Sound Ecosystem: Why Engineers Are Continuously Improving Existing Audio Models

In the 36th edition of the Sound podcast, we again talk with Yuri Fomin, a speaker design engineer whose design underlies Arslab acoustics. This time we are discussing the modernization of acoustic systems: why the models that have already been created are improving, and how we are creating our “sound ecosystem”.

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Dmitry: Yuri Stanislavovich, in previous issues we have already touched upon the theme of “the vital ecosystem”. We talked about how a person develops his skills, knowledge, environment in which he lives. At the same time, in relation to acoustics, he develops his tastes, preferences, opens up new brands and models.

Today I want to develop this topic and "go" in the direction of engineering. In previous releases, Artem Faermark said that the engineer’s job, among other things, was to modernize models of acoustics already released. Why do we need this work? What is it? What are its advantages, including for listeners?

Yuri: Now we can postpone the issue of the ecosystem, say, a step. And with regard to modernization, we can say the following: all the initial work [on the new acoustics model] are related to the experience of the engineering group, views, design traditions, transferring [to the current model] some successful options that were in previous works.

But in the period of the appearance of the product as a whole and feedback on it, we begin to observe what it is like or dislike [the user]. This is rare, but this must be observed. Why, for example, the choice of this or that system “goes aside”, that is, the listener gives preference to a competitor?

Dmitry: If we draw an analogy with cars, as we like to do: it’s not necessary to say that the engineer forgot to fasten the wheel, and therefore he has to correct something.

Yuri: I agree here. I have been involved in car acoustics for several years. To begin with, we must understand that there is an organization of the environment in the car, but it is connected with the shortcomings of the cars themselves: roughly speaking, a certain generation of automobiles was not sufficiently qualified and decorated acoustically.

Dmitry: I, rather, speak about a general analogy, when an engineer can recall some series of cars, because there was a gross mistake, a defect.

Yuri: This is rare. And modernization is directly monitoring the preferences of those people who are generally engaged in acoustic systems in the car. I led to what ...

The fact is that recently the same cars are equipped with high-class equipment. It does not require any modernization. I see it in my car. As a specialist, I have enough of what the company has supplied.

However, people have some kind of their own vision of this environment. Not enough, let's say, dynamics. Dynamics requires power. Capacities are attached to this car in the form of amplifiers, more powerful loudspeakers. The dynamics appear, and the person gets the adrenaline he was looking for. This is a certain narrow circle of people, but this does not mean that they do not need to pay attention.

The whole industry is working on it. Of course, there are good solutions. We began to buy more cars, we want them to have advantageous advantages over the cars of our friends, and not just solve the problem of delivery from point A to point B. For some, the car became home. If you touch on purely social things, then buying a car, of course, is easier than an apartment. And many began to move the apartment to the salon car. Most likely, that dog is buried here, which now “pushes” people to carry the ecosystem of sound inside the car.

Dmitry: If you look 10-15 years ago, we will see just a cosmic difference.

Yuri: Yes, just heaven and earth.



Floor speakers Arslab Classic 2

Dmitry: If you continue this thought and transfer it to the world of housing, look again at the home ecosystem: how can a person develop it with the help of acoustics?

Yuri: We must start with human physiology. A person receives information, he lives in it. 90% of the information a person receives visually. Nevertheless, those 10% of information that a person receives in the form of sound is extremely important: this information must be adequately perceived. To break these 2 streams, sound and video, on the one hand, it is possible (from the point of view of physiology, different physiological centers are responsible for them), but from the point of view of information, its values, they are inseparable.

Sound is often transmitted to those images that are not “drawn” on the screen or in life. For example, the sound of an arrow or a flying bullet. Emotionally it is very important. Sometimes it conveys the most important thing: the horror of what is happening, or, conversely, the lyrics. Without soundtracks, movies mean nothing. This is like a parsed constructor. The specialist will be able to guess, but the user will not.

This, of course, should be paid attention, and now attention is being paid to it. If we turn to the ecosystem, we are now on the verge of a revolution. What kind of? Since we have electronic systems have risen to a great height, and everything can be “tied up” on portable gadgets, the younger generation, which is growing and growing up, can no longer imagine life without this environment. Accordingly, almost everything adapts.

