Does Indeed (also listening to a band in the rehearsal room) ¡Not great for sound reinforcement providers though! For medium-sized venues a personal column for each performer can help with a more natural sound image. These, of course, we have immersive...
@@DaveRat Hi again, sorry if you’ve already stated this elsewhere in the comments. So what would be your ideal situation to try out on a gig? Are you suggesting individual stacks above each performer, firing out into the stadium? It’s a conundrum isn’t it, because when you stand next to Flea and his bass rig on stage or in rehearsals it must be epic. But to reinforce that, without using 8 more bass rig heads and cabinets (rather than PA amps and speakers) wouldn’t be true to that sound. Loving the videos, always good stuff.
Understanding the concepts is the first step. I cover ways to improve usage of stereo systems in several other videos and more info on the member side including ways to do it with subs as well. I think just continuing to read and look into it more and find out which aspects apply to you is the way
Dave I SO appreciate how you explain and talk about things: I'm a 'hands on/visual learner', and with all things music it helps a TON to have it taught that way.
Very thought provoking and Inspirational. Dave you remind me of Russell Johnson ( Artec Consultants ) an old sound designer from New York. He mixed the room with speakers from the ceiling speakers bouncing off the walls and under the seats in Theatres. He also created zones for sound to be directed to through out the theatre allowing more dimension. He was an FN genius. at that time I was just an assistant and my boss could not get his head wrapped around it and trashed the system and went back to point source and ruined an accoustical gem. Sometimes Senoirity SUCKS, but when my boss retired I worked on my own time rewiring trunklines my boss had cut, I had mamagement come and listen when I finished and everyone was blown away. But when I explained what I had did my Supervisor told me to shut it down and never use it again or it would be his ass on the line for letting it happen. So Sad but true.
I never forgot Dave's story about humans hearing the sound of ocean waves in stereo. Hence our ears, the most perfect set of speakers in the universe does not hear in mono. He told about creating "imbalances" in the PA to simulate how the ear hears sound in a more natural, pleasant and even richer way. Like there is perfection in imperfection. This video expounds on that story further. I've read many things about audio through my life and this might be the most prolific thing I've ever come across. If the idea of trying to see how sound moves in the air is a crazy thing, count me in Dave. I think you're a genius at this.
I encourage anyone doubting the magnificence of this to see a a concert with a Lacoustics L-Isa system. I recently went to a Bon Iver concert where they used it and I have to say its a completely different experience compared to a normal stereo Pa Concert. Especially on this Large scale of an arena. It was waaaay drier, way more immersive and simply waaay better sounding than anything i've ever seen on a non-open-air-stage that large.
Very inspiring. Thanks for relighting the fir in my belly for thinking outside of the box in audio. Years ago I had my teacher at recording arts school 1980ish Tell me I was insane with some of my questions. And to keep it up. Somewhere along the road of my career I became a me too audio guy both live and studio. The best compliment I always get when is from people who know me for a long time see something new and say hey Kyle was doing that years ago.
Was working with a research group that was doing MRIs of disabled elderly brains while inducing stimuli to see if they could get the brain to lite up eventually it lead to using music signals but we also found that stereo made the brain work harder. Since then I have been working on loudspeakers that can form a sound field with 1 speaker and a mono signal. I feel it to be a more relaxing way to enjoy music and it's far more natural than stereo.
Such a great summary Dave! This really tells the story of how we still have much work to do in terms sound reinforcement. For instance, the research in concert hall acoustics is quite advanced and we now understand a lot of the subtleties very well, from the perceptual aspect, of what actually matters, to the physical measurements which can predict the subjective perception. It's so interesting to see that an orchestra doesn't need any reinforcement, as it's using exactly what you're talking about, the natural interaction with the room and with the reflections, and it's slightly different for every person in the room. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for sound reinforcement and whether we'll manage to escape the stereo hell anytime soon. PS. If you need me to send you some interesting research papers I'm more than happy to help out, I'm currently doing a PhD in this field as part of the Applied Psychoacoustics Laboratory (APL) and we're always trying to play around with this out-of-the-box thoughts and ideas.
You might be the person to ask this. What are your thoughts about an antireverb dsp? Basically if you have a fixed PA in a large hall that would naturally reverberate beyond any intelligibility at volume, could you create a custom room signature to get the audio cleaned up a little as it passes down the hall? Almost like an anti reverb impulse response or a selective noise cancelling. Would love to hear your thoughts. (I was at an event in basically a tunnel and I couldn't hear a thing, which is why I thought of it)
I've seen some work on stuff in that direction. Basso ally it takes manyany speakers, like hundreds for a smallish room with complex processing for each speaker. Much cheaper and easier to add sound absorbing material.
@@DaveRat I figured the something crazy like that would be required. The location I was in is a historic train station in the Midwest, so I'm going to guess either solution is probably not allowed, but the problem got me thinking. The best I could come up with is a series of reinforcing speakers down the side paired with microphone/speaker clusters for the anti reverb. Combine that with some fancy ANC software that passes the original signal with a source distance delay taken into account. Or some kind of crazy look ahead signal process where the PA automatically accounts for the reflections and pumps out the out of phase signal just before the actual signal. Anyways, thanks for all the knowledge you've shared!
It's super complex and requires so many speakers, like 25% of the walls covered with sound sources with an amp and processor for every speaker. Energy once generated is relatively easy to absorb and very difficult to cancel.
I love this video. I think it depends on the scenario you’re going for. In a church setting where the goal is to lead the church/congregation in worship, it’s important for each person to be able to hear all of the vocals. So the vocals need to go through each of the LCR speakers. Now we do have some leeway with the instruments because they help create the atmosphere for the songs they sing. Keyboards are the easiest because they send different sound to each speaker. Guitar is some what simple because the effects can be stereo and send different sounds to each speaker but you can also pan the guitar to mimic where the guitarist is located on stage. Same for bass and drums.
Interesting way to look at it. I venture to the other end of the spectrum for my personal listening experience. To me, stereo sounds better than "live sound". Live sound is too loud, too high frequency or bass heavy, has too much reverb, there's people talking and making noise etc...A good home speaker set sounds intimate and very "acoustic" and organic. Omni directional speakers have more of this enclosed listening quality. The good home systems provide offers more clarity and precision. I like the idea of "multi-track" audio for multi point speaker systems as well though. Really a difference in the experience of the sound to have all this stuff reflecting in different ways with different setups. I was blown away when I heard the bose micros in my house. They seemed to "open" the sound up with a feeling that you could grab the instrument. It seemed very rich in volume but the sound did not actually travel outside the house which is good. With stereo, depending on how far apart your speakers are you get 5 strong points (far left, mid left, center, mid right and far right), those points then reflect obviously in interesting ways creating more focal trajectory. But again it's just a different experience. One thing is for damn sure we got to get away from the phone mixing based production. I came up with an idea called stereo cell, that basically is the concept of attaching very small but good speakers to a cell phone. In this way it can still fit in your pocket like a cell but would provide much better sound with the latest speaker developments. The new gen wants super exaggerated kits which is a whole nother issue ha...They sort of bake all this directional stuff into very basic arrangements (less virtuoso musicality but the listener can "feel" the vibe because the kick is 20db too loud). lol.
Hmmm, comparing processed home hifi and recordings to live where everything is pumped through big speakers in a more raw form at higher level. Yeah, stereo is less intrusive. But 2hat about comparing both live PA system sound and home hifi sound to say, someone playing an accounting guitar, a stand up bass and a percussionist? My take is that both live pa and home hifi and surround sound and all the other formats fail at reproducing sound even close to the original due to flaws in the formats of reproduction.
Makes totally sense. You downmix 30 sources into two tracks that are going to be reproduced into acoustical nightmare (average venue) and create so many issues in frequency, space, and time domain anyways. Pretending the sound from stereo is somehow going to be more coherent and polished is just insane. Dave, you actually use the venue to downmix the audio, kind of like a acoustical summing box, and everyone gets their own slight variation of the mix. I have to admit it took a minute for me to wrap my head around your concept.
This stuff is so fun, when I took a basic sound engineering class in a community collage 20+ years ago it was just as amazing to think of just how stereo works with our 2 ears to fool us to seeing sounds for all directions. But when then thinking of things like this, like the way the sounds come all out of the one speaker, even if you maybe have a perfect outdoor environment where reflections where not as big an issue, just those sounds coming out the same speakers has to have some impact on the distortions and way these sounds mess with each other. I even have a pretty big collection of 3D home audio I enjoy that is mostly in DTS WAV, but I agree you will never get back to the original sound. I really enjoy your videos!
Dave, I love your channel! I've been a musician and done a ton of recordings in a live situation, mostly Classical and jazz. Was in charge of recording a Symphony Orchestra at concerts for Public Radio broadcast. Did 15 years with a great hall and great mics. After getting an acceptable recording with a singe point stereo AKG 422, I too thought how can we improve the recording experience? after adding spot mics, different stereo pairs and a whole lot of trial and error, We took the three spaced omni small condenser mic approach and the right to left did sound fairly realistic. The hall ambience and reflections was another matter. I'd setup at a rehearsal with an empty hall and it sounded just great, you could hear the hall and it did send you there if you had headphones or a decent speaker listening environment. As soon as the hall filled with the audience, no hall ambience except a bit of people rustling around. Defeated! I ended up getting an early Klark-Technik digital reverb to put some semblance of space in. Live Jazz has the same issues if you close mic everything and mix down. I was able to record for release a club performance that included David "Fathead" Newman where the club and musicians insisted that we record with two spaced mics, about 10 feet away from the stage. Cool until I heard the drums overwhelming the piano and couldn't do anything about it! New designs in speaker systems and computer cancellation of our home reflections and replacing them with the original ambience is a possible move forward. However, we do tend to really like the clarity of mixing down close mic'd sources so we get a "better than being there" experience. No right and wrong as you say, just food for thought.
This reminds me of what Bose did with the L1 system. Each musician had one instead of being funneled through a PA. Pat Metheny did concert that used the L1s exclusively. Good Stuff!
Once my band played as the last one on some festival - raining whole day, getting worse, people leaving. Huge stage, PA, lost time with soundcheck = loosing more people. We decided to get people under cover of stage roof and divide it between a band and audience. Drums dry, bass from amp, guitar from amp, choir dry, 2 violins and 2 vocals slightly amplified with mic directly into RCF ART310A. It was STELLAR. Even if something was quieter than it should be sometimes, you could still hear every single note from every particular instrument and locate it exactly.
You are absolutely right in your thinking, many years ago, when I was young, I got hold of a 10 band eq 5 bands per channel, and sent each band to it's own 3 watt amp and speaker and used a 50 watt amp as a sub, in the middle, it sounded amazing, so yah, it's all good, great video
Leads me to believe that every musician should have a dedicated speaker (PA) for their instrument positioned in front of them with the best coverage for the audience possible. I suppose rigging and audience size would be the biggest challenge here. Also, creating an environment where there is no stage volume and using the speaker itself as the source. Every musician on IEM’s. This idea has very much dictated how I approach my gigs. Even if I don’t have ideal circumstances, working towards this has improved the quality of my work. Thanks for your inquisitive leadership, Dave!
using a stereo pointsource system in a small venue i sometimes squeeze a dog toy squeakie ball for fun during events. i would totally agree that sounds from multiple sources add to the overall experience. thanks for all the videos.
Very interesting observation, video and thoughts. It would be a great future video the application of your opinions in a real mixing scenario of yours. Cheers.
I would add that we are perhaps on the way there with systems like atmos and ambisonics. Let's see, there's lots of road to cover with many different scenarios. Thanks for putting the lights out of the box!
Very cool and yes, there are systems like Atmos or even sound bars, L-isa, Soundscape and surround that try and create the illusion of sound source locations. It's tough though as the room reflections from the illusion don't match the reflections that would occur from actual sources in those locations.
I really do miss something like a 3-speaker standard. Purely mono stuff goes in the middle, purely stereo stuff goes into the sides. It's a small change, but it would definitely change the sound.
I would love to talk about concepts for a mono or X-number of speaker system (doesn't have to be two: Left / Right) that can enhance a rock band in small and medium venues, mostly without venue PA. You're an artist and a genius. Van Gogh, Michaelangelo, and Dave Rat.
Increasing the number of sources deals with some of the issue. Another aspect of the issue has to do with sound sources tend to radiate differing sounds in different directions while speakers try to radiate the same sound in one direction
Sind Some time last year doing small pub gigs with 4 point source speakers behind the performers, plus two speakers for ell guitar. Placing every instrument in the speaker behind that that instrument and the fx to the two speakers beside. Was a very interesting project to do, and had a very acoustic feel to it
If only record companies released multitrack versions of songs/albums! You could have an assortment of speakers, one for each instrument so it may just sound more "life-like"... who says 5.1 or 7.2 or whatever has to be surround? Make it one speaker per instrument or at least groups of instruments, set up multiple speakers in front of you, not around you :) anyway, great content, criminally underrated what you're doing here, Dave, i'm learning a lot of interesting concepts from your videos, thanks!
