Interesting stuff going on in recording...

[Redacted]

You read a lot on ASR about room correction (Dirac etc), DSPs, frequency/phase/time shifting, multi channel audio, active crossovers.....

In the second half of Fricker's video, he goes into a DAW plugin that help him to "better" record things like drum kits. It's all about analysing multiple streams at once and being able, through the plugin, to adjust sounds across all the channels. I know he's really running a product endorsement, but....

I'm wondering if there is anything to learned he that could be applied to room correction, crossover and the like, in the so-called HiFi world? There are clever people working with DSP in many fields- I assume they do cross pollinate!

And if orchestral/classical recordings might benefit (all using multiple mics) ? I've heard so many terrible classical recordings, that they may want to see what the rest of the recording industry is doing today.

Any interest? I know ASR's first reaction is to diss or mock things, but I thought it was interesting and could lead to new possibilities...

 

[Philbo King]

He's certainly not wrong, and his brief history of recording is spot on. I enjoy his rants when he's not screaming.

I still prefer untweaked audio recorded by a good drummer. The 'perfection' thing kills the feeling for me. Any machine can do perfect...

I'm not sure how it could be helpful for surround playback though.

 

[Redacted]

I'm just thinking there is some clever stuff in the tool that a smart DSP guy could apply to stereo systems maybe letting you tweak in real-time- but if I was that guy, I would not be babbling on ASR, I'd be buying a boat.

There was something in the idea of analysing all the mic'd channels at once, and applying changes as needed to all channels to get the result that made me curious.

I had in my mind some stuff as simple as passive crossovers and basic stereo, like in most speakers. Post XO, you have two or three channels to each speaker driver, and what comes out of each driver, with respect to the other drivers is inevitably subject to phase and temporal anomalies. You could record the input to each physical driver, say from an IR signal, to get a baseline set up to figure out phase and time alignment like Fricker's plugin was doing. If you could then, process those signals to the speakers to adjust for the 'faults' that get send out to the listener that may be interesting if you could adjust the stereo source files to include some pre-compensation - bottom line getting the benefits of active XO and individual driver physical placement for time correction without adding hardware to your stereo. And maybe something like that for multi-channel speakers.

I obviously haven't thought any of this through, and maybe all of this is already fully covered by existing tools, but there is fun (for me) in looking at ideas that occur in field and musing if there are applicable in another. If not, no big deal, it's the thought exercise that is nice, and now I am retired I slightly miss the "whiteboarding" that I did with my very hot dev team!

 

[Apesbrain]

I know ASR's first reaction is to diss or mock things...

I think it's more accurate to say that ASR's first reaction is to reject claims regarding sound quality that are not supported by objective evidence.

 

[staticV3]

I'm wondering if there is anything to learned he that could be applied to room correction, crossover and the like, in the so-called HiFi world? There are clever people working with DSP in many fields- I assume they do cross pollinate!

The only relevant part for media playback is time aligning your speakers, and that was figured out decades ago.

From what I can tell, there's nothing useful here for consumers.

 

[Redacted]

"I think it's more accurate to say that ASR's first reaction is to reject claims regarding sound quality that are not supported by objective evidence."
Sure, but I'm not making a claim, just blue-skying....

 

[Redacted]

The only relevant part for media playback is time aligning your speakers, and that was figured out decades ago.

From what I can tell, there's nothing useful here for consumers.

OK, I'm just having fun, my R&D and patent days are gone, but what mechanism is there that potentially lets us improve phase and time alignment of speakers with no changes or additions to existing hardware where you have no DSPs in your live setup, and passively crossed over speakers?

 

[staticV3]

what mechanism is there that potentially lets us improve phase and time alignment of speakers with no changes or additions to existing hardware where you have no DSPs in your live setup, and passively crossed over speakers?

the heck is this question?

I guess you can change the speaker position to improve alignment and switch the wires around for phase? How is this relevant?

 

[MaxwellsEq]

You read a lot on ASR about room correction (Dirac etc), DSPs, frequency/phase/time shifting, multi channel audio, active crossovers.....

In the second half of Fricker's video, he goes into a DAW plugin that help him to "better" record things like drum kits. It's all about analysing multiple streams at once and being able, through the plugin, to adjust sounds across all the channels. I know he's really running a product endorsement, but....

I'm wondering if there is anything to learned he that could be applied to room correction, crossover and the like, in the so-called HiFi world? There are clever people working with DSP in many fields- I assume they do cross pollinate!

And if orchestral/classical recordings might benefit (all using multiple mics) ? I've heard so many terrible classical recordings, that they may want to see what the rest of the recording industry is doing today.

Any interest? I know ASR's first reaction is to diss or mock things, but I thought it was interesting and could lead to new possibilities...
]

Ex studio electronic engineer here.

In the studio you have total control across all the individual sounds - either microphone-ed or direct injected. You can EQ or reverb every sound individually. What's more, you don't need a computer or AI. I worked with fully analogue consoles and fully analogue multi-track tape machines. Even in the 60s and 70s, per-channel EQ and (to a lesser extent) reverb were available and used. The art of the sound engineer and producer was always to find "spaces" in the sound field to drop all the sounds in. The choices are infinite. Skilled mixers do not need plugins.

This is like the mixing stage of a cake - you have a wide choice of ingredients and a multiple choices of ratios and baking time

Once it's mixed down to a master, it's baked in. Like a cake. You can't reverse a cake-baking exercise. All your flexibility and choice are gone. Want more flour and less sugar? Tough!

 

[Redacted]

There was a thread on stepped speakers on here tweeter to bass or mid.

Some people claim passive crossovers cause phase issues around the crossover point.

Sorry if haven't put it in a way you follow.

the heck is this question?

I guess you can change the speaker position to improve alignment and switch the wires around for phase? How is this releva

 

[EERecordist]

Tracking drums is an art. What I have found is that musicians who play an instrument have a lot to contribute to a mix, but they also have weaknesses. That would be the same for a producer. The software in the video is a drum mixing tool which takes an understanding of art to apply.

Slight variation in timing, advancing or retarding, gives music swing and other feelings. Sometimes you find musicians can be too much a slave to recording parts to a click track. The resulting tracks may not be aesthetically pleasing. Even outboard or plugin processors which make a small number of voices to a chorus have time variation settings between the parts to make it sound like a real chorus.

As @MaxwellsEq states, once you get through final mix and mastering for distribution, the mix cannot be undone, other than primitive demixing software. So I think most people would say, start by EQing your room, then improve the acoustics with sound-absorbing or deadening at the frequencies of interest. There are posts on ASR on specialized managing subs in a room.

If you are interested in drums, for fun, look up the socials of Sylvia Massy on tracking drums. She gets good results from a large number of microphones, the tracking room, and even her garden hose microphone. A friend of mine, Ivan de Prume, drummed for White Zombie and others. He had a home business of composing and recording drums. Musicians would send their other tracks and say "I want a drum style like _," he would record some parts, they might go back and forth, then they would get a mechanical release from him, and pay for his drumming.