the shun mook magic

asian audiophiles, hong kong's, in particular, are famous for their tweaks. and shun mook is the epitome of hifi tweaks.

this post is by no means a dummies' guide to shun mook and i am far from an expert on this subject, but rather a personal experience on shun mook and how magically it enhances my system. there are many documentations (old hifi mags, journals) on the magic of shun mook but they are quite hard to find since the peak of shun mook fever was in the 80s to early 90s. i am fortunate to have a couple of old HK mags on this subject.

shun mook was the proud creation of the HK twin terror called bill ying and master tham more than two decades ago. together they terrorised and impressed all and sundry. in their heyday, they toured the region extensively to educate and demonstrate the power of shun mook to the audiophiles. and their reputation went beyond asia. audiophiles from US were also impressed and the hifi media there gave lengthy coverage on it.

my friend, ken, can write you a book on the various applications of shun mook since he has dabbled in almost all variations of shun mook, from the mpingpo disc to the "mooncake" (resonator). here, i am going to share with you on how shun mook acts as a "concentrator" for the all-important vocalist's mouth, a criteria which is important to asian audiophiles. a good vocalist's mouth has presence, is pinpoint, sharp and no larger than a 50 sen coin. the perfect vocalist's mouth can even show the "movement" of the mouth. yes, this is no BS, no snake oil, no voodoo.

when you are reasonably happy with your speaker placement, you will invariably achieve a "vague" vocalist's mouth of height varying from 4ft to 5ft from the floor, right smack in the middle of the wall facing you. if you fail to get a semblance of a mouth emanating from the wall, chances is, your speaker placement is not there yet.

listen attentively, you will find a point source where the voice emanates. place the mpingpo disc (retaling for RM150) on that point source, experiment with upward/downward movement of 2mm at most to find the exact point where the vocals get "focused" and "concentrated" the most. it is akin to putting the magnifier under the hot sun and get a focused heat source. the mpingpo disc has a magical way to focus all the sound energy into one small spot, and voila! you get your vocalist's mouth defined!

in my case, i needed two mpingpo discs (see picture) to achieve maximum effect, ie. the give me the best vocalist's mouth. once you achieved this, listening is made pleasurable as you can visualize the singer better. some argue that it is mere psychoacoustics at play but it is more that that.

the above is only scrathing (5% maybe) the surface of shun mook. it has many other applications and usage to change/alter the tonal balance, soundstage height, separation and other important aspects of your sound. my purpose is just to re-ignite the magic of shun mook, you have to do your own research ;-)

perhaps, master ken can give us a low-down on shun mook. ken, over to you ;-)