Do measurements of drivers really matter for sound?

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[https://www.linkwitzlab.com/sys_test.htm]
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Best regards
Bernd
 
I measure what I listen to. I ended up experimenting with acoustic foam placement and seeing how it affects the sound field at the listening point(s).

Yes, absolutely, on f < 500Hz everything depends on the mic position and mic type. Our ears are not omni (at all). So you need to find a mic array configuration that resembles your subjective hearing, to the best of your subjective judgment.
PB070084.jpg
 
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The Theory of System Identification gives you a slightly different RIR, including on lower frequencies, like:
80-rir-sgram.png

It also gives you the estimates of RIR estimation errors (matched filters give you none). Everything left of t=0 is the model noise. Thus, you know that what is at t>0 is not perfect, and how badly not perfect. You know then that there is something wrong at f>16kHz (which is, I guess, Barkhausen noise) while the matched filters fool you into unrealistic belief.

The measurement of ... anything ... is not 'X' but 'X+-delta'.
 
I measure what I listen to. I ended up experimenting with acoustic foam placement and seeing how it affects the sound field at the listening point(s).

Yes, absolutely, on f < 500Hz everything depends on the mic position and mic type. Our ears are not omni (at all). So you need to find a mic array configuration that resembles your subjective hearing, to the best of your subjective judgment. View attachment 1283976
or add a suitable waveguide to the microphone that resembles the human outer ear.....and then re correlate everything you thought you knew about measurement spectra.....or not.....just listen and enjoy instead.
 
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Here is the RIR, attached as zipped .wav
Thanks for this Mike. Anyone here willing to do a waterfall from the IR?
Of course, I know what orthogonal Matched Filters are. I don't remember which Angelo's papers I read but AFAIK, the first open publication on the topic is the 1960 'Theory and Design of Chirp Radars' which refers to classified publications from 1947 by Darlington.
My question is, "Do you recognise Angelo's method (it's not just his log chirp) as a Matched Filter measurement?". Thanks for the history lesson.

If you want an error estimate, just do the measurement several times and you will have enough info to do statistical analysis & error estimates very quickly.
With all due respect, I disagree... but, please, don't allow me to punish you with a 1000-page lecture on adaptive signal processing.
What methods do you propose that have better LF noise immunity than Angelo's method within a limited time window?

How do you do your IRs & RIRs?
 
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The Theory of System Identification gives you a slightly different RIR, including on lower frequencies, like: View attachment 1283984
Everything left of t=0 is the model noise. Thus, you know that what is at t>0 is not perfect, and how badly not perfect. You know then that there is something wrong at f>16kHz (which is, I guess, Barkhausen noise) while the matched filters fool you into unrealistic belief.
Can you explain why the noise at t<0 has disappeared by t = 0.4?

Are you claiming this "TSI measurement" gives more useful info than your #434 spectrogram? BTW, 2ms is about 2 feet
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I need to do more listening to the residuals that you posted earlier but I'm suspicious of loadsa stuff, especially the crackly stuff which some have claimed is Barkhausen noise.

Someone claimed they can hear Barkhausen when they sweep some units. Still waiting for more details :)
 
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A manufacturer will never know the exact characteristics of a listening space, this is not their job to be honest. They can design for an average volume and dimensions that are close enough for the speaker to perform well. That's it. If you have a problem room, that would be your problem alone.
That's kind of moot, since we all DIY here.

Lucky...
 
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My question is, "Do you recognise Angelo's method (it's not just his log chirp) as a Matched Filter measurement?". Thanks for the history lesson.

If you want an error estimate, just do the measurement several times and you will have enough info to do statistical analysis & error estimates very quickly.

What methods do you propose that have better LF noise immunity than Angelo's method within a limited time window?

How do you do your IRs & RIRs?
1. Of course
2. It is not that easy. Chirp does not cover the entire space of excitations, it overfits the noise, and may introduce systematic bias, MLS is even worse. I would get much cleaner results running 1/f noise for the same time as several repetitions of chirp.
3. ReLS on 1/f Gaussian noise of the same RMS as chirp. Sine sweep has 1/sqrt(f) spectrogram and it hurts LF.
4. I use 3 methods: Chirp, Gaussian noise shaped as "average" music which I estimated averaging spectrograms over The Best of Queen CD, and ReLS, and real music of various genres. They all produce slightly different versions of RIR and give enough food for thought. Using sine sweep for tweeters turned out to be a particularly bad idea.
 
