[Moseph]

Originally Posted by Xomblies

you're doin it right now son

Yeah, you're definitely going to need to elaborate. I can't infer anything about my own statements: I made them, I know what I meant to say. Any subtext there I don't know about is on you.

Also, looks like some big happenings while I stepped away. This is gonna be long, since I'm late to the party...

Originally Posted by Xomblies

smaller sine waves don't travel as far son, mixing quiet (unless you're mixing in a bathroom the size of a closet) actually does make a difference. You can simulate acoustics on a computer all you want, but i'll speak from experience

"Smaller", by itself, doesn't mean anything in particular with respect to acoustics. Based on context, I'm assuming you're talking about "less energy." And yes, the distinction (and precision) is important here.

Originally Posted by ares

This is actually untrue. The room has the same influence proportional to the listening level at any volume. Most of the interactions within a room (reflections) are nearly (if not quite) linear systems, meaning that increasing or decreasing the listening level will increase or decrease the level of room sound by some proportionality constant relating to the materials within the room and its size.

Hold up, what about the Sabine Equation (as referenced in my copy of Kinsler*)? That's not a linear description. I was always under the impression that the "relatively" linear behavior was because most descriptions knocked out the higher-order behaviors on purpose to give a general idea of what the room would do (i.e., the non-linear stuff is actually important).


*Fundamentals of Acoustics, 4th Edition. Kinsler, et al. Wiley: 2004. My understanding is that this is the standard intro survey text (in one form or another), and that this has been the case for roughly 50 years or so.

Originally Posted by ares

Also, beware of mixing at loud volumes because the ear hears differently at different SPLs. See: Fletcher–Munson curves. You should mix at an average listening level (I mix at about 75-80 dB SPL) in order to keep this from affecting your mix too much. Typically, you will perceive 2-5 kHz as being louder at high SPLs relative to other frequencies.

Another big one is the dramatic change in the perception of bass frequency. I've always considered this change to be even more important, since most people will have a perceived boost at 2-5 kHz across the volume ranges (though the exact nature does change with volume).

Originally Posted by ares

Each reflection of sound within a room can be modeled using the equation:
...

Again, I'm wondering how relevant the non-linearities are in this instance. I've always thought of this behavior in the linear realm as well, but was under the impression that it became more vital in the higher frequencies.

Originally Posted by Xomblies

i think you're also overlooking the fact that we're not talking about a completely empty room here which is probably what you've been simulating. In the real world, most people in an "untreated" room often have other objects in the room...not to mention there are a lot of factors in building a room that come into play like what type of dryall, is there wallpaper, what about glass windows? are there curtains? what about crown molding? how tall is the room?, is it vaulted? so while i'm sure your impulse response simulations of completely empty rooms with walls made of math are accurate, You can usually trust your ears more than you can some bullshit some nerd pulled off of google.

I'd be inclined to give him a little more credit than that. That's all stuff that gets considered in the first week of reverberation calculation. I was worrying about that stuff in my Acoustics class and we only talked about it for about 3 class days (as would be expected in a general overview of acoustic phenomenon).

And the idea that you can learn the physical behavior of sound using nothing more than Google and no particular understanding of calculus and differential equations is pretty ludicrous. Even the easy version of acoustics hits on multivariate calculus and lots of phasor trigonometry.

Originally Posted by Xomblies

i'm pretty sure all acoustic treatment techs stopped using the flether munson principle some time ago, there are more up to date sound pressure theories...

Which one would you consider the "gold standard?" Part of the reason why there are lots of equal-loudness contours is because the measurements are pretty much always calculated directly from experimental results: the sampling pool has a big influence on the data in that regard. Nonetheless, his point was largely about how perception changes with volume, and all equal-loudness contours will show that particular relationship in roughly the same way.

Originally Posted by Xomblies

allow the reader to determine whether or not the person giving it knows what their doing rather than just what they're talking about.

Speaking of which, did you ever get an answer on the -24 dB standard for digital audio? I'd still like to look into that if possible.

Originally Posted by Convectuoso

I can't imagine why the fuck anyone in their sane/sober mind would want to put reverb over the whole mix?

Off the top of my head: very common on jazz records, very common on orchestral/symphonic/brass recordings, can be used to "sweeten" an album recorded in a dead acoustic space, often done with live recordings, often done to maintain cohesion through edits, can be used as a short-term special effect, and is very standard when you want to put the performance in a single virtual space. Keep in mind that "reverb" doesn't always just mean "artificial reverb."