I'm posting this from another site that he posted. I find this pretty amazing as this is a hobby for him and something he's doing out of passion. Check it out below and his website and YouTube channel. He has great info! Also, if you want to send him speakers to measure, keep in mind that there's no cost to you.
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Well, after months of back and forth, looking at expenses and trying to predict the future, I finally did it...
I have acquired a Klippel Near Field Scanner!!!!
As some of you have seen me say before, it takes me 10+ hours; sometimes literal days. The NFS will cut that time down significantly and provide even higher accuracy data. I should be receiving it hopefully within a few weeks. I am awaiting a shipping date from Klippel but I just sent payment for shipping/import fees this morning.
It's going to take me a long time to pay this off... at my current YouTube revenue rate it may be 10-15 years (I have literally been averaging $10/day; which is nice but it is nowhere near enough to make a living from). So, it should be apparent (if it wasn't already apparent) this isn't about money for me but about passion. Frankly, if I were in this stuff for the money then I would just throw up subjective reviews like so many of the other reviewers and knock out a review per week. That's not a knock against those guys... plenty of people watch and appreciate that content. But that's not my goal with my channel/site. For me it is about gathering evidence (data) and using that to help draw meaningful conclusions about what we as listeners like and prefer and then use that knowledge along with future data to help inform in order to make purchase decisions that make more sense for us. I am trying hard to do my best to provide objective and subjective; that's my real goal. And I think I do a good job but the NFS will allow me to take it to a new level. This isn't my full time job but I work just as hard at it as I do my day job.
As I've said before... if I can just break even, this is a great way for me to pass the time in a meaningful way. I get to play with cool toys. I get to make more friends. I get to learn. I get to grow. And, maybe, if this passion doesn't wane (it hasn't in my last 15 years) then it'll be a hobby for me after I retire from my real job. And the community benefits with great data. The data can never replace hearing something yourself (because tastes can change, etc). But I am a proponent of good data to help us build a better understanding and filter out the junk from the "maybe" pile.
Now, I'm all in on this and payment is being taken care of on my end. However, I have started a PayPal contribution page for those of you who have the means and have found my efforts useful enough to warrant contributing to the cause in order to help me at least offset some of my costs. I know times are tough for everyone so if you can't or simply don't want to contribute, hey, I get it. Like I said, it's already a done deal. But if you are able to help just know that I am extremely grateful for anything you can help with.
Erin's Audio Corner
Erin's Audio Corner - YouTube
If you want to help contribute to the cause the link is below:
Contribute to Erin's Audio Corner Klippel NFS Fund
Full disclosure: Erin did come on my podcast and that episode is coming soon so please subscribe to my YouTube channel!
The Intellectual People Podcast - YouTube
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Well, after months of back and forth, looking at expenses and trying to predict the future, I finally did it...
I have acquired a Klippel Near Field Scanner!!!!
As some of you have seen me say before, it takes me 10+ hours; sometimes literal days. The NFS will cut that time down significantly and provide even higher accuracy data. I should be receiving it hopefully within a few weeks. I am awaiting a shipping date from Klippel but I just sent payment for shipping/import fees this morning.
It's going to take me a long time to pay this off... at my current YouTube revenue rate it may be 10-15 years (I have literally been averaging $10/day; which is nice but it is nowhere near enough to make a living from). So, it should be apparent (if it wasn't already apparent) this isn't about money for me but about passion. Frankly, if I were in this stuff for the money then I would just throw up subjective reviews like so many of the other reviewers and knock out a review per week. That's not a knock against those guys... plenty of people watch and appreciate that content. But that's not my goal with my channel/site. For me it is about gathering evidence (data) and using that to help draw meaningful conclusions about what we as listeners like and prefer and then use that knowledge along with future data to help inform in order to make purchase decisions that make more sense for us. I am trying hard to do my best to provide objective and subjective; that's my real goal. And I think I do a good job but the NFS will allow me to take it to a new level. This isn't my full time job but I work just as hard at it as I do my day job.
As I've said before... if I can just break even, this is a great way for me to pass the time in a meaningful way. I get to play with cool toys. I get to make more friends. I get to learn. I get to grow. And, maybe, if this passion doesn't wane (it hasn't in my last 15 years) then it'll be a hobby for me after I retire from my real job. And the community benefits with great data. The data can never replace hearing something yourself (because tastes can change, etc). But I am a proponent of good data to help us build a better understanding and filter out the junk from the "maybe" pile.