We are closing in on what we should measure and how much it matters. Still being defined and that is how it should be, and how scientific method works. One very sad fact for you is this, physics never stops being part of the equation. If you trip and fall, not matter how much you wish you are exempt from the laws of physics - you're falling. Too bad. So I'm sorry, you can't stop at some point and ignore the laws of physics. It won't go well for you, and later you will find that something you thought sounded good, doesn't. Not compared to something truly better.
You keep repeating it ...I read the same things in the JC blowtorch thread, it's the same here. Once you have defined what is sound and we are on the same plane (?) then you can start to use the term and conjugate it.
But I don't blame you for not catching it, it's the times.
 
Sorry, but I have trouble folllowing this thread. The title is about driver measurements, but discussion is all around room sound, mics, analysis methods and presentation graphics, loudspeaker directivity, listening test preferences etc. Some interesting points from history though :cool:
 
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Hello Juhazi,

You are not alone: I have the same trouble. Looking back it seems that - between the lines- there is a mix up between (an improved way of?) measuring distortion and the audibility of distortion. Then the thread meanders on and off towards better or worse sounding loudspeaker systems.

History repeats itself in this thread: lots of belief in Waterfalls, Wigners, Wavelets and Novel Distortion measuring methods as an explanation for "better" sounding systems.
Alas, Toole and Olive have shown matters to be otherwise, not matter the methodological shortcomings of their ventures.
I think this is what kgrlee tries to explain here: been there, done all that..
 
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Hello Juhazi,

You are not alone: I have the same trouble. Looking back it seems that - between the lines- there is a mix up between (an improved way of?) measuring distortion and the audibility of distortion. Then the thread meanders on and off towards better or worse sounding loudspeaker systems.

History repeats itself in this thread: lots of belief in Waterfalls, Wigners, Wavelets and Novel Distortion measuring methods as an explanation for "better" sounding systems.
Alas, Toole and Olive have shown matters to be otherwise, not matter the methodological shortcomings of their ventures.
I think this is what kgrlee tries to explain here: been there, done all that..

Sorry, but I have trouble folllowing this thread. The title is about driver measurements, but discussion is all around room sound, mics, analysis methods and presentation graphics, loudspeaker directivity, listening test preferences etc. Some interesting points from history though :cool:

If it had all been done before, then there would no questions posed in the thread opener that did not have answers already.
 
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This is an outgrowth of this other thread
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...s-really-matter-for-sound.409770/post-7624912
… which turned into a wide ranging discussion about new forms of distortion, new ways of measuring and presenting distortion, and several other sub-topics. While that thread is informative and entertaining, it glosses over the practical application of measurements.

I would like to focus on those practical measurement techniques that are available today to a speaker designer. I want to discuss
(1) those measurements which should be used to select the best drivers for a project.
(2) The measurements needed for simulation and to implement the design.
(3) The various techniques and equipment that people use to perform the measurements.

I would also like for us to distinguish between those measurements which are crucial to the design process, and those which are nice to have because they make the design process faster. Which measurements become important when aiming for top performance?

So I will start.

Impedance sweep: A driver impedance sweep both in free air, AND as installed in the cabinet, is one of the most crucial measurements. It reveals the driver Fs, the Le, the Re. Impedance wobbles show the existence and frequency of potential resonances. The impedance data is used in simulation to model passive crossovers. I use DATSv3 for this. It automatically calculates the Fs, Re, Le, and for sealed box designs, the Qt of the driver+cabinet.

But this thread does not contain discussion of any "new distortions", nor any "new measurements", nor actually any "new means of presenting distortion". What you have done in your new thread is constrained the discussion to linear measures and lumped parameters - all of which is well-known, well documented, and provides for a well tried-and-tested means of designing loudspeakers.

I have refrained from posting this on the new thread to avoid being characterized by negativity and littering, but I fail to see the new thread asks anything that is not already very well known. What is to discuss? What am I missing?
 

