We are taking a behind-the-scenes look at Pro Audio
Workshop: Seeing Sound. In the last video we looked at module 1. In this video
we're gonna look at module 2. Module 2 is all about
speaker placement. What can we know from just our designs and looking at the room
and what we know about physics and geometry to help us produce a more consistent
result with minimum variance. The first lesson in module 2 is all about
collecting information information about your room your inventory your system
what you're going to end up with at the end of this lesson is your own personal
list of most important questions that you need to ask about every show and we
all have these right we have like a short list we definitely need to know
things like what are the speakers how big is the room what time is the show
that kind of stuff and then we have a longer list that sometimes we get
answers to and sometimes we don't so you'll see here that I have kind of a
master list that I've been compiling over the years with other people's
suggestions at the bottom of most of the lessons there's a homework walkthrough
so if you're having any trouble hopefully you can watch that and it'll
give you the answer and there's always our online community or reaching out to
me privately if you have any trouble visualizing speaker coverage is the next
lesson in module 2 each of these lessons is going to introduce some new key terms
and concepts to help us start talking about the shape that a speaker makes in
a room and how then we can match that shape to the room so in this lesson
we're going to learn about on axis off axis left off axis right vertical table
vertical bottom stuff like that lesson 2.2 is all about front to back distance
ratio I learn more and more about how valuable this is all the time I think
it's the most valuable thing I use now on every show that I work on
and I say that because it's not always immediately apparent when we just have a
two-dimensional design that we're looking at on a piece of paper right we
need to know a few more things about like how high as a speaker and once we
know how high the speaker is then we can calculate the distance at the first row
to the last row knowing the front-to-back distance ratio gives us
all kind of information about like how many speakers do we need in the array
how many your rate boxes per zone what is this play between them and if we're
not doing a multi element array maybe we just know what is our level variance
going to be from front to back if we just have a single speaker is this
design even going to work is it going to meet our dis so this is where we're
gonna start coming up with some design guidelines design criteria as it relates
to front to back to Center Asia I explained some stuff about fractions
some math things this is a simple lesson that I stole from Steve Bush such a
simple idea when you think about it yes puts on where the people are but we
still see so many systems that don't follow the sky blue guideline right any
time you see a symmetrical sound system in an asymmetrical room or trying to
cover an asymmetrical audience plane it's not following this guideline right
by the way this is when we start getting into the lessons where you're actually
doing designs in map XT or whatever design system you want to use I should
have mentioned that in the first module actually that although I suggest that
you use map xt you don't have to use map xt and although i use smart and
satellite you can use whatever audio analyzer you want so you can also use
whatever design and prediction software you want in fact if you want to use
pencil and paper you can do most of these lessons where you're just doing
designs with pencil and paper it doesn't really matter to me i just suggest map
xt to people who are new and are looking for something free and easy to get
started with but this is when we get into the lessons where you'll start
exporting those designs and uploading them into the course to complete your
homework assignments alright listen two point four place at coverage center
such a again such a simple concept but when we actually start to look at its
application we see oh I haven't been doing that in my designs or oh that
place that I work at doesn't quite follow that so what are the
repercussions and what can we do to improve the situations where the
speakers are not placed at coverage center
all right lesson two point five again I know I keep saying that this is simple
but I just discovered that we can take these simple ideas that are easy to
remember and totally easy to learn but the really the Devils in the details
right the the application they're applying them to our designs this is
just all about matching wide coverage speakers to wide spaces or wide audience
planes and narrow coverage to narrow audience planes it may even sound a
little bit silly but I think it'll make more sense once you actually see the
lesson all right listen two point six now we start
getting into a little bit more exciting math and I think some of the more
powerful stuff that you're going to take away thinking yes this is really going
to help me in my designs and this first one is forward aspect ratio and it's
simply the power of being able to match speaker shames by width and depth to
room or audience playing shapes by width in depth suppose that there's a cool
little calculator down here that I developed to help you look at that so
you can put in a length and width of a space it'll tell you what the forward
aspect ratio is and then you can tell it hey this is the speaker that I have is
that good enough and it'll say smiley face yes or if it you know if it was the
wrong speaker it might say no you're actually over covered by four point I
Tessa Buhl's try doing this instead so just not really calculated it
necessarily gives you answers but it helps you investigate these shapes okay
we looked at forward aspect ratio so now in Lesson 2.7 we're going to look at
lateral aspect ratio while for DES tweaked ratio
helped us look at speaker shape by width and depth of their shape we're using
lateral aspect ratio to look at the width of coverage from a specific
distance from the speaker this answers the question do we need from fills for
example alright here we're going to get into some basic subwoofer arrays in
lesson 2.8 and you're going to learn how to make two subwoofer arrays that you
just need two speakers for the two element inline gradient array and the in
fire array each of them have slightly different applications give that you
slightly different results and we talked about how to build them and their
application I should also say that with each of these videos since we're not
watching the videos with each of the videos there's a initial section that is
usually just me and slides and I'm explaining the concept and then in the
second section there is in the field work so for example in this video in the
first section I'm going to explain the concept of the SU subwoofer arrays and
how they're built and then we'll in the second half of the video is actually
video of me in the field building them measuring them verifying them things
like that so that is the format for the videos and then here's a bonus video at
the bottom that's half an hour long but gives you an entire tuning from
beginning to end from first person perspective with this silly GoPro camera
that I have but it just allows you to see how all the stuff comes together in
the field and you're only at the end of module two at this point so you don't
know the whole process yet but I just want you to see how all these pieces
start to come together in the field okay so that's the end of module two of Prodi
workshop seeing sound in the next video let's look at module three
sound design