Room Measurements...Can I stop now?

[mr average]

We are probably closer than you think on these issues. Again, I'm not putting all my eggs in the measurements basket. I spent a long time (2-3 years) recording and mixing in my space and listening on headphones (Senheiser HD650's, AKG 240's, etc) and monitors. I was never completely confident or happy with my recordings and I became more interested in the impact of room acoustics on the final sound. As I noted in another thread, I've been down the equipment road, the recording techniques road, and the mastering road looking for solutions. I've solicited the aid of a mixing engineer to see if an outside studio impacted my work. And I've tried listening, thinking, researching, and talking about audio and recording until I was blue in the face.

As a result, my interest in room acoustics is really a sort of a last stop in the home recording train. Measurement is just part and parcel of that process. It's another way of thinking about what happens when we record by looking at the fundamentals of sound. It's also just another sub-hobby buried under the larger umbrella of recording. Some people make guitars, some people build studios, some play in bands, and many go shopping. If I had to write music and record it on a daily basis, I would be institutionalized. Or perhaps lop of an ear. So things like room measurement fill the void. Besides, the pictures are really pretty.

all well and good if you are the only one listening in the same room at the same spot

but what if other people play it in other rooms
how will it sound there

how about in the car?

does it really pay to go to the trouble to make it perfect when so many other locations will mess it up again ?

 

[dwillis45]

all well and good if you are the only one listening in the same room at the same spot

but what if other people play it in other rooms
how will it sound there

how about in the car?

does it really pay to go to the trouble to make it perfect when so many other locations will mess it up again ?

That's the whole basis behind acoustic treatment and confirmation through measurement. The idea is that if you mix in a properly treated room, your mixes will translate. You won't have to spend your life in the car.

Granted, it's a large and complicated assumption. But that's essentially why people go through this effort.

 

[mr average]

That's the whole basis behind acoustic treatment and confirmation through measurement. The idea is that if you mix in a properly treated room, your mixes will translate. You won't have to spend your life in the car.

Granted, it's a large and complicated assumption. But that's essentially why people go through this effort.

i hear the room treatment sales guys say that a lot
but when i think about it logically it does not compute

use the screen and mix it flat
listen to it in headphones and it sounds great

i cannot outguess everybody elses room for them.

 

[dwillis45]

i hear the room treatment sales guys say that a lot
but when i think about it logically it does not compute

use the screen and mix it flat
listen to it in headphones and it sounds great

i cannot outguess everybody elses room for them.

Hard to argue with the room treatment sales guys, though. Most of them have pretty extensive backgrounds in acoustics and they use some very big words.

 

[dwillis45]

use the screen and mix it flat
listen to it in headphones and it sounds great
.

That's pretty close to my strategy. Mix on headphones, forget about the room, and use the same pair of headphones to listen to your music. And, to be absolutely sure, never play the music anywhere without using those exact headphones. I take this one step further by never letting anyone except my closest friends listen to my songs. And I've given them all the same pair of mixing cans that i use--a pair of Senheiser HD 650's. It get's a little expensive, but I overcome that by having few if any friends. I encourage everyone to try this. It really works. In fact, I'm surprised that someone hasn't thought of this before. It's a solid gold strategy, especially for the headphone companies.

 

[rob aylestone]

I think it is necessary to establish if music is an art, or a science. Can you paint a picture from scratch, by eye, or do you need numbers on the canvas. Can you tune a guitar by ear, or must you use a tuner. Can your brain tell your hands how to strum a song, or do you learn to read tab brilliantly and play by the numbers. How many of the amazingly good musicians we often seek too emulate can read or write conventional music?

Does it matter? Possibly?

What seems certain is that talent is required, but the talent can't be itemised and measured. All you can measure is the end product. The process is immaterial. If it works for the individual it's enough. Sadly, the people who don't have the talent end up on the TV programmes totally amazed nobody buzzes, turns, lights or sees their 'talent'.

