Joe and Dr. Wong visited me in July. After listening to my system, they gave me a lot of valuable suggestions and advice. I was very grateful as my system was cheap and not worthy of mentioning and yet they still squeezed out valuable time from their busy schedule to visit me. Later, Dr. Wong wrote an article about this visit, he praised my creative ways of making use of resonance in improving my system, however, he took care not to criticize the many side effects of playing with resonance. I felt that I was indebted to both Joe and Dr. Wong for their kindness and encouragement, thus I have written this article as a continuation of Dr. Wong’s article and to share my recent discoveries with fellow audiophiles.

During their visit in July, after listening to some CDs, Joe commented that the bass and the mid-range were okay but the highs have not enough extension, as a result, the tonality was not crystal clear and truly transparent. After they left, I played Carol Kidd’s “When I Dream” repeatedly in order to understand what Joe meant. I realized it was true that Carol sounded like she has caught a flu, she sounded muffle, even the part where her saliva exploded in her mouth was not clear enough (don’t ask me whether I am listening to music or listening to the sound of saliva). In order to solve this problem, I carried out some experiments at 1am in the morning. As I was living near MRT tracks, I have to wait till MRT stopped their service at 1am before I can carry out any serious tuning of my system.

I did the following:

picture 1

1)	On the hi-fi rack between the speakers, I placed 50 pieces of glass marbles
2)	One slice of ¾ inch thick glass on top of each speaker
3)	Moved the crystal ball to the front edge of each speaker top from its original position in the middle of the speaker top
4)	Remove the protective copper mess from the speaker tweeter, exposing the tweeter (see picture 1)

After I have done all these, I could hear that the soundstage has extended wider, there were better layering, spaciousness and analytical power has also improved. However, the tonality was still not transparent and clear enough, worse still, the bass was affected and sounded thin.

I don’t know how to proceed further except staring at the two speakers motionlessly. After a while, I noticed that there was this little black ceramic knob sticking to the bottom of the round Enacom which was plug into the back of the speaker together with the speaker cable. This ceramic knob was used in communication equipment to eradicate signal disturbance and reduce radiation. Two years ago, I put this on to make my system quieter and it has proved to be so effective that I bought more than 10 pieces at one go, I was afraid that I might not be able to find these gadgets later on. How can I forget about this? I quickly took out two pieces and stuck one on each tweeter. (See picture 2)

I settled down to listen to Carol Kidd again. Wah! Carol’s flu was getting better but still not fully recovered yet. I was disappointed and frustrated at the same time. “Okay, once and for all, I want to get it done”, I murmured to myself as I removed the tweeter from the speaker. If I spoil the speaker then I have an excuse to buy myself a new pair. I stuck two black knobs at the back of each tweeter. (See picture 3)

picture 2 picture 2

Reciting my Buddhist chants asking for blessing, I re-assembled the tweeter. Thank God! The guitar introduction flew down like heavenly sound, Carol Kidd has recovered fully and her voice was spotlessly clean, sweet and crystal clear. The tonality was delicate and transparent, like a clear blue sky with no clouds.

To further confirm the effects, I played “Summer Knows” by Silvia Droste. Silvia was standing right in front, seducing me with her sexy and magnetic voice. I was so excited that I could have rush forward to grab her except that now she seems to be much further away than before the tweaking. This was because the soundstage has extended further back. The guitar introduction from 2:52 seconds onwards was full of wooden fragrance, I could hear and see the guitarist’s fingers gliding on the strings, plucking, pressing and strumming etc.

Tracy Wong’s “Bury Heart” touched me in another way. The sorrow and helplessness contained in the initial hum and her saliva (saliva again?) really broke my heart. How can any man hurt the lady so badly? From 0:31 to 0:33, Tracy’s saliva exploded in her mouth twice, once more than Carol. Fantastic!

The problem with the highs has been solved finally, now I have to check the performance of the mid-range and the bass to see whether there were any side effects. With the fifth track “Night Fight” from the soundtrack of “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon”, each musical instrument, big drums, small drums were clearly defined with pinpoint imaging and excellent focus. Every drumbeat was deep and solid, very dynamic indeed. I closed my eyes and could see Michelle Yeow and Zhang Zi Yi chasing each other on the roof, coming in and going out from the wall at the back of the speakers.

Listening to Yo Yo Ma performing “Farewell” has never been more enjoyable before. The bass sunk really deep to the bottom of the valley. Cello, erhu and drum each has their own space and yet in total harmony.

But when I changed to Jennifer Warnes “Way Down Deep”, the side effects surfaced. The bass seemed to be too low (really way way down deep in this case) and too tight, very suffocating and seemed to have standing waves!? I never experienced standing waves in my system before.

How can this be? It is not logical at all. Usually when I tuned my system’s high frequency, the bass would be affected and lifted up, and become shallower. This was the first time the bass was not lifted but sunk lower instead. It looked like I have to let my system have more breathing space.

To release the tight bass, first of all, I tried to add on or remove various tweaks from the sub-woofer’s top. However, it did not solve the problem. As illustrated in picture 4, my sub-woofer was supported by three spikes in a plate of oil. I adjusted the distance between the oil and the sub-woofer to either tighten or loosen the bass. This is a very effective but laborious way, as I have to add or remove the oil drop by drop. Thus, once I have reached the stage where the output of the sub-woofer can integrate with that of the main speaker seamlessly, I would not touch them anymore. Now, it seemed that I have no choice but to adjust that plate of oil.

picture 4

I removed 6 spoonfuls of oil to release the tightness of the bass. Then I slowly add back some oil while listening to “Way Down Deep”. By trying and repeating till I got the tonality I desired. Finally, I stuck a piece of the black ceramic knob at the plug of the speaker cable for the sub-woofer. Finito!

It was dawn already and I was dead tired! After listening to a few discs, I found that there was a lot of saliva sound when listening to vocals; however, the musicality has not been reduced. The tonal balance was right, as a whole, the system sounded balanced. I was quite satisfied with the results of this experiment, after all, this is a very cheap set-up, what more could I ask for.

To make this article more readable, I have exaggerated some points. It may seem to be very simple but if I can achieve the effects as described as easily as said with a few moves, I can claim to be God. However, playing around with resonance can be fun and economical. You can use any material and it is all up to you to be creative. It doesn’t matter if you own an expensive or a cheap system, if you never try to make use of resonance to get the full potential out of your system, to enter another dimension of hi-fi, you do not know what you have missed!

Translator’s note: This is a translation of the original article written in Chinese by Mr. Pen. The original article was better written and readers with knowledge of Chinese are urged to read the original. I apologized to Mr. Pen for my poor translation.