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Nothing in an audio analyzer tells you how good it sounds

By Nathan Lively

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In this episode of Sound Design Live I’m joined by Advanced Systems Specialist at d&b audiotechnik, Nick Malgieri. We discuss the self-aware PA system and the future of live sound, cardioid subs, and why there’s no polarity switch in d&b amps.

I would like our d&b users to be thinking more about the artistic goal and making adjustments based on what they’re hearing and not getting lost in the science and the measurement and the verification. We’re trying to build a platform that doesn’t require that. And we can just focus on mixing or show.

Nick Malgieri

I ask:

  • What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to sound system design?
  • The self-aware PA system and the future of live sound
    • If the most destructive part of the signal chain is between the loudspeaker and the listener, then what is the most powerful tool we have to deal with this destruction?What are some specific ways that d&b helps us with directivity?
    • Array processing reduces or eliminates the need to measure the PA on site.
    • Chris Medders : I’d be curious to hear how accurate he feels the phase prediction feature is when measurement values are precise in the field, and how effective that is for eliminating the need for TF measurements in varying sized rooms.
  • From FB
    • Chris Tsanjoures What is the best theme for a bar, and why is it Tiki?you seem to do a lot of traveling and consulting. If you think going a different direction than a clients current plan would be best for their situation, what are some of the things that you are able to identify a client needs, without them realizing they need it?
    • Christopher Patrick Pou What does a “typical,” mix bus section on any given mixing desk look like in an object mixing-based environment?
    • Gabriel Figueroa I’d also like to know why some deployments are not using the desk as the control of the objects and what the pros and cons are of this approach.
    • Peter Jørgensen whats the behavior in a endfire sub array with internal cardioid subs, like SL-sub.edit: What happens when you build an end-fire array with a cardioid subwoofer like the SL Sub?
    • Johannes Hofmann Whats the minimum distance of a cardioid sub to reflecting surfaces behind the sub to avoid cancellation in the lowend?
    • Istvan Kroki KrokaveczWhen will games be available on D40 amps?
    • Tomasz Mularczykhighest scores in D80 games
    • Benjamin Tan “How does engaging Array Processing change your tuning approach?”
    • Michel Harruch: Is there any plan to incorporate polarity inversion for the design of complex subwoofer arrays like gradient or end fire on ArrayCalc?
    • alexdanielewicz Why can’t you flip polarity in the d&b ecosystem?
    • Robert Kozyra How to identify the problem speaker(s) in a large array hang.
    • Daniel Brchrt How do I combine speakers from different series with unmatched phase response, like the T10 and Y7P?
    • Sunny Side Up Why have external amplification rather than built in amps?
    • Steve Knots what do you think about renting cranes to hang PAs rather than rigging them from truss?Well, I’ve seen photos of big festivals where it’s being done already so I’m curious about the whole thing — safety, rigging for crane lift, stabilizing / aiming the array, and of course security around the crane base to make an un-climbable fence wall type deal. I guess. Seems innovative
    • Wessley Stern What is their philosophy with sub/main crossover? It seem to me that they let there subs LPF be much higher than other companies, well above where the main cabs HPF is in most cases, resulting in a lot of LM summation. I really enjoy their systems and the perception this results in.
    • Vladimir Jovanovic Subwoofer driver sizes and uses. Is there a trend of releasing 21″ subs? Not just from d&b, but other brands too. Did the needs of events changed to drive this trend? (Pun intended, I know where the doors are) If there is a trend at all.

Notes

  1. Quotes
    1. Nothing in an audio analyzer tells you how good it sounds.
    2. I have never found a discrepancy in what the alignment says in ArrayCalc versus what I found on-site.
    3. Our whole design ethos is little, light, and loud.
    4. If you’ve done all the alignment in ArrayCalc, we don’t need Smaart.
    5. We’re trying to do as much of the science as possible for you ahead of time, so that when you get onsite, you can focus on your show and for the vast majority of applications, there’s absolutely no need for a polarity button because we already have cardioid subs.

Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated. Please let me know if you discover any errors.

I’m Nathan Lively. And today IEM joined by Advanced System specialist at DB Audio Technician. Welcome to Sound Design Live.

How’s it going, Nathan?

Going good. Just for you. I see that there are some special tools here that I have that would really welcome you. That’s the last time I’m going to do that.

Do we need a director to call sound effects on the show or what?

Stage manager. All right, Nick, I definitely want to talk to you about object based mixing and firearmies and combining speakers from different families. But before I do that, after you get a sound system set up, what’s one of your favorite pieces of music to play through? It to get familiar with it.

Actually, the first thing I usually play isn’t music at all. It’s a very simple recording, a very dry recording of a simple snare drum. For me, that’s a great way to check system timing. And when we play with soundscape systems, with emulated room acoustics, it’s a good way to hear the nuances of Reverb tales and stuff like that.

Cool. I would actually like to add that to my list of things. I’ll send you a link near Drum Sounds.

There’s a couple of things. I’ll send you a couple of things. Great.

Okay, so we had a lot of questions come in, so we’ve got a lot of technical topics that people want us to hit. But before we do that, we should talk about career and business stuff for a minute. I wondered if you could take a look at your career so far, Nick, and pull out some lessons that you’ve learned and that have helped you find more of the work that you really love. So what are some of the ideas that you can share with people that might help them look beyond maybe some of the typical front of house, mixed positions that people think of and just maybe some career advice that you have found over the years?

I think probably the first thing I like to tell people is never in my career did I get hired off of a resume submission.

You’re saying that my plan to just make a beautiful looking resume and send it out to everyone and then do no follow up is not a great correct.

Yeah. Not recommended. Every single job offer I got was like a verbal offer off of someone that I knew or met or we knew someone in common and I came as a reference or something. So I’d say as general career advice, just be around people, make friends with people, make connections, find an excuse to visit a company, find an excuse to visit a show site. Maybe you have a friend with an Inn or something, shake hands, make your smiling face known, and just be the person who is on the forefront of their mind when they’re in a last minute scramble and need somebody.

Yeah, that’s a great point. If the audio is based on personal referral, that’s such a great point about staying top of mind. How can you do that in sort of non manipulative and fun way, showing up, being places? Yeah, that’s great. It’s not a recipe, but it is something that is probably the opposite of just me sitting here at home waiting for the phone to ring.

Yeah, absolutely. And don’t forget, there’s a lot of markets in audio other than like, touring front of house engineers.

Tell me about it. What are some things I may have forgotten?

Let’s not forget about the in house gigs, right? In your hometown. There’s a lot of performing art centers, clubs, all that kind of stuff. And there’s a whole other world of audio called installation, which, by the way, was largely unaffected by Kofi. And a lot of people from the touring world just segue right over to installation, and only some of them are going back out on the road now that they’ve gotten used to spending the evenings at home with their families.

Now, is installation a place where I could continue working as a freelancer, or is it mostly employees? And so should I be going and looking at job boards or looking at their websites for openings? How do you recommend I get started with that?

The installation companies are probably more likely to accept, like, a cold call resume if they have an opening, but knowing someone there is still going to be the inside track. And in my perception, there are two kinds of audio installation companies. You have ones that maybe also have a touring division and really specialize in performance audio, and they have staff on hand that are audio ninjas to be able to really do high end systems. Then there’s a lot of installation companies that are really just responding to bid requests, and they’ve got the labor for the physical installation, the rigging and the wire termination and all of that stuff. But they might not do performance audio systems frequently enough to have an audio Ninja on staff. And a lot of those companies are either leaning on manufacturer people like me to come help Commission it, or a freelancer to come in and be their Ninja for that one off gig because the other five gigs are going to be like low voltage alarm systems and camera systems and stuff like that.

Maybe doing a little bit of research could help or at least knowing gain in. Oh, this is a place that focuses on performance, audio or this is not. And then coming into that conversation intelligently. Hey, I know that you guys don’t focus on this, and so I could really bring that to the table and be helpful in that way.

Yeah, that’s right. You can’t just ask for a job. You have to propose your value to somebody. So figure out what they’re missing and what you can provide for that.

Now, when you proposed to your wife, was it similar you’re here is the value. I bring this cow. I have a car.

No, something like that. Right.

Okay, let’s talk about technical stuff. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to sound system design?

I think the most common mistake always happens on show site, and it’s just poor prioritization on how to manage your day.

Like what?

Like spending too much time thinking about what’s happening on a Smart trace and not enough time thinking about just having a good physical layout of speakers. Or maybe this isn’t a great time to make noise because I’m pissing off other people who are working in the room. Hey, I’ve got a rigor in the air. I probably shouldn’t be blasting a speaker next to them or just spending too much time tuning a PA and not actually getting to a sound checkpoint, which ultimately is just as important as tuning the PA. Let’s just get it most of the way there. And if we find some time later, we go back and do some touch up.

What is the bad thing that’s going to happen if I don’t prioritize my time correctly?

Yeah. First of all, if you can’t prioritize your time and manage it, you’re going to end up missing meals or something. Then that makes a long day extra hard and unhealthy. So let’s take care of ourselves at some point during the day. Also, you need to be thinking about what’s the content for the show. How am I going to mix it? How am I going to route it all with this kind of stuff? What is the artistic priority as opposed to trying to make a PA perform quote perfectly on a screen?

Now I’m remembering back. I remember you have a pretty good story about prioritization and its relationship with smart. Do you know what story I’m referring to?

Yeah.

Can you tell us about that?

Yeah. I love this story. We’re good friends with the folks over rational acoustics that make the Smart software. And I had a really fun experience when they got a d&bA, and I was going to come out and help them tune it. And first of all, is a little bit of pressure because I use Smart sometimes for tuning. And the last thing I want to do is get caught using it wrong from the people that make the software. And I’m like you guys are going to provide the Smart rigorous. And it showed up. And we had two days allocated for commissioning and training and all of this kind of stuff. And because of scheduling and travel conflicts, day one, I was working with Jamie Anderson from Rational, and on day two was Chris Andrews from Rational. And so two days we got to tune a PA with two separate people that work for the company that makes the tuning software. And I showed up to a very well installed PA. First thing I did is make noise, come out of all the right places, and verify that it’s wired correctly and stuff. And then we had the standoff moment with each other where it was like, So how do you want to do this?

And they looked at me, how do you normally approach this PA? So we started to get into it. We walk in the room making some changes by ear, showing them how rate processing works and this kind of stuff. And after the end of day one, they were like, this is great. Let’s go to dinner. And I realized never once had we looked at Smart. Well, it was sitting there running the mic was there. We just never placed the mic. We never did anything. We never heard something that we needed visual feedback to correct. And so then Jamie leaves. In day two, Chris shows up, and Chris is like, I don’t care what you did with Jamie yesterday. Let’s reset it and do it again. And so we tune the whole PA differently, but in a similar style, using our ear, walking the room, and never once looked at Smart. And it was a really good reaffirming moment to me that even the people that design it, they like to say there’s no such thing as Smarting up here. It’s a tool. Use your judgment, be influenced by the artistic goals of the show and the logistic constraints of your venue.

And Smart is there if you need it.

Yeah, that makes me think that the audio Analyzer. Maybe I should be thinking about it more as a verification tool, as a problem solving tool, unless as a qualitative tool that says, IEM going to tell you what’s good. Nathan, I’m like, okay, all right. Audio Analyzer. You tell me what’s up and I’ll do it.

Yeah. I’ve heard really well measuring Pas that I don’t like the way they sound. And I’ve heard very poorly measuring Pas where the second I push up some channels on my mixer, like, this is great. I love this. So, yeah, nothing in an Analyzer tells you how good it sounds.

Okay. During the last Lifetime Summit, you gave a great presentation called the selfaware PA System and the Future of Live Sound. And if people want to listen to that, they can go to Livesonsum at 2021 Soundslive.com. But a couple of follow up questions about that presentation. If you say that the most destructive part of the signal chain is between the loudspeaker and the listener, then what is the most powerful tool we have to deal with this destruction?

Yeah. And just to clarify that these days, year 2022, we have these pristine signal chains of all digital, high bit rate, low noise floor, virtually zero cross talk. And then the sound leaves the speaker, and we’re still subject to the same pesky physics that we’ve always been subject to, and we can only control so much of that. And that is what is turning into feedback. That’s what turning into intelligibility, lack of impact, all of that stuff. The best tool for us to avoid this primary source of degradation is directivity. The more that our loudspeaker can focus on where we want it and avoid all other directions, reflective surfaces and open microphones, the better the PA is going to sound before we’ve touched an adjustment at all.

Wow.

Okay.

And so what are some of the specific ways that d&b helps us with directivity?

On the subwoofer side, it’s all about cardioid subs, not just to cancel sound on the rear at some frequencies, but equally across all frequencies, so that even if you are on the back side of the sub, you’re still getting a proper representation of the frequency response, just quieter. Then we have the SL series line array cabinets, which have side firing low frequency drivers that not only add more energy to the front, but cancel on the back, which is great as you walk off axis one of those rays, all frequencies get attenuated evenly. And then even on point source cabinets, we rely a lot on what we refer to as a dipole, which is two smaller low frequency drivers instead of one larger low frequency driver. And those two smaller low frequency drivers are spaced out in the cabinet so that they create summation directly on access, but cancellation in other directions. Not only do we get good directivity out of the frequencies coming out of the Horn, but we get added directivity of lower frequencies as cool.

Okay, so another thing that you said during that presentation is that array processing reduces or eliminates the need to measure the PA on site. And that connects with one of the questions that came in from Chris Meters, who says, I’d be curious to hear how accurate he feels the phase prediction feature is when measurement values are precise in the field, and how effective it is for eliminating the need for TF measurements in varying size rooms. Funny way to say that. And the subject he didn’t mention there is I think he’s referring to a Ray Calc. Would you agree?

