Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

Cool Shit

With the exciting delivery of the new PA system to Rat and the significant advantages and innovations over anything else I have ever heard or mixed on, I though maybe a peek at some other cool and exciting ideas outside the pro audio world, is in order.

Check out these new Michelin wheels known as the Tweel. Thank you Maija for the heads up on this one.

Even cooler, take a look at the video below:

Slipping over into some sound nerd speak, check out this speaker technology:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/woody_norris_invents_amazing_things.html is an interesting video and if you are curious enough search out more on ted.com like the Wii hacks. Thank you Grier.

Like everything in life, for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction, so to prevent my blog from becoming a black hole and consuming the universe, I have included a web page sent to me be the illustrious Dan Hadley:

http://www.nathanmarciniak.com/elemental/

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

Hey! MicroWedge 15 has been released and is now available. These are not much bigger han the MicroWedge 12's, louder and sound every bit as great and have considerably more low end capabilities.

I am heading off to EAW tomorrow to work on some new and exciting MicroWedge products as there are 3 more in the pipeline.

As for a tidbit of info on the K1 system, the LA-8 amps have limited but very specific internal EQ. Unlike trying to EQ a line array with a standard parametric, graphic or digital processor version thereof, the controllable parameters of the K1 EQ are linear phase, locked latency filters. This means you can EQ some elements in a line array without causing interference issues due to phase and time-error interactions between adjoining boxes.

In other words, do you know all that "frequency shading" that so many vendors have been implement without giving it a serious thought about ramifications? Like adding some high frequency EQ to the upper boxes or turning up down the horns in the bottom? Well, depending on the processor, adding that eq causes a phase shift, time shift or both in the HF. Most processors only cause a phase shift while a few cause a time shift as well. This phase shift is so drastic that it can easily be heard with a simple test.

Take a mono music signal and input it into your digi processor of choice. Bypass all EQ and all crossovers so you just get a full range signal. Using headphones, route output 1 to the left ear and output 2 to the right ear. Ok, both ears should sound identical. Now put a 30HZ high pass on one output but not the other. You should hear a shift in the centering of the sound. Almost as if the sound now has a diagonal center. Now try putting tiny amounts of delay on one ear or the other. You will be stunned by how accurately your ears can hear the even 1 millisecond.

OK, so what does this all mean? Well, just as your ears hear those subtle phase and time issues, adjoining line array boxes "hear" them as well and any differential in the time or phase will deteriorate the summation of adjacent boxes, cause unpredictability and reduce the consistency of coverage.

Ok, enough for now, I will try and offer a bit more insight into K1 system with each blog post.

Rock on!

Dave Rat