Keith_W
Major Contributor
Acoustics Insider is a pro audio channel that is usually science based. They decided to interview ... Johnny Darko. They got their membership base to put together some questions which were given to Darko. IMO the questions were really very good. Darko's answers ... not so much.
Since Darko failed so badly, I thought I would throw the questions open to ASR members. But first, here is the video (don't worry, the clicks go to Acoustics Insider and not Darko). I have typed the questions and paraphrased Darko's replies to keep it brief - hopefully I have preserved the meaning.
6:09: "What is one thing mixing engineers should know about audiophiles, and what is one thing audiophiles should know about mixing engineers?"
Darko: Not all audiophiles are the same. Audiophiles can be pretty painful, of a certain demographic. My passion for audio gear was started by my passion for music. Other audiophiles are obsessed with sound and listen to a limited range of music. Being an audiophile is a broad church. People like me are rare (i.e. "music first audiophiles"). Engineers think audiophiles are gear obsessed, they need to know that people like me exist. They also think of loudspeakers as a tool, and must think that audiophiles are nuts - they overspend on speakers and put them in rooms that sound like a bathroom.
14:50: "What characteristics of engineering that goes into a speaker that most affects the sound stage, and what do you look for in a speaker to get excellent imaging?"
Darko: Lower distortion and better time alignment. Coaxial speakers tend to give better imaging and soundstage. I don't understand why.
Comment: No, Darko. Imaging/soundstage is a function of ITD, ILD, and a few others, so it is the interaction of the speaker and the room that produces the soundstage. If we focus on the speaker only, it is its directivity characteristics, smoothness of off-axis response, and how close to a point source ideal we get. Also you could have said something about the importance of reflections which you are actively trying to kill with your acoustic treatment.
16:40: "As you appreciate the importance of both objective measurements and subjective impressions, how accurately do you think we can predict the sound of a loudspeaker based on measurements?"
Darko: I am fascinated by measurements. I read Stereophile's section on measurements and read how Atkinson correlates measurements to his subjective impression. There is no 100% objective analysis of a loudspeaker because you have to interpret the results, and that is by definition a subjective process. I don't buy into this dichotomy of subjectivity vs. objectivity. I don't think there is a 1:1 mapping of "if we measure this we hear this". It's not a solved problem. It can help speaker engineers understand if they've made a mistake, but every speaker engineer i've spoken to says that we measure up to a point then we sit down and listen.
Comment: how well you can predict the sound of a loudspeaker based on measurements depends on (1) the quality of the measurement and (2) how much experience you have with correlating measurements to sound quality. I am fairly confident that if I see x I will hear y, but only for the measurements I know I can correlate. Speaking for myself alone, there are still some subjective aspects to sound which I haven't correlated to measurements, and some measurements that I don't understand how they correlate to sound. This is a function of my own inexperience. For example, if someone on ASR says "a 10ms difference in subwoofer time alignment is enough to kill tight bass", I wouldn't know until I hear it myself.
19:00: "Do you feel there are aspects of a subjective experience that are not portrayed in measurements?"
Darko: Imaging. You could see a low distortion figure and think that will image well but that's not a guarantee. For example, I reviewed two speakers, one went down to 54Hz, the other to 64Hz, but the 64Hz speaker sounded like it had more bass. It's a loose guide for consumers, it's a shortcut. Life is more nuanced than measurements.
Comment: It's more likely that he doesn't understand why the 64Hz speaker sounded like it had more bass. All sorts of reasons abound, e.g. the missing fundamental effect, Darko may not actually know what low bass sounds like (lots of people who think they know what bass sounds like actually don't, most often they are mistaking midbass for low bass).
21:47: "Some music sounds good on most speakers, but other music will sound good on some speakers but terrible on others. Which audio recording / processing qualities ensure good sound on most speakers?"
Darko: Everything comes down to the recording and mastering quality. There is a whole genre of "audiophile music", artists nobody has ever heard of. These sell well because gear obsessed audiophiles are into the sound of those recordings. I'm not. I don't know what goes into it. But dynamic range compression definitely affects quality. It is important to maintain the dynamic range.
31:32: "At what level of treatment are we able to hear real differences in speakers? For example, do we need a certain RT60 value? What do we aim for?"
Darko: I didn't do it in an incremental way. I went from a room with 0.7-0.8 milliseconds (sic) to have flat, roughly 0.3. I don't know what the tipping point is. I'm guessing the tipping point may be 400-500ms? It's not only the value, but the stability of the value, it can't be 0.5, 0.3, 0.5, 0.3. It needs to be flat across the board.
Interviewer interjects: the more you treat the room and the closer you get to an anechoic chamber, the more of the speakers you will hear.
Darko: People in your world are different. You need to have a treated room. Audiophiles won't do it because they have to balance home life with sound.
Comment: Well, at least he measured and he's in the right ballpark with his recommended values. I would say look up the DIN 18041 standard because the target is different depending on the size of your room and your intention.