Yes. So it sounds like there’s two questions there. One is about a rate processing, and let’s put a pin in that for a moment. The other one is about the ability to tune your PA quickly and accurately within the software before you’re on site. And to answer the question simply, I have never found a discrepancy in what the alignment says in a Ray calc versus what I found on site. Even when I put up a mic to verify it’s within ten degrees of phase wrap between the subs and the tops and anything there couldn’t be much more perfect. And why would I want it to be more perfect at a specific location anyways? The idea of alignment is to make it work for a larger portion of the audience as possible. And one of the main benefits of using the software to do this is you can very quickly with a couple of mouse clicks, pick multiple points for your measurement microphone, and verify if the timing decision you’ve made translates not only to the 100 level, but also to the 200 level and the 300 level. Whereas if you’re on site with a microphone that just turned into a 45 minutes process just to get the mic from the 100 level to the 200 level to the 300 level, and who’s got time to do that?

When tuning, you load in at eight and sound checks at noon or something. So it allows you to be more informed from the comfort of your home. And as long as your file is accurate to the way the PA is deployed on site, you just push those settings to the amps and then bust out smart if you find yourself with some extra time and energy that day. Now, rate processing is very similar for anybody who doesn’t know. Rate processing is our technology, where each cabinet within the array requires its own DSP, path and amp channel. But this allows every cabinet within the line array to have a different signal sent to it, so that the behavior of the array as a whole matches the geometry of our venue better than we could with just mechanical splay. So this means we need to have an accurately represented array, proper height, proper spray angles, all that kind of stuff. And within the array calculation, we need to make sure we have accurate venue geometry. Then the software can say, okay, now I know the relationship between the PA and your audience areas. Let me optimize myself for perfect spectral response from the front row to the back row.

This does a couple of things. One, it corrects for weird HF peaks and dips and all this stuff. It fixes Farfield HF reduction because of air absorption, and it makes the PA hit a target curve at the listener positions, so it will hit the same target curve in the front row as it does at front of house and at the back row. And if you have a rate processing enabled on other parts of your PA, like delays and sides and 270, all of those parts of the PA are now hitting the same target curve at their respective audience positions. So this way now you don’t have to worry about level matching and spectral matching different parts of your PA, which is the biggest part of measuring the PA. Now you can just say, oh, the whole thing is too much lowmade. I’m going to pull out some 250 Hz and apply it to all parts of the PA. And they’re all going to respond much more similarly than they would without a rate processing.

That’s so cool. And I’ll just add that it is really fun and so powerful to be able to check all those different alignment positions really quickly. If you’re like me and you want to try to calculate the best alignment position ahead of time, and then you do that, and however you do that, then you just have to accept, okay, this is going to work. It’s really nice in a Ray calculator. You can then verify, oh, yeah, this is the right one. Okay, great. And so I like that tool a lot.

Yeah. There’s only one gig I’ve ever had where I really cared about making the whole system align in one specific mic position. And in a previous lifetime, I worked for a rental company out in California that Myers Sound used to hire for their internal events, like their parties and stuff like that. And then my question was always like, Where does John Myers sit? He’s the one whose name is on the check. He’s the one that can hear the difference. Let me make it a line there, and everybody else can just deal with it.

Tell us about the biggest or maybe most painful mistake you’ve made on the job and what happened afterwards.

What’s the old joke? In our business, I’ve screwed up bigger gigs in this one. Expertise. What is it saying? Wisdom comes from expertise, and expertise comes from failure. We can do these one liners all day long, but it’s true. Making the mistake is the way to learn and be a better person. And we’ve all done them. I was working a show. We’re Loading it in. I was working in the doghouse of an analog console, if anybody remembers what those are. And I was pretty pissy. It was a rough day. It was a gig at a winery where we loaded it on grass, and I was trying to figure out how to make this console sit level on a grass embankment next to the stage. It was hot. There’s mosquitoes. I’m just pissy. And the voice behind me, someone on the stage, it’s empty. They’re like, no audience. There’s no artist yet or anything, but his voice is like, how are you? And I was like, this is fucked up. And I just totally went off and just, like, verbal diarrhea on how I was feeling and turned around. And it was the main headliner artist singer of the show, and was like, oh, God, what have I done?

And he ended up being really cool. I hear your brother. This is a hard work environment. Just keep going. I really appreciate it. That was when I turned around who would say something so nice.

He could have been like, who is this guy? Get him out of here.

Totally. And that’s all it takes. Just rub someone the wrong way and he’s thinking about his pressures of performing, and he doesn’t want my negativity involved. And I’m the monitor engineer. So if I’m going to be like that during rehearsal, it’s gain to ruin his vibe. So he could have just said, yeah, get them out of here. And then that’s it. I’m fired. And once that happens, you never get that gig back.

I don’t know if this is great career advice, but a friend and student of mine got a new job once, and it was a really important one for a big, well known company. And I said, hey, I think one of the best things you can do from my experience is to figure out as quickly as possible what things are going to push your buttons and then figure out how to deal with that. Because the worst thing is that it becomes a surprise that’s when it’s really painful is. Yes. All these circumstances. Yes. All this pressure and stress, and then also a surprise, like something falls on your foot or something is late or whatever, things go wrong. And so if you can sort of get ahead of that somehow, man, it can really help because that’s the difference between saying something you really regret to a manager or something, and then you have a whole thing to deal with.

Totally. I feel like one of the best professional advances I’ve made came as a byproduct of moving to the Southern US, where I just had to learn how to keep my mouth shut more than I’m used to. I think people in the south tend to be a little bit more cordial, a little more polite, and they complain in a different way. And that’s been a good career and life skill for me.

Christian Giroud says, what is the best theme for a bar and why is it Tiki?

Oh, yeah.

What are you talking about?

Yeah, one of the things I missed most during the COVID era is hanging out in some town where there’s some trade show like Info.com or name or something, and ending up at Tiki bars with rational acoustics guys. Okay, they love a Tiki bar. I love a Tiki bar. And we need to get back to this trade shows just for the Tiki bar. I couldn’t care less about the trade show. As soon as 05:00 hits and we’re all looking at each other, am I going to get a blue drink or a green drink? That’s what that week is all about.

So Chris says that you seem to do a lot of traveling and consulting, and this question that I’m going to paraphrase, which is basically, how do you handle these situations? Or have you been in a situation where it seems like the client wants something and they’re saying, this is the result that I want, and so here’s how I want to do it. But you know, that’s not going to get them the result.

Yeah, that’s the hardest thing about audio, right? Human beings are visual thinkers and audio is invisible. So everybody has an idea of how to do it, and there’s no real way to prove it. And even your average person might not know how to listen to the PA to know if it was achieved or not. So it’s all about being a bartender and playing psychology and just having good verbal interactions. And there’s a way to advocate for what you think is the right decision without knocking down a client’s request. I think there’s a way to verbalize that there’s a certain approach. Just don’t be the annoying it guy who’s just no, that’s not how it works. You don’t know what you’re talking about. No one wants that kind of audio person. Just speak normally with them and say, So what I’m hearing is repeat what they’re saying. It makes them feel heard and say, how about this? What if we tried an approach to do this and explain in simple terms why you want that approach? And I find it’s really hard for a client to argue with that. It almost makes it feel like it was their idea to approach it the way you want to approach it.

And you’ve told me in the past that a rake out can be a tool to facilitate these discussions. Sometimes it really helps to have a visual element. This is what you want. Here’s how we can do it. What about this? What about that?

Small churches and clubs and venues that want a line array, but it’s too small of a room for a line array? Let’s look at it in a Ray calc. Let’s show you how a line array performs versus a point source, and it will be immediately apparent that there’s a really good discussion there. And if in the end you want to win array whatever it’s your PA, you can buy whatever you want. But at least I advocate for what I think is best.

There’s a bad movie podcast called How Did This Get Made? And I don’t listen to it that often, but it comes to mind in this moment because we’ve all been in music venues all over the world, but even here in Minneapolis, I’ve been into several music venues where the PA does not fit the room. And you’re like, how did this get made? These two big arrays, half of it’s just playing into a balcony and a wall, and it doesn’t seem to fit it’s.

Funny, this is the number one theme of being a support person for d&b Audio Technic, because our whole goal, our whole design ethos is little light and loud. How do we get very high directivity, high bandwidth and high output out of the smallest cabinet possible? And our clever Germans do a pretty good job. Meanwhile, we have people coming and saying, I don’t want that speaker because I don’t think a pair of tens are big enough. Woofers, which used to be the simplest method of evaluating loudspeaker. You have to explain to people, no, you don’t understand. This pair of tens has more low frequency extension than our old speaker that had a 15.

So you’re finding some preconceptions about just things people think about the size of related to power quality. Okay. Christopher Post says what does a typical mix of section on any given mixing does look like when in an object based mixing environment.

So let’s be clear. When you’re using soundscape and object based mixing, there is no master bus in your console. We need different performers, different types of signals to hit that process. Or the processor works is like a summing matrix with the spatialization data and renders that to the PA using delay and level distribution. So then this is a great question. How do you feed the processor from the console? The short answer is there’s no one way, there’s no one way to sound scape. But I could give you a very kind of simple anecdote that represents a lot of projects that I work on. Let’s say it’s a typical band. So maybe Kick, Snare, hat come out of a mono bus and send it to a processor where we can place Kick, Snare, and hat within our mix using a sound object. Then maybe a stereo mix that has all of the Toms and other drums. Those come in as two sound objects, and we can make those Toms big and wide or accurate and sound like they’re coming from the drum set. And then maybe another stereo bus for overheads and chimes and percussion stuff that maybe wants to go wider than the Toms.

Then maybe you have a bass player who has an electric and an acoustic and a Di and a mic, and I don’t know, a foot pedal organ thing or something. All those inputs can come down to a mono bus called Bob the bass player, and then Bob the bass player’s bus comes into a sound object that we control in our one called Bob the bass player, and we can place that where Bob is located might do the same thing for guitars, keyboards, bust them down, but then send them to the processor in a way that represents an individual performer. And then as you get to your money channels, your lead vocals, your pastor Mike, your CEO for the corporate event, those might be post Fader direct out of the console. All your channel strip processing works. Your Fader affects the level of that, but it immediately leaves the console and gets summed in the processor where each singer can have their own sound object. That way, when people sing together, they’re not stepping on each other in the mix. You want to listen to the Alto or the tenor you can DeMask it binaurally just like we do in an acoustic world and retain clarity headroom and require less processing on the channel strip to get it.

Related to this, Gabriel says, I’d also like to know why some deployments are not using the desk as the control of the objects and what the pros and cons are of this approach.

Yeah. So if you have a soundscape system and you’re using an Avid S Six series console or digital SD series console, you can control soundscape natively from within the console. And I know it sounds awesome and it can be your object parameters are being saved within your scenes of a console, and that’s really nice. But for a large venue and we have 100ft of travel where the sound object could be through the mains and maybe sides if you have them. And that 100ft is now represented by a three inch by three inch quad panner on your screen, it’s not as meaningful as you would think.

The scale is off, right?

And we can scale the stuff separately from what the console sends into what the processor receives. But yeah, three inches to represent 100ft is pretty coarse no matter what. So I always tell people, let’s think of it as like a wave control computer. Let’s just have our one running on a touchscreen, hovering right over your console like your wave screen does, and you can just touch the object to move it. You get a full size screen, you can visualize the room better, you can put in a seating chart. So you really know when you’re placing a sound object exactly where it is instead of just placing it in this vague square on the console.

Peter Jorgensen says, what happens when you build an infrastructure with a cardioid subwoofer like the SL sub?

Yeah, I’ve done it with the SL sub and other subs and from other manufacturers subs, because I’m not just a DB guy, I’m also just a sound guy. It works well. It’s cool. You don’t have to make an end fire out of omnidirectional subs and you can mock this up in a Ray calc. There’s this myth out there that you can’t do in fire Subaru in a Ray calc. You most surely can. It will automatically calculate your delay times for you as well. And if you want to learn more, send an email to [email protected] and we’ll show you how to do it. But to answer the question, we have some cabinets that are cardioid by themselves and then we put them into an end fire. And of course it depends on your spacing and the number of cabinets within the array and the delay times, etcetera. Etcetera. But essentially it turns it into hypercardiot. And I did it. I do a gig every year at the Monterey Jazz Festival and I run the main stage there and I do an end fire of cardioid subs. And the reason is twofold one, it’s a wooden stage that resonates.

I think it’s right at 78 Hz. Oh, wow. Yeah. And it rolls pretty slow. It used to be years ago, the stage would hear the feedback long before front of house did, and they would just hit the call button on calm. And if I was at front of house and saw that call button lighting up, I would just immediately pull the subs back because I knew it was coming. And so when we put ourselves in an NFL array, it allows me to change the delay times so that I can take that 78 Hz null and point it directly at center state, so that it’s really trying to cancel that one frequency in that one direction to stop the stage from resonating. And that feedback. And the second reason I do it on that gig is because I don’t have anywhere else to put the subwoofers. So it’s a win win in that I can’t stack them high because it blocks sight lines. I can’t do them horizontally across the front because their VIP section would be like their knees would be touching the subs and they wouldn’t be very happy about that. So they have to be up on the deck, but only one high.

And so then putting one in front of the other is the only way to make them fit.

All right. Johannes Hoffman says, what’s the minimum distance of a cardioid sub to reflecting services behind the sub to avoid cancellation in the low end?

Yeah, this is a really common question, and I totally get where it comes from, because when you have a speaker firing in the back of the subwoofer, it seems like it needs some breathing space. And it does, but not as much as you’d think you can. Actually all the d&b cardioid subs, they have the casters on the backside, so you flip it up to roll it. So then when it’s lying down, the casters point backwards and I just tell people push it all the way up to to the casters touch the wall. It only needs that four to six inches that the caster represents.

Okay.

However, most people don’t realize when you have a cardioid sub, you really need to maintain 2ft of open space to either side. It actually needs more space on the sides than it does in the back. And that’s because we need the sound to wrap around the sides to interact properly between the rear driver and front drivers. So, for example, we see people all the time that might have, like, an SL sub, but they’ve decided to place it up on end so it’s higher. Maybe that’s because they want to put a front fill on top of it or something, and it works and you can do it, but it eliminates one path length around one side of that cabinet because the side is now obscured by the ground. And undoes a whole bunch of the cardioid effect and it ends up turning into kind of like a loose cardioid.

We don’t want loose, we want tight.

That’s right. In a breakout, you can select between an SL sub and an SL sub upright, and you can look at how that affects the rear rejection.

