Recording - May 2015 - 8

Note to faithful writers: When sending your letters by email,
please remember to include your name and where you hail from.
Monitor mix tricks
Hi Greg Ogan: I really enjoyed your article on getting
good headphone mixes in the March 2015 issue of
Recording. I have a small project studio in California, and
am often faced with this problem. Towards the end of the
article you mention a trick involving an additional track to
monitor the live signal (vocal). Are you referring to an aux
input? Thank you,
Scott
@smpmedia

Greg Ogan replies:
Hi, Scott. No, it's not an aux input. I use an extra
audio track that is input monitor enabled. That way
when the vocalists are singing, they hear themselves on
two tracks, hence being louder for monitoring without
disrupting the mix. Additionally, if you are doing punchins, they can hear themselves on that track prior to
being dropped in. Hope that clears things up, and
thanks for reading.-GO
Can we cancel out the Equal Loudness Contours?
Hi Mike, Thanks for a very easy to understand article
on listening level and the Fletcher-Munson curves a.k.a.
Equal Loudness Contours (March 2015). After reading
your article, I got to thinking, if our hearing changes (what
we perceive) with changes in volume, why not put a master EQ after the mixer that has different curves for different volume levels?
My thinking is: most digital EQs (outboard and plug-in)
have multiple preset settings, so each Phon curve could be
saved and used as needed. For example, If I'm playing
back at 80 Phons I'd use that preset, if I'm at 30 Phons I'd
use the appropriate preset... so no matter what level I
choose, I've compensated for how we perceive frequencies at different volume levels.
Do you know if there is a way to setup an EQ to mirror
and cancel out the Equal Loudness Contours? Thanks for
an interesting article and a great magazine. Peace,
RL Alexander
Pleasantville, NJ

Hello RL: I guess the easiest answer to your question
would be to say, "In theory, there is no difference between
theory and practice, but that doesn't hold up in practice."
While it should be possible to create a set of EQ curves
that invert the Equal Loudness Contours and let you turn
your levels up or down at will, in practice there are other
factors that might skew your results.

For example, if your room has a resonance at a particular frequency, turning the level up will excite that frequency more, and cause
deviations in that frequency range. Note that this would happen anyway! But with that "anti-ELC" EQ in place, you might be fooled into
believing that it doesn't, or not listen for it as carefully.
The only way to compensate for this would be to calibrate your room
at different listening levels with a frequency sweep and program an
inverse of each curve, but then the EQ would be no good if you listened
on headphones; you'd have to do a separate set for those, and headphone frequency response is highly variable from person to person.
Note that the Loudness button on old stereo systems was designed
to do a compensation of this type, in a very brute-force way, by boosting low end when you listened at lower levels. It was very unscientific and would sound different on different types of music at different
levels, but it was an easy way to quickly give a listener a more pleasurable experience. When you start talking about a scientifically reliable way to do this for all listening levels... especially when you talk
about inserting EQ into the audio chain between your mix and your
monitors!... experienced engineers are going to get very nervous.
Pro audio has a long history of audio processes that seemed like a
great idea at the time and haven't stood up very well in the long run.
While it's theoretically possible and the available hardware and software is getting more capable every year, doing something like this
won't win many fans until there's a real preponderance of evidence
that it can be done reliably. "First, do no harm" was good advice for
physicians 2000 years ago and it works well for engineers today.
Many thanks for reading!-MM
A ribbon that isn't really a ribbon
Mike, I read your Samson monitor review (November 2014) and I
want to point out a distinction that gets muddied too often these days.
Ribbon drivers are not AMTs and AMTs are not ribbon drivers.
Ribbon drivers-like those on Apogee and SLS Audio speakers-
move forward and back, like the ribbon in a ribbon mic. AMTs, like
those used in speakers by ADAM Audio, Emotiva Pro, and ESI, are
pleated accordions that move from side to side and force air in and
out of their pockets.
This means, among other things, that AMTs have issues at high levels due to nonlinear compression of air, which ribbons don't have. On
the other hand, it's hard to design a ribbon speaker to be easy to
drive; being a ribbon microphone in reverse, they want a lot of current and not much voltage.
So: is the Samson a ribbon or an AMT? I know that a lot of marketing people call AMTs "ribbon" or "quasi-ribbon" drivers, but they
are actually something different.-Scott Dorsey
Scott: Thanks for pointing that out. It's been many years since we've
reviewed a speaker with a true ribbon driver; the last was the PS8R
from SLS, reviewed in June 2006. The Samson Resolv RXA6 reviewed
in November 2014 is in fact an AMT design.-MM

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8

RECORDING May 2015



Recording - May 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - May 2015

Contents
Recording - May 2015 - Cover1
Recording - May 2015 - Cover2
Recording - May 2015 - 1
Recording - May 2015 - 2
Recording - May 2015 - 3
Recording - May 2015 - 4
Recording - May 2015 - 5
Recording - May 2015 - Contents
Recording - May 2015 - 7
Recording - May 2015 - 8
Recording - May 2015 - 9
Recording - May 2015 - 10
Recording - May 2015 - 11
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Recording - May 2015 - Cover3
Recording - May 2015 - Cover4
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