Where are the affordable competitors of trinnov

[alaios]

So today I had the luxury to have a sound engineer to come at my place. We did three tests:
1. Use the trinnov software with their 3d microphone
2. Use the minidsp with their calibrated microphone
3. Listen to my system as it was.

1. I was blown with the trinnov room correction. This things has improved the soundstage clearly. I was able to position for first time the instruments and the singers. Just wow

2. Minidsp did "some improvements" but it does not get even close to trinnov corrections. I could hear the difference from 3. (the system as it was) but I would say that these were not big. Soundstage improved only marginally with my default system.

I really want to have room correction that is so advanced as trinnov. At the same time the price is really really high . I wonder why there are no competitors using those lovely 3d microphones at cheaper prices. What is China doing ?

Regards,
Alex

 

[GXAlan]

I wonder why there are no competitors using those lovely 3d microphones at cheaper prices. What is China doing ?

Patents. Software algorithms.

US8014532B2 - Method and system for processing a sound field representation - Google Patents

A method of processing a sound field representation which can be used to provide a representation which has been modified by at least spatial processing. The method includes: the establishment of an initial representation of the sound field and the establishment of a representation which has...

patents.google.com

At least one of the patents ends 2026.

 

[Blumlein 88]

miniDSP makes an Ambi-mike for ambisonics that could be used like that I think if the software took advantage of it.

ambiMIK-1

Introducing ambiMIK-1, an affordable First Order Ambisonic (FOA) microphone with embedded preamp, Analog to Digital converters (ADC) and USB processor. This compact solution enables high sample rates (up to 32bit/192kHz) in a portable package. With applications ranging from VR/AR & music...

www.minidsp.com

I don't know exactly what Trinnov is doing. It is a variation on tetrahedron miking like the various Soundfield or ambisonic mikes. I recall somewhere J_J has decried the use of measurement microphones because they measure pressure and not velocity. You need both for some purposes and I suppose Trinnov is doing something with that. A ribbon is an example of a velocity microphone.

 

[Sokel]

I don't think it would be easy doing it for cheap.
It's not the hardware, it's the people developing the whole thing that have to be payed decently as it's not only the pure developing software but the highly specialized knowledge of doing decent filters, algos, and beyond that.

I think the way detecting the speakers, reflections, etc is genius in the simplicity of the idea (triangulating as we do for thousands of years) but complex at the same time to bring it home to users with a simple device as this mic.

I think all the juice is about the way of measuring, all pros get bitter smiles when they hear about single mic measurements for serious applications.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I don't think it would be easy doing it for cheap.
It's not the hardware, it's the people developing the whole thing that have to be payed decently as it's not only the pure developing software but the highly specialized knowledge of doing decent filters, algos, and beyond that.

I think the way detecting the speakers, reflections, etc is genius in the simplicity of the idea (triangulating as we do for thousands of years) but complex at the same time to bring it home to users with a simple device as this mic.

I think all the juice is about the way of measuring, all pros get bitter smiles when they hear about single mic measurements for serious applications.

I agree. I think Trinnov says they have 50 patents. Take what a Klippel for speaker measurement does. I had such an idea decades ago. I'm sure many did. Actually doing the work to turn it into reality is why Klippel gets paid the big bucks. What Trinnov is doing or claiming is almost like a Klippel measurement taking into account the speakers, where they are and how they perform along with reflections they put out into the room. Again, a simple idea that is obviously possible and could be useful. But who has done the work and made the functional product.

Maybe some open source project working with miniDSP could do something similar. I don't see it as very likely.

 

[GXAlan]

Once patents expire, I could companies like Dirac or Audyssey* bringing us some of the tech. On the other hand, when patents run out, the know-how to implement the patents can still be tricky and there’s a chance Trinnov might license it in the sub $10K range like they did with the original Sherwood 15 years ago.