Okay, Eston says when will games be available on D 40 amp? So this is news to me. Apparently there are games on some amps, but not on other amps. Tell me about that.

Yeah, all d&b amplifiers have games built in, and you should know that if you perform a firmware update on a d&b amplifier, it will reset all the settings, as you would expect with a firmware update except for its IP settings. So it doesn’t reset the network card, which is very convenient. And it also does not reset your high scores in the games. Critical and even the really old amps had simple games. Then we came out with the fancy four channel amps with the color touchscreen and the games got way better. And now we have this brand new amp platform that I suspect will eventually get the games. But to be honest, our software team has been working really hard making all of the audio features work correctly in the brand new amps, and I would rather they prioritize that than the games at the moment.

So Thomas wants to know the highest scores in the D 80 games, and I’m guessing these amps don’t report back to you and you don’t have a list, but I think we were talking about how it would be fun to have a leaderboard so we could see self reported who has the highest scores.

Yeah, or log it within our one, since you’re already on the network with your computer so you can have your own list, you don’t have to go back to the amp to find your high score reported back to Dbau.com, so we can keep track of who’s winning the games. We also get a feature request quite often that people want to be able to play multiplayer games across the network on front panels amp so the stage right fly guy can play against the stage left fly guy during the show.

Benjamin Tan says how does engaging array processing change your tuning approach?

It’s all part of the PA performing nicely and more like each other. So even if we have a main hang of 24 GSL and a side hang of twelve V, those are voiced to the similar target curve. So I don’t really have to worry about matching curves, even though they’re different box counts, display angles and box type and all that. And it’s doing things like mostly or completely fixing the kind of HF peaks you get right down in the front row underneath the line Ray, that kind of Fresnel effect. It gets rid of that. Which, by the way, really resolves feedback issues. If you have an artist that ever goes out on a thrust in front of the PA. It fixes the HF absorption issue in the back rows, so I don’t really have to worry about tuning for that. At the end of the day, I just need to voice the PA overall for whatever my overall mix is going for. We already have controls, like a coupling filter is what we call it in our one where we can change kind of the overall voicing of lows to highs. Do you want a flat response or do you want the case stacked low end for a lot of power?

And we can just make those broad adjustments and then maybe put in an EQ filter or two, depending on what I’m feeling, what I’m hearing, and you’re done. And if you’ve done all the alignment and Raycock, we don’t need smart soundscape systems are similar. This is why I talked about the self aware PA on the soundscape. The processor knows where every loudspeaker is located and how it’s pointed, and so it times itself. You never enter a delay time into a soundscape system. It realigns itself based on where you want the sound to come from. So I would like our d&b users to be thinking more about the artistic goal and making adjustments based on what they’re hearing and not getting lost in the science and the measurement and the verification. We’re trying to build a platform that doesn’t require that, and we can just focus on mixing our show.

Yeah, that’s cool. It sounds like there’s this idea of letting the computer do what computers are good at, and let’s have the humans do the creative decisions that the humans are good at.

I love it.

Michelle or Michael says, is there any plan to incorporate polarity inversion for the design of complex subwoofer arrays like Gradient or In Fire into a Ray calc? And they are expressing this sort of surprise that I remember having as well the first few times working with d&b systems and realizing, oh wait, there’s no way to insert a polarity inversion. But referencing back to the clever Germans, there must be a reason for excluding this.

Yeah, we don’t have a polarity button. The amplifiers and the filters available to you within our one do play with polarity as needed to get the behavior we want out of the cabinet. And this is a contentious issue. We’re used to having a Polarity button. And why would a high end manufacturer like d&b just take that feature away? And in general, this kind of comes back to this ethos that I just described, where we’re trying to do all of as much of the science as possible for you ahead of time so that when you get on site, you can focus on your show. And for the vast majority of applications, there’s absolutely no need for a polarity button because we already have cardioid subs, we already have full broadband connectivity. We already have all these benefits built into the PA, as is and we all know a lot of sound engineers that can dig themselves a whole pretty quick by hitting polarity buttons and not entirely knowing what they’re doing. With that being said, I do recognize there are kind of niche setups where this would be handy. And if you want this as a feature, please don’t be shy.

Send us an email [email protected] And what would be really helpful is if we could understand what you’re trying to achieve that requires you to need the polarity button because we’re really good at trying to figure out what you’re really asking for and if there’s a set up that you want that’s common. Maybe we would think about just building an amp preset or something to achieve it so that you don’t have to know how to use the priority buttons and it just works. But either way, we’d love to hear from you. The feature requests are always welcome [email protected]

Robert Kazeera says how to identify the problem speakers in a large array hang. He’s referencing a feature in DB where it has some self verification built in. And he also told me later about sometimes he had maybe trouble where he felt like maybe some of the speakers were not making true reports because maybe there’s a reflection because they were too close to the ground. But anyway, maybe you could start by just talking about this self verification feature that is built in.

Yeah. Another excuse why you might not need a measurement Mike. So when we go online with our d&b system, with our one talking to the amplifiers, or even without our one, you can do this. Through the front panel of the amplifier, there’s a function called system check, and this will send almost inaudible low tones and completely inaudible high frequency sounds to the speakers. The amplifier then measures the return impedance and will graph out the impedance measurement of low frequency and of high frequency and of a rear firing driver or a midrange of that cabinet to verify that all of the drivers are operating as a circuit correctly. So this tells us that something is plugged in. It tells us if there’s a broken wire, it tells us if there’s a blown voice coil, all this kind of stuff, and it makes it very quick and easy without making any noise to verify that every speaker is performing electronically up to speed. Now this doesn’t test for things like torn cone or a cabinet rattle or that kind of stuff, but we’re going to get there once we start making noise. So we run system check that verifies the electronic circuits.

Then with vertical line arrays and sometimes other types of arrays, we run a test called array verification, which is just about the most clever thing I’ve ever heard of because we designed the system in a way calc and opened that same project. And R one now knows what amp channel is supposed to be driving which cabinet within our line array, and it initiates a test process where the amp channels, one at a time, will make a low level kind of noise. And while this is happening, it uses all of the adjacent loudspeakers within the array of microphones.

That’s cool, right?

And so by the time it runs this whole test, which takes 1020 seconds for a large array, it will tell you if your line array is wired the same way it expected it to be wired based on how you built your file. And with technologies like array processing, if we had a pair of cables swapped within our fan out, this could have horrendous and unpredictable results. So making sure that every box in the array is actually fed by the right DSP channel is crucially important. So not only will it tell you if it’s patched wrong, it will tell you how it’s patched wrong, which cables are plugged into the wrong cabinet. But what this user is referring to is we have seen times where people run this test before the pace at trim height, which is floating right off the ground. And some of those bottom cabinets are basically firing right into the floor. And this can create reflections, which throws off the test. And in my experience, it’s only happened with J series. There’s something about the LF sensitivities of that box that make it have this issue. And as soon as you take it, like more than 6ft off the ground, then you can run the test without that reflective for being an issue.

Daniel says, how do I combine speakers from different series with unmatched phase response, like the T Ten and the Y seven P? And he sent me a couple of measurements, and I was like, I wonder if those are correct. And I looked them up on the d&b site, and they were, yeah, talk about combining speakers from different families and different series.

Yeah. There are manufacturers that when they come out with a new generation of loudspeaker, they adopt a new phase profile. And this makes it hard to incorporate newer systems and legacy systems into the same PA. Our approach is to try to keep that phase plot as consistent as possible. Over the years, even when we came out with newer apps that are more highly capable, processing wise, we didn’t take that opportunity and just change the phase response to existing speakers. We wanted it, but J series on a D 80 new fancy amp to be exactly the same as a J series on the old two channel amps. We lock in that performance and make it consistent across the world across the decades. And mixing most d&b loudspeakers works really well right out of the box with complementary phase profiles. Now, there are exceptions. The Tseries is a great one. The T series has a very unique acoustic mechanism that affects its phase profile. And here’s how this works. So the T series for everybody doesn’t know it’s a small speaker, and it’s convertible between a point source and a linear box. And it has a rotatable Horn that doesn’t just turn the dispersion on its side.

It actually changes the way the Horn interacts with a secondary acoustic lens, which you can see on the front grille. You see these kind of stripes, this different perforation hole pattern on the front grille. And behind that front grille is a multilayered grill. And these metal perforated metal grill stuff. Multilayered actually affects path length of high frequencies. So when we turn the Horn and it changes the way the HF dispersion interacts with the secondary perforated metal mechanism, it changes the path length, the high frequency, and changes the curvature of the wavefront. So a point source speaker radiates an outward rounded wavefront. And when a Tseries is in a point source mode, it’s 90 X 50, I think. And then when we turn the Horn and we turn the cabinet, it’s now 105 degrees wide by a proportional vertical directivity with a flattened wavefront appropriate for a line source. And the way this works is because of this perforated metal slowing down HF frequencies by extending their path length, which is why the HF phase profile of a Tseries changes depending on the mode it’s in as a byproduct of this mechanical system. And yes, we do have the ability to change it with fancy technology that’s in all these amplifiers apply some Fr filters, all pass filters, all this stuff.

But it would incur latency. So now we have part of our PA at a different latency than the rest of the PA. And it would make Tseries on new amps be different than T series on old amps, which is not something that we want to introduce to our users. So people ask me all the time, though, this is such a cool thing, how come you don’t do this Tseries rotating a Horn perforated metal thing on all the speakers? And now you know why there is a downside. And it works well for a small speaker like a T series.

But that’s not something we want in our Stadium PA. And I remember you saying that in the rare occasion that you would need to combine these two speakers, you just need to make a choice, right?

Yeah. So what part of the frequency bandwidth do you want to have it be aligned? Do you want it for good LF steering and the kind of low, mid and lows want to be perfectly aligned? Or is the T there? For Intelligibility, people commonly use a single T series in the line array mode as a high powered front fill. And in that case, we really care about the HF. So let’s make the HF part of the frequency response align better for alignment with our main system. So, yeah, you make a choice. There’s no such thing as a free lunch and audio. And if you want, like a cool feature like point source to line array, which is highly valuable for small, mid sized rental companies. Then you got to give something else up on the other end. In this case, it’s a non complimentary phase profile.

Yeah, and I’m sure there were conversations on the production side before anything ever happened where they’re like, okay, if we do this, then we’ll have this consequence. And they said it’ll be worth it.

And that’s just another reason why d&b makes 100 different models about speakers, so that you can pick and choose these trade offs as needed for your application, Sunny says.

Why have external amplification rather than built in amps?

Sure. The timeless debate. I see strengths both ways. I used to work for a rental company, a couple, actually, that only had self powered speakers. And from an inventory management point of view, it’s perfect because you never have to think about I’m sending this many speakers, and so how many amps do I need? And every speaker is an amp. So problem solved. Send them out. Don’t have to think about it. On the other hand, if you’re a rental company, it’s a lot more expensive to have an amplifier for every speaker, whereas a lot of rental companies have enough amps to run the A system or the B system, but they never have to run them at the same time so they can buy half as many amps. So there’s that stuff from the commercial side. Then from the technical side, of course, having an amp and a speaker makes it way more. And the question is, do you want that weight in the air? Do you want it on the ground? And amps do fail from time to time. When that failure happens, do you want it in the air? Do you want it on the ground?

Being able to hot swap an amp without having to bring in a rigor or lift is pretty valuable. So there are positives and negatives both ways. I like having one type of cable go up to the array instead of signal amp power. I like having the electronics down on the ground where I can monitor them more easily and troubleshoot them more easily. I like having a lighter array so I can get away with using less rigging and all of that stuff. The roof can only support so much or whatever. So having a light array allows me to use the array I want, not the array I can hang. So that’s easy for me to say. I work for d&b.

And one interesting point I hadn’t thought of before that I remember you telling me about is that if the amp weighs more than the rigging also is going to weigh more because it has to be higher rated to be able to carry heavier weight. And so it’s not just this increase in the weight, but also then the whole thing goes up.

Let’s say we have a really big line array, a maximum hang of 24 boxes. And Germany decided actually for this crossover, we have to use this coil of wire instead of this coil of wire. And the coil wire they want to use is £2 heavier. Not only is the box £2 heavier, but the array is now £48 heavier. And because the array is £48 heavier, the rigging has to be upsized to hold 48 more pounds. But not just the rigging at the top box where the extra £48 happens. But every box has the same rigging, so every box has to have Upsized rigging to hold 48 more pounds. That Upsize rigging now also added 48 more pounds, which means the rigging has to be upsized again to hold an additional 40. Everything is interconnected. So literally every ounce we can shave off of a speaker means £100 in the end or something. Maybe that’s exaggerated, but it’s not just an individual box. It’s quite a lot in the amp. Then at an additional £20 per box is a pretty massive hurdle.

So my friend Steve Knott says, what do you think about renting cranes to hang PA rather than rigging them from Truss? And I said, what specifically do you want to know about? And he said, I’ve seen photos of big festivals where it’s being done already. So I’m curious about the whole thing. Safety rigging for crane lift, stabilizing, aiming the array, and of course, security around the crane base. To make an unclimable sense, wall type deal seems innovative.

I love it. It’s not new either. Doing this for years before line of rays. Even like all rigging, as long as it’s done safely by a qualified and experienced professional, I think it’s wonderful. Personally, I think cranes are a little ugly, so the aesthetic of a giant yellow tractor isn’t my favorite show business aesthetic, but it certainly has logistical benefits. It’s a lot cheaper than paying a crew to come build a tower. I’ve done a lot of outdoor shows where the PA really needed to be in a place that was not conducive to rigging, like on a slope. And with a crane, you can rig it and then drive the crane into position or turn the crane into position. So that’s a huge benefit and it can be totally safe. I strongly suggest at night, between days on site, you bring it in and touch the PA to the ground just in case there was a hydraulic failure. At some point when you’re not there. A lot of times these hydraulic systems, they can have a very slow week and a regular operator wouldn’t notice because a regular operator doesn’t use the crane that just holds something in the air for four days straight, but it can slowly droop.

So let’s be aware of some things like that. But yeah, have a great time. Also, driving cranes and forklifts and lifts is just super fun.