This is an outgrowth of this other thread
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...s-really-matter-for-sound.409770/post-7624912
… which turned into a wide ranging discussion about new forms of distortion, new ways of measuring and presenting distortion, and several other sub-topics. While that thread is informative and entertaining, it glosses over the practical application of measurements.

I would like to focus on those practical measurement techniques that are available today to a speaker designer. I want to discuss
(1) those measurements which should be used to select the best drivers for a project.
(2) The measurements needed for simulation and to implement the design.
(3) The various techniques and equipment that people use to perform the measurements.

I would also like for us to distinguish between those measurements which are crucial to the design process, and those which are nice to have because they make the design process faster. Which measurements become important when aiming for top performance?

So I will start.

Impedance sweep: A driver impedance sweep both in free air, AND as installed in the cabinet, is one of the most crucial measurements. It reveals the driver Fs, the Le, the Re. Impedance wobbles show the existence and frequency of potential resonances. The impedance data is used in simulation to model passive crossovers. I use DATSv3 for this. It automatically calculates the Fs, Re, Le, and for sealed box designs, the Qt of the driver+cabinet.
Click to expand...

Further to my last post, I was going to suggest the only variable in the new thread (if we excuse passive crossover design which is a whole new topic) is the choice of Qts. For what is IMHO the best read on the subject of Q, I was also going to simply provide a reference to Michael Gerzon's paper "Why Do Equalisers Sound Different?" (published in Studio Sound, July 1990), and leave it at that.

However, since it has been over 30 years since I read the article properly, I thought I would have a read once more. The following statement stood out starkly...

"the Wigner distribution may well form the basis of future improved methods of time/frequency analysis beating the uncertainty principle limit. This is because it can be shown mathematically (the methods of proof are buried deep in the Quantum Theory literature) that the normal methods of time/frequency analysis can be obtained from the Wigner distribution simply by blurring it with a suitable smoothing filter."

He continues...

"The point is that real-world measurements are never exact, and what we shall see is that incredibly small changes in amplitude and phase response, supposedly quite ‘negligible’ according to objectivist ideas, can actually have large audible effects. This is not to say that these effects cannot be measured, only that measurements of amplitude and phase responses are not the way to do the measurement."

"we shall have to stop thinking of filters purely in terms of their amplitude and phase responses but will have to find other new ways of looking at them."

Perhaps every contributor/reader here would do well to read this article too? I trust no one here is up to challenging the intellectual might of MIchael Gerzon? I'm certainly not!!
 
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“can actually have large audible effects”
Now that is the issue here. A presumption that hasn’t been backed up by any referral to solid perceptual research. Or did I miss something? And no, your own experience doesn’t count, for the obvious reasons.
 
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“can actually have large audible effects”
Now that is the issue here. A presumption that hasn’t been backed up by any referral to solid perceptual research. Or did I miss something? And no, your own experience doesn’t count, for the obvious reasons.
"Can" in this sentence refers to the application. The differences between the detection in pre- and post-echo is one obvious example that is backed up by plenty of research that I hope you have not missed.

And just for the record, I learned long ago never to trust my own opinion. On the rare occasion I have described a subjective impression, I have stated it clearly as my own, and offered it as an alternative to that which has been reported by others whose abilities I learned to trust well.
 
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What you have done in your new thread is constrained the discussion to linear measures and lumped parameters - all of which is well-known, well documented, and provides for a well tried-and-tested means of designing loudspeakers.

I have refrained from posting this on the new thread to avoid being characterized by negativity and littering, but I fail to see the new thread asks anything that is not already very well known. What is to discuss? What am I missing?
Perhaps true for some experienced designers. There are a lot of people just getting started and might benefit from a "everything measurements in one place" thread.

I consider the process of making accurate, repeatable measurements to be one of the most challenging aspects of DIY speaker design. The fact that it is so often done wrong, even by experienced people, makes my case. I don't think I have ever done a complete set of frequency response measurements without needing to repeat part of it.

So there is plenty of "discussion headroom" to talk about tools, techniques, methods for QC and data reduction...
 
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