Why are PA systems terrible?

[Salmon Egg]

Whether it is because I am getting old or not, I often have trouble
understanding spoken words. I notice that when I listen on radio or
television, some voices are easy to understand while others are
difficult to understand. Is there an acoustical explanation? That is, If
I can understand one person but not another, is my processing bad? Are
some people just harder to understand than others? Are there hearing
defects that will reduce perception of one person's speech but not
another's?

Of late, I have been having much trouble at meetings using public
address (PA) systems in an auditorium or a restaurant. I attribute it to
having multiple sources of sound sources such as the speaker and the
amplified sound through loud speakers. In radio parlance, I would call
that a multipath effect. At some meetings, it would have been better to
avoid using a PA system altogether and just living with the lower volume.

Would it be better to arrange the loudspeakers so that you receive sound
primarily from a single loudspeaker? Should one try to sit so that wou
are at the same distance from two speakers.

I am hoping someone here can quantify what is happening and what
strategies to use at a meeting to get the most out of it.

Bill

[AZ Nomad]

Post by Salmon Egg
Whether it is because I am getting old or not, I often have trouble
understanding spoken words. I notice that when I listen on radio or
television, some voices are easy to understand while others are
difficult to understand. Is there an acoustical explanation? That is, If
I can understand one person but not another, is my processing bad? Are
some people just harder to understand than others? Are there hearing
defects that will reduce perception of one person's speech but not
another's?
Of late, I have been having much trouble at meetings using public
address (PA) systems in an auditorium or a restaurant. I attribute it to
having multiple sources of sound sources such as the speaker and the

any good reason you don't visit an ear doc?
The ear isn't a single transducer. There is basically a transducer at
each frequency and they can be selectively damaged.

And yes, PA systems are generally quite awful. You're not alone there.
I pretty much ignore them. They rarely have anything useful to say
and I don't need some god damned automation to tell me the painfully
obvious.

[GregS]

Post by Salmon Egg
Whether it is because I am getting old or not, I often have trouble
understanding spoken words. I notice that when I listen on radio or
television, some voices are easy to understand while others are
difficult to understand. Is there an acoustical explanation? That is, If
I can understand one person but not another, is my processing bad? Are
some people just harder to understand than others? Are there hearing
defects that will reduce perception of one person's speech but not
another's?

Have your ears checked.

Post by Salmon Egg
Of late, I have been having much trouble at meetings using public
address (PA) systems in an auditorium or a restaurant. I attribute it to
having multiple sources of sound sources such as the speaker and the
amplified sound through loud speakers. In radio parlance, I would call
that a multipath effect. At some meetings, it would have been better to
avoid using a PA system altogether and just living with the lower volume.

Thats so true. And, the meeting or performance is greatly inhanced by a feeling of
realism with no PA.

Post by Salmon Egg
Would it be better to arrange the loudspeakers so that you receive sound
primarily from a single loudspeaker? Should one try to sit so that wou
are at the same distance from two speakers.

Sounds like your on the right track.

Post by Salmon Egg
I am hoping someone here can quantify what is happening and what
strategies to use at a meeting to get the most out of it.

I'm guessing the hearing part that goes first is those nice frequencies from 5-10Khz
that give you all that clarity.

I have always had trouble hearing words in songs. I don't listen to words in
songs anyway

greg

[Answerman]

Post by Salmon Egg
Whether it is because I am getting old or not, I often have trouble
understanding spoken words. I notice that when I listen on radio or
television, some voices are easy to understand while others are
difficult to understand. Is there an acoustical explanation? That is, If
I can understand one person but not another, is my processing bad? Are
some people just harder to understand than others? Are there hearing
defects that will reduce perception of one person's speech but not
another's?
Of late, I have been having much trouble at meetings using public
address (PA) systems in an auditorium or a restaurant. I attribute it to
having multiple sources of sound sources such as the speaker and the
amplified sound through loud speakers. In radio parlance, I would call
that a multipath effect. At some meetings, it would have been better to
avoid using a PA system altogether and just living with the lower volume.
Would it be better to arrange the loudspeakers so that you receive sound
primarily from a single loudspeaker? Should one try to sit so that wou
are at the same distance from two speakers.
I am hoping someone here can quantify what is happening and what
strategies to use at a meeting to get the most out of it.
Bill

Find a competent audiologist and get a speech intelligibility as well as a
DPOAE test.