Speaking of driving forklifts, I know you have used an NSL Five, I believe. Can you talk about that for a second.

The MSL Ten.

Msl Ten. These giant Meyer sound speakers.

Yeah, I don’t know. Myers an old company, so I don’t even know if I’d call it an early Myer Speaker, but they’re long gone at this point. But they were so large, a single MSL Ten barely fits into a 53 foot truck like it clears with a couple inches on either side. That’s how large this giant array speaker is. And it was brilliant in that they built slots for Forks from a forklift into the speaker. So you drive the Forks into the speaker. It’s now rigid on the Forks. You pull it out of the truck, you drive it in a position, you take it up in the air, and you turn off the forklift. Congratulations. You’re raised Hong. From logistics point of view, it was amazing. The sound quality could probably be debated. It’s still innovative for the time.

Believe it or not, the first place that I worked for when I moved to the Bay Area had some. They got them second hand somewhere from someone else.

Right. Good times. The last time I was using them was like the amplification for NASCAR, where it’s really about vocal band blunt force SPL. It’s not exactly a nuanced show, and they want it cheap, so being able to rig it without a single hand or crew person helps that be a cheaper installation. It was a great fit for that.

Okay. Wesley Stern, what is their philosophy with main sub crossover? It seems to me that they let their subs low pass filter be much higher than other companies, well above where the main cabs high pass filter is, in most cases resulting in a lot of low midstymation. I really enjoy their systems and the perception this results in.

So he likes that bump in the crossover range. It’s a bit of a misnomer out there that d&b doesn’t allow you to mess with the crossover. We do, but in limited ways. We don’t allow you to actually visualize or just the slopes, but we give you buttons that allow you to tailor the crossover point. And this user is right in that the subs generally go higher in frequency response than most users prefer. We leave it available to you if that’s your approach. But depending on the subwoofer model, it will either have a button called 100 Hz or it will have a button called Infra. Both of these, they lower that low pass filter to cut out some of the upper base. 100 Hz is approximately 100 Hz. Infra is closer to 70 Hz, but changes based on the capabilities of that subwoofer so that you can throttle down the frequency response of that sub and let it focus on the real low stuff, which is more common these days. And Conversely, all of the high mid boxes have a button called Cut, which is a low cut, and it moves up the high pass to cut out some of the well end response at the top.

And between these two buttons, we have four options on how to run this crossover. We can have summation in the crossover point for additional power. We can carve it out to have a little bit less magnitude in the crossover point because maybe we just feel like it’s muddy in that room or with that mix or any combination thereof, and we just toggle the buttons until we like how it sounds. And we have confidence that we haven’t skewed the phase response or made some kind of other compromise because the predetermined friendly buttons that are still compatible and you don’t have to think about it.

Vladimir says subwoofer drive sizes and Uses Is there a trend of releasing 21 in subs, not just from DB, but other brands, too? Did the needs of events change to drive this trend?

I don’t think the needs of the events have changed, but DB has gone to generally larger drivers’than we did in the past, and this is because I think it’s less about the needs of the act and more about the capabilities of the speakers. That’s the thing that’s changed when we had the J series, the kind of gold standard d&b large format PA the tops could go down to. I think it was like 90 Hz or something. Then we had a J sub that was 318s and a J infra that was 321s. A lot of people ran the systems without 21s because the three by 18s with enough low end. Personally, I think once you hear one of these big PA with even just a single infra, it’s hard to use it without because that extra low stuff really feels good. But the reason why there were two models of subs was because the 18 inch drivers could go fast and be high impact, but they couldn’t go very low, whereas the 21s could go really low, but they couldn’t go fast and be high impact. And what’s changed is voice coil technology, particularly with the SL series.

That whole voice coil magnet structure is really reengineered and requires a higher voltage to the voice coil, which the d&b amps are capable of providing. And all of this, in turn, allows the main speaker that goes down to 45 Hz. So we got rid of the upper base requirements out of the Subaru and allowed a 21 inch driver that now has full power even at full excursion, which means as that speaker pushes out, it still has full power to get pulled back to its neutral position as quickly as possible. So now the 21 inch driver can go faster, like an 18 with higher impact, which allows us to be like, oh, the 21 can now do the upper base and the lower base with more impact than the J series could do total. This is a huge win. Let’s go with the 21s. So now that SL sub with 321s not only has the same frequency response as a J sub and a J infra put together, but has almost identical SPL output as a JCB and a junk put together, but weighs less than a J infra by itself.

Okay, so there were some rumblings on Facebook. It seemed like there were a couple of people who are like something about they don’t like d&b phase response and they’re like something about it makes them upset. And our assessment of that is maybe this trend in the market towards flatlines magnitude response phase response. And so I just wanted to give you the floor on that for a minute to maybe address what you think are some of these preconceptions.

Yeah, I think we’ve seen a big marketing push from some manufacturers who are making their face response quote more linear. That is to be like more of a flat line without wraps in the phase response. And DB is not doing this. We’re not into it. We don’t like it. The reason there is we don’t really believe that you’re hearing much of a difference. In the end, we think it’s more of a visual improvement than a Sonic improvement. And there’s no such thing as a free lunch and audio. So just because we can preemptively mess up the signal in exactly the opposite way that the speaker is going to mess it up doesn’t mean we get that for free and doesn’t mean that we don’t incur other side effects in the process. And the main obvious one when it comes to fixing phase response is latency. I think Meyer has a really cool product called the Blue Horn that has a very flat phase response on like 50 Hz or something. And it’s very cool. But as a necessary compromise there, that speaker takes 50 milliseconds for sound to come out 50, right? Chris from Rationale says, yeah, if you want the base to come out the same as the high frequency, you need to think of it like a restaurant.

If the high frequency is your entree, the midrange is your appetizer and the base is your cocktail, you can have them all at once. You just need the kitchen to keep your cocktail and keep your appetizer until the entree is ready. And so same thing with F IR filters and fixing phase. Right? We need to make the high frequency wait, and then we need to make that mid frequency wait until the low frequency is ready to come out of that frame, and then we can align it. And then you end up with 50 milliseconds of latency, which for Bluehorn is totally fine because that is a post production studio environment product where latency isn’t an issue because it’s all playback. A concert, on the other hand, is a different story. That Snare drum already stopped by the time 50 milliseconds goes by. Maybe there’s situations where you could argue that’s, okay, and that latency is still good, but it does come back to my earlier point to the d&b amps have all the ability to make flat phase response right now as is and we could fix it. It takes one of our DSP people like 5 minutes.

It’s not hard. But then that speaker on a D 80 will sound different than the same speaker on an old D twelve and the world of change. And in the end, we don’t really think. We think if we did two versions of the same speaker and we AB them. One had flat phase response, the other one didn’t that you wouldn’t pick the right one if asked to in a blind test.

Nick, where is the best place for people to keep up with you and follow your work?

You can find me on social Nick makes it louder on Instagram, see some pictures of some d&b rigs, a whole bunch of soundscape systems. Otherwise, feel free to send me an email. You can send an email to support us at Dbaudio and just say hey Nick, I had a question about that thing you were talking about or tell me more about this. Anybody anywhere in the world can send an email to [email protected] tell them where you live. That email will get sent to your local support team in your time zone in your native language. Also we have a ton of tutorial [email protected] Everything from software use to wreaking and hey come and say Hi see me at a trade show if those ever start up in postcode come say Hi otherwise you’d be on the internet bar. Yeah. If you bring up the Tiki bar thing to me at a trade show there’s a good chance you’ll end up drinking Tiki drinks on the d&b credit card.

Well, Nick mail. Jerry, thank you so much for joining me on Sound Design Live.

Thanks, Nathan. So much fun.

Gradient vs Delta Subwoofer Array

By Nathan Lively

How does a 6-element inverted gradient stack compare with an equally sized delta subwoofer array?

I interviewed the creator of the Delta Array recently and he mentioned how similar it is to the gradient. I decided to see for myself.

Coverage Shape

Forward Aspect Ratio

For a short demo of FAR please see One Simple Tool to Find the Right Size Speaker for Any Space.

FAR = depth / width
deltaFAR = 26 / (13*2) = 1
gradientFAR = 26.15 / 23 = 1.14

30 / deltaFAR = 30
30 / gradientFAR = 26.38

Have you tried the Delta Array in the field? What were your results? Let me know in the comments.

Rog and Nathan’s 5-hour Show about End-fire vs Gradient Arrays

By Nathan Lively

Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play or Stitcher.

Support Sound Design Live on Patreon.

In this episode of Sound Design Live, I talk with the the creative director at Void Acoustics, Rog Mogale. We discuss building an R&D lab in China, 200 mph motorcycles to Tibet, and gradient vs end-fire subwoofer arrays.

I ask:

  • What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to Void speakers?
  • FB
    • Kyriakos Papadopoulos 
      • Where can we find the second part of his subwoofer arraying guide?
      • And what are his thoughts on gradient configurations?  I’d like to know his subwoofer system design approach regarding the use of gradient configuration. Reasons to use, trade offs like Impact and headroom reduction, band pass behavior. And if he has a preference on gradient or end fire or a mix of them!
    • Stuball Scramble How do the aesthetics of his cabinet designs affect the acoustic designs? Does an acoustic design goal come first on a given project, or an aesthetic one, and what compliments and conflicts arise?
    • Gui Wise can you make him talk about his SuperScooper Mogale 18″?? The Idea and history behind this for this design, his thoughts about it in quite briefly!
    • Nathan Short Ask him about running his racing motorcycles at 200+ mph on the unused superhighways in the edges of Tibet near China a long time ago.
Rog Mogale

If I can’t get everyone dancing, I’ll never mix again.

Rog Mogale

Notes

  1. All music in this episode by Harper’s Jar.
  2. A Practical Guide to Bass Arrays, Arcline: Design Considerations and Practical Implications, System Planning For Dance Venues
  3. Speaker Plans
  4. Quotes
    1. I’m the only person who’s hearing actually gets better every single year.
    2. You are doing the artist a disservice if you don’t understanding what they’re doing.
    3. Music can change people. It put’s you in a place where you are able to learn and change.
    4. If you don’t know why you’re doing this and who you’re serving, just get out. Don’t do it.
    5. If the audience isn’t that big, I like to toe the line arrays in to avoid using so much fill.
    6. I’d like to see more systems distributed. Nothing should ever face back towards the DJ.
    7. I’ve tried to unlearn everything I’ve known.
    8. I’m not a lover of end-fire.
    9. I’m a gradient lover. Give me lots of bins. If you haven’t got enough bins you can do a space. Just make sure you are in 1/4 wavelength center to center and the highest frequency is 80 or 90Hz.
    10. I consider myself as an artist that has a good founding in acoustics and physics.
    11. There’s a small mod for the Super Scooper that not many people know about. If you block off the two top left and right chambers, it works better.
    12. A well modded eminence scoop with double bracing is king.
    13. That thing can rip your life apart. It can change you.
    14. It should almost be a law that you shouldn’t work in this industry unless you can play a musical instrument and have some theory in music.
    15. If I can’t get everyone dancing on the dance floor and including in the toilets, and you can check, I’ll never mix again.

Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated. Please let me know if you discover any errors.

I’m Nathan Lively, and today I’m joined by the creative director at Void Acoustics, Rog Mogale. Rog, welcome to Sound Design Live.

Good morning, Nathan, and welcome to Rog and Nathan’s show about end fire vs. gradient arrays. And we’re only going to talk five hours.

Yes. So we’re going to talk for five hours about environ versus gradient.

But before we do that, Rog, tell me about some of your favorite, maybe one of your favorite test tracks, like after you get a sound system set up, what’s one of the first things you’ll want to listen to to to kind of get a sense of it that?

Well, that really depends, because what are you playing? Who you playing to? Are you doing demos to people? So which scenario are you referring to? Because I can think of about eight different things where I would set a system up to play to people. Sure.

Let’s let’s think of a scenario. So let’s say you’re doing a Medium-Sized Club install and this is just for you. You’re there alone, right?

OK, yeah. I would play, obviously the style and genre that the club is going to play. You know, if it’s an all out dance club or techno club, then I play something that’s obviously going to reflect what will be played and nothing too good. You know, I quite like some of those kind of tracks were really screaming the vocal kind of leads and, you know, you wouldn’t normally play, but it’s what’s going to be played.

So you have to allow for that and set up accordingly. It’s very, very different. If I’m doing if I’ve just set the system up and the nightclub owner and all the staff turn up for the first time, then, yeah, I’m pulling out nice recordings and yeah, hopefully getting them all in tears, which I’ve done a couple of times. That’s good business.

Yeah. So that’s interesting. So do you do a little bit of part of your research as to kind of find out what music they’ll be playing, they’re what they’re expecting to hear. And that way when you do that first demo, you have something that that you know that they’re familiar with. Yeah, of course. Yeah.

With everything in life, you do your homework, you never, ever get caught off guard. So I need to know who who’s going in now, you know, what kind of night support and what kind of styles and. Yeah, yeah, I’ll do my homework and that’s the way you go forward with it. Is that a curiosity?

Do you ever notice do you notice any trends in the music? Like is there one artist or one track that, you know, everyone is going to be happy with or.

No, it was always going to come up when you ask people what they’re playing difficult and in a club world? Not really. I mean, I see it on forums commented that the rude sandstorm is often one that’s kind of people you know, you put up a post and go, what what would be the first track you play on that? And you often get that. It’s a fairly typical. I’ve never played it, to be honest. OK, yeah, so that’s the thing, no go, that’s actually really cool to hear that, you know, people’s tastes are fairly eclectic or like changing often enough that there’s not one thing you just always play.

Yeah, it’s not like in a demo for a live system where, you know, certain tracks and Hotel California and all the other boring stuff is going to be expected, which I won’t do, you know, come on, show me how great if you are by just playing the same track as everyone else.

OK, so yeah, I know that everyone’s a reference and we all want to hear something we think we know. But now there’s there’s other options.

So how did you get your first job in audio. Like what was one of your first paying gigs.

So do you want the short answer here, which is kind of like two minutes, or do you want the life history until that point?