I went to an electronics show in the late 1990s where I was fooled by sound. Was waling down the hallway, and a room was open and I heard a grand piano in a room they were serving refreshments. I went into the room and turned left and saw the grand piano with the lid up, but nobody was seated at the piano. Cool I thought a player grand piano. Never saw one so I went over to investigate the player piano. Upon approaching, I discovered it was not a player piano, but a Yamaha grand piano. On the floor next to the piano were two 3 way accoustic suspension speakers. Asking about the recording, the piano was recorded with 2 microphones the night before with no compression, eq, or mixing. It had me completely fooled until I was about 15 feet from the piano and saw the speakers on the carpet. Very impressive and very real. It was a digital recording with good equipment. The speakers were less than 2 feet from each side of the piano on the floor with no stands. Still remember that 25 years later. It is the one time a recording completely fooled me. Early stereo recordings were often mixed hard left and hard right. Listen to some vintage Beatles and other recordings of the same time. When stereo television came out, the studios had a very difficult time with using conventional microphones and the result was comb filtering from the phase delays in the stereo recording and the close spaced speakers in a television set. Studios then moved to mono mixes and X/Y stereo microphones so the sound was phase aligned when a stereo mic is used for one point source. This is why in audio production, each performer is picked up with a single mic, not a pair of mics. The phase cancellations are brutal. It was fun watching the TV studios learn that in early stereo television. Sound engineers knew long ago to not place a pair of mics for a single performer unless the recording is strictly for binural headphone use.
Great... by not using soundsources, but lightsources, you make it clearer to me! Thanks, Dave!! 🙂 You mak me look with an other perspective to soundmixing... we are all being so conservative... do it the old way as being teached in the early days... As a musician I try to experiment, thinking outside the box... as a soundguy I am soooo conservative!! So thanks for your insights and let me be more creative!! 🙂
I love this topic. Been thinking about different ways to implement this. Smaller environments seem like an easier task. Sitting in a small venue listening to a bluegrass band with no amplification is a great experience. You get to experience the room and the music together. Making each instrument a bit louder for a larger venue having all the sound emanate from near that instrument would be fine for the audience, but would cause issues on the stage as it gets louder. I'm picturing in my mind a horizontal line of speakers across the front of the stage and panning each instrument to a different location in that array. Instruments stage left would be panned left, then follow the instruments across the stage. Multiple subs could be similarly panned. It would take a lot of equipment to do it, but a cool thought. With In Ear Monitors, I think it would be somehow possible to electronically simulate Binaural audio. Record each instrument, and make that sound emanate from an imaginary point on the stage. Boss Wazza-Air Headphone amp comes to mind.
This is pretty much what I've been trying to achieve in a live music listening room (meaning the audience is expected to listen, no talking) I've recently opened. Through experimentation I've landed on a different solution that works shockingly well! Long story short, I'm hanging splayed main speakers front and center over the stage with subs directly under. Everything is run in mono. Then I'm delaying the whole PA signal the equivalent of about 15-18ft (the furthest distance an instrument is likely to ever be placed behind the PA speakers). This allows the listener to hear the actual source just before the amplified version of it. Since our 3D auditory image of the world is mostly constructed from the timing cues of a sound hitting one ear before the other, hearing the original sound source before the amplified version leaves the impression that all the sound is coming from the original source! Turning the delay on and off is an impressive experience, especially when you close your eyes. You can "feel" each sound move from the PA to its instrument! Even the lead singers voice seems to drop from the speakers directly above down to his/her mouth. It works so well with acoustic instruments! I would definitely try it on bluegrass!
Always a pleasure to watch your videos. I remember experimenting with lots of little speakers and sources in a room and thinking there will be a way someday to build it up to scale for large events. That being said, have you heard d&b's Soundscape? Granted, I might be biased since I mostly use their gear but I must say it's a game changer for me and certainly a good step in the right direction.
D&B soundscape, Dolby Atmos, and L acoustics L-Isa are interesting ways to smear sound sources around between various speakers to try and create the illusion that the sound sources are located in various horizontal and vertical or rear or overhead locations. This is all fun and useful and has applications. What I'm referring to is that as long as sound systems are designed to be a bunch of shower heads shooting energy at the audience they will never accurately sound like many of the sound sources they are trying to recreate. Actual sound sources are more like sprinkler heads in a field shooting sound in various directions where you can walk between them closer and farther. Trying to recreate this with shower heads blasting in the audience direction may be useful for practical but will not create audio that sounds like the original
@@DaveRat As always there is always a compromise. Yes, I agree with the concept you put out there and hope better solutions will emerge. On the other side I think the limitations of PA setups over the years might have conditioned the general public to expect a wall of noise to be blasted at them from a stacked or a flown bunch of cabinets regardless of what the instruments actually sound like in person. It amazes me how many people confront me for not taking part in what I consider to be this generation's loudness war. We moved from louder on CD's to now louder live mixes. I constantly see this babysitting at festivals where guest acts try to push everything to an eye watering limit. Yes, the most truthfull sound you get in a small room where nothing is really put through those showerheads but to my annoyance, people started asking me for double bass drum mics on a jazz gig in a small pub. Anyways, great food for thought and thanks again for all your videos. 😃
@@PadreAG I hate the waste of seeing great musicians playing and the PA is producing more energy than the room can physically hold with any clarity at all, no matter how "good" the sound system is. I also get sick of hearing nothing but kick drum. Thank God for the growing trend of listening rooms!
always found that panning mono sources doesnt make them sound like they are in real places in the sereo field and i figured this was due to there being no timing differences, if there were pan controls in a mixer or daw that introduced a few ms of delay to the weaker side i think that would improve believability
Oh no it's another video on multiple PA speakers & feeds. After the last few videos I started pondering this some more and one day I realized.......... 5.1 & 6.1 surround sound audio does exactly this different, sounds are sent to different speakers a different volumes to produce the feeling of sound moving around in space. And to think this all started with somebody going to the theater and being annoyed that his movie didn't sound the way he expected it to during editing because of a mono speaker system in the theater. Well touché you beat me to commenting. Awesome analogy. I think I thought of surroundsound the next day after watching and commenting.
Hmmm, if you only made it to surround sound thinking, you stopped too early My opinion and this video is actually about why surround sound, Atmos, and all the other configurations available are flawed Surround sound is like mounting a bunch of showerheads on the walls and maybe even ceiling. And then trying to recreate the experience of being in a field walking through sprinklers. Sound sources like instruments are more like a campfire or a sprinkler radiating energy outward Creating a room full of showerheads to recreate a sprinkler field or using central heating to recreate a campfire is using directional energy shooting inward. This is the reason the recreations fail.
I have had a 222-seat theater at my disposal in Fort Lauderdale for some 35 years. It was a church way back but is now fully godless and it’s a magnificent sounding room. Very steep seating, heavy velour curtains over stained glass and exposed concrete. Since I could do what a wanted, I installed a coincident pair above the stage angled out about 60 degrees, on its own stereo amp. I have really enjoyed boldly mixing stereo in that room, sending maybe half the sound, or more?, to that pair. I can’t think of any reason big setups should not do this. It’s highly room dependent of course, but quite an ear-opener in a nicely proportioned room.
For decades I've been dreaming about a sound system (theater or surround, call it as you like) in which I have not only left and right but also up (above) and down (below) sound channel. The stereo system was the pinnacle of analog recording (we can safely forget about quadrophonia). In the digital realm the sky is the limit as for the number of audio channels. So, you are perfectly right, for re-creating a live performance every sound source should have it's own channel and by that I mean also loudspeaker. The headphones are another painful story, maybe for some other time 😀🤗
Thank you, once again. But I'm left with more questions (which is a good thing and why I like your vids): Can I, then, place 2 point source speakers right next to each other(touching) and make it work as long as I FULLY pan each source to ONE of the speakers?
That would depend on the recording. With an old Beatles recording where the guitar was panned hard to one side and a drums were on the other side, that would work perfect. With recordings we're only the low frequencies are mono and the highs and mids have a lot of stereo to them it would work but generally vocals are fairly mono so it'll cause some problems with that. There are ways to convert a stereo recording into a compatible signal that will play back really well from three full range point source speakers right next to each other. Basically the method is a wiring configuration that recreates a playback version of mid-side recording. I did a video on it but I'm not sure if it's public I will take a look and if it's not I'll make it public fairly soon The video I did though is on building a midside speaker
@@DaveRat My apologies for not clarifying. I meant in a live sound application. Example: 3 vocals 4 instruments and a drum set miked (just kick and snare). My brain says it would sound fine if I were to hard pan each source to one of two speakers. All vocals and snare to one box, then all instruments and kick to the other. There shouldn't be any phase issues. Is this true? The reason why I would ever think of doing this is to 1. Put less stress on my speakers 2. I assume cleaner sound 3. The venue is small enough to do this where I don't have to put a speaker on each side for wide coverage. You have convinced me to become of member of your channel for the fee. I think the education I will receive will be more than worth it. THANK YOU!
Welcome to the channel and thank you so much! Do a search on Dave Rat double hung PA and there's good info out there on my blog and in some of my videos that cover that exact subject and let me know what you think
That's sort of what location metadata (like in atmos or similar) allows for, then you can reproduce in binaural, stereo or multi-channel and the "point souces" will adapt to distribute through the the number and location if speakers and of the listener (positional audio)...
Hmmm, a sound source is kind of like a campfire or a sprinkler, radiation energy, outward in various directions. Atmos is is like heater vents or showerheads mounted on the wall. Atmos is like trying to replicate a campfire by using complex central heating with wall and ceiling vents. I don't see one being able to recreate the other
@@DaveRat used atmos as an example, with metadata of spatial location you can eventually use a wall of sound tech once available, all around you, if you can make one, emiting sound from wherever you want. My main point was addressing the fact of never risk losing real spatial dinamic coordinates data, and then making the data adapt itself as best as possible to whatever playback context is available (mono, binaural, stereo, multichannel, and eventually "holographic" whatever if ever available... )
Hmmm, perhaps it could be simpler. Music releas with 4 stems and each stem has 4 channels. The playback side would have 4 speaker pods placed whereever ya want. Each stem would have a front, rear l, rear r, and up signal or so. Each stem would be reproduced as a 3d sound source by the sound pods
A problem is also that a microphone only captures sound at a point in space, and as you explained, sounds rarely converge into points. I'm not sure if we will ever get around that. In classical music setups, there are often many mics suspended over the orchestra. Maybe a way of doing it will involve a microphone matrix and a speaker matrix, where every speaker gets it's own microphone mix...
Agreed. Capturing sound at one point in space is an issue and also capturing multiple points in space and reproducing from 1 or 2 points inn space is also an issue
I love this topic, Dave. When mixing on a well set up stereo rig for a venue, and with enough time to spare to figure out the nuances and advantages/disadvantages of said rig - I try to reproduce what I see onstage in my mix, just louder. Certainly, there will be compensations, but the goal is to generally change things as little as possible. This does not work with all types of music by any stretch of the imagination. It's strictly a goal to have in mind -when feasible. It's a real treat when I'm able to do a mix like this, but also seldom. My 2 cents... And thanks!
PLEASE DON'T STOP SHARING YOUR KNOWLEDGE!! At university in the 80's I remember hearing a Neumann dummy head binaural mic in headphones and the positioning of sound in space was amazing. Needs headphones to work. Seeing someone walk up to me with the mic head turned around and hearing their footsteps coming from behind was truly freaky! Have been playing around with the Dolby Atmos in Logic and it seems no where near the old tech... It kinda works if you think about it wanting to work! Not sure why. this should be run of the mill stuff like MS is for stereo widening on the recording side!?!? Making music correct in a large stadium environment is still a goal worth pursuing.... bringing the performers closer to the people and the people closer to the performers. Thanks
Love what you're trying to achieve here! I'm curious about your thoughts on delayed PAs and also a compromise between what you're doing here and a delayed PA. So, after fighting horrid room acoustics for years as a live sound engineering, I've recently opened a live music listening room large enough to comfortably hold 100 standing. The room has fortunate dimensions for acoustics and then with further treatment really sounds fantastic. The whole time I'm creating this I'm hoping to keep volume levels just at or above the non-amplified drum kit level. After experimenting w speakers in more traditional 2.1 arrangements I decided to suspend the 2 splayed mains over the center of the stage (in mono) and found it expanded the sweet spot dramatically! Then I tried delaying the entire PA the equivalent of 15ft over the 20ft deep stage. At the lower volumes we can push, the delayed PA becomes shockingly invisible as the original source hits the ear just before the amplified version bringing back a truly realistic image! You can FEEL each vocal and each instrument move from the PA to the source as you ingage the delay. I find myself demonstrating it to musicians and other engineers often. I'm wondering how well it would work with a delayed 3.1 system for louder venues? This seperates many instruments from each other and the image would remain roughly the same anywhere in the room.
Using independent vocal sources is great and a step in the right direction. I've applied this concept on arena and stadium level concerts as well with excellent results. My focus now is on the other end of the spectrum which is smaller format and trying to reach higher levels of realism. If that's successful then looking at ways to scale that
@@Lunatic768 Oh yeah, delayed amplification would work really well, and makes a lot of sense in theater. As I think about it now, I can recall one particular theater that always made me wonder how the actors sounded amplified but yet not amped. Why do I not hear of this being done in live sound? I assume I'm missing something. Is this done all the time and I'm simply not hanging with the cool kids that are doing it? Is this a luxury from being in a fortunate room that I'm taking for granted or what? I realize that I'm not pushing levels as high as some but it gets pretty loud and the effect still works, though I imagine it would be reduced at a certain threshold. Actually I guess it would have more to do with the ratio of sound between the original signal and the amplified version.
Real stereo is so rarely heard in amplified sound I’m not sure most would even recognize it. I have a Calrec Soundfield MkIV microphone that drops jaws every time I record with it, but it is only fully effective with symphony or ensemble. It is intoxicating to play back those recordings. What is particularly exciting is that a spaced stereo pair of monitors totally loses the discrete problem, making a beautiful stereo soundfield. Instruments have a 3D place in space, on speakers OR phones. I have produced a number of classical recordings with only the Calrec, hearing chuckling from the band… until playback time. I love that thing.
