26-sep-09 Floyd Toole speaks
Posted 26th September 2009 at 04:30 PM by planet10
Thursday i took the ferry over to Canada to attend a lecture by Floyd Toole at an AES presentation.
The lecture covered off a summary of the contents of his book. It probably was more enlightening for those that haven't read the book, but i was able to get a few details added.
He also signed my book, and really liked my title - Frugal-phile(tm) -- he said we need more of them
I have added this to my absolutely required audio reading list along with Leviton's "This is your brain on music" Very complentary books.
Floyd's book summarizes the 40 years of work he has done on loudspeakers & rooms.
The 3 most interesting things in the book are
1/ under well controlled & designed blind listening tests there is a very high level of consistency in what listeners consider best sounding
2/ a FR metric has been developed which has a high correlation with what people prefer. Unfortunately this metric is not really available to the diyer -- it consists of 70 measures made in an anechoic chamber that reaches down to at least the transition frequency.
3/ a very good explanation of how multiple subs can be used to minimize bass FR deviations caused by the room.
The book is very approachable & understandable. That it aligned with and largely reinforced much of my audio philosophy didn't hurt.
The most valuable snippet i found in the book (where it is repeated over & over again) is that 2 ears + a brain is much more capable than a mic plus an analyzer.
dave
The lecture covered off a summary of the contents of his book. It probably was more enlightening for those that haven't read the book, but i was able to get a few details added.
He also signed my book, and really liked my title - Frugal-phile(tm) -- he said we need more of them

I have added this to my absolutely required audio reading list along with Leviton's "This is your brain on music" Very complentary books.
Floyd's book summarizes the 40 years of work he has done on loudspeakers & rooms.
The 3 most interesting things in the book are
1/ under well controlled & designed blind listening tests there is a very high level of consistency in what listeners consider best sounding
2/ a FR metric has been developed which has a high correlation with what people prefer. Unfortunately this metric is not really available to the diyer -- it consists of 70 measures made in an anechoic chamber that reaches down to at least the transition frequency.
3/ a very good explanation of how multiple subs can be used to minimize bass FR deviations caused by the room.
The book is very approachable & understandable. That it aligned with and largely reinforced much of my audio philosophy didn't hurt.
The most valuable snippet i found in the book (where it is repeated over & over again) is that 2 ears + a brain is much more capable than a mic plus an analyzer.
dave
Total Comments 3
Comments
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AES - I assume you don't mean the "tubesandmore.com" people
Quote:The most valuable snippet i found in the book (where it is repeated over & over again) is that 2 ears + a brain is much more capable than a mic plus an analyzer.
As any EnABL lover who has tried to sweep the dang things will agree
My impression with my limited peek at this book is there are now THREE mandnatory authors on a diy'ers shelf:
- Morgan Jones
- Allen Wright
- Floyd Toole
Cheers!Posted 27th September 2009 at 08:44 AM by Geek -
Interesting article by him here, but despite all the waffle he doesn't appear to be say more than that people prefer a flat Freq response:
https://www.theaudiocritic.com/back_i...ritic_28_r.pdfPosted 2nd October 2009 at 02:47 AM by PeteMcK -
a few pdfs of articles by Toole here, better than the one posted above
https://www.sound-thinking.org/index.php?showtopic=2213Posted 2nd October 2009 at 03:01 AM by PeteMcK