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Dr. Toole's 4th Edition Book is Coming! (Discount)
- Thread starter amirm
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Shout-out to Routledge/Taylor & Francis.
My copy of the 4th edition of The Book did not arrive; what I received was a torn mailing envelope with the packing slip still inside. Presumably it was ripped open by either postal service machinery or postal service personnel.
Anyway Customer Service at Routledge/Taylor & Francis was very helpful, and they are shipping me a replacement.
My copy of the 4th edition of The Book did not arrive; what I received was a torn mailing envelope with the packing slip still inside. Presumably it was ripped open by either postal service machinery or postal service personnel.
Anyway Customer Service at Routledge/Taylor & Francis was very helpful, and they are shipping me a replacement.
thewas
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Michael had access to the warehouse?
Before someone complains, above is a fake AI generated image ;-)
DaveBoswell
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Floyd Toole is live right now at Toronto AES. Check it out.
PristineSound
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Came in just a couple of hours ago. Looked through the TOC, despite the fact the book is titled 4th ed, and If shouldn't have expected huge difference from 3rd ed, but I somehow did.
I think I will have to shelf this for a little bit and get to it later after other books that's been waiting on the queue. But still good to have this book in waiting.
I think I will have to shelf this for a little bit and get to it later after other books that's been waiting on the queue. But still good to have this book in waiting.
nathan
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I've had all three editions (ie, #1, #2/3, and "#4" which is really the third since 2&3 were the same book but just from different publishers) and I am surprised how very different the 4th is. So far it feels like a complete re-write. Same science at the core (with updates and more depth, especially from the guest authors) of course. I think the new tone and approach is going to be a bit more accessible for many folks, without watering down any of the science.
PristineSound
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Thank you, great feedback, perhaps it can skip the queue!
Floyd Toole
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Hello everybody, I just returned from giving a lecture to the Toronto section of the AES, as noted above. It was great to meet some old friends and to introduce some new audio enthusiasts to the science of audio.
The 4th edition is more than a book. It has a website - not yet accessible, but should be soon. I have already complained to the publisher.
Books are always limited by page counts and old content must be omitted to include anything new, and this time I have two extra authors. We planned in advance to have a website and the first version of it contains some historical stuff that some greybeards may find interesting, some on LP playback systems that will no doubt upset a few fans of the format. There is an expanded discussion of ITU and EBU recommendations that are in bad need of updating.
Perhaps the most important website content are some slide shows that summarize some book content, including some new material. Educators may find them useful, but I think almost anyone should scan them for an overview of specific topics. The last slide show is about "translation" and it shows spinoramas on a wide selection of pro monitors and different kinds of consumer playback devices. There are some surprises, I think. The audio world has changed for the better - dramatically.
What is now need is for people to pay more attention to trustworthy measurements and less to "opinions" formed under biased circumstances. But human nature is powerful. I focus a bit on this in my Toronto lecture, which you might find interesting. I apologize for my voice giving out near the end - age is showing . . .
I have ideas for more, and we have a window of several weeks after which we can have some revisions and new material uploaded, so stay tuned.
Cheers,
The 4th edition is more than a book. It has a website - not yet accessible, but should be soon. I have already complained to the publisher.
Books are always limited by page counts and old content must be omitted to include anything new, and this time I have two extra authors. We planned in advance to have a website and the first version of it contains some historical stuff that some greybeards may find interesting, some on LP playback systems that will no doubt upset a few fans of the format. There is an expanded discussion of ITU and EBU recommendations that are in bad need of updating.
Perhaps the most important website content are some slide shows that summarize some book content, including some new material. Educators may find them useful, but I think almost anyone should scan them for an overview of specific topics. The last slide show is about "translation" and it shows spinoramas on a wide selection of pro monitors and different kinds of consumer playback devices. There are some surprises, I think. The audio world has changed for the better - dramatically.
What is now need is for people to pay more attention to trustworthy measurements and less to "opinions" formed under biased circumstances. But human nature is powerful. I focus a bit on this in my Toronto lecture, which you might find interesting. I apologize for my voice giving out near the end - age is showing . . .
Cheers,
@Floyd Toole. I am a objective electronic technician with lots of mechatronics service experience and ~54K units of repair under my belt reformed after being a subjective technically illiterate home audio department sales guy for ~9 years in the 80s and early 90s. I was a very involved, very strong supporter and very avid seller of KEF and ENERGY speakers of the era. I met with and had drinks/dinner with some of the best speaker designers/engineers because I was a very loyal super level supporter speaker sales person that had very strong support direct from speaker brand head offices that saw me as a top level speaker seller in Canada. I won the Canada national sales contests every year for top speaker brand names. I really enjoyed selling quality speakers. I saw quality speakers as the total solution for audio gear customers' needs. I never deviated from my intention to not waste the customers' money on diversionary rubbish hardware that made no demonstrably effective improvements in their home audio gear's sound quality. After the home audio gear sales years when I became a electronic technician I was granted service contracts from these same speaker companies and I happily provided after sales speaker service and Western Canada sales and support of their speaker drivers too. The home audio speaker industry has been a very strong influence in my life over the decades. I am not really into speakers calibrated with USB microphones and such anymore or really ever for that matter, I never commented about this stuff with you, I read and follow along on the threads about it and it's so nice seeing a person like yourself here @ ASR contributing to the forum, being a upstanding famous great contributor to audio gear speaker science and a strong supporter of the audio gear industry. So thanks for hanging loose with us and for being you Dr Toole!
