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Post by arnyk on Jan 24, 2017 17:30:38 GMT
So there is this guy who is not as well known as Ethan Winer: Dr. Earl Geddes. He takes a somewhat similar approach to audio namely the scientific one and has written quite some renowned papers it appears. Ethan and Geddes agree on a lot of things that is clear. This is interesting because they come to almost opposite conclusions. A interview with him about his views to read: www.dagogo.com/an-interview-with-dr-earl-geddes-of-gedlee-llc. One of the best about audio in general from my point of view. For example, he states: "In the study that Lidia and I did we confirmed that THD and IMD were basically useless indicators of sound quality because the measured values for either of these metrics did not correlate with the perception of music played through the system."
Now before you come in criticizing him using the word 'perception' to prove his claim; read the interview. He has a small speaker company and claims that his speakers are the best value for the asking price. He sells his designs as a kit or assembled. The reviews are VERY good. His company is for sale now due to his age and no new speakers are manufactured. The latest design is his Geddes NS15 speaker a few months old. His approach designing them is in short this: - Low distortion where the human ear is most sensitive - Speaker directivity to avoid reflections thus avoiding ugly and expensive room treatment Do you believe that these speakers could possibly sound better than Mackie HR824's? Have a larger sweet-spot? In an untreated vs a treated room? Looking forward to hear your opinions! PhilietesEarl is a long time friend of mine and many other people who have audio as a professional or avocation, particularly in the Detroit area where he was raised and has lived for the past decade or so. I've heard his speakers as he developed them and also as he commercialized them. He's among the two or four most knowledgeable people about speakers and audio in general that I know. I knew him before he got his PhD. He's somewhat younger than I so I suppose I can say that there was a time when I knew more about audio than he did. ;-) Comparing his speakers to Mackie HR824's is more than a little bit unfair, as his speakers are generally significantly larger and far more expensive. I've heard both on many occasions but never compared them directly. They both IME generally sound good given a reasonable room and program material. I suspect that Earl's larger speakers measure generally better for distortion, frequency response, and directivity. They might have a larger sweet spot because they probably have better control of their directivity. Again, they are so different in orientation and cost that there is really no totally fair comparison of them. As far as mentions on the web goes, I believe that just one of the possible ways to write my name, and the one that is most likely to be limited to just me, has over 3 million mentions per Google (IME optimistic for everybody). Then there are the other ways of writing my name that I have used in the past. I've been posting on the web and Usenet before and then over the web, going back into the 80s.
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Post by arnyk on Jan 24, 2017 17:40:07 GMT
Hahaha you are right, but I was just phrasing, and while in professional studios it might not be important: at home you do have to take the design and WAF into account. Anyhow, I was just trying to start a discussion. Here is a interesting paper of Earl Geddes about exactly this; achieving accurate bass in smaller rooms: drive.google.com/file/d/0BxgUOGOB5HbfR0JTRF9XZjkyUms/view?pli=1You know, it might be a better approach to life if you are open to different views than your own. Even when you wholeheartedly believe yours is right. Good luck!Tjere are hihgly effective room treatments that There are highly effective room treatments that don't look at all like room treatments. Generally, they cost very, very serious bucks. The enabling technology is the fact that only a small portion of a room treatment needs to be actually exposed on the people side of the wall.
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Post by arnyk on Jan 24, 2017 17:47:43 GMT
Hey Hexspa, Just to be clear, the reason I shared that link for that sub was because apparently speaker makers are working with the directionality concept and I for one, held the belief that all subs were omni ... so that's news to me. Also, please note that the intended application of the QSC is live sound and probably has more to do with efficiency than accuracy. In addition, live venues being larger, mode issues seem to be farther down on the list. I get the impression you don't agree with Geddes but why don't you tell us how you really feel? Cheers, Rock It is all about context. Live sound is as you suggest generally done in far larger rooms than your average residential living room or listening room. This becomes even clearer when you start comparing the Schroeder frequencies. Live sound is not infrequently done in the open air, where the room size may be approximating infinity. Live sound is also generally done with a relatively high bass cut-off. Live sound subwoofers may only go down to 40 Hz or have even higher cut-offs. So, the arguments based on wavelength are close to being reversed. Cardioid woofers are IME for real.
