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Author Topic: Help with phase and delays vs mains  (Read 4214 times)

Miguel Dahl

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Help with phase and delays vs mains
« on: April 10, 2021, 08:50:07 AM »

First, I can't believe how rusty I've become after almost a year doing close to nothing due to corona..

My new workplace have Meyer UPQ-1P mains and some older Yamaha DXR12 as delays. The delays only cover three rows.

My utility-case with soundcard and measurment microphone is unaccessible to me at the moment, so I did some adjustments to the system by ear, as it needed some tweaking.

I can't get the delays to play well with the mains. There's some phasing going on. I've tried increments of 1ms, and flipping polarity on one of the speakers for each increment.

There's always some narrow range of frequencies which are out of phase between delays and mains. So I chose the setting which had the least amount of "crap" in the response, and notched the range out of the delays which sounded most horrible. "Do I want it to be in phase at 250, 500, 750, and out of phase between that, or the other way around" as a from the top of my head example.

Is this just as simple as the phase response between the two speakers is just not the same in that region I'm having trouble with? It sounds good up to about 200Hz, I can hear they play well together, then the inverse phase-thing start to happen up to some higher mid somewhere. What's happening in between there in some ranges is just disturbing to listen to.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2021, 08:59:27 AM by Miguel Dahl »
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Scott Bolt

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Re: Help with phase and delays vs mains
« Reply #1 on: April 10, 2021, 09:01:10 AM »

As a general rule of thumb, the delay should be about 1mSec per foot for each foot of distance between the mains and the delay speakers (with the delay of course on the delay speakers).

I am unsure of the phase as I have no idea if Meyer and Yamaha speakers utilize the same default phase for their speakers or not.  Generally the low frequency response can tell you by ear.  If you are out of phase, the woofer frequencies should be noticeably less pronounced than when in phase; however, since I assume you are using 2 speakers for FOH there are usually patterns of cancelation depending on where you stand anyway.

Use only one side at a time to avoid the comb filtering normally seen in a venue while doing your setup.

Your ears are the best instrument .... but I do agree, it is always nice to see measurements that agree with your ears :)
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John Roberts {JR}

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Re: Help with phase and delays vs mains
« Reply #2 on: April 10, 2021, 09:11:38 AM »

As a general rule of thumb, the delay should be about 1mSec per foot for each foot of distance between the mains and the delay speakers (with the delay of course on the delay speakers).

I am unsure of the phase as I have no idea if Meyer and Yamaha speakers utilize the same default phase for their speakers or not.  Generally the low frequency response can tell you by ear.  If you are out of phase, the woofer frequencies should be noticeably less pronounced than when in phase; however, since I assume you are using 2 speakers for FOH there are usually patterns of cancelation depending on where you stand anyway.

Use only one side at a time to avoid the comb filtering normally seen in a venue while doing your setup.

Your ears are the best instrument .... but I do agree, it is always nice to see measurements that agree with your ears :)
+1 what Scott said

JR
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Miguel Dahl

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Re: Help with phase and delays vs mains
« Reply #3 on: April 10, 2021, 09:23:17 AM »

As a general rule of thumb, the delay should be about 1mSec per foot for each foot of distance between the mains and the delay speakers (with the delay of course on the delay speakers).

I am unsure of the phase as I have no idea if Meyer and Yamaha speakers utialize the same default phase for their speakers or not.  Generally the low frequency response can tell you by ear.  If you are out of phase, the woofer frequencies should be noticeably less pronounced than when in phase; however, since I assume you are using 2 speakers for FOH there are usually patterns of cancelation depending on where you stand anyway.

Use only one side at a time to avoid the comb filtering normally seen in a venue while doing your setup.

Your ears are the best instrument .... but I do agree, it is always nice to see measurements that agree with your ears :)

Same as 3ms pr meter, -ish. Then maybe add a little tiny bit for haas effect for localiztion of the sound to come from the stage, depending on temp.

I was only listening to one side when I did the adjustments. And even if I moved from "here" to there", there was some phase-issues no matter what. When I flipped the polarity the phase issues just changed which range they occured in. Moving up or down by a few hundre Hz. Maybe 200Hz wide ranges.

