You mean a HP that is like 1st order at the knee but moves up in the stopband? 
I'll still admit it was shrouded by head-scratching. Mainly because I was the only person I knew at the time that had any problem with domes. I've had some good ones but rarely much luck in integrating them as I now believe it should be.
I came close with a dome midrange and with a 4" m/w. Still there are other things I didn't like about domes.
I once built a plasma tweeter which I was surprised sounded almost the same as a Scan-Speak dome within its range, and this led to even more head scratching.
Glad now to have found a way.
I'll still admit it was shrouded by head-scratching. Mainly because I was the only person I knew at the time that had any problem with domes. I've had some good ones but rarely much luck in integrating them as I now believe it should be.
I came close with a dome midrange and with a 4" m/w. Still there are other things I didn't like about domes.
I once built a plasma tweeter which I was surprised sounded almost the same as a Scan-Speak dome within its range, and this led to even more head scratching.
Glad now to have found a way.
Here in this post… http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/mult...t-vs-accurate-hi-fidelity-13.html#post4481656
dave
dave
I will make a few questions/observations. Is this only helpful in a room? Do they use this EQ in tracking/mix rooms? Working in studios for 20 years I have never seen it. So why do you need it at home. This leads me to a couple of things. Are all mixers hard of hearing in the high end. Most mix rooms (except for movies) aren't much bigger than living rooms so that's not the difference. Do they have more absorption, not the ones I've been in. They have absorption and diffusion but it's well designed.
Something dosnt add up. Can anyone shed light?
Something dosnt add up. Can anyone shed light?
Funny you should mention that, as it brings up one of my concerns with using any of these suggested room curves. Harman's testing found that the preferred in-room curve differed for different DI speakers. And at the end of Olive's paper on their method investigating DI was one of the things that needed further research. But I haven't seen anything new from them on the subject.
Decided to read it tonight. A few highlights
He points out that Bradley theorizes that the energy arriving in the first 50ms should be considered as an "early reflection benefit (ERB)." "The reduction in threshold might be of the order of about 3 dB per doubling of signal duration over the range 20 to 100 ms".
It's well know that having early reflections enhances intelligibility through increasing level. Its why a good conference room has a reflective ceiling. So, OK this points towards a smaller space being more sensitive to variations in off axis response as more of these reflections fall within the ear's integration window for timbre. Common sense.
Then a bit of hand waving. He takes 7 highly rated (blind) speakers and proposes a window of DI curves from them, as a target the industry should shoot for. He speculates that off axis in a small room affects timbre up to ~ 8kHz (but not much above 1 kHz) whereas for cinema, its up to 600 Hz. So, speculation here is large cinema, DI matters below 600Hz. Small room, below 8 kHz but not much until 1 kHz on down. Personally IME, I think he underestimates the impact of DI on timbre in small rooms from 1 to 5 kHz.
But he bases this on these particular speakers radiation patterns, not on any generalized look at real rooms absorption characteristics.
So, in the end, he didn't actually study the effect room size has on the ability to affect timbre with a given DI, except in the grossest sense (large cinema vs living room), and the analysis was focussed more on proposing specific steady state room curves for given DI's.
He attempts to answer a question, just not the one asked here. He acknowledges this with the question "To quantify room reflectivity, is it better to use the early decay of conventional reverberation time data, or to use a measure of early-reflection energy accumulation time? The latter would seem to have a more direct relationship to perceptions"
Sorry, no "AHA!" moments divulged by Toole this time around.
He then describes his old data your very familiar with "The importance of loudspeaker performance was persuasively shown in an elaborate test in which three closely rated loudspeakers were evaluated in four very different
rooms. The double-blind subjective ratings were essentially unchanged as the test was moved from room to room". However he doesn't investigate if a speaker can be bettered by tailoring the on axis a bit for the off axis interaction with a specific room, so again this doesn't answer the question.
Other interesting observations:
- untrained listeners like 7 dB more bass at 50 Hz than trained listeners.
- Sean's proposed room curve is flat above 1.5 kHz, factoring in untrained and trained listeners. Yikes! That would tend to be really bright. The trained listeners target was -4 dB at 10 kHz (reflective room)
One odd conclusion:
" For stereo recording and listening, early reflections can reduce the timbral degradation and speech intelligibility loss in the phantom center image. It helps to fill the large spectral dip around 2 kHz, created by stereo/interaural crosstalk ([26] and [1] section 9.3.1)."
