The new device that may just put me out of business

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

I am a real stickler about room acoustics. I have read the never ending discussions about the sonic benefits of expensive cables, power cords and various other audio myths to get subtle improvements from audio, but I believe this next generation technology is a real winner in my book. It addresses an area that is not subtle in its improvements, and can really bring out the great sound of your hometheater via improvements in your rooms acoustics. Forget fancy cables, power cords, CD wipes, green markers and let me introduce you to MultiEQ. This maybe a bit technical for many, but just try and follow as best as you can. It's found in rather expensive components now, but I am sure it will trickle down to lower price points as the cost of DSP's continue to fall.

http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/specsformats/AudysseyMultEQ.php

[edtyct]

I am a real stickler about room acoustics. I have read the never ending discussions about the sonic benefits of expensive cables, power cords and various other audio myths to get subtle improvements from audio, but I believe this next generation technology is a real winner in my book. It address an area that is not subtle in its improvements, and can really bring out the great sound of your hometheater via improvements in your rooms acoustics. Forget fancy cables, power cords, CD wipes, green markers and let me introduce you to MultiEQ. This maybe a bit technical for many, but just try and follow as best as you can. It's found in rather expensive components now, but I am sure it will trickle down to lower price points as the cost of DSP continue to fall.
Terrence, if you don't mind my asking, why will MultiEQ put you out of business? If you're a sound engineer, won't it make your work sound better in general, and less dependent on a particular environment? I recently read about a new headphone-based system that is adapted to a person's own aural characteristics that can mimick, uncannily, the speaker layout of his/her listening room. There seems to be a lot of movement in the pychoacoustic area these days. Very exciting.

Ed

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

Terrence, if you don't mind my asking, why will MultiEQ put you out of business? If you're a sound engineer, won't it make your work sound better in general, and less dependent on a particular environment? I recently read about a new headphone-based system that is adapted to a person's own aural characteristics that can mimick, uncannily, the speaker layout of his/her listening room. There seems to be a lot of movement in the pychoacoustic area these days. Very exciting.

Ed

Ed,
Sound engineering is my main job, but on the side I do high end installations with an emphasis on the audio side of the equation. One of the biggest parts of that job involves doing acoustical analysis on the system after installation(tweaking in other words). I also specialize in coming in on other installers work and cleaning up the acoustical mess they create. This device will eliminate the need for RTA and SPL meters in the future, and thus my services if they include a microphone and maker it user friendlier.

In terms of sound engineering this will make the studio much easier to calibrate and quickly set up. I plan on purchasing this product if they offer it in a stand alone box, and most definately for my hometheater when it becomes available in a more affordable receiver than the Denon 5805

[edtyct]

Got ya. At least you can be the first guy on the block to have a stand-alone box. But I would think that the extent to which MultiEQ depends on fuzzy logic to determine patterns of dispersion among listening positions, and, by the designers' own admission, not straight acoustics, there may still be a need for sound experts to finetune, no? As much as we try, we still don't seem to be able to eliminate the human element. Thanks for the info.

Ed

[Woochifer]

Well T, I don't think you're exactly going to need food stamps anytime soon!

The MultiEQ seems like a more sophisticated version of similar systems that Yamaha, Pioneer, and others have been marketing the past couple of years. It seems to have more advanced auto EQ functionality and it applies fuzzy logic so that the EQ benefits are not limited to the seated measuring position. Those are clear advances.

But, from my reading, the system still cannot do anything about the decay time inside the room. And my understanding of acoustical treatments is that it uniformly benefits everyone in the room by reducing the decay time and making it more consistent throughout the frequency range. Those still require a professional, or a DIY tweaker with just enough knowledge to be dangerous (a few chapters into Alton Everest's book now puts me into that category).

With auto calibration now showing up in subwoofers as well as HT receivers, it seems that products like the MultiEQ are just the tip of what advances in signal processing will bring over the next few years. NHT's been touting their soon to be released DSP correcting speakers, and some initial impressions that I read from CES indicate that it's a very impressive start.

http://www.soundstage.com/traveler/traveler200410.htm

A theater installer I talked to recently also swears by the self-powered Meridian DSP correcting speakers. Even with all of these DSP-based systems, there are still aspects of room acoustics that even the most advanced auto calibration system doesn't touch upon. "You can't fix a first reflection" was Tom Holman's quote from that article. I guess until the promise of direct synaptic input is realized, you still got a job!