Now, I'm all in on this and payment is being taken care of on my end. However, I have started a PayPal contribution page for those of you who have the means and have found my efforts useful enough to warrant contributing to the cause in order to help me at least offset some of my costs. I know times are tough for everyone so if you can't or simply don't want to contribute, hey, I get it. Like I said, it's already a done deal. But if you are able to help just know that I am extremely grateful for anything you can help with.
Erin's Audio Corner
Erin's Audio Corner - YouTube
If you want to help contribute to the cause the link is below:
Contribute to Erin's Audio Corner Klippel NFS Fund
Full disclosure: Erin did come on my podcast and that episode is coming soon so please subscribe to my YouTube channel!
The Intellectual People Podcast - YouTube
Attachments
Here is Erin on my podcast to talk about it:
Erin's Audio Corner buys the Klippel Near Field Scanner System (NFS) - YouTube
Erin's Audio Corner buys the Klippel Near Field Scanner System (NFS) - YouTube
oh my, i did not know klippel prices where this crazy steep
Have you bought any test equipment lately?
oh no, i can not afford klippel stuff, my next purchase will be a $8 esr meter so i can measure my npe caps to see if they are still fresh
LCR-T4 ESR Meter Transistor Tester | ElectroPeak
Thanks for watching! Hopefully many will send their speakers in to grow the database.
So it appears to be a machine that positions a measurement microphone anywhere you want, about a speaker on a stand. An automated way to get polar response measurements, as hinted by his "it takes me 10+ hours; sometimes literal days" statement, which I assume refers to positioning the microphone by hand.
So why not fly a drone with a microphone on it to those measurement positions? They can send back video to a phone these days, one would think an audio stream could be sent to a nearby receiver. Yes, they make some motor and fan noise, but one would think that could be engineered out of the measurement in a variety of ways.
For me, doing something like that might as well be trying to fly myself to Mars; I cant even get an easy MLTL build off the ground. It's 9:00 AM - time to shut the computer and go do something physical -
So why not fly a drone with a microphone on it to those measurement positions? They can send back video to a phone these days, one would think an audio stream could be sent to a nearby receiver. Yes, they make some motor and fan noise, but one would think that could be engineered out of the measurement in a variety of ways.
For me, doing something like that might as well be trying to fly myself to Mars; I cant even get an easy MLTL build off the ground. It's 9:00 AM - time to shut the computer and go do something physical -
What you are buying is more than the "robotic arm" which could be built pretty cheaply today. The software is the big lift. It does more than just measure the audio at a specific point, it is reconstructing the overall wavefront from the speaker. Its quite impressive and useful if you are building speakers for large venues. I'm not convinced it will help that much for a domestic room since the other half of the problem is the room and you need to quantify that. I think the existing tools can be used for that without the need for the robot. We just don't know enough on how to use the tools well.
This is documented in the CTA-2034 specification which is based on the work Toole did and is published in his book:
Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms (Audio Engineering Society Presents)
The science discussed in the above book, referenced as SPINORAMA data, is very, very good at using anechoic data to predict in-room response. It really is incredible. I provide proof of that in all my loudspeaker reviews where I overlay the prediction of the in-room response, derived from the SPIN data, with my actual in-room measurements via RTA. You'll see the prediction is very close to the actual in-room measured response.
They can. I was doing that before. But it was a labor of love. As I said in the quoted OP, it took a minimum of 10 hours to measure a speaker to get the full anechoic SPIN. That's two different sets of measurements (ground plane and then quasi-anechoic), horizontal and vertical... about 140 individual measurements. That then had to be post-processed. It literally took me 4 days to measure the Revel F226Be because measuring a heavy tower speaker is even more troublesome to get the axis lined up correctly when you're measuring 8 feet off the ground for quasi-anechoic and then the shape of the enclosure presented its own set of issues when doing the ground plane measurements.
The reason I purchased the NFS (among other things) is to make my life easier in the long wrong. Less time spent testing means more tests, ultimately.
FWIW the CTA standard is here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?attachments/ansi-cta-2034-a-pdf.45978/ and it says that it doesn't represent the response below the transition frequency where room modes will be an issue.
The RTA response seems to be predicted but that is not necessarily a great predictor of the perceived sound. Somehow the process walks around the effects of room treatment but given the goals of the CTA I'm not surprised.
Lots of interesting stuff in the standard. Most of which are beyond the resources of most small speaker companies.
The RTA response seems to be predicted but that is not necessarily a great predictor of the perceived sound. Somehow the process walks around the effects of room treatment but given the goals of the CTA I'm not surprised.
Lots of interesting stuff in the standard. Most of which are beyond the resources of most small speaker companies.