I don’t want the whole life history. I’m sort of curious, like that moment when you were young or whenever it happened and audio was interesting. But then also you got money for it. Like, I feel like that’s that’s a special time. Like the first time you actually pay money for your first record, you know, that’s like you’re really taking agency of a thing.

So, yeah. So I’m kind of interested in that that moment in your life, what happened there and how did it turn into a job for the first time? I’m not sure I’ve even been ever paid for anything yet.

It’s OK, know, I mean, obviously it was always in me music.

I mean, it’s not something you choose. I’m against people that, you know, choose to being something it chooses you. It’s. Yeah, you just got to be there for it. And if you’re open enough and it will come and it will find you and it will use you and it will give you a good time and all the tools you need to do it.

So yeah. So first got into a very young age.

I didn’t hear very well as a kid at school. I was the kid at the front of the class with the big headphones and the things swung around my neck. So really I kind of always wanted to make everything louder, I suppose.

Sure, sure. Glorified from that.

Really. So yeah, hearing got better after about 10 or 11 and I kind of could start to speak a bit then as well, which was handy.

And actually my hearing gets better every year. I have it tested every year and I’m the only person that’s hearing actually gets better every single year my age. There should be nothing over like ten K and there’s just loads.

So you’re going to live forever.

Yeah, well my is well it’s just been like a purple kind of cushion in a class somewhere. So yeah. The first time I really kind of did it for real I suppose was I did like being at school in the late seventies just before I left school. And then in the last year of that I was doing a bit of sound as well. The guy who did send a sixth form a left. So I was doing the kind of sound and the lighting for the stage in the school.

I was and it wasn’t wasn’t a very big place.

And yeah, it just kind of felt right. Making noise felt better than kind of illuminating things anyway, you know, it just felt good. So I left school and I got a job on a building site doing civil engineering and I started going to university for to learn civil engineering did that for two years.

And yeah, I really just knew that wasn’t wasn’t my path. It was just, you know, you get that got is systemic out there. And if there is and I don’t do it or find it, I’m I don’t regret this. And I got to that point. And when I get to that point, I just walk away. So I just walked away from it and I didn’t look back. It wasn’t what I’m used for.

So so. Yeah, but in the evenings and weekends, I was kind of doing a few kind of discos. A friend of mine had like a really bad disco and I thought, yeah, I’m going to build some speakers. And just because I wanted to and I could and I just thought, yeah, be a cool thing to do. So I think it was some of the ones from the early feygin catalog, maybe the 115, you know, W bin and the Y Ben and things like this.

And although actually even even in the early 80s, in my last year at school, I was in woodwork building speakers as well at that early. Yeah, I really wanted to I mean, two years old, my mother got pictures of me, you know, with like cardboard boxes of first drawn on them.

OK, it’s a string. It is even like free Amazon amplifiers. It’s getting that technical even like two, three years old.

So. Any evenings was doing this disco with my friend and yeah, it just was good, and then some kind of bands, friends of mine said, wow, yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve got a gig coming up, like a pub or small club. Would you like to do the sound? And I’m like, Yeah, why not? So I started doing that. I got a small mixer, 12 channel mix and multicore some mix and stands and yeah that’s that was I supposed.

Yes, that was mid mid eighties and that was the first paid thing I did really. The discos and the live work with, with the system I built.

Sure. So that was your first, like sort of commercial opportunity. I’ll make speakers for my friend who’s building this disco or this manager.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually I would it wasn’t his I supplied it to him. It, it was.

Yeah I you had a rental company from 1985 onwards. It was called Sound Facilities and.

Yeah. So that’s just it kind of took off a bit and after about two or three years stop doing the discos. Just, just didn’t, just wasn’t really into I was really kind of into the live things and doing a small few festival stages outside and doing lots of kind of Pumbaa work and no nightclubs at this time. And yeah, it just took off.

And then I did a couple of bands that were kind of break in at the time and that was useful because, you know, a lot of, you know, and a lot of music industry people would turn up at concerts and gigs.

And you’re using your systems. Yes. Yeah. By then I actually designed my, my, my. The first time frame for city system there is blue with yellow writing. There’s some pictures of I can send you pictures of speech on the web.

Sure. Yeah. I kind of started to I suppose, get noticed.

Yes. Guys not doing too bad and mix. So a couple of companies in Bristol and which actually remember the name of it all. My memory is really bad. Said Would you like to come and do a bit of freelance mixing, you know, for some bigger shows than that? And I said, yeah, I’d kind of love to. So I went over and kind of took took a while, you know, some days and afternoons to learn the desks and all the board and stuff like that, because it was quite, quite a step up from what I was using.

And yeah. Really got into it and went and did did loads and loads of shows then then then did some work in London. This must have been from about eighty seven, eighty, eighty nine around that time I was in London and yeah it just took off then I was just getting work from, you know, loads of big bands and loads of big artists and then went over to the States and did some bits in the early nineties.

Yeah. I’ve just been really lucky. I’ve worked with many, many people in the industry, but I’ve worked with people that I really respected.

I’ve never you know, you do people are this justice if you don’t like or don’t understand what they’re about. I have one of the biggest, biggest artist in 87. His management rang me up. He was American guy.

I can’t say I work. I say.

But he, you know, top two, three performers ever that that big it wasn’t Michael Jackson, but it was under that, but not it was close in scale of things. And he he just rings up. It was all telephones in those days, no mobiles. And my ceramic thing with the van Dila. I’ve heard of it. Yeah. Yeah. Picked out. You picked it up and he’s.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We’ve had some of your work and you come highly recommended. We’ve got a UK tour and starting off at Wembley or somewhere and would you, would you like to do the house for this. And I said well to be honest I just don’t really like the artist. I called him by now. I know. I just don’t really like him. I just don’t I just don’t do it. And sorry, put the phone down.

But because, you know, he deserved and everyone deserves to have the best they can.

And, you know, it really needed someone that wanted that gig so badly that would have died for it. And just then the ultimate mix and it would have just been work for me. And sure, it’s not enough.

It’s a disservice to the artist. So so I’ve turned down lots of work where I could have done it would have been an easy gig. But it’s I’m not connecting with I’m not doing them justice. So, yeah, I work that well and everything.

No, it’s great that he’s there. I mean, we like to sometimes get a little arrogant and think that we’re the best at everything and really we’re only the, you know, good at a small number of things. And we should really focus on those things. And those include, you know, working on the music that we really love. We’re not going to be the best at working on music that we don’t care for.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I see a lot of it and especially recently creep in the industry. And it’s where, you know, people have really forgotten why we do stand and why we do lifesize and. We do clubs or whatever, and we do it for people’s enjoyment and we do it to make a difference. I say the music can change people. You don’t listen to an album become a different person. You don’t go to a concert and become a different person.

But what it does do is it puts you in a place where you’re able to learn and change. So it indirectly does change you. And I’m all for that. I’m just here to use what I’ve been given to give people a good time and just turn them on and make it as best enjoyable experience as I can. And, you know, that’s the reason people work as medics or paramedics or doctors or firemen. You know, they’re there for the people.

But occasionally in the industry, you just see people who are doing it for them. They’re walking around. They’re kind of it’s all ego. And it’s just like just just get out right now and just stop doing that. It’s just not right. If you don’t know why you’re doing this and who wear here and who we are serving, just don’t get why it’s such a big injustice. So I see that creeping in a bit where it’s know this superstar MCS, engineers and things, you know, and it’s like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, don’t go that way.

So speaking of who you’re serving, why do you think you ended up here talking to me today and working as a civil engineer? Is it just because you hated it so much that you were kind of looking for anything else?

Or was there a moment where you were like, OK, I need to make a decision for whether or not I’m going to be happy for the rest of my life or whatever? Can you think of how did that how did that turn out? When was that moment? Yeah, that yeah.

And it was well it was it was the, you know, being two years in the unit doing the civil engineering kind of degree and being out on the building sites. It was the second winter that hit me hard. It really did.

And it never felt right. It just didn’t feel like the thing. It was the thing kind of I wanted to do, but it wasn’t the thing I should have been done and it really was.

And so, yeah, after two years, I’d just had enough. And I was like I say, in the evenings doing systems and doing a few live events and discos and things, and that made more difference.

I could really see what how that could affect people and the difference and the change that could bring. So it was just one day a lesson, as I said that before I came to that regrette point, you know, if I on going to regret so I might. Bristo accent comes out every now and again.

It took me years to try and hide it, but it just does come out occasionally. Yeah. SAT in the classroom and. Yeah. Am I going to regret not just sitting here for the rest of my life and just been on building sites and you know, I mean where there’s this other side that I can do and I just so want to do it, but I don’t really know how. But so I just walked out, I walked halfway through the lesson and I just quit my job and I said, I just have to have to make this, you know, I have to make something out of audio and I have to make a name and I have to give with it and change things.

So that that’s that was the point. The real point. It was just really walking out of a lecture and just just no more of this. No, it’s not. I suppose I was lucky. I had a feeling it wasn’t right. You know, you are told the way to go if you’re open and receptive. And it just took, you know, for me to get that out of my life, which would probably 18 or 19 to actually say no more.

No, this is not right. I’ve got to do something else. So I did. And yeah, I’m lucky I did. It’s been brilliant, however.

Right. So I want to know, what are some of the biggest or most common mistakes you see people making who are new to avoid speakers, and I’m really just using the word void because, you know, that’s what you’re associated with now. But you’ve been working on systems and helping people with systems for a long time. And so you get a lot of support calls. You’re helping people with their designs. You’re going to see their installations and saying, oh, you did this, this and this.

And this could be a better way to do that. So I’m I’m just curious if there are any trends that you’ve seen over your years of working on systems that you that people just consistently do or like the kind of questions that you that you get all the time?

OK, so I can split that into, obviously, because we do talking products as well into touring and into life. Obviously, you have to have to be careful here not to upset everyone or that everyone.

I don’t care, to be honest. It’s it’s a really, really good crew of people that use our products. We’re not as careful as some some other companies that really vet who uses their product and literally tells them what time to get up and what toilet roll to use. We just don’t sit on people that that much because, you know, if you haven’t got that much trust or someone don’t use them, you know, there’s got to be able to get out there and just do a good job.

And luckily, you know, we have that. So I don’t really see many mistakes. And if there are that be pulled up by other people, we have two or three forums for power users. And, you know, people put up what they’ve been working on and people just, you know, come up with suggestions and things like one thing life wise I see often done and I can’t say it’s wrong, but I would do it differently is OK.

So if you’ve got a very, very wide audience outside festival, this isn’t really practical.

But if the audience isn’t that big, I quite like to toe the line or raising quite a bit to avoid using so much fail. I see people use hell of a lot of fill on top of the front from base tax, you know, side Phil’s pointing at the audience. It’s just too too many sources from, you know, arriving at different times for me. I like to keep things really simple.

If you can just do two hangs, a one in the middle, you know, and then if that means you’ve got to have a bit of extra help and, you know, then do that. So that’s that’s one thing that that a lot of people kind of like I say, you don’t get it wrong because if you’ve got a really wide audience, then I understand you’ve got to hang flat going outwards to cover it also with clubs.

Yeah, this is quite a controversial one. I mean, I massively trust the people who who who do are clubs and write them off and help set them up. Know from Germany, Nathan Shaw and the US and many others around the world, tokie Japan. So, you know, I really trust them. And I’m in such a lucky position because I don’t need to go out anymore and write clubs off or check things or set things up. You know, they have as good an air as I do and that’s probably better in some cases.

So yeah, I can totally trust them. I’d like to see more systems done distributed. I, I’m not a lover of four stacks when when you have especially mid tops, nothing should ever, ever face back to the dB. It’s the same as doing an outside festival, getting all the delay stacks and turn them towards the stage. You would not do that, but it’s done in clubs and yeah, I hate it.

I really do. I like running mid tops.

You find the zero point, you know, the front of the stage and you run everything, you delay everything back, you calculate it first and then you find tune by just just for the feeling really. And I find it really it gives the deejay a lot easier job and it really kind of brings everyone closer to the front and it brings everyone the same experience because they’re all kind of here and the same thing from from the same point.

So it’s interesting. You have a point of focus and some sort of a sonic image instead of it just coming from all around you.

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I know that’s done.

And there are some very famous ones that people have done quite recently, but they were very long flops. So the real rare delays and if they’re told in enough, you know, they’re probably not going to be heard at the front of of, you know, at the front of the club. But other than that, if it’s a square club, I just wanted to I really just advise everyone to go stupid and all the clubs. I’ve actually done myself like shock.

Thirty nine in Bangkok. We’ve done distributed systems. And to me it just makes the whole place just party about. More and a bit more united, it just really brings everyone together, I guess, tell me what you mean by that, because to me, just distributed just means more speakers. But in this case, we were talking about how they’re aimed. And so you’re using more speakers to to fill the space. But instead of them being around the room kind of pointed in towards some center point, they’re still all using the stage or the dB as their sonic image and then pointed away from that.

Yeah, totally.

This is exactly the same as you do in a live concert with Stacks. It’s just that you’re doing this in a room and you’re just delaying as you as you go back. Normally, you wouldn’t need to do this if you can get a big enough array along the, you know, under or in or around the deejay console, then, you know, the set will go all the way. So you really just fill in the middle top as it goes back.

That’s that’s what you’re doing.

But, yeah, I don’t know why people more people don’t do it, because it’s really just. Yeah, I really like being in clubs.

It gives a focal point, you know, if not if you’ve got kind of sand behind you into the side of you, you’re a bit where’s it coming from?

You know, so well, you’ve done all these great projects, have these beautiful speakers. And I thought maybe to sort of give a more well rounded story about you in the short time that we have together, you could talk about maybe one of the biggest and most painful mistakes that you’ve made on the job and how you recovered. Oh, yeah.

I don’t I don’t personally tend to make many mistakes. I know. That’s like, wow. But, you know, I go and prepared and I do my homework on everything because the performer, the deejay, the artist who is the band, whoever’s going to be on that stage, you know, it’s their moment and they’ve put everything into it. So I’m not going to leave anything unturned. So I’m going to do everything in my power to make my bet right.

