How Real Do the Drums Sound?
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- čas přidán 16. 07. 2024
- In this CZcams video, Dave Rat talks about a method of achieving realism in reproduced sound rather than just fidelity. He discusses the flaws inherent in conventional sound systems and recommends placing the sound source directly in the listener's acoustic environment for a more realistic experience. He then goes on to demonstrate the difference between different speakers and encourages users to acquire the tools that will achieve their desired outcome. Ultimately, he describes a method to create a sound that is realistic and not just a reproduction.
00:00:00 In this section of the video, the speaker demonstrates how conventional sound systems are designed to recreate an audio environment and bring the listener into that space, but it's not entirely realistic due to the physical world we live in with regards to distance and time it takes for sound to travel. Instead, the speaker lays out a different approach where the instrument, such as a guitar player, is placed directly in the listener's acoustic environment to create a more realistic scenario. The speaker also notes that audiophile sound systems are not based purely in science but are rather an art form wrapped in science, though there is science involved and audiophile speakers can still sound wonderful.
00:05:00 In this section, the speaker recommends purchasing speakers based on personal preferences for aesthetics, practicality, or sound quality. He suggests buying speakers that were used during the recording or mixing process if one wants a sound system that sounds closest to how it was intended. However, he notes that realism in sound reproduction is not the same as identical recreation or fidelity, and there are many factors that contribute to how we perceive sound. Ultimately, one should acquire the tools that will achieve their desired outcome.
00:10:00 In this section, the speaker discusses the importance of realism in reproduced sound, as opposed to just fidelity. Realism means that a sound source will sound real regardless of where you are in relation to it. The concept of a sweet spot, where the sound is best, is a result of flawed sound reproduction systems. The speaker then goes on to demo a homemade four channel, four signal speaker compared to a pair of vintage speakers using higher quality gear. He cautions listeners that the speaker may not be suitable for their specific application, but that it creates a realistic sound of a drummer in the living room.
00:15:00 In this section, a raw drum recording is played back through different speakers, including the real speaker without the sub, the stereo speakers, and the real speaker with the sub. The goal is to determine which sounds more realistic, not necessarily what sounds better or smoother. The platform from which sound is projected is crucial to creating sonic realism, and speakers that radiate all sound in one direction or a single sound in multiple directions are incapable of reproducing realistic sound. The fundamental platform is what determines the sound's realism, and once that is established, the sound can be refined.
00:20:00 In this section of the video, the speaker expresses their fascination with creating and reproducing realistic sound through instruments. They are impressed with how effective and simple it is to make something sound real, even though the CZcams format can only capture a fraction of the full realism. The speaker notes that the difference between formats can be heard, and signs off with a reference to Spicoli McConaughey.
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"Audiophile = art" That is the most succinct description of audiophilia I have heard! Sometimes I dream of an "invisible" speaker, one that disappears in the room and is designed to NOT attract attention...because I don't think you can listen objectively while you are thinking about how pretty your speakers are.
I am not one to judge but I am one to describe what I see and hear.
I have a friend in France that does high end contact speakers in walls of expensive homes and museums. The sound radiated from the walls and the sound is not super hifi but does really cool and you can't tell where it comes from.
It already exists. EPI 100v speakers. Get the version with the Upgraded tweeters (Plastic bezels, rather than fiberboard surrounds).
They are slightly larger than Bookshelf speakers. A 2 way system, with a punchy, accurate, 8 inch woofer.. and a very unique "Inverted" (concave) tweeter.
When I first heard a pair, it was at a shop, owned by a hoarder... and they were placed haphazardly, under piles of magazines. One was laying on its side, and one was vertical. The vertical one, was partially blocked by a sit-down video game. Yet... the soundstage, and sound clarity, was insane. It was as if the band was live, in the building... and the sweet-spot was huge. It extended something like over 20x20ft... before fading off.
The thing is... when I heard how good the music sounded... I NEEDED to know what speakers were playing. I spent a good 15 minutes, trying to search for them.. and I FAILED!!!
These speakers literally VANISH into the room. The sound that comes out, is almost Holographic. Ive never experienced anything like that, in my entire life... and its only more recently that Ive heard such a thing existing in some other speakers.
Anyway... when I finally asked the man what speakers were playing, and WHERE the heck they were... I was shocked.
They were in the most Non-Optimal of positions, and still... the sound was beyond amazing. Furthermore... for the amount of deep bass they were producing... I was shocked that they only used an 8 inch woofer.. AND, I was also shocked at how small the speaker boxes themselves were. Of course, this was also my first experience with not only an Audiophile grade speaker... but with a Sealed Speaker. The bass on sealed speakers, is FAR more musical and realistic... and far less distorted (droning / farty) , compared to Ported speakers.
Despite them being quite small in size... they weighted between 2 and 3x more than my Techniques 12" 3-way fullsize speakers. And when I opened one up, I realized why. The Techs used very low powered woofers, with smaller sized magnets. Each EPI woofer weighed like 3 times as much. They massive magnets, and stronger voice coils. They crapped all over the Techs in every way... and those Techs were put out on the Curb, the next day... where they belonged. I almost cried, at how much better music was, when hearing each song, on the EPIs. In fact, I was hearing things in music, that I had never heard before.. such as lyrics that I never could understand... was now completely crystal clear, and I could easily recognize what the singer was actually singing.
Now, the Techs were able to be pushed much louder than the EPIs... but the thing is... that the music sounded so much better with the EPIs, that it didnt even phase me. They are loud enough, at their max capabilities.
I got my EPI's used, and refoamed from a restorer / reseller. However, there is a man that used to work for EPI / Genesis, that hand makes brand new EPI drivers. humanspeakers dot com. Supposedly, his new drivers, have an even better response. But Ive never tried / heard them... so I cant tell you for sure. Though... he also does restoration of existing drivers, as well.
