Know of a "Dirt Cheap" tweak?

lexphin,

Copper is good. There are also silver cones but they are not easy to find. Franck Tchang's placement is perfect in my system. I would be interested in knowing your impressions. SR uses crystals under the screen. Audio-Magic copied this in their bells, but with no screen.

You can home in on the very best locations for almost any type of acoustic resonators like the tiny bowls or even tube traps using a SPL meter and a test time of say 315 Hz off one of those test CDS. This will allow very accurate placement of the resonantors where there are peak sound pressure levels that are say, 6 dB above the average sound pressure in the room. For example, in the upper room corners and first reflection points. You would be shocked at just how many of these exceedingly high SPL peaks there can be in a room. Oh, and don’t forget other rooms of the house.

lexphin,

I forgot to mention to place one on the ceiling -- at the crossing of the diagonals from one corner to the other, in the exact middle of the ceiling -- as per SR. Zilplex also uses the same location.

geoffkait,

Franck Tchang has saved us a lot of trouble by homing in for us -- identifying the best locations for his Acoustic Resonators. This works well for my own cone-style resonators a la HFT. SR, Zilplex and Audio-Magic following with their own location maps for their resonators, bowls and bells. Of course, we can add or subtract as needed using a meter and/or trial and error.

One mans dirt cheap tweak is a others man arm and leg. Keeping all cable connections clean is great. Getting speaker cables off the floor is one more that i feel helps. Replaceing wall out lets with audio grade plugs is al so great, but not really cheap depending on which one you use. I have found the biggest bang for the buck High Fidelity MC O5s easy to use. May be not dirt cheap but a tweak that delivers a sonic improvement.
enjoy Pete

Sabai, Franck’s guide to locations for resonators is just that - a guide. Even he says that. Every room is different. If your location is off by 6 or 12" that can make all the difference in the world, as you missed the peak. The real locations vary from room to room, system to system, speaker to speaker. Speakers radiate different patterns so there cannot be one size fits all. And that’s why you’re only guessing if you don’t use a SPL meter. And I'm not even getting into the RFI angle.