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Author Topic: EASE, FIR Maker, and the creation of corrective speaker eq files  (Read 5112 times)

Sam Feine

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Hi all,

We recently decided it was time to revamp our audio division at the shop and decided that the best upgrade that we could make to our inventory was new DSP and amps.
We therefore bought some Powersoft amps with the built in DSP as we had heard that not only are they well proven amps but they also have rather powerful DSP available.
When buying the amps the folks at powersoft assured us that they had presets for our speakers.

As it turns out this claim is true, but their presets are purely IIR and also require our smaller speakers to be bi amped instead of tri amped, something we do not want to do.
 
Today we got a chance to get the amps plugged in and programmed with the old DSP settings we had been using for our EV XLC127+ / XLD281 boxes in the EV amps and were rather pleased when right off the bat we were able to tell a difference in the sound quality from what we had been used to even with very similar settings.

We feel that we can take it further though and have decided that we want to try to make some custom FIR filters for the boxes.


It is here where we seem to be hitting a brick wall so to speak.

From what I understand through a few weeks of on and off internet / forum searching we can make custom FIR filters with free software that is relatively simple to use but would require a profound knowledge of the speakers and exactly what we want the filters to look like. Otherwise there is FIR Maker that is bundled with EASE that appears to take the not inconsequential task of making a custom FIR filter for the boxes and makes it look incredibly simple.

As far as my understanding goes and I could be very wrong, having never had an opportunity to play with EASE, a speaker's EASE data will contain not only things like the box's output pattern but will also contain the frequency response curve of the box which can be taken into account by the bundled FIR Maker software when creating a custom FIR file for the speaker. This is nice especially because while EV does not seem to want to give out the frequency response data for these boxes they do have EASE data online and we were also able to get some files that they say are EASE data from them, though it is a lot of small files and does not appear to be in the .gll file format that standard EASE speaker data apparently comes in.

Unfortunately as mentioned before, I do not have a copy of EASE to play with and there really isn't too much I can find on the subject of just what the software can and can't do without spending more than 2,000 on a piece of software that I think will help do what I want but might just be an expensive paperweight. Further even if it turns out that I am correct about all that I have stated above, we only really need to make a few FIR files and it seems like a bit of a waste to buy such expensive and powerful software only to use it once.

So before we go spending money on EASE or finding someone with it to help us out, I ask of those who do know of EASE and its capabilities, will it do what I think it will? and if not what should I be doing to make these FIR files?

As always, thank you all for the help,
-Sam

(Yes I have seen the other thread about FIR and subsequently signed up for syn-aud-con. Having read some of their 3 articles on FIR filters I am still not too sure what I will need to do though...)
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Arthur Skudra

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Re: EASE, FIR Maker, and the creation of corrective speaker eq files
« Reply #1 on: July 23, 2014, 01:40:57 AM »

You might want to chat with Bruce Olson or Charlie Hughes about EASE and FIR Maker and your specific needs, they both are very helpful in supporting AFMG here in North America.  I do know that AFMG offers a 30 day trial with their software, but you will need to invest time on your part to learn how to do this.  The articles at SynAudCon are the easiest out there for understanding the process of rolling your own FIR filters, however if you're having difficulty understanding those, I don't think EASE is going to make things any "easier" for you--it is a professional grade software package that requires some effort to understand what it does.  Even then, it is easy to make wrong assumptions with software--it only does what you tell it to do, not what you *think* it should do!

How much is your time worth?  Perhaps you should hire someone for a day or two that has a measurement rig, knows how to make proper measurements and interpret the data correctly (particularly the phase curve), and understands the process of creating FIR filters, and invests the time necessary to get the final 20% out of the boxes you have.  Might be money well spent.
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Doug Fowler

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Re: EASE, FIR Maker, and the creation of corrective speaker eq files
« Reply #2 on: July 23, 2014, 10:02:26 AM »

I don't think FIRmaker will create tunings for loudspeakers.  It is used to create FIR filters to control array directivity, similar to Renkus-Heinz Iconyx.

A quick email to AFMG support should confirm this.
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Sam Feine

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Re: EASE, FIR Maker, and the creation of corrective speaker eq files
« Reply #3 on: July 24, 2014, 09:12:09 AM »

As always, Thank you all for your help,

Right now we are looking into learning how to measure the rig ourselves and to that end have signed up for a smaart training class.

In the mean time we plan to do what we can to tune them with the standard available filters in the DSP and are still looking around to try to better understand the filter creation process for FIR filters.

If anyone knows a good person to go to in the Houston area for help with tuning them / possibly using EASE (though if Doug is right it wouldn't do what we need it to anyway...) do let me know.

Again thank you very much for your help,
-Sam
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Brandon Wright

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Re: EASE, FIR Maker, and the creation of corrective speaker eq files
« Reply #4 on: July 24, 2014, 12:33:32 PM »

I would get a hold of EV and see if you can get their FIR tunings for the TG series to import as a starting point.

Might I ask why you didn't just go the TG-7/FIR-drive route?
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Sam Feine

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Re: EASE, FIR Maker, and the creation of corrective speaker eq files
« Reply #5 on: August 04, 2014, 10:04:44 AM »

I would get a hold of EV and see if you can get their FIR tunings for the TG series to import as a starting point.

Might I ask why you didn't just go the TG-7/FIR-drive route?

Hi Brandon,

We had tried to do just that, however after some poking around the files appear to be locked into their own proprietary software.

To answer your question about the why we didn't use their amps, in our part of the world no one seems to be using their amps which are also larger and heavier than the Powersoft we ended up going with. We also knew that Powersoft has a reputation for building good amps and their K series in particular are very well proven. To add to that they only have FIR settings in that amp for the slightly upgraded DVX version of the boxes we are using and to upgrade all of the boxes would cost an arm and a leg.

Also after getting in contact with the folks at EV we found that they really only are supporting the DVX boxes and don't seem to eager to help support their older lines.
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Electro-Acoustic Engineer at Community Professional Loudspeakers

ProSoundWeb Community

Re: EASE, FIR Maker, and the creation of corrective speaker eq files
« Reply #5 on: August 04, 2014, 10:04:44 AM »


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