I measured the relative distance between mains and delays with a laser finder, just to get a ballpark ms-number, and took it from there.

I've dialed in delays a thousand times, but more often than not, it's been the same brand and family of speakers, Meyer, D&B. But this time I was hearing something which was really off, in a dead quitet environment though, as opposed to outdoors.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2021, 09:33:47 AM by Miguel Dahl »
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Helge A Bentsen

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Re: Help with phase and delays vs mains
« Reply #4 on: April 10, 2021, 09:44:06 AM »

It's hard to do it by ear if you have two different brands, IME having speakers with matching response as close as possible is way easier to align, and most manufacturers have boxes that match ish straight out of the box.

What I do if I don't have a analyzer is set the delay roughly based on distance, then fine-tune it by talking into a mic. Usually works decent enough for speech intelligibility. I like the result better than using music or noise as a signal.
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Miguel Dahl

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Re: Help with phase and delays vs mains
« Reply #5 on: April 10, 2021, 10:39:12 AM »

It's hard to do it by ear if you have two different brands, IME having speakers with matching response as close as possible is way easier to align, and most manufacturers have boxes that match ish straight out of the box.

What I do if I don't have a analyzer is set the delay roughly based on distance, then fine-tune it by talking into a mic. Usually works decent enough for speech intelligibility. I like the result better than using music or noise as a signal.

But to cut to the thing I was originally asking about. Can this thing I'm hearing be because of two different speaker brands, not same family = different phase response? I'm pretty sure I'm hearing at least 120-ish degrees off in those ranges I was speaking about.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2021, 11:06:43 AM by Miguel Dahl »
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Steve-White

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Re: Help with phase and delays vs mains
« Reply #6 on: April 10, 2021, 02:03:47 PM »

I would sanity check the individual enclosures.  If anything is horked up there, you will never be able to dovetail them together.  Without seeing a floor plot, it's difficult to predict any behavior characteristics.

For the sanity check, look around everything in the signal chain to see if someone "fixed" something.  I suspect that is very likely and you are hearing the results.  A janitor could have knocked something loose and reconnected it.  Anything is possible.

Once certain the system is doing what it's supposed to do you can move forward with tuning it.
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Dave Garoutte

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Re: Help with phase and delays vs mains
« Reply #7 on: April 10, 2021, 03:19:00 PM »

Since the lows carry better, could high passing the delays allow you to align a smaller frequency range?
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Helge A Bentsen

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Re: Help with phase and delays vs mains
« Reply #8 on: April 10, 2021, 03:25:49 PM »

But to cut to the thing I was originally asking about. Can this thing I'm hearing be because of two different speaker brands, not same family = different phase response? I'm pretty sure I'm hearing at least 120-ish degrees off in those ranges I was speaking about.

IME it's usually more of a response-issue than a phase-issue. A delay will stick out if it's way off in frequency response or timing, it's only phase matched for a small area with the mains anyway.

IMHO, YMMV, It Depends etc...

I've turned off delay systems in reverberant rooms sometimes, not because they were bad installs/alignments, but because the reflection from the back wall was more annoying than level/response issues for the last row of seats. Got a nasty sounding slap back from the delays off the back wall. Could this be a similar issue?
« Last Edit: April 10, 2021, 03:28:08 PM by Helge A Bentsen »
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Russell Ault

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Re: Help with phase and delays vs mains
« Reply #9 on: April 10, 2021, 03:59:26 PM »

But to cut to the thing I was originally asking about. Can this thing I'm hearing be because of two different speaker brands, not same family = different phase response? I'm pretty sure I'm hearing at least 120-ish degrees off in those ranges I was speaking about.

It's hard to say exactly what's going on without access to a measurement rig, but for what it's worth the published phase responses of those two boxes are nearly identical (although I'd characterize the DXR12 as being more PC125 than PC100).

Is there anything else in the system processing that would cause phase offset? What processor are you using and how is it currently configured?

-Russ
« Last Edit: April 10, 2021, 06:53:11 PM by Russell Ault »
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Re: Help with phase and delays vs mains
« Reply #9 on: April 10, 2021, 03:59:26 PM »


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