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Post by Quint on Apr 12, 2018 19:05:04 GMT -6
Interesting article on dsp correction employed in speakers, headphones, monitors, etc. darko.audio/2018/04/resistance-is-futile/Of particular interest, is the following paragraph from that article: "Kii Audio take their DSP to the next level. The Kii Three loudspeakers’ mathematics ensures audio frequencies below 700Hz are dispersed not omnidirectionally but in a cardioid pattern. Impossible in the analogue domain!" I haven't hear about this company or any of its products, but the idea that bass can be directed in a cardioid pattern, instead of omnidirectionally, is a pretty intriguing concept. I definitely would like to find out more. Has anybody heard about Kii or used any of their products? Are there any studio monitors which employ this method? Thus far, I've been somewhat apprehensive about any dsp being present in my monitors, but the ability of dsp to direct bass in a cardioid pattern or to deal with various time domain issues could potentially sway me. Pretty interesting stuff. |
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Post by Tbone81 on Apr 12, 2018 19:20:16 GMT -6
Hmmm...sounds like hype to me. I'm definitely skeptical. Hopefully someone smarter can chime in but I don't see how a digital process can change the direction of sound coming from a transducer. As I understand it the direction that sound propagates is a function of speaker design, cabinet design, and room acoustics. I'm hardly an expert however.
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Post by mrholmes on Apr 12, 2018 19:27:50 GMT -6
I did try two of the so called room correction software soloutions.
To my ear, none of them changed anything for the better.
A propper room treatmeant + impulse and phase acurate monitors is the thing I like.
No more voodo in my small home-studio.
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Post by Quint on Apr 12, 2018 19:54:53 GMT -6
Hmmm...sounds like hype to me. I'm definitely skeptical. Hopefully someone smarter can chime in but I don't see how a digital process can change the direction of sound coming from a transducer. As I understand it the direction that sound propagates is a function of speaker design, cabinet design, and room acoustics. I'm hardly an expert however. I don't claim to be an expert either. But I would be interested if it's actually legit. |
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Post by Tbone81 on Apr 12, 2018 20:27:50 GMT -6
I did try two of the so called room correction software soloutions. To my ear, none of them changed anything for the better. A propper room treatmeant + impulse and phase acurate monitors is the thing I like. No more voodo in my small home-studio. I used ARC for quite a while and it helped my (former) small room, definitely did some weird stuff to the sound. Didn't sound "natural" but did help the low end translation. I've tried it in three different rooms with wildly different results. Eventually, as I added more and more bass traps, and refined my sub crossover/setup it became unnecessary. In my current setup it kept changing the relative level of my sub, I didn't like it so I don't use it anymore. |
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Post by Quint on Apr 12, 2018 20:42:55 GMT -6
I did try two of the so called room correction software soloutions. To my ear, none of them changed anything for the better. A propper room treatmeant + impulse and phase acurate monitors is the thing I like. No more voodo in my small home-studio. I used ARC for quite a while and it helped my (former) small room, definitely did some weird stuff to the sound. Didn't sound "natural" but did help the low end translation. I've tried it in three different rooms with wildly different results. Eventually, as I added more and more bass traps, and refined my sub crossover/setup it became unnecessary. In my current setup it kept changing the relative level of my sub, I didn't like it so I don't use it anymore. I guess a distinction should be made here though. That article wasn't talking about software correction in a daw, but rather dedicated dsp built into the monitors. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2018 1:28:58 GMT -6
Not tried the Kiis myself, but a lot of guys currently looking for new mastering speakers seem to love them.
