Optimize Your Sound: August 2014

Thursday, 14 August 2014

Installations

Some of the work done by Optimize Your Sound

DIY Tips and Tricks

We don't charge you for everything. Here's some DIY Tips and Tricks!

Loudspeaker Upgrades

Optimize Your Sound can do custom equipment upgrades to make your system sound better.

Due to increasingly better measuring techniques and insight, new materials and applications, more refined products appear on the market. Optimize Your Sound continuously follows these developments and offers you the possibility to make use of them in your existing loudspeakers. An upgrade or modification can consist of the strategic and careful replacement of electrical components such as resistors, inductors or capacitors. But also alterations to the dampingplan and the mechanical properties of the loudspeaker cabinet can result in less colouration and better integration with the room acoustics. The end result is better definition, a more spacious image, more fine detail and a calmer presentation of the musical content. You also have the possibilty to fine-tune an existing loudspeaker to the rest of the hifi-system and to your own personal taste. So, if you're not completely satisfied with your current loudspeakers but you find it a pity to get rid of them or the purchase of a set of new loudspeakers is too costly, consider an upgrade.

Custom Work

Optimize Your Sound does custom builds to suit your needs

One of the major activities at Optimize Your Sound is that of designing and building extremely high quality, tailor made loudspeakers. With over 30 years of experience in loudspeaker design, acoustics and interior architecture, Optimize Your Sound is able to offer solutions for those who are looking for something unique, something tailor-made to your specifications and that can compete with the absolute best in high-end audio. We work closely together with experienced furniture craftsmen and suppliers of very high-grade components to realise an end product that meets the highest quality level in sound that is possible - exactly as you want it. Optimize Your Sound creates custom solutions for the discerning music lover.

High Quality Speaker Equipment Manufacturers

Optimize Your Sound recommends high end speaker manufacturers that invest in R&D and QC rather than marketing.

Eighteen Sound is a leading designer and manufacturer of high quality professional audio loudspeakers, with the most advanced development and manufacturing technologies in the world, and located in Reggio Emilia, Italy.

The Eighteen Sound R&D and Engineering Teams’ unparalleled experience in professional transducer design is manifest in the exceptional products created at the home offices and manufacturing center. Relocated in 2013, this facility is comprised of two cone transducer and one HF compression driver Production lines, with proprietarily designed robotic and state-of-the-art computer networked segments, interlaced with hands-on, constant inspection and detailing. The final end-of-the-line Quality Control is an exercise in ‘white glove’ inspection, in tandem with piece by piece automated testing and documentation, allowing for each unit to have an end of line, retrievable set of data. With individual bar code signatures on each driver, our database can provide you with ‘birth certificate’ datasets of your unit.

Our Track Record

Optimize Your Sound has a track record of successful competitive sound career.

Team Zapco

From: Trinidad/Tobago
Vehicle: 2002 Nissan Sunny
Function: Competition/Daily transportation
Head Unit, processors, etc.: Pioneer P99RS
Amplifiers: 2 x Zapco Z-150.6
Front Stage: Seas 27TAFNC/G Tweeters
Scanspeak Discovery 10F/4424G Midrange
Peerless HDS 830491 Midbass
Subwoofer: JL Audio 8W3v3-4
Recent results: 2013 MECA SQ, Master Class, 1st place
2013 MECA SQ, 4th highest SQ score worldwide

Contact Information

You can contact Optimize Your Sound via:

Email: jonbabulal@gmail.com
Mail: San Ford Street East, California, Trinidad & Tobago
Website: Optimize Your Sound

Our Experience

Relevant Experience

Optimize Your Sound has world wide recognition in excellent sound.

The owner of Optimize Your Sound maintains a global rank of car audio sound quality.

How we can make your system sound better. Part 5: Speaker Placement

Better Sound through Speaker Placement

Optimize Your Sound works on physical placement to optimize your listening position.

If you don't consider yourself an audiophile there's a good chance you placed your speakers based on where they'd look best—and stick out the least—rather than where they sounded ideal. Follow some basic speaker placement rules to optimize your setup.

Pursuing the perfect speaker setup is a nearly endless chase but you can easily tweak your current setup to improve your system's sound without endless test sessions and absurd cable upgrades. At Wired's how-to wiki they've put together a checklist for making sure your setup doesn't fail some basic speaker placement principles.

How we can make your system sound better. Part 4: Sound Proofing

Better Sound through Sound Proofing

Optimize Your Sound provides sound proofing products to keep your home or car quiet and noise free.

Soundproofing is any means of reducing the sound pressure with respect to a specified sound source and receptor. There are several basic approaches to reducing sound: increasing the distance between source and receiver, using noise barriers to reflect or absorb the energy of the sound waves, using damping structures such as sound baffles, or using active anti-noise sound generators.