I wonder what he's referring to? What spectral dip at 2 kHz? Not what the standard DRP curves predict (shown in my earlier attachment) and I certainly don't hear a 2 kHz dip from mono signals in stereo (far from it).
Thanks Dave for the review.
And thanks Earl for asking!
Read the linked paper, it explains what Toole is talking about.
And thanks Earl for asking!
Makes sense to me. Have a look at my thread here: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/277519-fixing-stereo-phantom-center.html
Read the linked paper, it explains what Toole is talking about.
10 year ex- recording/mixing engineer here. Worked in +15 control rooms across Canada. Each control room I worked in had at least 1 set of house monitors that were eq’d to a “house curve”. Nearfield monitors that sat on the mixing console bridge above the VU meters were rarely eq’d.
Typical house curves in the studio/control room world, including surround sound mixing usually came from the following guidelines:
EBU – 3276 – https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/tech/tech3276.pdf See Fig 2 on Page 6.
Dolby Surround Mixing Manual - http://www.pacificav.com/library/Dolby%20Surround%20Mixing%20Manual.pdf See section: 4.3.2 ANSI/SMPTE 222M Modified X-Curve and Figure 4-5 Modified X-Curves.
ITU-R BS.1116-1 - METHODS FOR THE SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF SMALL IMPAIRMENTS IN AUDIO SYSTEMS INCLUDING MULTICHANNEL SOUND SYSTEMS: http://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/bs/R-REC-BS.1116-1-199710-S!!PDF-E.pdf See page 13, Figure 2, Tolerance limits for operational room response curve. This doc also has recommendations on room size, reverb time, early reflections, directivity index, etc.
If one does the research, there are more ITU, IEC, ANSI, ISO, etc., standards for the design, construction, and operation of studios and control rooms that more or less have the same set of specs. I was involved in a ground up build of a couple recording studios/control rooms in Vancouver based on Chip’s Davis Live end/dead end design in which the majority of control rooms today rely on those founding principles of a reflection free zone at the mixing position. Some of those principles as applied to listening room design can be read here: http://www.embedded.com/print/4015907
Well worth the read on how to make a small room sound big
As far as directivity was concerned, the majority of control room monitors I used (dozens of them) had narrowing directivity as frequency rises. To the point of laser like directivity at 10 kHz and the sweet spot was literally the “head in vice” approach to monitoring. Drove me nuts as moving my head an inch or two from center changed the tonal balance in the high end due to the monitor’s narrowing polar responses at hi frequencies. And with the Producer sitting beside you, he always thought the mix was a bit dull, until he moved into the head in vice sweet spot and then went ok, sounds bright enough. Nothing to say of the musicians crowding around behind the mix position could not understand how dull it sounded until they too sat in the sweet spot, one at a time. Madness. This is to a large degree what drove the use of wider dispersion near field monitors on the mixing bridge not only helped this, but also limited room boundary issues if it was an improperly designed control room. The downside was the massive comb filtering off the mixing desk. Choose your poison.
Nowadays with constant directivity monitoring and high-end DSP, this makes plugging in one’s own house curve, for translation, much easier. Like these 3 mastering engineers for example have employed DSP into their monitoring chain: http://audiovero.de/en/testimonials-and-references.php Search on House Curves at GearSlutz.com or any of the professional recording forums and you will see the B&K and the other house curves mentioned above, come up repeatedly and still used today. This is old news in the recording world.
My preference is constant directivity speakers set up much like what is in the ITU guidelines (i.e. reflection free zone, 60 degree arc for proper phantom center imaging, equal reverb time over frequency, house curve, etc.) so that I can enjoy what the recording/mixing, mastering engineers, producers, and artists are hoping we can hear on our home sound systems. I have a number of mixes, albums, CD’s etc., that I recorded and mixed and they seem to translate as best as I can remember what it sounded like in the control room when I have my home system set up this way. I think of it as an encoding/decoding process. By mirroring the guidelines as best as possible, I am getting as close as to what it sounded like in the control room. Why would I want to do that? Because I don’t think people realize how many hours are spent getting the perfect mix/balance by all who are involved in the process. Having spent 10,000 hours in the mixing chair and working with +100 artists, we all wanted to put the best sound forward. And when hearing it on my home system and it sounds close to what it sounded like in the recording studio, Ah, heaven. But that’s just my preference
Typical house curves in the studio/control room world, including surround sound mixing usually came from the following guidelines:
EBU – 3276 – https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/tech/tech3276.pdf See Fig 2 on Page 6.