Wow another shirt IDEA...OUT OF THE BOX!Kidding aside...thank you for making us think outside the box...cant wait to read negative comments from people inside the box...this sure hit them hard
I guess the answer to the question of why we don't do this is budget and practicality. The cost, setup time and the complexity of mixing with a system comprising multiple speakers or arrays all over the place would be prohibitive in most scenarios. It's complex enough when you have left/right hangs, side hangs, centre hangs, delay hangs and time aligned sub arrays just to get even coverage in a room. I suppose the best we'll get is double hangs, one for vocals and one for instruments, or maybe double hangs plus a centre cluster, or putting vocals in mono centre and instruments left and right, but if you're trying to cover an arena, then you'd need an inordinate number of additional hangs. It's a dream that sadly I don't know if many people would be able to achieve. Curious to know how you're solving this on recent or upcoming Chili Peppers tours? I know you like to use multiple mics and pan them differently, but have you ever gone beyond that?
Well, I stopped touring in 2017 so no current mixing for me. Another way of looking at this would be to ask yourself, what if a new level of sound clarity and realism could be achieved? Is it possible the sound systems would then get financial budgeting on tour closer to what lights and video make? Do we not perform because the money is not there or is the money not there because we fail to be amazing enough? I don't have the answers and also asking the questions and pointing out the fundemental flaws to the current approach, perhaps could inspire some progress
I mostly gig solo guitar & vocal shows in bars and pubs, often needing only one speaker for adequate coverage. To check for an improvement in clarity/fidelity it would be easy to put up two powered speakers side by side and pan vocals L to one speaker and guitar R to the other speaker.
I have thought about, but never figured out how to approach the musicians, having control all instruments from the console, by inserting some type of control between the guitar and amp, for example. Maybe just a rack of EQs with level control. Sort of turning the live venue into a recording studio, with the ‘producer’ in control of each sound source.
i've always dedicated group outputs on large format mixers to separate submixes for this exact purpose, either for a full surround environment or for a L1 L2 C1 C2 R1 R2 setup. It's fun to always experiment with equipment and sound in general, it seems people just get hung up on certain standards and think it applies everywhere.
Imagine standing in a field of sprinklers and walking around or sitting around a campfire. Now set out to recreate those experiences using an Atmos concept So now you are in a room with showerheads mounted on the walls and ceiling to recreate a sprinkler field Or heater vents on the walls and ceiling to recreate a campfire Can you see where the recreation would fail?
I love this concept.. placing a Danley Sound Labs Jericho Horn J1-94 in front of each musician on stage, and mix each instrument on it's own matrix. i like where you are going with this.. 🤣 thanks for your videos, sir
One interesting thing I found out when consulting on the EAW anya system was that it is practically impossible to make two things sound the same if they have different dispersion charictaistics. We were voicing the Anya rig and I wanted to compare to the MicroWedge which I designed and EAW builds and sells. Anyway, we kept testing and comparing and matching the EQ between Anya and MicroWedge and could not get them to sound similar. Anya has a 70 to 90 ish degree horiz dispersion and controllable vertical dispersion and the MicroWedge has about an 80 degree conical dispersion. It dawned on me the match the vertical of the Anya to around 80 degrees and wow. Once the dispersions we're matched, it them became possible to EQ the two vastly disparate designs to sound similar. In my opinion, this is why horn loaded systems are greatly challenged in sound like the original sources and why studio monitors and home hifi are not horn loaded Not to say horn loading is not useful, but horn loading is not the optimum choice if sonic realism compared to the original source is desired. Unless the original source is also horn loaded or has similar dispersion
Sounds like what you're working towards is the Wall of Sound that the Greatful Dead had built in the 1970s. The speaker cabs behind the band were localized to align with the instruments on stage. Curious what the Rat take on the Wall of Sound is. They also had a really novel mic technique that exaggerated the proximity effect to isolate sources and reduce feedback. This also makes me think of surround sound systems in theaters. You mentioned them, but one thing to note is that as humans we're really good at placing where a sound is coming from. In a theater the center channel of the surround has 90% of the dialouge, stuff recorded on location. This channel lives behind the screen that's actually acoustically transparent. This draws the viewers eye into the image, where in theaters with stereo systems it can be distracting depending on seating position because of phase change. The same things can apply to PA systems, it is something to consider.
Hmm, quite familiar with the wall of sound in fact I even deployed a system in that configuration back in the 80s when I was on Black flag tour. Obviously putting the PA behind the band is a bad idea and putting the PA farther away from the audience did not sound good Yes these ideas of separation are good and I'm looking at trying to take this to newer and better levels. I did a tour of arenas and stadiums worldwide where I deployed multiple Soundsystem side by side and was able to put different instruments into different PAs which worked really well And on huge scales like that the limitations are more pronounced. But what I'm getting at is building three-dimensional speakers capable of recreating true Sonic realism where you can walk around behind a speaker and have a hard time telling that it's not an actual human playing an instrument
Another thought….. maybe what you are heading toward is using a monitor mixer for the FOH so you can send a lot of different mixes to an array of widely spread speakers. Probably work better in smaller venues rather than arenas but I think it will work better than a stereo mix
I think there are a near 8nf8nitenanountvof application dependant solutions and advanced to be made. And trying to continually push stereo to higher and higher levels of perfection is not one of them
Why dont we use multiple sources meaning speakers that play the rights frequency scattered around the room and all aim to a central point like the middle of the room toward the ceiling all in mono would that work
Multiple sources recreating the same signal creates maximum interference and cancellation and summation. Which means having multiple sources recreating the same signal all located at different distances will ensure that the sound is completely as inconsistent as possible throughout the room. If every speaker reproduced a different instrument then they wouldn't interfere.
It's technically not the same if each speaker plays a narrow band like vocals thru one , guitar ,snare drum. Bass ,and highs for Instruments like your tuning strategy video but looking at a frequency chart and see where female and female vocals fall between and just let one speaker deal with it then guitar frequency to another I hope you get what I mean
Yes if the sources are de-correlated, either by reproducing different frequencies or reproducing different sources or even different captures of the same source from significantly different parts of the instrument such that the tones and overtones and timings are significantly different, then that will eliminate or minimize summation and cancellation issues. I cover the concept somewhat in this video th-cam.com/video/VHjdh-Vka-g/w-d-xo.htmlsi=gzAkyaemFEX-ArEt
I'm going to try this but need to see which frequency chart will I use to copy each instrument and vocals then probably use crossover capacitors to minimize crossovers in the mix
David Rat; targeting a normal stereo hifi, i’d love your comments to using your mixing concept in a studio environment. Hard panning 2 source mic’s, etc.
hi Dave, very exciting and good thought ! i wish i could place almost invisible speakers (with high efficiency) directly above the individual musicians.. (in a small venue) cheers from berlin
I hang splayed mains directly over center and delay the whole signal by the equivalent distance of the mains to the rear most instrument (usually the drum kit). In my setup that's usually 3-4 meters. The PA becomes virtually invisible! I describe this further in my response to Dave above. The effect is dramatic! The impression it leaves is that all of the amplified sound appears to be coming from the original source!
Dave, how do you pan Tom's on the drums? Like if you were to record a band in a studio and pan from the drummers perspective would you pan the first rack tom 100% to the left? Or 75%? Just curious. Thanks for sharing all of the great knowledge. You Sir are very knowledgeable.
I pan based on the listeners perspective. So floor pans to the right, stage right, in the drum fills and to the audience left, stage right, for the main pa. For a right handed drummer playing on a kit with the floor to his or her right side
I see a parallel of this to the Dolby atmos and video game principles of treating sound sorces as objects which movement can be tracked and manipulated independently.
Hmmm, to me, Atmos is more like a bunch of projectors point sound towards a listening area more that a recreation of individual realistic sound sources.
The concept is really interesting, any chance to have practical examples of how to make the best of a live situation without having to dobule mic every source to split it apart
I've been experimenting with delayed mono PAs. See my above response for a description. The spacial realism is shocking! I do not believe it would be scalable to arena size though.
The theatre world has long done single source or single array per source setups, with the mixdown happening in the air rather than in the mixer. It's interesting to apply this to the rock and roll world. I've had really great results with a theatre style centre cluster in rock and roll - feeding vocals, kick, and snare to the centre cluster. Far better intelligibility and separation in the mix. I've also done this in monitors, 3 wedges for the lead singer, outsides is band mix, inside is just their vocal - had several singers say they've never had a better mix.
@@DaveRat Well aware of your work. Some years back your work appeared in my uni dissertation, and you very kindly gave me some useful answers and commentary via email.
Very cool. Yeah I am trying to sort why every sound system always sounds fake and artificial, even when the freq resp and capabilities of the speaker far exceed fidelity of the original sound source. Record hitting a trash can lid or banging some sticks together. The freq response of the source will be very limited, at the recording through the best speakers money can buy. Will the speakers recreate those simple sounds well nough that you are unable to differentiate the reproduction from the original? I think not. The issue is not distortion or freq responce or really any of the primary specs we rely upon The issue is with stereo and the way speakers are configured to reproduce, it will never work until we alter the config and reproduction methods.
In terms of hifi audio, you could check the Learprint system by Alain Français, he reproduces the sound of an orchestra by replacing the musician with a recording of his instrument and a unique speaker only reproducing his recording. You end up with a pretty big amount of speakers but the illusion works
A system that is capable of taking individual tracks from a mix and distributing them to different speakers would be cool. It would be like an Atmos mix, but all the speakers are in the front of the room. I could get behind that! I don't notice any benefit from surround sound, so I'd just as soon put all the speakers in the front of the room.
I run a small run and gun PA company. Bands playing makeshift indoor and outdoor venues that are 8-9 hour affairs. 3-4 hour setup, 4 hour show and quick tear down while the bartender gives me the evil eye because they have to wait for me to finish. I call it guerrilla audio. Any suggestions to achieve your concept on this scale?
I really like your thinking. It is really interesting that we are listening to the same formats through speakers and headphones (at home use at least), but it is not an easy question. Maybe if music was available in multitrack format (besides stereo) for home use, one could have multiple speakers for different instruments and vocals. Maybe this would be easier for studios than ever before. I know you went further than that and you have built a speaker firing in multiple directions, feeded the speakers from different mics. That was very impressive, but very hard to record all the instruments like that. Maybe I can try something, hanging some cheap smaller speakers from the ceiling, I would be curious how that sounds.. I've found a website where a lot of tracks were downloadable in multitrack, for mixing practice.. I am no sound engineer, but on live events.. as far as I know, the Grateful Dead's wall-of-sound did have most instruments on different towers of speakers? Maybe that system had the possibility to sound clearer to the audience, and to give back the original feeling of the stage? Also, I can imagine it was not very stage-friendly. Thanks for your videos Dave!
What comes to mind - different styles and different locations/environments need different solutions. Live: For the classical orchestra there is that hall with wooden walls, that helps to reach the listeners ear by enforcing reflections in a as good as possible way. For a club band, there exists the solution with those long personal pa speakers per musician, that also can stand behind every musician to monitor himself. Please don´t ask me, where this helps, and if this causes new troubles... But in a rock music scenario, there is also the question on stage: In any way - Do the musicians even position themselves and their amps etc. for the sake of the arrangements placement needs, where the sound "should be" in sonic space? Or do they do just pragmatically seek a place to stand and move, to "be seen", forced into a somewhat limited space called "stage". Or - other perspective: Are the drums on a mighty riser, because the music needs the drumsound to be a little higher up in space? I think no. Studio: A rock recording is kinda artificial per se. For mimiquing a "Live in the studio" situation, you can fake-pan the imagined musicians position, may be in combination with little room reverbs and eqs for anti-proximity-effect, to get an illusion of room distances and depth. Home: It might well be possible to create a home speaker system, where you dedicate a box to every recorded musician and place the personalized loudspeaker box, where you want to "sit" - or "stand" the "placeholder musician" in your own room. Could sure be done.. with a lot of effort from recording to stems to system. Plus a competent elitist listener, who knows what he wants. Even differently. For every. single. song... Sry, Dave...your thinking is brilliant, but this would get too difficult for a lazy normal, like me.
incredibly insightful, love how you always think in terms of the simple fundamentals. Whats really interesting me are the implications for record mixing and recording - especially when recording multiple point sources in an 'imperfect' space. Thanks for the thought provoking content, Dave
It's about understanding the inherent flaws and limitations of stereo and mono so that sound humans will hopefully be inspired to explore improving their sound setups and mixes by implementing new and creative solutions
@@DaveRat Oh okay, it's surely really thought provoking, but thinking about all the changes about how things work digitally that would be needed by everyone to make something like that possible, it's probably too late. it would be really cool if that was possible. In my opinion recording music was never really about recreating the exact feeling and sensation of being in the actual room the musicans were palying in, probably at first, but it quickly evolved in something different completely, like creating spaces and sensations beyond real life limitations. If that wasn't the case as you said binaural audio would be everywhere, but that's not the case. Just like Dolby Atmos this concept could surely find its nieche for people who want to venture in this new listening experience, and I'd be here for it, if they have the equipment to do so.. From your point of view stereo did a lot of bad things, and that's arguiably true, but it made music accessible to everyone. In some way it reminds me of video, movies and remote video calls. Of course it would be better to be there physically, but let's say anywhere we are on any device we can have a video call with our friends and chat with them, see what they're seeing, surely it would be better to be there in person with them, but we can do the best we can do to make it accurate but also accessible to everyone, and then our brain will fill in the gaps for us, over time.. Like we have a clear mental image of a song in our heads, and we can listen to it in our heads without having to play it on a device. It exists in our heads, and when we listen to it mentally we don't image it playing through a speaker, we don't remember the sound of the speaker or of the room we were in, we just remember the song, our brain filled in the gaps, and overtime gave life and created an identity for the song. It's not like being inside the music of course, that would be better, to experience it as if it was played in front of our eyes, in this exact room, but that would be impossible, so we make it easy so everyone could do it. Play it through a stereo system or even a mono source, the best you can do, to not let song be forgotten, and listen to it so it can be part of our lives, whenever we need it. about how things work digitally that would be needed by everyone to make something like that possible, it's probably too late. Sorry for the probably wall of text, I said it was really thought provoking.
