Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bigus 
At least local and dragon recommend using the right tools to evaluate the starting point and track progress toward your goal.
but amirm doesn't even understand the very tools that he outright and blindly disregards regarding the ACTUAL behavior of the acoustical space. all that he knows and is familiar with is the frequency-response! that's his "comfort zone" or his "security blanket" - everything has to fall back to what he is comfortable with. and he doesn't even present CSD/waterfalls when discussing the modal region - he only posts the frequency-response in his graphs/articles! he's not here to discuss acoustics and explore - he simply resorts back to these blatant generalizations about "room furnishings", carpet, rugs, etc. he actually puts forth toole's Reverberation Time measurements of "carpet" - when such calculations aren't even valid in our rooms! his entire foundation is copy-paste parroting toole; mostly out of context to support whatever scenario he has got himself into. there is conveniently always some kind of quote or hedge that he can use for ANY situation. and he thinks all the tests are directly applicable into ANY residential room, with ANY type of speaker (without knowing anything about the polar response), and with ANY type of room furnishings.
the absolute worst part is that he STILL ignores reality and assumes all
"reflections are reflections are reflections" - he makes NO effort to distinguish between sparse and densely diffused reflections. *only* those extremely spatially and temporally dense result in comb filtering so closely spaced and narrowly notched as to not be noticeable - sparse reflections result in very noticeable and audible comb filters! he literally thinks we are striving for a
"reflection free world", as he stated earlier regarding the acoustical models that have been presented - instead of the reality of such models that
suppresses such high-gain early arriving indirect signals arriving within the haas interval that are detrimental to localization, imaging, and intelligibility. if we are after a
"reflection free world", as he makes attempt to imply, then why on earth is it
stressed to utilize the ETC to identify the ACTUAL high-gain troublesome reflections and attenuate
surgically, instead of just covering the entire boundaries in porous absorption like so many on this forum blindly do (and of which i contest). such a contradiction!!! he thinks there is only 1 way to do things, yet toole himself states
"it is simply a matter of taste". myself and dragon bring that quote up repeatedly and amirm selectively ignores it - he wants everyone to do as his marketing and sales team does! he needs
validation. hell, we even provided the ONE example that SURPASSES toole's requirements for dense, sidewall reflections by presenting the single most
reflection RICH small acoustical space - and the
professional engineers opted instead for absorption at the sidewalls instead of the dense array of sidewall reflections!! but hey, maybe those bookshelves and
"typical room furnishings" might be able to match the well mixed first order dense diffused reflections that Blackbird C can provide - with it's BROADBAND diffusers.
he argues AGAINST blackbird and doesn't even realize blackbird is what toole proposes on Steroids - and the professional community rejected it in favor of the effectively anechoic ISD-gap a la LEDE.
a pretty amazing demonstration made in the worlds
paradigm example of a lateral reflection rich environment -
and then he wants to see "real world studies" ... yeah, as if professional engineers of which it is their
job to mix/master in such a room have less weight with regards to their commentary than a random sample pool of audiophile listeners.
that's tantamount to disregarding a Formula 1 engineer's comments and preferences and putting more weight into your neighbor's opinion with his 1970s muscle car.
he wants to discuss psycho-acoustics and then insists that such discussions are based around the frequency-response --- then utterly fails to provide any follow-up commentary on how the frequency-response is related to localization and imaging.
he has explicitly stated in the past over and over that he sees no reason for "time-domain" measurements in our residential rooms - and then in this thread he repeatedly presents the Olive/Toole graph that deals with psycho-acoustics of indirect reflections (eg, image-shifting), of which
is in the time-domain!!! . so, no one should be using the ETC to identify how ACTUAL indirect energy is impeding the listening position he says - and then he presents a graph that shows how to identify "image-shifting reflections". hmm, if i want accurate localization and imaging, and not some "wide, fuzzy" imaging - then don't i have to measure MY space to determine whether any such destructive, sparse reflections impede the listening position?
