I would be the first one to observe that one can enjoy music through untreated boundary interference issues. I've already done so in other threads, although not in those same words. At the same time, I always endeavor to design and/or treat to minimize boundary interference. The reason being that while they don't necessarily get directly in the way of my enjoyment of the music, they do show up in and obscure measurements that I use to deal with things that do matter.
I'm a slow learner and still not convinced that absorption near the speaker is necessary a bad thing (as long as they are broad band enough and not causing diffraction). Measurements will tell.
Also, the information on the web is sometimes unclear or even contradictive. I will have to draw my one conclusions.
I actually read the wesayso's thread in whole
and his build is my main source of inspiration. His room is different and has a different set of conditions. No absorption close to the speakers, but in other specfic locations in order to reduce early reflections. As in his case I also plan to use Haas kickers to induce "reflections" in a controlled matter.Yesterday I dug out my measuremt equipment, made a crude baffle and bought some absorbing material.
Welcome to the internet, where everybody has his/her own opinion and doesn't mind (or needs) sharing it all to the world.
Absolute and resounding "YES!".
What is great for some, might be cringe-worthy to others.
I actually read the wesayso's thread in whole
I applaud your perseverance and dedication in trying to find your own answers.
Most just come up with assumptions and it falls on the persons involved to explain themselves over and over again. I mean, a simple search would probably clear it up, but so many are lazy... A sign of our times, I am afraid (or is it that I am getting old and grumpy!?)
Safe travels along the roads to audio nirvana.
How did you come to that conclusion?
I have a IDS-25 clone and I have a near field absorber as the right array is close to a side wall. It is a must in this situation.
Good on you, Crumboo! May your journey be a good one. Stick with it and it will be rewarding!
Experiments are fun and we can learn from it. Go try a few different things for placement before committing to a full build. This actually is the reason for me to prefer free standing arrays. As we get to rotate them, place them just that bit further out etc. I know it isn't always possible and to be honest, I didn't have a whole lot of room to play with either.
Just observe the measurements and especially the IR. We can trace what happens and deal with that. Don't ever forget to keep an eye on the other side, around the microphone itself. Measurements don't show from which angle a reflection hits.
An array like this isn't a horn with beautifully controlled off axis energy. So in many cases it needs a little help. Surprisingly less than most speaker designs though. I've repeated it many times, the parallel planes (and even small ridges) are the ones to worry about. This doesn't mean that we get a dry sound, by eating up those reflections. There's enough energy going everywhere, and that is going to color what we hear. It just means we have a little more control after absorbing the most severe peaks. A Haas kicker is a fun addition, be sure to have delay available to play with it's timing. That will bring back a liveliness and it kind of lets you dial in a better space than what we usually live in.
I used it primarily to make my space sound larger than it is. It also does wonders for overall tonality. In the world of HiFi it would probably be seen as cheating, just like using EQ/DSP is to many. But in our little corner of the world, right there in the comfort of your own living room it counts as MyFi, in other words: anything goes, as long as you enjoy it!
Experiments are fun and we can learn from it. Go try a few different things for placement before committing to a full build. This actually is the reason for me to prefer free standing arrays. As we get to rotate them, place them just that bit further out etc. I know it isn't always possible and to be honest, I didn't have a whole lot of room to play with either.
Just observe the measurements and especially the IR. We can trace what happens and deal with that. Don't ever forget to keep an eye on the other side, around the microphone itself. Measurements don't show from which angle a reflection hits.
An array like this isn't a horn with beautifully controlled off axis energy. So in many cases it needs a little help. Surprisingly less than most speaker designs though. I've repeated it many times, the parallel planes (and even small ridges) are the ones to worry about. This doesn't mean that we get a dry sound, by eating up those reflections. There's enough energy going everywhere, and that is going to color what we hear. It just means we have a little more control after absorbing the most severe peaks. A Haas kicker is a fun addition, be sure to have delay available to play with it's timing. That will bring back a liveliness and it kind of lets you dial in a better space than what we usually live in.
I used it primarily to make my space sound larger than it is. It also does wonders for overall tonality. In the world of HiFi it would probably be seen as cheating, just like using EQ/DSP is to many. But in our little corner of the world, right there in the comfort of your own living room it counts as MyFi, in other words: anything goes, as long as you enjoy it!
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Measuring is absolutely good and indispensable if you want to see certain things, but remember that we are mainly talking psycho acoustics here.I'm a slow learner and still not convinced that absorption near the speaker is necessary a bad thing (as long as they are broad band enough and not causing diffraction). Measurements will tell.
Also, the information on the web is sometimes unclear or even contradictive. I will have to draw my one conclusions.
I actually read the wesayso's thread in whole
Yesterday I dug out my measuremt equipment, made a crude baffle and bought some absorbing material.
The trouble with that is that the human ear is what we are on a mission to please, but the human ear is very easy to fool and confuse.
Like the human eye or any sense really, but likely to a greater extent. Adaption, habit, and projected bias can be detrimental and confusing both when testing something new, or revaluation something old and established and comparing the two.
It's the old Pepsi Challenge dichotomy really.