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Post by philietes on Jan 29, 2017 22:54:06 GMT
Interesting! Probably a good idea to post another link here: www.gedlee.com/downloads/Philosophy.pdf. Geddes explains his design choices with supporting arguments. "The acoustics of large rooms have been studied extensively and are well understood and the solutions to its problems are very well known. But unfortunately a great deal of this knowledge is not applicable to small rooms and its unique set of problems."
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Post by philietes on Feb 14, 2017 15:04:11 GMT
One is about small rooms in general, one about using multiple subwoofers in a small room. www.gedlee.com/Papers/directivity.pdfwww.gedlee.com/Papers/multiple%20subs.pdfBecause as long as there are reflections - reflections are good things for sound quality - directivity plays a role. Hence the deader the room the less directivity matters, but the lower the sound quality is becoming anyways. The best is a more lively room with high DI speakers. This will achieve good imaging with good spaciousness. A dead room will have good imaging, but poor spaciousness and a live room with a low DI will have good spaciousness but poor imaging. It is a complex inter-related problem. So for example the Mackie. It is like numerous small self-powered speakers from Behringer, JBL, etc. They all have good axial response thanks to DSP EQ, but they all lack a high DI, often not well controlled, and they all have severely limited output capability. Could someone claim that his speakers are about the best possible in an untreated environment? And very good value in a treated environment?
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Post by arnyk on Feb 15, 2017 16:16:03 GMT
You mentioned JBL above with what seems to be a negative shading of meaning, but a few years back they came out with the LSR 305 and 308. They have well-controlled directivity. I believe that Earl has posted some test results involving them on his web site and been fairly positive about them.
The genesis of this kind of speaker is that Genelec is usually credited with innovating the small high performance 2-way monitor based on a dome tweeter with a relatively large waveguide in the 90s but their high price was a problem for many. Mackie started selling a rather similar speaker selling at a high but far more reasonable price and with similar high performance in 1997. Ca. Y2K Behringer came out with a similar speaker, the B2031 (Truth) for less than half the price, but with similar performance. In early 2016 JBL came out with the LSR 308 which is again similar and evolutionary but takes advantage of new technology in the form of switchmode power supplies, switchmode power amplifiers, and DSP signal processing.
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Post by Ethan Winer on Feb 23, 2017 19:17:39 GMT
I have to say I disagree that a live sounding room is desirable for music reproduction. At least with rooms the size you find in most homes. IMO deader is better.
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Post by arnyk on Feb 24, 2017 2:10:07 GMT
I have to say I disagree that a live sounding room is desirable for music reproduction. At least with rooms the size you find in most homes. IMO deader is better. Accurate reproduction would seem to demand that there be as few contributions from the listening room.
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Post by Ethan Winer on Feb 27, 2017 21:25:18 GMT
^^^ Yes, exactly Arny. This article explains in detail the logic behind a reflection-free environment, and why a small room should not contribute its own ambience: Early Reflections
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Post by philietes on Apr 24, 2017 23:19:42 GMT
His opinion is that the ideal in a playback system is one that has good imaging, as well as good spaciousness – the feeling of being in an acoustic space. To get spaciousness you need a lot of reflections (preferably lateral) from places other than the direct sound for times but only greater than 10 ms. This view opposes that of the perfect anechoic chamber ideal. Actually to me this makes sense because the mastering engineer knows his audience: consumers do not listen in anechoic studios. Isn't this why the NS-10 monitors have been so popular? And would double blind tests proof spaciousness to be preferable to anechoic listening rooms? I am curious if you challenge these beliefs or think they can be beneficial in the persuit of accurate sound, as an alternative or an addition to other options.
