Sound systems are intrinsic to the dance music experience, yet few of us really know much about them. RA's Stephen Titmus attempts to demystify things with help from Funktion-One and Martin Audio.

Great Article! I really appreciate the way, RA cares about music, technology and perception!!!

Great article

Enjoyed this article!!!!!!1

while i agree with two of the more central points of this article (loudspeakers as well as room acoustics are very important), there is also a lot of voodoo bs.

cables matter? lol

WAV or vinyl for playback is important? lol, the mastering is waaay more important than the medium (vinyl, CD, laptop, ...) or the format (WAV, high-bitrate MP3, ...).

CD players sounding "warm?" voodoo alarm! there is no room for this word in serious discussions of audio.

also, i would not consider great sound an "esoteric art."

Digital audio is well-understood, its foundation being Shannon-Nyquist. There are four central characteristics to measure the quality of analog audio: noise, frequency response, distortion, and time-based errors. And the perception of sound by humans can also be analyzed rigorously, using insights from statistics and from experimental science (e.g., double-blind testing).

So, to me, it seems it's pretty much all science rather than an art. It's just that many producers as well as consumers of audio fall prey to placebo-like effects. And many firms exist that make money from catering to placebophiles.

Allright Article!

Good read.

There's a great video of Tony Andrews giving a talk at the red bull music academy - quite technical at times, but extremely interesting. vimeo.com/31191130

Very nice read.

Great article. This subject needs to be brought up more often and hopefully this will be read by someone in Los Angeles so that we can educate a few bar/club owners here that have no concept of sound. Pattern Bar excluded.

Anyone who has listened to WAV compared to MP3 on proper studio monitors will tell you that the difference in quality is massive - this is not illusory or a placebo effect, also i think you are wrong when you claim cables make no difference. In my experience you get what you pay for - Buy the best you can afford and use correctly whether it's audio files or hardware.

Excellent read!

I enjoyed this. Something for the Apple ear bud generation to ponder...

They don't matter if you're listening on your computer speakers, but when your speakers and amplifiers are worth more than most people in the world make in their life, the difference becomes more obvious.

+1. fantastic article and great series (remembering the art of warming up). More of this please!

who did say the last sentences ... the text part that is quoted ?!

You cannot put all MP3 files under the same umbrella. A 320 kbps VBR lame encoded MP3 is practically the same as a 44.1/16bit wav to our brains. Of course a 128kbps MP3 is s***.

And yes I've listened to MP3 files in expensive studios. Yes I've done blindfolded real A/B tests myself and with other audio professionals. When I was studying audio engineering a teacher of mine had this bet were he would invite someone to the most expensive restaurant in Barcelona if he could distinguish a WAV from a good MP3 in a real A/B blindfolded test. Guess what? Nobody ever won that bet.

Cables really do not make a big difference, unless you have some really crappy chinese cables with even worse connectors. But after certain point it really does not matter.

http://diyaudioprojects.com/Power/DIY-Braided-Speaker-Cables/

If you really want to spend thousands of dollars on cables, I'm sure the audiophile industry will be really thankful. But you won't get a better sound.

I think the single biggest change in clubland in the last 10 years has been the quality of the sound. 10 years ago my ears would still be ringing on Tuesday from being assaulted by jagged distorted tunes. Nowadays if I pick somewhere with good kit and a good sound guy I feel wrapped in a warm blanket of loud clear sound and no ringing afterwards.

I love the sound of vinyl. But hearing big lumps of digital bass pouring out of a Funktion 1 rig is a a real joy. It's all a question of personal taste. Although it's better than it used to be I still don't get on with Fabric Room 1.

Interesting read and that Red Bull Music Academy vid is worth a watch.

thanks for the link fascinating watch throughout

nice read

" If you drive them into them red... How can I put this? The whole thing's fucked before you even start!"

more so if the tune is squashed to death at mastering LEVEL WARS ANYONE?

I dont know how to break this to you but some people can hear the difference between WAV and 320 mp3. I am able to do it even on ipod ear buds. The mp3 sounds grainier and lacks that high end sheen (the one that stops at 20k if we re talkin 16 bit WAV)

just A/B mate not that hard to tell is it ?

This is such an important read and needs to be SPREAD... Its sad to see some of the biggest names out there that have no concept of any of this.

IF YOU WANT MORE HEADROOM ASK THE SOUND GUY AND MAKE HIM FEEL COMFORTABLE ENOUGH TO TELL YOU WHEN SHIT GETS HARSH...

Too many sound guys need to grow a sack and be honest with the "artists" and the "artists" need to not let their ego get in the way of what the sound guy is saying and WORK with them.