Sherwood Newcastle R-972 7.1 A/V Receiver with Trinnov Room Optimizer Technology - HomeTheaterHifi.com

The Sherwood Newcastle R-972 A/V Receiver is the latest high-end receiver in the Sherwood product lineup. The Newcastle brand is Sherwood’s premier product line. The R-972 A/V receiver boasts some impressive features including 7 channels of amplification at 100 watts per channel, 4 HDMI 1.3...

hometheaterhifi.com

Audyssey still exists as a company but not with the founding team. They did MultEQ-X on their own but I thought Sound United has some of the Audyssey patents assigned to them. Not sure how much technical know how for algorithms still exists.

Even then, the Trinnov mic is 4 mics calibrated to 0.5 dB. The UMIK-2 calibrated to 1 dB would be $800 if you needed 4 of them.

 

[kemmler3D]

I had such an idea decades ago. I'm sure many did. Actually doing the work to turn it into reality is why Klippel gets paid the big bucks.

Yep...

If it were that easy, someone would have built and released a patent-infringing free version already. There is a lot of cleverness and university-level math involved in something like this, a bit beyond straightforward room correction EQ.

 

[Keith_W]

I would be more interested in what processing Trinnov did to improve your soundstage. I don't really like the whole idea of "measurement goes into a black box ... result comes out and it sounds better". What are they improving, exactly? From my own experience, DSP can certainly improve the soundstage. I know what I have done to improve it since all my corrections are manual, but I want to know what Trinnov is doing.

 

[GXAlan]

What are they improving, exactly?

AES Convention Papers Forum » A New Comprehensive Approach of Surround Sound Recording

The AES Forum is where our members get to interact with each other in between conferences and section meetings.

secure.aes.org

AES Convention Papers Forum » Reproducing Multichannel Sound on any Speaker Layout

The AES Forum is where our members get to interact with each other in between conferences and section meetings.

secure.aes.org

US8014532B2 - Method and system for processing a sound field representation - Google Patents

A method of processing a sound field representation which can be used to provide a representation which has been modified by at least spatial processing. The method includes: the establishment of an initial representation of the sound field and the establishment of a representation which has...

patents.google.com

Step 1: establishment of an initial representation of the sound field in the form of a set of coefficients representative of that field in time and in the three spatial dimensions

Step 2: establishing a set of directivity functions which is representative of the processing operation, in the form of a set of coefficients corresponding to the decomposition of those functions on a basis of spherical harmonics

Step 3: applying the filtering combinations so defined to the coefficients of the initial representation, in order to obtain the modified representation.

What is different is that Trinnov does a mini-Klippel NFS style presentation with the quad microphones to generate a soundfield based upon estimated directivity from the MLS sequence. Then, it does math to convert from one soundfield to the next.

In contrast, all other systems with monaural mics are just looking at frequency response and group delay/phase.

The best example.

If I have Dirac, I can put my speakers anywhere on a 10 fr radius from where I am measuring and it’s all the same. So proper Dolby layout and LCR standing side by side are treated identically.

With Trinnov, it knows where each speaker is and it would treat the scenarios differently. That lets it remap position. Second, because it is capturing 4 points in 3D space, knowing the difference in response lets them analyze a bit of how the sound travels in 3D space.

 

[Keith_W]

Thank you so much for posting those papers! Now i'll go read them and see if I can make sense of what they are doing. Thank you also for your summary, it is starting to look as if it's not possible to reverse engineer what Trinnov is doing without using MATLab and a Ph.D in signal processing.

 

[holdingpants01]

If your system have problems with basic stuff like placement of the instruments then I would look into fundamentals first. That is better placement, sub 500Hz EQ, properly designed and placed room treatment, better speakers (in this order). Throwing extremely heavy processing on a flawed system should be absolutely the last resort. From my experience the better the system, the less trinnov do, the better the result. Trinnov is so expensive that even better speakers are usually the affordable option

 

[Purité Audio]

I didn’t find Trinnov offered that much of an advantage in terms of domestic audio, they were initially designed to allow to take his ‘acoustic’ to an unfamiliar space and re-create it.
Perhaps more of an advantage to ‘traditional’ loudspeaker designs.
Keith

 

[alaios]

Patents. Software algorithms.

