[musicreo]

great! i will try this command tomorrow, this will make my life so much easier!

I would suggest to copy the activate.bat file and rename it (e.g activate_mod.bat) and then add all commands you need for your measurement at the end of the activate_mod.bat file. You can start your modified measurement with "venv\Scripts\activate_mod"

This way you could also add speaker notifications. For example I had one version where I just played a wav file ("next speaker front left") before the Sweep for this speaker starts.

 

[reter]

Done some measurements today, seems like the more deep i go with the plugs more muffled the audio is, maybe the frequencies bounces when they enter in the ear canal?

Also, can someone explain me more accurately what is the "headroom" and why lower is better? if i pump my speaker to give me less headroom i get more reverb than actual quality from the source, why do i need to record those frequencies if i can actually lower my speaker and record the source without risking to get the mics actually record more bounced reverb than the source itself?

 

[simplefi]

For Impulcifer, lower headroom just means your signal to noise ratio is higher. You want your intended signal (sweep) to be as high as possible relative to the noise (ambient, background, hiss from equipment, etc) and turning up the volume and/or gain are both ways to achieve this. But as you have discovered, if at some point the volume is -too- high and you are getting poor results, it is ok to turn it down as long as the SNR is acceptable. Personally I use the speaker volume than I listen to so that the results can reflect that, and then I adjust gain to increase my SNR. Having a high headroom in Impulcifer isn't necessarily "bad" as long as the noise isn't showing up in the results.

 

[castleofargh]

Done some measurements today, seems like the more deep i go with the plugs more muffled the audio is, maybe the frequencies bounces when they enter in the ear canal?

Also, can someone explain me more accurately what is the "headroom" and why lower is better? if i pump my speaker to give me less headroom i get more reverb than actual quality from the source, why do i need to record those frequencies if i can actually lower my speaker and record the source without risking to get the mics actually record more bounced reverb than the source itself?

As said, because of ambient noises. I personally like to listen to music quietly(true for speakers and headphone. If the room is reasonably quiet I'll easily listen at or below 60dB SPL. But with noises in the room in the 30 to 40dB(when it feels quiet!!!!!!), Imagine measuring like that and getting noises mixed in with the secondary cues(reverb) as soon as 20dB below the loudest signal... That's not a good idea at all.
But of course if I push my speakers near the max, I get stuff shaking in the house, the mics distort like crazy, and the result while vastly different, is just as bad.
Again that's why from the get go I told you that sadly you should try a bunch of things and mostly rely on how the resulting convolution feels to you. You don't want to distort anything, you don't want the signal to clip anywhere. Of course you don't want any of that, but if you run away too far in the other direction, you will inevitably bring in other issues you also don't want. This is compromise paradise, so, good juggling to you.

 

[reter]

For Impulcifer, lower headroom just means your signal to noise ratio is higher. You want your intended signal (sweep) to be as high as possible relative to the noise (ambient, background, hiss from equipment, etc) and turning up the volume and/or gain are both ways to achieve this. But as you have discovered, if at some point the volume is -too- high and you are getting poor results, it is ok to turn it down as long as the SNR is acceptable. Personally I use the speaker volume than I listen to so that the results can reflect that, and then I adjust gain to increase my SNR. Having a high headroom in Impulcifer isn't necessarily "bad" as long as the noise isn't showing up in the results.

Thank you guys

also, can i see the SNR somewhere in the impulcifer plot? how can i know if there's too much noise? i was not prepared to the sensitivity the master series has, so i'm still tweaking the gain

 

[sander99]

Done some measurements today, seems like the more deep i go with the plugs more muffled the audio is

Do you measure a new headphone compensation using the same mic placement you used for the speakers each time? That is what you should do ideally, and certainly for radically different mic placements.

 

[musicreo]

For Impulcifer, lower headroom just means your signal to noise ratio is higher.

The headroom is just the amplitude peak in the frequency response curve. It is assumed that the SNR is better with lower headroom but this is only true if your noise does not increase the same amount like your boosted signal.

 

[morgin]

Do you guys measure your ears incase the hearing is different? I mean like the eye prescription, where one eye is more dominant than the other. Would that make any difference to our HRIR?

 

[Brandon7s]

Do you guys measure your ears incase the hearing is different? I mean like the eye prescription, where one eye is more dominant than the other. Would that make any difference to our HRIR?