[IRG]

I am a real stickler about room acoustics. I have read the never ending discussions about the sonic benefits of expensive cables, power cords and various other audio myths to get subtle improvements from audio, but I believe this next generation technology is a real winner in my book. It address an area that is not subtle in its improvements, and can really bring out the great sound of your hometheater via improvements in your rooms acoustics. Forget fancy cables, power cords, CD wipes, green markers and let me introduce you to MultiEQ. This maybe a bit technical for many, but just try and follow as best as you can. It's found in rather expensive components now, but I am sure it will trickle down to lower price points as the cost of DSP continue to fall.

http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/specsformats/AudysseyMultEQ.php

Hi Terrance,
Are you familiar with ambiophonics? I imagine given your expertise and employment you are. The definition from the website is: ..."the method combines an exploitation of seldom applied, but well documented, psychoacoustic principles with the basic rules of good musical performance space design to create believable concert-hall sound fields in dedicated home listening rooms. Ambiophonics moves the listener into the same space as the performers, by accommodating to individual external ear and head characteristics, minimizing interaural correlation at the listening positions, abandoning the traditional stereo loudspeaker equilateral triangle, recreating early reflections and reverberant fields via computer, eliminating front-loudspeaker crosstalk, and reducing the home music theater wideband reverberation time to less than .2 seconds. The completion and testing of the first full-scale version of the Ambiophonics Home Concert Hall has demonstrated that the Ambiophonic sound reproducing technique is a worthy successor to both stereophonic or surround-sound listening configurations, for staged music, in that it can consistently generate a "You Are There" concert, opera or pop sound field even preferably from standard LPs, DVDs or CDs that the ear-brain system will accept as real."

I got a first hand demonstraiton from the founder of ambiophonics.org and it was quite brilliant. This was by far the most advanced installation I have seen, but then again I am not in the business like you. One room in his house was specifically designed for great acoustics (like a concert hall) and I must have counted 22+ speakers (all of them large planar type speakers - about the size of doors) and several subs. But he also had a setup in another room that was regular sized, and used Bose cubes, just to show that good sound can be had even from these little buggers.

It seems to me and I am a layman here, not a professional engineer like you all, that the science behind ambiophonics is quite different altogether from surround sound that it listed in your article. Apples and oranges. But the ultimate goal is similar, and that is to produce music (and film) that sounds as lifelike as possible.

Anyway, I thought I would share this was others if they have never heard of ambiophonics before. The demonstration I got was very cool. In one example, a marching band was playing, and you could hear and feel every nuance of the band playing from a distance and coming towards you, playing right in front of you, and then drifting off in the distance. Did it sound lifelike? Incredibly close to it. Anyway, I do think it helps having a huge room as he does (40' ceilings, walls toed out) with proper acoustical treatment, and a huge amount of equipment to make things sound lifelike. But it also worked remarkably well on a very budget oriented system with just 4 speakers.

I'd love to hear your opinion on ambiophonics if yu are familiar with it. It was almost bought by JVC and then along came Dolby Digital/DTS and surround sound, and it was too hard to try and market both systems, so today, I don't think there is any commercial application of this system yet. But perhaps someday...

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

Well T, I don't think you're exactly going to need food stamps anytime soon!

The MultiEQ seems like a more sophisticated version of similar systems that Yamaha, Pioneer, and others have been marketing the past couple of years. It seems to have more advanced auto EQ functionality and it applies fuzzy logic so that the EQ benefits are not limited to the seated measuring position. Those are clear advances.

But, from my reading, the system still cannot do anything about the decay time inside the room. And my understanding of acoustical treatments is that it uniformly benefits everyone in the room by reducing the decay time and making it more consistent throughout the frequency range. Those still require a professional, or a DIY tweaker with just enough knowledge to be dangerous (a few chapters into Alton Everest's book now puts me into that category).