And I don’t want to lose face. So normally not many problems. One big problem I had that was out of my control and this didn’t go well was I was doing a culture clash in London, I think must have been about twenty thousand people. Twenty two thousand people. We had Floyd Klein twelve, which is we no longer make that product has been superseded by our Klein and we did the Sanjak. And I thought this is probably a bit underpowered.

We had probably fourteen or sixteen aside and an additional hangs from the balconies. And I thought it’s probably a bit underpowered, but we’re quite aware of it. It’s enough, it’ll be OK. And we are below to perform all the same checks. You know, had nine vocal mikes, Ramses on the opening act. So this is quite a difficult, you know, shape to mix anyway. So what I find out later is that the amps for the mid tops haven’t been linked there, only one on one channel.

So you’ve got the top cap, then the second, the third one down, then the fifth one down. Every other cap wasn’t wasn’t working.

And then someone because I wouldn’t normally go and check that. You just normally assume that that’s been done and that’s that’s how it is.

So the system came on and it must have been about plus twenty five dB from about 250 hertz up and everything, just fed back at like one hundred fifty two hundred.

And when does that happen at me during the show it came back on. Well no this was the first number because I was now you know, I’d done all the RTA and done everything on the system with half the work. And I now had a full system, all the cabs working the first that comes on. And that’s just it’s just I haven’t just mixed up the whole thing in seconds with nine emcees and another. Yeah.

So, yeah, that was and it was televised.

Yes. I was just looking at me and go and what the hell’s going on.

And I’m like I’m just dying. I really. Well how did you come back. What. You just remix it. You just grabbed some controls and sucked, you know, put some bypasses on you just get on with it. And luckily after the first number, it was it was almost back to where it was. But again, that was out of my control. So it’s but that was a difficult one. Yeah. Yeah.

Some of my competitors were stood next to me as well because they had some of the bands to me. I really lost face that day.

What was there was another bit to it as well.

But we know that was pretty much it kind of how you recovered. Like I’m also curious, like what happened afterwards. Like did you.

Did you. Obviously, you didn’t lose all your work and never worked again like you had conversations and there were probably producers or even promoters who are like, what happened? And then what did you say to them?

Well, they just had the technical and yeah, it just went wrong. And I’m really sorry, you know, and. Yeah, yeah. But as you can tell, you know, from from four or five minutes in, everything was fine. So it was just, just, you know, and the show went really well. Everyone loved it. And I got back to the next one.

OK. So it was.

Yeah it was. Yeah. But there’s a few. Yeah. YouTube videos of it and you can see how bad it is.

All right. Well I have a handful of questions here that were sent in from Facebook and some of them are pretty broad in general. So we can kind of see how well we can do with them. So. So we’ll give it a shot. So Kyriakos knows that I never pronounce his name right. Sorry about that. Where can we find the second part of his subwoofer, Irangate more?

Well, as you probably read or probably this morning before you got up, you didn’t have much time, Nathan. I did. The first base array, the practical guide to base raising phase in an eight. And at the time, there really wasn’t anything kind of like it. There was nothing that showed you, you know, how the response is going to look.

So, you know, also, we we had some big shows coming up as well, which is why the the the area the I think it’s 50 meters by 25 or something or 30 meters is actually the area of the concert hall we had booked. So I just did lots of simulations just to see what was actually going to work the best at some concerts that I knew we had coming up. And so but then I just for a while I’ll just share this, because there’s nothing there’s nothing like this.

There’s nothing out there. So it was early.

Some of the some of the bits got taken up quite seriously.

The Martin Audio MLA system from 2009 onwards for about five or six years, used the Delta, Delta Arae, the I, the I outlined in The Practical Guide and the Tuesday at Glastonbury every year.

And it worked well.

It did work well.

It’s it’s so I’m I’m a fan of more gradient. Definitely. I know that’s a question for sure.

Yes, that’s cool. And and I that was definitely one of my texts that I read it a long time ago when I didn’t understand any of it. But I do remember the Delta and I was like, oh, this is interesting. So for people who don’t know and haven’t read the guide from thousand eight, would you mind just describing the Delta array and and and what you feel like it’s practiced best practical purposes.

OK, so it’s quite a lot like what you would call now like inverted CSA. So it’s to Cabinet’s forward. So how you’re doing and you stand him up, right.

You do, you do two forward, one back to forward one back. And the rare one obviously is fais adjusted and has a delay. So it’s very much like but with the Delta Arae you actually physically move the bass, been the rearward facing bass cabinet, you actually physically move it.

So this is different than an inverted gradient stack that people might be familiar with.

Actually, what you’re doing is you’re creating a bigger surface area and so you’ve got a bit more directionality. That’s actually what it’s doing.

So, yeah, but it kind of if you’ve got a long enough array, it kind of works just having it flat. There is not much point and staggering.

You know, the redwood facing. What does it do.

It just puts more at the front and gets rid of any lobes. If you if you’re doing a left and right stack, obviously you can have a massive power power rally in the middle, which, you know, 500 people really got off on and everyone else is kind of where’s the bass? So it gets rid of that on stage.

Levels are going to be a lot quieter, you know, so for low end. So, yeah, it’s why not. And also it couples cabinet actually makes more use of what you have. You haven’t got things fighting each other or you know, everything is working as one. So you’ve got a game now which is always worth having. But to the original question, where is part two? Part two never really happened because it was going to be about horns and things like that.

And then I looked into it and it’s just so complex, you know, like, you know, to MAPP horns. It’s so easy. To just have a reflex, it’s so predictable, it’s you know, you can get the fun of it, you just know what’s what it’s going to do. But homes are just really quite unpredictable. And especially in multiples, things start changing with larger homes. And so it’s very, very difficult to predict.

And I really kind of gave up.

But what did happen is part two came out well, it wasn’t part two. It was a kind of side kick off from it. In 2010, I wrote System Tips for dance venues, which I think is also on the Net and the PDF that went into more elaborate, more elaborate Khalaji and false tax systems to stack either side of the dance floor circular with a circular D.J.. So of all the subs facing outwards, which actually proved to be the best.

So yeah, that that was it.

But it didn’t go into homes, but it did elaborate on on the joy of part one. So part two is. Yeah, the system tips for dance venues.

Cool. So Quercus also wants you to talk about gradient configurations. And I tried to get him to be a little bit more specific about exactly what he wants to know. And I said, well, what do you want to know about it and what specific questions? And he said, I’d like to know his suboffices design approach regarding the use of Khadir configuration reasons to use trade offs like impact and head room reduction, bad past behavior, and if he has a preference on gradient, in fire or a mix of them.

So we don’t really have time to do like a whole like three hour course and answering all these questions, which I’m sure you have a lot of insight into. So how can we how can we talk about this question? What do you think Cariocas wants to know from you about gradient arrays?

I really have to start off by saying that really you’re talking to the wrong guy about it, because I’ve over the years, I’ve I’ve become more like a kind of jazz musician where I’ve kind of tried to unlearn everything I’ve known because there’s so constrictive. And, you know, they set you in a very, very defined way. And I’ve kind of tried to go more free form because all my work has become design as the companies become bigger. We have, you know, support staff and we have staff to do, you know, help with installs, layouts and festival system planning.

We have this. So I don’t really get to do that anymore. So I used to, but that was probably 10 years ago, so that I’ve not really been in the field. And yeah, I go to concerts, I mix things, but I don’t really plan the systems and I certainly don’t sit there for weeks on end just just running simulations anymore. If I’ve got the time to do that, I should be designing because you can get a lot of people to say a computer and do predictions, you know, but you can get very, very few people to do what I do.

And so that’s another thing I’ve realised my time is valuable and you just capitalize on what you’re good at. You just don’t sit there running simulations or analysis, because are the people that can do that actually quite like it? I don’t particularly like it. I really like designing stuff. And so that’s that’s where I’m at. I’m not a lover of fire. It’s I.

Space, I don’t know, we don’t get to do, you know, massive, massive stadiums and so we don’t you know, we can be doing three or four stages at Notting Hill Carnival, which has two million people over the weekend. But because there’s so many systems, it’s quite small and there’s just not room for fire.

There really just isn’t not enough real estate. No, no. I’ve looked into it and I’ve looked at people have had problems of blobbing and it doesn’t look the cleanest kind of at the front. And I’m really just a lover of just, you know, bins as wide as the audience everyone’s in. You know, if you need it a bit wider, you can start to put delays on the ends. Yep. Reverse, you know, in a gradient fashion or a CSA and invert so that you you get, you know, on stage noise levels.

And that works for me. That really, really works. And I don’t really think you can take that any further. Some of the void rental partners have been doing, like what they call Delta arrays now, which are kind of big, huge Vee’s. And to me, it doesn’t really matter because you can really make the frequencies for so long. You know, you can make any MAPP of cabinets in any kind of shape, some somewhere and go that direction.

So but I just yeah, I’m a great lover and just give me lots of beans. And if you haven’t got enough then you can space. You can you can, you can do a space. Just just make sure you know you’re on quarter wavelengths into the center and yeah. The highest frequency you say your 90 hertz and yeah. That, that for me works. Yeah.

I want to move on but I feel like for people there are probably people who are listening who may have not heard this rule before of the limit of spacing quarter wavelength. So could you just explain that a little bit? What is the highest frequency operating range I should be looking at to calculate this? And then how do I do that?

OK, I mean, ideally and this this also applies for when you’re designing a line or a cabinet, you’re trying for obviously a center to center spacing of quarter wavelength.

But that, especially with H.F., is just very, very difficult to get.

And I’m some mid-range as well. So, you know, a half a half wavelength is in my ear, still sounds OK. And actually lower frequencies of wavelengths are still OK. I don’t mind a wavelength if push comes to shove. I you know, so you’re talking quite a distance then from if you take 100000 below one hundred and ten below, you know, you can you don’t you need to you fill everything up along the whole front. So yeah.

I’m not too much of a stickler on this quarter wavelength. It’s, it helps but it’s, it’s impractical.

OK, so you’re saying people should do whatever they need to to get the line length that they need for the coverage that they need. Yes.

Yeah, well, like going over one wavelength spacing and that’s not edge to edge. That is actually drive a center of drive at the center of drive. But ACTC, that’s not as your cabinet build this thing. I put the cabinets two minutes apart. But no, that’s so it’s a bit closer than we think, but well, depending on cabinet, if it’s a home then you assume, you know, and the full frontal, you know, area is the radiation area of the home that you can assume that it is to the edge, OK?

So there was a time in my life when I was living in Portugal and I was working at the National Theatre and my predecessor or a guy, a colleague who used to work for the National Theatre before I got there, eventually left and became a distributor for void acoustics in Portugal in the Lisbon area. And that was my first introduction to them. So he really liked them. And I think he he told us about them when he came by the theater one day to help us, like, install some new antenna cables or something like that.

And he may have given us some marketing materials, but I remember the first time seeing those and it really dawned on me that my entire life I sort of understood that people wish that speakers could be invisible and that’s why they’re sort of black.

And then they ended up they end up getting put into all sort of weird places because people don’t want to see them, at least in terms of most things that aren’t just concert, whereas just focused on the audio, but you still have to see the performers. So so it was it was eye opening for me to see this brand where they seem to go the opposite direction and they seem to say, hey, we’re not going to make our speakers invisible, we’re going to do the opposite.

We’re going to make them visible. They’re going to be so beautiful that you’re going to want to see them and you’re going to want to put them where everyone can see them. Now, they’re like part of the show. And I’m just saying all this story as a preamble to stubbles question, which is how do the aesthetics of his cabinet designs affect the acoustic designs? Does an acoustic design goal come first on a given project or an aesthetic one? And what components in conflicts arise?

OK, so, yeah, you’ve just highlighted why, you know, I went with things that weren’t just black boxes because it was quite evident in the late 90s when I first set up the successor to Void Acoustics, which we called big mouth speaker systems. And I was lucky to get some some work in the Caribbean, in Antigua and also around around England as well. And that was sort of a series called Static. It was all kind of wooden and it was bare wood and very, very difficult to make.

So, yeah, it just became really apparent the even lighting in clubs were looking kind of nice and artistic and kind of had some kind of sculpture. But then clubs were just spending millions on décor and it was just plush and it was looking really, really good. And then there was just really horrible black. Conover’s always in the corner, like trying to be hidden because it didn’t look good or it didn’t couldn’t make a statement. It should just be hidden.

So I thought, well, yeah, this just make something that looks nice and beautiful. And so, I mean, I don’t consider myself as a speaker designer. I consider myself as an artist who just as a really good finding in acoustics and physics, I’m you know, I come at it that way. We have far more to do with, like, how a top car manufacturer, you know, comes up with molds and, you know, for cars and things like that than we do traditional speaker companies.

You know, it’s so easy to get to the question.

There’s there’s two ways to do this. There’s either I come up with something just wacky, like in my head, and I have to then make it make a sound. Or the second way is I get a brief and.

There’s a second part to the brief MAPP, and that is the you want something to work so correctly that there is only one form it can actually take to do that. So that was Incubus. That was there was no brief. The brief was make everything couple, you know, and make everything completely.

One in that cabinet and that made top section make the twelve’s the French compression drive is the one or just some or become one or be within half wavelength and just, you know, and then have a bit of control over that with power shading and things like that. So that the form of that came because that to me was physically the only way all those transducers and horns could actually be mounted and set to accomplish that.

So that so Incubus wasn’t oh, let me come up with something that looks really, really groovy and then just try and make a sign that that was more like our motion. Our motion was just let me make something really, really nice. And now I’ve got to kind of worry about getting a good sound from it. But because it is or comical, Holmes is quite an easy thing to achieve. Try motion was another one that was. Yeah. You know, I just want to make a speaker that looks like that.

So so you draw it first, then you start running the simulations and then adjust things. And so but try emotion was difficult that, that, that.

Yeah. To get it to get a good sound out of that was very, very difficult. That’s, that’s not an easy thing to do. But actually it turned out because the, the horns were triangle the had a symmetrical vertical dispersion. So there’s less actually going at the top from the bottom. So you get less in shlubs, you get less cieling reflexion. So actually it kind of I didn’t actually even think about that at the time, but that was like a side effect.