Probably why most vinyl and masters are created from 320 kbps MP3s then?? sorry to be sarcastic but surely this is nonsense?

Most CD players don't send a digital signal straight into a mixer.. the DACs and in-player processing do make a difference. Apparently the CDJ2000 has some good tech in this department. Tony thinks so anyway - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbJkVtrj82s

imo, tony should refrain from commenting on issues relating to digital audio. he obviously doesn't have the slightest clue about it. thus, imo, his comments hurt his reputation as a builder of speakers.

-

also, it's unfortunate this site doesn't impose the same standards as hydrogenaudio.org when it comes to these strong claims regarding differences in audio quality. oh god, how i would love to see this imposed:

Great read, a good commercial for Funktion One, but...
Funktion 1 sounds great with techno, but with deeper house, it sounds kind of flat.
Also the sound in the Panorama Bar isn't that good.

The DA converters are better in CDJ2k's, yes. Not voodoo.

And Tony knows a lot about digital. I learned much from info he has provided over the years

Unless they've changed it since I was there last P'Bar is not Funktion One - it's downstairs in Berghain that has Funktion One... upstairs is a different system - Is it Martin Audio?

Very important topic and a nice Funktion One commercial, btw out of the 5 F1 sound systems ive heard, there are about 3 that are so badly calibrated that its laughable, like Berghain (I think Panorama has Meyer Sound, supposedly meant to sound trashy), and dont get me wrong, I love the place, but man it seems like that system is calibrated to hurt, and yeah i get it, the rough techno ambiance downstairs, the trashy house thing upstairs but seriously its not enjoyable after a while. What good is a fantastic sound system if you calibrate it to sound like shit.

How about a piece doing some research on what Richard Long had going on at the Paradise Garage and what Gary Stewart does nowadays. Ive yet to hear something that even comes close to his setups.

As a disclaimer I havent heard that F1 rig they have going on at the Labyrinth.

When you do a master there's always some processing involved, specially for vinyl mastering. For example the RIAA equalization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization

Obviously a lossy compressed format is not suitable for that because artifacts arise when the audio is manipulated.

I never said MP3 was a good format for processing, or mastering. I just said that our brains can't distinguish a good MP3 from a wav.

Do some research before talking about subjects you clearly do not understand.

A 320 kbps MP3 is not by itself a good MP3. There are many factors you are omitting such as which encoder was used, what quality the encoding was done, etc.

If you read my previous post you didn't understand much.

Look at this REAL response from a pair of 500$ Shure in ear monitors. They stop around 16Khz.
http://www.headphoneinfo.com/content/Shure-SE535-In-ear-Headphones-Review/Sound-Quality.htm

Do you really think the ipod ear buds do better than a pair of professional 500$ IEM? I can assure you your ipod ear buds can't reproduce anything over 15Khz. Your brain is playing jedi mind tricks with you.

Great read!

Acoustics first yes!

Good article, thanks

bell'articolo!

mp3 sucks.

Sorry with all due respect, I think there are some facts you have not considered .
You people need to stop reading all these scientific reports formulmas etc . and start thinking again .
Sound is air vibration ( pressure) and it's surounding will respond to it, so when we cut off frequencies out of a song it will change the reaction of the materials responding to it because some sounds are simply gone .

When i compare vinyl to mp3 (320 vbr min) in my studio/room ( 4 kef q50 ) the difference in favour of vinyl is huge .

www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/z.html if u guys wanna drool over some formulas .

if i started a club i would want Brian ENO to build my soundsystem...

Thank you RA, !!!

great article! Im a sound engineer in San Francisco and deal with three Martin Audio systems every week - they are great but the room really does make or break them. The main system is in a room with marble floors + twenty foot high ceilings with zero treatment and it bothers me to no end. I do my best to EQ but club owners simply dont want to pay for acoustic treatment and its a shame. The other two systems on the lower level of the club are in rooms with low ceilings and concrete floors and sound great however.

Having heard the VOID system three times now I'd say its probably my favorite for small, well treated rooms, but Funktion One is still the king for large boomy spaces. EAW is also great when properly setup, the new custom designed DJ monitors at Ruby Skye (another club I work at in SF) are INSANE. The SPL of the whole club goes up when they're on, just sooo clean.

