Avantone CLA-10 (Yamaha NS-10M Clone) Review

[lowkeyoperations]

There has been development of many standards for professionals in audio. The AES has a Standards Committee. https://www.aes.org/standards/ If you look down the page on the left-hand side, you'll see a link marked "AES Standards development." https://www.aes.org/standards/development/
If you click on that link, it takes you to a page that describes the development process as well as who is involved (basically anyone who applies).
About half-way down that page is a link called, "AES Standards, new projects", which leads you to this page: https://www.aes.org/standards/meetings/new-projects.cfm

As for the history of these standards, this page https://www.aes.org/standards/about/ tells you just about everything you need to know. The standards are promulgated by AESSC working groups ..... which are open to, and I quote, " ... any and all."

So no single entity forces their views on everyone. Instead, working groups take input from all (even you guys and us guys) and AFTER A PERIOD OF TIME issue standards.

You can see near the bottom of the page that there are four fields that are the subject of study by the 11 working groups. One of them is "Acoustics: Sound systems, loudspeakers, microphones, and acoustic annoyance." (Bolded by me.)

So no, Amir has not proposed an "imaginary standard that cannot be disclosed". He has proposed a new standard that invites comment form anyone, and is a process that will go through committee, "probably" changing as it goes. The only "content" that Amir needs to come up with is his suggestions to the Working Group. The same applies to you, to me, and to all of us.

But you knew that, didn't you?

Jim Taylor

Ok so there are some existing standards. Who would have guessed!

Of course I’m sure they will not be Amir Approved standards.

I’ve put forward a suite of suggestions to this working group already.

Funny the hardest person to satisfy has no useful input.

 

[RobL]

My GRADE report includes an assessment of compliance to ITU-R BS 1116. Is this not an existing “standard” for control rooms etc? I believe the standard cover everything from room size and shape, reverberation, reflections, spl etc. etc.

Edit: Link to standard

 

[PeteL]

There has been development of many standards for professionals in audio. The AES has a Standards Committee. https://www.aes.org/standards/ If you look down the page on the left-hand side, you'll see a link marked "AES Standards development." https://www.aes.org/standards/development/
If you click on that link, it takes you to a page that describes the development process as well as who is involved (basically anyone who applies).
About half-way down that page is a link called, "AES Standards, new projects", which leads you to this page: https://www.aes.org/standards/meetings/new-projects.cfm

As for the history of these standards, this page https://www.aes.org/standards/about/ tells you just about everything you need to know. The standards are promulgated by AESSC working groups ..... which are open to, and I quote, " ... any and all."

So no single entity forces their views on everyone. Instead, working groups take input from all (even you guys and us guys) and AFTER A PERIOD OF TIME issue standards.

You can see near the bottom of the page that there are four fields that are the subject of study by the 11 working groups. One of them is "Acoustics: Sound systems, loudspeakers, microphones, and acoustic annoyance." (Bolded by me.)

So no, Amir has not proposed an "imaginary standard that cannot be disclosed". He has proposed a new standard that invites comment from anyone, and is a process that will go through committee, "probably" changing as it goes. The only "content" that Amir needs to come up with is his suggestions to the Working Group. The same applies to you, to me, and to all of us.

But you knew that, didn't you?

Jim Taylor

Exactly, there are tons of standards in audio. Now let's start with the premise that we need an extra one. One that hasn't been proposed by AESSC, not by Harman, not by Sony, not by Dolby, not by THX, not by Amir, all we know is "we need one" We don't know on what, we don't know what it entails, we don't know who it targets, we don't know what it wants to fix but the only important thing is that the corpus of the recording industry agree that we need a new standard, whatever that is, is this the state of this current discussion? What am I missing here.

 

[lowkeyoperations]

I have proposed no standard.

You proposed that there needs to be different mixes made for different audio playback devices such as iPhones based on some meta data system you have imagined.

Is that still part of what you would like in the standard?

 

[lowkeyoperations]

Exactly, there are tons of standards in audio. Now let's start with the premise that we need an extra one. One that hasn't been propose by AESSC, not by Harman, not by Sony, not by Dolby, not by THX, not by Amir, all we know is "we need one" We don't know on what, we don't know what it entails, we don't know who it targets, we don't know what it wants to fix but the only important thing is that the corpus of the recording industry agree that we need an new standard, whatever that is, is this the state of this current discussion?

What am I missing here.

Also that it’s your fault PeteL.

.

