Its funny you mentioned that. I had that experience in an Audio Salon a few days ago. The room was highly treated. Speakers were $50,000 plus w corresponding expensive electronics.
The imaging of the bass was something I had never heard before w a very distinct origin. Still not sure if it was good or bad.
The big speakers in the studio are to impress the customers
My experience in the studio is that the big speakers are NOT used for mixing or mastering. Perhaps for a last listen through. Much smaller speakers seem to be the standard tool used in the US and Europe - as long as the customer is not on site.
My experience in the studio is that the big speakers are NOT used for mixing or mastering. Perhaps for a last listen through. Much smaller speakers seem to be the standard tool used in the US and Europe - as long as the customer is not on site.
And most small studios have only bookshelfs and suchlike for mastering/mixing. (well, all small studios I know have only the small speakers). If not because of money, is because of trends, and/or... some even find confusing or uncomfortable to use large speakers for that.
In fact I consider more intimate to listen to small monitors nearfield. Is not brutally revealing like headphones and is not diffuse like far field. Perhaps this effect helps for making audio work.
I am sure that it is true that many recording engineers use poor speakers for mixing, but then that explains why there are so many poor recordings on the market. There are also some very professional recording engineers who do high quality work. I prefer to listen to those recordings. Hence, once again, just because something is "common practice" hardly makes it the right thing to do.
True, but it also doesn't mean that we have to do the same. With some time, effort and money can usually do better than most mixing and mastering suites. Russell alludes to this a few posts ago.
FWIW, every studio and mastering engineer I've met has been interested to hear their work on a "really high end" system. They know.
FWIW, every studio and mastering engineer I've met has been interested to hear their work on a "really high end" system. They know.
100% agree with you Marco - this subject is still poorly understood. I have wasted a good deal of time and money before I understood this point.
It's not helped by the fact most loudspeakers are tested at high SPL levels to minimise signal/noise levels. If we were able to do additional tests of distortion and phase at eg. 0.1W, I think we would see some very interesting differences in drivers.
The same could be said for amplifiers—the measurements of performance under 1 watt I think are significant and also usually missing. I'd like to see date down to .001 watt, if feasible. I'd think there would be a lot of variation in performance in that region.
I believe that the lower signal levels can be significant for amplifiers (crossover distortion etc.) but for loudspeakers I think that the difference between levels would be negligible, if not non-existent. Loudspeakers don't have crossover distortion (they are passive, not active.) Only once have I seen a loudspeaker that did exhibit low signal level distortion, it was a very unique prototype that had a "stiction" problem. But that was a special case and I have never seen another do this since - about 28 years.
Hi gedlee,
Interestingly that some T/S parameters are changed depending on the signal strength sa an example:
1501al-2
Fs (Vas, Cms) are different depending of the signal level....
regards
ivica
Since T/S parameters are a result from several mechanical parts in a woofer, and all this being non-linear, is not a surprise to see parameters changes with level.
A musing here... in electronics, resistors represents the most pure block element in the chain, most times. "Resistor" in mechanics are always far from linear and various materials suffers from hysteresis in making "resistive" service (opposition to movement etc).
Sorry about incomplete comparision, but I don't know mechanics that much, and is a result of talking/chatting with mechanical engineers when comparing equivalent RLC model with mechanics (T/S parameters, anyone?).
The issue is not if the TS parameters change with level, of course they do, but only as the level grows, they will reach a constant value and remain there as the level falls. Hence, they are not nonlinear as the level falls, which is what I said.
In a loudspeaker the resistance is almost entirely electromagnetic, not mechanical, and so again it will remain linear as the level falls.
To repeat myself, this is NOT true of an amplifier because it is active.
My assumption has always been that bass drums are aurally localized by their non-bass output. Even with a single sub, it can easily be heard as coming from a distinct position in the sound-stage.
cheers
The transient of the beater of the kick certainly generally provides a location cue, although that is not the case for bass frequencies with less HF component, such as the bass section in an orchestra or the bass drum with a soft beater, such as that in the example I cited.
I tried a K+H sub on the monitoring system in my carefully designed room with a deep bass trap covering most of the wall behind the speakers and the side walls curved inwards with a 14' radius to eliminate lateral standing waves. THe sub was a mono unit and the crossover was 90 Hz. I returned it and went to stereo subs because the bass fidddles apparent location shifted audibly towards centre when the sub was engaged.
The bass drum in the track I cited (Sukay - Pasha Siku) has very little HF component to the beater sound and when heard inside has a vague apparent location in the soundfield.
so the mechanical resistance of surrounds and spiders and the mass of the assembly including cone are irrelevant?
Let's not broaden the context here - we are talking about nonlinearities at very low signal levels. In that context, I would call the mechanical resistance "insignificant" rather than "irrelevant". In most drivers the magnetic resistance is many times larger than the mechanical and so even if the mechanical resistance is nonlinear - a rarity in itself - it would be swamped out by the magnetic resistance. "Mass" is irrelevant when we are talking about resistance and/or nonlinearity. Mass is never nonlinear. Compliance is the dominate mechanical nonlinearity in a driver, but that tends to be an effect only at large excursions, not small ones.