CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, April 01, 2020

Can you match speakers through space and time?

www.sounddesignlive.com: What if I want to compare my speaker to your speaker to see if they are compatible? Is there any way to actually do an apples to apples comparison?

Hypothesis: Yes!

Let’s look at an example.

Is a PRX615M compatible with a PRX618S? I don’t have either. How will I find out?

1 comment:

Elliot Queale said...

This is a really interesting article that touches on the broader topic of using data from different sources and attempting to draw a conclusion. Now more than ever, we are confined to our own homes and personal equipment, and don't have the luxury of testing different setups. This article outlines the many challenges that can come from using incomplete data or worse, bad data. At a certain point during this article, I wondered if Nathan started going down the data rabbit hole just trying to get the phase offsets to line up without justification. At the end of the day, though, the measurements that were taken had so many sources of error and variance that there is almost no way to know what adjustments to make, or even if the adjustments made were correct. I think that what Nathan outlined is important for anyone, though, even if you're using the same preamp/speaker combo. Understanding where and why phase offsets exist, why some speakers might have different signal strengths at different frequencies, or even why one signal might be shifted is important. It seems like a lot of audio engineering might have to start happening this way, and it will certainly pose a challenge to even some more accomplished sound engineers