The test of any recording process is aural. It will be good or not. Any genre of music. I learned long ago that because I hate rap and metal it does not mean this material cannot be well recorded and produced. We all make end judgements and quality can be applied to any genre and style. I always expected Abbey Road studio in Lindon to be an amazing place and had in my head the fact it would have some kind of magic sound. It doesn't - but it's a nice sound that makes in comfortable to be in. Same with Air Lyndhurst. A very popular place to record classical stuff and sample package. Just a nice sounding space. I only passed through, but I bet their response is not remotely flat, and their monitors are not remotely flat. In fact, what would be the point of studios having two or more pairs of speakers of different sizes if they were flat? What is important is a response that does not make things jump out. In some of the plots here, you can clearly see the clustering of the results and even in one, steps - which clearly don't exist in real life, so are measurement anomalies.

I firmly believe that trusting my ears is the only way, and double checking against measurement tools ultlimately pointless.

 

[Ainaudio]

Start (or restart) with loudspeaker correction. It is first layer of equalisation and time correction in your control system. There is nothing more right for it as offered by: aplaudio.com
This way you will get almost ideal loudspeakers - real point of reference. And it will cut loudspeaker & room endless corrections "loop" forever. Continue with loudspeaker direction and room acoustics corrections (room acoustics optimisation and room equalisation /second eq layer over loudspeaker eq/) only after it.
P.S.
You can correct your headphones there too. It is even easier because there are not problems with acoustics correction for headphones.

 

[dwillis45]

I think it is necessary to establish if music is an art, or a science. Can you paint a picture from scratch, by eye, or do you need numbers on the canvas. Can you tune a guitar by ear, or must you use a tuner. Can your brain tell your hands how to strum a song, or do you learn to read tab brilliantly and play by the numbers. How many of the amazingly good musicians we often seek too emulate can read or write conventional music?.

From what I can see these days, music is not art. It's crap. It's largely overproduced, over engineered, and over sold. But that's a somewhat separate discussion. Most bad paintings are created by eye. Some decent Plein Air work is done in that fashion, but most of the great masters used charcoal underdrawings based on perspective--often aided by simple machines like the camera obscura. Yes, you can tune a guitar by ear and by machine. But you are more likely to be sharp or flat using your ear only. Besides, tuning is definitely not art. It's a pain and my wife hates it. Of course tuning machines lie:

YouTube

The only thing I can say about the brain is that it can do odd things to music. The CNN Glenn Campbell documentary is evidence of that. And I see it every day when I try to play music. Sometimes I just drift off and can't remember the next chord position. Of course, I take a lot of medicine and dementia does run in my family. So there's that

 

[dwillis45]

What seems certain is that talent is required, but the talent can't be itemised and measured.

Talent can be augmented by learning, training, practice and all sorts of different processes. In fact, most talent is simply raw and probably genetic. Or God given for those who believe in the man in the sky stuff. Most musical talent would probably exist in the raw state without the aid of some form of technology and measurement. I wonder if Martin guitar uses any measurement device? I wonder how Adam audio knows the cross over post of their speakers? The list goes on and on. But it's really not an all or nothing debate. Measurement won't kill you. It can add context and deepen your understanding. Of course, you don't need a mic and complicated software. Just play a test done and walk around your room.

 

[dwillis45]

The test of any recording process is aural. .

I believe you mean oral. I began playing music in the early 1970's for one purpose: to attract women. Of course, the ultimate irony is that most of the women I've known (in the biblical sense) have either hated music and enjoyed baseless crap. Oh well.

 

[dwillis45]

I firmly believe that trusting my ears is the only way, and double checking against measurement tools ultlimately pointless.

Whatever works is fine. I just would't claim the approach as the one true path. It's far too austere and too limiting. It eschews any notions of technology, science, or progress and it's fundamentally undemocratic and insular. If it can only be done by ear, you create a master class of the gifted and a large pool of feckless wannabes who can never possibly achieve anything because of their aural inequities.

 

[rob aylestone]

I believe you mean oral. I began playing music in the early 1970's for one purpose: to attract women. Of course, the ultimate irony is that most of the women I've known (in the biblical sense) have either hated music and enjoyed baseless crap. Oh well.

Nope - most absolutely aural, as in with the ears, not the mouth - in any sense.

