Yeah Kyle, you're slacking ... at 8:42PM.

Way to lay into a guy, Cliff. You can't be critical if we all don't know your rules or verbage going in. I definitely know what you're talking about though. Just listen to a bunch of acoustic guitarists try to explain their holy grail tone. You'll hear the same mess of different terminology used to describe sometimes opposite ideas.

I know you weren't directing your criticism directly at me (Tony tells me what a great guy you are to hang with) but I really was trying to be fairly descriptive & thought I'd found a decent word to describe what I was hearing (brittle). It's one of my pet peeves when a person can't describe something well. I think it comes from commiserating with tech support people.

When I first listened to the new preset 17 with my 87A I thought there was some missing low end & a harshness in the upper end that sounded a little distorted. The word I thought described this the best was brittle. With a little bump on the low end the harshness seemed to go away, although I would have thought I would still hear the high end distortion. Since I don't know exactly what you're doing in each of the presets I can only trust my ears to judge the differences.

To your other points, I guess thinner would mean less midrange as I think about it, although I was thinking more of a lack of low end. Biting to me does mean some distorted quality that I associate with distorted levels or bad piezo speakers.

I really would encourage you to list your 10 words here with a description for each so that we can communicate without any argument over semantics. God knows we have better things to do than miscommunicate over a system we all enjoy so much. I vote for harmony & communication.

Lets jam!

Tom

Way to lay into a guy, Tom Munch.

Just kidding.

Well, as it appears to me, there are no rules for communicating about audio qualities right now, something that is essential for a functional language to work. We have a whole truck-load of words, all of which mean different things to everyone. Tower of Babel. A lot of these words have been invented, I think, by the audio press. Imagine making up language for what you think you heard over the differences in audio qualities between normal and "special" AC power cords or different wood that you laid your speaker cables next to. Honest. I have seen this and much more.

I'm going to post the 10-word vocabulary I have been teaching here at Bose. "your rules" hit me funny, like it's my ball and you have to play this way or forget it. It's not like this is the script carved on the holy tablets by God, or whatnot. It's just an attempt, a proposal, for any rule where there really aren't any. I think that if we can at least agree on 10 words, it's a start. Actually, these words are a "middle man" to what we really need to do: Hear, listen (the combined activity of taking in audio information, thinking and concluding) and identify in real engineering terms. Like, for instance, a "nasal" quality is heard, the thought process says "aha, too much level in the 1KHz octave" and then you can do something about it, like reach for the 1KHz part of an equalizer and make it sound normal. The words describe familiar qualities we are all familiar with, many having to do with our knowledge of how normal human speech sounds.

So, I'm going to post all this as a separate topic in "technical". But, for this discussion, here are the 10 words, which describe a 1 octave excess level in the stated center of that octave (these are all "ISO standard center frequencies"). These can be used anywhere (Ghm, per your inquiry) but hopefully for better communication about qualities about our system, for better or for worse:

woofy (31Hz octave)
boomy (62 Hz octave)
punchy (125 Hz octave)
chesty (250 Hz octave)
honky (500 Hz octave)
nasal (1000 Hz octave)
quacky (2000 Hz octave)
Shrill (4000 Hz, the most annoying octave to be accented)
Spitty (8000 Hz octave)
Air (16,000 Hz octave)

Kyle is going to follow this up with some illustrative recordings on the "Spectral Identification" disc I made years ago. You're gonna love it.

Thanks Cliff,

This ol Kintuky boy is lookinford to gitina proper edgicashun.......Ghm

Hey, Cliff, "your rules" is just showing you how much respect we all have here for you & your talents. I was just showing my affliction for you.

I would much rather describe sound in engineering terms too, but I thought part of the emphasis here on the forum was to use our ears & not look at specs on this system. Using my ears makes me wax poetic (when there is no wax in my ears) about springtime & youth & passion for this system. This makes me use flowery descriptive terms that have nothing to do with engineereing but everything to do with emotion & how this system makes me feel. Thus I come up with a term like "brittle" which would never be a passionate word except for wood or peanut candy.

