Sound Design Live

Build Your Career As A Sound Engineer

How Jamie Anderson Saves Time in System Tuning with Smaart® Check Points

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In this episode of Sound Design Live I talk with Jamie Anderson from Rational Acoustics about how he is able to work faster with Smaart using strategic check points in his sound system tuning process to avoid time consuming errors. Anderson also explains why Smaart is not a silver bullet, the history and future of auto EQ, and why Germans don’t laugh at his jokes. I ask:

  • How did you get your first job in audio?
  • You were at Meyer Sound from 92-97. What was the hot topic at that time?
  • Looking back on your career so far, what’s one of the best decisions you made to get more of the work that you really love?
  • You have a pretty tough job selling and teaching a piece of software that many live sound engineers hope will be a silver bullet. You said something yesterday that I liked a lot, “Smaart is a tool that helps good sound engineers make better decisions.” Would it be fair to say that Smaart forces you to ask better questions?
  • What do you do to save time in the field?
  • In online forums I will regularly see this question come up: I’m working in a highly reflective room tomorrow. What are your tips? And someone will always suggest that they keep the volume low. But this is misleading because rooms are linear. The room doesn’t change with drive level. So what’s really going on here?
  • Tell us about the biggest or maybe most painful mistake you’ve made on the job and how you recovered.
  • What’s in your work bag?

sound-design-live-jamie-anderson-saves-time-system-tuning-Smaart-check-points-heashotTaste your food before you salt it.

Notes

  1. Music in this episode by Heavy Moan.
  2. Jamie’s go bag:
    1. Roland Octa Capture
    2. (5) microphones: (1) wireless Lectrosonics
    3. Cables and adapters
    4. Cable checkers: Rat Little Sniffer
  3.  Books: Siddhartha, Sound Systems: Design and Optimization, Sound System Engineering
  4. Quotes
    1. As a system engineer, my job is to get everyone the same show. That’s what I refer to as sound communism.
    2. There’s a lot of tuning that goes on that is dropping a microphone in a place and tuning to make the response sound great at that place and ignoring the fact that the rest of the place is wildly varying.
    3. The audio analyzer is going to help you create uniformity, but really only as far as the system design will allow you.
    4. People come to the Smaart course hoping to learn how to align and get a good sounding sound system, but they are skipping the whole system engineering. We are teaching them about a really useful tool, but you really have to understand system design and engineering first. There’s no short cut.
    5. I was feeling really bad, so I went to the doctor. He MRI’ed me and now I feel great.
    6. Imagine if you could run an MRI on a laptop. That’s great, but that’s not going to cure people.
    7. I try to shoot down people’s expectations that this is going to be a magic bullet. It’s a really powerful tool, but it’s just a tool.
    8. It’s nice when people say, “They Smaarted the system,” but it’s a misnomer. Really systems are Nathaned or Jamied or Ericaed or Bobbed or Karrened.
    9. The fundamental problem with auto EQ is that it assumes that EQ is the right decision. In fact, rarely is it. There are very few things that EQ is a good tool for addressing.
    10. In the real world there is time compression. Where you had 2 hours, now you have 15 minutes. If it takes you 15 minutes to setup and verify your analyzer then it is not a useful tool to you because you can’t apply it.
    11. I’m my own worst enemy. I can confuse myself with the best of them.
    12. One bad cable can turn a million dollar sound system into an AM radio.
    13. The worst place to mic a violin is in close because it sounds different at every location.

Mixing Monitors for Tears for Fears

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In this episode of Sound Design Live, I speak with the the Director of Audio at IMS Technology Services, Chris Leonard. We discuss mixing monitors for Tears for Fears, setting up the sound system for the presidential inauguration, and Dante troubleshooting tips. I ask:

      • How did you get your job at Maryland Sound?
      • Walk me through the sound system at your last gig at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
      • How do you troubleshoot Dante networks?
      • What was the biggest mistake you’ve made on the job?

sound-design-live-mixing-monitors-tears-for-fears-chris-leonard-headshotThe day you stop learning, you’re only moving yourself back.