 

[Zensō]

Sonarworks isn't as legitimate as Harman, last time I looked into it, but sorry I've forgotten the details - for a start Sonarworks doesn't use an industry standard rig & target that has any significant preference research behind it, is my broad understanding.

I don't have quite the same defeatist attitude as you, inasmuch that if a standard becomes adopted and is seen as the preferred best way target to have when creating music, then people will start using that, even if it's not headphones. Then if those music creators that can't afford decent speakers & rooms and instead they have to use headphones then they can do their best at re-creating the target in headphones. If the standard were to become Anechoic Flat Speakers with RoomEQ below transition zone combined with Harman Hump in the bass, then Headphone Harman Curve would already be the best equivalence for them to use, and that exists already in the form of the 2018 Harman Headphone Curve. If the new standard were slightly different then perhaps they could iterate from that by making comparisons. It's hard to create a standard in headphones, I don't think any admin body would commit to doing that, as they're not predictable enough like I mentioned, but if people wanted to make do & get by with just using headphones to mix then Harman Headphone Curve would probably be best.

You might find this interesting.

SoundID SR for Headphones: A new Headphone Tuning Standard - Sonarworks Blog

This White Paper covers data-based insights and a proposal for the new headphone calibration standard and its implications for the industry

www.sonarworks.com

BTW, your assumption (bolded above) is very far off the mark. Every engineer I know uses headphones, either in conjunction with speakers or alone. There are a number of top tier engineers now mixing and mastering for the major labels solely on headphones, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not they can afford speakers.

 

[Deleted member 21219]

Ok so there are existing standards. Nice!

The evolution of standards begins with threads like this. And Amir is right; it is far, far too early to propose any concrete (specific) standard. Before that is even subject to invitation by the Working Group, there first needs to be the realization that a problem exists, and that a new or reformed standard can address it.

Judging by the tenor of this thread, I'm not too optimistic.

Jim

 

[PeteL]

The evolution of standards begins with threads like this. And Amir is right; it is far, far too early to propose any concrete (specific) standard. Before that is even subject to invitation by the Working Group, there first needs to be the realization that a problem exists, and that a new or reformed standard can address it.

Judging by the tenor of this thread, I'm not too optimistic.

Jim

If you mean the problem of the “ circle of confusion” as rightfully put forward by Toole. Yes, it is universallly realized that the problem exist. There is a near consensus on that. What is not as clear is that the finger pointing. The my daddy is stronger than your daddy stuff without any concrete ideas is a right way to solve that.

 

[Deleted member 21219]

If you mean the problem of the “ circle of confusion” as rightfully put forward by Toole. Yes, it is universallly realized that the problem exist. There is a near consensus on that. What is not as clear is that the finger pointing. The my father is stronger than your’s stuff without any concrete ideas is a right way to solve that.

Of course not. But the Working Group will hammer that out. History proves that if the vast majority agree that there is a problem, then the vast majority will eventually come up with a solution.

The only thing that troubles me is that word, "eventually". I'm an old man. I'm not sure I have that much time left.

Jim

 

[lowkeyoperations]

Of course not. But the Working Group will hammer that out. History proves that if the vast majority agree that there is a problem, then the vast majority will eventually come up with a solution.

The only thing that troubles me is that word, "eventually". I'm an old man. I'm not sure I have that much time left.

Jim

In the meantime how do you suggest we ameliorate the impact of the circle of confusion?

 

[Zensō]

In the meantime how do you suggest we ameliorate the impact of the circle of confusion?

Start mixing and mastering on AirPods.

 

[PeteL]

Start mixing and mastering on AirPods.

View attachment 305842

You make it as a joke but you absolutely nailed it. If there is a standard its definitely this.

 

[lowkeyoperations]

Start mixing and mastering on AirPods.

View attachment 305842

There’s probably a big enough market to do just that! Apple will throw in the money and we can have “AirPod Approved. From the Artist to you.”

 

[Joshua Cadmium]

I already gave the real example of this way back in the thread. That when I hear a slightly bright track on a speaker, I don't know if that is right or is the fault of the speaker. You can't leave us in limbo like this. Again, I don't have this problem in video.

Again, there is no real circle of confusion in video. Video standards are much more easily met.

Virtually all consumer display devices have the ability to hit rec. 709 standards. Calibration tools are also relatively cheap. Room treatment for video is basically $120 gallon of paint: https://www.rpimaging.com/products/munsell-neutral-gray-paint .

Video is also arguably easier to "mix". For instance, on video, I could use the worst monitor ever and still get things somewhat close just by looking at measurement tools like a waveform monitor or vectorscope (tools which used to be very expensive, but are now available on virtually all editing software).