Great! Thanks for speaking it out loud! 🙏
@@DaveRat Hi Dave, whats the name of the company? I've been looking for high end contact speakers for a while and can't seem to find any of a really high calibre. Would love to check them out.
Absolut Sound based on Biarritz France. Pretty much just him and a partner
Bastien Desvergnes is his name, great surfer too.
I think he has the driver made in Switzerland. I have one of the older ones but last I saw him he had a new version. I have not seen the ones he uses on the open market
this was exactly the idea i was mentioning before about using it to "reamp" instruments in different environments.
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Would love to hear a mix for these "real" speakers. As a drummer I can confidently say that I wouldn't want to have a real drummer in my living room playing 😅
When I have some time I hope to build a few more of these and maybe set up a little band get some people to record drums bass guitar maybe even vocals and have a real band setup. I think that would be fun to mess around with
@@DaveRat yes please. Building speakers, want to get around to building these speakers in a couple months.
@@DaveRat That would be super cool. I think that you can get an 'hyperrealistic sound', in the sense of making the instruments sound real in the space but also better than actual live instruments.
@@DaveRat exactly what I was hoping you where planning to do!
Cool, will work on it. I've got loads of projects and will add that in
I wish Paul from PS audio would watch one of your videos. I can’t help but feel that the entire hi-fi industry is going to become stagnant if we don’t wake up and pay attention to the basic principles that you are identifying, I myself find myself going against the grain, trying to justify why I do things differently, but when people hear it, they are amazed you sure are a pioneer. We need more people like you in this world.
ditto
Audiophile is just astrology for people with big wallets and won't fade away any faster than palm reading and magic shows.
It's a realm that affects how people feel and how they perceive the invisible and therefore it's holding power is endless
@@DaveRat I would absolutely watch a debate between Paul and Dave...
Dave, I used to be one of “those guys” until I started mixing music. Enough can’t be said about realism. The truth about studio monitors is they aren’t meant to sound good, they are meant to sound true and translate exactly what’s fed into them. For most audiophiles, they are simply dull sounding. I do believe some of the modern power amps are exceptionally clean but they are not totally transparent. A certain amount of harmonic saturation is added (via tubes, etc..) to give them warmth. As an aspiring engineer, I find that there are a lot of good recordings that get destroyed in post due to over processing. The realism is lost. We want everything to sound good so we tweak it. Thanks Dave!
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So stoked to see this upload. The last demo both blew my mind and made perfect sense. I’ve really been looking forward to seeing the drum demo. So much that I had to comment before I’ve even pressed play 😂 Love the way your mind works, Dave. Thanks for sharing with us.
Interesting and solid points made here. I was very impressed at the sound of your experimental setup. It sounded almost "realer than real" at least through CZcams's compression. But definitely night and day vs the stereo mix as far as how it interacts with the room. You do a great job of crystalizing and demonstrating concepts that I notice with my ears but can't articulate myself.
Thank you!!
@@DaveRat that a point, I moved from idea of electronic and fully processed sound of FOH to understanding that all that is not real. Not bad but something wrong with it. And finally you started to answer my questions.
Brilliant stuff as always Dave. As an FOH engineer who specializes in mixing direct input synth acts I get to enjoy the creative freedom of working in a purely synthetic realm where such concerns for faithful reproduction and realism are meaningless. Between the electric socket and the audiences ears there are only artistic choices. 👍🏻
I love this aspect and perspective! Yes for all the realism there is the entire genre of electronic music where realism is whatever is created and desired
Love your concepts in sound reproduction. Your explanations are excellent. Thanks 👍🏆
Being someone who as a kid drooled over audiophile systems, spent some years in various forms of audio recording and reproduction, this is awesome.
Sound reproduction is exactly that. Horses for courses. If you want to be sitting in the middle of the movie sound field engulfed by a larger than life production, Dolby and it’s various uncles aunts and cousins is your tool and multiple decent quality task appropriate components your work horse.
But when it comes to music, bands in particular, I’ve always been amused at the extents we went to to create the stereo sound fields. Create, not re-create. We never, still don’t, setup stereo mics. We use very directional close proximity mics and then feed the signal through various tools to create the spacial separation. Always recording an effective mono sound field and then creating from there. This speaker concept is fascinating. Instead of filling the room with audio with the hopes of over powering the environment and listener, you create a far more intimate point source(s). Would be really interesting mapping mics to audio channels on the speaker and miking with the speaker dynamics in mind. 3 or 4 of them in the room with channels mapped per the instrument or source pool they are representing. Suddenly you have multiple point sources each representing a specific element of the audio into real space. Suddenly you’re in the old Bose world with 6-8 small drivers in enclosure. I strategically aimed. You no longer need big fancy expensive gear but rather smaller compact gear with a good audio chain. Intimate audio reproduction 101. Won’t ditch my studio monitors just yet, for traditional stereo mixes but damn this will be fun with naturally miked sessions … Thanks Dave!
Fun right! You get the concept!
I too drooled over audiophile stuff and dived into it only to find out that it had about the same scientific integrity as astrology so I migrated to the real world of live sound and recording
@@DaveRat definitely. Gonna make for an awesome experiment, both in building some simple speakers and then figuring out how best to record for them … Love it
Cool cool keep me updated
This is like next level self awareness but for sound. Thanks for sharing your experience, knowledge and thoughts with us Dave. Much love from New Zealand.
Thank you and love New Zealand!
Just when I open up CZcams, new Dave Rat! Love it. Thank you!!
Thank you and fun and let me know what you think!
@@DaveRat Will do
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awesome ideas and info on this channel. thanks Dave
Thank you!!
Thanks Dave, love your video as always!
