Tech Focus: Audio Monitoring, Part 1 - Immersive Sound Is Changing What Loudspeakers Are and Do

Tech Focus: Audio Monitoring, Part 1 - Immersive Sound Is Changing What Loudspeakers Are and Do Software steps in to manage the increase in speakers and greater complexity By Dan Daley, Audio Editor

Wednesday, January 15, 2025 - 7:00 am

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The big winners in the immersive-sound sweepstakes have clearly been the companies that make loudspeakers. With Dolby Atmos and other formats adding multiple side and overhead speakers for 7.1.4 and larger configurations, transducers are shipping by the pallet load. This dynamic has also boosted the consumer soundbar sector, which reached the $8 billion mark in 2024 and is headed toward an estimated $16 billion by 2032.

However, managing multiple loudspeakers in an intensive broadcast-mix environment, such as production trucks, requires more than just numbers: it needs its own kind of math, in terms of placement and positioning. That has led to development of a robust software market for such requirements as time alignment and automated imaging correction.

Genelec's Will Eggleston: In immersive installations, the challenge is always the need for quick and precise calibrations.

In immersive installations, says Will Eggleston, marketing director, Genelec, the challenge is always the need for quick and precise calibrations that account for level matching and [time-alignment] compensation, as well as room-environment equalization. Those are an absolute necessity.

He cites the GLM Genelec Loudspeaker Manager software, used for keeping multiple speakers correctly aligned in the tight confines of the audio compartment in the rear of most trucks. We find most trucks have been adapting from 5.1 surround to 5.1.4 immersive or maybe 5.1.2 with the use of four or two overhead [speakers], respectively. Noting that the GLM software can scale from stereo to 5.1 or 7.1.4 and higher, he says, The biggest challenge in these environments is usually space.

Another concern with multiple speakers is their size and geometry. A compact form factor, performance attributes, and various mounting options usually top the list of requirements for playback and durability, he adds, citing Genelec's basic analog-input 8030 and its Smart Active cousin, the 8330.

Reading the Room The freelance nature of the A1 cohort in the U.S. means that sports-audio mixers operate from a variety of trucks, each with its own acoustical environment. Getting a mix to translate is important, and DSP has been the silver bullet for that.

Several brands have developed room-correction systems for this. Some begin by focusing on LFE correction -JBL's Intonato 24 system, for instance, works solely below 500 Hz - but all are said to optimize frequency response to the spaces they're used in. Though differing somewhat, all speaker-calibration solutions need a point of reference in order to function.

This takes the form of a measurement process that captures a snapshot of monitor performance from a listening position based on several swept-tone passes. The resulting profiles and a predetermined target curve (that is, a flat or ideal frequency response) are the two main components of speaker calibration. The effects of the two curves are seen as after curves, which compensate tonal issues using EQ within each monitor channel, work to improve the phase relationship between monitors, and enable improved stereo and multichannel imaging.

Neumann's Jonathan Ruest: It's less about speaker size than about how well the speaker can adapt and translate in a different environment.

Room-correction software comes into play much more often now, especially in immersive environments, says Jonathan Ruest, head of sales and business development, Americas, Neumann, a speaker and microphone manufacturer. It's less about speaker size - although they do have to be more compact than not - than about how well the speaker can adapt and translate in a different environment.

Neumann's MA 1 Automatic Monitor Alignment system uses algorithms that calculate room geometries from individually calibrated measurement microphones to create a room-adaptive target curve. The software is run once on a speaker, which then uses that stored DSP data to adapt itself to new environments. (Each microphone has a serial number; with the serial number loaded into the MA1 software before tuning, the software calibrates the speaker for that individual mic's measurements.)

Mountability matters as much as speaker size, Ruest says, noting that the company has developed a mounting matrix that takes into account ceiling locations - necessary for Atmos - as well as more-conventional wall and stand mounting.

Finally, he points out, speakers need to be loud enough, a parameter that requires more than a volume knob that goes to 11. Unlike in music mixing, sports production involves a combination of elements, including sound effects and speech, and all must be heard clearly within a complex mix.

Immersive mixes tend to be more dynamic, he says. There are a number of considerations, especially as the number of speakers in a truck multiply.

Collectively, DSP systems will likely prove their value as more sports broadcasts move to the REMI/at-home model. Productions with endpoints perhaps in an A1's basement or garage home studio - a situation once propelled by pandemic policies but now more by economic exigencies - are making REMI workflows the norm in many cases.

In the larger picture, as various flavors of surround audio become ubiquitous and immersive sound grows ever closer to becoming a broadcast standard, digital technology is redefining what a loudspeaker is, what it does, how it does it, and where it can do it. In a soon-to-be-world of 5.1.4 and then some, it's perhaps not a moment too soon.

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