[simplefi]

can i plug the trasducer to the behrinher audio interface?

No, you must hook it up to an amp.

 

[reter]

No, you must hook it up to an amp.

Can i still use hi fi cable+asio4all while using voicemeeter? i hope there will be not much delay

 

[Brandon7s]

That's the one I'm using-compared to other low cost transducers, I found that the Clark is lacking in low bass output. It only starts generating output above 30Hz but the tradeoff is that it goes up to 800Hz which I found to be a decent range for audio purposes. As for amps, any appropriate speaker amp will work and you only need one channel (for a single transducer). Alternatively you can use an old receiver, try cheap a class D amp or even get a subwoofer plate amp.

Ah, for some reason I thought you were using the Clark model that is a step up from this one, which I believe is more than double the price. I'll definitely go with this particular model then since it works so well for you. Now just to look into how to mount to my chair, since it's a fairly ordinary office chair and not exactly made for home theater or anything!

 

[reter]

Ah, for some reason I thought you were using the Clark model that is a step up from this one, which I believe is more than double the price. I'll definitely go with this particular model then since it works so well for you. Now just to look into how to mount to my chair, since it's a fairly ordinary office chair and not exactly made for home theater or anything!

let me know if the 7.1 virtualization works, also can voicemeeter set a low pass filter? i want somehow control the frequency output of the trasducer

 

[Brandon7s]

let me know if the 7.1 virtualization works, also can voicemeeter set a low pass filter? i want somehow control the frequency output of the trasducer

Well, I ended up at a kind of dead-end on this project, I'm afraid. I don't have a suitable chair for mounting a transducer. I'm considering buying a new one since my current chair isn't all that ergonomic and this would be a good excuse to upgrade, but I'm going to have to put this on hold until I get that sorted out first.

 

[reter]

Well, I ended up at a kind of dead-end on this project, I'm afraid. I don't have a suitable chair for mounting a transducer. I'm considering buying a new one since my current chair isn't all that ergonomic and this would be a good excuse to upgrade, but I'm going to have to put this on hold until I get that sorted out first.

Actually, i'm planning to mount a buttkicker LFE mini with some screws under the chair, also some antivibrant rubber between the seat and the piston to get more efficiency, but before that i want to optimize my hrir

 

[simplefi]

Well, I ended up at a kind of dead-end on this project, I'm afraid. I don't have a suitable chair for mounting a transducer. I'm considering buying a new one since my current chair isn't all that ergonomic and this would be a good excuse to upgrade, but I'm going to have to put this on hold until I get that sorted out first.

I know I've seen other transducers (buttkicker?) that are meant to mount to office chairs and include a clamp for the center post. Since you can set custom filters in voicemeeter I've been wanting to experiment with whether a low pass or full range transducer is better with HRIRs. Running the transducer full range means that the above-bass audible sound it generates could possibly interfere with open-back headphone imaging. This doesnt seem to be the case with unprocessed headphone listening but for HRIR I need to nail the measurement process before I can test this scenario.

Ironically my best measurement was one of the very first few I ever did. I have since removed the wings from my Sound Professionals mics and have been experimenting with different mic placement in the ear. I have not been able to reproduce or even get close to that early measurement and can't figure out why. Despite trying different mic placements, the results all sound same-ish and there isnt as much variability as I expected. These latest results all sound like a really good crossfeed filter that give you a large open headstage. My initial measurement on the other hand sounds like I am listening to a pair of not-so-great speakers. But the fact that it can fool my brain into thinking that mediocre sound is coming from -over there- is kind of mind blowing. I just haven't been able to get anything close to this result so I am wondering if the mics being held in place with the wings was a factor.

 

[lowdown]

I know I've seen other transducers (buttkicker?) that are meant to mount to office chairs and include a clamp for the center post. Since you can set custom filters in voicemeeter I've been wanting to experiment with whether a low pass or full range transducer is better with HRIRs. Running the transducer full range means that the above-bass audible sound it generates could possibly interfere with open-back headphone imaging. This doesnt seem to be the case with unprocessed headphone listening but for HRIR I need to nail the measurement process before I can test this scenario.

Ironically my best measurement was one of the very first few I ever did. I have since removed the wings from my Sound Professionals mics and have been experimenting with different mic placement in the ear. I have not been able to reproduce or even get close to that early measurement and can't figure out why. Despite trying different mic placements, the results all sound same-ish and there isnt as much variability as I expected. These latest results all sound like a really good crossfeed filter that give you a large open headstage. My initial measurement on the other hand sounds like I am listening to a pair of not-so-great speakers. But the fact that it can fool my brain into thinking that mediocre sound is coming from -over there- is kind of mind blowing. I just haven't been able to get anything close to this result so I am wondering if the mics being held in place with the wings was a factor.