US8014532B2 - Method and system for processing a sound field representation - Google Patents

A method of processing a sound field representation which can be used to provide a representation which has been modified by at least spatial processing. The method includes: the establishment of an initial representation of the sound field and the establishment of a representation which has...

patents.google.com

At least one of the patents ends 2026.

the 2026 sounds as a very positive message

 

[alaios]

I don't think it would be easy doing it for cheap.
It's not the hardware, it's the people developing the whole thing that have to be payed decently as it's not only the pure developing software but the highly specialized knowledge of doing decent filters, algos, and beyond that.

I think the way detecting the speakers, reflections, etc is genius in the simplicity of the idea (triangulating as we do for thousands of years) but complex at the same time to bring it home to users with a simple device as this mic.

I think all the juice is about the way of measuring, all pros get bitter smiles when they hear about single mic measurements for serious applications.

I am not saying doing it for cheap but perhaps cheaper. Typically when you have a very succesful company competition "comes" hires 1-2 people from that succesful company and tries to do the same type of product. In all industries is like that

 

[alaios]

I would be more interested in what processing Trinnov did to improve your soundstage. I don't really like the whole idea of "measurement goes into a black box ... result comes out and it sounds better". What are they improving, exactly? From my own experience, DSP can certainly improve the soundstage. I know what I have done to improve it since all my corrections are manual, but I want to know what Trinnov is doing.

I do not know the details but I think the fix the room, so the equivalent of moving the "wall". In home cinemas they would also use, for example a subwoofer, to play in a way that negates some of the problems that are being generated from the other subs.

 

[alaios]

If your system have problems with basic stuff like placement of the instruments then I would look into fundamentals first. That is better placement, sub 500Hz EQ, properly designed and placed room treatment, better speakers (in this order). Throwing extremely heavy processing on a flawed system should be absolutely the last resort. From my experience the better the system, the less trinnov do, the better the result. Trinnov is so expensive that even better speakers are usually the affordable option

Yes it has. But that is way trinnov is needed. I can not move my speakers. I just cant and it was amazing to see the sound stage being hugely improved. Seeing the singers separate clearly in the stage. It was amazing.
Minidsp fixed the frequency response indeed but the staging was only marginally improved

 

[Sokel]

I am not saying doing it for cheap but perhaps cheaper. Typically when you have a very succesful company competition "comes" hires 1-2 people from that succesful company and tries to do the same type of product. In all industries is like that

When a company presents such power it usually comes with strong NDA's, patents, etc.
Even if one could get such a person it could be unusable.

Eventually some competition will emerge, for sure. But given the overall poor software support across the industry I'm not optimistic.
Companies probably don't want to pay the worth of the highly specialized people to run and maintain the chain.

 

[Puddingbuks]

I always wonder how they pick the right price for a product.

Trinnov is now out of reach for many because of the price. But per unit they get a lot of income.

How many units would they sell if a trinnov “box” + 3D mic would cost 1.500 euro/dollar?

Will the larger sales numbers result in more profit?

 

[Count Arthur]

There's a comparison of various systems here:

I have an ARC 4 studio and I'm very pleased with the results, there's a whole thread about it here:

The ultimate low cost solution for room correction?

Hello to all of you from ASR, I've been following you for about three years and this is my first post...I'm using Google translator, so excuse my English... I wanted to let you know that IK Multimedia has just introduced a new dedicated product to environmental correction, called: "ARC STUDIO"...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[MarkS]

it was amazing to see the sound stage being hugely improved. Seeing the singers separate clearly in the stage.

I'm curious as to how often you attend live performances of unamplified music (singing especially).