That’s very useful. So, yeah, two ways. You know, the other thing is I get a brief and it’s OK. The Cabinet has to be this weight this size because it has to go in a truck. It has to have this I put this frequency response and things like that. And so then you really are. Yeah. You’re working to a spec. You’re working to a brief. A brief. And I can do that. I don’t mind doing that, but I do just like making weird shapes, make a good sound that there’s something about that.

But it’s not. I mean you could literally give me a piece of glass and it can make it can make a sound. I can make anything make a sound.

It’s not the problem.

Guillaume’s says. Can you make him talk about his super scooper Mogale 18 inch? And I said, what do you want him to say about it? And he said, the idea in history behind it.

And I said, OK, well, that’s going back to my old DIY days.

OK, when is that from?

So that was this was one of the earlier models that you that you designed and built. Yeah. Yeah. Are you aware of my speaker plans history. Oh, my God. Oh, you haven’t learned to speak of plans, just like the greatest forum in the whole universe. Oh, OK.

Well, no, it’s a DIY community and I started it in 2003, I think.

OK, so just just after I started avoid acoustics, which are.

Yeah, that’s a conflict of interest. But on one hand you come of trying to sell speakers for quite a bit of money and say that the best say this is proprietary information.

Yeah, yeah.

But I mean, a lot of that was the thing, you know, I helped and I still help out. You know, if people ask me questions, I’m now for it. I’m not like most designers that just hide it. Everything to them is a secret because, you know, you’re arming other people. And I really don’t kind of mind. It’s we you know, we’re all in this together.

So speak of plans. Yeah. Like I say, it’s the best kind of forum ever. So 2003 that started and yeah. That was yeah.

It was good.

And it still is good really, because it has people who come on and you know, you’re really encouraged to come up with your own designs and use base box pro or when, when, when ESD or nonresponse, things like that and just come up with your own thing.

You know, we really, really against copying and people coming on and kind of what and plans the things it’s like now just work out for yourself, for yourself. So I’m glad the forum is kept that and still is still keeps going that way. So yeah, I will talk about the super scoop. I’m not avoiding it.

So I started the forum because it really is a UK kind of answer to the US stuff that was going on. And that was pro sound news, was it. I think the forum there or live. Yeah.

Somewhere might have even been called Pro and live. Back then there was another one. There was the high efficiency speaker forum and it was just people like me and Bill.

What is this, the one that I like? I had Bill for Fritz IEMs. I don’t know.

I’m sorry, but crap memory. I remember Tom Dowling was on it as well, and there were a few when Barnham and there was, you know, Freddy and Jake, there was quite a few of us. And yeah, we kind of really started that whole DIY movement. This was this was 98, 99. We were on these forums. You know, a lot of it was on kind of old tripod kind of forum sites and just really, really Windows 95.

I think my machine was Batman, but it kind of worked.

And we started talking and yeah, we it was brilliant.

So I really wanted to they were all us sites and I really wanted to kind of the same thing, but but more kind of UK based and more European based. So that’s why I started Speaker plans and then it just.

I actually the more famous one with the 1850 hon, and I’m sure I did that before I started with acoustics, and I think Super Scooper is while the super scooper came out before voit acoustics as well. So they would have been about to phase in 2001. Yeah, I just wanted to do some designs that people could use for like free parties and just just for fun, really, and make a bit of a difference.

It was nothing really too serious. Yeah. I just that’s why I did it. It’s yeah.

It’s kind of in a way come back to bite me because yeah, I am in direct conflict, you know, it’s a conflict of interest trying to sell speakers and also having plans out there that stop people from buying.

But but to be honest, the people that are going to DIY built by and build are never going to buy. So you’ve not really lost a customer. And I think what I have done is I do get quite a bit of respect by people saying, wow, you know, you’re one of the only designers that will actually talk to people and actually will help and come back with a reply. And I think, you know, that that puts me in a bit of a stand on other people, really, because I do that to be a super scooper was just for dub and reggae.

Sound systems are used 1850 Mach one driver. And yeah, you need quite a few of them because it was it was a hyperbolic flare. So you need quite a few to build up quite a bit MAPP really. And yeah.

Well then we released a driver void release, a driver called the VAT 1000, which actually worked really, really well in it. And I had designed the super scoop before the driver came out. So I didn’t that was a pure fluke that we came out of a driver that just seemed to be the one that worked the best.

Eneko But but yeah. So there’s a mod. There’s a small mod you can do that not many people know about or anyone, and that is with some drivers. And you’re going to have to send this because, you know, I’m out of the loop with DIY, to be honest, bezoar 20 years ago now. So I don’t really know that there’s people that are still doing DIY every day and they’re in a much better position to advise what’s good people come to you and go, what’s the best DIY thing?

I might just go to a forum because you know that they really are aware of what’s happening and right at the forefront of it all.

And I’m not because I’m concentrating on the commercial side. So I forgot what I was going with that one.

But now the mind is completely different from other modes.

Yeah, the mods and the rockers and everything else.

So yeah, the front chamber is a bit too big. It’s a bit too big.

If you can put two bits of angled woods would at the if you can from the front the cabinet, you take the driver at the top, you need to block off in the rear chamber behind the driver. If you block off the two top left and right chambers, then it actually it works better with certain drivers to have a lot smaller front chamber. So, yeah, that one about a year after I designed it, but I never kind of put the mods, but I think a few people had worked it out well.

But yeah, it’s OK.

I really wanted something there. And also it was kind of slightly ego kind of thing as well. It’s nice to have a Ben that you’ve designed, you know, a lot of, you know, DIY and design sound systems and sound systems are, you know, around the world. And it’s just nice. The well one that they’re doing and given so much with the performance isn’t to just on an egotistical side. It’s just really nice to be part of that.

And, you know, if they’re going to build some, I just don’t think some crap, really. So I just just decided to put something out there, just kind of stop at least some real rubbish being built. But I really did want to compete with the Éminence design. There’s a single eighteen éminence, and if you do a few monsta that by putting in corner deflectors, it actually, I have to say still is better than the super scooper, the super super probably slightly under it, but yeah, a well molded eminent scoop of double racing is is can go on.

I don’t love that Gloria. I wanted to but I don’t.

OK, so Nathan Short says ask him about running his racing motorcycles at two hundred plus miles per hour and the new superhighways and the edges of Tibet near China a long time ago. Apparently, you ride motorcycles and you took one out to some superhighways.

And what’s the story here about such a Nathan thing, isn’t it, to kind of glorify that?

Not just brilliant. Yeah, yeah. Actually, I was just going to a shop on a fifty sixty moped, you know, get a packet of facts and turn grandma spooky superhighways, you know, so.

Yes, I think it’s quite well known that I really, really love and dB motorcycles, I have a car, but it really is just to get to the shops when I can’t carry some kind of backpack. It’s yeah, I’ve only got four motorcycles at the moment. Certainly as quite, quite bad. Yeah. One of them’s a beast. It’s twelve ninety. Well three hundred and one skateboard v twin that weighs under 200 kilos. So that’s, that’s the same power to say how excited I am.

Not because that’s the same power to weight is like two Ferraris or two.

That’s nine hundred and six. What are you doing with that thing. A lot need.

Yeah. It’s got traction control. Speed is done. Yep. Just going for rides. I just love it. It’s just that thing can just rip your life apart. Yeah. I can change you. It’s good. So I love bikes. Yeah. The other thing you probably don’t know is that I moved from the UK to mainland China in 2002. Just after it opened, I started doing the R&D in England and I just could see this was just going nowhere because, you know, you go and see people.

Can you can you make this work? Can you make this better word? And you just get that kind of beard scratching. You don’t know what’s going to cost. Like, well, to know if I can fit under. And it just it was just so bloody hard work and everyone was just giving me such a hard time.

And I really like to work quick and just just just jump on it and just get something out quick because you’re in the moment. Same with writing music as well. Yeah. You know, two year long album writing is just not good. It doesn’t work. So I was, you know, and I’d had enough of England. I really had I just knew every day where I was going to go, who was going to see what I was going to say, where I was going to eat.

You know, I’m a firm believer in, you know, is if if you don’t wake up every day and you don’t get a kind of wow.

You know, you look you look at something, you just you got to have a wow every day and at least two, three times, you’ve got to be shocked. You’ve got to really have a wall.

You know, if you tell and England for me, we’re starting to get like that, just just get away straightaway. Just move. It’s not it’s not your place. And it’s took me all my all my life to find my place and where I feel at home. And that is Gran Canaria. It’s it’s it’s it’s the people that make anywhere.

And they’re just brilliant. They we have manners here. If you go across the street anywhere in my town, all the cars will stop for you anyway.

Well, we still have MAPP. It’s, you know, that’s different. So, yeah. So I was looking for to get out of England because it really just didn’t like it. I needed that change. So I went to a trade show to do some soul searching for some component just to see, you know, bar handles or just what was in China. There wasn’t really very, very much back in the early 2000s. And I went to a trade show in Shanghai for fourteen days and I ended up staying for 14 years.

So it was quite a yeah, it is quite aware of one because I went back and seen some factories and they just just just get on with it.

Everyone just get some of it. And if you just want something done quickly, you just just chuck a few more people in it and everyone’s so eager to learn where they were then they’re not so much know they just ever want to learn and you just chuck people in and you could get stuff done. So I was really impressed and I was just, you know, going back and forth to England more and more like the first year and then to Faizan in late 2002, I think I thought, well, I’m kind of in China more than I’m in England, so I’m just going to stay here.

I’m just going to just live here. So I rented an apartment and just outside Gangel in quite a rural area, actually, and I thought stuff MAPP. So I’m going to build Nandy lab. So I did. I rented a place, built some soundproof rooms and got some nice kind of kit in there and, you know, things like that for testing.

And I had some offices and I got got a couple of guys and made a small area where we could do kind of mock ups of based Benzino prototypes. So would work. And we had fibreglass with a guy who could do molds and would knock us up some fibreglass. So, you know, I did so much from 2004 till 2010. I designed, well, everything for void and that was over thirty five series and probably six or seven products within each series.

So I don’t think ever been done in history. That’s I could literally have something I. The door three days you could work, that sounds like you were focused and you had this whole team who were really focused with you as well. Yeah, that’s how life works.

Yeah. You just get a team of everyone around you that you need and you just, you know, you get everyone really on one. They’ve got to be up for it, though. And the people were never really wanting to learn. And I just did so much so quick. And yeah, it wasn’t the easiest country to live in.

It wasn’t, you know, it was.

And then I couldn’t wait to get out and really. Really. OK. But yeah, it was cool in terms of getting work done.

It was the best. But then in terms of living, you’re like, OK, it’s time for another another thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, things happen with the presidency change as well. And the whole place really changed as well. And so it became quite difficult for a foreigner actually to be there. And so that was hence the move. And I think twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen when I moved back. So ripe the motorbike and Tibet thing. So I would say after about two or three years have been in China, I would spend the winters just a second job and village because it was it was quite warm.

You know, you could have twenty six, twenty seven degrees on Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve and things like this. I don’t know what that is in real Fahrenheit, but.

Yeah, yeah. So what happened was I would spend the, I would spend the, the cold winters in gungho and the summers, I would go to Tibet and I didn’t have the full R&D lab. I was in Gangel, but I did have like a kind of apartment and a little kind of almost like a design studio where I could go in and do a bit of cad and kind of just come up with concepts and come up with ideas to take back to the lab.

So I used to spend quite a lot of time on the China Tibet border. And yeah, I had bikes in both locations. I had what the motorcycles was the most I had at one point.

Well, and yeah, they were just kind of roads with no one on them and some of them were kind of private and toll roads in that.

And it was just, you know, there’s still not many people on the roads, you know, in central western China, you know, a car is still quite a luxury item.

So, yeah, I had this expec Kawasaki’s at 10. Ah. And good for about one hundred and ninety five horsepower I think. And it didn’t have any restriction because Japanese bikes have a and restriction which is about one hundred and eighty six miles an hour. They’ve got like a gentlemen’s agreement that goes over that even though they didn’t have that. So I, I’m not sure it was 200. I read just over two hundred on the speed of two, three times on the high speed runs.

But I think the GPS was reading about one hundred and ninety seven. I was doing so. Yeah, it’s enough. Yeah. It’s quite a strange experience.

You know, there are a few kind of cars about it’s quite strange because it’s, it’s like you’re in a car park just kind of slowly maneuvering around vehicles.

It’s really that park is quite strange. Yeah. Actually feels quite safe.

There’s no kind of buffeting or wind noise because you’re right behind the fairing and you really feel quite confident and safe.

It doesn’t you think, oh my God, Chindamo now. But now it’s all right.

Yeah, it’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So that was the Tibetan and the China thing. So big part of my life, you know, a massive part of my life. I spent almost half my life in Asia. Then I moved to Malaysia after China and I was always going to move the R&D lab there, but I only really lasted four or five years.

And that are not the easiest person, not the easiest place to to live in really, or after the rose tinted glasses come off and you see what it’s really about. So, yeah, I was I was looking for somewhere else and and someone suggested, well, how about Cyprus or Greece? Because I just can’t do anywhere cold. It’s just, you know, the least temperature I’ve seen here. And just a just under two years of being here is 19 degrees in the winter, which is sixty six degrees Fahrenheit.

Yeah, that’s the coldest. Sixty six is the coldest it can ever get here. So and I think the most the world’s third most stable climate. So it never goes over like twenty seven or twenty now.

So and just for people who were wondering about your earlier comment. Twenty seven is eighty degrees Fahrenheit.

Yeah. Yeah.

So it’s sixty six to eighty all the rain every seven or eight months and only for fifteen minutes. So you know that kind of you know, suits me fine that, that, that kind of living. It’s good.

But what I’ve actually done by being here is I found where I fit in and I think the most important thing in life is to find where you fit in. It might not be the place where you look like you come from or even sound like, but it’s just where you fit in and and every. It comes together. Since I’m here, everyone has come together on more creative. I write more music, I design more speakers, it’s just got easier.

It’s just where I should be. And it took me my whole life to find that. But, yeah, it’s important to fit in, I think.

Right. I’m guessing you don’t listen to any podcasts. I don’t I’m not going to ask you. I’m not a TV watcher. You know, it’s it’s not called a program for nothing. It really isn’t.

