Subwoofers - do you really understand what you are doing?
Mike Leader of Leader Cinema systems, manufacturers of world class large-scale systems for both music industry and motion picture industry professionals, tells you more about subwoofers than you thought you could possibly want to know...
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by Emmy Award Winner Michael K. Leader, President, Leader Cinema Systems, Inc
Ex VP Studio Systems Group Electro-Voice, Inc
© Leader D-Cinema Systems, Inc, 2010. All rights reserved.
It is most unfortunate that many of today’s mixers and engineers, music producers and performers have never experienced a truly superlative monitoring system in an exceptionally well designed control room. This is part of the problem with much of today’s music recording. I speak from a few decades of experience in the engineering of very large scale monitoring and presentation systems for both multi-channel music to picture, Digital Cinema and Alternate Content, Tracking and music playback. I am none too sure either that today’s monitoring systems are anywhere near the level they need to be either. And the truth of the matter is, with the proliferation of compact monitors Yamaha et al, in the budget price range, attempting to purchase a so-called accurate monitor has the same number of subjective headaches as purchasing an audiophile speaker system at any price range for their homes. I personally find it laughable across both markets the nonsense talked about in terms of accuracy and uncolored sound. If this really is the case, why do all the speakers in a similar size and price range sound sooooo different? Think……
The ridiculous concept of running a single “sub-woofer” to extend the limited acoustical power performance from baby sized monitors is preposterous. Sure it’s done. But do you really understand what you are doing?
The greatest fallacy foisted upon us from the movie industry, is that low frequencies are directionless, as the wavelengths are so long that we do not lock on to a direction. This is only somewhat true for sustained energy….traffic rumble, low frequency filtered pink noise, single frequency sine wave..pick a frequency say 30 Hz…even I doubt I would quite know from where the source was located. Should you be fortunate enough to be in a real studio, have someone wind up and do some hard kicks on a drum set. Deliberately place the kick on the left or right channel and low pass the kick say at 70 Hz. Then route the kick to a single “sub-woofer”…you will immediately realize that the impact of the beater on the skin creates a pulse which has direction. Same for electric bass, string bass and symphony orchestras and your deep synth runs.
What does one require in a full range monitor system:
SOFFIT MOUNTED Systems are a must. If the system is not soffit mounted, the random energy rolling around behind the box, off to the sides, and top to bottom becomes delayed energy arriving behind the first wave front has passed your ears. Boomy bass lacking definition and source location are all major issues with non mounted monitor systems. In addition, SOFFIT mounting smoothes out the response, provides you with free 5 to 6 db of low frequency gain, and a degree of bass smoothness that can not be matched through equalization..no matter who made it or how many digital bits and sampling it might have. If you have monitor speakers with the vent in the rear of the enclosure…you are out of luck.
At a minimum, the low frequency section needs to reach down to 25 Hz..flat in power bandwidth. This is not quite the same as frequency response. Well it is frequency response…but with attitude…it means that this box as specified “should” get down to 25 Hz as listed on the data sheet. The attitude is, can you do this at its long term average or continuous power handling….I’ll bet you can’t, and this is why you cant hear the real depth and power of the bass. Be prepared to spend real money. A 10 inch 200 watt 2 cu ft box is a toy, as you will see later.
Power Compression ideally should be zero. All woofers, even the 18 inch, well designed woofers by EV and JBL in the 1000 watt 4 inch voice coil range will suffer from power compression if you pound them with more than its long term average power rating. Power Compression is due to heating of the voice coil. As the heat builds up, so does the resistance of the voice coil. The higher the resistance, the less power the woofer draws. You turn it up…and it begins to sound lousy..and after a few minutes you are aware of a very strange expensive smell, as a unique shade of blue smoke emerges from the box. So, if your have a baby “sub-woofer” its overall power handling with be quite limited. A cone woofer’s reference efficiency will not be much greater than the 3% range. So, with lets say 100 watts power handling for a 10 or 12 inch woofer, @ 3% efficiency (on the high side) the output in Acoustical Watts will be 3 acoustic watts. A popular 8 inch 2 way, American made good monitor typically found in broadcast studios has a ½ space reference efficiency of 00.6% with long term power handling of 30 Watts the system will play at 107 dB SPL above 80 Hz. Its output in Acoustic Watts is 00.18 watts. More on this follows, but power compression is a significant issue.
