The three needs to be 3BE

BE true, BE courageous, BE exceptional

The name of our venture is 3be audio. We are on the mission to present the most emotional experience of lively sound to music lovers. Aural Sculptures and other featured devices for audio playback should be designed to enfold the most thrilling sound ensemble during playback of ANY recording. The scope includes the visual appearance of the respective equipment that should deflect viewers/ listeners attention away from the usual technical connotation during listening. Here comes more about our 3 “To-BEs”.

BE true

Our first claim points to the principles in acoustic engineering of our products.

“The pure sound” is a well-known marketing promise for audio equipment. “Eliminate all factors in the signal path that have measurable impact to the integrity of the original signal!” is a well-known mantra among our peers in the high-end audio business. We at 3BE believe that neither the first nor the second claim reflect on the truth about audio transmission or the factual levers for a thrilling listening experience respectively. 

How do we know if a playback is pure? What is our reference? We at 3be audio share the basic principle that audio playback equipment should not do anything to the feed that it has to communicate to the audience. However, this is not enough, nay, from a holistic point of view, this aiming is obviously naive: Whatever the signal is that is inscribed in our data carrier for playback, it is extractet and altered in many ways until it meets our unique ears in a specific listening environment. And yet, we do not have considered our absolute incompetency to hear the same as the recording engineer once heard and taped. The promise of “pure sound” is simply impossible to deliver, since the major(!) levers for fulfillment are (usually) out of reach (i.e., perfect electromechanical transducers, perfect listening environment) or not available for reference (original recording criteria). Our aural senses are of highly individual characteristics, the transfer to impartial measures and quantities has never been exhaustive. In fact, related to the definition of euphony, nothing could be closer to the truth than the phrase “perception is reality”.

Maybe that is why we and many friends and fellows have tried and discussed so many fascinating high-end playback technologies in the past decades, while the fascination was mostly on the technical/ analytical impression rather than on memorable sound experiences. Yes, these “sounded great with jazz material”, and those charmed with “their mid section playing up to voices” – great realizations from an analytical point of view, but not affecting. 

3BE have decided to make up their mind back at square one: What is the pleasure of listening to music? How does it grab you emotionally? How do we deduce a universal quality aspiration for our venture? We have come to the following agreement (sorry for the unemotional wording):

“We want to become live attendees in the recording that we are listening to, regardless of music genre and technical recording quality.”

So we love walking virtually through the sound stage during listening, identifying the particular elements, the musicians and their moves within the sound painting, and enwrapping ourselves with the atmosphere captured in our favorite music. In short:

“Authentic music presentation.”

This phrase implies a high significance of fuzzy and subjective factors in the specific judgement, obviously. It means that all our engineering and measuring is subject to extensive cross-checks in listening and feedback sessions with changing audience as integral parts in our design process. 

We focus our engineering efforts on physical fundamentals, especially on the kinematics and kinetics of sound transmission, starting with the electromechanical signal conversion in the loudspeaker driver, ending with the usual listening room with its typical shortcomings. This is the field, where the mathematical methods for describing and solving design problems such as interaction of driver and enclosure are (still) subject to rude simplifications of physical reality, e.g., with regard to the application of multi-dimensional energy balance equations. This applies also to the aspect of the various testing methods that we know so well such as frequency response measurements. Consequently, controlling of applicable transmission models on the respective mathematical design level delivers approximations to the real physical question but not the practically sufficient solution. The knowing about these limitations results in cross-checking relevant design data by many, many practical tests and validations in our workshop. This is vital for any intermediate assessment before moving to the next step in our design process, and it often leads us to very different conclusions than just building “linear graphs”.

Changing, unbiased audience is also elemental during the closing phase of a design project. A lot of happy faces over all kinds of people – not necessarily audio experts – with their individual fancies is required before we can confide in the objective ability of our design object for what we call “authentic” playback. Time-consuming and seldom straightforward, but in the end, we get what we are striving for: A “true” feeling about the performance of our product.

BE courageous

The courageous imperative at 3be audio describes our stance on invention. It has quite old-fashioned roots: Only long-term validated engineering processes and equipment are used for measures and completion of construction. A conservative choice of long-life materials and components is used in the production of electronic and mechanical equipment. Our purchased components pass several intake measurements before storing, usually sorted by pairs. And so on.

But you may have inferred from the section before that we love to challenge normative standards, especially their limitations, and that we are willing to work with “fuzzy logic”, “soft factors” and “try & error”. This courage is requisite to invention and to breaking barriers arising if you limit your development to the benchmarking of simplified technical indicators only. 

Not invented here but of maximum interest to our first claim “be true” is the question regarding digital correction of room acoustics. We do not believe that the comfort and the interior of a living room should be put second to the requirements of a “perfect” playback room/ home theater. We are charmed by the results of our various devices for room acoustics correction that we have in place and tested in our (non-perfect) studio, and we have jettisoned any reservation with regard to this massive and fuzzy intervention in the overall transfer function. Yes, we put “eliminate all factors in the signal path that have measurable impact to the integrity of the original signal!” second to the fact that room acoustics are Armageddon for all technical measures preserving the “pure sound” beforehand. It is a given that the playback sound in a specific room can be improved, but not the quality of the playback equipment itself. Digital acoustic room correction is an advisable investment for any music lover to unleash the qualities of his/ her equipment (or to attest its limitations). We are looking forward to the further improvements in these technologies and algorithms.

Focusing on fundamentals of sound transmission, 3BE is today mainly engaged in the harmonization of loudspeaker drivers and their enclosures. The progress in additive manufacturing methods and in the multi-dimensional design/ computation of objects/ fluids opens the door to tap the full potential of their combinations. Of course, the development in this area is still of high dynamics. Everything along the supply chain is easier said than done, and many aspects and details, say “standards”, on the way to an industrial scale/ standard are still to be settled. By now, we acclaim proof of concept for some great “hand-made” objects that we call Aural Sculptures – our invention. 

BE exceptional

Once we have made up our mind about our demand regarding the acoustic qualities of our offerings, we have decided to escalate our “courageous” imperative with regard to their visual appearance. Today, we feel two extremes for presenting audio technique in living rooms: Either you prefer to hide devices, speaker boxes and cables behind the rest of the interior, or you make your hi-fi system a showcase of its own. At 3BE, as hi-fi lovers, we probably tend to the latter preference. However, we need to overcome a temptation to prioritize the presentation of tangible technology over the presentation of a virtually visible sound painting.

Pointing to the subject of loudspeaker boxes, we are in the vanguard position to create shapes and dimensions of almost unlimited variations in their visual appearance. This includes the option, to embed (or hide) them as integral part of the surrounding interior. So we have decided to create our Aural Sculptures as exceptional, possibly one-of-kind, objets d’art. Our initial idea about the design of Aural Sculptures is determined by the arts that they are made to serve, but their outer appearance by the individual audience that they have to please. Aural Sculptures shall express privacy and making the beholder forget about their function and built-in technology. This shall be the “exceptional” imperative for 3be audio.