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Figure 1Sound traveling slower through the audience than the air above it, is a well‑accepted phenomenon. And compelling supporting evidence has been published in the past decade. Nevertheless, one must always remain vigilant of the possible causes for sound getting decelerated. Is the audience to blame, or a drop in temperature, or a combination of both?
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Figure 1Kurtosis and crest factor are closely related. But unlike crest factor, Kurtosis is not exclusively peak‑centric. Kurtosis indicates the presence of outliers in general as well as peaks. For music, kurtosis is a function of frequency (Figure 1).
Regrettably, in order to appreciate this, some math is inevitable.
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Bill WhitlockDisturbance signals, such as hum, buzz, or noise, can be extremely frustrating. And troubleshooting them is oftentimes a time‑intensive process of trial and error. Until I learned of Bill Whitlock and his education[1] on Audio System Grounding and Interfacing.
Whitlock recommends relatively simple means to — methodologically — identify causes for disturbance signals. And while his teachings have always appealed to me, I never got to the point of actually building some of the tools myself. Until recently.
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Why do certain channels on a mixing console featuring transient signals (like drums) run hotter than other channels (e.g., strings) even though they all sound equally loud? Let us look at duty cycles.
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Some audio professionals find power alleys, which are associated with left‑right subwoofer deployments, objectionable. This is somewhat ironic considering that modern full‑range loudspeakers also go down to 63 Hz (and lower). And their — bottom octaves — are subject to the same artifacts when deployed left and right. Despite this, left‑right mains are still the standard in typical PA systems and continue to be widely accepted.
Double standards set aside. If one insists on minimizing power alleys while sticking to left‑right subwoofer deployment, using — low‑directional — systems per side, one can consider using signal post‑processing to minimize the interference patterns (spoiler alert: processing will come at a cost). But first, let us address the elephant in the room.