I guess so. Music is mixed and mastered in a semi-reverberant environment and is expected to be played back in such. From reading the BBC paper it seems that the staff were complaining that the control rooms were too dead (tho not fully anechoic) and thus not pleasant to work and mix in.
The CID approach leaves some reverb, but seems to shift it off to the sides and maybe later after the direct sound. My simple sims showed that both a CID and a dead room will minimize the indirect sounds for the 1st 20 or 30ms, but in different ways. As to how they actually sound, I can't say without visiting the rooms in question. It would be great to know how the engineers feel about the CID approach 15 or more years later. Has it stood the test of time?
If I may presume to say what was being thought (really I just want to know myself) The animations are a view from a single slice (??) a horizontal plane cross section therefore not showing all energy?
For these purposes though I would defend it. But I have one request...Can you display it as a still image showing a 'peak hold' over the duration?
The way CARA displays its results is at the listener's ear level. To me this makes sense, as I can't hear sounds that aren't at my ears. You can still see what is going on elsewhere in the room, but only at the height you've chosen. 1M in this case.
CARA doesn't show the levels in 3D space. That would be great to see, wish it did, but it sticks to the important part, the listeners ears (or their hight throughout the room).
CARA doesn't show the levels in 3D space. That would be great to see, wish it did, but it sticks to the important part, the listeners ears (or their hight throughout the room).
I don't know. Maybe. You'd like to see the peak level reached at all points during a certain time window?
Yes I think so...In particular I'd like to view the demarcation of the region but if it could be done, I'd like to see this shown at different frequencies to assess smearing of the region due to diffraction as the reflectors become acoustically small.
I think the CID concept is great for listening rooms. I have been in a small studio that was quite dead (actually deader than one anechoic room that I visited), but it also seemed to me that using different speakers made a difference as well. Most studios tend to use speakers with drivers that have diaphragms that absorb low level detail which would also relate with the feel of deadness that is heard. This is understandable because hard diaphragms tend to sound harsh, which really is either transmitting deficiencies in the system, or caused by the driver breakup mode.
There is an animation that shows intensity across the whole room frequency by frequency. Unfortunately tho CARA has a great animation player, it does not save in a format that is readable by anything else, as far as I can tell. So I have to export frame by frame, then make those into an animated GIF. Tedious, to say the least. I'll see what I can come up with.
The purpose of the tool is not to get a good image but to check if there are combinations of directivity and orientation that provide a stable central image when moving around central place.
No, the purpose of this tool is only to check if there is a directivity that permits to really trade time and intensity (Haas effect) : central image must stay stable when moving.
technically, I could add reflections but I'd prefer not.
In between, I changed a bit the soft adding a slider that directly changes the directivity order (the n of cos(nΘ)) (http://www.ohl.to/audio/downloads/optirectivity.zip)
I remember reading an AES paper that calculates this, and generate a polar plot for a few frequencies. However, I get a feeling the interaural effect also becomes confusing.
I also calculated this a long time ago : I found that the "ideal" directivity was very narrow and could be obtained by very toed-in dipole speakers (or other speakers with a high directivity). But at this time, I had no possibility to auralise this. I also tried to build a real one but it was too complicated to keep the directivity constant.
Hi Keyser,
wow, did you start this thread nearly one year ago ?!? G, time is flying !
Here is my updated and now somewhat more comprehensive approach to answer (or not to answer 😀) the famous question.
This is an attempt to provide an overview of the complex room/speaker/listener system and to show the dependencies.
Radiation patterns are typically selected based on preference. That is fine as long as the potential consequences are know and considered.
I hope this makes sense.
Oliver
wow, did you start this thread nearly one year ago ?!? G, time is flying !
Here is my updated and now somewhat more comprehensive approach to answer (or not to answer 😀) the famous question.
This is an attempt to provide an overview of the complex room/speaker/listener system and to show the dependencies.
Radiation patterns are typically selected based on preference. That is fine as long as the potential consequences are know and considered.
I hope this makes sense.
Oliver
True but certain polar patterns are also preferred because they are closer to what was used in mixing/mastering. Besides all the confusion what a standardized control room design should look like, there are patterns that have emerged over the last decades. The de facto standard is represented by speakers with omnidirectional response at lower frequencies that rises with frequency.
A speaker with constant directivity from top to bottom might be very desirable but it's just not what most recordings are made for.
You will never hear what and how the mixer heard,
you will never know what he/she thought or did not think,
no matter what you do.
So the "defacto standard" is a moving target or even a ghost.
Of course it is a moving target but my point is that the target is moving within constraints. The typical "omni at low frequencies, directional at high frequencies" speaker is within those constraints. A constant directivity speaker is not (even if it is desirable for various reasons).
Markus, even if you move their speakers into your living room, the experience will be different due to the different sounds fields. And this is only because of your room ! It makes a unique experience because of its unique modal distribution and all the other properties I have mentioned in my article.
Approximating a radiation pattern of somebody else's speakers played in a very different room is plain foolish.
Get your system right at home and pray that the studio guys know what they are doing. That is all we can do.
Approximating a radiation pattern of somebody else's speakers played in a very different room is plain foolish.
Get your system right at home and pray that the studio guys know what they are doing. That is all we can do.
Yes, there are large differences although the power response of a speaker doesn't change with the room. I was talking about broad trends in radiation patterns.
Either way you slice it "omni at low frequencies, directional at high frequencies" is the de facto standard in most mixing and mastering environments - constant directivity is not. I think it would be foolish to enforce a radiation pattern that is completely on the left or the right side of a Gaussian distribution. This would be the opposite of getting "your system right at home".
So what do you think happens audibly when you play back a recording, which was assembled on a "standard" studio speaker, on a CD speaker ? Do you think that the systems are incompatible ?
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