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Post by mrholmes on Apr 13, 2018 4:59:58 GMT -6
I used ARC for quite a while and it helped my (former) small room, definitely did some weird stuff to the sound. Didn't sound "natural" but did help the low end translation. I've tried it in three different rooms with wildly different results. Eventually, as I added more and more bass traps, and refined my sub crossover/setup it became unnecessary. In my current setup it kept changing the relative level of my sub, I didn't like it so I don't use it anymore. I guess a distinction should be made here though. That article wasn't talking about software correction in a daw, but rather dedicated dsp built into the monitors. Difference is the Software runs on DSP chip? Its still the same idea. My experience is that you can EQ a little bit if you work in the extrem nearfield - in a transmisson truck for example. But you cant EQ your room all those EQ softwares did wild things to the phase in my home studio. Italien one made a kick drum sounding hollow and killed it in the phanthom middle. It just sounds more wrong than right to my ear. I am not saying I am an expert. I just bought a few days ago one of the most impulse and phase accurate nearfield monitors in the world. This makes a very very very big diffrence. Out of a sudden I can hear that some of my favourite tunes are not so great produced as I always thought. I can hear big mix mistakes in my favourite Springsteen tracks from the 80s for example. Its like having a new pair of ears, and everything before this was some kind of a blind-flight. All I want to say is that the problem maybe is a diffrent building-site?? If your monitors maybe do some phase-crap and than there comes such a RC-DSP how would that get any better? A diffrent point of view....from someone with ADD. |
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Apr 13, 2018 7:20:10 GMT -6
I guess a distinction should be made here though. That article wasn't talking about software correction in a daw, but rather dedicated dsp built into the monitors. Difference is the Software runs on DSP chip? Its still the same idea. My experience is that you can EQ a little bit if you work in the extrem nearfield - in a transmisson truck for example. But you cant EQ your room all those EQ softwares did wild things to the phase in my home studio. Italien one made a kick drum sounding hollow and killed it in the phanthom middle. It just sounds more wrong than right to my ear. I am not saying I am an expert. I just bought a few days ago one of the most impulse and phase accurate nearfield monitors in the world. This makes a very very very big diffrence. Out of a sudden I can hear that some of my favourite tunes are not so great produced as I always thought. I can hear big mix mistakes in my favourite Springsteen tracks from the 80s for example. Its like having a new pair of ears, and everything before this was some kind of a blind-flight. All I want to say is that the problem maybe is a diffrent building-site?? If your monitors maybe do some phase-crap and than there comes such a RC-DSP how would that get any better? A diffrent point of view....from someone with ADD. The devil is always in the details and execution, Ill agree an acurate, phase coherent speaker is a better place to start, but DSP can get you closer to that. You really better like the sound of any DSP speaker out of the box, because that’s your new DA or your introducing another AD ! I know guys who seam to love the KII, but nobody has said placement is any easier and they could get by with less treatment. Cardiod LF has been around for around 10years in large scale touring Meyer Sound was one of the first, and they do seam work well in the large scale situations less so in Small scale. You have to remember you still have a lot of spl coming off the back, you just have that notch a 180 degrees off axis and you have to think about what boundaries are doing because your radiating in 3D, most tend to think in only 2D where polar patterns are concerned. I’m not anti DSP, I have used XTA, BSS AND Ashly boxes to speed up speaker design but always preferred conventional crossovers. Here is the thing, you will see manufacturers using DSP as a band aid for poor design and cost cutting more and more, I would rather just start with great drivers! |
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Post by jcoutu1 on Apr 13, 2018 9:33:59 GMT -6
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Apr 13, 2018 10:21:20 GMT -6
Fulcrum is doing it right, well designed box, great drivers use DSP to solve some problems. Fulcrum and Vue to of EAW’s best on their own building great products, but I’m still a Meyer guy! |
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Post by johneppstein on Apr 13, 2018 10:53:29 GMT -6
Interesting article on dsp correction employed in speakers, headphones, monitors, etc. darko.audio/2018/04/resistance-is-futile/Of particular interest, is the following paragraph from that article: "Kii Audio take their DSP to the next level. The Kii Three loudspeakers’ mathematics ensures audio frequencies below 700Hz are dispersed not omnidirectionally but in a cardioid pattern. Impossible in the analogue domain!" I haven't hear about this company or any of its products, but the idea that bass can be directed in a cardioid pattern, instead of omnidirectionally, is a pretty intriguing concept. I definitely would like to find out more. Has anybody heard about Kii or used any of their products? Are there any studio monitors which employ this method? Thus far, I've been somewhat apprehensive about any dsp being present in my monitors, but the ability of dsp to direct bass in a cardioid pattern or to deal with various time domain issues could potentially sway me. Pretty interesting stuff. I have not heard of them or used their stuff but the concept of cardioid subwoofers has become fairly widespread in concert sound reinforcement over the past few years. It's usually implemented as (and this is greatly simplified) arrays of subwoofers with some boxes pointed backwards with the signal polarity/phase manipulated is such a way that overspill from the front facing speakers is cancelled. It's basically an application of the "steering techniques" used to control directionality in concert line array sdystems. Now, being a stodgy old fart I just can't for the life of me understand how this could be done without adverse effects on frequency response and sound quality due to comb filtering, but this stuff has become quite widespread in the SR industry. (I still think the old fashioned "point source" stacks sound better, but I don't go to that many huge concerts anymore....) I don't know of any cardioid bass techniques that don't require additional bass drivers to generate the cancellation signal. I don't see how that could really be done. |
