Hi Ethan,

Ethan Winer wrote:

I don't really think that one should "get lost" in ... sinewaves except in
the special case of finding the optimum location for a bass trap.

I disagree. If you think about it, other than snare drums and cymbals, all
music consists mainly of steady sine waves. A kick drum is basically a click
with a sine wave that decays.

Let us take the deceptively simple example of a piano. Way long time ago
Scientific American published a paper about the piano and its tuning. It
is a very non-simple sound source, including that resulting
emanated/perceived frequencies are non-constant as I remember that
paper.

It is also in my experience one of the three sound sources that combined
tell all about the properties of loudspeakers and room combined. The
other two sources are a or a few violins, i.e. a chamber music ensemble
and a full symphony orchestra, well recorded, something romantic is fine
because of the probable fullness of the sound. The latter will reveal
all room colorations that need to be address because it will
"de-compose" and "segment" if there are - ahem - issues.

An electric bass is mainly a fundamental sine
wave with a second harmonic sine wave. When you play pop music using these
as the main low frequency instruments, you ARE playing sine waves. So if you
want to know how accurate the response is for these typical sources, then
static sine waves are the ONLY sensible test.

No contest. Static sinewaves will by their behavior tell you the exact
frequency of a problem. Frankly I plain do not like to use them in my
apartment, if not for any other reason then because it is an apartment
and not a house and currently I have peace with my neighbors, I like to
keep it that way. I think we see this differently because - as I
understand you - it is your occupation to solve room problems fast.

The listening test above will tell you whether there is a problem that
matters. Rock and pop music are great for rapid cross-over tuning but
they are not the fastest possible way to determine minor problems. Major
problems, such as a resonance that is the same between multiple walls
due to impractical room dimensions, yes - that will be very obvious. I
recall one listening room where the only resort was to use a narrow
notch filter at such a fundamental room node, 52-55 Hz could not be
reproduced in that room.

The TACT stuff is of course an interesting solution WHEN the major
problems are solved, but I can not - on the basis of the demonstration I
was at - make my mind up as to whether it really is an advantage. But it
could be great fun to be into tuning its parameters ...

--Ethan


Kind regards

Peter Larsen



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