Re: 0.97 metering

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 06:46:21PM -0600, Jan Depner wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-11-24 at 13:28 +0000, John Rigg wrote:
> > Group delay is larger in LF speaker drivers than HF ones, so I'd
> > expect to see zero delay on LF and longest delay on HF (or is it
> > showing the amount of delay compensation?)
> 
>     Rane crossovers, Peavey crossovers (and others), and BBE Sonic
> Maximizers give you the ability to set delays for low and mid
> frequencies to compensate for speaker placement (both in the enclosures
> and in space) and other issues.  The delays were added so you could play
> around with those settings without buying a crossover or BBE.  Another
> reason that I wanted to add them was to get a better handle on the
> processing.  It forced me to actually run through the processing code
> and see what was happening.

In big live sound rigs you sometimes want to delay the LF, but in a
studio you might want to do the opposite. If you look at the impulse
response plot for most multi-way monitor speakers,  you can see that 
the HF reaches the listener before the LF. The difference can be
several milliseconds, so if you're going to provide delays for speaker
time alignment, a delay on the HF channel could also be useful.
 
>     JAMin is still a dedicated mastering processor.  We're trying to
> stay away from too many bells and whistles which is one of the reasons
> there haven't been too many changes lately.  Almost everything that has
> been added has been optional.  The RMS meters were requested by a fair
> number of people so, IIRC, the concensus was that it was a good thing
> (TM). 

RMS metering is important for many users. A peak/rms/both selector would
be useful though :-).

> We keep getting requests to make it simpler and lighter so people
> can use it as a plugin.  I think I can safely say that that ain't gonna
> happen ;-)

Good to know.

>     I do have a question though, since you seem to be a serious user, is
> there a need for five compressor bands or more parametric controls on
> the HDEQ?  Both of those have come up before and it seems like overkill
> to me but I'm not a mastering engineer so I really don't know.  What's
> your take?

I'd say five compressor bands would be overkill. A lot of mastering
engineers avoid multi-band compression altogether, unless there's a
particularly bad problem that requires it. The existing three bands
are already flexible enough for routine work, and another two
would get in the way in many situations.

The same applies to the HDEQ. The existing features are more than 
adequate for most mastering work. In an exceptional case requiring
more, it's pretty easy to put it through an external EQ plugin.

This is a dilemma of course. Do you provide all the bells and
whistles that users ask for, given that anything you add could make
routine work more difficult? It's more important to keep things simple
enough to allow efficient work flow IMO.

John

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