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Continue reading →: The Sweetness – Resolution AxisAfter all of the big decisions are made in the curating of an audio system, the biggest of which is the choice of speakers, one eventually gets to the tuning phase. The ultimate capability of the system has been determined by big, heavy stuff, but does the thing sound as…
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Continue reading →: Live Room or Dead Room?A listening room can be described as “live” or “dead”, depending on how reflective the walls, floor and ceiling are to sound waves. A live room is echoey, a dead room is non-reverberant. Examples of a live room are a wood paneled church building or an empty warehouse. The best…
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Continue reading →: Noise? What Noise?Much ado is made of the concept of noise, among both the engineering community and the listenership, but what exactly is meant by the word noise? We can understand the noise of a washing machine or an air conditioner when we are trying to listen to a delicate passage of…
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Continue reading →: The Importance of MonauralForgiveness is a great social asset, and it takes a valuable place amongst audiophiles as well. Developing a great audio playback system is, for most of us, a slow and methodical process of identifying and acquiring very specialized and expensive equipment. Equally painstaking is the installation and configuration of the…
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Continue reading →: Avoiding Common Speaker Placement ErrorsWhen setting up an audio system, or perhaps installing a new speaker system, anticipation of the pleasing results to come sometimes precludes proper setup diligence. When this happens it is perhaps traceable to unfamiliarity with what is needed, and it can persist years after the errors are made, covertly robbing…
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Continue reading →: The Easy Life of a PreamplifierIf we consider that the audio signal in a playback system begins at one or more sources and proceeds, eventually, to the speakers, then we find the preamplifier in a special position. It is the first component that is common to all of the sources. Dividing the system into front-end…
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Continue reading →: Speaker Listening ConsiderationsShopping for a speaker system is not unlike shopping for any other audio component, except that it is arguably even more important to listen to it first and on as many occasions as possible. The first and most compelling reason is the size and weight of speakers. The manufacturer may…
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Continue reading →: If You Can Hear The Speakers, Leave With The PeekersIn the old days of the mid-twentieth century, it was considered a badge of virtue for any audio system to render each of the speakers (drivers) audible. People would remark with awe and wonder that the bass could be heard emerging from the woofers, the mids from the midranges, and…
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Continue reading →: Self-Powered Speakers – Blessing or Curse?They are the newest rage in high-end audio, with several manufacturers joining the party. There are three broad categories into which the offerings fall: The partially self-powered speaker, the fully self-powered speaker, and the all-in-one speaker. Each of these share some similar advantages and disadvantages, and we will look briefly…
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Continue reading →: Good…But No GoosebumpsIn the endless attempt to understand audio playback from the listener’s perspective, a considerable vocabulary has developed to describe each facet of the sound. Copious use of the audio lexicon can be seen at the end of equipment reviews, including such metrics as sound stage, dimensionality, timber, pace, dynamics, attack,…
Mike Vice
Bella Sound
On a lifelong pursuit of audio excellence.
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Mike Vice