Trying to solve all the problems for every application and every person may not be an optimal approach. Not unlike trying to design the perfect car to replace all cars for everyone. That said, I believe there are fun and relatively simple solutions that can be applied to some or many situations ranging from home hifi to large scale events
Can you do a hang of a 16 element K2 and send 16 different sources into it going into a dedicated speaker for each source? So your lead singer put that in the top box the guitar put it in the second from the top so on and so forth in whatever combination you want and do a video on it.
Your videos on that topic and how you came to use a double hung PA and seperate the sources in the wedges have definitely triggered something in my brain and I'd like to share my thoughts with you... I've been following the adventures of @PresentDayProduction moving towards Dolby Atmos mixing and having the possibility to assign each source to a single speaker recently. I've found the technology behind this really interesting. This makes me thinking a lot about about the general problematic of live sound reinforcement and I wonder if Atmos would be something that could be usable (in the future) in a live environment. It seems to provide better clarity and a better image when mixed for an immersive experience and then processed down to a stereo setup than a classic stereo mix. Of course, Atmos is designed for a single optimal listening position and latency would definitely be an issue for live use at this point in time, but I wonder if that kind of technology used on a double hung PA could be a valid solution to make it sound more natural. This is just theoretical thinking and Atmos is too expensive for the average venue anyway, but maybe there's a way to use the virtual speakers concept with the equipment we use live today... Just thinking out loud
Sound sources radiate sound outward towards the listers and the walls Atmos is designed to project sound inward from the walls. Like tryin to recreate the feeling of sitting around a campfire by using central heating and adding more vents on the walls Atmos is good for creating secondary sounds coming from external directions but does not address the accuracy and realism of primary sources that would be located in and amongst the listeners.
Hi Dave, I do get your point in that sound from two points never sounds the same as is does from stage. The same reason why I don't believe in surround sound for music. (Film is a whole other domain.) I do have some issues with the comparison that a "sub here, a mid there and a tweeter over here" might be more comparable with the sound as it comes from stage as it produces fase-diferentials. The sound from the stage are frome different locations but all contain a full range of frequencies. It would be nice to amplify every instrument by his own speaker. The problem we would run into is that te visitor standing on the right of the stage needs a different speakerplasement to match it his or her's view of the stage. Thank you for you video's. God bless, René Leunk, the Netherlands.
Yes with the flashlight sending the same info in one directions and the light bulb sending differing info to the front and diff info to each side and diff info upwards and downwards
@@DaveRat So in a concert, your job is to make the flashlight's beam audibly shine on everyone equally. In nature, the sounds of the crickets come from over there, neighbors dog barks over there, the damn woodpecker driving me nuts over there... What are your thoughts on reproducing that for a show? An image pops to my mind of percussion in the center, with a 360* degree spread outward into crowds and other instruments coming in from single point sources from a ring around the outside of the audience. Bass would probably be with the drums but guitar would be over here and keys coming from over there, vocals from over there... The soundmans job would be to mix by spreading those single points in such a way that sounds best. That seems like an untamable beast but I know very little about it at this point. Or are you just recognizing the truth about the nature of sound and letting that be your guide in how you mix sound for the Peppers? Very cool, by the way. When I grow up I wanna be a kid like you. Sorry for the ebook but how else could I have asked that question in only 4 lines of text?
@Dave, I really appreciate your push to think about this from a different theoretical perspective. Could you do (or have you already done?) a video suggesting practical experiments to explore these ideas using sound equipment typically already found in small-to-mid-size venues? I think a lot of us would love to hear your thoughts on how we might do that.
Hmmm, I will continue to vid more. Not sure how far u have dived into the sound testing and listening playlist and the vids on mixing. But yes, will continue to expand
@@DaveRat I appreciate your kindness in being polite enough not say, "Watch the rest of my videos, dummy!" Ha ha. But I'm working through your channel slowly as I have time. These topics take time to digest and ponder. Much respect, sir!
Dave, this topic is great. Is really thinking out side of the box. Literally. But, thinking outside of the box is directly proportional to increasing costs. How can you achieve power over distance, without having enough pa ? Are we talking about a hard evolution of sound that should implemente development not only for speakers , but consoles also ? How much will it cost and how will that affect an overall budget or even an artist fee ? Is crazy to think that thinking out of the box eventually comes to money ,,,, or not ?? You yourself are a vendor , and if I come as a cliente looking for this experiences for my audience, how will it affect on my budget ?
could this be why small basement shows I went to growing up always sound "better" to me and hold a special place in my heart then when I go to big venue shows these days? In the small basement shows nothing is mic'ed up, every source is coming from what is producing the sound the only thing in the PA was the vocals but the you often could still hear the vocals coming from the singers as well.
I'm not really referring to venue size I'm referring to the way sound is being reproduced. For live shows large and small we already have a live band so feeding speakers that sound extremely real is not a very high importance. For reproduced sound there may be applications where Sonic realism is desirable
You could mic up each performer individually and time delay each source within the dsp so as to minimize wavefront scattering for most listeners. The recorded performance would also be more accurate. Love the frequency sweeps at the end!
I envision a melding of motion arrays and ADS-B like tech to create motion in the sound that travels around the room with performers and even audience, to project an accurate image spatially. Almost like a hologram of sound. Almost like being on stage next to the performance.
@@DaveRat would be fun to gut some track spots and mount some tube speakers to the gimble to prove it out then scale it up. I would imagine horizontal arrays would become possible at that point.
How do some recordings portray extreme depth and height, while others display what is described in the video? Are these opinions applicable to anything other than panned mono? What is the effect of phase differences?
Wave field synthesis is super interesting and not unlike creating acoustic hologramsbi in the acoustic space Great stuff. And not unlike cars, there are applications for a formula 1 race car, a limizine, a sedan and a 4 wheel drive truck and many more. Trying to design a sound system for all applications will be as successful as a car for all applications. Though I dont believe there has been enough development in the application of creating sonically realistic reproducers.
I've always been interested in trying to fake a spatial reflection, especially a sound which you believe is coming from behind but is actually from the front/or your in ears. Big rabbit hole though
That's insanely tricky, since the way we perceive height and front-to-back information are exclusively changes in frequency response/comb filtering, and is directly dependent on the shape of our ears and heads. Since we all have differently shaped ears and heads from one another, it is a real challenge to have a solution that can pull this off. In headphones, though, this is actually achievable to some extent. This is what products like the new AirPods pro are trying to accomplish by somehow making a physical model of the individual's ear and directly using that information to compute vertical and front-to-back spatial data, directly tailored to the individual. For speakers, though, where multiple individuals have to listen to the same box, this is, or at least seems, next to impossible, without the speaker physically being in the spot the sound is intended to propagate from.
@@FOHFILMS Exactly, I've used internal ear scanning devices to achieve this before, would need to be tailored for each person differently somehow, it'll happen one day I'm sure though, and it will be awesome.
I was intrigued by your monitoring setup using 3 wedges. I have found on EAW's website your setup guide for Microwedges, and did not read correctly, because I thought the 3 wedge setup meant vocal in the center and instruments left/right. But recently I re-read it, and realized that you suggest to put all the instruments in the center wedge and vocal both in left and right. So how does this setup correspond to your idea of not putting the same source into to multiple speakers?
Putting the same source into two speakers insures summation when equidistant from the 2 speakers and cancellations when off to one side or the other. If summation when centered or equidistant with cancellation in other areas is desirable, then the same source into multiple sources can be beneficial. Dual vocal wedges, sub arrays, line arrays are a few examples of using the same source into multiple speakers in a beneficial way. Oh and what I said or say is that the same sound to multiple speakers is unnatural but I never said unnatural (does not exist in nature) is bad or good. It's all about understanding the tools and using the right tool or method for the job
@@DaveRat Oh wow, thanks for the detailed answer! I see your point, and thanks for explaining the result of doing that too. Another question ;-) When would you say it is important to move from two (left/right/vocal in both) to three (vocal left and right/instruments center) setup?
Atmos shoots sound inwards from multiple directions to try and simulate sources in various locations. Actual sources radiate sound outwards in various directions at differing levels and freq ranges
Very interesting analysis. I think point-source speaker were born as a means to an end, but maybe they became an end on themselves. That'd be wrong from an engineering standpoint, if one specific solution becomes the goal and there's no room for any other. Orchestras in a theatre, for example are the perfect example of a "real" listening experience, with literally one point-source for every single instrument. Thanks for the video!
I have mixed in binaural using "Dear VR" plugin (virtual 3D room that recreates the "flowers" depending on the 3D positioning of the source in the virtual room). What is your take on that? PS: isn't it a lost war to start with? Speaker cones are all made of paper, and that's supposed to sound like metal (horns), wood (guitar), and so forth... Wasn't the war lost before it even started?
Hmmm, then simplify. Record and play back the sound of a paper bag crumpling through paper speaks and see if you can or can not hear the difference between the recording and real. There may be many issues but the main fundamental is that differing sounds radiate outward in all directions from natural sources and if we wist to recreate realistic sound, we need speaker that radiates differing sounds outwards
Hey Dave, what about using panning in a stereo system? If everything is panned to a slightly different degree they'll all have slightly different reflections (or at least the average of the two paths from each speaker will be different)
That's a step in the right direction. Stereo speakers are like two showerheads pointed at the listener. Natural sound is like rain, band and other sound sources are like sprinklers in a field radiating sound in various directions. Panning and altingbsources sent to left and right will help but it won't make directional showerheads into sprinklers
The problem with panning in a big stereo system is that most members of the audience will only hear one side of the p.a. Whichever speaker they are nearest to will be all they will hear due to the Haas or precedence effect. If the two sides of the p.a. are completely different then maybe it starts to work as they will hear both but with a delay between them. Maybe the answer is a row of sources or line arrays above the stage with each instrument in the source that is nearest to above them.
Hmmm, mic'ing the same source such that it is somewhat decorrelated each mic to the other and then panning will solve that. But that won't solve what is lacking in sound reproduction systems.
This reminds you just why a tiny club gig just sounds so damn real when there’s only a vocal PA 🎤❤️
Exactly
Does Indeed (also listening to a band in the rehearsal room)
¡Not great for sound reinforcement providers though!
For medium-sized venues a personal column for each performer can help with a more natural sound image.
These, of course, we have immersive...
Except immersive tries to recreate the experience of sitting around a campfire by using central heating.
@@DaveRat Hi again, sorry if you’ve already stated this elsewhere in the comments. So what would be your ideal situation to try out on a gig? Are you suggesting individual stacks above each performer, firing out into the stadium? It’s a conundrum isn’t it, because when you stand next to Flea and his bass rig on stage or in rehearsals it must be epic. But to reinforce that, without using 8 more bass rig heads and cabinets (rather than PA amps and speakers) wouldn’t be true to that sound. Loving the videos, always good stuff.
Understanding the concepts is the first step. I cover ways to improve usage of stereo systems in several other videos and more info on the member side including ways to do it with subs as well. I think just continuing to read and look into it more and find out which aspects apply to you is the way
Dave I SO appreciate how you explain and talk about things: I'm a 'hands on/visual learner', and with all things music it helps a TON to have it taught that way.
Thank you Alan!
Very thought provoking and Inspirational. Dave you remind me of Russell Johnson ( Artec Consultants ) an old sound designer from New York. He mixed the room with speakers from the ceiling speakers bouncing off the walls and under the seats in Theatres. He also created zones for sound to be directed to through out the theatre allowing more dimension. He was an FN genius. at that time I was just an assistant and my boss could not get his head wrapped around it and trashed the system and went back to point source and ruined an accoustical gem. Sometimes Senoirity SUCKS, but when my boss retired I worked on my own time rewiring trunklines my boss had cut, I had mamagement come and listen when I finished and everyone was blown away. But when I explained what I had did my Supervisor told me to shut it down and never use it again or it would be his ass on the line for letting it happen. So Sad but true.
I said this kind of thing years ago....nice to know someone feels the same!!!!!! Thank you Dave!!!
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I never forgot Dave's story about humans hearing the sound of ocean waves in stereo. Hence our ears, the most perfect set of speakers in the universe does not hear in mono. He told about creating "imbalances" in the PA to simulate how the ear hears sound in a more natural, pleasant and even richer way. Like there is perfection in imperfection. This video expounds on that story further. I've read many things about audio through my life and this might be the most prolific thing I've ever come across. If the idea of trying to see how sound moves in the air is a crazy thing, count me in Dave. I think you're a genius at this.
Thank you and you get it!!!
I have more to come and some demos as well that may be interesting
Dave I Just Like how you show all of us things. Thanks Amillion we can learn from this. A Big Thank You.
Awesome and thank you Hennie!