Floyd Toole
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Those of you who listen to my lecture will appreciate that one of the greatest frustrations has been that most of the key information was known 39 years ago.
Since then we have been "polishing the apple" and spreading the word. It is still an uphill battle.
Since then we have been "polishing the apple" and spreading the word. It is still an uphill battle.
nathan
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I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture (and am grateful the event organizers shared is via YouTube, which is not as common a practice as I would like).
I found the comments on the ITU and EBU standards for reflection decay time (or "RT60") interesting. The one standard that CEDIA points to is based on an ITU standard -- but it doesn't seem to suffer from the "only treat the room to tame things above 1k" problem that you discuss. Is the CEDIA "standard" more what you would like to see?
Edit: I see that you discuss this topic in the new edition and reference rp22 so I think I know which chapter I am reading next....though after reading that chapter, I don't see the criticism that you mentioned in your lecture (about an ITU standard that focused on the RT above 1k and ignored stuff below that) so maybe I misunderstood that point in the lecture.
I will say that Dolby has specified what the RT should look like in a control room, right down to variations by octave, in their Design Tool (not the written specification but the EXCEL sheet they offer for professionals to design the studio rooms). (https://www.avsforum.com/threads/th...ainment-dolby-audio-room-design-tool.3245554/) Whether this is not a "requirement" as your book indicates on page 344 I cannot say for sure, but it is their "recommendation." I have copied it here for convenience.
For the most part, as one would expect, it is similar to the targets on page 343:
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In his talk, I loved the story of how Mr. Toole got Consumer Reports magazine to stop rating audio gear. Plus, the statistics refresher (flip the list vs. scramble the list) was concise and clear.
BTW, curently on page 45, "2.5 A View of the Loudspeaker Industry in the 1980s." Wonderfully explained. Thanks Mr. Toole.
BTW, curently on page 45, "2.5 A View of the Loudspeaker Industry in the 1980s." Wonderfully explained. Thanks Mr. Toole.
I'm really enjoying the latest edition so far. I started reading in Chapter 14, as low-frequency stuff is where my interest lies. The material that carries over from Chapter 8 of the 3rd edition is of course as good as it ever was. Todd's new material in Chapter 14 of the 4th edition is great stuff.
I seem to recall a video interview of Todd, where he talks about explaining the modal expansion in terms of separate position- and frequency-dependent components. He was sort of wondering to himself about whether this would be effective from the perspective of readers. I can say that from the perspective of an engineering type, it's quite successful. It got me to think about how the math relates to the physical situation in ways I hadn't before. The diagram of Figure 14.6 is a great illustration of coupling factors, both into a mode from the sub, and out of a mode to the listener. If lay people can understand this concept, it will go a long way toward teaching them how to solve sub and listener location problems. Overall, I am very pleased with the new chapter and am looking forward to reading the rest of the book.
The only beef I have is with production aspects of the paperback version of the book. It's about a half-inch narrower than the 3rd edition, and they've apparently adjusted for that by moving the right margin of the left-side pages and the left margin of the right-side pages closer to the binding. To read this text on my copy requires manhandling the binding in such a way that I worry about damaging the book. This goes against a deep-seated aversion to abusing a book.
I seem to recall a video interview of Todd, where he talks about explaining the modal expansion in terms of separate position- and frequency-dependent components. He was sort of wondering to himself about whether this would be effective from the perspective of readers. I can say that from the perspective of an engineering type, it's quite successful. It got me to think about how the math relates to the physical situation in ways I hadn't before. The diagram of Figure 14.6 is a great illustration of coupling factors, both into a mode from the sub, and out of a mode to the listener. If lay people can understand this concept, it will go a long way toward teaching them how to solve sub and listener location problems. Overall, I am very pleased with the new chapter and am looking forward to reading the rest of the book.
The only beef I have is with production aspects of the paperback version of the book. It's about a half-inch narrower than the 3rd edition, and they've apparently adjusted for that by moving the right margin of the left-side pages and the left margin of the right-side pages closer to the binding. To read this text on my copy requires manhandling the binding in such a way that I worry about damaging the book. This goes against a deep-seated aversion to abusing a book.
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Floyd Toole
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There is a detailed analysis of ITU and EBU recommendations in the Chapter 3 website content , whenever it is activated - needed more space. The RT recommendations were clearly based on these documents. The CEDIA "optimum area" looks suspiciously as if it was designed by someone selling low-frequency absorbers. In my humble opinion it is overkill. The precision required for RT performance in small dead rooms (not performance spaces) is not supported by any psychoacoustic research I am aware of. RT is the oldest metric of room acoustics, it is easy to do, so people do it, get paid for it, and doing it precisely makes it seem fundamentally important. Early reflections are much more audibly important, but harder to measure. Broadband ETCs are widely used, and give the wrong answer: pp 185-86.
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