Stereo 2 channel low frequency energy. This is forgotten, that there is significant “movement” in music below 50 Hz region. In live music, in this case lets take classical, the row of double basses sawing away creates energy that both reaches the ears of the listeners directly along with highly desirable reflected and delayed sound emerging from the side and rear walls of the stage area. This energy moves across the stage, and given the recording technique, this very low frequency content is there. It simulates sustained low frequency energy. But, if you have any doubt, mono the two channels during a session and experience the room collapse. Have you heard the term about control rooms “breathing”? There you have it. It IS a part of the performance. It is a part of the art form of music. And it is a critical element missing in over hyped consumer speakers at all price range…and even more so in studio systems as we will see.
It is fascinating to listen to sound effects libraries, recorded either in two channel stereo or Ambisonic. Out door atmosphere is dramatic in two channel…if! Your systems can get down..way down to below 30 Hz. Even a gentle wind will create movement. Listen to the deep growl prior to a thunder clap using two high performance systems that can get down. The switch to mono…either sum both channels…or mute one. The difference is like listening to a 1970’s car radio.
Matching your 5-inch, 8-inch 10-inch whatever number of inches you have (!) compact monitor to a sub woofer is a hugely challenging experience, as there is a massive difference in the output capabilities…er.. that's right measured in Acoustic Watts. So, your 5 inch..ok 8 inch box, for the most part has no energy in the region where you need to augment its output. So, even with our simple example above with the 3% efficient cone woofer, the disproportionate acoustical power is the reason that there is such controversy in matching a woofer to a compact monitor. No Amount of time delay or parametric EQ will fix the miss-match. In addition is is highly unlikely your acoustical space is good, and the monitor system is not Soffit Mounted. The best you can do, is to make sure the system is at least in phase. If you like and have the experience, you can sweep very slowly with a sine wave generator, or use pink noise with a good RTA. Watch for holes in the transition as you are crossing over between the two. If augmenting and the compact monitor is running full range, you run the risk of bottoming the woofer in the compact monitor. Then find a good solo recording of a cello.. hopefully you will know what a live cello sounds like. Cellos are difficult to maintain the power balance in studio systems…the great systems can do it seamlessly….try it…. You might be surprised. You can also use a keyboard….run some scales…and also run scales in different keys…you will be most surprised with the shift in density.
You will experience a benefit with the small compact systems even with a baby sized woofer extension in each channel. If you do apply an active crossover between the compact full range monitor, set the crossover about ½ octave above the specified 3 dB down point. This will insure that the full range system will not be stressed with low frequencies below the tuning frequency of the full range system. Once you have everything balanced, the improvement in clarity should be evident in the mid band. This is due to removing low frequency energy and at high levels, the passive crossover network in many passive systems can have the coils saturated if the coils are not air core type. In any event, the removal of low frequency content from the woofer in the full range monitor, will improve the sound quality.
I am amazed how, that so many project studio owners have the need to run out and purchase Neumann, AKG, Sanken, Schoeps and other exotic microphones costing thousands of dollars. You have a big or small session. Now lets see.. a few expensive microphones….what $ 10,000, maybe a few instruments.. a Strad or two, maybe and Amati and Guarneri…so maybe $ 30 million of instruments in the trio. Or your session has a signed original Les Paul or other million dollar treasure…along with the group…say a modest $ 2 million of instruments. The mics are in place….the record button is pressed… ok you hard drive has been recording everything as your terabyte of space only costs pennies in comparison to 10 inch reels of tape. The down beat…..the music…the passion..the artistry of music..the professionalism…..and you are monitoring it on speakers that cost less than your array of microphones.