[Tony]

Post by Salmon Egg
Whether it is because I am getting old or not, I often have trouble
understanding spoken words. I notice that when I listen on radio or
television, some voices are easy to understand while others are
difficult to understand. Is there an acoustical explanation? That is,
If I can understand one person but not another, is my processing bad?
Are some people just harder to understand than others? Are there
hearing defects that will reduce perception of one person's speech but
not another's?

1)Hearing is usually tested by measuring the quietest sound that you can
detect, but the ability to understand speech when there is background noise
is equally important. That gets a lot worse when the nerves in the ear work
less well, whether through age, disease, or damage by noise. What happens
is that the bandwidth of the individual filters in the ear increases, so it
is like a radio that can't reject interference. There is an online test
that uses this effect to assess how good your hearing is compared to the
average for your age: http://www.rnid.org.uk/howwehelp/hearing_check/.

2) Some people do speak a lot more clearly than others, the way that
consonants are pronounced is critical. Also sight is important - most
people do some unconscious lip reading when they are face to face in noisy
surroundings.

3) A lot of PA systems are very badly designed. Also there are severe
practical limits on what can be done with a PA system, depending on the
acoustics of the space, and where it is practically possible to put
speakers. I have done some systems that I'm not very proud of but it was
the best that could be done given the constraints. But a warning: I was in
a conference (to do with acoustics as it happened) and I thought the PA
system was really terrible - I could hardly understand a word. I was
shocked that an acoustics conference would put up with such a bad PA! But,
in the coffee break, with a lot of noise from people talking, I found that I
was still having a hard time understanding what people were saying. That's
when I realised that I had an ear problem. Luckily it was an infection that
got better after a few months. However as I get older I have to accept that
I must work harder to understand people (with or without PA) in noisy
surroundings.

[Salmon Egg]

Post by Tony

Post by Salmon Egg
Whether it is because I am getting old or not, I often have trouble
understanding spoken words. I notice that when I listen on radio or
television, some voices are easy to understand while others are
difficult to understand. Is there an acoustical explanation? That is,
If I can understand one person but not another, is my processing bad?
Are some people just harder to understand than others? Are there
hearing defects that will reduce perception of one person's speech but
not another's?

1)Hearing is usually tested by measuring the quietest sound that you can
detect, but the ability to understand speech when there is background noise
is equally important. That gets a lot worse when the nerves in the ear work
less well, whether through age, disease, or damage by noise. What happens
is that the bandwidth of the individual filters in the ear increases, so it
is like a radio that can't reject interference. There is an online test
that uses this effect to assess how good your hearing is compared to the
average for your age: http://www.rnid.org.uk/howwehelp/hearing_check/.
2) Some people do speak a lot more clearly than others, the way that
consonants are pronounced is critical. Also sight is important - most
people do some unconscious lip reading when they are face to face in noisy
surroundings.
3) A lot of PA systems are very badly designed. Also there are severe
practical limits on what can be done with a PA system, depending on the
acoustics of the space, and where it is practically possible to put
speakers. I have done some systems that I'm not very proud of but it was
the best that could be done given the constraints. But a warning: I was in
a conference (to do with acoustics as it happened) and I thought the PA
system was really terrible - I could hardly understand a word. I was
shocked that an acoustics conference would put up with such a bad PA! But,
in the coffee break, with a lot of noise from people talking, I found that I
was still having a hard time understanding what people were saying. That's
when I realised that I had an ear problem. Luckily it was an infection that
got better after a few months. However as I get older I have to accept that
I must work harder to understand people (with or without PA) in noisy
surroundings.

This has been the most useful post on the subject since I posted the
question. I tried the the hearing test you suggested. The result was
that my hearing was within normal range. While I realize such a test is
not definitive, it does reinforce my perception that the problem has
more to do with the PA and room acoustics than with my hearing defects.

Your item 3) is pretty much what I concluded based upon my knowledge of
physics and engineering, but I am not an expert in the field. I would
like to know more about multipath effects if such information is
available.

I have noticed now that I am recording digital TV signals, that much
sound is poorly recorded. Several times recently,I have noticed garbled
words that I could not understand even with multiple replays. Sometimes
I can guess at a word that seems to correlate with the recorded word.
But even then, the word does not sound like how it should.

I am going to a technical meeting on optics tonight. I will try to place
myself so that I am getting my signal either from the speaker directly
or primarily from only one loudspeaker.