With audio mixing - multiple sounds, instruments, and vocals are fighting to be heard within their overlapping freqencies.

Video does not really have that problem (unless you consider CGI compositing). Video resolution lives in its own designated pixels.

-----

Audio reproduction is still mostly constrained by physics. In video, you need a relatively expensive and hard to make analog device (lens) to make sure resolution and color are accurately imaged. Once obtained, though, you don't need an expensive analog device to then display that image.

Current video displays are digital technology and thus relatively cheap. Speakers are still stuck in the analog domain and thus relatively expensive.

-----

The biggest difference between video and audio is that video can get away with a simulation of color spectral curves, due to the principle of univariance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_univariance ).

All you need is RGB color (or something close to it) and you can trick the eye into seeing colors that aren't there. For instance red and green on a monitor combine to make yellow, even though the yellow spectrum is not reproduced at all. This is called metamerism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamerism_(color) .

You can't do those same kind of tricks in audio. Audio reproduction has to recreate the full spectrum of sound without any shortcuts.

With video compression, we can also get rid of most of the captured color and still be okay. This is because humans are more sensitive to brightness changes than we are to color changes. We can chop off about 1/2 of the full range color resolution and still reproduce overall images well. This would be considered 4:2:2 chroma subsampling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling ). Most consumer formats like Blu-ray actually go further with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling - only about 1/4 of the color resolution is preserved.

Full range video does not have to reproduce the full spectral range of vision. Full range audio does have to reproduce the full frequency range of hearing.

-----

2 channel audio reproduction is basically 1-5ish big analog "pixels" per channel that have to cover all the audio frequencies and do so in an imperfectly overlapping and bouncing way that changes from room to room and even placement in the same room. Video is not like that at all.

There is no way to reproduce audio as well as you can reproduce video. It's not even close.

 

[Joshua Cadmium]

Not a speaker but we have a $50 IEM that does that: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ds/truthear-x-crinacle-zero-iem-review.37380/

Thank you for pointing this out! I have been going through your past reviews but missed this one.

And, of course, I wasn't considering headphones when talking about speaker technology shrinking, but it is definitely a valid point. I'm now wondering if some kind of headphone standards are the middle ground for everyone here, as that seems to be the consensus.

You could completely eliminate the sound of the room, but then model an ideal room using DSP. I know others are somewhat doing that, but it would need to be mathematically modeled instead coming from the measured data of a real room.

 

[PeteL]

You might find this interesting.

SoundID SR for Headphones: A new Headphone Tuning Standard - Sonarworks Blog

This White Paper covers data-based insights and a proposal for the new headphone calibration standard and its implications for the industry

www.sonarworks.com

BTW, your assumption (bolded above) is very far off the mark. Every engineer I know uses headphones, either in conjunction with speakers or alone. There are a number of top tier engineers now mixing and mastering for the major labels solely on headphones, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not they can afford speakers.

Wow, "A/B testing involving 147 000 individuals". And nothing is being done in the pro world in term of research...

 

[Geert]

Book? Did you say his book? Dr. Toole's seminal paper on controlled tests of loudspeakers came out in 1985 in J. AES ("Subjective Measurements of Loudspeaker Sound Quality and Listener Performance"). He did not publish the book until after he retired from Harman in 2008. That's 23 years later. If you didn't know about his work until his book came out, you sure were living in a cave as far as acoustic science is concerned.

Nice move to quote me on Tooles book and make an unsubstantiated reasoning to ridiculise my knowledge, especially in the light of me asking you to stop this polarising discourse. You are on speaking terms with an (recently ex-) industry insider who has been doing exactly what you wish to accomplish, and that's how you choose to proceed?

You are fight toothing and nail the notion of any standard.

As a matter of fact, I didn't post in 3 days and most of my contributions to this thread involve sharing inside information about the adoption of SOTA monitors and the practises and challenges of mixing. In my last post I only asked further clarification of your objectives, I didn't challenge them.

If you are already onboard and understand the problem your industry has created due to lack of one, then we can talk about proper way to address it. Which is it? Are you already onboard that a problem exists or not?

You think I would start measuring speaker systems and help studio owners improving their monitoring setup decades ago if I thought it didn't matter and my golden ears were good enough? I was the one crying in the desert at that time.

You can't just declare stuff like this especially when I have post research that shows these rooms wildly differ in lower frequencies:

Again that graph from a study from 22 years ago, without any nuance. It tells us nothing about the current state of affairs, where more and more people are adopting DRC technology (easily accessible now since Genelec and Neumann offer solutions, and as many discussions about people experimenting with REW on music forums as we see over here).