Notes

  1. All music in this episode by Tears for Fears.
  2. Educational resources Chris recommends: SynAudCon, Smaart classes, Smaart manual, Smaart User Group on Facebook, InfoCOMM, Sound Design Live podcast, Bob McCarthy’s book, MXu,
  3. Hardware: RAT tools CAT snake, Yamaha Ri8-D, CL5, QL5, VRX 932LA-1, Q-Box, GoPro, Shure55
  4. Dante troubleshooting
    1. Unplug the secondary (redundant) network. It’s easy to get those crossed.
    2.  ULXD Dante configuration needs to be set to Redundant Audio if you are running a star topology network.
  5. TM Array
  6. Stage Jammer: Patching the stage, jamming the stage together
  7.  Quotes
    1. A lot of it has to do with your attitude and work ethic. Nowadays work ethic seems like a thing of the past.
    2. As a company you don’t always have the space the bring in a green person right away. You need to have them mature a little bit, but if they mature in a labor pool that you work with all the time and they get to know your gear, I’m more inclined to bring them along on a show.
    3. Networking is key. If you came to town for the first time and said, “Hey I’d like to work with you,” the first thing I’d do is see who you are connected with on LinkedIn or who I know that already knows you.
    4. They were making fun of me for volunteering to work for free and the truck driver said, “You’re all laughing. One day you’re all going to work for him.”

sound-design-live-mixing-monitors-tears-for-fears-chris-leonard-tour

 

Smaart is just a tool. You are the analyzer.

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In this episode of Sound Design Live, I speak with Product Manager and Smaart Instructor at Rational Acoustics, Chris Tsanjoures. We talk about sound system tuning time saving techniques, microphone placement for main+sub alignment, and the biggest mistake new Smart users are making. I ask:

  • Why should I care about the physics of audio and sound system optimization? I’ve got a good ear and I don’t need robots to tell me how to do my job.
  • What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making who are new to Smaart?
  • How do I save time in sound system tuning? What are some time saving techniques or shortcuts you can share with us?
  • Thinking about the most common sound systems that we run into on a day-to-day basis, what is your guidance around microphone placement in the horizontal and vertical plane for main+sub alignment?
  • What’s in your work bag?
  • What are the new SPL features of Smaart?
  • From Facebook:
    • Kevin
      • Is he using FIR and IIR filters in his live system tuning? Does he believe there is a future in their applications for an end user system tech?
      • Has he seen FFT system tuning techniques being accepted by a wider audience of engineers in recent years?
      • Is he excited about any specific developments in the world of system processing or speaker design that will make system design and system teching easier?
      • What can we do as end users to encourage loudspeaker manufacturers to develop a proper standard for generating and publishing speaker specifications?
      • What’s his favorite subwoofer and why?
    • Jonathan
      • What’s next for Smaart ? Send and receive OSC ! Gain tracking on the Octa-Capture?
    • Rory
      • How to measure and read tonality or timbre of loudspeakers. For example at x-over freq two driver playing the same tone at the same magnitude and phase sound completely different! A progression of this is how to measure the ability of speaker system to convey the emotional content of an artists performance and connect with the listener.
    • Russell
      • What does he always recommend as the absolute minimum you should do? Which steps should you never, ever leave out.

sound-design-live-Smaart-tool-you-are-the-analyzer-chris-tsanjoures-headshotIf you’ve already set your subs up left/right, then you’ve already made a decision that you don’t care about coverage. –Chris Tsanjoures, Smaart Ninja