I encourage anyone doubting the magnificence of this to see a a concert with a Lacoustics L-Isa system. I recently went to a Bon Iver concert where they used it and I have to say its a completely different experience compared to a normal stereo Pa Concert. Especially on this Large scale of an arena. It was waaaay drier, way more immersive and simply waaay better sounding than anything i've ever seen on a non-open-air-stage that large.
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Looking for that opportunity, where Dave is stretching into a full system production
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Very inspiring. Thanks for relighting the fir in my belly for thinking outside of the box in audio. Years ago I had my teacher at recording arts school 1980ish Tell me I was insane with some of my questions. And to keep it up. Somewhere along the road of my career I became a me too audio guy both live and studio. The best compliment I always get when is from people who know me for a long time see something new and say hey Kyle was doing that years ago.
Cool cool Kyle!!
I really enjoyed how you wrapped up the video. Just got here by youtube algoritms. Brilliant
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Was working with a research group that was doing MRIs of disabled elderly brains while inducing stimuli to see if they could get the brain to lite up eventually it lead to using music signals but we also found that stereo made the brain work harder. Since then I have been working on loudspeakers that can form a sound field with 1 speaker and a mono signal. I feel it to be a more relaxing way to enjoy music and it's far more natural than stereo.
Interesting stuff
Such a great summary Dave! This really tells the story of how we still have much work to do in terms sound reinforcement. For instance, the research in concert hall acoustics is quite advanced and we now understand a lot of the subtleties very well, from the perceptual aspect, of what actually matters, to the physical measurements which can predict the subjective perception. It's so interesting to see that an orchestra doesn't need any reinforcement, as it's using exactly what you're talking about, the natural interaction with the room and with the reflections, and it's slightly different for every person in the room. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for sound reinforcement and whether we'll manage to escape the stereo hell anytime soon.
PS. If you need me to send you some interesting research papers I'm more than happy to help out, I'm currently doing a PhD in this field as part of the Applied Psychoacoustics Laboratory (APL) and we're always trying to play around with this out-of-the-box thoughts and ideas.
Awesome and yes! I love all new info and please do send what you wish. Drat@aol.com
You might be the person to ask this. What are your thoughts about an antireverb dsp? Basically if you have a fixed PA in a large hall that would naturally reverberate beyond any intelligibility at volume, could you create a custom room signature to get the audio cleaned up a little as it passes down the hall? Almost like an anti reverb impulse response or a selective noise cancelling. Would love to hear your thoughts. (I was at an event in basically a tunnel and I couldn't hear a thing, which is why I thought of it)
I've seen some work on stuff in that direction. Basso ally it takes manyany speakers, like hundreds for a smallish room with complex processing for each speaker.
Much cheaper and easier to add sound absorbing material.
@@DaveRat I figured the something crazy like that would be required. The location I was in is a historic train station in the Midwest, so I'm going to guess either solution is probably not allowed, but the problem got me thinking.
The best I could come up with is a series of reinforcing speakers down the side paired with microphone/speaker clusters for the anti reverb. Combine that with some fancy ANC software that passes the original signal with a source distance delay taken into account. Or some kind of crazy look ahead signal process where the PA automatically accounts for the reflections and pumps out the out of phase signal just before the actual signal.
Anyways, thanks for all the knowledge you've shared!
It's super complex and requires so many speakers, like 25% of the walls covered with sound sources with an amp and processor for every speaker.
Energy once generated is relatively easy to absorb and very difficult to cancel.
I love this video. I think it depends on the scenario you’re going for. In a church setting where the goal is to lead the church/congregation in worship, it’s important for each person to be able to hear all of the vocals. So the vocals need to go through each of the LCR speakers. Now we do have some leeway with the instruments because they help create the atmosphere for the songs they sing. Keyboards are the easiest because they send different sound to each speaker. Guitar is some what simple because the effects can be stereo and send different sounds to each speaker but you can also pan the guitar to mimic where the guitarist is located on stage. Same for bass and drums.
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Interesting way to look at it. I venture to the other end of the spectrum for my personal listening experience. To me, stereo sounds better than "live sound". Live sound is too loud, too high frequency or bass heavy, has too much reverb, there's people talking and making noise etc...A good home speaker set sounds intimate and very "acoustic" and organic. Omni directional speakers have more of this enclosed listening quality. The good home systems provide offers more clarity and precision. I like the idea of "multi-track" audio for multi point speaker systems as well though. Really a difference in the experience of the sound to have all this stuff reflecting in different ways with different setups. I was blown away when I heard the bose micros in my house. They seemed to "open" the sound up with a feeling that you could grab the instrument. It seemed very rich in volume but the sound did not actually travel outside the house which is good. With stereo, depending on how far apart your speakers are you get 5 strong points (far left, mid left, center, mid right and far right), those points then reflect obviously in interesting ways creating more focal trajectory. But again it's just a different experience. One thing is for damn sure we got to get away from the phone mixing based production. I came up with an idea called stereo cell, that basically is the concept of attaching very small but good speakers to a cell phone. In this way it can still fit in your pocket like a cell but would provide much better sound with the latest speaker developments. The new gen wants super exaggerated kits which is a whole nother issue ha...They sort of bake all this directional stuff into very basic arrangements (less virtuoso musicality but the listener can "feel" the vibe because the kick is 20db too loud). lol.
Hmmm, comparing processed home hifi and recordings to live where everything is pumped through big speakers in a more raw form at higher level. Yeah, stereo is less intrusive.
But 2hat about comparing both live PA system sound and home hifi sound to say, someone playing an accounting guitar, a stand up bass and a percussionist?
My take is that both live pa and home hifi and surround sound and all the other formats fail at reproducing sound even close to the original due to flaws in the formats of reproduction.
Makes totally sense. You downmix 30 sources into two tracks that are going to be reproduced into acoustical nightmare (average venue) and create so many issues in frequency, space, and time domain anyways. Pretending the sound from stereo is somehow going to be more coherent and polished is just insane. Dave, you actually use the venue to downmix the audio, kind of like a acoustical summing box, and everyone gets their own slight variation of the mix. I have to admit it took a minute for me to wrap my head around your concept.
You get it!!! ⚡⚡
I love what you are doing i have been thinking of that. Glad you are ahead
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This stuff is so fun, when I took a basic sound engineering class in a community collage 20+ years ago it was just as amazing to think of just how stereo works with our 2 ears to fool us to seeing sounds for all directions. But when then thinking of things like this, like the way the sounds come all out of the one speaker, even if you maybe have a perfect outdoor environment where reflections where not as big an issue, just those sounds coming out the same speakers has to have some impact on the distortions and way these sounds mess with each other. I even have a pretty big collection of 3D home audio I enjoy that is mostly in DTS WAV, but I agree you will never get back to the original sound. I really enjoy your videos!
Thank you Jeff!
Dave, I love your channel! I've been a musician and done a ton of recordings in a live situation, mostly Classical and jazz. Was in charge of recording a Symphony Orchestra at concerts for Public Radio broadcast. Did 15 years with a great hall and great mics. After getting an acceptable recording with a singe point stereo AKG 422, I too thought how can we improve the recording experience? after adding spot mics, different stereo pairs and a whole lot of trial and error, We took the three spaced omni small condenser mic approach and the right to left did sound fairly realistic. The hall ambience and reflections was another matter. I'd setup at a rehearsal with an empty hall and it sounded just great, you could hear the hall and it did send you there if you had headphones or a decent speaker listening environment. As soon as the hall filled with the audience, no hall ambience except a bit of people rustling around. Defeated! I ended up getting an early Klark-Technik digital reverb to put some semblance of space in. Live Jazz has the same issues if you close mic everything and mix down. I was able to record for release a club performance that included David "Fathead" Newman where the club and musicians insisted that we record with two spaced mics, about 10 feet away from the stage. Cool until I heard the drums overwhelming the piano and couldn't do anything about it! New designs in speaker systems and computer cancellation of our home reflections and replacing them with the original ambience is a possible move forward. However, we do tend to really like the clarity of mixing down close mic'd sources so we get a "better than being there" experience. No right and wrong as you say, just food for thought.
Interesting and cool
This reminds me of what Bose did with the L1 system. Each musician had one instead of being funneled through a PA. Pat Metheny did concert that used the L1s exclusively.
Good Stuff!
I like that setup and design and the sound is quite impressive.
Once my band played as the last one on some festival - raining whole day, getting worse, people leaving. Huge stage, PA, lost time with soundcheck = loosing more people. We decided to get people under cover of stage roof and divide it between a band and audience. Drums dry, bass from amp, guitar from amp, choir dry, 2 violins and 2 vocals slightly amplified with mic directly into RCF ART310A. It was STELLAR. Even if something was quieter than it should be sometimes, you could still hear every single note from every particular instrument and locate it exactly.
Awesome, that is cool. Turning a movie into an interactive play
You are absolutely right in your thinking, many years ago, when I was young, I got hold of a 10 band eq 5 bands per channel, and sent each band to it's own 3 watt amp and speaker and used a 50 watt amp as a sub, in the middle, it sounded amazing, so yah, it's all good, great video
👍👍👍 VideoMentary Productions Channel
Leads me to believe that every musician should have a dedicated speaker (PA) for their instrument positioned in front of them with the best coverage for the audience possible. I suppose rigging and audience size would be the biggest challenge here. Also, creating an environment where there is no stage volume and using the speaker itself as the source. Every musician on IEM’s. This idea has very much dictated how I approach my gigs. Even if I don’t have ideal circumstances, working towards this has improved the quality of my work. Thanks for your inquisitive leadership, Dave!
There are many things we can do or try for many applications. I think its fun and important to explore more and not take the status quo as the way
using a stereo pointsource system in a small venue i sometimes squeeze a dog toy squeakie ball for fun during events. i would totally agree that sounds from multiple sources add to the overall experience. thanks for all the videos.
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I liked your thoughts, as you said, they make you think outside the box!😀
Awesome
Very interesting observation, video and thoughts. It would be a great future video the application of your opinions in a real mixing scenario of yours.
Cheers.
Will try and do that
I would add that we are perhaps on the way there with systems like atmos and ambisonics. Let's see, there's lots of road to cover with many different scenarios.
Thanks for putting the lights out of the box!
Very cool and yes, there are systems like Atmos or even sound bars, L-isa, Soundscape and surround that try and create the illusion of sound source locations.
It's tough though as the room reflections from the illusion don't match the reflections that would occur from actual sources in those locations.
I really do miss something like a 3-speaker standard. Purely mono stuff goes in the middle, purely stereo stuff goes into the sides. It's a small change, but it would definitely change the sound.
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I've been experimenting with this
And how is it going?
I would love to talk about concepts for a mono or X-number of speaker system (doesn't have to be two: Left / Right) that can enhance a rock band in small and medium venues, mostly without venue PA. You're an artist and a genius. Van Gogh, Michaelangelo, and Dave Rat.
What about having a line array above each instrument for that instrument only and the main line array have vocals and the overhead drum mics
Increasing the number of sources deals with some of the issue. Another aspect of the issue has to do with sound sources tend to radiate differing sounds in different directions while speakers try to radiate the same sound in one direction
Sind Some time last year doing small pub gigs with 4 point source speakers behind the performers, plus two speakers for ell guitar. Placing every instrument in the speaker behind that that instrument and the fx to the two speakers beside. Was a very interesting project to do, and had a very acoustic feel to it
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If only record companies released multitrack versions of songs/albums! You could have an assortment of speakers, one for each instrument so it may just sound more "life-like"... who says 5.1 or 7.2 or whatever has to be surround? Make it one speaker per instrument or at least groups of instruments, set up multiple speakers in front of you, not around you :) anyway, great content, criminally underrated what you're doing here, Dave, i'm learning a lot of interesting concepts from your videos, thanks!
Yes! You get it!!
I went to an electronics show in the late 1990s where I was fooled by sound. Was waling down the hallway, and a room was open and I heard a grand piano in a room they were serving refreshments. I went into the room and turned left and saw the grand piano with the lid up, but nobody was seated at the piano. Cool I thought a player grand piano. Never saw one so I went over to investigate the player piano. Upon approaching, I discovered it was not a player piano, but a Yamaha grand piano. On the floor next to the piano were two 3 way accoustic suspension speakers. Asking about the recording, the piano was recorded with 2 microphones the night before with no compression, eq, or mixing. It had me completely fooled until I was about 15 feet from the piano and saw the speakers on the carpet. Very impressive and very real. It was a digital recording with good equipment. The speakers were less than 2 feet from each side of the piano on the floor with no stands. Still remember that 25 years later. It is the one time a recording completely fooled me.
Early stereo recordings were often mixed hard left and hard right. Listen to some vintage Beatles and other recordings of the same time.
When stereo television came out, the studios had a very difficult time with using conventional microphones and the result was comb filtering from the phase delays in the stereo recording and the close spaced speakers in a television set. Studios then moved to mono mixes and X/Y stereo microphones so the sound was phase aligned when a stereo mic is used for one point source. This is why in audio production, each performer is picked up with a single mic, not a pair of mics. The phase cancellations are brutal. It was fun watching the TV studios learn that in early stereo television. Sound engineers knew long ago to not place a pair of mics for a single performer unless the recording is strictly for binural headphone use.
I love this! And this is what I want to strive for
Great... by not using soundsources, but lightsources, you make it clearer to me! Thanks, Dave!! 🙂 You mak me look with an other perspective to soundmixing... we are all being so conservative... do it the old way as being teached in the early days... As a musician I try to experiment, thinking outside the box... as a soundguy I am soooo conservative!!
