[jaakkopasanen]

@arksergo have you had a channel balance issues with your ear plug style mics?

 

[Dasm]

What about these mics ? https://ru.aliexpress.com/item/3290...&terminal_id=6da114871b834f97a495a3ab513237b9
Only 4x1.5 mm and can complete sits inside earchannel near drum

 

[arksergo]

@arksergo have you had a channel balance issues with your ear plug style mics?

No, I had not. I get very good result with first try.

 

[jaakkopasanen]

What about these mics ? https://ru.aliexpress.com/item/32904312556.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.749368cby4x4t5&algo_pvid=5afb3969-fdcb-411e-883d-34335637ddee&algo_expid=5afb3969-fdcb-411e-883d-34335637ddee-19&btsid=ac892c58-bb17-4192-b9ac-1769fda6effd&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0%2Csearchweb201602_6%2Csearchweb201603_55&dp=5c5295331d1312d8703126c31a2b4dff&dp=5c5295331d1312d8703126c31a2b4dff&af=843361&af=843361&cv=47843&cv=47843&afref=&afref=&mall_affr=pr3&mall_affr=pr3&aff_platform=aaf&cpt=1572976982385&sk=VnYZvQVf&aff_trace_key=0bfd625ee04d465d8629b786236c081d-1572976982385-02840-VnYZvQVf&terminal_id=6da114871b834f97a495a3ab513237b9
Only 4x1.5 mm and can complete sits inside earchannel near drum

There are no info about frequency response, sensitivity or noise.

No, I had not. I get very good result with first try.

Have you made more than one measurement. I'm wondering how reproducible your results are. I have one good stereo measurement with close to perfect stereo balance but it's really hard to reproduce this success with my mics.

I might cut open the hooks of my mics to take the capsule out and place it in an ear plug. That would be the fastest way for me to test my hypothesis.

 

[Dasm]

There are no info about frequency response, sensitivity or noise.


Have you made more than one measurement. I'm wondering how reproducible your results are. I have one good stereo measurement with close to perfect stereo balance but it's really hard to reproduce this success with my mics.

I might cut open the hooks of my mics to take the capsule out and place it in an ear plug. That would be the fastest way for me to test my hypothesis.

Freq responce is easy to compensate. I bought 5 pcs, will show you measurements later.

 

[arksergo]

Have you made more than one measurement

No, I measured once. I am going to do some additional measurements this weekend, wanna try to get big virtual room for movies and separate layout for 5.1 movies

 

[71 dB]

I tried electret mics Jecklin disc and ear mics, but it's not working. Signal to noise ratio is complete rubbish. Weird noises like ghost hunter gear! Useless! My first try with mics, so I probably made all the mistakes. Depressing.

Using this circuit and feeding Olympus LP-5 recorder ( I have tried both line in and mic connection). I don't know what is wrong. Would this help:

 

[johnn29]

There are no info about frequency response, sensitivity or noise.


Have you made more than one measurement. I'm wondering how reproducible your results are. I have one good stereo measurement with close to perfect stereo balance but it's really hard to reproduce this success with my mics.

I might cut open the hooks of my mics to take the capsule out and place it in an ear plug. That would be the fastest way for me to test my hypothesis.

Is there a way we can ask Impulcifer to assume channel balance with the headphones and then attenuate L or R to get balance? When I correct for it via HeSuVi's attenuation I'm hard pressed to find anything "wrong" with the sound. It sounds really good and is bang on center then. Again I A vs B against the real speakers and they're remarkably similar. It's not identical though, but even my naturally perfect measurement wasn't identical.

Only thing I find frustrating playing with the balance is then I can't A vs B with my perfect recording quickly. Although if I can't pick a winner with a 5 second pause, perhaps that means there's no real better version!

 

[arksergo]

I tried electret mics Jecklin disc and ear mics, but it's not working. Signal to noise ratio is complete rubbish. Weird noises like ghost hunter gear! Useless! My first try with mics, so I probably made all the mistakes. Depressing.