Notes

  1. All music in this episode by It Prevails(Chris Tsanjoures, Lead Guitar).
  2. Why Smaart?
    1. Hearing is subjective. You like one song while I like another.
    2. Hearing changes. What if you wake up with a cold?
    3. There is proof in analysis. You have data to support your claims.
    4. Speed. How do you recreate that sound that you love in a completely different environment in 5 minutes?
  3. Biggest mistakes made by people who are new to using Smaart.
    1. Lack of practice in a controlled environment where you get used to looking at the data.
      1. So how do you practice?
        1. Get two matching speakers and an output processor. Put them next to each other. Splay them apart and find the point of equal time and level.
        2. Get two unmatched speakers and try to make them match.
  4. Time saving techniques
    1. The day before, look at the design to determine where you’re starting, ending, and what your target is.
    2. Create a checklist of polarity, time, response, and level for each system.
  5. Order of operations – download Chris’ personal system alignment worksheet
    1. Verification: Does it work? Do all of the outputs arrive where they are supposed to?
    2. Main systems. Everything else will then be set relative to the main.
    3. Do symmetrical systems sound the same?
    4. System response measurements and matching.
    5. Level
    6. Polarity
    7. Time
  6. Microphone placement for main+sub alignment
    1. Where’s the person who can do the most damage? Is it at FOH? Where is the bulk of the audience at this EDM thing?
    2. Make sure you are phase aligned not only at the crossover frequency, but 1 octave up and down from it.
  7. Chris’ workbag
    1. (6) Y-cable
    2. (5) Measurement mic (Earthworks S30, Behringer ECM8000)
    3. (1) PC
    4. (1) MacBook Pro
    5. (1) iSEMcon SC1 Microphone calibrator
    6. (1) Manfrotto Micro microphone stand
    7. (1) Smaart IO
    8. (4) 1ft polarity inversion cables
    9. short XLR cables
    10. any adapter you can imagine
  8. Hardware: Roland Octa-Capture
  9. Quotes
    1. If you are out there actually putting things together, you learn a lot faster.
    2. Any analyzer, they’re just tools. They are going after the same goal, which is good sound.
    3. If it takes you 2 hours to get [the system] to sound good, that’s not acceptable to me. If you get that system up and ready to be used in 15 minutes, you’re a hero.
    4. If you’ve already set your subs up left/right, then you’ve already made a decision that you don’t care about coverage.
    5. Nuisance monitoring is basically LF measurement. C weight to keep track of LF level, A weight to keep track of loudness that could cause hearing damage.
    6. If I start a show off at 98 dBA/106 dBC, I don’t want to end too far away from there.
    7. I’m a subtractive mixer. If you can’t hear the guitar, it’s because something else is in the way.
    8. Sound is linear. What’s not is our human hearing mechanism.
    9. The first two steps don’t involve an analyzer. You are the analyzer.
    10. Smaart is just a tool. It just makes data. You are the one analyzing it.
    11. Any idiot can make squiggly lines on a computer. The skill is in making data that you can rely on or make meaningful decisions from.
    12. Part of the skillset for a system technician is being able to operate an analyzer. You definitely get paid more.
    13. A good engineer can make a bad system sound good. And a great engineer can make a good system sound great. And an excellent engineer can make a great system sound transcendent. -Jim Woods

sound-design-live-Smaart-tool-you-are-the-analyzer-chris-tsanjoures-tshirt

Merlijn van Veen and Understandable Misunderstandings

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Merlijn van Veen is a sound engineer and system tuning expert in the Netherlands.

He has been with Harlekijn Holland, the company of renowned European singer Herman van Veen, for the last 8 years and mixes more than 150 performances a year, both indoor and outdoor.

sound-design-live-quick-announcement

NATHAN LIVELY: What’s your favorite thing to do in Soest (Netherlands) when you’re not working?

Merlijn_van_VeenMERLIJN VAN VEEN: I love to watch blockbuster movies and television series. I also like to play games (board and computer) and have a profound passion for making various calculators to aide me in my educational endeavors.

Since the arrival of my 15-month-old daughter, it has become a challenge to find free time between her, my wife, and work. Being on the road a lot is a blessing in disguise. There’s lots of time to kill and this is where I made most of my calculators.

How did you get your first job in audio?

I quit the Art of Sound (studio recording) education at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague before graduating, arguably for misguided reasons. I’m never sure whether to regret it or not. It’s funny if you think about it because 15 years later, they invited me to teach system design and optimization over there. 😉

When I dropped out of school, the department head at the time gave me a contact at the Dutch Broadcast Company, something I’m still humbled by today. One week later I was doing sound for the worldwide first edition of the reality show Big Brother. I worked on that show and various others for the next 5 years.

I know you are on tour right now. Walk us through a day in your life.

Correct. We literally just started our national tour in the Netherlands, which will continue until summer 2015.

Our country is an exception to many European standards when it comes to installed sound systems. We have little over 450 theaters and pretty much all of them come with decent sound systems that are included in the package so to speak. That being said, there’s still room left for improvement IMHO.

Even today I run into a lot of what I like to think of as understandable misunderstandings. By that I mean poorly-informed decisions caused by a lack of understanding with regard to physics that lead to over- or under-coverage and poor time alignment and level management. This is one of the reasons I started teaching. Today I primarily listen to raw pink noise on untuned systems. I have my preferred tracks that I like to listen to but only after I tuned the system and have plausible reason what to expect.

In the past when a given system was supposedly designed and tuned by a renowned engineer, I’d be intimidated and automatically assume that it would work out fine only to find out that he or she apparently had a different application in mind.