Low frequency distortion. You would not like to see the distortion specs for any ones low frequency system. 15 inch, 18 inch 24 inch, the really really good stuff, no you still do not want to see the distortion specs. But do not worry. The human hearing system being much less sensitive at low frequencies (Fletcher Munson) masks the annoyance of distortion curves that do not look pretty. Keeping the low frequency section large, will provide you with greater sensitivity. If you are fortunate to have a dual 15 inch or dual 18 inch system tuned to 26 Hz or so, for each channel and soffit mounted, you will truly experience another dimension, and one that all of the exotic makes of snake-oil price range speakers have never experienced. Two woofers in an enclosure couple and sound superior to a single driver. The next challenge is in finding top flight amplifiers to provide the control with high damping factor. I use American made Crown amplifiers in our systems, with DF > 3000:1 I also provide amplifiers with more than 6dB of headroom over the woofers Long term power handling. So, a 800 watt LTA woofer will have 3200 watts peak capability per cone, as I apply a single amplifier channel per cone.
X Max and X Max Limit. This is a very long story. X Max is the specification that produces 3% distortion. It is safe to operate a woofer to X max. depending on the voice coil and heat sinking, I would not recommend operating continuously at X max. We design our systems for the max level we require at 10 dB below X max. Remember, that for every increase of 3 dB you are doubling the amplifier power. This becomes a very costly and demanding design feature if you want to have your system to operate at military levels of mission critical performance. Ok..so you want to lean on it and play BlackHawk Down at realistic in chopper levels…no problemo. The music will sound effortless and musical too. X Max Lim..is the danger zone. Lim is the limit at which expensive mechanical damage will occur…followed by that annoying expensive smell.
How will you know how great your low frequency performance is? A few ways. Find a classical recording made in a church or auditorium. A budget recording will possibly do. If you can feel or hear the air conditioning system, at a very low level, your system certainly is reaching down there. Possibly the same recording, if done in a church, will exhibit low level rumble from traffic outside and or a combination of traffic and HVAC…this is hi-fidelity! Obviously play music…the extension should reach deep easily to 35 Hz..flat…without any silly humps between 60Hz to 120 Hz, if anything slightly notch 70Hz to 110Hz due to room combining.
Last test, and I am serious. The motion picture Master and Commander. The first battle sequence between the British and French ships. If you are unable to hear a difference in pitch and impact between the French and British cannons, you do not have an accurate woofer system at all. The Walt Disney Post Production sound department first experienced this phenomenon on one of our Leader Hollywood Format™ 4 way very large format systems in the Aidikoff Screening Room in Beverly Hills California. There is a difference…what a test…and try playing it at 120 dB SPL…well we can…bring two check books. But it is possible.
Finally, you might be wondering who can hear down this low and deep…. Prince’s studio Paisley Park Minneapolis, the control room is equipped with an astonishing system (not ours) by Westlake Audio SM-1 5 way..each enclosure is equipped with dual 18-inch woofers….Output in acoustic watts we calculate at 58 Acoustic Watts per enclosure at low frequencies.. Kinoshita Monitors were specified by Tom Hidley for Bop Studios South Africa. System reaches down to 9 Hz…for this you will require three check books www.reyaudio.com Our clients have it as well….we have a passion, so visit us at www.leadercinema.com We manufacture world class large scale systems for both music industry and motion picture industry professionals.
Good luck in your search for “sub-woofers” for your compact monitors….but first visit the drug store for a bottle of aspirins.
Musically Yours,
Michael Leader,
© Leader Cinema Systems, Inc 2010. All rights reserved.
Publication date Tuesday May 25, 2010
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Discussion on this article's topic...
I have two questions for you,
1) have you ever mixed on your supremo system, then listened in the car and said to yourself, hmmm that needs tweaking?