Still despite all the great choices for club soundsystems these days its shocking how many big deal DJs I've worked with who drive the mixer into the red. Some of these guys have great sounding studio productions and clearly know what they're doing when it comes to digital audio so its always bizarre to me when they start redlining. This is less of an issue with analog mixers (Xone/Rane) but the digital mixers like Pioneers break down so fast when pushed into the red. If the house engineer is on his game, he'll have the master attenuator switch on the DJM-800/900 turned down to -6db so that even if its in the red, its not clipping (this lost gain needs to be made up at the house limiter though). Also its crucial to have the CDJs hooked up via digital SPDIF to avoid the extra A/D conversion stage when the CDJs feed the DJM. There's even one EAW processor that has a AES digital input so you can run a totally digital signal path until it hits the amps, this is highly preferable with digital DJ setups.

Another hugely important factors is the source files used, its 2012 and no one calling themselves a professional DJ should be playing lossy formats like MP3s on big club systems, buy a wave or the vinyl! To the guy who keeps defending MP3s- even if you cant tell the difference, other people clearly can! I've done lots of tests and the highs are all smudged together - shakers and hihats gets all phasey and lack definition, bass response is reduced, and the whole track just feels less open. Great soundsystems are as much about whats FELT as they are about whats HEARD, so why would you knowingly play a file that chops off a large chunk of the frequency response? Its 2012- internet speeds are super fast, hard drives are huge, why would you even mess around with lossy files any more? Perhaps if smaller lossless codecs like FLAC were more popular (I blame Apple and Pioneer for not pushing these) we'd see a wider adoption of lossless files among digital DJs...but thats another story

GREAT STUFF!!!
darkhhhhh.posterous.com

Cool ’cause I don’t get upset I kick a hole in the speaker, pull the plug, then I jet...

I have to say I've generally preferred the Martin systems than the F1's when i've attended events. That said this could be coloured because of the setup in each one.

Derp?

Really interesting read for a bit of flavour around audio setups. Will be digging a bit deeper into this, good to know that the variations in sound at club nights are not just some imaginary difference!

Hey Maxwell,

The VOID sound system at Monarch is by far my favorite in SF. What do you think about the sound systems at Vessel, RS, Mezzanine, 222 Hyde, and Public works? Just curious to hear your opinion since you have proper ears.

-J

Very interesting read..i will look at sound in a new light...

This is a terrific article that will hopefully open some people's minds and encourage them to experiment and improve the quality of their sound systems. While the article tries to avoid using and even poke fun at the techno-babble used by audio geeks, people should take the time to educate themselves as long as you can stay away from all the misinformation and skulduggery that is aloof in the audio world. At the end of the day though everything is subjective and people need to trust their ears more.

@Moix11 you can stop being a douche, posting a Wikipedia article on the RIAA curve and the frequency response of Shure SE535s doesn't make you an expert on anything.

@Maxwell great stuff.

Hi! I play at 222 every Friday at my happy hour (GetSet) and I LOVE the system in there. It's a joy to play on a Xone:V6 every week (I have one at home too so am incredibly spoiled) and the whole vibe in there is great. Emilio the owner really cares about high quality sound and you can really hear the difference in there. The cheap drinks and LED ceiling don't hurt either . I haven't been to Vessel but I work at Ruby Skye frequently (I'll be there this Thurs + Saturday actually) and they have a great system as well. It's a larger space so sounds much better with some heads in there. As I mentioned before the new EAW DJ mons there are incredible, soooo clean and punchy.

Public Works is cool but I can't help but think it could sound a lot better than it does. The thing with a lot of these clubs is that they're only as good as their weakest link, which is usually the DJ mixer and the files the DJ is playing. There's nothing worse than going to a venue with a great system and hearing everything played thru a redlined DJM-800. That's been the case on a number of occasions I've been to Public Works. That space is also very tough, it has a great warehouse kinda vibe with the high ceilings and balconies but there's nothing on the walls, no treatment, and no reinforcement so that F1 system can't really live up to its potential.

Every show I've been to at Mezzanine has always sounded great. Trentemoeller live was amazing, and the DJ stuff I've seen there always sounds great (dirtybird, etc). They're one of if not the only club in SF to have a bangin Funktion One club system designed for DJs AND line arrays designed for live acts, so they're probably the most versatile venue in SF. All in all my favorite spot is probably 222 Hyde and Monarch. I work in big clubs every weekend so the idea of standing in line to piss, for a drink, etc with a bunch of people does not really appeal to me. In fact I'm not even the biggest fan of clubs in general, it just so happens to be that they're the places with the best sound systems that most often play the music that I love. Give me a private loft party with some chill people, a great soundsystem, and a great DJ any day of the week over a nightclub. But doing sound for a living is a dream come true, it's a lot of fun despite the fact that the hours basically kill my social life. Most importantly it keeps my days free to write tunes...and plot to take over the world

Best,
Max

Yea. Brian eno would design my club sound system too. The system in fabric are the best in my humble opinion. Just a cut above really.