I have Sound Professional mics and also cut off the wings because they were making maintaining the placement during recording very tricky. I glued foam ear plugs onto the backs of the mics and that totally solved the problem, so the mics stayed in position. I ended up with lots of BRIRs from multiple recording sessions and combinations of Impulcifer command line options. Most are just ok, with various sonic issues. Just a few are truly astonishing, and to my ears virtually perfect. Of course ears vary, but my experience is the wings on those mics are not needed to get ideal results.

 

[reter]

Doesn't the wing help to wear the mics in the same position multiple times? i noticed that with foam you can't wear them the same position so the measurements get slight changes evey time

 

[lowdown]

Doesn't the wing help to wear the mics in the same position multiple times? i noticed that with foam you can't wear them the same position so the measurements get slight changes evey time

Not my experience. I had much more variation and movement of the mic position during and between measurements with the wings than with them cut off and foam ear plugs glued to the backs. But I imagine the wings could work fine in some ears. Also, I can't see a reason why you couldn't glue ear plugs on the back and leave the wings on as well. If you use something like silicone caulk, which stays flexible, to glue the ear plugs they could be removed without causing any damage to the mics. So could be tried both ways.

 

[Brandon7s]

I know I've seen other transducers (buttkicker?) that are meant to mount to office chairs and include a clamp for the center post. Since you can set custom filters in voicemeeter I've been wanting to experiment with whether a low pass or full range transducer is better with HRIRs. Running the transducer full range means that the above-bass audible sound it generates could possibly interfere with open-back headphone imaging. This doesnt seem to be the case with unprocessed headphone listening but for HRIR I need to nail the measurement process before I can test this scenario.

Ironically my best measurement was one of the very first few I ever did. I have since removed the wings from my Sound Professionals mics and have been experimenting with different mic placement in the ear. I have not been able to reproduce or even get close to that early measurement and can't figure out why. Despite trying different mic placements, the results all sound same-ish and there isnt as much variability as I expected. These latest results all sound like a really good crossfeed filter that give you a large open headstage. My initial measurement on the other hand sounds like I am listening to a pair of not-so-great speakers. But the fact that it can fool my brain into thinking that mediocre sound is coming from -over there- is kind of mind blowing. I just haven't been able to get anything close to this result so I am wondering if the mics being held in place with the wings was a factor.

A center-post mount would be great, I'll look into transducers with such an option.

It can take a LOT of tries to narrow down what works best for you. I have 108 separate measurements that I ended up doing over a period of 3 months or so. My 66th measurement was good, but my 85th, 98th, and 103rd measurements are what I use on a regular basis. After the 85th most of them sounded fairly similar, I spent a lot of time trying different mic mountings and depths, as well as experimenting with distance and speaker location in the room. The thing that made the most difference was to remove the silicone housing of the Sound Professionals' mics I use and to glue them to foam earplugs that I trimmed in half, and then gluing the cables to the foam so that the capsules didn't tilt when the cable was pulled taught. Removing the housing to the capsules let me insert the mics deeper into the ear and then gluing the cable to prevent capsule tilt made the measurement variation between the left and right much less extreme. Without that, the right and left mics were getting radically different high-frequency results since one would tilt into the wall of the ear entrance and thus being blocked. Inserting the mics into each ear at roughly the same depth also helped keep the two sides more similarly matched in frequency response and I think rust makes a big difference in quality of the final HRIR.

I also tried inserting the mics deep into the ear without being attached to earplugs but I found those measurements to be highly inconsistent between left/right and they were also unusually bright, so I ended up going back to foam earplugs.

This is what gave me the best results, though I did trim down the length of the foam a bit in the final iteration to allow for deeper insertion:

Personally, using the wings was a pain in the butt for me. They made for inconsistent results and the localisation was poor, and the EQ profile was nowhere near as good as when inserted into the ear.

 

[morgin]

I’m trying to solder the side of the ear mics to something like a paper clip. Bending the paper clip so it fits around the ear like eye glasses and keeps the mic facing out but able to go further in. Maybe having the ear canal exposed and not blocked with foam might make a difference.

 

[simplefi]

Good to know that the wings aren't necessary to get good measurements. I was thinking that the extra silicone material was either holding the mic at a more favorable position just outside the ear canal or possibly damping the mic's FR. With the wings off, the round silicone casing is large enough to snugly sit flush inside my ear canal but no deeper. I've also made a foam backing that cups the mic. The foam sits in the ear canal and holds the mic protruding out.
I wonder if deeper insertion would help the measurements? I am a bit nervous to remove the mic from the silicone casing but this would be the only way for me to get a deeper fitting. Though I think I have plenty of mounting options to try as of now so I will keep trying to perfect it.

It can take a LOT of tries to narrow down what works best for you. I have 108 separate measurements that I ended up doing over a period of 3 months or so. My 66th measurement was good, but my 85th, 98th, and 103rd measurements are what I use on a regular basis.