By all means measure away, but be sure that you are measuring in the right way and the right thing.
Measuring badly or slavishly/exhaustively, can be as much of a red herring as just going by ear.
AND, when you experiment with various kinds of absorbers and reflectors, make it easy to change things and don't get to invested in a certain setup, either economically or emotionally, before you freeze it in a aesthetically palatable way.
You can get ninety percent of the way there with bath-towels, blankets, down comforters, cardboard and scrap plywood.
Well then yours isn't one of the dosen or so popping up doing an image search.
It's hard and expensive for a private person to do a double blind AB test with a broad test audience, so often it comes down to "I can hear it's better!".
You can convince yourself a number of things is better, when in fact in the long run (and the short of course, but masked by prejudice and maybe exhaustion) they aren't.
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I have been in the high end audio business for about 45 years now, so I guess I know when I hear something or not. If you had read "stupid cheap Line array" or Wesayso's thread, and a couple of other, you would have noticed how my setup is and how my line arrays are constructed (hint..all aluminium)
I have even heard Wesayso's arrays in his room and there is no doubt in my mind, that the room treatment he has done and the addition of the Haas kicker, makes the room size almost disappear. Well you are of course allowed to have your own opinion on this.
Wow... so Google Image Search is now the forehand uber ultimate achievement in audio excellence and reconnaissance.
I'm laughing so hard, it hurts...
That's all about what I need to know right here.
Enjoy your hubris moment there.
Surprisingly often even seasoned professionals and professors talk provably nonsense, or cling to old notions and ideas, because the question is slightly out of their specialty, or "that's the way had always been".
I've seen it countless times.
Not that I wouldn't rather listen to an expert saying something wrong for the right reasons, than listen to a crank, or a self proclaimed expert.
Comb filtering due to early reflections is a complex subject. Electronic audio engineers are taught to avoid it like the plague, because "they know how it sounds", due to being able to reproduce it at will.
While realworld comb filtering is more broadband/diffuse in nature and the psycho acoustic experience is totally dependent on the placement in the room, intensity and number of sources.
For example, a normally furnished room is going have completely different characterics WRT to comb filtering, with the same amount of bare hard wall near the speaker, than an unfurnished one.
It's not "forehand" (whatever that is) for anything. It's a quick way of assessing how different people set their line arrays up, and chose to present them.
Especially telling is that some of the images are of Roger Russells owns setup of his IDS-25 and prototypes.
Not an absorber in sight.
I've been nothing but nice in this thread, and yet you decide to kick up dust and get aggressive and confrontational.
Why?
I've heard others describe people with that sort of behaviour as "toxic".
Not that I would ever use such a loaded, empty buzz word, which really basically does the same thing it pretends to criticize.
It's mostly used by Nancy, passive aggressive people allergic to anything but soft stroking, group hugs, back padding and then later snide remarks and backstabbing.
I do wonder though, do you sometimes get accused of being "toxic"?
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They were most of them close to the back wall or up against it, and within one to three meters from sidewalls.
Psychoacoustically, having seen boundary nulls in my measurements, I can't help but feel the sound would be improved with appropriately placed absorbers. Why then shouldn't I make the psychology work for me. If I don't it will certainly work against me. Toole didn't say absorption of early reflections was harmful, did he?
Are you trying to be sarcastically facetious?
You are using a single mic, with what kind of pickup pattern and at what distances (rhetorical question)?
Toole (and others I might add again) didn't establish a religion.
Almost nothing is wrong given the right circumstances in audio.
No one interested in sound would set speaker up in a small chamber with hard walls, or a cathedral like space with no absorbing furnishing of any kind and expect hifi sound.
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This is a first for me.
You must bring out the best in me!
As I mentioned to a friend, dogma is impossible to fight... so I'll let this one go. Enjoy your life in your corner of your world.
What does me enjoying my corner of the world have to do with anything?This is a first for me.
You must bring out the best in me!
As I mentioned to a friend, dogma is impossible to fight... so I'll let this one go. Enjoy your life in your corner of your world.
As this an attempt at a faux exasperated, world weary, snide sendoff, like "OK boomer/millennial"?
And where in the world is there dogma in what I wrote? I suggest the exact opposite.
One of the pictures showing up does seem to be quite familiar .
Looks can be deceiving though. This is my room:
Or as seen in the search:
Oh no, no absorbing panels in sight! That must sound awful. Or not, maybe Toole is right. However, measuring the room and presenting it in a way so we can see what happens over time:
Huh? what happened? I can see some bumps, representing reflections, but they do seem a bit lower in SPL level.... how is that possible?
It must be tuned to a single microphone position, right? That must be what's at fault.
Sorry to disappoint, the early reflections have been significantly reduced, by absorbing the most obvious first reflections with huge panels, though they are hidden from plain sight. Would you believe nothing was needed (but actually was tested extensively) behind those arrays? It would have looked dreadful to place anything there. So what about the wall beside the right speaker? No damping/absorbing there? Well, the front of that array is ever so slightly in front of that chimney (10 cm to be precise) for it to not show up in measurements at all. The only remainders of reflections are from behind the listening spot. Because the absorbing panel (which looks like a poster) still is a tiny bit too small to catch them all. It hits the microphone at just over 6 ms. A tiny bit louder reflections for the right speaker than for the left.
