New Audio Setup books!

[sleepysurf]

Despite the recent predictions of the demise of high end audio, there are TWO new books out addressing audio/speaker/room setups, both written by noted experts.

The first is from Floyd Toole, entitled Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms (Paperback).



It's available at Amazon...
[URL="http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Acoustics-Psychoacoustics-Loudspeakers/dp/0240520092/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=I12DOX9OY4X9TH&colid=1GDDQNVYRFL0A"]http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Acoustics-Psychoacoustics-Loudspeakers/dp/0240520092/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=I12DOX9OY4X9TH&colid=1GDDQNVYRFL0A

The second is from author Jim Smith, entitled Get Better Sound. I never heard of Jim Smith, but the following excerpt (reposted from 6moons.com) describes his background.

October 08 - Virtual audio consultant - Quarter Note Press releases Get Better Sound, the reference set-up manual that guarantees better sound from any home audio system. Eight years after introducing his 31 Secrets to Better Sound—received by over 15,000 audiophiles around the world—Jim Smith has written a reference manual for setting up home audio systems. When he wrote 31 Secrets, Jim's company—Avantgarde-USA—was the North American importer for Avantgarde Acoustic Hornspeakers.

During the period from January 2000 CES through January 2004 CES, Jim's set-ups at shows garnered over seven 'Best Sound of Show' audio press comments for Avantgarde-USA, with many more similar mentions in smaller publications and message boards. The voicing techniques (and more) that Jim employed to win those 'Best Sound of Show' awards are now available to audiophiles in Get Better Sound.

Jim Smith explains: "An unexpected discovery became the basic motivation for this set-up manual. The thing that became the driving force for me arose from the incredible number of systems that I heard in audiophiles' homes in the past eight years. Not just with Avantgardes, but with a host of other high-end components.

In all of those visits to audiophiles—to my great surprise—I never encountered one system that was performing anywhere near its potential. In fact, very few were performing at even half of the performance of which they were capable!

And yet, the common denominator among their owners was the question, "What about upgrading to the XYZ component?" It was clear that they thought that buying another amp, CD player, etc. was the path to audio nirvana.

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]But their priorities were misplaced. There was no need to spend another dime on components until they had gotten their system optimized to be able to 'play the room.'

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Buying a new component without getting from it what you should be getting is about the same as throwing money out of the window. As a lifelong audiophile, I'm in favor of upgrading components, but believe in doing it from a foundation of performance. So this manual is part of my mission to change all that - for audiophiles everywhere!" [/FONT]

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[C.A.P]

might be worth a look ! I have read Floyd Toole's stuff before!

 

[ScottGardner]

You can read some of Floyd Toole's stuff here:

http://www.harman.com/about_harman/technology_leadership.aspx

 

[JonFo]

Alan, thanks for the Heads-up on the Toole book. !

Ordered mine, and highly recommend others who are serious about in-room audio performance get it as well.

It's reviewed favorably Sigfried Linkwitz and Paul Scarpelli (Triad speakers).

Here a quote from Paul's review that is spot on:

He debunks myths, and has the ability to cut through the crap to what really matters. He and I have both ranted for years on the importance of the room in presenting accurate sound reproduction, and that overlooked concept will be more strongly promoted with the introduction of this book.

As good as the book appears at first glance, it stands out even more due to the paucity of printed material on the subject of speakers and rooms. The few books available are either incomplete, antiquated, or in the case of Everest, geared more toward pro sound.

The one negative on the book is that all research and recommendations are derived from box speakers. So us dipole-Line-array-ESL users will need to 'adapt' some of the recommendations based on our own research and experience.

I'll post a lengthy review once I've read the book, and then I'll start a thread on the variations we might want to overlay on the books recommendations based on our unique needs.

 

[JohnA]

Nice one, just preordered the Toole book:rocker:

Edit:
Also ordered Jim Smith's book.

He's the same guy who had circulated the "31 secrets"

 

[JohnA]

OK, having now read carefully both books, I can throw in an opinion.

I find them both to be OK, but nothing 'out-of-this-world'
Hard to recommend either of them, but worth a read if they happen to come across your way.

'Get better sound' is perhaps more opiononated, an expansion of the '31 secrets' free pdf.
Frankly, I think not a lot of extavangant insight has been added compared to the pdf. I disagree with a couple of the ideas put forward as well, but overall I think any self-respecting audiophile should know everything that is in there anyway.

'Sound reproduction' looks very impressive and promising as one skims through the pages, with the nice graphs begging for immediate study.
Sadly (in my opinion) the accompanying text is not up to the task, being repetitive, subjective and a bit narrowly-scoped.
It could do with some extra proof-reading too.

This is not to say that the books are duds, because they are not.
They are passable - maybe my standards are a bit high, I can't help it.

Probably the more you know on a subject, the less new stuff you can realistically expect to find in a book, so the expectations should be lower.
I've tried to be frank here, if you want nice words and unwarranted enthusiasm log on to a audiophiliac forum:rocker:

Next time I will try curb my enthusiasm, so to speak