[Salmon Egg]

Post by Salmon Egg
I am going to a technical meeting on optics tonight. I will try to place
myself so that I am getting my signal either from the speaker directly
or primarily from only one loudspeaker.

I am back from this meeting. I was in a relatively small room with no PA
system. I was within two meters of the speaker.

The biggest factor on intelligibility was whether his mouth was turned
toward me. When that was the case I understood him well even if I did
not watch his face. With his mouth not away from me, I could understand
him well. With his back toward me, It was much more difficult to
understand what he said. To what extent would most listeners be affected
the same way s me? To what extent is intelligibility under such
conditions affected by individuyal cvapability?

Bil;

[Tony]

Post by Salmon Egg
The biggest factor on intelligibility was whether his mouth was turned
toward me. When that was the case I understood him well even if I did
not watch his face. With his mouth not away from me, I could understand
him well. With his back toward me, It was much more difficult to
understand what he said.

Human voice is directional at high frequencies. Your intelligibility problem
in this situation was from loss of direct sound, so proportion of
reverberant sound was too high. If you want to follow this up, look up
Peutz.

Post by Salmon Egg
To what extent would most listeners be affected
the same way s me? To what extent is intelligibility under such
conditions affected by individuyal cvapability?

It is believed that background noise and reverberation have a similar effect
in reducing intelligibility, so there will be the same individual
differences. The RNID site will tell you if you have a serious problem, but
I'm sorry to say that it will return "normal for age" when there is
significant impairment. Particularly if you are the more experienced side
of 50. The graphs of hearing loss against age are rather horrifying,
although no-one really knows how much of the average "normal" impairment
(for men) is due to "natural" ageing and how much to noise-induced hearing
loss from old-style industry. You will get some indication about your own
ears by having an audiogram done. It only measures threshold of hearing but
still gives a useful indication of how well your ears are working, and will
probably show up any noise-induced hearing loss that you might have.

[Peter Larsen]

Post by Tony
1)Hearing is usually tested by measuring the quietest sound that you
can detect, but the ability to understand speech when there is
background noise is equally important.

THAT is an integral part of a qualified check-up.

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[David Combs]

Post by Peter Larsen

Post by Tony
1)Hearing is usually tested by measuring the quietest sound that you
can detect, but the ability to understand speech when there is
background noise is equally important.

THAT is an integral part of a qualified check-up.
Kind regards
Peter Larsen

New to me -- am used to just the headphones in the quiet room.

How do they DO such a test?

Better yet, how do they FIX the problem?

Seems like it's kinda beyond what a hearing-aid can do...


David

[Answerman]

There is an online test that uses this effect to assess
http://www.rnid.org.uk/howwehelp/hearing_check/.

That test is a joke. Being told that my hearing is "normal for my age"
tells me nothing other than the fact that the hearing of 50% of people my
age who took the test is in the toilet.

[Salmon Egg]

Post by Answerman

There is an online test that uses this effect to assess
http://www.rnid.org.uk/howwehelp/hearing_check/.

That test is a joke. Being told that my hearing is "normal for my age"
tells me nothing other than the fact that the hearing of 50% of people my
age who took the test is in the toilet.

If it isn't too outrageous, it does tell mee that it is not all me.

I recently tried some other experiments. I was listening to a digitally
recorded TV show, actually "All in the Family." There are two computer
speakers about half a meter apart with my head forming the right angle
of an isosceles triangle. I found that I could improve the
intelligibility by cupping my hands and placing them behind my ears. I
find I can place my hands and fingers in various places to modify the
frequency response enough to improve my hearing sometimes. I have not
yet been able to pin down just what a good way of holding my hands is.

Bill

[Ron Capik]

Post by Salmon Egg

Post by Answerman

There is an online test that uses this effect to assess
http://www.rnid.org.uk/howwehelp/hearing_check/.

That test is a joke. Being told that my hearing is "normal for my age"
tells me nothing other than the fact that the hearing of 50% of people my
age who took the test is in the toilet.

If it isn't too outrageous, it does tell mee that it is not all me.
I recently tried some other experiments. I was listening to a digitally
recorded TV show, actually "All in the Family." There are two computer
speakers about half a meter apart with my head forming the right angle
of an isosceles triangle. I found that I could improve the
intelligibility by cupping my hands and placing them behind my ears. I
find I can place my hands and fingers in various places to modify the
frequency response enough to improve my hearing sometimes. I have not
yet been able to pin down just what a good way of holding my hands is.
Bill

Maybe you should look into a pair of clip on Ferengi ears. :-)

Later...
Ron Capik
--

[Angelo Campanella]

Post by Salmon Egg

Post by Answerman

There is an online test that uses this effect to assess
http://www.rnid.org.uk/howwehelp/hearing_check/.

