Fundraiser launched to help displaced Universal Audio employees
Several employees at Universal Audio have lost their homes and all of their belongings in the California wildfires. Help them get back on their feet...
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Several employees at Universal Audio have lost their homes and all of their belongings in the California wildfires. Help them get back on their feet...
Grunge pioneer teams up with Native Instruments to produce hard-hitting drum instrument.
Big Reds house twin 10-inch woofers and offer low-frequency extension down to 28Hz.
The Haas Effect is a psychoacoustical effect named after Helmut Haas who first described it in 1949 and clarified his findings in 1951, although it was actually discovered by Lothar Cremer the previous year and called 'the law of the first wavefront'. It is also known as the Precedence Effect which is a far more descriptive term.
If one sound wave arrives at the ear shortly after another, the two are heard as a single sound, with the first arrival being used to determine the perceived sound location for the merged sound, even if the later sound is louder. For simple transient sounds, the time window for the two sounds to merge is below 5ms, but for more complex sounds like speech it can be as much as 40ms. A longer gap between the two sounds is usually perceived as an echo.
It is this precedence effect that allows accurate sound localisation in reverberant locations, since only the direct sound determines the perceived source location, and the later reverberant reflections are merged into the first sound.
However, if the second sound is significantly louder than the first it can become dominant in the perception of source location. It was determined that for time differences of up to 30ms, the first arrival determined the perceived source location even if the second arrival was as much as 10dB louder. Only when the second arrival was around 15dB louder did it become dominant in determining the source location.
“Most portable EWI to date" features built-in speaker, battery operation and 200 onboard sounds.
To help SOS readers, other musicians and studio personnel during the COVID-19 lockdown, we've launched a FREE Replica Digital Magazine.
The legendary London studios have acquired long-running mastering house Alchemy, with the latter facility being rebranded Alchemy Mastering At AIR.
Your chance to win this truly superb orchestral sample library from Spitfire Audio, worth £1697$2200.
The updated portable sample player adds a USB port for sample and project management, assignable MIDI channels, expanded memory and more.
New consoles combine advanced analogue features, such as illuminated buttons and mute groups, with powerful digital signal processing and effects.
DC Coupling (sometimes also known as AC-Blocking) is an electronic engineering arrangement that allows both AC (eg. audio) and DC (eg. control voltages) to pass into or out of an amplifier or other circuit.
AC-coupled equipment effectively has high-pass filters at each connection, and these affect the phase response slightly, so some designers prefer to omit those and provide DC-coupled connections instead. The danger, though, is that any DC present on the connections can potentially cause damage and incorrect operation of connected equipment, as well as loud clicks or pops when making or breaking connections. An increasing mumber of audio interfaces now provide DC-coupled inputs and outputs to enable them to be used with synthesizer control voltages, which are effectively DC signals.
AC Coupling (sometimes also known as DC-Blocking) is an electronic engineering arrangement that allows an audio (or any other alternating) signal to be passed through a connection while simultaneously preventing any DC bias or offset voltage on the source signal from getting through. In other words, AC coupling rejects any DC components within a signal, passing only the AC elements. The simplest form of AC coupling is a series capacitor in the signal line and, in effect, it forms a high-pass filter with a very low turnover frequency (<1Hz).
AC coupling is employed widely in audio circuitry to isolate the DC operating condition of one stage of circuitry from affecting the next, and to protect parts of an audio chain from the potentially damaging effects of DC voltages.
Tonaderspeisung Power — more commonly called Tonader, T-power or A-B power — is a largely obsolete microphone powering system which was widely used on portable battery-powered audio equipment in the 1960s and '70s before the technically superior phantom powering system became more popular. T-Power operates with 9-12V DC with the positive rail connected to the hot side (pin 2) of a balanced audio connection, and the negative rail on the cold side (pin 3).
One of the potential weaknesses of T-Powering is that any power supply noise is inherently added directly to the wanted audio signal. T-Power is broadly similar in concept to the Plug-in or Bias Power arangement used on unbalanced consumer electret microphones, but with a higher supply voltage.
Plug-in (or Bias) Power is a method of providing power to the internal electronics of electret microphones, and is commonly used on consumer equipment. Plug-in Power is only ever provided on 3.5mm mini-jack input sockets as found on domestic sound recorders, 'phones, laptops etc. The format provides a low DC voltage of typically between 3 and 5V, with the positive side of the power supply connected to the unbalanced signal connection(s) in the mini-jack socket. So the tip connection for a mono input, or tip and ring connections for a stereo input. The negative return is via the sleeve connection.
Phantom Power is a standardised professional method of providing power to the electronics of some types of microphones via a balanced XLR connection. The relevant standard was first conceived in the early 1970s, and is now recognised as IEC 61938:2018. Several variations of phantom power are detailed in the document.
Most professional systems operate with a nominal supply voltage of +48V DC, although there is an acceptable tolerance range of +/-4V (ie. 44 to 52V). This arrangement is described as the 'P48' format, and the phantom power supply is connected with the positive side going to each of the two balanced audio lines via individual 6k8 current-limiting resistors. The negative side is returned via the cable screen. In this configuration the maximum current available to the microphone is 10mA, providing up to 170mW of power. Most microphones draw around 4mA (or less) of current, but some models require more and a few need the full 10mA .
Battery-powered equipment often uses the P12 format, which uses a 12V power supply with 680 Ohm feed resistors allowing up to 15mA and 100mW of power. A newer addition to the specification, called P12L (low-power), uses 3k3 resistors to give 4mA and just 22mW of power.
At the other end of the scale is the new SP48 variation which uses the 48V supply voltage but connects via 2.2K feed resistors allowing up to 22mA and 520mW of power.
Although rare, some manufacturers choose to provide non-standard supply voltages, such as 15 or 24V — something which seems prevalent on budget, compact, active PA loudspeakers. Some microphones are very tolerant of the supply voltage (many AKG mics can accept anything from 9-52V, for example), while others won't function correctly if the supply voltage falls too low.
Other microphone powering schemes are also available, including 'Plug-in Power' for consumer electret and lavalier mics, and Tonader (or A-B) power for battery-powered legacy professional equipment.
Music Expo, in association with Sound On Sound magazine, is announcing a virtual summit series with three live events to inspire and empower music makers: Aug 21, Sep 11, Oct 09.
A 'Mix-minus' is, as the term implies, a full programme mix but with one contributing source missing from the mix. Most commonly used in broadcast applications, the mix-minus feed is used as the return (foldback) monitoring signal to a remote contributor. The idea is that the remote contributor needs to hear contributions from all other sources being mixed into the programme, but must not receive their own contribution coming back as that could result in howlrounds and confusion due to transmission delays. In programmes involving multiple remote contributors, each would need to receive its own independently generated Mix-Minus signal.
A Mix-Minus signal can be generated in several different ways, but this term normally refers specifically to a technique whereby the remote contributor is sent the full programme mix with a second version of the remote contributor's signal added in opposite polarity, thus cancelling out the remote contribution. Another technique is to use the equivalent of an Aux bus which receives contributions from every source except the remote contributor. This approach is normally described as 'N-1' or 'Clean-feed' — but the results are exactly the same.