So I don’t watch much TV. I yeah. I just just try and learn the things. I listen to a lot of music, you know, I haven’t a really, really good hyphy with electrostatic and valve amps is really important because it’s a reference. And the stuff I do in the studio, it’s it’s it should almost be a law that you can’t or shouldn’t work in this industry at any level unless really you can play music in musical instruments and have some theory and music, because you really should understand.

Yeah, I know a lot of people don’t and they do a good job. I understand. But I can always tell the engineer that has a musical background that they’re you know, it’s it’s a weird one. When I mix a band life, all I’m I mix for the crowd. I don’t mix for me. And that happens in nightclubs. You know as well people who set up nightclubs, a lot of them get it right, you know, and a lot of the people that work, you know, avoid systems as well.

Luckily to say, get this right. And they actually tune the system for the audience and for the space and for the time to be had. A lot of people just go and do it for them, what they think is right and it’s not enough.

Who are you to say what what’s right?

It’s so when I used to mix bands, I used to get a lot of work because I used to I used to go to, you know, people that run, you know, the venues and and the tunnels, the tour managers and promoters.

And I would say, look, you know, I will get especially is like a funk band or something like that. I remember doing Asimov quite a few times and Gil Scott Heron and people like that. And it was just just brilliant, brilliant shows. And I would say if I can’t get everyone dancing on the dance floor and including in the toilets and you can check and I’ll never mix again, I will never mix again.

And luckily I’m still good. But I mix. I mix for the audience. I mix for the time, for the feeling.

That’s what I why I do it and well I mix for I’m really not I’m not worried if the high hats are enough. Fourteen K in the scheme of things it’s really not important. It’s the whole vibe. It’s just bringing that audience up. It just gets better and you know, you just connect with it and you just yeah. That’s what you mix for and you do it more from your heart and from your ears. So yeah. So I’m, I like to see people that do that.

And that’s normally people with more of a musical background.

Yeah. Whereas where is the best place for people to follow your work. OK, yeah that’s me.

So I guess they’re going to call you up.

Yeah. No, if it’s my personal life then yeah.

You can check out Roger, Google, Facebook and most of the the posts are public actually. So you can if not on Facebook, you can kind of see what I’m about. But that’s just that’s kind of more the studio stuff I get into. I don’t really post design and stuff and I don’t really post anything about upcoming designs because I really don’t want anyone to know. We don’t want it to upset, you know, sells a few current products.

So we keep things back.

And also the Void Acoustics Facebook page as well on the Instagram page has, if you want, keep up on void and you know, where will the new installs are happening?

And you know what where we’re at. And what we’re doing obviously is a bit quiet on the festival season. But I have to say, there’s a few installs going about this. There’s some still going on. And as a company, we’re kind of doing all right. It’s it’s OK. Obviously, it’s it’s done, but it’s it’s OK.

So, yeah, because, yeah, I’ve seen the companies that have a installer contracting division have continued on because those projects started years ago.

Yeah. Yeah. It is also just being able to adapt as well. So we’re doing we’re seeing you know, obviously we do smaller stuff for kind of bars and lounges that actually kind of work in living rooms.

So we’re starting to do kind of quite a few high end lives, but they just won’t kind of club party systems because they can’t go home. They want to party at home. So that makes a lot of sense.

So you just gotta think, you know. Yeah, it’s just yeah, it’s there’s an opportunity out there and everything that’s kind of bad if, you know, to work and you and you can see it and you know and.

You can use it. So this has not been so bad for us. I mean, yeah, I do feel for the people that are, you know, the tech crews that are all laid up in the system, sitting in warehouses, you know, because there’s no festivals. That’s that’s obviously not good. But and obviously, the nightclub industry is going to be quite decimated. This is going to be the last thing they want is lots of sweaty people in a dark room.

So we’re going to have a while to go. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, Rog Mogale, thank you so much for joining me on Sound Design Live.

The BEST subwoofer array for large concerts?

By Nathan Lively

During my interview with Adam Hill we discussed an AES paper he coauthored called Subwoofer positioning, orientation and calibration for large-scale sound reinforcement. During the interview, we focused mainly on the interference of stages and other boundaries on directional subwoofer arrays, but there is another large part of the paper where the authors describe a ground-based optimized subwoofer array that I thought would be fun to try to recreate.

Wondering how a gradient subwoofer array works? Check out this video explanation.

1 – Minimize spacing to avoid nodes

As a starting point, four single cardioid subwoofers were placed across the front of the stage on the ground with four meter spacing.

plan view

This initial setup gives very limited coverage across the audience area, although there are no noticeable nodes anywhere in the coverage area.

prediction @63Hz

2 – Expand horizontally and vertically

Since the additional subwoofers of the system will be off to the sides of the stage, they can each be stacks of three subwoofers.

3-element inverted gradient stack
3-element gradient stack
prediction @63Hz

3 – Angle outside subs 45º

The optimization routine shows that simply rotating the outside subwoofer stacks away from the stage by 45° gives very even results across the audience area while keeping SPL on the stage under control

prediction @63Hz

Note that I have not taken into account the potential gain difference between my 2-element gradient arrays across the front and the author’s “four single cardioid subwoofers”.

Results

15dB of F2B (front-to-back) rejection at 43Hz comparing the 1st row to DSC (down stage center). 6.75db of rejection at 90Hz.

Can this be improved?

The authors leave the design wide open for adjustment and make this recommendation about placement:

an even coverage in the audience area is best achieved when subwoofer spacing is minimized

If we add one more sub it will decrease the spacing and DSC should benefit from improved F2B rejection. Let’s also add a 2nd order Linkwitz-Riley LPF at 203Hz.

7 subs

1.75dB of improved rejection at 90Hz. Otherwise, similar results.

How would you improve this design?

What are your ideas for improvement? Comment below.

You can download my MAPP file here.

Does flipping a sub around also flip its polarity?

By Nathan Lively

This question made my brain hurt so I had to make a video to explain it to myself. The answer is NO for the common subwoofers we encounter in the field that are closed in the back and have ports in the front. The answer would be YES if the sub were open in the back, but then the coverage pattern would be a figure-8, not omni.

  • Why do you polarity invert the rear sub in a cardioid array?
  • Phase Wheel
  • FIGURE 4.12 Summation zones from Sound Systems: Design and Optimization by Bob McCarthy

Transcription

This transcription was generated automatically. Please let me know if you find any errors.

I have a question for you: If I grab this speaker and flip it around so it faces the rear, does that polarity invert the signal?

Think about it for a second. A student asked me this recently and it made my head hurt a little bit. And I realized that I had some competing ideas in my head about how speakers work versus how instruments work. And so I wanted to just talk about that for a few seconds in case other people are having sort of if this question makes your brain hurt, then hopefully this video will help a little bit.

Here’s why I think this question makes your brain hurt. I asked this question in my student community, and you can see most people are saying no, but twenty five percent said yes. I just posted this question a while ago on YouTube and I only have five votes and it’s only an hour ago. You can see there’s still some division as to what’s going on with this question. Maybe I didn’t ask the question correctly. So maybe the question is confusing.

But but let’s look at this. So, um, let’s see. I have this video over here from Alex to find out where he’s talking about making a snare drum. And I think this is maybe where this idea comes from, because one of the first things we learn about making drums is that if you would like to get the nice sound of the snare on the bottom of the snare drum, and you’re going to put a microphone down there and you’re going to put it equidistant like this, then you need to do a polarity inversion on the input channel where that microphone comes in.

Otherwise you’re going to have problems. OK, so we all learned that a long time ago and we are familiar with this idea. I like this. I found this video of a slow motion snare drum. We’re familiar with this idea that when the top head has struck up here, then the bottom head also goes down at the same time. And so we have these equidistant microphones that are receiving opposite pressure. And that’s why we need to polarity invert them so that they’ll go in the same direction when they get some together in our console digital audio workstation.

I have another image here from Sound on Sound. So here is a recording of those two microphones. And if I draw on this, it should be pretty easy to see that where we have a peak here. Then at about the same time down here in the bottom snare mic, we have a peak, but in the opposite direction. Now we start thinking about how this relates to loudspeakers and we think, oh, it’s the same thing, right?

We’ve got positive pressure going in this direction and we’ve got, um, negative pressure going in the other direction. I should probably use different colors anyway. And this is, I think, kind of what we’re thinking. And here’s just the same picture. But just the parts exploded out, positive pressure, negative pressure. So if I go back into my simulation here and I take a look at the speaker and I look at it at this microphone, then what do we expect to see?

Well, I’m thinking that there’s going to be a positive peak going up. OK, let’s measure that. Let’s zoom in and let’s do let’s reset delay and let’s store that. So I feel like my expectation was met. I expected a positive peak. So now if I have this idea that if I flip the speaker around and now at that same microphone, the peak should go down, then the same thing would be true if I left the speaker the same way, but just measured behind it.

Right. So I have a microphone back here so we can just switch microphones. So I’m at my one in one hundred and eighty degree microphone and I’ll hit predict and I’m kind of expecting to see it go down. Right, because this is my idea. I flip the speaker around, but we can see that the speaker is totally weird now, right. Because we’re not getting as much high frequency information back there behind the speaker, but we still have a peak to look at and it’s going up.

So that’s weird. You may be wondering why I don’t have this perfectly in the center, and that’s because that it takes a little bit longer for the sound to travel around the speaker and get to this microphone. And so I had to offset a little bit so I could put the microphones at the exact same position, three meters and negative three meters. But I just move the speaker. OK, but now you’re thinking, OK, well, that doesn’t work with high frequency drivers.

But surely subwoofers, which we know are omnidirectional sounds going forward. Sounds going all sounds are going everywhere. So let’s test that. Let’s get rid of this X 40. I’ve got a 750 here. Let’s measure the 750 at our front microphone. Let’s autoset delay, zoom out, we’ll store this and let’s do the same thing, let’s just switch to the rear microphones. We’re going to go to the trouble of actually flipping the speaker around.

Oh, same problem. Yes, it’s arrived a little bit later. And that’s why I had to change the position a little bit so that I could line the peaks up perfectly on top of each other. But same polarity. And if you like to look at phase, we can do that.

So here we go at our zero degree microphones store and here’s our rear microphone, and it’s exactly the same. So what’s going on here? I think the confusion is that sound is not coming out of the rear of the subwoofer the way you are imagining it like this or like this or like this. OK, this is kind of what we’re imagining. And that might be true if this were not closed in the back. So we might be tempted to think that positive pressure coming out here and then negative pressure coming out of here.

But that’s not really happening because it gets here and it says, I can’t get out this way. So then it goes over here and out here and then actually comes out of a port somewhere. And then maybe then it goes around the speaker and and that’s why it takes a little bit longer to get to that rear microphone. But you have experienced an open back driver and where you have experienced that is with an open back guitar cabinet. So it’s pretty common for a guitar amplifier to be open on the back in many times in studio sound, we will mark the front and the back.

And you have the same situation, right? You need to polarity, invert that rear microphone. I can’t insert a guitar amp into MAPP XT, but I have tried to make a simulation to play with this. So it looks like these two speakers are really far apart. But just imagine that this is a big guitar amp and that this speaker up here is the going to stimulate the forward pressure of that single speaker. And this, uh, back here is going to stimulate the rear pressure.

So if I play these both at the same time, this is the kind of pattern that we would get with an open back guitar. And it. Right, similar to a microphone that receives on two sides that’s open on the back. You’re going to get this figure eight pattern guitar amplifier figure eight pattern of coverage, subwoofer, not a figure eight pattern because it’s not open in the back. And the way I built this, in case you’re curious, is I just turn this guy on.

Let’s look at him at the zero degree microphone. And store, and then I just inverted the polarity at this guy and pushed him back far enough so that his peaks would still line up with the peaks of the other guy so that we’d have a lot of. I wanted to make a really dramatic example. Right. OK, in case this is all still confused you, there’s one way that always works for me. Any time I’m ever getting confused.

And I’m like, oh, this still doesn’t make sense to me. You can always insert a gradient array in MAPP XT. The next question that I found people often get to once they realize that flipping a subwoofer around does not invert the polarity, then they say, wait, but isn’t that how you build a cardio subwoofer array? You flip the sub around so that it inverts the polarity? That’s not right. You flip the sub around to create delay.

So I have another video called Why Do You Polarity Invert the rear sub and a cardioverter way where I suggest you watch it. If you haven’t, it’s just a nice step by step illustration of how an inline gradient cardio subwoofer already works. But right now, I’m not going to go over that, but I am going to show you one. So here I’ve got the same subwoofers, but now they’re creating cardio and subwoofer so I can do a prediction at eighty hertz and we’re too zoomed in to really appreciate it.

You can see that we’ve got some action going this to the front and a cancellation going to the rear. And so just keep that in mind because the inverted gradient stack is the exact same principle, just smush together so that it uses less real estate. So here we’ve got two processing channels. Right. Let me expose that for you. So here’s my gradient in line, forward gradient in line rearward and I’ve got normal polarity and reverse polarity. So you always need two processing channels, one with the polarity inversion and the delay.

So let’s compare that then to an inverted gradient stack. And this is really fast in case you ever get confused in your and you’re like, wait, how does this work? You can open up map sixty just right click choose insert gradient flown subwoofer. And when you do that, take note of two important things. Uh, number one, we have two processing channels and we are achieving a polarity inversion not by flipping the sub around but with an electronic polarity inversion.

Number two, we can automatically apply the processing that we need, namely the delay directly into our process. So make sure you check this and make sure you choose the right channels. OK, so I’ve already inserted this, so I’m not going to do it again. But that’s what’s going on here. We have two speakers facing forwards, one facing to the rear, and it’s the one that’s facing to the rear that has the delay and polarity inversion.

So over here you can see I’ve got gradient forward, gradient rear and this is my stack. And if I do a prediction, we’ll see that we get summation to the front and cancellation to the rear. So just to summarize, flipping a sub around does not invert its polarity because the back is closed. And the way we achieve this polarity inversion in our gradient subwoofer arrays as through an electronic polarity inversion, not by this change in orientation. All right.

Let me know what questions come up for you about this and let me know if you have any suggestions for me. I’m always trying to improve my own understanding of these principles. Thanks.

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