But why now there is a niche for classical acoustics, classical solutions? Roughly speaking, the question is in the transmission of energy. To put it simply, until we can tear ourselves away from the outlet. As soon as we tear away from the socket in 220V, then, of course, there will be a boom. Why did I call the outlet?

This is the only reliable and very energy-intensive way to "pump" energy into the playback system. Without this energy, it is impossible to transmit the dynamics, adjust the sound to the desired quality indicators. As soon as the energy is transmitted through the air, I find it difficult to say how revolutionary this will be a step forward.

Dmitry: We 'll have to wake up and be ready for a new life.

Yuri: Yes, someone will understand that he is already out of work. This does not mean that I do not pay attention to what is happening in the production of loudspeakers, they still have a sufficiently long-term resource. I still do not observe new revolutionary models that would change the traditional understanding in terms of the method of reproducing electric energy into sound.

Dmitry: Still, now the main consumer demands very conservative decisions and the demands for these decisions are very high.

Yuri: This is a debatable question. Conservatism in my understanding and in understanding a person who is 20 years old is not always identical. I will give an example. When my children were born, they could not choose anything, they could only listen to what I was listening to. Somehow it affected them.

When they turned 16, I heard another music. When I invited them to listen to Michael Jackson, they did not even know who he was at all. Traditions, what we pass: knowledge, taste, the habitat in which we are ...

Dmitry: ... it is not easy, "the way it was," but what we want to convey is the best.

Yuri: Absolutely, the best, the right. If we believe that this is the best, we surround them with our loved ones. We try to make this environment correspond to our inner world, and, accordingly, with the desire of loved ones to perceive it, our system is created. Now, of course, the ecosystem is unthinkable without modern devices. My wife is 60 years old, she has three smartphones, three laptops - all three. For all, she is an advanced grandmother. But this does not mean that she does it against her will. She is interested.

Dmitry: Similarly, young people may well listen ...

Yuri: And young people simply cannot imagine themselves without it ...

Dmitry: Not just she doesn’t imagine herself, at some moment she can discover a new world for herself if she looks a little away from the latest gadgets, from fashionable portable speakers, and will pay attention to classical, more conservative acoustics. She will just find another sound.



Pictured : Audio-Technica ATH-M50x Headphone Cover

Yuri: Absolutely. My grandson is 15 years old, he can already be engaged in some options for setting up equipment, I mean computer, etc., but he is mistaken in the multiplication table. It is very important for the old people to push the youth not to forget such things.

It is important that our, roughly speaking, modernity does not outstrip the knowledge that was before it, or, at least, does not exclude them and does not forget. If young people will not forget traditions, education, history, mathematics, physics, then we will be the most educated nation.

Dmitry: The Foundation.

Yuri: If the parents manage to preserve this foundation, then we will assume that there are traditions.

Dmitry: Speaking of the foundation: you talked a lot about psychoacoustics.

Yuri: I will not hide, I used to perceive psychoacoustics, at least, if not as a “corrupt girl of imperialism”, then not serious. But when we plunged into this area in terms of psychology, physiology and medicine, spent a couple of years on this, I realized that this is a very important area.

Few authors give a collective image of psychoacoustics. A lot of medicine, a lot of psychology, a lot of physiology. Selected topics are well covered. But if, for example, to take the psychoacoustics of Aldoshina - she is still technocratically suited to this and does not reveal some of the questions. She doesn’t disclose, not because she doesn’t understand, she doesn’t know them, she’s just an elderly person, she can’t track down the latest works in the world.

Dmitry: On the other hand, the audience of such specialists is so small that they sometimes work very fragmented.

Yuri: Yes, I agree. And, as a rule, all in their shops. It is a common understanding of what we hear, in fact, no one gave. There is such a statement that acoustics should not distort sound at all. And it is correct. Well, who will argue with that?

Dmitry: No one.

Yuri: But the fact is that for some reason everyone does not pay attention, in fact, acoustics are the same instrument. Imagine, from the point of view of technical understanding, we did everything so that acoustics do not have nonlinear distortions.

But the most interesting thing is that the loudspeaker is a generator of own noise. Transmitting musical chords, it itself generates some harmonics inherent only in this loudspeaker. That is, it is impossible a priori to get rid of nonlinear distortions.

Dmitry: Therefore, we must lead this process.