That test is a joke. Being told that my hearing is "normal for my age"
tells me nothing other than the fact that the hearing of 50% of people my
age who took the test is in the toilet.

If it isn't too outrageous, it does tell mee that it is not all me.
I recently tried some other experiments. I was listening to a digitally
recorded TV show, actually "All in the Family." There are two computer
speakers about half a meter apart with my head forming the right angle
of an isosceles triangle. I found that I could improve the
intelligibility by cupping my hands and placing them behind my ears. I
find I can place my hands and fingers in various places to modify the
frequency response enough to improve my hearing sometimes. I have not
yet been able to pin down just what a good way of holding my hands is.

Not at all unexpected. Your cupped hands improve the outer ear forward
gain in the few kilohertz region; right where the sibilants, so vital to
purvey speech intelligibility, have their main energy. I also have done it
electronically (aka "preemphisis") or by adding tweeters...

Years ago, I added a pair of radio shack cone tweeters to my TV, upper
left and right corners (guests think they're cool), capacitaively coupled to
the respective left and right audio stereo speaker drives. When a phone
jingles in the TV audio... I often think it's my phone!

Ange



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[Salmon Egg]

Post by Angelo Campanella
Not at all unexpected. Your cupped hands improve the outer ear forward
gain in the few kilohertz region; right where the sibilants, so vital to
purvey speech intelligibility, have their main energy. I also have done it
electronically (aka "preemphisis") or by adding tweeters...

What does that tell us in terms of evolutionary significance? I would
argue that understanding speech has not been all that important until
now. If it were, we would already have bigger ears that serve the same
as cupping them with hands.

Bill

[Angelo Campanella]

Post by Salmon Egg

Post by Angelo Campanella
Not at all unexpected. Your cupped hands improve the outer ear forward
gain in the few kilohertz region; right where the sibilants, so vital to
purvey speech intelligibility, have their main energy. I also have done it
electronically (aka "preemphisis") or by adding tweeters...

What does that tell us in terms of evolutionary significance? I would
argue that understanding speech has not been all that important until
now. If it were, we would already have bigger ears that serve the same
as cupping them with hands.

Unfortunately, evolution took a different route; it gave us relatively
longer legs than most other mammals so that we can walk or run closer the
sound source... inverse square law, and ll that.

Ange




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[GregS]

Post by Angelo Campanella

Post by Salmon Egg

Post by Angelo Campanella
Not at all unexpected. Your cupped hands improve the outer ear forward
gain in the few kilohertz region; right where the sibilants, so vital to
purvey speech intelligibility, have their main energy. I also have done it
electronically (aka "preemphisis") or by adding tweeters...

What does that tell us in terms of evolutionary significance? I would
argue that understanding speech has not been all that important until
now. If it were, we would already have bigger ears that serve the same
as cupping them with hands.

Unfortunately, evolution took a different route; it gave us relatively
longer legs than most other mammals so that we can walk or run closer the
sound source... inverse square law, and ll that.
Ange

I watched a group sit down next to a speaker, and later complained about being too loud.

greg

[Salmon Egg]

Post by GregS
I watched a group sit down next to a speaker, and later complained about being too loud.

When you use the term "speaker," do you mean a human mouth or do you
mean a loudspeaker? It is difficult for me to remember a situation where
too loud came from an unamplified human mouth. That might have happened
when someone was shouting to someone else a distance away while the
shouter was close to my ear.
while

Bill

[GregS]

Post by Salmon Egg

Post by GregS
I watched a group sit down next to a speaker, and later complained about being too loud.

When you use the term "speaker," do you mean a human mouth or do you
mean a loudspeaker? It is difficult for me to remember a situation where
too loud came from an unamplified human mouth. That might have happened
when someone was shouting to someone else a distance away while the
shouter was close to my ear.
while

Definately loudspeaker, but I have never used the term loudspeaker, except
in the use, loud speaker.

greg

[David Combs]

Post by Angelo Campanella
Years ago, I added a pair of radio shack cone tweeters to my TV, upper
left and right corners (guests think they're cool), capacitaively coupled to
the respective left and right audio stereo speaker drives. When a phone
jingles in the TV audio... I often think it's my phone!
Ange

How about some cookbook-like details?