Dolby Surround Mixing Manual - http://www.pacificav.com/library/Dolby%20Surround%20Mixing%20Manual.pdf See section: 4.3.2 ANSI/SMPTE 222M Modified X-Curve and Figure 4-5 Modified X-Curves.
ITU-R BS.1116-1 - METHODS FOR THE SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF SMALL IMPAIRMENTS IN AUDIO SYSTEMS INCLUDING MULTICHANNEL SOUND SYSTEMS: http://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/bs/R-REC-BS.1116-1-199710-S!!PDF-E.pdf See page 13, Figure 2, Tolerance limits for operational room response curve. This doc also has recommendations on room size, reverb time, early reflections, directivity index, etc.
If one does the research, there are more ITU, IEC, ANSI, ISO, etc., standards for the design, construction, and operation of studios and control rooms that more or less have the same set of specs. I was involved in a ground up build of a couple recording studios/control rooms in Vancouver based on Chip’s Davis Live end/dead end design in which the majority of control rooms today rely on those founding principles of a reflection free zone at the mixing position. Some of those principles as applied to listening room design can be read here: http://www.embedded.com/print/4015907
Well worth the read on how to make a small room sound big
As far as directivity was concerned, the majority of control room monitors I used (dozens of them) had narrowing directivity as frequency rises. To the point of laser like directivity at 10 kHz and the sweet spot was literally the “head in vice” approach to monitoring. Drove me nuts as moving my head an inch or two from center changed the tonal balance in the high end due to the monitor’s narrowing polar responses at hi frequencies. And with the Producer sitting beside you, he always thought the mix was a bit dull, until he moved into the head in vice sweet spot and then went ok, sounds bright enough. Nothing to say of the musicians crowding around behind the mix position could not understand how dull it sounded until they too sat in the sweet spot, one at a time. Madness. This is to a large degree what drove the use of wider dispersion near field monitors on the mixing bridge not only helped this, but also limited room boundary issues if it was an improperly designed control room. The downside was the massive comb filtering off the mixing desk. Choose your poison.
Nowadays with constant directivity monitoring and high-end DSP, this makes plugging in one’s own house curve, for translation, much easier. Like these 3 mastering engineers for example have employed DSP into their monitoring chain: http://audiovero.de/en/testimonials-and-references.php Search on House Curves at GearSlutz.com or any of the professional recording forums and you will see the B&K and the other house curves mentioned above, come up repeatedly and still used today. This is old news in the recording world.
My preference is constant directivity speakers set up much like what is in the ITU guidelines (i.e. reflection free zone, 60 degree arc for proper phantom center imaging, equal reverb time over frequency, house curve, etc.) so that I can enjoy what the recording/mixing, mastering engineers, producers, and artists are hoping we can hear on our home sound systems. I have a number of mixes, albums, CD’s etc., that I recorded and mixed and they seem to translate as best as I can remember what it sounded like in the control room when I have my home system set up this way. I think of it as an encoding/decoding process. By mirroring the guidelines as best as possible, I am getting as close as to what it sounded like in the control room. Why would I want to do that? Because I don’t think people realize how many hours are spent getting the perfect mix/balance by all who are involved in the process. Having spent 10,000 hours in the mixing chair and working with +100 artists, we all wanted to put the best sound forward. And when hearing it on my home system and it sounds close to what it sounded like in the recording studio, Ah, heaven. But that’s just my preference
Thanks Dave for the review.
And thanks Earl for asking!
Hey, if I can get someone else to read the paper and give me the highlights I'll do that every time.
It's funny (sad! really
) that I just don't have the motivation to read this stuff anymore (retired.) Not that I don't read, I read several hundred pages a day usually, but its all "fun" stuff (if you can call Dostoyevsky fun!?) I decided to read all the classics since for decades I only had time to read my journals.And thanks a lot Dave. The one area that concerns me most about Floyd is how he looks at very early reflections and their negative effect on imaging. He basically writes off this issue. I know his musical tastes don't go for studio work, but I can't see how he can just ignore it either.
It is the fact that piston sources always have collapsing directivity with frequency. Unless you use some sort of waveguide a changing pattern (DI) with frequency is inevitable. But waveguides are not trivial to use properly - they add a whole new complexity to the problem. Then there is the open question of what DI should we design to? Lots of open issues there.
Thanks Mitch - I find your knowledge of the subject matter quite refreshing and informative.
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