Wow! Amazing stuff, Dave. 👏
Cool cool thank you Ry!
Great video Dave. Thanks
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Wow. So inspiring see how you Invent future of sound right now.
Fun!!
Great video as always!
Thank you Erik!
Once again, another awesome video!!! These explorations are simply wonderful, so mind opening. Please do more, more and then some more, please…
“Learning about Cuba, and having some food”
PEACE
Awesome and thank you!!
much love, thx Dave
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This reminds me of something i heard like 20 plus years ago and its all still true. I grew up in the audiophile world.
You are so right.
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The hardest part of every mix for me is the ‘vision’ part, what impression do I want to make, and I rarely sit down at the console until I have that. But once in a while, the artist needs to hear something NOW and I will make a totally unadorned ‘reality’ mix with only corrective EQ. More than once, that mix, dry as a bone, has taught me loads about my ears, my setup, etc, and I think the reason is that is sounds new everywhere I hear it. It stays interesting, if not exactly fascinating, and I think you’ve just put a name and definition to that.
Use the listener’s ambience, not your own. Brilliant stuff, Dave.
Super cool Peter!
Amazing Thank you!!! 🙏🏼
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Yes! I remember when you post this video about construction of you multivoces spk. I realise how the idea was so great. What i was earing was astonishing . Then i comment on your idea and suggest adding a sub. Now i can imagine in real life how that it can sound so real. Great lesson for me. Thankyou ❤
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5:06 for those wondering what the hell this is:
that's an omnidirectional speaker, most commonly used in creating room impulse responses (so you can replicate a room's reverb in a plugin, for example). They're also used for determining diffuse field HRTFs (of HATS units for example, but also of real people using in-ear microphones; in conjuction with a special room, that's essentially an echo chamber).
Fascinating content Dave. I love how you think and communicate your ideas. My simple thinking notices that the phase between 2 sources is drastic (ie the traditional stereo speakers) but as soon as you introduce more sources of output it averages out. I can't help but think of Magic Alex. He was bashed in Beatles docos but maybe he was onto something with having many little speakers as monitors instead of just a stereo pair.
Well finally subscribed, figured Id watched too many vids on here without it.
Here for this philosophy on audio and how "the drums sound"
*thumbsup*
Awesome and welcome and thank you!
And I do my best to look out for the subscribers above all on this channel.
Amazing Dave. I am especially impressed by the way it captures the whole change of character of the drum or cymbal as you approach and move around it. Not just the volume. The hats get more sizzle and the snare gets fatter with a bit more skin than snare. Bravo!! Can't wait for the 3 piece combo reveal. Another comment you made to someone about drum volume, highlights what a lot of folks don't realize. That a lot of really experienced pro's don't all play loud as hell. Some of the best bands I've worked with have a stage volume where you can walk up to, and have a conversation with them while they are playing. They let the P.A. do the heavy lifting.
Thank you and agreed. Agood jazz drummer can play the exact volume to match the rest of the band.i used to mix big band and truly amazing to hear drums vary in volume from soft to loud throughout the song and eve
@@DaveRat Yes, I had a similar experience with a big band over a couple of years. Their ability to control their dynamics is quite humbling to the average musician and tech. I learnt a lot during that time.
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another banger. wow my skull candy $60 and earphones have thus far been the only way to listen to your videos where the test signal at the end doesnt cut out on the low end. even with my nice p.a. speakers.
I keep imagining 333 microphones around a drum set in a sphere arrangement, equal distance, equal gain and then 333 speaker positioned in the room along the same arrangement.
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Hey, Dave: you continue to make your case. To repeat, still would love to see this commercialized and developed. You groundwork is creating a marketing campaign; it's convincing.
The goal here for me is to explain how instruments radiate sound and improve and share an understanding of audio.
To do so I built a real sounding speaker as a demo. Hopefully this info and understanding will inspire improvements in audio
Fantastic explanations of realism, fidelity, etc. Definitely a solid logical and empirical foundation for your awesome experiments.
Your 4 driver speaker system definitely had greater realism. It was absolutely sounding like walking around a drum kit while someone played it. Funny thing was that that seemed unpleasant in some ways. That made me realize just how much our conception of what drums are supposed to sound like is a synthetic experience, informed extensively by the experience of 2 channel stereo music.
The thought I came away from this video with was me wondering if you could use this speaker (or perhaps a pair of them) to play back a recording of an ensemble recorded using the mic array you've been using for these recordings?
Your experiments are so great, and definitely make the gears in my brain turn. Thanks for sharing this with the world!
Love the brainstorming and the most important part of this whole adventure is being able to share and communicate how sound actually is generated and travels around a room.
I believe this understanding will be beneficial in ways to many people that we don't fully realize
First time I’ve come across you on CZcams, very interesting 👍🏻
Super cool and great to meet you welcome Martin!
It's hilarious that an audiophile would argue and get mad about audio quality with such an experienced engineer like Dave.
Us live engineers are meaningless to those in the audiophile world of magical understandings.
The live band is a noisy pile of poo it is the vinyl record on a granite slab running through pure silver wire with special beads into a calibrated lead shielded phono preamp driving to huge monoblock tube amps with $50,000 directional speaker wires on cable risers into monoliths of granite and titanium that emit sound through electronic osmosis that is where true audio lives.
You are expecting logic from someone who thinks putting your speaker cables on little stands is worth spending large amounts of money on !! That's a big ask.
I'm not a sound person, but I am a musician who regularly performs live and records live jams in my rehearsal space. I really appreciate smart people like you who can articulate knowledge, skill, and wisdom and still come across like one of my friends. Your videos have made me think! Thanks for your efforts!
Great to meet you and thank you!!
