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View Full Version : Helius Designs: in conversation with Howard Popeck – part two



Neil McCauley
02-02-2016, 11:31
Geoffrey ….. When it comes to listening to what you've designed, do you worry that you can find yourself liking something which is actually wrong? How do you keep yourself on track?


In the context of tonearms it’s difficult to imagine what I could do to make it sound ‘wrong’. This part of the system is passive – although it doesn’t generate an audio signal in its own right; the idea is to prevent it from contributing something of its own personality and mask the music. As you lift the veils of colouration, it’s difficult to imagine how the sound could be described as ‘wrong’.

Turntables are slightly different in that speeding them up a semitone makes the music sound snappier, more ‘dynamic’; slowing them down can make them sound ‘richer’. So, yes, it is conceivable that some disks might sound better. Though briefly amusing, if you know it’s wrong, you don’t enjoy it for long and anyway, other disks will sound awful.

Okay, so what about speakers?


Ah, well ..... these are a completely different animal - especially 3-way systems were you have two drivers trying to reproduce the same piece of music simultaneously. This requires the engineer to make decisions on tonal qualities that greatly affect what the audiophile hears.

For instance …..?


For instance, if you believe that overlap should be minimal, then traditionally, you might opt for a Butterworth filter – but this leads to greater phase incoherence than ( say ) the Bessel network which permits more musical overlap but .....

Please continue @ http://www.hifianswers.com/2016/02/helius-designs-in-conversation-with-howard-popeck-part-two/

Part one of this series @ http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?42941-Helius-Designs-in-conversation-with-Howard-Popeck-%96-part-one

Do you have a question or questions you’d like us to put to a maker?

The willingness of makers to correspond directly with enthusiasts is a variable. That said, they are usually – but not always – more prepared to talk to the press. If you have questions for any audiophile maker – anywhere – then I'll ask Howard to convey these to them in the hope of getting a positive response to be published here. So if you’d like us to try then just post here on this thread and we’ll do our best.

Thanks from Neil (editor in chief) and the folks at AN&MR