So thanks for your insights and let me be more creative!! 🙂
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It all about the flowers of energy man! (Great band name BTW!)
I love this topic. Been thinking about different ways to implement this. Smaller environments seem like an easier task. Sitting in a small venue listening to a bluegrass band with no amplification is a great experience. You get to experience the room and the music together. Making each instrument a bit louder for a larger venue having all the sound emanate from near that instrument would be fine for the audience, but would cause issues on the stage as it gets louder. I'm picturing in my mind a horizontal line of speakers across the front of the stage and panning each instrument to a different location in that array. Instruments stage left would be panned left, then follow the instruments across the stage. Multiple subs could be similarly panned. It would take a lot of equipment to do it, but a cool thought.
With In Ear Monitors, I think it would be somehow possible to electronically simulate Binaural audio. Record each instrument, and make that sound emanate from an imaginary point on the stage. Boss Wazza-Air Headphone amp comes to mind.
Awesome, love the pushing of thoughts and ideas!
This is pretty much what I've been trying to achieve in a live music listening room (meaning the audience is expected to listen, no talking) I've recently opened. Through experimentation I've landed on a different solution that works shockingly well!
Long story short, I'm hanging splayed main speakers front and center over the stage with subs directly under. Everything is run in mono. Then I'm delaying the whole PA signal the equivalent of about 15-18ft (the furthest distance an instrument is likely to ever be placed behind the PA speakers). This allows the listener to hear the actual source just before the amplified version of it. Since our 3D auditory image of the world is mostly constructed from the timing cues of a sound hitting one ear before the other, hearing the original sound source before the amplified version leaves the impression that all the sound is coming from the original source!
Turning the delay on and off is an impressive experience, especially when you close your eyes. You can "feel" each sound move from the PA to its instrument! Even the lead singers voice seems to drop from the speakers directly above down to his/her mouth.
It works so well with acoustic instruments! I would definitely try it on bluegrass!
That's cool bringing the focus back to the original sources
Always a pleasure to watch your videos. I remember experimenting with lots of little speakers and sources in a room and thinking there will be a way someday to build it up to scale for large events. That being said, have you heard d&b's Soundscape? Granted, I might be biased since I mostly use their gear but I must say it's a game changer for me and certainly a good step in the right direction.
D&B soundscape, Dolby Atmos, and L acoustics L-Isa are interesting ways to smear sound sources around between various speakers to try and create the illusion that the sound sources are located in various horizontal and vertical or rear or overhead locations.
This is all fun and useful and has applications.
What I'm referring to is that as long as sound systems are designed to be a bunch of shower heads shooting energy at the audience they will never accurately sound like many of the sound sources they are trying to recreate.
Actual sound sources are more like sprinkler heads in a field shooting sound in various directions where you can walk between them closer and farther. Trying to recreate this with shower heads blasting in the audience direction may be useful for practical but will not create audio that sounds like the original
@@DaveRat As always there is always a compromise. Yes, I agree with the concept you put out there and hope better solutions will emerge. On the other side I think the limitations of PA setups over the years might have conditioned the general public to expect a wall of noise to be blasted at them from a stacked or a flown bunch of cabinets regardless of what the instruments actually sound like in person. It amazes me how many people confront me for not taking part in what I consider to be this generation's loudness war. We moved from louder on CD's to now louder live mixes. I constantly see this babysitting at festivals where guest acts try to push everything to an eye watering limit. Yes, the most truthfull sound you get in a small room where nothing is really put through those showerheads but to my annoyance, people started asking me for double bass drum mics on a jazz gig in a small pub. Anyways, great food for thought and thanks again for all your videos. 😃
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@@PadreAG I hate the waste of seeing great musicians playing and the PA is producing more energy than the room can physically hold with any clarity at all, no matter how "good" the sound system is. I also get sick of hearing nothing but kick drum. Thank God for the growing trend of listening rooms!
Too loud and too much kick are not optimum and yet just like everything, opinions of "too much" is a vast landscape
always found that panning mono sources doesnt make them sound like they are in real places in the sereo field and i figured this was due to there being no timing differences, if there were pan controls in a mixer or daw that introduced a few ms of delay to the weaker side i think that would improve believability
Haas panning is useful
Oh no it's another video on multiple PA speakers & feeds. After the last few videos I started pondering this some more and one day I realized.......... 5.1 & 6.1 surround sound audio does exactly this different, sounds are sent to different speakers a different volumes to produce the feeling of sound moving around in space. And to think this all started with somebody going to the theater and being annoyed that his movie didn't sound the way he expected it to during editing because of a mono speaker system in the theater.
Well touché you beat me to commenting. Awesome analogy. I think I thought of surroundsound the next day after watching and commenting.
Hmmm, if you only made it to surround sound thinking, you stopped too early
My opinion and this video is actually about why surround sound, Atmos, and all the other configurations available are flawed
Surround sound is like mounting a bunch of showerheads on the walls and maybe even ceiling. And then trying to recreate the experience of being in a field walking through sprinklers.
Sound sources like instruments are more like a campfire or a sprinkler radiating energy outward
Creating a room full of showerheads to recreate a sprinkler field or using central heating to recreate a campfire is using directional energy shooting inward.
This is the reason the recreations fail.
I have had a 222-seat theater at my disposal in Fort Lauderdale for some 35 years. It was a church way back but is now fully godless and it’s a magnificent sounding room. Very steep seating, heavy velour curtains over stained glass and exposed concrete. Since I could do what a wanted, I installed a coincident pair above the stage angled out about 60 degrees, on its own stereo amp. I have really enjoyed boldly mixing stereo in that room, sending maybe half the sound, or more?, to that pair. I can’t think of any reason big setups should not do this. It’s highly room dependent of course, but quite an ear-opener in a nicely proportioned room.
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My new favorite channel 😎👍
Awesome and hey hey AP Studio!!
For decades I've been dreaming about a sound system (theater or surround, call it as you like) in which I have not only left and right but also up (above) and down (below) sound channel. The stereo system was the pinnacle of analog recording (we can safely forget about quadrophonia). In the digital realm the sky is the limit as for the number of audio channels. So, you are perfectly right, for re-creating a live performance every sound source should have it's own channel and by that I mean also loudspeaker. The headphones are another painful story, maybe for some other time 😀🤗
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Thank you, once again. But I'm left with more questions (which is a good thing and why I like your vids): Can I, then, place 2 point source speakers right next to each other(touching) and make it work as long as I FULLY pan each source to ONE of the speakers?
That would depend on the recording.
With an old Beatles recording where the guitar was panned hard to one side and a drums were on the other side, that would work perfect.
With recordings we're only the low frequencies are mono and the highs and mids have a lot of stereo to them it would work but generally vocals are fairly mono so it'll cause some problems with that.
There are ways to convert a stereo recording into a compatible signal that will play back really well from three full range point source speakers right next to each other.
Basically the method is a wiring configuration that recreates a playback version of mid-side recording.
I did a video on it but I'm not sure if it's public I will take a look and if it's not I'll make it public fairly soon
The video I did though is on building a midside speaker
@@DaveRat My apologies for not clarifying. I meant in a live sound application. Example: 3 vocals 4 instruments and a drum set miked (just kick and snare).
My brain says it would sound fine if I were to hard pan each source to one of two speakers. All vocals and snare to one box, then all instruments and kick to the other. There shouldn't be any phase issues. Is this true? The reason why I would ever think of doing this is to 1. Put less stress on my speakers 2. I assume cleaner sound 3. The venue is small enough to do this where I don't have to put a speaker on each side for wide coverage.
You have convinced me to become of member of your channel for the fee. I think the education I will receive will be more than worth it.
THANK YOU!
Welcome to the channel and thank you so much!
Do a search on Dave Rat double hung PA and there's good info out there on my blog and in some of my videos that cover that exact subject and let me know what you think
That's sort of what location metadata (like in atmos or similar) allows for, then you can reproduce in binaural, stereo or multi-channel and the "point souces" will adapt to distribute through the the number and location if speakers and of the listener (positional audio)...
Hmmm, a sound source is kind of like a campfire or a sprinkler, radiation energy, outward in various directions.
Atmos is is like heater vents or showerheads mounted on the wall.
Atmos is like trying to replicate a campfire by using complex central heating with wall and ceiling vents.
I don't see one being able to recreate the other
@@DaveRat used atmos as an example, with metadata of spatial location you can eventually use a wall of sound tech once available, all around you, if you can make one, emiting sound from wherever you want. My main point was addressing the fact of never risk losing real spatial dinamic coordinates data, and then making the data adapt itself as best as possible to whatever playback context is available (mono, binaural, stereo, multichannel, and eventually "holographic" whatever if ever available... )
Hmmm, perhaps it could be simpler. Music releas with 4 stems and each stem has 4 channels. The playback side would have 4 speaker pods placed whereever ya want.
Each stem would have a front, rear l, rear r, and up signal or so.
Each stem would be reproduced as a 3d sound source by the sound pods
It's interesting how I've intuitively thought this and tried a bit before being told and taught the correct normal way.
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A problem is also that a microphone only captures sound at a point in space, and as you explained, sounds rarely converge into points.
I'm not sure if we will ever get around that. In classical music setups, there are often many mics suspended over the orchestra.
Maybe a way of doing it will involve a microphone matrix and a speaker matrix, where every speaker gets it's own microphone mix...
Agreed. Capturing sound at one point in space is an issue and also capturing multiple points in space and reproducing from 1 or 2 points inn space is also an issue
@@DaveRat agreed!
Thanks for the good quality content Dave!
You really provoke thinking on topics that seem to somehow be set in stone.
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I love this topic, Dave. When mixing on a well set up stereo rig for a venue, and with enough time to spare to figure out the nuances and advantages/disadvantages of said rig - I try to reproduce what I see onstage in my mix, just louder. Certainly, there will be compensations, but the goal is to generally change things as little as possible. This does not work with all types of music by any stretch of the imagination. It's strictly a goal to have in mind -when feasible. It's a real treat when I'm able to do a mix like this, but also seldom. My 2 cents... And thanks!
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How do you split the sound in the same fashion as your light example when most equipment is designed for left right only
PLEASE DON'T STOP SHARING YOUR KNOWLEDGE!!
At university in the 80's I remember hearing a Neumann dummy head binaural mic in headphones and the positioning of sound in space was amazing. Needs headphones to work. Seeing someone walk up to me with the mic head turned around and hearing their footsteps coming from behind was truly freaky!
Have been playing around with the Dolby Atmos in Logic and it seems no where near the old tech... It kinda works if you think about it wanting to work! Not sure why. this should be run of the mill stuff like MS is for stereo widening on the recording side!?!?
Making music correct in a large stadium environment is still a goal worth pursuing.... bringing the performers closer to the people and the people closer to the performers.
Thanks
Thank you Andrew⚡⚡
Love what you're trying to achieve here! I'm curious about your thoughts on delayed PAs and also a compromise between what you're doing here and a delayed PA.
So, after fighting horrid room acoustics for years as a live sound engineering, I've recently opened a live music listening room large enough to comfortably hold 100 standing. The room has fortunate dimensions for acoustics and then with further treatment really sounds fantastic. The whole time I'm creating this I'm hoping to keep volume levels just at or above the non-amplified drum kit level.
After experimenting w speakers in more traditional 2.1 arrangements I decided to suspend the 2 splayed mains over the center of the stage (in mono) and found it expanded the sweet spot dramatically!
Then I tried delaying the entire PA the equivalent of 15ft over the 20ft deep stage. At the lower volumes we can push, the delayed PA becomes shockingly invisible as the original source hits the ear just before the amplified version bringing back a truly realistic image! You can FEEL each vocal and each instrument move from the PA to the source as you ingage the delay. I find myself demonstrating it to musicians and other engineers often.
I'm wondering how well it would work with a delayed 3.1 system for louder venues? This seperates many instruments from each other and the image would remain roughly the same anywhere in the room.
More than I can dive into in a comment response. We cover more in-depth stuff on the member side in zoom chats and such
We do this kind of thing for vocals for live theatre. Works great!
Using independent vocal sources is great and a step in the right direction. I've applied this concept on arena and stadium level concerts as well with excellent results.
My focus now is on the other end of the spectrum which is smaller format and trying to reach higher levels of realism.
If that's successful then looking at ways to scale that
@@Lunatic768 Oh yeah, delayed amplification would work really well, and makes a lot of sense in theater. As I think about it now, I can recall one particular theater that always made me wonder how the actors sounded amplified but yet not amped.
Why do I not hear of this being done in live sound? I assume I'm missing something. Is this done all the time and I'm simply not hanging with the cool kids that are doing it? Is this a luxury from being in a fortunate room that I'm taking for granted or what?
I realize that I'm not pushing levels as high as some but it gets pretty loud and the effect still works, though I imagine it would be reduced at a certain threshold. Actually I guess it would have more to do with the ratio of sound between the original signal and the amplified version.
Real stereo is so rarely heard in amplified sound I’m not sure most would even recognize it. I have a Calrec Soundfield MkIV microphone that drops jaws every time I record with it, but it is only fully effective with symphony or ensemble. It is intoxicating to play back those recordings. What is particularly exciting is that a spaced stereo pair of monitors totally loses the discrete problem, making a beautiful stereo soundfield. Instruments have a 3D place in space, on speakers OR phones. I have produced a number of classical recordings with only the Calrec, hearing chuckling from the band… until playback time. I love that thing.