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Post by johneppstein on Apr 13, 2018 10:59:53 GMT -6
Hmmm...sounds like hype to me. I'm definitely skeptical. Hopefully someone smarter can chime in but I don't see how a digital process can change the direction of sound coming from a transducer. As I understand it the direction that sound propagates is a function of speaker design, cabinet design, and room acoustics. I'm hardly an expert however. Cancellation due to phase/polarity manipulation. Generally requires extra drivers in the array. |
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Apr 13, 2018 11:34:55 GMT -6
Interesting article on dsp correction employed in speakers, headphones, monitors, etc. darko.audio/2018/04/resistance-is-futile/Of particular interest, is the following paragraph from that article: "Kii Audio take their DSP to the next level. The Kii Three loudspeakers’ mathematics ensures audio frequencies below 700Hz are dispersed not omnidirectionally but in a cardioid pattern. Impossible in the analogue domain!" I haven't hear about this company or any of its products, but the idea that bass can be directed in a cardioid pattern, instead of omnidirectionally, is a pretty intriguing concept. I definitely would like to find out more. Has anybody heard about Kii or used any of their products? Are there any studio monitors which employ this method? Thus far, I've been somewhat apprehensive about any dsp being present in my monitors, but the ability of dsp to direct bass in a cardioid pattern or to deal with various time domain issues could potentially sway me. Pretty interesting stuff. I have not heard of them or used their stuff but the concept of cardioid subwoofers has become fairly widespread in concert sound reinforcement over the past few years. It's usually implemented as (and this is greatly simplified) arrays of subwoofers with some boxes pointed backwards with the signal polarity/phase manipulated is such a way that overspill from the front facing speakers is cancelled. It's basically an application of the "steering techniques" used to control directionality in concert line array sdystems. Now, being a stodgy old fart I just can't for the life of me understand how this could be done without adverse effects on frequency response and sound quality due to comb filtering, but this stuff has become quite widespread in the SR industry. (I still think the old fashioned "point source" stacks sound better, but I don't go to that many huge concerts anymore....) I don't know of any cardioid bass techniques that don't require additional bass drivers to generate the cancellation signal. I don't see how that could really be done. John as we both are old live guys, do you think in small scaled near field applications even if you could eliminate the phase canekation effects Cardiod would be that much of an improvement? I still think the rear side loves and the other boundary effects would be problematic and less predictable than a traditional omni LF. Plus I would want to see the polar patter above the cardiod operation. |
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Post by notneeson on Apr 13, 2018 12:04:14 GMT -6
I heard Enter Sandman on the flagship Meridian DSPs at a demo once— insane top end, yet still musical. Never heard that track quite like that before, but it's not something I reference, er, ever.
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Post by johneppstein on Apr 13, 2018 12:09:01 GMT -6
I have not heard of them or used their stuff but the concept of cardioid subwoofers has become fairly widespread in concert sound reinforcement over the past few years. It's usually implemented as (and this is greatly simplified) arrays of subwoofers with some boxes pointed backwards with the signal polarity/phase manipulated is such a way that overspill from the front facing speakers is cancelled. It's basically an application of the "steering techniques" used to control directionality in concert line array sdystems. Now, being a stodgy old fart I just can't for the life of me understand how this could be done without adverse effects on frequency response and sound quality due to comb filtering, but this stuff has become quite widespread in the SR industry. (I still think the old fashioned "point source" stacks sound better, but I don't go to that many huge concerts anymore....) I don't know of any cardioid bass techniques that don't require additional bass drivers to generate the cancellation signal. I don't see how that could really be done. John as we both are old live guys, do you think in small scaled near field applications even if you could eliminate the phase canekation effects Cardiod would be that much of an improvement? I still think the rear side loves and the other boundary effects would be problematic and less predictable than a traditional omni LF. Plus I would want to see the polar patter above the cardiod operation. Well, to begin with I have a certain skepticism concerning concommittent adverse effects on the sound. That being said, I've really only heard of it being used successfully in large scale applications with plenty of free space around the array. For a given value of "success". I believe I've seen advertising copy concerning application of the principle to smaller scale systems, but you know how I feel about advertising copy (or should by now!  ) I really can't see how it could be very effective is a smaller room with walls relatively close to the speaker array - it seems to me, just on the basis of common sense and basic physics, that reflections from solid walls would wreak havoc with the cancellation that the scheme relies on to work properly. I would suspect that similar problems might arise in most studio monitoring applications. I did see some literature on a studio monitor application that used something similar that looked interesting, but the thing was HUGE - it use 4 18" drivers in open air on each side for the low end, with the sheer amount of cone are providing a sort of "virtual baffle" to avoid excessive low end cancellation. I forget what it was called or where I saw it (Might have been here, might have been PRW), but it did look interesting. Probably not practical for most studios, but interesting. IIRC is employed careful placement to get the reflection from the back wall to create part of the directional effect, I don't remember exactly. Then again, I do tend to default towards skepticism.... |
