this is why i think final response should be tuned by ear.
you should still measure everything and try to get everything to look good in measurements but unless you are tied to a chair as you move around the response will change and only your ear/brain knows whether it pays more attention to direct or reflected sound etc.
with measurements alone you would have to make an arbitrary choice whether to go for flat on-axis, off-axis or power response or some combination of those. that choice will always be wrong.
when tuning by ear you will always be right.
ear is the final arbiter, not the microphone.
microphone is just your trusted consultant.
there are 3 parts to the system: the speaker, the room and the ear/brain. with mic your negative feedback loop is at best around some combination of the first two. with ear you have global negative feedback.
I think many would skip at least some of it, not weight enough their own listening due to "bias" and all that, in general lack of listening skill, or more precisely perhaps there just isn't enough confidence to go by ear because AB testing is relatively tough job. So, it's just easier to go by "preference score" or by nice graphs. Of course many people do it as well so not a blanket statement, just an observation that a lot of people tend to go with what is easiest, and only few can spend time and effort to go bottom of it.
This said I'm totally convinced a playback system is only as good as listening skill of the person setting it up. So if someone doesn't want spend time to listen how their system actually sounds and how to possibly make it better, they might just leave it there because that's as good as they need it, or be able to tune it. If they were, they would have. 😀
This said I'm totally convinced a playback system is only as good as listening skill of the person setting it up. So if someone doesn't want spend time to listen how their system actually sounds and how to possibly make it better, they might just leave it there because that's as good as they need it, or be able to tune it. If they were, they would have. 😀
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I don't believe that tuning by ear a (potentially) bad/flawed design is good practise.
First make it measure well (including off-axis and distortion), only after that "tune by ear" for the tonality that you like in your specific listening environment.
😎
First make it measure well (including off-axis and distortion), only after that "tune by ear" for the tonality that you like in your specific listening environment.
😎
For sure yeah, there is too much variables that way. While it could be good at the moment it could be still way off from what it could be at best. Someone might get close if there is very good system to AB with, but it's just faster to get into ballpark by measurement in that case as well.
This is easy to notice if one tries mixing music. Do it tired late at night with headphones and while the sound would be perfectly good with the headphones at that moment as you've just adjusted it to your liking, the sound is most often quite bad with speakers next day due to many reasons 😀 Trying again with speakers and fresh brain and it sounds just fine on the headphones as well. This is also something people likely master as they spend time on it, they know how the system sounds like and how their auditory system adjusts over the process to maintain a reference and not drift away with the sound. Anyway, moving target of "good sound" isn't exactly easy to hit, auditory system is last stage and very big part of final perception of sound.
Back to playback: after all positioning is pretty important, and overall tonal balance. Even if system is tuned to any very good standard with measurements, positioning and balance affect each other kinda, so at least possibility to adjust the balance for liking would be great for anyone. Former affects how the speaker measures anechoic, latter only affects perception through effects that happen in auditory system, how sound in room sounds like. Positioning is free to adjust, if it's not one should spend quite much time to listen what kind of acoustic radiation fit the practical positioning they must use.
At least I had to do some balancing on various rooms I have had my system some adjustment was necessary. Not sure if it was completely due to the room or due to the fact that I had long drive there with exposure to noise, and so on, some issues with my system, likely multiple things together 🙂 Also spend time on positioning. Here good smooth directivity excels, because sound is good not just on one axis but to ~all relevant axis so for example the toe-in can be adjusted solely for spatial aspects of sound. If speaker has only one good listening axis then toe-in and even positioning is somewhat locked and you don't even have a chance to position it "properly". Again, another thing whether one cares about it, or can hear / mind about issues relating this and in this sense what is proper depends on person in control.
This is easy to notice if one tries mixing music. Do it tired late at night with headphones and while the sound would be perfectly good with the headphones at that moment as you've just adjusted it to your liking, the sound is most often quite bad with speakers next day due to many reasons 😀 Trying again with speakers and fresh brain and it sounds just fine on the headphones as well. This is also something people likely master as they spend time on it, they know how the system sounds like and how their auditory system adjusts over the process to maintain a reference and not drift away with the sound. Anyway, moving target of "good sound" isn't exactly easy to hit, auditory system is last stage and very big part of final perception of sound.