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Post by Hexspa on Apr 25, 2017 16:08:23 GMT
This feels too academic.
When you listen to music you want to hear music.
When I "master" my recordings I just hope to god that the audience member has a halfway decent system but I also engineer my stuff so that if they don't I'm still covered.
I've never once thought whether they'll have sufficient room ambience. It's just not going to happen in the majority of cases.
I've recently taken out all the treatment in my room which has virtually zero absorptive surfaces. It sounds like hot garbage and most of the main reflections are arriving past 10ms.
You have to take things out of the theoretical and bring them into the practical to have much use.
Also, no one said anechoic chambers are ideal. [reading through Arny and Ethan's responses seem to logically conclude with small rooms being best in anechoic states although larger rooms are not subject to this] Being able to hear the music is ideal. Nulls negate that. Peaks and resonances exaggerate it. Uncontrolled reflections smear it. Distortion, well, distorts it.
Isn't that all there is to audio according to Ethan?
The multiple subs theory makes sense insofar as one complementing the response of another; especially considering their range basically mono. You still need something to mitigate ringing, though.
I went to goodwill to make a donation. Their receiving room was huge, very spacious. "Nothing Compares 2 U" was playing. Sounded ok; big but with a reverb tail. Honestly I think a little more absorption in there would've enhanced the sound.
It's funny that this guy says small rooms are less understood. Maybe because all I've focused on is small rooms I feel more comfortable proceeding to treat a small room than understanding what would be appropriate for a larger space. I guess it's pretty simple: remove the room from the room.
I think if the room is sufficiently large, or shaped in such a way, to have a true reverb (and sufficient pre-delay) then the amount of liveness would come down to taste. Geddes might prefer a very live room for playback and someone else might prefer one more damped. I don't see why one would be objectively better.
-m
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Post by Ethan Winer on Apr 26, 2017 16:45:38 GMT
To get spaciousness you need a lot of reflections (preferably lateral) from places other than the direct sound for times but only greater than 10 ms. This is just wrong, and I explain why in excruciating detail in my Early Reflections article linked directly above. It may be a common belief that reflections are good in a home-size listening room, but it's just wrong. As proof, headphones sound larger than speakers. First, there's nothing a mastering (or mixing) engineer can do to counter the damaging reflections in a consumer's listening room. Even if there was a way to finesse the audio to take advantage of reflections, or reduce the damage, every room is different so no formula could work for more than one target room. But it's impossible to counter reflections and the resulting comb filtering anyway. As for why NS10s are popular, that's a long story without a single answer. And to answer your last question, No, a blind test will not necessarily prove that small-room reflections are "preferable" to avoiding reflections. People have difference preferences, so what grandma prefers might not be what I prefer. What a professional mix engineer prefers may be very different from what an untrained and uninterested teenage office worker prefers.
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Post by philietes on May 1, 2017 11:41:15 GMT
Thank you! Let's take the professional mix engineer vantage point!
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Post by arnyk on May 1, 2017 13:07:52 GMT
Thank you! Let's take the professional mix engineer vantage point! I think that we are faced with various potentially conflicting viewpoints, that potentially have validity in context. We can't forget that we tend to mix for average music lovers, not just us or audio engineers in general. IME your average music lover wants what turns out to be a mix of sonic cues from the recording, as well as some sonic cues from his listening room. A long-term controversy in high fidelity has been: "What do you want? Do you want to be transported from your listening room to the music venue or do you want the music venue to be transplanted into your listening room?" They are two different things! If you want to transport the listening room to the music venue then you might want a low reflections listening room. If you want to transport the music venue to your listening room then you may want more reflections from the listening room.
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Post by philietes on May 1, 2017 18:40:26 GMT
Your average music lover wants what turns out to be a mix of sonic cues from the recording, as well as some sonic cues from his listening room. Consciously he is not aware of this right? I mean the average music lover doesn't know of these sonic cues. I could imagine though that average music lovers are so used to reflections that they actually prefer them over a dead room; people like what they already know.
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