2)if all our mixes (pop music - not Cinematic) are going to be squished into MP3s and listened to on ear buds and $10 PC speakers, should we simply attempt to listen to and prime our mixes on those instead.... oooh I hope I haven't angered the great Mr Leader
thank you for your deep knowledge
yours is definitely bigger than mine!!
all the best
Simon Wood
Wednesday July 14, 2010
I am a 30 plus year guitarist with a modest 5.1 channel home theater (Kenwood + Bose), and a basic Zoom 12 track digital recording workstation. I am in the market for my first real subwoofer and I'm... well I'm poor. What can a mere mortal(And I mean poor)
attempt to get the best possible sound for the little money I can afford?
Thursday June 24, 2010
Tuesday June 01, 2010
Monday May 31, 2010
I see that an advertisment for ORB AUDIO has appeared within this discussion on monitoring and low frequency extension "Sub-Woofers".
I do not endorse any products without my approval, and this advertisment for ORB is not approved by me.
Michael Leader
Sunday May 30, 2010
Saturday May 29, 2010
And he is right. And to a great degree, this is where all of my passion was created. Me, as an infant, in London, was exposed to an amazing gift, the great musicians rehearsing in our living room. One particular occasion was for a party hosted by Princess Margaret at London’s mid 1950’s hot nightclub the Bon Viveur.
I love the fact that Ireland is so supportive of the arts. Be it paint on canvas, dance, amazing musicians, theater, actors… all I have met have a huge passion for their art and craft. Your “hanging on by our finger-nails”, yes I get it. And I am sorry that you find what I have to say offensive. There is a challenge in bringing technology into the world of music. So much technology actually “gets in the way” of the music. Sure technology has provided so much, otherwise there would have been no multi-tracking and Les Paul, Elvis, Beatles, and so many forms developed in the digital era lets say in the past 20 years.
I think that we all strive for some degree of perfection. The pity of this with electronics and speakers, is that the degree of physics and engineering required to achieve the desired subjective level of performance, is first an engineering activity which we measure and evaluate across scientific objective levels of performance and as we are humans, our subjective view of the result.
John Sayers “down under” nice to hear from you….the 813’s can be made to sound quite amazing…ideally only when soffit mounted. Any the versions with the “Blue Lip” or “Black Lip” horn has very erratic beamwidth. Pity there is no facility here for me to post the polar plots of the Horizontal and Vertical polars for the 813. One of the best amplifier combinations for use with the 813’s is the STUDER A68, bridged mono. John Vrtacic and I created dozens of studios with the Vrtacic Engineering soffit technique he created for the 813.
NS-10’s , we all know why this became so widely used. However, in so many studios that I became involved with, again, the amplifier of choice was the approx 60 lbs / 27 Kgs Studer A68 (in stereo mode). This combination worked exceptionally well… too well, and had very little to do with the real world for which the NS 10’s fame propelled it to. And ah yes, blown tweets and woofers all the time….hardly the level one would experience in most home systems. So in a way, this illustrates the miss-match that occurs so often…very good NS10 / Studer sound, but at a cost that has no resemblance to the real world.
Back to your keen observation John on the importance of low end response. The 813 was specified as down -3dB at 40 hz. With enclosure tuning in the 40Hz range, the power output of any speaker system will be attenuated below this frequency. Equalizing to boost the low end is a dangerous exercise, and will result in an unpleasant sound and blue smoke if pushed hard enough. Soffit mounting will smooth out the bass response but little power will be evident below 40, although the frequency response might measure down to 35 o 30 Hz.