@@DaveRat respect
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Watched the whole thing real time. :) Really appreciate your just open mindedness. "I mind is like a parachute and for either to work, they have to be open" (Zappa). You have that in spades. btw, whatever camera you were using looked good. Lastly, YT be what it is, there is a lot of really incredible stuff coming from the platform, like you being able to share ideas and concepts that may not have the opportunity to be contemplated otherwise. Maybe check out some of Eric Valentines stuff too if you haven't already. He's sort of like you, a bit of an open book and mind, but he's a little more studio oriented rather than your live angle. Both totally interesting and incredibly valuable. Just thanks buddy, and really appreciate what you do.
Will do and thank you Adam!
Think the pipe rig is a winner, sounds pretty convincing as far as I can tell through my headphones. Great out-of-box thinking there Dave
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I think it would be interesting to have Casey bring his drums over and have him set up in the same spot as the speakers. Record it the same way you did with the speakers moving from front to back and do direct comparisons 🤘
My goal is not to create identical. That's a much more complex adventure.
As I mentioned in the video, it does not need to sound identical to sound realistic. But it definitely would need the sound realistic if it was to sound identical.
I am tackling the realistic aspect of this not the identical aspect that comes later
The goal here is primarily educational and to show the importance of radiating sound in multiple directions if you are recreating a source that radiates sound in multiple directions.
The time and complexity of trying to make it sound identical as well as an adventure for someone else to take on
@@DaveRat Fair point! As a drummer, I'd be interested to see a comparison between all of them. Keep up the great work brotha 🤘
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Super cool stuff! Your speaker contraption has a snare sound that is exciting the room acoustics and sounds so much more real…….on my iPhone! The stereo pair sounds very dry and lifeless, kinda like some of the drum sounds recorded on the 70’s.
Fun!
Great Video. 😃👍♥️
Angry audio engineers at a narcotics anonymous meeting in las vegas would be a funny comedy sketch.
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Lol.
As a drummer I love what microphones and speakers do to the tone of drums, to me it sounds much better after being miced up rather then just acoustic.
Hi Dave, I swear all these yrs of being a Music lover, Musician, and audio lover. You literally mirror my thouhts about sound. I have to admit your demonstration here sounded as close as I have heard. I remember years ago I believe u put out a video of your tube speaker build. I would love to know all the details of this system. You are on to something amazing. Your knowledge and experiences I know you could crack open a whole new way to design an entire home system that could get as close to the original prefomance. I think you should consider designing a system speakers and all and patient your designs. You are an audio Einstein 😀
I believe you would make History and I am serious. Give it some thoughts. Either way I wanted to mention how your tube speaker is what filled that void so many speakers lack.
I have been chasing that void for years. The only speakers that I have heard that get close are westlake studio monitors or any of the heritage Klipsch, let me know what you think. GOD BLESS
Incredible.
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You are so right. I love your aproach.
Open baffles are more realistic because they use the room.
So, somehow Bose was right with systems like the 901, 601, etcetera.
Yes and no. Radiating sound in multiple directions is good. But radiating the same sound in all directions is bad and unnatural.
The Bose 901 and other omnidirectional systems or reflectional systems radiate the same sound in all directions which means every reflection and all the direct sound are exactly the same creating maximum comb filtering.
To solve that it is important to radiate different sounds in every direction which is why I built a multi-channel speaker that has a different sound shooting to the side then the other side then up then down four different sounds in four different directions
@@DaveRat Sure. You're right. The main problem is that most recordings are in stereo (or surround) to begin.
Thank you for the thought provocations! I am musing on how some sounds and instruments exist acoustically in a way the speaker demonstration illustrates here. I'm out of my depth here, but it seems that created instruments followed were essentially silent unless they are amplified (electric guitars, etc). Then electronic instrument fabrications that only produce a sound if played through a speaker. None of those exist in "nature" in that strict sense that we could hear. These are all blended together into an "artful" result. Finally I realized I'm a passive consumer waiting for someone else to make something that wins enough commercial success to survive. So I'm happy and experiencing some doubt but not really sure why. I gotta take this information in low doses.
Continue to ponder. An electric guitar is never recorded direct. It almost always is run into an amp, a tube amp adding color or a an amp that adds distortion and/or a speaker can that is open back or a even closed back guitar cabs are invariably made from soft or thin wood to radiate sound from the real and resonate.
I learned this years ago when I was building guitar cabinets for various fans including Black Flag. I began by building rigid boxes out of quality wood like I would build a PA speaker cabinet, but no one like the sound of those. I began studying Marshall cabinets and other guitar cabinets and realized they're made out of thin resonant wood and use speakers that are high and distortion and have lots of breakup modes.
It's not about building a clean perfect guitar cabinet it's about building one that sounds like a mess and creates all kinds of coloration to take that clean guitar sound and make it interesting.
So even a guitar cabinet connected to an electric guitar radiate sound out the back and to the sides and from the baffle and pretty much does everything but radiate a clean sound in the forward direction like how speakers are designed.
Trumpets and horns radiate high sounds to the front but the thin metal radiates sounds and all directions. If you really start to look at all the various instruments you begin to realize some common aspects like no instruments are purely symmetrical, and all instruments radiate differing sounds and differing directions. Even home Hi-Fi loudspeakers radiate different sounds and different directions but unlike instruments the rear radiation is not well thought out and a balanced part of the radiating energy it's merely a side effect.
It is the ability to radiate the proper sound in the proper direction that helps create sonic realism
I’m obsessed with sound as much as you are. I hope I get to meet you someday
Cool cool Nicholas!