I think we have to use the language of engineering more in order to be conversant in it. You guys at Bose use the language regularly & are better at it. I have a pocket spectral analyzer on my PalmPilot that I like to whip out at a gig & tell the band which frequencies are dominant at any time. This kind of shenanigan has helped a little. I'm still amazed at how many incorrect frequencies someone will guess are the offender when feedback arises on stage. Most folks guess too high. It would be beneficial for every musician to have a chart of relative frequencies on different instruments to refer to. I'll post one here now.

I still can't deny there are more components often than just the frequency response. Music after all has some magical qualities in it which cannot probably be described in pure engineering terms.

[edited for spelling]

Tom

All kidding aside (such a struggle); yeah, I'll agree that music is basically infinite. It amazes me, tho, that simple mathematical changes in, say, chord structure, make a listener (player too) feel different. Like, for instance, a minor chord typically makes anyone feel different from, say, a major chord. All you did is change one note relative to the others. Amazing.

My little 10-word vocab is, admittedly, a thimble-full of water from the ocean, but it's a start. Keep looking in "technical" for notice of Kyle's posting of the recordings.

Good chart, thanks for posting this. Readers please note that any musical note's spectrum starts, at least, with the fundamental (shown on Tom's chart), but the harmonics all extend to beyond 20KHz. If there were no harmonics associated with any note, you wouldn't be able to tell what instrument was playing. Some instruments even have harmonics below the fundamental of the note, but it's rare. The most common, I think, is full metal jacket distorted guitar.

guys, i skimmed through the previous posts, but didn't see this addressed:

what if you're using an external mixer? i use a mackie 3204 line mixer, because i do a single piano/guitar/midi act, and having just 4 channels don't cut it.

so, should i use a preset(besides 00) on channels 1/2, or should i use the channels 3/4, which have much less control?

signed, anxious

Hi Groucho,
Hmmm. You could go either way. My recommendation is to use channels 3 and 4 from a 1/4" TS connection from the Mackie 3204. If you find that you are having a noise problem then run 1/4" TRS to XLR connections to 20dB IMP PAD (or equivalent DI box with pad) then into Channels 1 and 2. Let us know if that works out for you.

Groucho,

Have you been working straight stereo? Do you want to continue with the same mixer setup?

You can do that with or without the presets, probably would need to do some experimentig to see what works for multiple instruments and what doesn't. If you set them to 00 they are flat but you still have control with the remote.

If you search through the forum you will find examples of folks using the PAS both ways.

You might find that you want to run some things direct and others thru the mixer.

It won't hurt anything to try the presets, see what sounds good to you.

There is a list of the new presets at the top of page one of this thread, along with a short commentary about them. That might help you decide where to experiment first.

Have fun, Oldghm

Good point Oldghm. Groucho definitely wants to evaluate his instrumentation to see if he can use any presets. Presets are important to consider.

As promised, here are some cuts from Cliff's Spectral Identification disc. Personally, there have been a few key people here at Bose who have helped broaden my listening capabilities by teaching me how and what to listen to. Cliff is definitely one of those persons who have helped me tune my senses. I hope these tracks are as helpful to you as they were to me. In addition, also consider the audio ear training course from Dave Moulton called Golden Ears. Although it's much more catered to the intricacies of recording music, it's very helpful in general (BTW it’s a lengthy 8 discs I think). Here goes with Cliff’s recordings...