When Little Mountain Sound hosted sessions in Vancouver for international stars, the 15 inch woofers were regularly blown. The Altec 604 series of voice coils were never created in the first place to deal with the increasing power demands below 70 Hz… hence a lot of blue smoke. The first Leader/Vrtacic LF extensions for the 813 used our single 18 inch enclosure 1800-9-26SD, which is a 9 cu ft enclosure (approx 190 Lbs) tuned to 26 Hz and powered with 1600 watts @ 8Ohms RMS. The enclosure tuning alignment is “B6” so there is an additional boost at the tuning frequency of 6 dB. B6 alignment changes the tuning or interaction of the woofers mass and the combined volume/air mass in the enclosure/and mass in the vent. The measured response of the system without the external, and correctly designed boost, will correctly show a roll of in response. The “boost” picks up the level at the enclosure tuning frequency. This ThielSmall Alignment, (thank you Australia for both Mr Thiel and Mr Small’s important work in this area in the 1960’s…a seminal paper..see AES) makes possible this performance, otherwise, to achieve the 26 Hz performance, would require an enclosure of at least twice the size, 18 cu ft per channel…and you do need two for stereo.
Even though there was an acceptable match in acoustical power between the two 15” woofers to our 18, and the system measured well through the crossover region…soffit mounted 18”s etc, many music producers were so used to the dynamics of the 813’s as they had difficulty in the improved bass extension while tracking. Conversely, when a Hollywood producer was in the studio working on a mix for a motion picture, they were more than satisfied with the match. In the late 1980’s as the movie mixes were becoming much more complex, Dick Tracey was the first flick to be released with a digital sound track….and this became our forte. We spent thousands of hours analyzing the content for bass density and level…and then came Terminator 2….later, Independence Day…..and Independence Day (with digital sound track) “terminated” thousands of woofers across the entire cinema industry. Cinema today is still stuck with limited low frequency power performance..and that’s another story.
There is an application of woofer technology that still needs to be applied to both cinema and the music biz… Unfortunately it requires rather large check books….
Cheers,
Michael Leader
Friday May 28, 2010
Friday May 28, 2010
you can't beat a set of high powered large coned speakers soffit mounted in a properly treated room.
Sure your little speakers with a sub are fine for mixing, but for response you need a decent system.
I accept that many great albums have been mixed on NS10s, I've used them myself, but always in conjunction with a set of large cone speakers soffit mounted so I can get a true low end response. The NS10s and all the new the small speaker systems are good for mixing etc but I still reckon you need a big system to truly get a good low end response and it doesn't have top be expensive speakers either. One studio I worked in (and won awards out of) had Yamaha NS1000's soffit mounted. They were the big daddy to the NS10s and had a 12" woofer, a mid range speaker and the NS10 tweeter.
When I worked at Music Farm I had the UREI 813s with dual concentric 15" and a 15" sub all in one speaker soffit mounted. Again - great reference for the low end response.
People often forget that the majority of the energy in a music track is below 100hz yet the Yamaha NS10s roll off at 100hz.
As I said , great for balance, but lousy for response.
Thursday May 27, 2010
Neil..you got it too...MP3 is the lowest...convenient yes...fidelity...well there is none. I kind-a look at MP3 this way...it's a stretch...but...as we entered the mid 1960's, germanium transistor gear started to enter the world of pro-audio. The great sounding Ampex 300, 350, 351 tube recorders along with Studer C37 and others, the great tube mic pre amps and tube consoles that had massive headroom...(some could easily output +28 dBm to +32 dBm...today’s mixers approx +22 dBu) anyway, that gear had an openness that the mid 60's into the 70's transistor gear did not have, and recording technology and playback technology suffered...and tubes survived. Maybe this is where we are today with MP3...MP3 maybe represents that early solid-state era...which was not the greatest at all. Sometime from now….and who knows when, someone will discover fidelity all over again.
Bernie....I would love to be able to ship some hand me downs to you. The early early systems my father made in 1964 are still in operation, all built around the Electro-Voice Sentry 1 and 2 speakers...12 inch 2 way (revved up a notch) ...so nothing is available.