(From how this thread is going, there's probably a few
of us who'd like to do that too.)


And suppose it's a plain commercial tv, where the
speaker is inside the case?

What I'm asking, I guess, is what is this capacitive
coupling you've wired up?

(I guess I would wikipedia it?)


Anyway, how much work is involved?

Thanks,

David

[David Combs]

Post by Tony
2) Some people do speak a lot more clearly than others, the way that
consonants are pronounced is critical. Also sight is important - most

The faster people talk, the less emphasis to the consonants.

For me it's those high-frequency consonant sounds
that I *require* to be able to understand anything.

I often end up cupping my ears trying to direct more
of those highs into my ears.

Question: for how many decades has the emphasis in
(hi-fi) speakers been on how much BASS it could blast
out, when all the interesting stuff is way up there.

For me, I do think that part of the problem is the
processing that goes on in the brain -- other people
understand someone speaking (with background noise)
FAR better than I do.

And yet my audio-tests show "good", low to reasonably high.

What else CAN it be?


Good thread, this.

David

[Ethan Winer]

Post by Salmon Egg
Is there an acoustical explanation?

Untamed reflections and excess reverb can make speech difficult to
understand. But that would apply to everyone speaking, not just some
people. Then again, some people speak with more clarity, and pronounce
"s" better than others, and distinguish "t" and "d" better.

--Ethan

[Angelo Campanella]

Post by Salmon Egg
Whether it is because I am getting old or not, I often have trouble
understanding spoken words. I notice that when I listen on radio or
television, some voices are easy to understand while others are
difficult to understand. Is there an acoustical explanation?

I think the elementary problem is that there are misconceptions on both
sides. On the one hand, the owner of the venue thinks that if the speakers
are loud, the message will be heard a longer distance away. On the other,
the listener arriving at that venue hears sounds that he identifes with the
talker, he will understand the speech. In the case of music those notions
are at least half true; "if it sounds good, it IS good".

But in the case of speech, one is not content unles the messages are
understood, and that places stringent requirement on the total system. The
basic problem lies in the propagation path. If it were along just one line,
like a telephone line, it's pretty much WYSIWYG. Bu in open space, only a
few sound rays can be considered as prime, or "direct" sound. Other rays
also arise from sound reflections ("echoes") from multiple locations. These
echoes are ALL delayed in time since the path lengths are perforce are all
longre, some very long.

Echoes that arrive not more than 20 milliseconds later than direct sound
will be perceived by the speech processor in our brain as one and he same
signal. Echoes arriving with more than a 20 millisecond delay compared to
direct sound will be interprested as interference or "noise". In english,
such delays greater than 50 millsecond long will pretty much wipe out
syllable recognition (40ms for erman) since that's the average spacing
between syllables in normal speech.

The only successful countermeasure we have is to move closer to the
talker where the direct sound level supercedes that of the summed echoes
every instant while the talking is going on.

I once asked an audiologist "How exactly does reverberation interfere
with speech?"

She amswered "The reverberating consonants mask the succeeding
consonants (low SPL energy)."

That explained it all for me. I have been designing sound veues ever
since wtith that in mind.

Post by Salmon Egg
That is, If
I can understand one person but not another, is my processing bad? Are
some people just harder to understand than others? Are there hearing
defects that will reduce perception of one person's speech but not
another's?

That enters into it.

The art of "Elocution" (google it for exlanation) is virtually a dead
art. I learned it in elementary school and in high school. It's very
simple... it just takes a few minutes of explanation and a few minutes of
practice to master... It came for free in English classes. One important
feature of it (and you sould learn how to do it just-in-case) is that you
speak more slowly as well as louder. Another is that you raise your head and
talk deliberately and clearly to the furthest person in the room.

Post by Salmon Egg
Of late, I have been having much trouble at meetings using public
address (PA) systems in an auditorium or a restaurant. I attribute it to
having multiple sources of sound sources such as the speaker and the
amplified sound through loud speakers. In radio parlance, I would call
that a multipath effect. At some meetings, it would have been better to
avoid using a PA system altogether and just living with the lower volume.

My strategy in those situations is to move closer to the talker. If it
means standing next to a blasting speaker, I insert my earplugs to protect
my hearing. Speech intelligibility there is good because the
direct-to-reverberation ratio is very much improved.

Post by Salmon Egg
Would it be better to arrange the loudspeakers so that you receive sound
primarily from a single loudspeaker?

