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I like your format. Even though the room will dominate in the actual measured response, outdoor GP is the best measure, since all devices are on an equal playing field. A 'FAQ' or frequently asked questions section on your website can answer a lot of the same repetitive questions that can tie up your time replying to inquiries. Well informed customers can then email you for additional information on your products.

What are relevant and useful specifications for a subwoofer. A complete set of measurements, showing frequency response, capacity and distortion, is sufficient to tell how a subwoofer will perform. Then you can see how loud it can play at different frequencies, which is what you need to know for system design, you can see how low it can play and how loud. The graph also gives an indication of usable frequency range upwards. However, most customers don't really want to see lots of measurements, they do not understand what those graphs mean, and they acknowledge that fact. For the new Compact Horn subwoofers I did this: The output capacity number and the frequency range gives the necessary information. You want to know the output capacity to be able to dimension your bass-system, and you want to know the usable frequency range to see if it reaches low enough and covers all the range up to the desired crossover. The less tech-oriented customer still does not make much sense of the numbers, and is more likely to go by what I recommend. That's fine. The tech-experts needs to be educated on the meaning of those numbers, because they make no sense to them since they are different from what other manufacturers typically publishes. They don't recognize the meaning of Output capacity, and the frequency range is not the same as frequency response with specified tolerance limits. This is labor-intensive - requires lots of time and effort to educate and show. Perhaps these customers should be ignored - it's really a question of effort vs. value. One solution could be to make additional specifications and measurements available, so they can see exactly what the performance of the subwoofer is. The graphs still require some explanation. (The real experts usually get it, so they don't need any more education. They may ask for measurements, if they want more exact information.) Typical subwoofer specifications are useless. They say nothing about capacity, frequency range specifications are at best unreliable. One English manufacturer speccs a small egg-shaped subwoofer with two 8" drivers as "7.5Hz" - clearly very, very far off from reality. Another manufacturer makes a hairdryer with two 6" or close to that drivers, claiming "14Hz" - I have heard it, and there is no way to get anything useful out of it at that frequency, from what i heard, it struggled hard to do normal bass frequencies. Capacity is important to know because this tells how loud the subwoofer can play in the room. This is the number you use to determine how many units you need to achieve your desired spl at the listening position. Frequency range is the usable range - how low it can play at still somewhat useful output level, and how high up you can set the crossover. For a subwoofer, the frequency response is largely irrelevant, you only want to know the range, and as long as the subwoofer is designed for high sound quality the response will be smooth between lower and upper limit. If the curve is flat or tilted or in some other shape does not matter, because the in-room frequency response will be dominated by the room, and will need adjustments in dsp for optimum performance. ---------------------------- Since the real experts are on data-bass, this is the place to ask for opinions on this - how to specify subwoofer performance.

Very Interesting. While nothing here constitutes definite proof, it does seem reasonable to me that the streaming version is a cinema track mix-down; whereas, the BD version is a re-EQed dedicated home mix. As I've argued before, cinema tracks need quite a bit more low frequency oomph for good impact in an X-curve calibrated cinema. That's because X-curve calibration undoes the natural in-room bass rise exhibited by an anechoic flat speaker due to boundary gain and reverb build-up. Of course a lot of people at home also have systems with less bass output, either because they calibrate to a flat curve (e.g. Audyssey) or because their speakers lack BSC or because they have boundary interference problems. Nevertheless, it appears that recent BD releases with home mixes done at Skywalker Sound Studios have re-EQ to better match systems that perform optimally for music playback. In terms of the graphs, the streaming version looks 5-7 dB hotter through much of the sub region. However, the gap may be much smaller after compensating for loudness differences in the mids and highs. In that case, it may be more accurate to say that the BD version is hotter than the streaming version in the 15-35 Hz region. Certainly the shift of balance toward deep bass could reduce the apparent level of mid-bass, even if the SPL is similar after compensating for loudness difference in the mids and highs. There's a good chance I'll buy the BD version of this film. I may be tempted to try out the streaming version to satisfy my curiosity. I could give my opinion as to whether the streaming version sounds like it is influenced by cinema EQ, for what that's worth. That UHD Atmos tracks often sound louder than BD DTS-MA is a curiosity. Almost all DTS-MA tracks have "0" dialnorm offset, and I don't believe any format supports positive offsets. It's possible that a lot of Atmos "home" tracks are just mixed hotter than the cinema versions, from which the DTS-MA may be derived from. Unfortunately, there are still no formal standards for home mixing and apparently no consistency between studios. For example, I believe (based purely on my subjective evaluation) that Skywalker Sound Studios applies re-EQ to home mixes, whereas most other studios don't. Skywalker Sound also appears to have a dedicated mix room and to use a calibration/mix level that's comparable (in terms of room size differences) to cinemas, i.e. 80-82 dBC @ 500-2kHz. Such mixes are likely to sound quieter, in addition to benefiting from more headroom and cleaner micro-dynamics than cinema mixes. OTOH, it appears that some studios monitor home mixes with calibration as low as (or maybe even lower than) 75 dBC and may still be monitoring near-field in a large room. Such tracks are likely to sound even hotter than cinema tracks and have more potential for clipping and other problems. Also under those conditions, the need for re-EQ is likely to be much less obvious for a number of reasons: (1) tonal imbalances are much less obvious and offensive at lower levels especially excess brightness; (2) lack of boundaries reduces low frequency boundary gain that boosts the bass of flat speakers / mid-field monitors in "small" rooms; and (3) per Floyd Toole, rooms with early reflections are more revealing of tonal balance flaws in a speaker, and I'd argue that this extends to soundtracks as well. From my knowledge, near-field monitoring in a large room is probably the worst environment to monitor a home mix in. Simply monitoring the mix on the dub-stage system, albeit with a Harman-like curve instead of the stupid X-curve, is likely to offer better translation than "near-field". Somehow I need to get the industry people over to my house to listen to and compare mixes.

Not sure I would call this 'soft': JSS