If you know where to look, it's easy to find them in my measurements.
Measurements are there that show way more than the sweet spot center alone. And it's not half as bad as what most would predict. In fact, it is quite well behaved in a wide area. Once you get what arrays can do in a room it all starts to make a little more sense. We have a whole bunch of little drivers, all with a specific position in the line. Each and every obstacle will create a series of reflections, but most of them don't coincide. However parallel planes do come closer to having identical distances as seen from a listeners ear. The bent over CBT array spreads this even further and thus will be even more insensitive to boundaries. Meaning it will require even less room adjustments while having great potential for good sound. Only one thing holding it back. As you need to shade the output of the CBT, you end up with not much more sensitivity than that of a single driver.
While with these straight arrays we get to keep more of their joint potential. Sure, even that comes at a price. Comb filtering between all those little drivers and ones ear is a true phenomenon. But at the listening distance, and even much closer, it won't be easy to detect. You can still see it in measurements though. Going with smaller drivers can have benefits, but you also lose some bottom end extension.
We can correct the timing of those little drivers back to what presents a decent IR with FIR filters. Especially at the listening distance. This is done out in the room, but preferably after proper treatment of early reflections. If you cannot do all of that, multiple measurements around the area of interest and re-combined into a single pulse has been known to be a working solution.
Where one stops, or what is enough is up to the end user entirely.
In a nutshell, this is what was done in at least one of those rooms in that image search. I presented it here for Crumboo so he might still benefit from this rather strange discussion.
I take no responsibility for those other line arrays as seen in a Google image search. In fact, in my thread I've never mentioned the IDS-25. That does have a reason that I might go and explain in my own thread.
.Looks can be deceiving though. This is my room:
Or as seen in the search:
Oh no, no absorbing panels in sight! That must sound awful. Or not, maybe Toole is right
. However, measuring the room and presenting it in a way so we can see what happens over time:
Huh? what happened? I can see some bumps, representing reflections, but they do seem a bit lower in SPL level.... how is that possible?
It must be tuned to a single microphone position, right? That must be what's at fault.
Sorry to disappoint, the early reflections have been significantly reduced, by absorbing the most obvious first reflections with huge panels, though they are hidden from plain sight. Would you believe nothing was needed (but actually was tested extensively) behind those arrays? It would have looked dreadful to place anything there. So what about the wall beside the right speaker? No damping/absorbing there? Well, the front of that array is ever so slightly in front of that chimney (10 cm to be precise) for it to not show up in measurements at all. The only remainders of reflections are from behind the listening spot. Because the absorbing panel (which looks like a poster) still is a tiny bit too small to catch them all. It hits the microphone at just over 6 ms. A tiny bit louder reflections for the right speaker than for the left.
If you know where to look, it's easy to find them in my measurements.
Measurements are there that show way more than the sweet spot center alone. And it's not half as bad as what most would predict. In fact, it is quite well behaved in a wide area. Once you get what arrays can do in a room it all starts to make a little more sense. We have a whole bunch of little drivers, all with a specific position in the line. Each and every obstacle will create a series of reflections, but most of them don't coincide. However parallel planes do come closer to having identical distances as seen from a listeners ear. The bent over CBT array spreads this even further and thus will be even more insensitive to boundaries. Meaning it will require even less room adjustments while having great potential for good sound. Only one thing holding it back. As you need to shade the output of the CBT, you end up with not much more sensitivity than that of a single driver.
While with these straight arrays we get to keep more of their joint potential. Sure, even that comes at a price. Comb filtering between all those little drivers and ones ear is a true phenomenon. But at the listening distance, and even much closer, it won't be easy to detect. You can still see it in measurements though. Going with smaller drivers can have benefits, but you also lose some bottom end extension.
We can correct the timing of those little drivers back to what presents a decent IR with FIR filters. Especially at the listening distance. This is done out in the room, but preferably after proper treatment of early reflections. If you cannot do all of that, multiple measurements around the area of interest and re-combined into a single pulse has been known to be a working solution.
Where one stops, or what is enough is up to the end user entirely.
In a nutshell, this is what was done in at least one of those rooms in that image search. I presented it here for Crumboo so he might still benefit from this rather strange discussion.
I take no responsibility for those other line arrays as seen in a Google image search. In fact, in my thread I've never mentioned the IDS-25. That does have a reason that I might go and explain in my own thread.
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Hey guys, anybody seen line-array projects/images that are not in corners....neither flush in the corners or pulled out a bit but still predominantly in the room corners.
Where the speakers are on the long wall of the room and substantially away from corners?
The more i reminiscence my straight-line experiments, the more i want to try this sometime soon. Seems like it could solve the corner reflection difficulties pretty easily....????
Where the speakers are on the long wall of the room and substantially away from corners?
The more i reminiscence my straight-line experiments, the more i want to try this sometime soon. Seems like it could solve the corner reflection difficulties pretty easily....????
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