This is a behind-the-scenes video for Pro Audio
Workshop: Seeing Sound. In the last video we looked at module 2 and in this video
I want to show you what's going on in module 3. So we are in the aiming portion
of the sound system tuning roadmap and this all of these lessons are just about
different ways to aim speakers either as a solo unit or to combine them with
other speakers now as you can see the lips and 3 is kind of a monster there
I'm sorry module 3 there are a lot of lessons in here I just updated this a
few months ago and added several more to make it more complete to try and cover
as many of the most common most important situations that I have run
into so I can't go through them all very detailed but I will go through them
quickly just to give you an overview so horizontal aim basically how to aim any
speaker no matter where you are no matter what the situation is triangles
yeah this is just a quick introduction to triangles basically explaining that
if you know any two pieces of information of a triangle you can find
out the third piece of information so a lot of times for example we know the
height of the speaker in the distance of the first row but we don't know the
distance from the speaker to the first row okay so we can speed up our work by
just knowing some basic principles about triangles vertical aim so this is the
corresponding horizontal aim now a vertical aim and here I give you a
formula for finding the vertical aim of any speaker as long as you know the
front-to-back distance ratio of the audience plane
you're trying to cover less than three point two five aim and slay of a coupled
point source array so if you don't understand all these words don't worry
about it I explain every new word that comes into the course here and we even
have a compiled glossary that you can access if you forget any of them or
don't know any of them and it's growing all the time as we get into
these lessons here you'll see that more and more of them are just different
kinds of arrays couple point source array then we'll go to uncoupled then
point destination and things like that okay and each of them comes with
potentially a formula or a technique but none of the math is super complicated
it's pretty easy stuff to wrap your head around less than 3.27 Aemon splay of an
asymmetrical couple point source array so what happens with the Eamonn splay of
your Center cluster if you need to turn one of them down a little bit why would
you need to turn one of them down a little bit well what if the room is
asymmetrical we talked about this before right put sound where there are people
not where they're or not so if you have you know a cluster up here but this root
side of the room is bigger than that side for whatever reason maybe there's a
bar over there I don't know then you might need to turn this one down and
then that's going to change the aim and display of your array a little bit and
this is where we also get into talking about shrinkage otherwise known as
proportional change in coverage with level offset when you start to learn
about things like comb filtering then you start to get really afraid of it so
what I try to talk about in this lesson is the trade-offs between an uncoupled
point source and point destination array and that's it's just a fancy way of
saying hey if you have two mains your left and right main on the side of each
stage like so many people do what happens if you aim those in towards the
center what happens if you aim those straight down the middle and what
happens if you aim those out okay lesson three point three five how to aim and
delay a loud speaker yay lesson three point four find coverage
angle and aim in one step okay this is just a fun lesson where you get to learn
how to use this calculator can put in a few pieces of information about your
design if you know exactly where the speaker is going to go and then find the
cover jingle inane alright here's what we get into designing our line arrays
the first step here is just automatic and that's basically just using learning
how to use the auto splay a name of your loudspeaker manufacturers design
software then we're going to get into how to do that manually and usually I
think most people use both I would usually start by having the loudspeaker
manufacturer software automatically aim and splay their Rea for me and then I'll
start making adjustments after that I think in the next lesson we'll get into
fine tuning it yep so multi-step process right a little bit complicated but these
are the trade-offs of being able to cover a huge long room with just want
array now we're going to start getting into the verification lessons
verification is the most important thing to do on-site so many times I've gotten
this wrong and I try to skip ahead and then the show starts and some of the
speakers don't work because I did not verify them something terrible like that
okay so just the lesson here is everything that you verify will work
fine and there won't be any problem everything that you skip over and don't
verify there'll be some problem with it just happens over and over again all
right so we're gonna start by verifying our audio analyzer we need to make sure
that that's working first so we don't incorporate any problems with the audio
analyzer into our system tuning then we're gonna verify the horizontal aim of
a single speaker and then an entire array then we'll Verte a verified the
vertical aim of that single speaker or array so this is when these lessons are
when we start putting microphones into the field okay
so for example in that last lesson we would have a vertical table vertical
bottom and on axis measurement and then compare those to find the optimal aim
now you can see as we're getting to these lessons less than three point nine
verifies play for a symmetric couple point source array so now we're taking
all of the things all of the aims that we estimated basically in the first half
of this module and now we're verifying those why don't we do it all in one step
well you totally could the reason that are two steps is because the first half
the estimation half you can do that at home right so the night before the show
or the week before or whenever you're planning this you can look at your
design and you can say okay with this information I can estimate that the a
misplay is going to be like this but then once you get in the field you still
need to verify that because there's all this information like room reflections
that are really more challenging for us to estimate and take into account in our
designs without actually being in the room and taking real measurements you
can still do this course even if you don't have a room to test these all in
so the best way to do this course is to watch each lesson and then go out into
the field and try it so you can actually get the things into your hands and into
your brains and eyes and ears and everything and and learn this stuff but
that could take a while and if you're not a person that is out doing shows
every day or maybe you're not doing shows that give you the opportunity to
move speakers around and take measurements you can still do this
course because every lesson has at least two options for the homework assignment
and usually there's an option where you can go out into the field and verify
this stuff and basically just report back take some photos take some video
document your work out in the field or you can do the same work in map xt so
what i've noticed some students doing is they'll go all the way through the
course just doing option b I'm sorry option a and doing all of their work and
practicing in their design software and then they'll come back and do it again
where they actually go out in the field and do the work so that's one way to do
it and some people go back and forth I just try to make this available because
I know not everyone has the same resources
all right listen 3.93 verify spacing for a symmetrical uncoupled array exciting
and then we get into the asymmetrical uncoupled array whew in this lesson for
example we're going to talk a lot about relay speakers so you might have a main
speaker and then you've got a long room and
you're gonna have to put a relay in a relay and a relay and you need those to
all sort of connect seamlessly so that's what these asymmetrical uncoupled array
is talking about and here we're just talking about the spacing now we're
going to get into verifying the aim and sway of a line array it's a pretty
simple process but I think maybe one that is potentially skipped over a lot
because we have now in our design software for our speaker manufacturer we
have Auto set a man display but once we get into the field we still need to do
verify that that actually worked and so this is a process of just looking at
microphone positions at our different zones and the crossover between them and
making sure that they meet our design guidelines that's it okay we made it to
the end of module three so as you can see I had to put a lot of stuff in this
one because we not only have the design and basically estimating a lot of this
stuff but then the verification in the field
so that's module three and in the next video we're going to talk about module
four EQ
sound design