With auto calibration now showing up in subwoofers as well as HT receivers, it seems that products like the MultiEQ are just the tip of what advances in signal processing will bring over the next few years. NHT's been touting their soon to be released DSP correcting speakers, and some initial impressions that I read from CES indicate that it's a very impressive start.

http://www.soundstage.com/traveler/traveler200410.htm

A theater installer I talked to recently also swears by the self-powered Meridian DSP correcting speakers. Even with all of these DSP-based systems, there are still aspects of room acoustics that even the most advanced auto calibration system doesn't touch upon. "You can't fix a first reflection" was Tom Holman's quote from that article. I guess until the promise of direct synaptic input is realized, you still got a job!

Yep your right, I still have a job! Whether or not this takes away any of my business doesn't really matter to me much. I think this product should be a must have for anyone with a hometheater or multichannel music setup. I personally think this system would probably work better if the room was treated before using it.

As far as decay time in small rooms, I am not sold that it is really a problem unless one has hard furniture(no cushy couches), no curtains, smooth walls, and no carpet on the floors. Most common listening rooms have at least some of these elements. I think the worst problems in small rooms is the lack of diffusion.


NHT DSP based speaker is not a new idea. Meridian has been doing it for years, and I think I like their system better than NHT. At least they take the digital signal all the way to the speaker themselves and do not have all of the extra A/D-D/A conversions in the process. I happen to really like Meridian speakers, and have used them in several installs I have done over the years. Next to installing horn hybrids, these are my favorites.

THX's stag theater uses screen speakers with electronic DSP based crossovers. Rather than correcting for acoustical and crossover errors, theirs exclusively is for time alignment.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

Hi Terrance,
Are you familiar with ambiophonics? I imagine given your expertise and employment you are. The definition from the website is: ..."the method combines an exploitation of seldom applied, but well documented, psychoacoustic principles with the basic rules of good musical performance space design to create believable concert-hall sound fields in dedicated home listening rooms. Ambiophonics moves the listener into the same space as the performers, by accommodating to individual external ear and head characteristics, minimizing interaural correlation at the listening positions, abandoning the traditional stereo loudspeaker equilateral triangle, recreating early reflections and reverberant fields via computer, eliminating front-loudspeaker crosstalk, and reducing the home music theater wideband reverberation time to less than .2 seconds. The completion and testing of the first full-scale version of the Ambiophonics Home Concert Hall has demonstrated that the Ambiophonic sound reproducing technique is a worthy successor to both stereophonic or surround-sound listening configurations, for staged music, in that it can consistently generate a "You Are There" concert, opera or pop sound field even preferably from standard LPs, DVDs or CDs that the ear-brain system will accept as real."

I got a first hand demonstraiton from the founder of ambiophonics.org and it was quite brilliant. This was by far the most advanced installation I have seen, but then again I am not in the business like you. One room in his house was specifically designed for great acoustics (like a concert hall) and I must have counted 22+ speakers (all of them large planar type speakers - about the size of doors) and several subs. But he also had a setup in another room that was regular sized, and used Bose cubes, just to show that good sound can be had even from these little buggers.

It seems to me and I am a layman here, not a professional engineer like you all, that the science behind ambiophonics is quite different altogether from surround sound that it listed in your article. Apples and oranges. But the ultimate goal is similar, and that is to produce music (and film) that sounds as lifelike as possible.

Anyway, I thought I would share this was others if they have never heard of ambiophonics before. The demonstration I got was very cool. In one example, a marching band was playing, and you could hear and feel every nuance of the band playing from a distance and coming towards you, playing right in front of you, and then drifting off in the distance. Did it sound lifelike? Incredibly close to it. Anyway, I do think it helps having a huge room as he does (40' ceilings, walls toed out) with proper acoustical treatment, and a huge amount of equipment to make things sound lifelike. But it also worked remarkably well on a very budget oriented system with just 4 speakers.

I'd love to hear your opinion on ambiophonics if yu are familiar with it. It was almost bought by JVC and then along came Dolby Digital/DTS and surround sound, and it was too hard to try and market both systems, so today, I don't think there is any commercial application of this system yet. But perhaps someday...

I have heard of this technology in Surround Sound magazine. They didn't go into deep detail, but its explaination did peak my interest. It does seemed based on their explaination that it wouldn't be practical for most listening spaces, but I am sure that they will find some form that is marketable. The future of sound is going to be quite interesting.