Given the date of the study and the popularity of Genelec in the European broadcast industry back then we should also ask ourselves what types of rooms they've been measuring, and if we're indeed looking at a graph that's representative for the music recording industry. Looking at the reverb time statistics in the study it's clear they measured a lot of rooms without the acoustic treatment you find in a typical commercial music recording studio.

The study also shows that from the 372 speakers they measured, only 250 had the speakers aimed at the listening position. Only 158 speakers were part of 2 channel (stereo) rooms. It's safe to assume that in 2001 most of the music control rooms could be found in that less than 50% subset of data.

When we look at the graph that represents the speakers aimed at the listening position things already look less dramatic than the graph you shared:

Unfortunately they didn't specify which percentage of this graph represents stereo setups, used in music recording control or mastering rooms. Nor where these setups or located on the graph.

What the study did specify is different practical challenges for improving monitoring. It indicates implementing a standard will be more challenging than some suggest.

To be clear, this is not "fighting the notion of a standard". It's having an open and investigative discussion about the available research data, and practical implications of implementing a standard. Better understanding of the playing field is necessary if you want convince people. So if I made any mistakes in my interpretation of Genelecs study or you have more elaborate data, feel free to correct or compliment.

 

[Robbo99999]

I’m agreeing with you Robbo!

Im just pondering that there might be a headphone standard that could work if the listeners are all listening on headphones?

If both the producers and the listeners were using the system you linked, or VSX, then I think we would have that “as heard by the artist” link that people are chasing here.

Well, Harman Headphone Target is probably best if you're restricted to using headphones during music creation, but it's not ideal for the reasons I mentioned already. I think the HRTF and coupling problems of headphones make it beyond the boundaries of what's acceptable for a standard used in music creation. That doesn't mean I think the Harman Headphone Curve is rubbish, in fact I use it on all my headphones and I think it works well, but it just can't be the same accuracy as Anechoic Flat Speakers. In terms of standards for audio production, then Anechoic Flat Speakers and the associated conditions I mentioned would be the standard. The hard part is I don't understand the mechanism by which the standard can be created/adopted/disseminated/controlled - I don't know which body is gonna do that.

 

[Robbo99999]

Currently, It seems to me that you are fighting tooth and nail not to tell us what the standard would include.

Either there’s a concept or not. Which is it?

@amirm , I see it as 2 problems, of which I think one is already almost solved:

1. What is the standard going to be? To me the answer is quite clear which I outlined in the following post, do you agree with that as a sensible target (albeit ranges of acceptability would have to be determined)? https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...yamaha-ns-10m-clone-review.46954/post-1686968
2. Implementation. Who creates the standard/which body/who disseminates it into the recording industry/which body deals with the accreditation of those standards in the recording industry? I don't know the answers to these questions, does anybody, is there an existing body that can take this on board and make it start to happen through the recording industry? If there isn't, then how is it gonna start to be implemented, does a new body need to be set up, who can do that?

What do you think to what I've outlined here @amirm ?

(I don't really see the need for the circular arguments that are happening in this thread (it's not on you), surely the discussion should just be about those two points above.)

 

[Robbo99999]

You might find this interesting.

SoundID SR for Headphones: A new Headphone Tuning Standard - Sonarworks Blog

This White Paper covers data-based insights and a proposal for the new headphone calibration standard and its implications for the industry

www.sonarworks.com

BTW, your assumption (bolded above) is very far off the mark. Every engineer I know uses headphones, either in conjunction with speakers or alone. There are a number of top tier engineers now mixing and mastering for the major labels solely on headphones, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not they can afford speakers.

I never said that headphones should never be used at all in the music creation process, I think I may have mentioned already that at least you'd want to check out your mix on some headphones to praps check the imaging side of things comes across ok as that is probably the main difference between headphones & speakers, (as they're strapped directly to your ears, so no ideal equilateral triangle with listening position). I also mentioned they could be useful for checking out details in bass areas as it's harder to buy & setup speaker setups that can resolve this area with the same fidelity & extension. What I don't think they can be used for is solely using headphones to create your music, I don't think that's very sensible, for the reasons I've outlined countless times in this thread.

I've bookmarked your link from Sonarworks so I'll read it later in more detail, but fact remains is that headphones are too unpredictable between listeners due to anatomy differences in order for them to be considered useful to be used as a standard in music production.