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ericn
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Post by ericn on Apr 13, 2018 12:26:01 GMT -6
John as we both are old live guys, do you think in small scaled near field applications even if you could eliminate the phase canekation effects Cardiod would be that much of an improvement? I still think the rear side loves and the other boundary effects would be problematic and less predictable than a traditional omni LF. Plus I would want to see the polar patter above the cardiod operation. Well, to begin with I have a certain skepticism concerning concommittent adverse effects on the sound. That being said, I've really only heard of it being used successfully in large scale applications with plenty of free space around the array. For a given value of "success". I believe I've seen advertising copy concerning application of the principle to smaller scale systems, but you know how I feel about advertising copy (or should by now! ) I really can't see how it could be very effective is a smaller room with walls relatively close to the speaker array - it seems to me, just on the basis of common sense and basic physics, that reflections from solid walls would wreak havoc with the cancellation that the scheme relies on to work properly. I would suspect that similar problems might arise in most studio monitoring applications. I did see some literature on a studio monitor application that used something similar that looked interesting, but the thing was HUGE - it use 4 18" drivers in open air on each side for the low end, with the sheer amount of cone are providing a sort of "virtual baffle" to avoid excessive low end cancellation. I forget what it was called or where I saw it (Might have been here, might have been PRW), but it did look interesting. Probably not practical for most studios, but interesting. IIRC is employed careful placement to get the reflection from the back wall to create part of the directional effect, I don't remember exactly. Then again, I do tend to default towards skepticism.... Well we do come from the age of either design the bigs around the room or the room around the bigs. |
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Post by johneppstein on Apr 13, 2018 12:59:31 GMT -6
Well, to begin with I have a certain skepticism concerning concommittent adverse effects on the sound. That being said, I've really only heard of it being used successfully in large scale applications with plenty of free space around the array. For a given value of "success". I believe I've seen advertising copy concerning application of the principle to smaller scale systems, but you know how I feel about advertising copy (or should by now! ) I really can't see how it could be very effective is a smaller room with walls relatively close to the speaker array - it seems to me, just on the basis of common sense and basic physics, that reflections from solid walls would wreak havoc with the cancellation that the scheme relies on to work properly. I would suspect that similar problems might arise in most studio monitoring applications. I did see some literature on a studio monitor application that used something similar that looked interesting, but the thing was HUGE - it use 4 18" drivers in open air on each side for the low end, with the sheer amount of cone are providing a sort of "virtual baffle" to avoid excessive low end cancellation. I forget what it was called or where I saw it (Might have been here, might have been PRW), but it did look interesting. Probably not practical for most studios, but interesting. IIRC is employed careful placement to get the reflection from the back wall to create part of the directional effect, I don't remember exactly. Then again, I do tend to default towards skepticism.... Well we do come from the age of either design the bigs around the room or the room around the bigs. Ah, most places don't even know what bigs are anymore. I remember Studio A at The Automatt had a lovely pair of (IIRC) Westlake built monitors that were essentailly modified versions of the big JBLs that had 2x15s, a 2" throat diffraction horn (one of those really wide, really thin-lipped types) and a slot tweeter. Might have been a 12" mid bass in there as well, memory is foggy. All carved out of solid walnut. Not quite as big as the house speakers in the club I was working at, but man, where they nice. And loud. Nice and Loud! |
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Post by jcoutu1 on Apr 13, 2018 13:12:25 GMT -6
Well we do come from the age of either design the bigs around the room or the room around the bigs. Ah, most places don't even know what bigs are anymore. I remember Studio A at The Automatt had a lovely pair of (IIRC) Westlake built monitors that were essentailly modified versions of the big JBLs that had 2x15s, a 2" throat diffraction horn (one of those really wide, really thin-lipped types) and a slot tweeter. Might have been a 12" mid bass in there as well, memory is foggy. All carved out of solid walnut. Not quite as big as the house speakers in the club I was working at, but man, where they nice. And loud. Nice and Loud! If you ever get to check out the dual 15 fulcrum monitors, those things can blow doors. |
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) I really can't see how it could be very effective is a smaller room with walls relatively close to the speaker array - it seems to me, just on the basis of common sense and basic physics, that reflections from solid walls would wreak havoc with the cancellation that the scheme relies on to work properly.