Male voice, 12dB boost, all 10 octaves, rapid play (1,070 KB, MP3)
Male voice, 12dB boost, all 10 octaves, rapid play, general descriptors (354 KB, MP3)
Male voice, 12dB boost, all 10 octaves, rapid play, frequencies called out (375 KB, MP3)

Female voice comparison, original then 12dB boost, all 10 octaves (2,070 KB, MP3)
Female voice, 12dB boost, rapid play, all 10 octaves (521 KB, MP3)

Pop synth tune, 12dB boost, 10 octaves (3,231 KB, MP3)
Pop synth tune, 12dB boost, 10 octaves, rapid play (1,073 KB, MP3)

Orchestral, 12dB boost, 10 octaves (3,371 KB, MP3)
Orchestral, 12dB boost, 10 octaves, rapid play, 1st 4 measures (1,180 KB, MP3)

These are HQ VBR MP3 recordings. For PC I recommend Winamp for playback software.

edit - new location for downloaded files (note: no need to download again - just moved to a different server)


EDIT: the "new" server noted above (March 23, 2005) was retired.

You can hear these recordings in the wiki

Spectral Identification

If anyone has the last one (Orchestral, 12dB boost, 10 octaves, rapid play, 1st 4 measures (1,180 KB, MP3) please send me a private message. Thanks

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ST,

Hi Kyle,

Thanks for posting these.

I was able to download them and have started on the journey of how to identify those odd, outta whack things that make music seem less (or more) than it should.

thanks for the suggestions guys

Thanks for posting these, Kyle. And thanks to Cliff for the quick course in listening and terminology. Very educational and helpful both for future discussion purposes and problem solving. The "air" is beyond these old ears, at least through my new Triports, but I get the picture on everything else.

Larry

Thanks Cliff and Kyle, for the crash course. Thanks also to Tom for the chart - all very useful tools. As I was writing each of the ten words into their proper octave range (on Tom's handy chart that I printed out) it occured to me...not only will my band have a great basis for learning to communicate about the audio spectrum, but now we've got a darn good start on describing our headcold symptoms to each other as well.

The punchy, chesty, honky, nasal, spitty so you can rest medicine.

LOL!

I have a better chart with orchestral instruments & voices in a file somewhere. I'll see if I can find it & post it.

guys, i downloaded the new updates and followed the intructions to a T.

everything loaded in perfectly, and i tried out the new presets.

I particularly wanted to use #85, for miking an acoustic piano. I have a Kawai KG-3c 6'1" 1979 piano using a Shure beta 58.

i gotta say the difference was staggering. i can't wait to use another mic (Beta 58) in conjunction with the first one.

excellent presets. great job, guys-at-bose.
:-)

Hi Cliff!

I wanted to ask about this:

quote:

---

6. For drums, we added the new D6 Audix, very nice, punchy. 76 and 77 are for a pair of 57’s and a pair of wideband electrets connected out of phase. These are placed on either side of the snare, below the cymbals but above the upper drum heads. This gives us a very good signal because of proximity and cancels long bass wavelengths like bass guitar, so they aren’t re-broadcast by the drum “overheads”. Want more hihat?; Move the mic towards the hihat (and so on). Like all good mic technique, the fewer, the better. This also allows a drummer to have a quick setup. It does require a Y-jack as follows: Male xlr into a pair of female xlr’s, one of which has pins 2 and 3 reversed. Try it out. Beats all the complication of 12 mics, submixer, ect. (ewwww). We have been using this setup in our Linemen shows since they started and havn’t wanted to change it.

---

Any challenges with the special cable - "pins 2 and 3 reversed" when using condenser mics and phantom power?

Thanks

quote:

---

Shrill (4000 Hz, the most annoying octave to be accented)

---

Cliff, I would have gotten more out of this if we could agree upon your usage of the word "annoying..."

Seriously, I would pay for a DVD recording of one of your courses. This is something I am very interested in, and I would like to see just how much of this I am still able to distinguish. I have not a small amount of tinnitus in both ears from almost 20 years of very loud playing standing next to the drums in generally confined areas, namely small stages in clubs in the "Holiday Inn" circuit all over the country. That's one of the reasons I got into quieter "acoustic" music 15 years ago and the PAS this past year.

Thanks for all your work on the PAS and your willingness to share your knowledge here with us.