Wow another shirt IDEA...OUT OF THE BOX!Kidding aside...thank you for making us think outside the box...cant wait to read negative comments from people inside the box...this sure hit them hard
Fun!!
I guess the answer to the question of why we don't do this is budget and practicality. The cost, setup time and the complexity of mixing with a system comprising multiple speakers or arrays all over the place would be prohibitive in most scenarios. It's complex enough when you have left/right hangs, side hangs, centre hangs, delay hangs and time aligned sub arrays just to get even coverage in a room. I suppose the best we'll get is double hangs, one for vocals and one for instruments, or maybe double hangs plus a centre cluster, or putting vocals in mono centre and instruments left and right, but if you're trying to cover an arena, then you'd need an inordinate number of additional hangs. It's a dream that sadly I don't know if many people would be able to achieve. Curious to know how you're solving this on recent or upcoming Chili Peppers tours? I know you like to use multiple mics and pan them differently, but have you ever gone beyond that?
Well, I stopped touring in 2017 so no current mixing for me.
Another way of looking at this would be to ask yourself, what if a new level of sound clarity and realism could be achieved? Is it possible the sound systems would then get financial budgeting on tour closer to what lights and video make?
Do we not perform because the money is not there or is the money not there because we fail to be amazing enough?
I don't have the answers and also asking the questions and pointing out the fundemental flaws to the current approach, perhaps could inspire some progress
I mostly gig solo guitar & vocal shows in bars and pubs, often needing only one speaker for adequate coverage. To check for an improvement in clarity/fidelity it would be easy to put up two powered speakers side by side and pan vocals L to one speaker and guitar R to the other speaker.
May be fun to try
What about the WFS (Wave Field Synthesis) configuration?
Cool stuff and very interesting the generate various sonic illusions
Love the thoughts man!
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I have thought about, but never figured out how to approach the musicians, having control all instruments from the console, by inserting some type of control between the guitar and amp, for example. Maybe just a rack of EQs with level control.
Sort of turning the live venue into a recording studio, with the ‘producer’ in control of each sound source.
Digging that PE product placement!
This is how my electronic music studio is set up. It sounds amazing. I actually record it with a zyllia 3d microphone
That's cool
i've always dedicated group outputs on large format mixers to separate submixes for this exact purpose, either for a full surround environment or for a L1 L2 C1 C2 R1 R2 setup. It's fun to always experiment with equipment and sound in general, it seems people just get hung up on certain standards and think it applies everywhere.
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I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on Dolby Atmos.
Imagine standing in a field of sprinklers and walking around or sitting around a campfire.
Now set out to recreate those experiences using an Atmos concept
So now you are in a room with showerheads mounted on the walls and ceiling to recreate a sprinkler field
Or heater vents on the walls and ceiling to recreate a campfire
Can you see where the recreation would fail?
I love this concept.. placing a Danley Sound Labs Jericho Horn J1-94 in front of each musician on stage, and mix each instrument on it's own matrix.
i like where you are going with this..
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thanks for your videos, sir
Interesting idea.
One interesting thing I found out when consulting on the EAW anya system was that it is practically impossible to make two things sound the same if they have different dispersion charictaistics.
We were voicing the Anya rig and I wanted to compare to the MicroWedge which I designed and EAW builds and sells.
Anyway, we kept testing and comparing and matching the EQ between Anya and MicroWedge and could not get them to sound similar.
Anya has a 70 to 90 ish degree horiz dispersion and controllable vertical dispersion and the MicroWedge has about an 80 degree conical dispersion.
It dawned on me the match the vertical of the Anya to around 80 degrees and wow. Once the dispersions we're matched, it them became possible to EQ the two vastly disparate designs to sound similar.
In my opinion, this is why horn loaded systems are greatly challenged in sound like the original sources and why studio monitors and home hifi are not horn loaded
Not to say horn loading is not useful, but horn loading is not the optimum choice if sonic realism compared to the original source is desired. Unless the original source is also horn loaded or has similar dispersion
Sounds like what you're working towards is the Wall of Sound that the Greatful Dead had built in the 1970s. The speaker cabs behind the band were localized to align with the instruments on stage. Curious what the Rat take on the Wall of Sound is. They also had a really novel mic technique that exaggerated the proximity effect to isolate sources and reduce feedback. This also makes me think of surround sound systems in theaters. You mentioned them, but one thing to note is that as humans we're really good at placing where a sound is coming from. In a theater the center channel of the surround has 90% of the dialouge, stuff recorded on location. This channel lives behind the screen that's actually acoustically transparent. This draws the viewers eye into the image, where in theaters with stereo systems it can be distracting depending on seating position because of phase change. The same things can apply to PA systems, it is something to consider.
Hmm, quite familiar with the wall of sound in fact I even deployed a system in that configuration back in the 80s when I was on Black flag tour.
Obviously putting the PA behind the band is a bad idea and putting the PA farther away from the audience did not sound good
Yes these ideas of separation are good and I'm looking at trying to take this to newer and better levels.
I did a tour of arenas and stadiums worldwide where I deployed multiple Soundsystem side by side and was able to put different instruments into different PAs which worked really well
And on huge scales like that the limitations are more pronounced.
But what I'm getting at is building three-dimensional speakers capable of recreating true Sonic realism where you can walk around behind a speaker and have a hard time telling that it's not an actual human playing an instrument
Another thought….. maybe what you are heading toward is using a monitor mixer for the FOH so you can send a lot of different mixes to an array of widely spread speakers. Probably work better in smaller venues rather than arenas but I think it will work better than a stereo mix
I think there are a near 8nf8nitenanountvof application dependant solutions and advanced to be made.
And trying to continually push stereo to higher and higher levels of perfection is not one of them
Why dont we use multiple sources meaning speakers that play the rights frequency scattered around the room and all aim to a central point like the middle of the room toward the ceiling all in mono would that work
Multiple sources recreating the same signal creates maximum interference and cancellation and summation.
Which means having multiple sources recreating the same signal all located at different distances will ensure that the sound is completely as inconsistent as possible throughout the room.
If every speaker reproduced a different instrument then they wouldn't interfere.
It's technically not the same if each speaker plays a narrow band like vocals thru one , guitar ,snare drum. Bass ,and highs for Instruments like your tuning strategy video but looking at a frequency chart and see where female and female vocals fall between and just let one speaker deal with it then guitar frequency to another I hope you get what I mean
Yes if the sources are de-correlated, either by reproducing different frequencies or reproducing different sources or even different captures of the same source from significantly different parts of the instrument such that the tones and overtones and timings are significantly different, then that will eliminate or minimize summation and cancellation issues.
I cover the concept somewhat in this video
th-cam.com/video/VHjdh-Vka-g/w-d-xo.htmlsi=gzAkyaemFEX-ArEt
I'm going to try this but need to see which frequency chart will I use to copy each instrument and vocals then probably use crossover capacitors to minimize crossovers in the mix
@MyTgangsta let me know how it goes
David Rat; targeting a normal stereo hifi, i’d love your comments to using your mixing concept in a studio environment. Hard panning 2 source mic’s, etc.
I cover a lot of this in other videos I've done and even more so on the member side
hi Dave,
very exciting and good thought !
i wish i could place almost invisible speakers (with high efficiency) directly above the individual musicians.. (in a small venue)
cheers from berlin
Cool co Curtis
I hang splayed mains directly over center and delay the whole signal by the equivalent distance of the mains to the rear most instrument (usually the drum kit). In my setup that's usually 3-4 meters. The PA becomes virtually invisible! I describe this further in my response to Dave above. The effect is dramatic! The impression it leaves is that all of the amplified sound appears to be coming from the original source!
Dave, how do you pan Tom's on the drums? Like if you were to record a band in a studio and pan from the drummers perspective would you pan the first rack tom 100% to the left? Or 75%? Just curious. Thanks for sharing all of the great knowledge. You Sir are very knowledgeable.
I pan based on the listeners perspective. So floor pans to the right, stage right, in the drum fills and to the audience left, stage right, for the main pa. For a right handed drummer playing on a kit with the floor to his or her right side
I see a parallel of this to the Dolby atmos and video game principles of treating sound sorces as objects which movement can be tracked and manipulated independently.
Hmmm, to me, Atmos is more like a bunch of projectors point sound towards a listening area more that a recreation of individual realistic sound sources.
this is a great conversation
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The concept is really interesting, any chance to have practical examples of how to make the best of a live situation without having to dobule mic every source to split it apart
Take small steps and see if things head in a desirable direction
I've been experimenting with delayed mono PAs. See my above response for a description. The spacial realism is shocking! I do not believe it would be scalable to arena size though.
The theatre world has long done single source or single array per source setups, with the mixdown happening in the air rather than in the mixer. It's interesting to apply this to the rock and roll world. I've had really great results with a theatre style centre cluster in rock and roll - feeding vocals, kick, and snare to the centre cluster. Far better intelligibility and separation in the mix.
I've also done this in monitors, 3 wedges for the lead singer, outsides is band mix, inside is just their vocal - had several singers say they've never had a better mix.
May e search double hung PA to see how I applied a similar concept to arenas and stadiums
@@DaveRat Well aware of your work. Some years back your work appeared in my uni dissertation, and you very kindly gave me some useful answers and commentary via email.
Very cool. Yeah I am trying to sort why every sound system always sounds fake and artificial, even when the freq resp and capabilities of the speaker far exceed fidelity of the original sound source.
Record hitting a trash can lid or banging some sticks together. The freq response of the source will be very limited, at the recording through the best speakers money can buy.
Will the speakers recreate those simple sounds well nough that you are unable to differentiate the reproduction from the original?
I think not. The issue is not distortion or freq responce or really any of the primary specs we rely upon
The issue is with stereo and the way speakers are configured to reproduce, it will never work until we alter the config and reproduction methods.
Hey Dave how can you improve a stereo image into a 3d type atmosphere
I will do some videos with experiments and see what happens
Thought provoking and fun! Thanks Dave
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In terms of hifi audio, you could check the Learprint system by Alain Français, he reproduces the sound of an orchestra by replacing the musician with a recording of his instrument and a unique speaker only reproducing his recording. You end up with a pretty big amount of speakers but the illusion works
I have looked into that and tried smaller setups with excellent results
A system that is capable of taking individual tracks from a mix and distributing them to different speakers would be cool. It would be like an Atmos mix, but all the speakers are in the front of the room. I could get behind that! I don't notice any benefit from surround sound, so I'd just as soon put all the speakers in the front of the room.
Agreed
I wish this guy was my math teacher,maybe I would have been a physicist.This man sure knows how to make a boring subject interesting
You made my day!!
I run a small run and gun PA company. Bands playing makeshift indoor and outdoor venues that are 8-9 hour affairs. 3-4 hour setup, 4 hour show and quick tear down while the bartender gives me the evil eye because they have to wait for me to finish. I call it guerrilla audio. Any suggestions to achieve your concept on this scale?
I cover a lot of thos in other videos. Also on the member side is more info including over 100 hours of zoom chats
I really like your thinking.
It is really interesting that we are listening to the same formats through speakers and headphones (at home use at least), but it is not an easy question. Maybe if music was available in multitrack format (besides stereo) for home use, one could have multiple speakers for different instruments and vocals. Maybe this would be easier for studios than ever before. I know you went further than that and you have built a speaker firing in multiple directions, feeded the speakers from different mics. That was very impressive, but very hard to record all the instruments like that.
Maybe I can try something, hanging some cheap smaller speakers from the ceiling, I would be curious how that sounds.. I've found a website where a lot of tracks were downloadable in multitrack, for mixing practice..
I am no sound engineer, but on live events.. as far as I know, the Grateful Dead's wall-of-sound did have most instruments on different towers of speakers? Maybe that system had the possibility to sound clearer to the audience, and to give back the original feeling of the stage? Also, I can imagine it was not very stage-friendly.
Thanks for your videos Dave!
What comes to mind - different styles and different locations/environments need different solutions.
Live:
For the classical orchestra there is that hall with wooden walls, that helps to reach the listeners ear by enforcing reflections in a as good as possible way.
For a club band, there exists the solution with those long personal pa speakers per musician, that also can stand behind every musician to monitor himself.
Please don´t ask me, where this helps, and if this causes new troubles...
But in a rock music scenario, there is also the question on stage:
In any way - Do the musicians even position themselves and their amps etc. for the sake of the arrangements placement needs, where the sound "should be" in sonic space?
Or do they do just pragmatically seek a place to stand and move, to "be seen", forced into a somewhat limited space called "stage".
Or - other perspective: Are the drums on a mighty riser, because the music needs the drumsound to be a little higher up in space? I think no.
Studio:
A rock recording is kinda artificial per se. For mimiquing a "Live in the studio" situation, you can fake-pan the imagined musicians position, may be in combination with little room reverbs and eqs for anti-proximity-effect, to get an illusion of room distances and depth.
Home:
It might well be possible to create a home speaker system, where you dedicate a box to every recorded musician and place the personalized loudspeaker box, where you want to "sit" - or "stand" the "placeholder musician" in your own room.
Could sure be done.. with a lot of effort from recording to stems to system. Plus a competent elitist listener, who knows what he wants.
Even differently. For every. single. song...
Sry, Dave...your thinking is brilliant, but this would get too difficult for a lazy normal, like me.
Well, we are more likely to get to the goals we set out to accomplish
@@DaveRat That´s right! 👍
incredibly insightful, love how you always think in terms of the simple fundamentals. Whats really interesting me are the implications for record mixing and recording - especially when recording multiple point sources in an 'imperfect' space. Thanks for the thought provoking content, Dave
Awesome and thank you!! ⚡
I'm sorry is this about recorded music in general, like records, home listening etc, or just about live music mixing and experience?