There is a web site, dedicated to totally over the top, and offensively expensive consumer grade...Bentley and Rolls Royce priced speaker systems. www.higherfi.com
I do like the guy who runs the company. He knows....and he was once highly involved with one of Americas class leading studios....supreme level of technical engineering and "hits" There you will find over a few dozen companies world wide, who make $$$$+++ speakers for a global market. The level of engineering is exceptionally shallow for most of the companies. A few have big names....however the performance rarely matches the promise. The international elite, doctors, lawyers, CEO's, titans of industry etc...purchase this gear from dealer’s world wide. The size of this market even makes my head spin, it is significantly larger than any of us would imagine.
Take for example the recent entry to the esoteric level of extreme snobbery in audio,( and some of you thought I was bad ) www.steinwaylyngdorf.com Yes, Steinway partnered with Lyngdorf, whom I had previously never heard of. For $ 150,000 USD, you get an impressive monolith complete with two 12 inch woofers and a pair of mids and a ribbon tweet of some sort. The chassis for the approx 5 ft tall monolith starts out as a massive ingot of aluminum. The mechanical detail is impressive, as the entire thing is tooled on a CNC machine and then finished. The electronics are in an impressive box…all in Steinway black of course…with a Gold Knob..that reviewers go nuts about. The system sounds quite listenable…the bass is not very deep, but as there is no rear enclosure, the bass is very “open”. With your eyes closed, there are better offerings at $ 150,000….they produced 150 pairs. In 16 months, all have been sold. Oh yes, they have a wide range of equally exotically priced smaller systems, and an even more costly living room cinema system…about $ 600,000so I’m told. The Los Angeles buzz, is that in the middle east, they have sold about 30 of the cinema systems in a year. I can’t vouch for this info…but it comes from a reasonable source.
Now we factor in (among many others) the B&W, Wilson Audio, Martin Logan, Gryphon Poseidon and a very strange duck in this pond Krell…(and do I have a story for you guys over 3 beers about Krell and their $ 40,000 sub-woofer!) the market is quite substantial world-wide. Frankly I have heard this $ 100,000++ stuff, and I have no comment….well in one word then….hopelesslyOverpricedMediocrity
So, you just might be wondering, ok what is good, that I have nothing at all to do with. Try the Meyer X10 studio monitor with the X800. Westlake SM-1, Kinoshita, find some Gauss drivers and make your own compression driver systems with custom horns (superb), Andy Munro’s some models of Dyne Audio. I think for the money if in good shape, JBL 4430 and 4435 were underrated, and if you tri-amplify the 4435…well, what an amazing bargain you will have. This also means that I would also suggest you bi-amp the 4430. Same for the original TAD monitors, the dual 15 and horn, prior to Mr Kinoshita designing his own improved version. But again, with these big boxes, the JBL 4435, 4430 and the TAD’s best to soffit mount them.
Ciao
Michael Leader
Thursday May 27, 2010
SR 4718's with Crest 2400 power That we use for the weekend warrior band. Don't forget about the bottom octave. It's costly but worth it. No weak links in the chain.
Wednesday May 26, 2010
Wednesday May 26, 2010
Cheers,
Bernie Scott
Wednesday May 26, 2010
I personally would love to experience the studio that Moose owns…. “providing sound that made you feel like you could reach out and touch the transients of an instrument as if in a hologram” If it were not for this forum, I would not have experienced such a poetic expression of everything a monitoring system is supposed to do.
I also agree, that there are recordings that have been made and monitored on lesser equipment. But for the most part, project studios in my experience fall short of the technical infrastructure to create great sound. During the mid to late 1990’s, my company represented Neve/Mitsubishi in Vancouver Canada. In our facility we had a 32 track Pro-Digi massive recorder along with the 2 track mastering recorder, the HS version. We sent the smaller machine out on demo to a few project studios. When it came back, with the reel of tape, it was fascinating for us to listen to the test recordings. Without exception the noise floor of their studio gear was evident on the test reel. There was low level 60 Hz, 120 Hz other spurious noises that would roll through the maze and then the odd transient “tick” spike. There was no true engineering in place to insure first that their AC power was clean and properly grounded. Ground loops were present between outboard equipment…so all of this and other elements gets in the way of the music.