 

[mr average]

From what I can see these days, music is not art. It's crap. It's largely overproduced, over engineered, and over sold. But that's a somewhat separate discussion. Most bad paintings are created by eye. Some decent Plein Air work is done in that fashion, but most of the great masters used charcoal underdrawings based on perspective--often aided by simple machines like the camera obscura. Yes, you can tune a guitar by ear and by machine. But you are more likely to be sharp or flat using your ear only. Besides, tuning is definitely not art. It's a pain and my wife hates it. Of course tuning machines lie:

YouTube

The only thing I can say about the brain is that it can do odd things to music. The CNN Glenn Campbell documentary is evidence of that. And I see it every day when I try to play music. Sometimes I just drift off and can't remember the next chord position. Of course, I take a lot of medicine and dementia does run in my family. So there's that

all art is subjective

some art is good

some art is bad - BART

some art is phony - PHART

 

[dwillis45]

Nope - most absolutely aural, as in with the ears, not the mouth - in any sense.

In the ears? Oh, my! That is kinky. I need to get out of the States.

 

[dwillis45]

all art is subjective

some art is good

some art is bad - BART

some art is phony - PHART

I like to think in terms of good and evil when it applies to humanity or art. And that's one thing I don't need to measure. I can just tell.

 

[dwillis45]

This is almost completely unrelated but most photographs taken before, say 1930, were taken without a light meter. And the earliest images were done without a shutter. If you go back far enough, they didn't even uses lenses.

Somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, lenses, shutters, and light meters became standard on almost all cameras. And I would guess that 99.9 percent of all modern photographs and photographers rely on light meters. There are a few fine art pinhole types hanging around, but they are in the minority. In fact, I would guess that most people couldn't take a photo without a meter of some sorts. It's actually quite easy, though. You use your eyes and some assumptions about light. Most of the time, you can actually get somewhere in the ballpark, especially during daylight and under average exposure conditions. So, realistically, measuring light and using a light meter is pointless and a waste of time. Why so many people use these "assistive" devices is beyond me. They really should just use there eyes. Photography is about composition, capturing a moment in time, and light. Very little else. And all of these can be accomplished without technology, like the light meter. It was done this way for the first 50 years of photography and I see no reason why anything should change.

Muhahahaha!

 

[dwillis45]

One more thing: What do you call two sixty year-old men having a discussion based on differing perspectives?

A retirement community.

 

[dwillis45]

Start (or restart) with loudspeaker correction. It is first layer of equalisation and time correction in your control system. There is nothing more right for it as offered by: aplaudio.com
This way you will get almost ideal loudspeakers - real point of reference. And it will cut loudspeaker & room endless corrections "loop" forever. Continue with loudspeaker direction and room acoustics corrections (room acoustics optimisation and room equalisation /second eq layer over loudspeaker eq/) only after it.
P.S.
You can correct your headphones there too. It is even easier because there are not problems with acoustics correction for headphones.

Sonar Works has a similar product and I've tried the headphone plugin. It really wasn't for me. I really wanted to move towards room treatment as a solution to what ails me. It seems like a more fundamental approach, rather than a software solution. Besides, most of these products seem to be based largely on a room EQ solution. The problem with that is that it can't really address all issues, including nulls which are often at the heart of room issues.

 

[mr average]

I like to think in terms of good and evil when it applies to humanity or art. And that's one thing I don't need to measure. I can just tell.

like einstein said

you can not measure everything that matters

and

not everything you did measure does matter at all

 

[mr average]

This is almost completely unrelated but most photographs taken before, say 1930, were taken without a light meter. And the earliest images were done without a shutter. If you go back far enough, they didn't even uses lenses.

Somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, lenses, shutters, and light meters became standard on almost all cameras. And I would guess that 99.9 percent of all modern photographs and photographers rely on light meters. There are a few fine art pinhole types hanging around, but they are in the minority. In fact, I would guess that most people couldn't take a photo without a meter of some sorts. It's actually quite easy, though. You use your eyes and some assumptions about light. Most of the time, you can actually get somewhere in the ballpark, especially during daylight and under average exposure conditions. So, realistically, measuring light and using a light meter is pointless and a waste of time. Why so many people use these "assistive" devices is beyond me. They really should just use there eyes. Photography is about composition, capturing a moment in time, and light. Very little else. And all of these can be accomplished without technology, like the light meter. It was done this way for the first 50 years of photography and I see no reason why anything should change.

Muhahahaha!

actually these days most cameras are automatic and cell phones have taken over the majority spot of photos and pix taken now .

without the automation you would have trouble calibrating your eyes to the actual brightness versus the ISO rating of the film or more accurately now the chip used