I always send an extensive System Profile Form to any potential client. It’s pretty detailed and goes way beyond just listing the core components. It looks at the AC and grounding arrangements, supports, accessories and layout. It lists the steps they’ve taken to get to where they are now and details the various elements in the system, the tools I get to use. I normally ask for detailed photos of the system, its situation and the room.I really don’t get ‘mushy’ about the products in a client’s system. To me they are just tools, so I’m not like looking at the list and saying, “Ohhh, I get to work with X, this is going to be such fun!” Each product and each room or system offers its own challenges and opportunities. But the first question I have to ask myself is how well-crafted that system is right now. Every system and the performance of every system, is a lot more than just the sum of the components. How those components are connected, fed and supported, the infrastructure around them, is critical to the final result and realising their potential. I have to look really closely at how good that infrastructure is and, as a result, how much of their potential performance are those ‘tools’ able to deliver?
RG. Are there products that you think are obstructive to your process: products that you are not comfortable working with?
ST. That’s a good question. In practice, the answer is, very few. What constantly surprises me is the results I’m able to get from products that I expect to be a nightmare.
RG. Nightmare in performance terms or a nightmare to work with?
ST. Both. So, for example, one of the things I look for and is key, is how much noise there is in the system. By ‘noise’ I’m not just referring to measured noise, such as noise floor, but any sound that isn’t when or where or how it should be. Any part of the signal that doesn’t fit properly into the musical picture. I think in terms of active noise and passive noise. There are noise artefacts that only occur once a signal is passing through the system. That might be a masking problem or a timing problem. In that case, it only really becomes apparent when you eliminate it. But if it isn’t a proper part of the musical whole – that makes it noise. My process is about eliminating that noise, whether it’s caused by mechanical feedback, poor grounding or poor organisation of the system’s output – a disorganised musical presentation.
There’s at least one genre of product which it’s difficult for me to work with. Pretty much everything I do with speakers depends on attitude and angular adjustment. Not just placement and toe-in but the precise angle of the speaker relative to boundaries and each other – the speaker’s position in space. That means using the spikes or feet to adjust rake angle, azimuth and height off of the floor. So, speakers that don’t offer those adjustments: speakers that just stand on four stubby legs – I’m thinking here of those big, bluff, often single driver cabinets – those products certainly limit what I can contribute to the system’s performance. It doesn’t make them bad products. They just need a different approach, to the one I offer.