THAT type of behavior should solidify why he is simply NOT interested in acoustics. hell, just look at his micro/baby diffusers and his auralex t'fusors (lol!) in his company's showroom. he doesnt design his own diffusers based on his own bandwidth and physical size constraints specific to HIS room. nope, he just sources some NON-BROADBAND/coloring diffusers and slaps them up on the wall. but im sure the "look" of it impresses clients! too bad it goes against toole's commentary for broadband treatments (absorbers, diffusers, reflectors). and adding insult to injury, he then criticizes blackbird C's diffusers for being so large!! completely ignorant that sound has size and objects must be large with respect to wavelength! you would have thought such information would be in the introductory statements of his CEDIA courses he so proudly prizes himself on.
and take a look at his failed misunderstandings of the recording world - where he implies that tracking (recording) rooms and control (mastering/mix) rooms should adhere to the same design requirements!
never mind the fact that tracking rooms / recording setups tend to be asymmetrical, and control rooms symmetrical - but also that a recording room is
subjective. you can record in a stairwell, with a reflective floor, with a carpet on the floor, with a 4" carpet on the floor, in a completely anechoic room, etc - it doesn't matter! you're after a particular 'sound' to get on the recording - unlike a control room of which is a critically accurate reproduction room of which mixing/mastering decisions can be made that are not influenced by the room.
it might sound cool to some to record drums in a stairwell, but you sure as hell wouldnt mix/master in the stairwell. it was quite laughable to see him bring up the exposed "floor reflection" in blackbird C when the room was being used at that time for RECORDING. lol -
adding to injury he didn't even know what a GOBO was - and then he wants to speak like an authority on the subject?
and on intelligibility, he is making the same error as other users on this forum have regarding 'early reflections' contributing to intelligibility - he STILL confuses the issue of gain - in terms of making something easier to hear as being
more intelligible in the sense of it being more articulate - and all of this is entirely moot in an
AMPLIFIED setting - gain is no longer the issue! notice how the d'antonio link he quoted and linked to is about speech rooms? he lacks the in depth understanding to differentiate what certain tests are about and the requirements - he takes things out of context and doesn't understand the fundamentals. but hey, increases in speech intelligibility via early reflections in a high noise environment must really be a big factor in your home listening room. if the noise floor is that high that you NEED early reflections to increase the perceived gain of the speech in the UNAMPLIFIED scenario, then maybe you have other problems to worry about. me? i'll just turn up the volume.
last but not least while we're on the subject of acoustical measurements, let's review his google'd response on the ETC. im quoting it to preserve the ignorance:
Quote:
Originally Posted by
amirm
As to the graph above, it came from FHG analysis of their room. They wanted to comply with the requirements of the first reflection being X dB lower than the direct sound.
For that, an impulse response is the weapon of choice. The ETC is nothing but filtered version of that response. Filtering a signal does not give you more accurate peak dB value. ETC is designed to make the impulse response easier for humans to interpret by filling in the valleys with the "envelop." You mention one way to do this which is based on Hilbert transform but that is material in this case. An easier way to think of ETC is as a zero-phase FIR filter of Impulse Response. Clearly filtering applied there doesn't give you more accurate peak dB value. If you are going to dispute any of this, please do so by overlaying the Impulse Response and ETC on the same graph. Show us how the *peak* value that FHG was using is different between the two. I am confident you won't show us this graph because it will demonstrate what I just explained.
did he really just say tthe ETC is a FIR filter of an impulse response? it's actually an UNFILTERED transfer function. but hey, that's just us humans back here on earth where most specular systems are
NON-minimum phase. again, the thinking of an EE who only knows small signal analysis and utterly fails to understand acoustics.
blatant ignorance on display for everyone to see - no wonder he thinks he can 'EQ' non-minimum phase issues, as im sure you remember getting into that very same discussion with him in the past in the 'Freq vs Time' thread.
the saddest part is he kept trying to elude us (lol!) to the fact that the "ETC is useless in the LF/modal region" - well
duh. that should have been obvious but it just shows his lack of understanding of the very measurement tools he attempts to disregard. it's no wonder his knowledge of acoustical behavior is dumbed down to calling the specular region the "speaker region" and the modal region the "room region". it must make for excellent marketing brochures