I started into audio AS a drummer. It's just the instrument that I understood naturally. As a result, I never had to learn about microphones or power amps ... I just bashed away !!😆However, my fascination with synthesizers remained and grew ... and one day I found myself studying (studio) audio engineering. Remarkably, I have been able to protect my ears from damage but I have never considered my ears to be incredible. But what I do realize is that, as important as I place fidelity, what really matters are the emotions you feel from songs. Remember the days of your scratched up compact disc getting locked up on your favorite song? I once got an awful paint stain on the 3rd side of The Wall, "Hey You" was forever corrupted. How about the wow and flutter of cassette tapes? I consider those days to be gone. We are now in the "Salad Days" of audio. All I need now is a cheap pair of speakers, a cool song ... and I'm fine ...
I love all types of sound reproduction and in between working on building the real speaker and listening to music on my high quality Rogers Studio One monitors, I am also just as happy with my wireless Bose speakers spread around the house playing songs from Pandora app.
It's not this against that, it's an appreciation of all and expanding the realm of options that interests me
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Hi Dave. If you can get hold of the Neumann "Head" or the DPA binaural mic setup for these videos, I think that would help quite a bit with the sonic experience on our side. Your speaker sounds way more natural compared to the hi-fi speakers. It would be kewl to hear a band with vocals played through that speaker. Greetings from sunny South Africa
Your monitor with a gtr spker from the gtr amp is absolutely amazing idea
I appreciated seeing the Ohm Walsh F in there!
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Totally agree.
Fantastic I need to say this as well I agree, 100%. I’m always saying about it. There’s a moment in a recording studio, where the artist or band a hearing the final mix down say wecaptured lightning in the bottle queen Bohemian Rhapsody smells like teen Spirit nirvana. There’s obviously all of these dreams Fleetwood Mac all these marvelous artists that come out with this sound and generally there’s a fair percentage of them hear part of the mix, perhaps on a pair of Yamaha, NS -10 monitors and I think they’re a wonderful pair of speakers. If it was good enough for them, it’s good enough for me hence is my cable selection a pair of wire coat hangers it’s just as good as some fancy pants speaker cables, but I just keep consistent bang for the bucks both in live production, and in my home hi-fi I use Mogami cables, because if it was good enough for the artist to record in the studio and most of the studios, have that brand of cable traveling down the line it’s good enough at the other end, but you’re 100% right my biggest factor I often find is that when you use a loudspeaker with a 12 or 15 inch driver in it and you’re listening to rock ‘n’ roll music that may have been recorded with an amplifier and as you well know Marshall Ampeg And Mesa, boogie, etc. usually have 10 or 12 inch drivers in the cabinets set a re-create it why wouldn’t I use something similar to how they made it I know there’s a lot more science to it, of course, and the Bible, which is the Yamaha sound reinforcement book certainly provide some sound understanding isn’t always everything. If it makes you happy do it. I’m very proud of my hi-fi system. It may not be the greatest in the world, but it takes all my boxes and creates the feeling that I just love And you can never have too many VU meters as I keep telling you. Selling the DBX-1 RTA YET? Ha ha ha. I always keep a few RU spaces left empty in the rack for it. Please do have a peep on you tube just search josef hi-fi you should find it. I made a few videos one on the amp pioneer sx-1980 another on speakers etc. I will admit I’m due for a new video but have been distracted in other channel josef model railway and toy room but all good fun stay safe Oracle!
Talking to inexperienced "audiophiles/home theater geeks" I recommend to go listen to a live band, then listen to speakers, as every speaker colors the sound. I get crucified in the audio forums for this view. Another great video!
Fascinating unfortunately I'm listening to it on my cell phone so I'm really not hearing the true sound. But I do understand the concept. Thanks for the video!
your home brew speaker definitely sounds like a kit in the room. Raw and imperfect just like a real kit. The hi fi speakers sound more polished like what we're used to hearing along with the beaming properties and field effects. The kit sounds more like a mic'd and mixed recording through the hi fi speakers. Great illustration! Time to market that real life speaker! LOL I wonder if there is a market for that in all seriousness....
You know I think there will be at some point I'll try and make some more of my spare time. It's not on my list of things to try and earn money from. But I could see it being fun to have three of these and put one in each corner of the room and in the fourth corner have an actual singer guitar player pumping sound into the other three.
Such that there is the sound of the real person in every corner of the room
@@DaveRat Makes me think of a venue like a larger restaurant or some such, with multiple rooms. It would be kinda cool to have a life like sound replicated throughout. No matter which area you were in, you'd feel like the performer was in the room with you. It's certainly remarkable, that speaker of yours...:)
It's interesting that you did this with drums. So when I mic up drums for a new group, I try to find videos and professional recordings that they have done. The videos show me how they are used to being mic'ed up and between the live video and the recordings, I get an idea of what they are used to sounding like. I can mic up and process drums to amplify the natural sound of the drums as well as my system can do that, or I can mic them up and make them sound more like the highly-processed recordings. To have a speaker system just to imitate a set of drums so you can potentially hear drums as though they were live acoustically is another level of reproduction altogether and is an interesting exercise in thinking about the craft.
Hopefully this is helpful and understanding the way sound radiates shown by reproducing the realistic sound and ideas will come for making interesting or better recordings
Dolby Atmos delivers sound as 128 separate tracks that the Atmos processor can manipulate. Nothing says a processor could be designed with a second set of outputs you could direct to individual speakers for each instrument or group of instruments.
Thank you for your comment about studio monitors: "If you really want to hear what the song originally sounded like, then use the studio monitors the song was mixed on." In my case JBL 4311B (L100) monitors.
He has hooking Dolby Atmos up to a central speaker or a group of centralized speakers that point sound outward would be very useful in creating realistic audio. Avoiding having a bunch of speakers around the perimeter shooting inward is the key to realism
As a self-titled acoustics nerd, this is a really interesting concept! I'm listening this in a fairly well treated room, the recording sounded surprisingly good for what it is.
