"Science with Soul".... Is the emotional "X factor" in music all about time?

When we listen to beautiful music & vocals performed live in front of us we feel a powerful emotional impact, a direct connection exists between the sound and our emotional & physiological state…. Our heart rate, blood pressure, brain activity and hormone levels are all measurably effected.

This effect is greatly diminished or absent completely when the same music is recorded and replayed at similar volume levels over conventional loudspeakers…. Why?

This question has been debated for years with many different subjective opinions and plenty of objective theories and solutions offered by audio equipment manufacturers…. To date all attempts to solve the problem have failed.

"Science with Soul"

Custom Install Audio’s Rapid Energy Decay (RED) loudspeaker technology is the solution!

Our technology is based on the latest understanding of how our ear / brain or Human Auditory System (HAS) locates and identifies sounds (see John Watkinson document) and 3D brain imaging techniques which have revealed the vital importance of time within the world of sound.

Using this knowledge combined with cutting edge material science and novel design techniques we have developed a new breed of loudspeaker, one which sounds so lifelike it triggers our “fight or flight response”, or our emotions…. Depending on the content!

Conventional loudspeakers suffer from severe “cone ringing” or time domain distortions (see “Pistonic Vs RED” document) which are most unnatural and mask the vital timing clues that our HAS uses to locate and identify sounds.

Loudspeakers with gross errors in the time domain are instantly detected by our ears, they cause stress or “listener fatigue” which blocks HAS from locating and identifying sounds accurately.

This not only destroys spatial information but crucially it also destroys the emotional impact of music.

Once you free the HAS from the stress of trying to “listen through” the 1,000’s of ghost echoes (cone ringing) our ear / brain can relax and naturally lock onto the transients and timing information of the music…. This is the key to unlocking the emotional impact.

Sounds are formed by an initial transient or increase in air pressure (compression) followed by decay to below ambient (rarefaction), then an increase back to ambient air pressure.

That’s all sound is, just fleeting changes in air pressure that our ear / brain detects & analyses to locate and identify sound.

It’s the duration of the air pressure changes that is key to how our ear / brain decodes sounds…. Timing is everything!    

Going Ape

Our ears “decode” these compression & rarefactions or Air Pressure Events (APE) and convert the eardrum movement (Kinetic energy) into electrical signals which our brain interprets as sound. APE’s have clearly defined and measurable start and stop points, they are time critical.

The numbers tell the story…. Conventional loudspeakers distort in the time domain by “ringing”, this is when the cone bounces backward & forward on its suspension causing “ghost echoes” and these ghost echoes are the cause of listener fatigue. 

Cumulative Spectral Decay (CSD) graphs clearly display loudspeakers ringing time (which is why so few manufacturers publish them) with even the best conventional full range drivers ringing for over 10ms after a high SPL music transient.

Our RED driver’s CSD shows an astonishing sub 1ms settling time. See graph below.

Correlation with digital recording & DAC designers  

We believe the time domain is key to unlocking the emotional impact of recorded music....Many digital recording engineers, DAC & A to D designers are now focusing on the time domain (jitter / phase &noise shaping) and making huge performance advances....

In this 10 minute interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80iu7ifXsOo the legendary Chord FPGA DAC designer Robert Watts explains that enhancing the time resolution and noise shaper to a previously unimaginable accuracy of -350dB(!!) was required to accurately recreate the depth perception of the original recording.

-200dB in the entry level "Hugo" DAC proved insufficient, So for their flagship DAC DAC "DAVE" they went all out with a no expense spared design.... First -240dB, then -260dB then -280dB.... Finally -350dB was proven to be necessary to achieve maximum depth / time domain accuracy compared to the original analog master they used for reference.

This corresponds well with the sub 25 microseconds (25 one millionths of a second) accuracy of our ear / brain to locate and identify separate time domain events ie the compression and rarefactions in air pressure.

Conclusion

"First do no harm" .... Loudspeakers must add as little distortion / coloration as possible, for 100 years we have focused on the frequency response.... Perfection was a simple matter of "flat from 20Hz to 20KHz" thats the perfect loudspeaker...Job done!

Well we all know thats far from true!

CD was proudly announced 25 years ago as the "perfect audio format" based on its ability to constantly reproduce a 20 / 20 frequency response.... Today we all understand how flawed CD was / is and ultra low jitter clocks are mandatory in studio DAC's & A to D's. Now it's time for loudspeaker designers to see the light...

100 years of frequency response worship is over...Now "time will tell"...!!