Yuri: Of course. Attempting in some way to at least take this process into account is the basis of the modernization work that Artyom Sergeevich [Fairmark] talked about. Now we take into account which harmonics generate these or other loudspeakers, and how these harmonics are summed up in our systems.

For this we have to make some new adjustments, to give new tasks to our manufacturers. Yes, they [components] may not be perfect, but they distort beautifully. The meaning is clear? The reason for using paper diffusers immediately becomes clear.

Dmitry: It seems to me a very good analogy here with painting.

Yuri: Of course. I think all the time how to evaluate something in isolation from art as a whole or in general from the environment.

Dmitry: Let's go back to the ecosystem ...

Yuri: To the ecosystem, yes. How can this be used in isolation? Suppose people 70 years old listened to the "paper". How to convince them now that the "paper" is imperfect?

Dmitry: None.

Yuri: And is it necessary to do this?

Dmitry: On the one hand, it can be shown that there is more.

Yuri: We have to give people a choice. But as engineers, if we begin to understand how we can achieve certain new emotional effects, we must use it. Then you can get, if not a new product, then a product with some new qualities. A person sees more, hears more. More, say, nice. These are common phrases. If we talk in technical terms, you can drown in them, and it will be incomprehensible to a person.

Dmitry: Just what you are talking about allows a person to cling to these new characteristics, not qualities, let's say.

Yuri: Of course.

Dmitry: And to develop, starting from them.

Yuri: Yes. We go from the fact that the equipment should really strive for the ideal. But if it does not like it, no one will buy it.

Dmitry: You can paint the wall in a smooth black color, try to do it without divorce.

Yuri: I don’t know whether I told you or not, but I still can’t understand Malevich’s motivation when he drew Black Square ’. That is motivation. Not in terms of how technically he did it as a master. I have several versions: either he just “stuck out” over everyone, or he is so deep that I haven’t yet understood. However, this does not leave everyone indifferent. Why did I give this example? What is the main thing in this work?

Dmitry: Do not be indifferent.

Yuri: Yes. The more we understand in the formation of the sound field, timbre colors ... I now speak with dry phrases, such that everyone uses, but somehow it is groundless. And I apply them from the point of view of how it is “sewn” to the equipment that we are developing. We want to like it. Of course, this can not be done immediately. Why? Because it is not known what they like.

Dmitry: For this, it is just necessary to release the first models and tackle their modernization.

Yuri: Release the first models, listen, gather information, analyze it and offer some new views, which we do in the form of modernization of our systems. And from the point of view of the microns that we add to our components, they form that very difference, oddly enough. Here, 5 grams, there are 5 grams, and, you see, everything already sounds different. I do not say whether it sounds better or worse, it’s not for us to judge. Judge will be the people who choose the audio system or not choose.

Dmitry: How is the work built in the conservative segment of acoustics? The work of an engineer and the work of a company manager, who represents, on the one hand, a brand, on the other hand, he also needs to somehow influence his characteristics, his quality, and contribute. How interconnected is this work from the point of view of the manager, engineers, and development department?

Yuri: There are two leaders here. One executive is on the market side.

Dmitry: Essentially a listener ...

Yuri: In fact, the customer of what he wants. He is on the buyer's side. The second manager can analyze the possible intellectual resources that are, and direct the activities of specific engineers, because they are working in the right direction so that it can be connected somewhere. Do you understand what this is about?

Dmitry: Of course.



Yuri Fomin and the bookshelf speakers Arslab Old School Superb 90 / Photo by Stereo & Video magazine

Yuri: For example, any work can be compared with the construction of a house. It starts with the foundation. High-class specialists work, but only the manager knows what type of flag he will have on the building.

Dmitry: And what kind of foundation is needed?

Yuri: And how many resources are needed, of what class. I try to make such analogies, but in reality the leader is an architect of sound. What is the tradition in this architecture? This is a classical education: theory and practice, the presence of successful or unsuccessful works.

Dmitry: That is, this is essentially the same modernization, but only for yourself.

Yuri: Absolutely. We start the modernization with ourselves. And when we modernize, respectively, there is an improvement in what we do. There are new materials, new tools.

Latest issues of the Sound podcast:

• [ read ] [ listen ] Old new vinyl: Its features and properties;
• [ read ] [ listen ] "Conservative sound": Talk Arslab and Penaudio;
• [ read ] [ listen ] "We look at home": We discuss technologies and formats.