Awesome! Yeah the hifi humans don't love it but HiFi and sonic realism have never been well aligned. HiFi in my opinion is the beautification of sound. Sonic realism shows the qarts that HiFi tries to hide
@@DaveRat It's kind of sad that many of the actions to actually get better sounding system are free or cost peanuts but are ignored.
For immersive audio experience Atmos < RATmos!
Thanks for all the knowledge you share on your channel!
@hilseile thank you!!
the catch 22 of this and the acoustic guitar video is we're kinda stuck listening to these things via our regular ole speakers anywho lol. that said, even then, these things do sound pretty wild!
Yeah I listened on headphones and stereo speakers and such to the CZcams videos and surprisingly much of it does come through but not as much as it is in real life being next to it
I see your point, although I'm not sure what to do with this haha
I believe that a better understanding how sound is reproduced by instruments and speakers can be useful in our miking techniques and the way we set up sound systems.
Mr. Rat. You are one cool dude. Life experience is nice aint it?
Thank you and fun!
Nice,totally get this, didn't Bose try to do this with 6.5 etc. and those PA sound stick type with a subwoofer
A speaker that radiates one sound in one or more directions like the Bose will be challenged to sound realistic. This speaker radiates 4 sounds in 4 directions
The monologue before showing the speaker is gold!
Do you think it would be worthwhile to DIY a couple of tiny versions of this speaker with tiny frfr drivers, in order to then rerecord tracks or stems through some sort of binaural or ambisonic microphone at low volume? Sounds dumb, perhaps, but I'm trying to find (low cost) ways to make electronic and experimental music sound more organic, and I really like the effect you're getting by walking around that speaker
It's worth a shot and sounds fun.
luving that
Hi Dave. New to your channel. I play in a duo that uses tracks for bass and drum. We often struggle to be happy with the sound of the tracks. For larger outside venues speaker placement is always a question. We also play with the EQing to try and optimize the punch. Do you have a video yet that shows how to optimize drum and bass coming from tracks and also talks about speaker placement, depending on the type of venue, whether they’re outside or inside. We are also interested not just in placement but speaker types if they also have an impact in optimizing our base and drum track sound. Thank you for your help.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the different requirements of reproducing electronic music that has been intentionally made with lots of pan & stereo sound space placements. The 'purity' of single central point source feels more suitable for live music PA, yet the studio albums from artists (Pink Floyd like) who started to use the capabilities of stereo sound reproduction as an another 'instrument' made the live reproduction of these albums in concert PA environment much more complicated. I've been into electronica from the early days of Shpongle, and the use of wide and deep sound stages to create '3d' music is what drew me in.
Be interesting to double up that system, run a rear facing one behind and run that one out of phase and hear the room more rather than the stereo setup cause it would cancel itself but the reflections off the walls, like having an open back system but the advantage of having more bass from the boxing i would put the mic right above between the systems
The complexity of the sound radiated from a speaker that radiates multiple sounds and multiple directions would be somewhat immune to phase cancellation from a second version.
If the second version used different mics in different locations then it would be closer to having two different instruments playing at the same time and that has little or no phase cancellation at all
hahaha I think I'll set up my back line and use the monitor mixer for a little re-amping.
Interesting.
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makes me think of the Pat Metheny orchestron instrument and those old mechanical instruments with all the real drums and cymbals and strings that are triggered. i can imagine some kind of range of physical materials used to construct speakers that provide some aspects... plastic, wood, metal, strings, wind etc...
It's interesting that development of real sounding instruments kind of stopped with stereo and switch to creating environmental illusions
perhaps another point of reference for comparison would be a 2-track recording of you actually walking around the kit while being played.
I cover real versus replay in the other video I did with be playing cigar box guitar.
But the point of this is not about sounding the same it's about sounding realistic and The educational aspects of understanding how sound is radiated and how to recreate sound that is realistic not necessarily identical
Is there anywhere I can download the multiple track recordings you're using for these demos? It would be interesting to see how well the effect works with the 4 speakers in the corners of my room.Or a demo video in 5.1 surround where you play around with what tracks go to which channels. Might sound like you're in an instrument rather than around it but thats probably still a distinct sound compared to stereo
It's just wild how that sounds so "in the room".
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The crossover design needs to be ist or second order to be closest to the original signal. Nearly all speakers today are 4th order. The idea of time alignment cor a point-source was imagined by someone a while back. Maybe the dual concentric designs attempted that physically, but there is no speaker out there that is linear from low to high without peaks or dips in response. So this idea to get rid of or tame essentially what can be defined as faults in the driver structure, comes about with filters and chokes in the crossover. So that sends the original signal through this giant network of phase inverting, reverting, complex mess of wire, caps and a resistive networks that creates something very different that what came from the amp. Some of the most realistic sounding systems I've had were low-fidelity, minimally manipulated simple, full range single or 2 way speakers When you went back and forth, your design sounded more realistic by far. Open, uncompressed and natural.
Cool stuff! What model are the other big speakers in the corner?
Had some really old coaxial 15-in speaker that I found in an alley about 20 years ago I don't know who makes it
Hii can please make a video about the speaker setup used by Skrillex, four tet and Fred again at Coachella 2023??? Seems a mind blowing and challenging setup to cover all that huge 360 space 🙏🏼
I will do but it will only be on the paid member side of my channel.
I don't want to inadvertantly create friction with Coachella with public info releases but on the member side the paywall allows me more freedom.