Probably, I know my left and right hearing isn't identical since there's physical differences at the ear-entrance, but those should be at least partially taken into account by Impulicfer's measurements. Without having mics that can be placed into the ear canal I don't see how one would reliably measure the difference. I've tried doing tests by ear but the generated EQ curves haven't been useful for me.

 

[castleofargh]

Thank you guys

also, can i see the SNR somewhere in the impulcifer plot? how can i know if there's too much noise? i was not prepared to the sensitivity the master series has, so i'm still tweaking the gain

The main problem you're going to have is that you probably lack the means to calibrate your setup(tell it that a given sound is XXX dB loud). Also, most non specialized mics will show low level noise no matter what(most are unreliable below 30dB).
But if you're just trying to get some idea of the SNR(between whatever recorded noise and signal), you can do that with any app on a cellphone or with any free "RTA"(real time analyzer) software.
I'm used to doing almost everything with REW(Room EQ Wizard) but I'm not sure I would recommend starting with that it's made to do many other stuff and does have a learning curve. while any random spectrum thingy can show you a ballpark magnitude for noise and another one when you send a test tone without you having to learn anything about anything.

Do you guys measure your ears incase the hearing is different? I mean like the eye prescription, where one eye is more dominant than the other. Would that make any difference to our HRIR?

AFAIK, with the exception of clear anomaly like really massive hearing impairment, your brain will simply adapt to whatever is the norm in your daily life. Only fairly rapid changes will feel weird instead of just being progressively accepted as the new reference by the brain. Say you tend to have a resting position where you tilt your head to the left a little. After a few weeks, your brain might just accept it as how looking straight sounds. Now you make a calibration and you carefully look straight for the center look angle, and if as soon as you relax in a chair you tilt to the left without thinking, chances are that the simulation will feel like the sound is off center. Not because it is, but because your usual orientation when looking at something isn't straight.
I probably took the weirdest example, but I like those ^_^, and it's a relatively rare but real thing. Some people end up trying to compensate an imbalance but they soon discover that using simple panning pot(making one channel louder) doesn't really remove the feeling they have. Only to find out by accident or because someone like myself proposed a weird example for the lolz, that what they need to feel centered audio is a tiny delay in one channel(most likely caused by some postural habit that the brain now calls centered).
My long winded point is, if you've had very different ear shapes for a long time, How they change sound is how you think natural well balanced sound is. Same with small to moderate hearing loss. We rapidly adapt if given the time. IMO, outside of what might count as impairment, I'm of the opinion that you should only care to simulate the sound as it's normally coming at your ear, and let your brain do what it's used to do.

 

[reter]

The main problem you're going to have is that you probably lack the means to calibrate your setup(tell it that a given sound is XXX dB loud). Also, most non specialized mics will show low level noise no matter what(most are unreliable below 30dB).
But if you're just trying to get some idea of the SNR(between whatever recorded noise and signal), you can do that with any app on a cellphone or with any free "RTA"(real time analyzer) software.
I'm used to doing almost everything with REW(Room EQ Wizard) but I'm not sure I would recommend starting with that it's made to do many other stuff and does have a learning curve. while any random spectrum thingy can show you a ballpark magnitude for noise and another one when you send a test tone without you having to learn anything about anything.



AFAIK, with the exception of clear anomaly like really massive hearing impairment, your brain will simply adapt to whatever is the norm in your daily life. Only fairly rapid changes will feel weird instead of just being progressively accepted as the new reference by the brain. Say you tend to have a resting position where you tilt your head to the left a little. After a few weeks, your brain might just accept it as how looking straight sounds. Now you make a calibration and you carefully look straight for the center look angle, and if as soon as you relax in a chair you tilt to the left without thinking, chances are that the simulation will feel like the sound is off center. Not because it is, but because your usual orientation when looking at something isn't straight.
I probably took the weirdest example, but I like those ^_^, and it's a relatively rare but real thing. Some people end up trying to compensate an imbalance but they soon discover that using simple panning pot(making one channel louder) doesn't really remove the feeling they have. Only to find out by accident or because someone like myself proposed a weird example for the lolz, that what they need to feel centered audio is a tiny delay in one channel(most likely caused by some postural habit that the brain now calls centered).
My long winded point is, if you've had very different ear shapes for a long time, How they change sound is how you think natural well balanced sound is. Same with small to moderate hearing loss. We rapidly adapt if given the time. IMO, outside of what might count as impairment, I'm of the opinion that you should only care to simulate the sound as it's normally coming at your ear, and let your brain do what it's used to do.