On tour, we start at 1PM with the load-in. After the desks and multicores have been put in place I’ll request access to the system, preferably a direct connection, respecting their speaker protection. I carry a Dolby Lake Processor with me which I prefer 9 out of 10 times over the house DSP as it will save me some propagation delay and AD-DA conversions.

I’ll spend anywhere from 1 to 3 hours (depending on the complexity of the system) tuning the system using Smaart v7 and four microphones. This might seem like a lot of time but I know from experience that I’ll be thankful for it by sound check because I will have provided myself with a white canvas, a frame of reference. This way of working has allowed me to produce consistent results from venue to venue with the exception of natural reverberation, which is inherent to each venue.

Around 4PM we do a brief line check, about 40 channels, and 5PM is dinner time. Sound check starts at 6:30PM and lasts till doors. The show starts at 8PM. Two sets, each an hour long, and as much as one hour of encores.

Load out takes an hour and on most days I’m home between 1AM and 3AM. When we’re doing a international tour, say Germany, Austria, Switzerland or Belgium, we bring our own system and start one hour earlier (noon).

sound-design-live-sound-system-tuning-tour-Smaart-7-merlijn-van-veem

You’ve created some great audio calculators to aid in system design for free on your site. Are they primarily for education or do you use them in the field?

With the exception of the Subwoofer Array Designer most of my calculators are developed for educational purposes. However, I do consult the air absorption, floor-bounce, and delay study calculators for confirmation when I’m in doubt.

What’s in the measurement rig that you take out on the road?

I use a Macbook Pro running Smaart v7 in combination with a RME fireface 800 audio interface. I’ve got five microphones: four Audix TM-1s and one DPA 4091. The Audix mics have been calibrated by me (see my post at the Rational Acoustics forum for the procedure), thanks to Smaart’s microphone correction curve feature, to match the DPA within 0.5 dB (both level and tonality). I’ve been fortunate to have my DPA compared to an official Meyer Sound SIM3 DPA (B&K) 4007 and stay within 0.5 dB. Close enough for me.

The mics are connected by means of 25-meter cables on drums, and everything is color-coded using shrink tube and tape to match the color of the traces in Smaart. This way I can instantly deduce which trace belongs to what microphone and position.

sound-design-live-sound-system-tuning-tour-Smaart-7-traces

Give us an overview of your procedure for verifying a sound system before sound check, once everything is set up.

When I arrive at a venue the first thing I do is evaluate the design and decide for myself which speaker(s) or array(s) are best suited to cover the macro shape. This will be my starting point and I’ll subdivide from there, making use of the available speakers.

I always carry front-fills with me ’cause there are always too few that are spaced too wide, or they’re mounted in the stage lip and have no chance of reaching the second row once the audience arrives.

Next I verify that the various speaker configurations and/or arrays are actually optimizable; this is not always the case. Then it’s all about proper speaker positioning, rotation, and aiming using laser pointers, protractors, inclinometers, levels, and both tape measures and laser distance range finders.

The latter is, without a doubt, the most important aspect of system design. It determines what is covered, how much of it is covered, and where the seams will end up.

Finally, I’ll measure at carefully chosen positions that will provide me with way more valuable information than arbitrary sampling the room in order to map system behavior. The data will guide me through the process of equalizing and time alignment.

Provided I have “good” gear to start with, I’m mainly managing:

  • low frequency coupling (between other speakers and/or the room)
  • buildup in the back of the venue
  • high frequency absorption by air

A great deal of time is also spent phase aligning the subwoofers to the main system.

During sound check I’ll walk the room making minor (1 to 2 dB at most) changes to (sub)systems, tweaking by ear whilst keeping the above in mind.

What is the most exciting advancement in audio technology for you right now?

Education, education, and education.

IMHO there are few industries that are so drenched with voodoo, superstition, and understandable misunderstandings as live audio.

There’s also a lot of valuable information and experience kept secret, through which some people become successful, that could benefit us all. Struggling to become a respectable engineer and making all the mistakes our predecessors have made before us seems un-pragmatic and doesn’t benefit the industry, the artists, and most important the (paying) audience.

I like to teach and am not afraid of creating new competition with my students. I couldn’t have achieved any of this without the help of others who feel the same way, even if I had to pay a fair price for it. I’m a big fan of the pay-it-forward approach. Besides, I’ll always be 15 years ahead of them. 😉

Where is the best place for people to follow your work online?

My website and Facebook page. This is where I publish my calculators and post articles that I feel could benefit the industry, as well as other stuff.