Super curious about what channels were routed to which of the four speakers on the realistic home build. Been thinking about how this could be used to make an electronic kit sound more like a real kit. Also been thinking of how to make playing a digital keyboard sound more like a real piano and feel, sound wise, more like it
Pretty much this routed them exactly like you see him overhead, Mic's behind him pointing left and right going to the left and right speakers and mic down low going to the speaker pointed down and back
I have a different sound system in most of the rooms of my house I'm definitely not the audio engineer that Dave is but I've been doing it for a living for 30 plus years and Dave is correct on each point he's made when I want to listen to a live show that I have recorded I go to one sound system in particular and the speakers reproduce APA style sound if I want to watch a movie I go to a different room although I have surround sound systems in several rooms if I really want to watch a movie and be wowed I go to a particular room if I just want to hear music in the background I use a different system if I just want to be loud and rock out yet a different room there was a point in time when I wanted to spend a whole bunch of money on this one beautiful sound system and is not it just doesn't make sense anymore I even have yet another system for when I want a mix music at the house and in that spot I actually have six or eight different types of speakers that I can switch through that I try to get every one of them to sound the same so that way when someone buys a CD no matter what system they pop it into it sounds similar to what I intended it to sound like it's all about perspective and intent there's some really shity sound systems that are appropriate for things that I wouldn't really listen to on anything else frame of mind and frame of reference are big part of it I found that audio engineering is 40% mental.
Dave I can't tell you how much I appreciate everything that you do. There have been a few tips that I've gotten from you that have absolutely changed the way I approach doing a live show. You are a true wizard. And the funny thing is what makes you a wizard is you're just realistic about every situation and the fact that they're all different. Thank you so much appreciate everything. I'm sure I'll never have the pleasure of working for you although it would be a dream to be around and learn everyday something new especially after spending so much time involved. That said I'll continue to listen and use every bit of advice that is relevant at the time and place
Dave, you're the man. Always look forward to your videos!! Lol.....that's my skull!!!! I'm so much smarter for listening to Dave Rat!!!! FYI check out The Cheap Audio Man. Has similar thoughts on gear.
Thank you and cool, will give a look
Also your sound tools are awesome man I just wish that you weren't always sold out of sound human t-shirts I would like to get a XL and a double XL that said it would be cool if we could sign up for a win available list you know to get a notification when a size that we want of a particular tool or merchandise is available I would say keep it up but I have a feeling you won't stop until you have to and I will always appreciate that thank you again I hope you have a fantastic Labor Day weekend
Gravity ! That had me in Stitches !
Fun!!
I'm imagining a stage the size of a football field occupied by a set of your pvc speakers. one for each instrument and vocalist of course but expanded in size by a magnitude of ten.
Huge drums dude. Sixty foot vocals. Is this possible?
Fun👍, though for live events we already have a % of the sources being actually live, or at least we did till in ears and silent stages got more popular.
A big challenge is that when scaling, the distances between instruments increase to longer times and that starts to mess things up pretty quick
Can you do a video on speakON cable connectors vs powercon cable connectors and what the difference between them is if any?
I will ponder that
Mounting the drivers in the plastic pipe is genius! I have been developing a virtual band in our rehearsal space for about a year, re-amping the other guitars, vocals, etc., and the drums split between two RCF SMA 15's. So making band rehearsal available 24/7, and although it sounds pretty good and serves a purpose it still hasn't got that drums in the room feel, especially the cymbals. So getting drivers for the cymbal elevated in some plastic pipe is something I'd like to try. Do you have any suggestions for the type of driver or tweeter that would represent cymbals at a real and dynamic level? Thanks in advance!!! This has been Inspirational cheers for sharing.
I recommend the B&c coax drivers for the stereo cymbal highs. Be sure to stuff all of the PVC tubes with loads of fiberglass or cotton insulation as they will resonate if you don't.
Did you watch the build video of the speaker?
@@DaveRat Cheers Dave. Just watch the build vid 👍👍👍👍👍
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What are those speakers at 4 minutes and 29 seconds it looks like MBI in the logo?
Beautifully realized concept. I'm really glad you've decided to pursue it further, so interesting. You may be familiar with the head transfer function algorithm, based off fast fourier transform with some added dsp. It is a way to virtualize movement of a source, or of the listener in relation to a source or multiple sources. The human ear does an analog of this, allowing us to hear up or down, front or back, as well as left and right. There are mics with rubber ears to capture this added sonic information. Sounds crazy but it's real.
Went and heard Holoplot for the second time last week. Worked as a consultant on EAW anya and have loads of experience with beam steering and some experience with wavefront synthesis.
And also, here is a simple way to make real sound rather that simulate a something that sounds similar if ya don't move around too much
@@DaveRat Right on, that's some cool stuff. I can imagine walls of arrayed emitters all tracking my head and beam steering the sweet spot to follow it. lol unfortunately it would sound like s#!t to everybody else in the room. Your solution here is a total paradigm shift for music reproduction, can't wait to see how far you go with it.
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What would happen if you played a conventionally mixed track (bass, drum, vocal
, Guitar) and put one of each instrument through each channel.
Not at all the expirment you are conducting hear but would it be more realistic than just the stereo image?
I guess it would be some sort of franken hybrid between traditional audio understanding and the cool work you are doing here
I've done some experimenting with that kind of thing as well but for that I had all the speakers pointed forward and spaced and located in different locations.
I will do some videos on that type of setup as well at some point
Whoa! Funktion speakers inside a house? 🤟 Do they even function at 75db? 😎
If they are not linear with volume then that would be undesirable sounding
In theory it is very simple to reproduce an exact copy of a musical impression. What I hear are mostly the sound pressure fluctuations in my ears and of course in my body. The moment they reach me, they are separated from the source.
So if the technology were able to copy these pressure fluctuations 1:1, then we would have achieved the goal of an identical reproduction.
It only needs one clever inventor...
Until then, I enjoy any music that touches me, even if it's only played on a portable radio...
❣your 🎞 ...🙂
Time travel is simple as well All we need is a clever inventor for that too!
@@DaveRat In the science documentary series "Back To The Future" Doc Brown invented the flux compensator, maybe we should give him a call...