It's about understanding the inherent flaws and limitations of stereo and mono so that sound humans will hopefully be inspired to explore improving their sound setups and mixes by implementing new and creative solutions
@@DaveRat Oh okay, it's surely really thought provoking, but thinking about all the changes about how things work digitally that would be needed by everyone to make something like that possible, it's probably too late.
it would be really cool if that was possible. In my opinion recording music was never really about recreating the exact feeling and sensation of being in the actual room the musicans were palying in, probably at first, but it quickly evolved in something different completely, like creating spaces and sensations beyond real life limitations. If that wasn't the case as you said binaural audio would be everywhere, but that's not the case. Just like Dolby Atmos this concept could surely find its nieche for people who want to venture in this new listening experience, and I'd be here for it, if they have the equipment to do so..
From your point of view stereo did a lot of bad things, and that's arguiably true, but it made music accessible to everyone.
In some way it reminds me of video, movies and remote video calls. Of course it would be better to be there physically, but let's say anywhere we are on any device we can have a video call with our friends and chat with them, see what they're seeing, surely it would be better to be there in person with them, but we can do the best we can do to make it accurate but also accessible to everyone, and then our brain will fill in the gaps for us, over time..
Like we have a clear mental image of a song in our heads, and we can listen to it in our heads without having to play it on a device. It exists in our heads, and when we listen to it mentally we don't image it playing through a speaker, we don't remember the sound of the speaker or of the room we were in, we just remember the song, our brain filled in the gaps, and overtime gave life and created an identity for the song.
It's not like being inside the music of course, that would be better, to experience it as if it was played in front of our eyes, in this exact room, but that would be impossible, so we make it easy so everyone could do it. Play it through a stereo system or even a mono source, the best you can do, to not let song be forgotten, and listen to it so it can be part of our lives, whenever we need it.
about how things work digitally that would be needed by everyone to make something like that possible, it's probably too late.
Sorry for the probably wall of text, I said it was really thought provoking.
Trying to solve all the problems for every application and every person may not be an optimal approach.
Not unlike trying to design the perfect car to replace all cars for everyone.
That said, I believe there are fun and relatively simple solutions that can be applied to some or many situations ranging from home hifi to large scale events
Can you do a hang of a 16 element K2 and send 16 different sources into it going into a dedicated speaker for each source? So your lead singer put that in the top box the guitar put it in the second from the top so on and so forth in whatever combination you want and do a video on it.
One could do that but the system would have the coverage and throw of a single K2 per side
Your videos on that topic and how you came to use a double hung PA and seperate the sources in the wedges have definitely triggered something in my brain and I'd like to share my thoughts with you...
I've been following the adventures of @PresentDayProduction moving towards Dolby Atmos mixing and having the possibility to assign each source to a single speaker recently. I've found the technology behind this really interesting.
This makes me thinking a lot about about the general problematic of live sound reinforcement and I wonder if Atmos would be something that could be usable (in the future) in a live environment.
It seems to provide better clarity and a better image when mixed for an immersive experience and then processed down to a stereo setup than a classic stereo mix.
Of course, Atmos is designed for a single optimal listening position and latency would definitely be an issue for live use at this point in time, but I wonder if that kind of technology used on a double hung PA could be a valid solution to make it sound more natural.
This is just theoretical thinking and Atmos is too expensive for the average venue anyway, but maybe there's a way to use the virtual speakers concept with the equipment we use live today... Just thinking out loud
Sound sources radiate sound outward towards the listers and the walls
Atmos is designed to project sound inward from the walls.
Like tryin to recreate the feeling of sitting around a campfire by using central heating and adding more vents on the walls
Atmos is good for creating secondary sounds coming from external directions but does not address the accuracy and realism of primary sources that would be located in and amongst the listeners.
Hi Dave,
I do get your point in that sound from two points never sounds the same as is does from stage. The same reason why I don't believe in surround sound for music. (Film is a whole other domain.)
I do have some issues with the comparison that a "sub here, a mid there and a tweeter over here" might be more comparable with the sound as it comes from stage as it produces fase-diferentials.
The sound from the stage are frome different locations but all contain a full range of frequencies.
It would be nice to amplify every instrument by his own speaker. The problem we would run into is that te visitor standing on the right of the stage needs a different speakerplasement to match it his or her's view of the stage.
Thank you for you video's.
God bless,
René Leunk, the Netherlands.
I have more videos planned and will dive into this further with examples and demos that hopefully will expand and clarify some of these ideas
Thank you for your response. Looking forward to the video's!
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Very interesting. It's the difference between a bare lightbulb in the center of a room and a flashlight in the same center of the room.
Yes with the flashlight sending the same info in one directions and the light bulb sending differing info to the front and diff info to each side and diff info upwards and downwards
@@DaveRat So in a concert, your job is to make the flashlight's beam audibly shine on everyone equally. In nature, the sounds of the crickets come from over there, neighbors dog barks over there, the damn woodpecker driving me nuts over there... What are your thoughts on reproducing that for a show? An image pops to my mind of percussion in the center, with a 360* degree spread outward into crowds and other instruments coming in from single point sources from a ring around the outside of the audience. Bass would probably be with the drums but guitar would be over here and keys coming from over there, vocals from over there... The soundmans job would be to mix by spreading those single points in such a way that sounds best. That seems like an untamable beast but I know very little about it at this point.
Or are you just recognizing the truth about the nature of sound and letting that be your guide in how you mix sound for the Peppers? Very cool, by the way. When I grow up I wanna be a kid like you.
Sorry for the ebook but how else could I have asked that question in only 4 lines of text?
I hope too and will try to do a video on two different perspectives on dealing with the limitations of stereo sound
@Dave, I really appreciate your push to think about this from a different theoretical perspective. Could you do (or have you already done?) a video suggesting practical experiments to explore these ideas using sound equipment typically already found in small-to-mid-size venues? I think a lot of us would love to hear your thoughts on how we might do that.
Hmmm, I will continue to vid more. Not sure how far u have dived into the sound testing and listening playlist and the vids on mixing. But yes, will continue to expand
@@DaveRat I appreciate your kindness in being polite enough not say, "Watch the rest of my videos, dummy!" Ha ha. But I'm working through your channel slowly as I have time. These topics take time to digest and ponder. Much respect, sir!
Thank you and great to meet ya Luke!
i try to have each source besides the bass and kick panned slightly different to one side or the other based on what side of the stage they are on.
That's a small step in the right direction
make the best of my limited resources.
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Dave, this topic is great. Is really thinking out side of the box. Literally. But, thinking outside of the box is directly proportional to increasing costs. How can you achieve power over distance, without having enough pa ? Are we talking about a hard evolution of sound that should implemente development not only for speakers , but consoles also ? How much will it cost and how will that affect an overall budget or even an artist fee ? Is crazy to think that thinking out of the box eventually comes to money ,,,, or not ?? You yourself are a vendor , and if I come as a cliente looking for this experiences for my audience, how will it affect on my budget ?
could this be why small basement shows I went to growing up always sound "better" to me and hold a special place in my heart then when I go to big venue shows these days? In the small basement shows nothing is mic'ed up, every source is coming from what is producing the sound the only thing in the PA was the vocals but the you often could still hear the vocals coming from the singers as well.
I think so and like that as well
hey dave, is this valid only for big gigs? arena and so on? what about for small clubs, simple sound systems...
I'm not really referring to venue size I'm referring to the way sound is being reproduced.
For live shows large and small we already have a live band so feeding speakers that sound extremely real is not a very high importance.
For reproduced sound there may be applications where Sonic realism is desirable
You could mic up each performer individually and time delay each source within the dsp so as to minimize wavefront scattering for most listeners. The recorded performance would also be more accurate. Love the frequency sweeps at the end!
I envision a melding of motion arrays and ADS-B like tech to create motion in the sound that travels around the room with performers and even audience, to project an accurate image spatially. Almost like a hologram of sound. Almost like being on stage next to the performance.
I think speakers that output differing sounds in differing controllable directions would be fairly simple to implement
@@DaveRat would be fun to gut some track spots and mount some tube speakers to the gimble to prove it out then scale it up. I would imagine horizontal arrays would become possible at that point.
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How do some recordings portray extreme depth and height, while others display what is described in the video? Are these opinions applicable to anything other than panned mono? What is the effect of phase differences?
There are so many options. Maybe watch my video on decorrelation
@@DaveRat Thanks for the reply. I will watch.
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Inspiring and always interesting, thanks
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What are your thoughts about spatial audio speaker systems Dave? Such as a large scale wave field synthesis system.
Wave field synthesis is super interesting and not unlike creating acoustic hologramsbi in the acoustic space
Great stuff. And not unlike cars, there are applications for a formula 1 race car, a limizine, a sedan and a 4 wheel drive truck and many more.
Trying to design a sound system for all applications will be as successful as a car for all applications.
Though I dont believe there has been enough development in the application of creating sonically realistic reproducers.
I've always been interested in trying to fake a spatial reflection, especially a sound which you believe is coming from behind but is actually from the front/or your in ears. Big rabbit hole though
Ha, yes that would be a complex
That's insanely tricky, since the way we perceive height and front-to-back information are exclusively changes in frequency response/comb filtering, and is directly dependent on the shape of our ears and heads. Since we all have differently shaped ears and heads from one another, it is a real challenge to have a solution that can pull this off.
In headphones, though, this is actually achievable to some extent. This is what products like the new AirPods pro are trying to accomplish by somehow making a physical model of the individual's ear and directly using that information to compute vertical and front-to-back spatial data, directly tailored to the individual. For speakers, though, where multiple individuals have to listen to the same box, this is, or at least seems, next to impossible, without the speaker physically being in the spot the sound is intended to propagate from.
@@FOHFILMS Exactly, I've used internal ear scanning devices to achieve this before, would need to be tailored for each person differently somehow, it'll happen one day I'm sure though, and it will be awesome.
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I was intrigued by your monitoring setup using 3 wedges. I have found on EAW's website your setup guide for Microwedges, and did not read correctly, because I thought the 3 wedge setup meant vocal in the center and instruments left/right. But recently I re-read it, and realized that you suggest to put all the instruments in the center wedge and vocal both in left and right. So how does this setup correspond to your idea of not putting the same source into to multiple speakers?
I can answer that. Just having the vocals alone removed from the instruments middle wedge is enough for better clarity
Putting the same source into two speakers insures summation when equidistant from the 2 speakers and cancellations when off to one side or the other.
If summation when centered or equidistant with cancellation in other areas is desirable, then the same source into multiple sources can be beneficial.
Dual vocal wedges, sub arrays, line arrays are a few examples of using the same source into multiple speakers in a beneficial way.
Oh and what I said or say is that the same sound to multiple speakers is unnatural but I never said unnatural (does not exist in nature) is bad or good.
It's all about understanding the tools and using the right tool or method for the job
@@DaveRat Oh wow, thanks for the detailed answer! I see your point, and thanks for explaining the result of doing that too. Another question ;-) When would you say it is important to move from two (left/right/vocal in both) to three (vocal left and right/instruments center) setup?
That has too many options. I would say do it when the outcome is more desirable than not doing it.
@@DaveRat Thanks!
love your experimental views, to my understanding at the present time, but is this the same principals dolby atmos is achieving?
Atmos shoots sound inwards from multiple directions to try and simulate sources in various locations.
Actual sources radiate sound outwards in various directions at differing levels and freq ranges
@@DaveRat ok so does that mean Atmos is reversing reality?
Ha! Maybe!
Very interesting analysis. I think point-source speaker were born as a means to an end, but maybe they became an end on themselves. That'd be wrong from an engineering standpoint, if one specific solution becomes the goal and there's no room for any other.
Orchestras in a theatre, for example are the perfect example of a "real" listening experience, with literally one point-source for every single instrument. Thanks for the video!
I have mixed in binaural using "Dear VR" plugin (virtual 3D room that recreates the "flowers" depending on the 3D positioning of the source in the virtual room). What is your take on that?
PS: isn't it a lost war to start with? Speaker cones are all made of paper, and that's supposed to sound like metal (horns), wood (guitar), and so forth... Wasn't the war lost before it even started?
Hmmm, then simplify. Record and play back the sound of a paper bag crumpling through paper speaks and see if you can or can not hear the difference between the recording and real.
There may be many issues but the main fundamental is that differing sounds radiate outward in all directions from natural sources and if we wist to recreate realistic sound, we need speaker that radiates differing sounds outwards
@@DaveRat Never thought of trying that. Thanks for the idea 🙂
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Hey Dave, what about using panning in a stereo system? If everything is panned to a slightly different degree they'll all have slightly different reflections (or at least the average of the two paths from each speaker will be different)
That's a step in the right direction. Stereo speakers are like two showerheads pointed at the listener.
Natural sound is like rain, band and other sound sources are like sprinklers in a field radiating sound in various directions.
Panning and altingbsources sent to left and right will help but it won't make directional showerheads into sprinklers
The problem with panning in a big stereo system is that most members of the audience will only hear one side of the p.a. Whichever speaker they are nearest to will be all they will hear due to the Haas or precedence effect. If the two sides of the p.a. are completely different then maybe it starts to work as they will hear both but with a delay between them. Maybe the answer is a row of sources or line arrays above the stage with each instrument in the source that is nearest to above them.
Hmmm, mic'ing the same source such that it is somewhat decorrelated each mic to the other and then panning will solve that.
But that won't solve what is lacking in sound reproduction systems.