The major studio in Vancouver at that time was Little Mountain Sound. They became the first 24 track studio in Western Canada in the late 1970’s. Oh yes, we sold them their first 2 STUDER A80 24 tracks. When both the 32 track and 2 track machines came back to us from rental, again it was interesting for us to evaluate the content. Completely free of hum and AC racket…no clicks and pops. The sound of the studio as the musicians were setting up and dropping stuff on the floor was open….just as if I was inside the hologram that Moose so aptly describes. Yes, this was a studio where the support technical engineering to create the technical infrastructure was first class. It makes a difference, and it is costly. It is this difference in infrastructure that separates the two camps. My dear friend John Vrtacic passed away August 2009. John was the engineering brain behind LMS. Together he and I along with a dozen or so super pros, spent the better part of 2 weeks evaluating monitor amplifiers back 1979, 1980. The huge soffits for the modified UREI 813’s became a concrete providers joy as the trucks arrived to pump massive amounts of concrete into the cavity above the control room window. The amplifier of choice: STUDER A68, bridged mono for each system. Who has used this system: Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Metallica….among hundreds of others either in Vancouver or in studios that Vrtacic built in California or on Maui Hawaii for Bob Rock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Rock Here is John’s site, he is missed by us all: http://www.vrtacicdesign.com/
Regarding the “tricked out” monitors, Joe Hannigan has a point. He mentions that there is no shortage of “flavors” out there. I gather Joe that your reference is possibly in the exotic home consumer speaker market. I will , with a very big smile, leave it to Dave Smith’s imagination on what my thoughts are on certain $ 100,000 plus speaker makers for both home music playback and cinema systems… Again, if the makers of these speaker systems for the consumer, and us studio people too, tells the public that the speakers are un-colored and natural….why do sooooo many sound as completely different as if black to white? So many speakers truncate reverb tails or room decay. If room decay is present in the recording, such as in the Telarc recording of Malcolm Frager playing Chopin’s Polonaise on a Bosendorfer Imperial Grand, on speakers that “behave themselves” you can easily hear the room “between” the notes. It is a wonderful experience….alas, so many speakers hide this important element….so critical when one thinks in terms of acoustical holograms.
Just in case you think that everything has to be the size of a 16 wheeler, check out the M-Audio (baby monitor) the version with the 5 inch woofer. I am amazed for a pair of speakers for a few hundred dollars how “listenable” it is especially in the mid-band. For my friends who have required a low cost stereo or multi-channel system in either a small room setting or board room, of the dozens of “baby sized” speakers I find the performance to cost ratio very high indeed.
If we look at today’s line up of makers of large scale monitors, there but a few…...and I have issues with some of their mid band designs. However, all of us, when we sit back and enjoy a movie from a major Hollywood Studio, we enjoy the product from large scale studios, with very good engineering support. The bass is fairly consistent studio to studio, genre to genre. Far more consistent than across the music studio industry large and small. Note that I said “consistent” on many occasions it could, and indeed can, be better, as movies from many European dubbing stages do not quite match on many occasions the Hollywood guys….close…but not always “down the middle”…
Now…about that hologram sound I desire in my car stereo…. Hmmmmmm
Ciao,
Michael Leader
Wednesday May 26, 2010
Wednesday May 26, 2010
Wednesday May 26, 2010
Unbelievable.....Really, I can't believe how this guy comes in and hijacks your blog and then you allow him a platform to sell his business.
Michael Leader seems like a hopeless EGO MANIAC....WOW!!!
Next time I am in the position to contract a professional sound system, I will call anyone but Michael Leader.
Thank you very much,
J. Tomasi
Wednesday May 26, 2010
Wednesday May 26, 2010
Wednesday May 26, 2010
Wednesday May 26, 2010
The truth is always somewhere in the middle, of course. In a perfect world, we'd all have speakers (soffit-mounted or otherwise) with full dynamic and frequency ranges to hear everything, all the time. The rest of us mere mortals who do NOT work at Disney, Skywalker or Paisley Park studios have to deal with real world issues and work with the tools we have. It's nice to know what we COULD buy if we had, as Mr Leader says: "Three checkbooks".