i can let my brain adapt to everything, i know that, but if i think about what i'm using now thanks to impulcifer i can't just look behind and turn back to the generic hrirs i was used (my brain was used) for a lot of years, that's why even tho my brain is already used with this hrir i made, i'm still looking for a room for improvement


anyway i have two questions:

1- there are many kind of reverbs in our life if i think about my room, in a cinema, in a parking; they all sounds different... and the reverb is the only way we can actually locate a source far away from us... then what's the most neutral reverb? i know the brain gets used to that as well, but if i think about hearing the voice of someone or listen to a song under a reverb then what's the best reverb to get the best neutral audio and spaciality?

i really don't know if it is a dumb question but i'm curious

2- what if i measure my front left and front right channels with 35-40 degrees to get a wider feeling?

 

[Brandon7s]

anyway i have two questions:

1- there are many kind of reverbs in our life if i think about my room, in a cinema, in a parking; they all sounds different... and the reverb is the only way we can actually locate a source far away from us... then what's the most neutral reverb? i know the brain gets used to that as well, but if i think about hearing the voice of someone or listen to a song under a reverb then what's the best reverb to get the best neutral audio and spaciality?

i really don't know if it is a dumb question but i'm curious

2- what if i measure my front left and front right channels with 35-40 degrees to get a wider feeling?

1. It is my opinion that the best reverb is the reverb that matches the room that we can see. Our sight alters our expections of what we hear, and when the two are dramatically mismatched then we are no longer convinced that what we are hearing is real. Our eyes override our ears, so to speak. If the goal of using a personalized BRIR is to believe that we aren't listening to headphones anymore but instead are listening to speakers, then room reverb that matches our visual expectations is of high importance. I'm a hobbyist musician and a bit of a reverb fanatic and I've experimented a lot with placing high quality reverb effects after a BRIR that has most of the reverb removed via Impulcifer's reverb management. It's super cool sounding to get the sound of being in a concert hall or a large chamber, but its doesn't trick my brain into thinking that I'm literally hearing those spaces as if I was there. When I use shorter reverb types like small chambers and medium to small rooms, then it gets a lot more convincing.

You can mess with the overall tonality of the reverb without breaking that illusion though. Our eyes don't generally tell us how much bass/mid/treble we expect to hear, not unless we are very used to how a room sounds and the construction of it sets specific expectations (such as a large metal box like a cargo container),but reverb length, onset delay, and to a lesser extent even diffusion characteristics are all things that our brain is VERY good at infering based on visual data. If you stray too far from that visual expectation then what you hear is an unnatural reverb. That's been my experience.

2. My speakers are at an 85 degree angle and honestly it's not all that much different sounding from a 60 degree angle, which is the typical recommendation for studio monitors. It's difficult to notice the difference in width when in the presence of a strong phantom center.

 

[sander99]

i can let my brain adapt to everything, i know that, but if i think about what i'm using now thanks to impulcifer i can't just look behind and turn back to the generic hrirs i was used (my brain was used) for a lot of years, that's why even tho my brain is already used with this hrir i made, i'm still looking for a room for improvement

I think you are misinterpreting what @castleofargh was saying. What Impulcifer aims at is to re-produce the exact same sound going into your ears as would have gone into your ears when listening to real speakers. So reproduce exactly what your brain is used to (adapted to) with real life sounds. And with real life sounds your brain is used to all differences between your left and right ears. If you somehow compensated for those differences you would move away from what your brain is used to in real life, so you would move away form what sounds most real and natural to you. What you are talking about seems to be adapting to something that your brain is not used to in real life, like for example the sound of a generic hrir, or an imperfect hrir.

 

[reter]

another question!

I was thinking to switch from a JBL 308p to a 306p for a matter of portability, would this change the general acoustic results in my measurements? in all my measurements i get a big curve on bass frequencies, is that related to the bigger speaker in relation to my pretty small room?

 

[Brandon7s]

another question!

I was thinking to switch from a JBL 308p to a 306p for a matter of portability, would this change the general acoustic results in my measurements? in all my measurements i get a big curve on bass frequencies, is that related to the bigger speaker in relation to my pretty small room?

The difference between those two speakers would be very difficult to notice. I have both the 8 inch and 5 inch JBL LSR 1st gen speakers. The main advantage of the larger speakers is more volume and slightly more extended bass response. Both still roll off quite heavily at about 90hz though. [scratch that, that's just my room being bad]

The big bass curve you're hearing is almost certainly an artifact of the shape and size of your room, aka a room node.