How we can make your system sound better. Part 3: Processing

Better sound through processing

Optimize Your Sound provides processors to add to your system to control the sound.

Audio signal processing, sometimes referred to as audio processing, is the intentional alteration of auditory signals, or sound, often through an audio effect or effects unit. As audio signals may be electronically represented in either digital or analog format, signal processing may occur in either domain. Analog processors operate directly on the electrical signal, while digital processors operate mathematically on the digital representation of that signal.

How we can make your system sound better. Part 2: Tuning

Better sound through tuning

Optimize Your Sound provides tuning services to get the best out of your system.

Use either the RTA, SPL meter or any other medium you have available, to adjust the equalization and other processors (i.e bass/treble enhancement, etc). Grab your CDs and hit the road again. Take into consideration that your system will "sound" different sitting in a garage and on the road, due to road noise (this is were you wish you would have added damping material to your car and taken care of all the rattles). Have knowledgeable people listen to your system and give you their opinion.

How we can make your system sound better. Part 1: Installation

Better sound through installation

Optimize Your Sound provides installation services to make your speakers sound better.

A primary function of a speaker enclosure is to keep the sound coming from the back of a driver cone from going into the room. The sound from the back of a driver is 180 degrees out of phase with the sound from the front. For bass frequencies the sound from the back would cancel the sound from the front, destroying the low frequency performance. At higher frequencies where the wavelength is smaller than the driver diameter, the situation is more complex. The sound may add, cancel, or something in between. The sound from the back is also delayed in time by a fraction of a millisecond, which can interfere with the stereo imaging (see discussion on source location). Preventing all sound from the backs of all drivers from going into the room is by far the cleanest way to obviate these problems. I chose this approach. Other approaches, which can (and do) produce good-sounding loudspeakers, are discussed in the section on system design.

What characterises good sound reproduction?

Accurate Sound

Accurate Sound has the following characteristics:

Proper tonal accuracy
Soundstage
Imaging
Dynamics
Absence of Noise

What is good sound? Part 5: Absence of Noise

Absence of Noise

Are you hearing sounds you shouldn't? Hisses, Pops?

First let us lay some groundwork: audio systems can exhibit "hum " and they can exhibit "buzz ," which are two separate situations. To solve the problem, you need to determine whether your system is exhibiting hum or buzz.
Sixty(60)-hertz hum (fifty(50) hertz internationally) is a result of having a ground loop in the audio system. This is where there are two or more ground references in the system, and current is flowing from one ground point to another. Any piece audio equipment requires one ground reference.

What is good sound? Part 4: Dynamics

Dynamics

Does the music sound all at one level? We can make it sound lively.

In music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic (staccato, legato etc.) or functional (velocity). The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicate dynamics. Dynamics are relative and do not refer to specific volume levels.

What is good sound? Part 3: Imaging

Imaging

Can you pinpoint exactly where the instruments are? We can tune the systems to do that.

Stereo imaging is an audio jargon term used for the aspect of sound recording and reproduction concerning the perceived spatial locations of the sound source(s), both laterally and in depth. An image is considered to be good if the location of the performers can be clearly located; the image is considered to be poor if the location of the performers is difficult to locate. A well-made stereo recording, properly reproduced, can provide good imaging within the front quadrant; a well-made Ambisonic recording, properly reproduced, can offer good imaging all around the listener and even including height information.

What is good sound? Part 2: Soundstage

Soundstage

Can you "see" the layout of the instruments? Optimize Your Sound can make that happen.

Soundstage is the ability to visualize the placement of musical instruments and vocalists in a music recording. A good soundstage also allows the listener to perceive the size and space of the performance venue in which the recording was made.

What is good sound? Part 1: Tonal Accuracy

Tonal accuracy

Does it sound real? We can make it sound real.

Tonal accuracy describes how faithful a system is in general to the original recording. It can apply to instruments as well as vocals. The more accurate the system is while playing a good recording, the more you feel as if you are there, listening to a live performance as opposed to a recording.
Tonal accuracy can also apply to the ambiance in a recording, which refers to the space in which a recording is made. Most modern recordings are made in a sort of vacuum, with individual instruments recorded separately or, in the case of some rap music, the individual parts are sampled from other recordings. But many older recordings, some modern ones, and almost all live albums capture the environment in which the performance was recorded. In fact, certain recording studios and performance spaces are known and revered for their sound, which give a recording or performance a specific ambiance.

Are you getting the sound you've paid for?

So you've already bought some expensive sound equipment for your home or car.

It was installed, but does it seem like you've gotten what you've paid for?

These speakers cost $8500USD

These speakers cost $180USD

Is the sound offered from the first set sound $8300 better than the second?

Well, it should.

Optimize your sound is a business that helps you get the most out of the equipment you've already owned through tuning, proper installation and listening environment treatments.