Exactly and then he can also create an exact replication of a musical sound source while he is at it
I suspect that your 'in person' result is much better than the result of YT playback through ordinary speakers. The only difference I get is some unwanted resonances from the small tube dimensions, but I am willing to believe that sound traveling outwards from a source would make a very different sound field in the room compared to the sound field from speakers near the walls.
Interesting, seems the sound differential and realism differential at least when walking behind the different speaker types would be audible even on a cell phone speaker
@@DaveRat The thing you said that particularly interested me was to consider the difference between sound radiating away from an object in the room compared to sound projected into the room from speakers near the walls, and I can believe that the former setup would have a greater similarity of sound field compared to a live drum kit. All good so far. But .. your demo was to compare two types of speaker in the centre of the room! So, for me, it did not illustrate the point I think you were making - except yes the ordinary speakers did sound more muffled as you passed behind them, but that effect is well known. Just for info, I am using JBL Monitor 4208 speakers on the wall, on a Teac receiver driven by PC digital audio and a DAC, with a DSPeaker processor and Monolith sub from BK electronics. So my listening filters are probably mainly my own ageing ears, the YT sound processing and the JBL speakers in that order. I love your highly practical content so please keep experimenting. And my wife says she prefers the sound of your speaker!
Hey Dave question?
just to give you some insight, currently working as PD for a Church. We have EAW LA460 old sound system for me….I’m part of that young new digital era lol 🤣
that being said I’m looking into the future for upgrading sound getting into a linear system EAW, meyers I’m local to the Bay Area, L-Acost and D&B
I haven’t heard the new EAW or Meyes just wanted to know what your thoughts are on them?
Sorry if it’s a little word😅
Have heard the new eaw or Meyer either, mostly familiar with L-Acoustics.
You could reach out to Rat Sounds install dept. Chat with Adam here. He is super cool and does a bunch of cool church installs.
cool
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Some of the best sounding speakers I have ever heard were $350 a unit and they were being powered by a normal mobile PA power amp by Harmon Crown. Rando book shelf speaker powered by a mobile pro audio amplifier and it made me sit and listen to music for hours just cause of how good it sounded. The entire set up was like $1200 or something. And I've been to places with $200k speakers and they sound like absolute garbage.
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AH the age old conversation between audiophiles and audio engineers..... LOL ...
What about VR headphones? Like stereo vision VR, but it tracks your head orientation and position and alters the track being played into your ear. I feel like headphones are the most elegant solution to getting exactly what you want in each ear.
Yes someone could design a set of VR headphones with positional tracking and highly processed signals to try and simulate what dropping a few of speakers into a room can do inexpensively and easily.
Why keep it simple when you can make it so complex?
Imagine the acoustic guitar playing singing person in the corner of a restaurant and three more of these speakers spread around the restaurant and it sounds like the person is playing in four different places at once
Or
Make every single person in the restaurant wear headphones that are programmed such that it thinks that there's four different people playing in the room at once and then have microphones in each of the headphones so that people can talk to each other and recharging stations on the tables so they can charge the headphones and take their ID so they don't take the headphones and they could leave a deposit.
All in good fun and the simplest solutions that achieve the desired goal tend to be the most desirable
Of course, yeah multiple people in one space, your speaker system elegantly shortcuts the effect high-fidelity creates. It's all about precision timing and placement to create "imaging" with high-fidelity speakers. You're mitigating such sensitivity by increasing your drivers and pointing them in different directions. You're sculpting in 3D. You're not painting in 2D. I get it. We're through the looking glass and we owe you entirely for guiding us along the way. I do think that adding tweeters and highly efficient woofers would be very valuable to your realistic speaker for more than just acoustic and vocal sounds - jazz, rock, etc. I look forward to seeing this evolve.
The "VR headphones" is already a thing with Dolby Atmos and Apple Spatial Audio for example. They have head tracking and also personalised rendering depending on the shape of your head & ears. HRTF and PHRTF.
Tickled by EVERY BIT of this! I continuously realize that the look of audio gear and how it makes me feel represents 90% of what I get out of it.
I'm also usually glad that drums in a good mix sound better to me than drums in a room... Still, I would NEVER pass up the FULL Dave Rat (say, if some rich audiophile gave Dave the budget to finalize his scientific magnum opus / audio-spacial reproduction paradise portal of Rat).
Never underestimate the importance of beauty
trying to make my mixes sound real was one of my mistakes as a mixer. I liked it a lot but most of my customers prefer heavily compressed drums with powerful triggered samples. Makes me sad 🤔
There are many choices when mixing. Do we make it sound real? Do we make it sound like the album? Do we make it sound like rehearsal? Do we make it sound like the audience seems to want to hear it or the band manager or friends of the band or the way we like it?
There is no correct answer to this but they're definitely tends to be an answer that will have a higher probability of getting you hired at the next gig than other answers. And that can be different for every band
@@DaveRat yes, exactly like you mention in your video, everything is a matter of choice
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The question is: Are the tubes speakers and their 3-D holistic effects working for every instrument in the frequency spectrum, other than Drums?
Have you watched the videos where I use the tube speakers for guitar, cigar box guitar and voice?
@@DaveRat Sorry Dave, I have to admit, These videos didn’t come to my eyesight yet, Otherwise, I had to come to another conclusion. Thank you for all your research and enthusiasm!
Cool cool if you want you to watch and let me know what you think
Do you have any plans for how to make the real speakers?
I did a video on actually building it and it's pretty straightforward.
One of the things that's interesting and important to know is that when creating a speaker with multiple sources pointed in multiple directions, many of the complications of pristine frequency response and driver selection and many ofthe issues associated with creating a Hi-Fi speaker go away.
It all just comes down to the recording process of making sure you record four separate mics at four separate locations about the same distance from the sound source