[bprice2]

I can't beleive y'all actually think this man's malody is due to what electronics he owns.  Could it be that he just needs to catch up on sleep? 

[woodsyi]

Well the problem clearly is due to one of the well known audiophile malady that compels the poster to obtain gears before they are ready for the market.   

He owns Bel Canto unit that hasn't been released yet and he has Ohm Walsh 100 mkIII of which only the mk II iteration is posted on current speaker page on Ohm Speakers site.     How do you do it?

[IronLion]

Ha ha, the Ohm's are actually all shipping Series III drivers now, the website is just not that regularly updated I think.  The previous poster is right, I may just be tired.  Maybe I'll try listening after sleeping in on the weekend...

[TheChairGuy]

IronLion,

Go out and buy a $200 Pioneer (or other, like Cambridge and NAD) DVD/DVD-A player, a couple DVD-A discs of your least favorite/sleep inducing CD's, and see how they fare.  You don't need a video monitor to play DVD-A's, you just won't be able to see the video extra's available and you'll navigate the disc somewhat more 'blindly' like with CD. 

You could spend a few hundred more and get a good TT/cartridge...but to get the most out of it you'd need to find dedicated space for it on level, dense surface, fine tune your arm and cartridge geometry, clean your records, et al.  It's well worth it for those that do, but not everyone wants to or can.  So, I'd suggest DVD-A for plug in and play experiment.  You can always sell it without taking a bath (especially if you buy it used to begin with). 

Don't change anything else but your front end in this experiment - you may well be as surprised as I at the difference in your energy levels.

Aside from that, consider yourself lucky to be able to sleep with only a few CD tracks...think of all that money you save over pot, booze and medication 

[woodsyi]

Ha ha, the Ohm's are actually all shipping Series III drivers now, the website is just not that regularly updated I think.  The previous poster is right, I may just be tired.  Maybe I'll try listening after sleeping in on the weekend...

Just pulling your leg.  At your age I was listening to midfi Adcom and Boston Acoustics and thought I had it made.  Count your blessings (or is it a curse?) and enjoy the process. I am sure you will continue to swap things and figure out what you want as you go on.  It may just be your body saying, "hey, there is plenty time to do this after getting married and have kids." "don't just sit there."  "Go out there and party."   

[Scott F.]

Lonewolf has asked the key questions IMO; What type of music are you listening to (be specific) and at what time of day?

In my case, if I try to listen to any classical (mainly small ensembles, trio's quartets) after say 5 in the evening, I start sawing logs....big time. This can happen with jazz too. On the other hand if I listen to more upbeat music, no issues at all. Unless I've had an infusion of artificial consciousness (aka coffee), I don't dare try listening to anything overly soft or melodic after I get home from work unless I want a nap.

The older I get, the more I appreciate a good nap.

[Wayner]

Get some music that wont put you to sleep. Also a nice cup of black tea wakes the audio senses.

Music to wake up by (If your an old fart like me) and totally commercial:

Billy Idol (sides 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
Van Halen (ou812, 1,2)
Queen (all)
The Fixx (all)
The Cars (all)
Al Dimeola (Casino)
Yes (Big Generator)
Thomas Dolby (The Aliens Ate My Buick, Wireless)
....................................... .................!

Head banger music omitted due to headache sufferage.

I'll save the heavy stuff for those who suffer other afflictions!

[Se7en]

I might also offer that if you only listen in the evening (prior to going to sleep) that it is possible that you've trained or conditioned yourself to get tired or feel sleepy. I find that I've developed very specific routines that have ultimately formed into habits, these habits have a very direct impact on when/how I sleep, feel tired, etc.

Does this also happen in the morning or mid day?

Question: Do you have a dedicated listening room? How is the air circulation where you listen?

Just a thought....

-Gabe

[jqp]

I seriously doubt that listening, no matter what eqipment you have, will induce sleep.

If there is something irritating sonically I could see a headache after a while, do to clenching muscles, etc. But that would be pretty extreme.

It is more likely you have type 2 diabetes.

Just kidding, but who could tell you the answer to this phenomenon on this forum. I think its time to trot out Occam's Razor.

I know that if I sit in my recliner and watch TV or listen to music at various times, after various activities, I can fall asleep easily. I am sure there are sonic imperfections in the TV audio signal, but I don't think that would cause me to go to sleep. Even less so the audio from my stereo.

My advice is to not believe that audio waves control your life to this extent 

[JLM]

IronLion,

Are you getting fatigued or sleepy? 

I find critical listening to be fatiguing as the mind is trying to "fill in the blanks" in order to recreate the entire musical event.  Background listening, while you read, type, drive, etc. does not draw me into this analytical mode.  Experiencing headaches would go along with this idea.  Iroinically my experience is that increasingly detailed systems can quite additive and "tease" one into wanting even more "blanks filled in." 

OTOH lack of sleep or boredom would explain getting sleepy, duh.  Western culture is all about entertainment and continuous stimulation.  Take away the drug (all that sensory input) and we crash.

[IronLion]

Problem SOLVED.  Finally.  Thanks to everyone who responded, it got my mind jogging and, I guess as many people suspected, my speaker setup was to blame.  Apparently, my initial problem was the room itself; I knew this somewhat early on because whenever I clapped my hands in the room, I could hear echoes in the upper frequency range that lasted for quite a while.  What I didn't know was how negatively this affected the room, and how fatiguing it made my system. 

Initially, I had set up the Ohm's correctly (with the tweeters crossing a few feet in front of me), but I noticed that vocals, especially female vocals, along with the upper registers in general, had a sort of hottish tinge to them.  I thought my Eighth Nerve Response treatments would solve this problem, which they did help slightly, but when I clapped my hands I still had that same upper-frequency echo reverberating for about half a second in my pretty small 12x14' room.  My speakers were still relatively new, so I kept messing with speaker orientation, and after a while I found that if I pointed the tweeters and crossed them closer to my ears (about a foot to a foot and a half in front of them), it would appear to make the hotness that I referred to before go away, and in a way it did or at least appeared to.  But, I think the problem with that and the reason why I still found the music fatiguing was that I was not only receiving more high-frequencies directly at my ears but the room was still making the sound itself hot, so these two factors combined made my system even more fatiguing than before.

Recently, I got a set of three GIK 242 panels and installed them all on one wall of my room; immediately, the echo I referred to before was gone.  I figured this would solve the problem, and the fatigue would be gone.  I was wrong, and I was wrong because my speakers were still oriented in such a way as to try to make up for the shortcomings of the room.  After some placement experimentation today, I decided to try them in the original way I had them at first (crossing a few feet in front of me), and everything snapped into place, the soundstage, image focus, etc.  I also pulled thme a few inches farther away from the wall, which lightened the bass a bit, a good thing seeing as they had been a bit boomy before because they were too close.  In any case, I have been listening now for over an hour with no fatigue whatsoever, and finally the investment I put into this system no longer seems like a huge letdown or a fancy once-in-a-while toy.  I am enjoying and connecting to the music so much more than I was before it is like night and day.

This whole experience has shown me both the importance of room tuning and acoustics, as well as the need to be open-minded to experimentation and continual evaluation and re-evaluation of one's components before coming to hasty judgements.  If I had been less patient, I would have sold my Ohm's and blamed the problem on the speakers or source, (and I would be lying if I said I had never been tempted to do exactly this) when in fact the problem was quite easily fixable, but because I had already owned these speakers for about three months, experimenting with placement was something I was kind of reluctant to do because I did it a lot when I first got the speakers and figured that I had already found the "optimal" setup for my room.