Using this circuit and feeding Olympus LP-5 recorder ( I have tried both line in and mic connection). I don't know what is wrong. Would this help:

I had hard times trying to get good signal from my mics too. In fact it was the most challenging part for me, because I am not any good in analog schematics.
Check out this link: http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/microphone_powering.html
Also you can find good scheme for measurement mic here (russian only): http://cxo.lv/index.php/solder/micamp/111-micamp01, author suggests to use this scheme:

I used this scheme, modified for balance output and phantom power with lm358 op amp. It is quite good, but you should keep wires from mics to amp as short as possible. Mine was about 20 cm and I ended up using it like this:

 

[jaakkopasanen]

Is there a way we can ask Impulcifer to assume channel balance with the headphones and then attenuate L or R to get balance? When I correct for it via HeSuVi's attenuation I'm hard pressed to find anything "wrong" with the sound. It sounds really good and is bang on center then. Again I A vs B against the real speakers and they're remarkably similar. It's not identical though, but even my naturally perfect measurement wasn't identical.

Only thing I find frustrating playing with the balance is then I can't A vs B with my perfect recording quickly. Although if I can't pick a winner with a 5 second pause, perhaps that means there's no real better version!

That shouldn't be too much work. Would you care to create an issue about this?

 

[jaakkopasanen]

Small update: headphone plots are now produced befor HRIR processing. This makes it possible to run Impulcifer right after headphone compensation recording to check the left and right ear frequency responses. This will make it faster to iterate with the mic placement because now headphone recording - processing - mic adjustment cycle can be done before even the first HRIR recording has been made. So in this stage the folder only needs to contain headphones.wav and the plots folder will have Headphones.png.

This allowed me to do a new measurement with good channel balance.

 

[71 dB]

I had hard times trying to get good signal from my mics too. In fact it was the most challenging part for me, because I am not any good in analog schematics.
Check out this link: http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/microphone_powering.html
Also you can find good scheme for measurement mic here (russian only): http://cxo.lv/index.php/solder/micamp/111-micamp01, author suggests to use this scheme:

I used this scheme, modified for balance output and phantom power with lm358 op amp. It is quite good, but you should keep wires from mics to amp as short as possible. Mine was about 20 cm and I ended up using it like this:

Thanks! Your gear looks badass!

 

[Joe Bloggs]

You can always assume that the left and right ear should receive HRIRs with the same frequency response and hence, for any measurement where there's a left and right ear version,
1. Calculate average of responses from the two ears
2. Equalize the impulses for the left and right ears to the average response, using minimum phase filters. The EQs should be octave smoothed to a certain degree so that the filters don't "try too hard".

This will yield a very balanced soundstage in most cases yet sound much superior to if you'd simply made the left and right impulses exactly the same. I know, I've been doing it this way for years.

Incredible idea, isn't it

 

[jaakkopasanen]

You can always assume that the left and right ear should receive HRIRs with the same frequency response and hence, for any measurement where there's a left and right ear version,
1. Calculate average of responses from the two ears
2. Equalize the impulses for the left and right ears to the average response, using minimum phase filters. The EQs should be octave smoothed to a certain degree so that the filters don't "try too hard".

This will yield a very balanced soundstage in most cases yet sound much superior to if you'd simply made the left and right impulses exactly the same. I know, I've been doing it this way for years.

Incredible idea, isn't it Can I be credited for it?

I've been thinking about this but wasn't sure if that would be ideal since not everyone's ears are symmetrical. Maybe this is not ideal but good enough. At least I could add a parameter for doing this so users could try it out easily and hear if it improves the result in their case.

 

[jaakkopasanen]

Busy day. Got plenty of tools for solving channel balance issues.

Firstly the headphone and result plots have now both sides in the same graph for easier comparison. This will make it easier to play around with mic placement and to figure out what is wrong with the channel balance.

The bigger change is channel balancer tool which adjusts left and right side levels or frequency responses to match each other. This usually nails the channel balance but terribly bad recordings cannot be made perfect. Here is the documentation about the new feature: https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/Impulcifer#channel-balance-correction

See here for squiggly lines: https://imgur.com/a/cWfO8Zt

I also made mock microphones by gluing a 11mm disc to a foam ear plug to see if 10mm or so microphone would fit into the ear canal opening. I doesn't and I have fairly large ears. I figured out that FEL Communications sell also pre-made EM258 mono modules and RODE VXLR+ adapters. Two of both would be needed which would make about 100€.
https://micbooster.com/primo-microphone-capsules/97-primo-em258-mono-module-with-35mm-plug-10m.html
https://micbooster.com/leads-and-ad...r-converter.html?search_query=vxlr+&results=1
I sent them an email asking if they could provide binaural mics with matched EM258 modules and a ear plug style support and possibly adapters to make them work with both recorders and USB audio interfaces.