Mandala of Tone

I was inspired to make this mandala of tone by my experience of listening to music through Charles Altmann’s DAC and amplifier. As my hearing evolved over many months, I became aware of hearing music at different levels.

Audiophile discourse traditionally focuses on the outward aspects of music reproduction, which appear in the pink ring and are termed sonic performance in the legend to the mandala’s left. The superior outward performance of AMM components enables improved listening at progressively subtler or more inward levels. Acoustic fidelity is invoked in the orange second ring to address acoustic essentials. Musical re-creation, in the gold third ring, speaks more directly to the subjective appreciation of music itself. Personal experience in the green fourth ring addresses the cumulative impact of success in the prior rings: how the listener feels. Finally, the transpersonal experience of being is realized in audio through the perfection of tone. Following Charles Altmann’s understanding of tone as the master value in listening to music (and so in audio design) it appears at the heart of this mandala.