Back to playback: after all positioning is pretty important, and overall tonal balance. Even if system is tuned to any very good standard with measurements, positioning and balance affect each other kinda, so at least possibility to adjust the balance for liking would be great for anyone. Former affects how the speaker measures anechoic, latter only affects perception through effects that happen in auditory system, how sound in room sounds like. Positioning is free to adjust, if it's not one should spend quite much time to listen what kind of acoustic radiation fit the practical positioning they must use.
At least I had to do some balancing on various rooms I have had my system some adjustment was necessary. Not sure if it was completely due to the room or due to the fact that I had long drive there with exposure to noise, and so on, some issues with my system, likely multiple things together 🙂 Also spend time on positioning. Here good smooth directivity excels, because sound is good not just on one axis but to ~all relevant axis so for example the toe-in can be adjusted solely for spatial aspects of sound. If speaker has only one good listening axis then toe-in and even positioning is somewhat locked and you don't even have a chance to position it "properly". Again, another thing whether one cares about it, or can hear / mind about issues relating this and in this sense what is proper depends on person in control.
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yes you can't design by ear. you must design by data. tuning by ear is the final step.
same as cars or tires or anything. they are all designed by engineers and computers and then they are handed over to some racing driver guy and the final tune is based on his feedback.
the racing driver could never design a car but also the guy in a lab coat could never tune it. in Automotive they call it "calibration" because "tuning" in that industry refers to something else but it's the same as what we call tuning here.
interesting tidbit - a driver whose job is to dial in tires said 70% of his work is in "soft handling" meaning driving in a straight line or slow radius - not extreme cornering. it doesn't matter how good a tire corners if it doesn't hold a straight line or react to micro adjustments well. i wonder what the analogy of that would be to speakers.
i guess the analogy to speakers is that it doesn't matter how well a speaker can handle 120 decibel sub-bass or 20 khz cymbals if it sucks at reproducing speech and vocals at normal listening levels.
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it occurred to me just today that when different frequency bands don't have exactly identical directivity we must have access to individual driver levels via active crossover if we are ever to get perfect sound in every room.
a passive system or a closed box commercial active system where you can't access the crossover will only ever sound right in one room that it was designed in.
essentially any system where you can't adjust level of midrange to woofer to tweeter when moving from one room to another is worthless because they all have different directivity that will sound different depending on room size, treatment etc.
amazingly back in USSR my pops had a 3-way system that had switches on the front to adjust the level of midrange and tweeter in 3 steps. i now realize that was brilliant. it isn't the same as doing EQ as EQ adjusts OVERALL curve, not individual drivers.
ideally of course i would want to be able to adjust not just driver levels but response curves individually for every driver but you need DSP for that.
Sorry to insist, but you are completely hijacking @bikerjay's thread. Why not open your own thread with an appropriate title?
You can also ask moderators to split a new thread, using your posts.
Don't know what you mean by not taking acoustics into account...
And I take off-axis measurements out the gazoo (how many folks do you know that use both a vertical mic array and a turntable for outdoor measurements?)
For me, I think calculations and simulations belong in the physical design stage...when the speaker blueprints and driver selection is taking place.
That pretty much locks in the big picture acoustic design. Sims are invaluable for this stage imo...I wish i were much better with Hornresp and VCad, etc.)
Once built however, I think sims are a waste of time. I Just measure the raw sections on and off-axis, choose the most like xover points for smoothest polars, and go to work building driver section by driver section processing.
Using software that auto-matches acoustic slope target curves, either with FIR or IIR is very easy. If chosen xover points show issues on remeasuring polars, it takes only a matter of minutes to regenerate auto target curve matchups.
I've built a bunch of designs besides just synergys, ... MTMs, MTWs, lines, coaxes, and omni. The synergies do have it a little easier when it comes to on and off-axis behaving more alike than not.
But still, I would vary my technique for any of the other type builds.......of ditching sims once a speaker is built, and relying solely on measurements to develop processing.
But then again, that's because I'm not beating my head against the wall trying to use passives (for which I'd no doubt be simulating still after the speaker is already built)
Past edit time...I meant to say I would NOT vary my technique for any other type builds, of ditching sims once a speaker is built, and relying solely on measurements to develop processing.
It was probably clear I made a typo...but in case not....
It was probably clear I made a typo...but in case not....