An article like this certainly defines what could arguably be the holy grail/benchmark of high fidelity playback. But it doesn't have to sneer at some very good tools that are out there, when used by the right folks in the right environment. (I'd rather have a decent sub connected to "baby monitors" than no sub at all, for example...it's important to hear AND understand what's down there, regardless of the math proving how "lame" it all is. A properly setup sub is still a useful tool, period. (If one needed a hammer to drive nails but couldn't afford the biggest & best made of titanium, one probably wouldn't decide to skip it and use the blunt end of a screwdriver, would they??)
I also fail to see (unless we're talking six-figure playback systems) the real-world point in all that excessive bass response - in stereo, even. Yes yes, the bar is certainly raised in home theater systems and good movie theaters, as well, (although they're a bit of a dying breed with the growth of the former.) I enjoy it as much as anyone, and am glad these systems (and the folks who create mixes for them) still exist.
Honestly, though, aside from a few tricked out high-end theaters, who's going to notice this in real-world listening? If all we ever had to work on was the kind of system Mr. Leader describes, I suspect a kind of inverse-universe mixing would be the norm; mixes that wouldn't translate well on "real-world" systems like cars, table radios, boom boxes and the rest of the crap that people use for casual playback. These are simple facts of our audio lives. Even for "high end" music systems (and there are no shortages of flavors of THAT kind of stuff out there!), there has to be a standard of "transportability" that engineers strive for. (Even with some "baby monitoring" systems.) I mix DVD sountracks with full range intentions as well, and test them on my own home system(s) as well as many friends and neighbors who will suffer my tests and tweaks.
I'm totally fine with a single sub for frequencies below 100 hz & on down, perhaps because I grew up in the vinyl mastering days of keeping the needle from popping out of the groove, but I also know that while low bass is indeed unidirectional, it's the UPPER frequencies that determine directional cues. For my classical & jazz recordings of ensembles with double basses, they certainly tell you WHERE the basses were standing, but they also let you feel it all over. I know that these recordings will be played on the web, on analog & digital FM radio, and in every kind of home listening enviro imaginable. And of course, I've taken the time and care to make sure they'll also play very well indeed on the kinds of systems Mr. Leader has access to.
Simply put, there's no need to shame the rest of the working studio community with a "Mine is bigger than yours" kind of article. It's just as foolish to chase the kind of "macho" big-muscle hardware Mr. Leader sells as it is to buy the latest "Fad of the Month" as seen in far too many trade mags and online vendors.
Wednesday May 26, 2010
So what does that mean for us mere mortals? Like always, we have to do the best with what we've got. When we face that dismal reality, one shining ray of hope still shines through, and that is that the key is the music, and not the technology that records the music. No matter how badly recorded, a hit song is still a hit song because the magic is in the melody and the groove.
Permit me to add that our project studios allow us to create, but we won't ever compete with the high end results of high end productions, no matter how many plug-ins we buy, or how many acoustic emulations we have of microphones and recording spaces abd what have you. Although there is a huge and growing market for these tools it behooves us to concentrate on the quality of the music before spending the kids' inheritance on equipment.
Wednesday May 26, 2010
The average listener will not be playing his/her music on one of these systems, so I'd like to interject with a little bit of reality - if I may?
Through trial and error - listening and re-listening, along with developing your own formulas for producing satisfying mixes, you most certaily can compete with these super studios. What's more, you can rest assured that the majority of your audience will not be scrutinizing every note with million dollar speakers.
In other words, us average Joes are more than happy to create great recordings the "old-fashioned way - BY EARNING THEM.
Wednesday May 26, 2010
Wednesday May 26, 2010
Wednesday May 26, 2010
Michael K. Leader - superciliousness personified !
Wednesday May 26, 2010
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