Dayton OmniMic Precision Measurement System - Page 5

Then I am a hypochondriac.

Thanks guys. Good and fair advice.

"Then I am a hypochondriac."

kal, have you recently pretended that you didn't know everything that you know and just put on some music and "tuned" it by ear regardless of how it measured over a long period of time, perhaps 20-40 hours of listening? and then gone back and measured how you "tuned" it in?

also, the brain is a dynamic eq filter. after listening to a system for a while, the brain will adapt to many problems. this is one complaint that i have with most of the jbl/harman research. a-b-x tests don't allow the mind sufficient time to adapt, as a result the differentials in the subjective scores overshoot the results folks will have over time with the products in their homes.

Well said, John. I think this is something we overlook many times over. I would like to put this to the test this next year as I will probably have my new speakers assembled before I get one of those Dayton calibration systems to do any 'proper' calibrating of the speakers themselves. I will have to do it by ear. Yes. I have to. I can't not listen to them if I have all the parts at this point.

Either way, it will be fun to do 'tweaking' over time and see what the results are. Should be fun.

^ well that's where I'm at. I have speaker that sound "good". Now I want to know if they are good. I even used components that had little testing/documentation.

First off, thanks for responding to my quip.

Not intentionally. I recently made a setup error and lived with it for a while. Eventually, though, the error was detected aurally, measured and corrected. Not interested in an intentional mash-up.


Many but not all. You do not have to advise me about this as I am a neuroscientist in my day job and I have raised the issue before.


There's a logical/procedural issue here. Is it better to test when the listener is most sensitive and, thereby, minimize potential problems that may or may not be acceptable with extended listening and adaptation? Isn't that analogous to insisting that our measurement instruments have more resolution than the phenomena they are measuring?

the peanut gallery is looking forward to your data and commentary mr. simonian. not many have such unlimited systems as you are cooking up. lots of folks are trying to triangulate in on what really matters. among only a few others, your are at the cutting edge of answering that question. i'll be following your progress...

Isn't the Audyssey pro mic the same one sold by Velodyne (DD/SMS-1/MIC-5), Behringer, Nady, Dayton, and others?


That may be the stated FR, but the ones I've seen are much closer than that. I have three: one from a Denon 4308ci, one from a Denon 3808ci, and one from an Alpine PXE-H650 car processor. They're interchangeable for all practical purposes.



I totally disagree. Say you have two $30 in woofers and $20 in tweeters or your $100 in DIY audio gear. (Excluding caps/coils/resistors, but go ahead and adjust the numbers downwards to add them in you want.)
A good measurement system could easily be the difference between an well-optimized speaker worth at least as much as a typical well-designed prefab speaker with $100 in parts would cost (~$500) and a worthless POS. I would say a good progression should go like so:

1) prefab audio stuff
2) maybe a DIY sub
3) a competent measurement rig (for me that means a MacBook, FuzzMeasure Pro, and either a mic preamp with a calibrated measurement mic, or for quick-n-dirty results, an Audyssey tower mic)
4) a proper subwoofer system (at least three subs, placed property)
5) DIY mains

But that same competent measurement setup will work just fine when you're speaker using a $150 compression driver on a waveguide and a $300 woofer. Or a line array of 28 $25 3" drivers.

What about this:

A DIY Speaker Testing Microphone
http://www.speakerbuilder.net/web_fi...diymicmain.htm

kal, i wasn't taking shots. i appreciate your work. it was out of respect for your experience that i raised the question with you. i was raising the question that maybe it is possible to create a good sound based purely on subjectiveness. this is a 180 degree turn for me, so bear with me...if the ultimate goal is to please our brains, and, our brains have a natural filter based on who knows what experiences and who knows what hard wired programming, then doesn't it make the most sense to just tune by ear instead of tuning by the numbers and then telling our brains that is what is accurate and adapt to it?

No. Because we may hear something is wrong, but not know what it is or how to fix it. The tools tell us. Our brains can't.

This is a great question/point.

The issue with it (IMHO) is, that our brains' opinions are not static - they are constantly changing, maturing, evolving... based upon a multitude of factors and stimuli. Compounding that issue is that our brains' opinions are easily fooled and manipulated... so it may not be the most reliable fixture to adjust your variables to.

I'd say, it probably is a better overall approach to educate your brain (the education will start to affect your opinion of good/bad) as to what is "good" by measuring and adjusting... should wind up being more repeatable and consistent.

In theory and only if one listens in isolation. And while subjectivity and adaptation cannot be denied, I have found that every step taken (by me or another) towards an objective standard results in greater enjoyment.

Now, you could say that I have brainwashed myself to believe that accuracy is desirable and that biases me but that cannot be the whole thing. Errors in setup, such as I mentioned before, are like murder: They will out.....eventually.

Heaven forbid someone actually would believe such madness...

Love your articles, BTW.

I have to wonder who ever only has $100 worth of DIY audio gear?

As posted elsewhere, in my opinion "the electronics (source), speaker/room (transducer), person (receiver and interpreter) interaction is extremely complex and hard to get right; moreover, the evaluator at the end of that chain, the person, is very subjective. What that means is there is an essentially infinite number of combined solutions, many of which are very bad, some of which are very good, and are few of which are excellent (most of us have have been in the presence of well chosen equipment in a well designed room and everything we do in this hobby from then on is about trying to recreate that experience). And, while many of us try to improve the subjective results by working as objectively as possible, it is true, almost by definition, that just because speakers measure well (in a standardized setting or in the room in which they are installed) does not necessarily mean they will sound good. Ultimately, despite what the vehement arguments you may follow on these threads seem to sometimes suggest, movies, music, and all the equipment that make them possible, is about what YOU like and YOUR enjoyment, and in my opinion, the DIY process is much more than half the fun."

