promise of years of enjoyment. But when audio companies started to be purchased by investor groups, they did not see the relationship between product support and brand value. Instead, the accountants only focused upon the manufacturing side of things and quickly got caught up in chasing production where more and more distribution was required to keep up with the production capabilities.

As this occurred with less care about how your product was sold, the service infrastructure was ignored. Even the American company McIntosh had to appoint independent service companies, sometimes one man operations, to take on the factory service overload, sometimes stretching out as far as a year. Even then, parts availability began to show further weakness in support.

And who took the verbal abuse from customers?

The very dealers who sold the customer the product. Management was sheltered from this grief which takes its toll on the humans of the selling dealer. This ultimately puts the dealer in the difficult position of having to choose between continued brand support with sales, which they had built up over many years or walking. We walked. This is not the first company we have had to leave but I hope it will be one of the last.

Only time will tell. But for the consumer, brand loyalty will likely go out the window the same way believing in a sports team has gone with its stars moving from team to team with the biggest check.

-Lou