AES Section Meeting Reports

Pacific Northwest - September 22, 2012

Dave Tosti-Lane, Sound Design Area Head at Cornish College of the Arts, describes room acoustics analysis at PNW Sept. 2012 meeting

Meeting Topic: Understanding and Interpreting Audio Measurement Tools in a Real Room with a Real System or, What Is That Squiggly Line Trying to Tell Me and What Can I Do About It?

Speaker Name: Dave Tosti-Lane, Sound Design Area Head at Cornish College of the Arts

Meeting Location: Raisbeck Performance Hall at Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle WA

Summary

The PNW Section started its new season with a presentation of Rational Acoustics' SMAART v7 acoustical analysis software by incoming PNW chair Dave Tosti-Lane. Tosti-Lane is the Sound Design Area Head of Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts, and mere hours before had finished a comprehensive training seminar on SMAART in California. Some 12 AES members and 17 non-members attended the meeting, held on a Saturday afternoon at Cornish's Raisbeck Performance Hall in Seattle. The hall is a converted historic landmark building with interesting acoustic challenges.

Several different speaker boxes and configurations were set up previously for a Cornish teaching event, including small, large, hanging and even defective boxes. The SMAART v7 screens were shown on a projection screen. PNW Committee member Bob Smith provided additional instructional materials.

Dave explained and demonstrated the basics of using such a test system with live sound in mind, generating test signals such as pink noise, positioning a test microphone, and observing the time and frequency analysis. He also discussed and showed using multi-channel arrangements to have reference signals for coherence and phase analysis. Basic microphone calibration, spectrum and spectrogram/RTA modes, were also discussed. One demo had the audience move out of, and back into the seating area to see the analysis changes.

Dan Spore won the door prize of a SMAART T-shirt featuring the 7 Bad System Dwarves, Tubby, Muddy, Boxy, Honky, Barky, Edgy and Sibilant.

Written By: Gary Louie

More About Pacific Northwest Section