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In this episode of Sound Design Live I talk with the senior technical support and education specialist at Meyer Sound, Merlijn van Veen. We discuss subwoofer alignment, subwoofer spacing, and M-noise.

I ask:

• In Subwoofer Alignment: The foolproof relative / absolute method you describe a process of comparing two sources in the near-field when they are side-by-side and measurement conditions are favorable, creating an alignment preset, and then deploying that in the far-field with complementary delay to correct for any distance offset caused by moving the speakers apart relative to the listening position. Unfortunately, most of us attend a seminar where we learn how to align two sources and it seems pretty straight forward. Then we get into the field and the whole thing falls apart. Why can it be so challenging to get actionable data in the field and how did you came to develop the relative/absolute method?
• You published a series of articles on your site called Mind the Gap, in which you share the performance improvements in directional subwoofer arrays caused by adding an air gap between enclosures. You end the articles with this: “the challenge becomes to determine the minimum required gap size for improved rejection without a noticeable increase in lobing.” Do you have an update for us on this subject and any further information on the minimum gap size?
• Could you give us a run down of the settings you use in your audio analyzer? smoothing, graph limits, averaging, etc.
• What is M-noise? Do I need to start using it as my test signal in Smaart?
• From FB
  • Dave Gammon: If he had hair…. would he have a mullet or ponytail…
  • Swapnil Wakodikar: Accessible software for all which provides stimulation of Line array and subwoofer configuration.
  • Ockert Marais: If you could only teach a single lesson about sound system optimisation for your entire life, What would it be?
  • Thorsten Bunz: Did having your own education site and writing articles help you get the job at meyer? How did it change your career?

If you ask a violin player to describe their violin, you’re going to get an 8-hour lecture because he knows his instrument intimately. He knows everything there is to know about that instrument because that’s how he makes his money. Ask an engineer to describe the phase response of the loudspeakers that he works with regularly and chances are you will hear crickets.

Merlijn van Veen

Notes

1. All music in this episode by Derrick Bryant.
2. Meyer Sound, MAPP XT, M-Noise
3. Merlijn’s starting audio analyzer settings: 1/48oct resolution, ±30dB with 10dB divisions, MTW FFT resolution, Complex magnitude average type, 16 FIFO or 1sec average
4. SC0403-A task group
5. Sound system Design and Optimization: and em Español.
6. Quotes
   1. It’s notoriously hard to absorb long wavelengths.
   2. If you have really unfavorable conditions, even using a gratuitous amount of smoothing, typically, will not rid you of those fake wraparounds.
   3. If you ask a violin player to describe their violin, you’re going to get an 8-hour lecture because he knows his instrument intimately. He knows everything there is to know about that instrument because that’s how he makes his money. Ask an engineer to describe the phase response of the loudspeakers that he works with regularly and chances are you will hear crickets.
   4. I don’t consider ripple a bad thing. It’s arguably the most important metric that there is in interpreting an analyzer because it gives you an understanding of the degree of interaction and direct to reverberant ratio.
   5. It’s not about wrong or right. If you know what you are doing, anything goes. If you want your analyzer to become an ally, then the analyzer should render the sound as crappy as it sounds, not paint a picture from a data sheet.
   6. It makes no difference which signal we use when it comes to obtaining a transfer function. M-noise does not change my calibration practice.
   7. Calibration is the process of making it sound the same everywhere. Voicing is the process of “How should the sound system ultimately sound?”.
   8. In the absence of a viable alternative, I think MAPP is still the ultimate sandbox to experiment with these things while looking at data that you will run into in the real world.
   9. Vince Lombardi: Excellence is achieved by the mastery of the fundamentals.