That works for the same reasons.

Post by Salmon Egg
Should one try to sit so that we
are at the same distance from two speakers.

A neat trick if you can put it off. Getting near any one speaker should
serve well, as long as the PA system is not totally distorted.

Post by Salmon Egg
I am hoping someone here can quantify what is happening and what
strategies to use at a meeting to get the most out of it.

I think I answerd that.

Post by Salmon Egg
An old man would be better off never having been born.

My definition of "Old Age" is that it is the condition wherein you can
no longer can cope with change. Hopefully you and I are not there yet!

Ange.



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[David Combs]

Post by Angelo Campanella
The art of "Elocution" (google it for exlanation) is virtually a dead
art. I learned it in elementary school and in high school. It's very
simple... it just takes a few minutes of explanation and a few minutes of
practice to master... It came for free in English classes. One important
feature of it (and you sould learn how to do it just-in-case) is that you
speak more slowly as well as louder. Another is that you raise your head and
talk deliberately and clearly to the furthest person in the room.

Well, in addition, make sure you sound the consonants, especially
the ending ones, eg the "s" hiss. So many words sound the same
without that distinguishing end.

(Seems to me, anyway. Am NO expert, to say the least!)

David

[Peter Larsen]

Post by Salmon Egg
Whether it is because I am getting old or not, I often have trouble
understanding spoken words. I notice that when I listen on radio or
television, some voices are easy to understand while others are
difficult to understand.

First of all, that is how some voices are ... however,

Post by Salmon Egg
Is there an acoustical explanation? That is,
If I can understand one person but not another, is my processing bad?

Yes, you need to learn the "another"'s phonemes.

Post by Salmon Egg
Are some people just harder to understand than others?

Yes. Some have good formant and some just doesn't project and some plain
mumble. Singing lessons is school is a LOT about voice projection as well as
about general joy of music.

Post by Salmon Egg
Are there
hearing defects that will reduce perception of one person's speech
but not another's?

Yes, impulse noise damage comes to mind, concert sound noise damage would
usually be exactly that. What happens in impulsen noise damage is that you
get a threshold shift, wikipedia that or find some other post from me abou
hearing and hearing damage, centered at the frequency of your ear canal
resonance.

This boils down to three cases + one:

1) speaker with no good formant or mumbling syndrome
-> difficult to understand no matter what

2) speaker with formant that is located at the center
of your impulse noise damage
-> difficult to understand

3) speaker with forman that is located below or above
the center of your impulse noise damage
-> easy to understand

4) anybody gobbling up the mic with a silly sound engineer
whose only knowledge of what a bass control can do is to boost
-> difficult to hopeless to understand due to masking

4b) add an imcompetently configured compressor and it gets worse.

Post by Salmon Egg
Of late, I have been having much trouble at meetings using public
address (PA) systems in an auditorium or a restaurant.

See 4 and 4a above.

Post by Salmon Egg
I attribute it
to having multiple sources of sound sources such as the speaker and
the amplified sound through loud speakers.

Yes, things DO get worse if they don't get arrival time right. Mostly they
don't and rhy to fix it by turning it up and adding more bass.

Post by Salmon Egg
In radio parlance, I would
call that a multipath effect. At some meetings, it would have been
better to avoid using a PA system altogether and just living with the
lower volume.

Yes.

Post by Salmon Egg
Would it be better to arrange the loudspeakers so that you receive
sound primarily from a single loudspeaker?

Yes.

Post by Salmon Egg
Should one try to sit so
that wou are at the same distance from two speakers.

Or plain close to one.

Post by Salmon Egg
I am hoping someone here can quantify what is happening and what
strategies to use at a meeting to get the most out of it.

Silly sound engineers not understanding that the more loudspeaker locations
the less clarity. A good setup is to have the loudspeaker behind and above
the speaker and a headset on the speaker and to remember to roll bass off to
compensate for the proximity effect and then some ...

Post by Salmon Egg
Bill

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[David Combs]

In article <4b9a4e84$0$2613$***@news.astraweb.com>,
Peter Larsen <***@hotmail.com> wrote:

Please do elaborate. Looks like you could teach the subject.


And, please explain "formant". And the energy spectrum,
and how the two relate.

Thanks,

David

[Riccardo Balistreri]

Hi Peter,

Actually this concept of "formant," "impulse noise damage," and
"threshold shift" sound interesting.

Could you tell us more or give us a specific link?