I skipped some of the Q&A because they were a bit boring.
Since Darko failed so badly, I thought I would throw the questions open to ASR members. But first, here is the video (don't worry, the clicks go to Acoustics Insider and not Darko). I have typed the questions and paraphrased Darko's replies to keep it brief - hopefully I have preserved the meaning.
6:09: "What is one thing mixing engineers should know about audiophiles, and what is one thing audiophiles should know about mixing engineers?"
Darko: Not all audiophiles are the same. Audiophiles can be pretty painful, of a certain demographic. My passion for audio gear was started by my passion for music. Other audiophiles are obsessed with sound and listen to a limited range of music. Being an audiophile is a broad church. People like me are rare (i.e. "music first audiophiles"). Engineers think audiophiles are gear obsessed, they need to know that people like me exist. They also think of loudspeakers as a tool, and must think that audiophiles are nuts - they overspend on speakers and put them in rooms that sound like a bathroom.
14:50: "What characteristics of engineering that goes into a speaker that most affects the sound stage, and what do you look for in a speaker to get excellent imaging?"
Darko: Lower distortion and better time alignment. Coaxial speakers tend to give better imaging and soundstage. I don't understand why.
Comment: No, Darko. Imaging/soundstage is a function of ITD, ILD, and a few others, so it is the interaction of the speaker and the room that produces the soundstage. If we focus on the speaker only, it is its directivity characteristics, smoothness of off-axis response, and how close to a point source ideal we get. Also you could have said something about the importance of reflections which you are actively trying to kill with your acoustic treatment.
16:40: "As you appreciate the importance of both objective measurements and subjective impressions, how accurately do you think we can predict the sound of a loudspeaker based on measurements?"
Darko: I am fascinated by measurements. I read Stereophile's section on measurements and read how Atkinson correlates measurements to his subjective impression. There is no 100% objective analysis of a loudspeaker because you have to interpret the results, and that is by definition a subjective process. I don't buy into this dichotomy of subjectivity vs. objectivity. I don't think there is a 1:1 mapping of "if we measure this we hear this". It's not a solved problem. It can help speaker engineers understand if they've made a mistake, but every speaker engineer i've spoken to says that we measure up to a point then we sit down and listen.
Comment: how well you can predict the sound of a loudspeaker based on measurements depends on (1) the quality of the measurement and (2) how much experience you have with correlating measurements to sound quality. I am fairly confident that if I see x I will hear y, but only for the measurements I know I can correlate. Speaking for myself alone, there are still some subjective aspects to sound which I haven't correlated to measurements, and some measurements that I don't understand how they correlate to sound. This is a function of my own inexperience. For example, if someone on ASR says "a 10ms difference in subwoofer time alignment is enough to kill tight bass", I wouldn't know until I hear it myself.
19:00: "Do you feel there are aspects of a subjective experience that are not portrayed in measurements?"
Darko: Imaging. You could see a low distortion figure and think that will image well but that's not a guarantee. For example, I reviewed two speakers, one went down to 54Hz, the other to 64Hz, but the 64Hz speaker sounded like it had more bass. It's a loose guide for consumers, it's a shortcut. Life is more nuanced than measurements.
Comment: It's more likely that he doesn't understand why the 64Hz speaker sounded like it had more bass. All sorts of reasons abound, e.g. the missing fundamental effect, Darko may not actually know what low bass sounds like (lots of people who think they know what bass sounds like actually don't, most often they are mistaking midbass for low bass).
21:47: "Some music sounds good on most speakers, but other music will sound good on some speakers but terrible on others. Which audio recording / processing qualities ensure good sound on most speakers?"
Darko: Everything comes down to the recording and mastering quality. There is a whole genre of "audiophile music", artists nobody has ever heard of. These sell well because gear obsessed audiophiles are into the sound of those recordings. I'm not. I don't know what goes into it. But dynamic range compression definitely affects quality. It is important to maintain the dynamic range.
31:32: "At what level of treatment are we able to hear real differences in speakers? For example, do we need a certain RT60 value? What do we aim for?"
Darko: I didn't do it in an incremental way. I went from a room with 0.7-0.8 milliseconds (sic) to have flat, roughly 0.3. I don't know what the tipping point is. I'm guessing the tipping point may be 400-500ms? It's not only the value, but the stability of the value, it can't be 0.5, 0.3, 0.5, 0.3. It needs to be flat across the board.
Interviewer interjects: the more you treat the room and the closer you get to an anechoic chamber, the more of the speakers you will hear.
Darko: People in your world are different. You need to have a treated room. Audiophiles won't do it because they have to balance home life with sound.
Comment: Well, at least he measured and he's in the right ballpark with his recommended values. I would say look up the DIN 18041 standard because the target is different depending on the size of your room and your intention.
I skipped some of the Q&A because they were a bit boring.