Just curious for those with so many attempts, were you keeping everything consistent between each take, or were you intentionally altering variables? My initial goal is to nail a simple stereo BRIR-no room compensation, EQ, balance, or any of that just to keep the number of variables to the bare minimum. Once I get that down, then I can tweak the other stuff. My seating and speaker position are constant so the only thing I'm changing is channel levels and mic placement. But how many takes do you do for a given mic placement before deciding it's no good and trying a different placement?

I've also experimented with different mic gains and channel levels but results were inconclusive. My thinking was that a high volume would definitely change things. For open-back headphones, a high volume would mean that one ear would pick up the sound from the other ear cup, but this isn't accounted for in the headphone compensation. For speakers, a high volume would excite the room more and have stronger reflections and longer reverb trails. Initial measurements seemed to not vary too much as long as the SNR was acceptable.

 

[Brandon7s]

Just curious for those with so many attempts, were you keeping everything consistent between each take, or were you intentionally altering variables?

I made so many measurements because I wanted to try out every idea I could think of: with and without silicone housing and wings, with and without being attached to foam earplugs, different depths, different distances from the speakers, different speaker placement in the room, different preamp gain, different speaker volumes, different EQ correction on the speaker output, etc. If I could think of a variation, I tried it. Mostly just because I was curious about the effect they'd have on the results but sometimes the variarions turned out great and so I'd stick with them.

I found that loudness didn't matter all that much except for exasperating room resonance issues so I ended up settling on volume that was only a little louder than my typical listening levels, and I EQd my speakers to make the troublesome room nodes less of an issue. I also tried two different pairs of Sound Professional mics - the non-Master series pair and then later on the Master-series version.

One of the factors that made the most difference was distance to speakers. Too far and I found it too high in reverberation and less detail, too close and it sounded harsh and was very rough to get a balanced HRIR in the left and right channels and the highs were exaggerated. I think a distance of about 5 feet from the monitors is what I found to be a good compromise. The other big factor was keeping the depth in each ear as similar to each other as possible, while still being deep enough to capture a goal d EQ profile for localization. Removing the silicone housing made getting increased depth possible, everything before that was decent but not great.

I can get fairly consistent results with new measurements after nailing down what worked well after trying a ton of variation.

 

[lowdown]

Good to know that the wings aren't necessary to get good measurements. I was thinking that the extra silicone material was either holding the mic at a more favorable position just outside the ear canal or possibly damping the mic's FR. With the wings off, the round silicone casing is large enough to snugly sit flush inside my ear canal but no deeper. I've also made a foam backing that cups the mic. The foam sits in the ear canal and holds the mic protruding out.
I wonder if deeper insertion would help the measurements? I am a bit nervous to remove the mic from the silicone casing but this would be the only way for me to get a deeper fitting. Though I think I have plenty of mounting options to try as of now so I will keep trying to perfect it.



Just curious for those with so many attempts, were you keeping everything consistent between each take, or were you intentionally altering variables? My initial goal is to nail a simple stereo BRIR-no room compensation, EQ, balance, or any of that just to keep the number of variables to the bare minimum. Once I get that down, then I can tweak the other stuff. My seating and speaker position are constant so the only thing I'm changing is channel levels and mic placement. But how many takes do you do for a given mic placement before deciding it's no good and trying a different placement?

I've also experimented with different mic gains and channel levels but results were inconclusive. My thinking was that a high volume would definitely change things. For open-back headphones, a high volume would mean that one ear would pick up the sound from the other ear cup, but this isn't accounted for in the headphone compensation. For speakers, a high volume would excite the room more and have stronger reflections and longer reverb trails. Initial measurements seemed to not vary too much as long as the SNR was acceptable.

Here's the foam backs, and placement I used for my measurements. I didn't intentionally try different placements.

My foam earplugs are a bit longer than needed, so I pushed them in as far as I could to get the positioning in the photo. It's definitely not deep into the ear canal. I wish I knew what variables accounted for the differences I hear between BRIR measurements, but I really have no idea. I only did a few speaker measurements with the speakers about 6-7 ft in front of me, and I only did one room measurement with the UMIK-1 positioned where my ears were for the speaker measurements. Some BRIRs just sound much better than others. With the best ones the spatial and sound aspects of imaging, soundstage, balance and clarity are beyond belief. I feel like I am at last hearing every bit of the precise spatial presence in the recordings arrayed in front of me. I did use some command line balance options, as well as a tweaked Harmon curve, and I have a few EQ tweaks in HeSuVi. The result is so good that the only limitation on recreating ideal musical virtual reality is the quality of the recordings. The only other factor that might help with the illusion in my setup is I listen siting in my normal speaker listening position, so the visual aspect of hearing is being reinforced.