Wouldn't someone have to train the brain first before they can actually tune by ear?? The ear is simply a 'dumb' device sending signals to the brain.

Sure but it is even more likely that they will sound bad if they measure poorly.


Sure but only if you know what you are doing and that re-introduces objectivity.

It's true.... the ear's job is ultimately to fire the auditory nerve. Keep in mind this organ is not simply passive. It's an active process. The efficacy of this process varies from person to person and amongst different tones. Two people listening to the same sound do not likely "hear" the exact same thing. I believe this accounts (at least in part) for differences in auditory preferences.

Allan

We should probably take the idea one step forward and say that speakers that measure well can sound bad in a bad room or if poorly placed, and speakers which don't measure as well can sound better than expected if attention is paid to the placement and the room (there is little help for speakers which measure badly). In terms of measuring, what probably matters just as much or more is how the speakers measure in the room.


I couldn't agree more. I think there are many people who spend a lot of money and end up disappointed in the results, wondering where they went wrong.

(Off topic) By the way, are you still using your DHC 9.9 or have you moved on?

"In theory and only if one listens in isolation. And while subjectivity and adaptation cannot be denied, I have found that every step taken (by me or another) towards an objective standard results in greater enjoyment."

this is actually a really, really good point. switching back and forth between living in the "real world" and the occasional listening to the "reproduced world" would cause problems, so getting the "reproduced world" as close to the "real world" makes sense. since most folks brains are "trained" around real world sounds, the a-b-x setup employed by jbl/harman can make sense. determining which system sounds most "natural" in that context is akin to determining which system most accurately reproduces the sound of the "real world".

however, many folks will ask what do i do if i find something other than accurate reproduction of the sound is more pleasing to me? do i eq for accurate and tell my mind to suck it up or do i eq for what is most pleasing to me? maybe the best option is to start with accurate reproduction, then eq based on personal preference and not argue that one eq is "better" than another eq, as it is all in our heads at that point.

by the way, in my estimation, this dayton measurement kit is a good value. once one has sufficiently good components, dialing in the sound via controlled directivity/room treatments/etc. is far more important than spending money upgrading to different components. $300 is a song when one starts thinking about selling some $1k speakers for another pair of $1k speakers where there will be a 50% loss on the "trade-up".

The ultimate goal should be accuracy.

I can't imagine listening to a string quartet and then afterward schooling the musicians about how it could have sounded better if their instruments were mic'd and that they should let you run the board.

With recorded music, the producer and mastering mixer have a free hand to distort the music to their liking or self imposed standard. We listen and either except that end product as something we like or something we don't like.

That's as opposed to listening and tweaking the signal to add our own distortion to the distortion and saying we made it better.

IMO, putting the end user in control of the final mix has been largely a disaster. The result has been the creation of a generation who don't have much of a clue as to how it should sound.

That's why I prefer the diagnostic tools that are now available. At the very least, you should have a reference starting point. Occasionally going back to that reference will usually let you know how much distortion you're creating to satisfy your subjective preference. It's an eye-opener in most cases.

Bosso

"The ultimate goal should be accuracy."

that is a good starting point, but don't forget the real "ultimate goal" which is meeting each person's individual goals.

what if i am an old man and i wish to hear the sound of the string quartet that i remember taking my wife to be when we were young, but now my hearing is shot on the top end, can i not eq the top-end way up in order to relive that blissful experience?

or let us say that i am young girl who frequents dance clubs and i love the power of the beat. the power of the beat makes me want to jump around. then i find out that my club runs the bass 6 db hot. when i play it "accurate", it sounds lame. can i not eq the bottom-end way up in order to relive that blissful experience?

I think people need to separate accuracy from what curve they want.

We can model our system to be accurate during the design stage but then we should have complete control over the curve we want in room. If we look at Sean Olive's blog and the work at Harman we will see that generally people like a tilted down curve anyways.

What is really an acurate in room response though?

A) is it a flat on axis response curve?

B) is it a tilted down on-axis response curve following Feltcher-Munson curve for equal loudness? (following what Harman proved in blind tests)

C) is it a about having a better polar response, better power response?


The product in this thread allows people to learn about the accuracy of their speakers/equipment. I always believed its all about learning all the compromises in our systems more then anything else.

What they do after that is 100% choice.

Great Post!

Sorry ahead of time but this reminds me of that insurance commercial with Mayhem saying, "I'm a teenage girl."

dbl

I'm also extremely interested in this product. I currently use REW, radio shack SPL meter, and built-in sound for measuring. However, I was never satisfied with REW because I never was able to get it even half way functional. The only function I was able to get to work is SPL sweeps and ultimately became frustrated because I spent more time trying to get everything to work when I really just wanted to measure. And buyers remorse later, I started wondering and becoming dissatisfied with the inaccuracies of the RatShack meter.

I almost pulled the trigger a few times in the past week on a calibrated mic from Cross Spectrum and external sound card. It's been pointed out that OmniMic will alleviate many of the issues I had with REW. However, will a user be giving up advanced functions by purchasing this product and not going the separate route? I have a concern that once I get a handle on the measuring process and tweaking with the DSP, that I might be limited in the future if this is only aimed at beginners.

Nope. Still have the DTC-9.8 but will be moving on soon.

Actually, I have done this experiment with a colleague as subject. The careful re-EQ of his setup was initially successful but, the more he listened, the more he became disturbed by the dichotomy between real world (live) sound and this recreation of what once was real world. He ultimately discarded the EQ.


No accounting for such tastes. Let her enjoy it when I am not around.

Oops, thought I remembered you posting on the 9.9.