What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

P

Phil Graham

Honorary PhD
Mar 10, 2011
651
1
18
Atlanta, GA
Hey all,

I have done so much writing over the years for various jobs, projects, degrees, etc. I've decided to attempt to start being paid, however meagerly, for some of it. Within the next few weeks I should have the first short, cheap title out in ebook format. The words are written, they want only a pass from an editor and formatting. Basically enough to get my feet wet in e-publishing and figure out how to do a better job on the future titles.

With that in mind, I am shamelessly requesting some market research for future authorship. What audio-related topics would you pay $3-5 USD to have discussed in less than 50 pages, all formatted to read on your Kindle/Nook/iPad/Smartphone/etc? I have my own ideas, but if writing for FOH Magazine has proven anything to me, it is that I am a poor judge of what topics will resonate most with professional audio practicioners.

So, help pick topics you care about, and I'll do my best to create content worth paying for!
 
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Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

Are you familiar with the term meta-research?

I would be interested in basically a summary of current trends/research that is deeper than the typical magizine article but not as detailed as a typical research report. Something that would let me consider new ideas and decide it they are worth pursuing deeper.
 
Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

Tough question... I still buy real books when they contain specific information that I need access too. I sure wish they were only $3. it seems between wiki and google most general information is already available free.

Coincidentally I just helped an old friend with some casual technical fact checking for his new book http://www.ethanwiner.com/book.htm due out in a few months. he is obviously taking a more conventional book publishing approach.

I am thinking of doing a cheap E-book myself someday, not as a revenue stream but to publish some information that just isn't out there. In the last decade I have learned things about drums that are just not in the technical literature that I would like to publish, while perhaps it could serve as self promotion for my business. I already do too much writing for free on websites like this.

About the only advice I can give, is ask yourself what book would you like to buy that doesn't exist? Or what can you do a much better job at? Perhaps write one about using inexpensive modern measurement systems to set up bar room or lower end sound systems (to appeal to a broader DIY audience)... I don't know if this concise information can currently be found in one place even for pro installers.

General information is already out there for free, look for specific solutions for specific real world problems, that people are willing to pay a few bucks for, but not willing hire a real consultant to advise them about.

JR
 
Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

I think FIR filters would be a good topic. There is a ton of ambiguity about those things and most of the information out there is written for people who are already knee deep in digital programming.
 
Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

Brandon G Romanowski said:
I think FIR filters would be a good topic. There is a ton of ambiguity about those things and most of the information out there is written for people who are already knee deep in digital programming.
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Perhaps an Ebook explaining how to negotiate the tower of babel to get specific DSP loudspeaker controllers to actually deliver something close to actual factory presets?

Surely this is common problem that many must deal with, and the modest cost of Ebook guidance seems reasonable (to moi).

JR
 
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Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

Honestly, the book that I want written the most is the wireless equivalent of Bob McCarthy's Sound Systems: Design and Optimization. Everything about wireless mics, coms, IEMs, etc... Coordination, deployment, troubleshooting, theory and best practices, and all the changing legal shit we have to deal with. Obviously it would be much more than just 50 pages or so, and I would pay a significant amount for it. I would love to see it written by a certain H. Cohen, but I gather that he's too busy with work and life to take on something like this. I'd do it myself, but I don't have near enough technical and engineering knowledge to be authoritative about it.
 
Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

Justice C. Bigler said:
Honestly, the book that I want written the most is the wireless equivalent of Bob McCarthy's Sound Systems: Design and Optimization. Everything about wireless mics, coms, IEMs, etc... Coordination, deployment, troubleshooting, theory and best practices, and all the changing legal shit we have to deal with. Obviously it would be much more than just 50 pages or so, and I would pay a significant amount for it. I would love to see it written by a certain H. Cohen, but I gather that he's too busy with work and life to take on something like this. I'd do it myself, but I don't have near enough technical and engineering knowledge to be authoritative about it.
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make that +2, I would pay for that for sure!!!!!
 
Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

Justice C. Bigler said:
Honestly, the book that I want written the most is the wireless equivalent of Bob McCarthy's Sound Systems: Design and Optimization. Everything about wireless mics, coms, IEMs, etc... Coordination, deployment, troubleshooting, theory and best practices, and all the changing legal shit we have to deal with. Obviously it would be much more than just 50 pages or so, and I would pay a significant amount for it. I would love to see it written by a certain H. Cohen, but I gather that he's too busy with work and life to take on something like this. I'd do it myself, but I don't have near enough technical and engineering knowledge to be authoritative about it.
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I feel like that wouldn't be so easy to do. Every few months there would need to be another edition of it!
 
Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

While reading the forums there is a lot of info that goes like this:

I tested X speaker and adjusted the EQ at 4k and now it sounds great!!

How about a recompile of common settings for speakers that can be handled by a simple processor such as an EV DC-One or a dbx260 or an EQ, along with a small review. Extremely well indexed!!!


This is an example:

I recently had a chance to do a show for Evan with his new Mackie HD 1531s and 1801s. Have to say, for only 2 18” drivers, the subs really didn’t disappoint. I was pushing them a little, but I still had enough low end for the room which was about a 300 cap. The tops were little bigger than I’m used to and needed two people to get them on the sticks, however that’s the only beef I had with them. That and I wish there were halfway stops on the output and eq knobs.

They looked awesome and got plenty loud with no feedback issues through the entire show. Didn’t need to use too much eq. I had a 2 db cut at 2.5k and cut 3db at 4k and 190hz. I split the subs between the stage. Probably would have gotten some more balls out of it if I stacked them, but I liked how they looked split and was curious how loud they would be.

It was a basic local rock show with loud drums and guitars. The vocals really cut and sounded sweet through the mix with plenty of headroom. By the second band, I had the rig cranking and was barely hitting the limit on the tops. Hitting limit on the subs a little more, but still sounded plenty beefy. Evan’s getting a couple more which will really round out the system.

Unfortunately, there was no budget for a helper on this show so I thought unloading would be a bitch, but even at midnight, unloading the rig from the truck by myself wasn’t bad at all. Being someone with about a 2” bicep, I generally can’t unload a full rig alone, but it was a snap. Not unloading a heavy amp case was a big plus.

Overall, I think this rig is awesome for any small-midsized show. Crisp, tight highs, deep powerful lows, and smooth mids. Great addition to the Harford Sound arsenal.
 
Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

Phil,

My $.02 coming from my very limited perspective; I would love a 50 page or less basic primer on live sound reinforcement in general terms written for the neophyte like me. I am thinking of church sound volunteers, guys who wanna provide sound for their own band on a small scale etc. Something that included basics of mic types and techniques, signal flow, basics of the mixing board, application of eq and dynamics in the process of mixing, basics of system deployment regarding speaker placement integration of subs with tops, basic concepts of crossover and system DSP.

I know this is tremendously broad and would have to be treated at a very superficial level to fit in the space required. But from my perspective church sound volunteers for example don't have the motivation to go read an exhaustive book covering any one of the above topics nor do they have the motivation to go search out info from wiki or google on individual topics. A short primer written by someone with authoritative knowledge would be pure gold. 50 pages of required reading for the volunteer sound team guys, or 50 pages to read that will give you a huge head start on operating a sound system for your buddies band or your teenage kid's band.

It may not be workable, but there is my idea.

Loren
 
Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

I know I might get some flack for that one but what I am asking for is a very easy to understand walk through that can get anyone using the system including interns and engineers in training. The point is becomming familiar hands on with the system and making some actually useful measurements so that when you go to a training seminar you will have a basic clue and can ask some intelligent questions if needed.
 
Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

Eric Cagle said:
I know I might get some flack for that one but what I am asking for is a very easy to understand walk through that can get anyone using the system including interns and engineers in training. The point is becomming familiar hands on with the system and making some actually useful measurements so that when you go to a training seminar you will have a basic clue and can ask some intelligent questions if needed.
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The problem with Smaart (or any other measurement platform) is not so much "how to use it" (that is described in the user manuals), but rather what to do with the data. More on that later.

Think of it as learning to play a guitar. It is one thing to show how to finger a chord. But if the guitar isn't tuned properly, it will not sound good (bad data in a measurement platform).

So first you have to understand the basic tuning of the strings.

There is a lot more to "making music" than just chord charts. Chord relationships, tempo and on and on.

Anyway-back to measurement. I heard Sam Berkhow (developer of Smaart) say in one class I took " If you gather the data properly (the first step to overcome), then Smaart will accurately show you the results. It will not tell you what to DO with the data. That is up to your understanding of the various pieces of data (impulse response-amplitude response-phase response etd) as to what the actual problem might be and YOU have to determine howot go about achieving a good result. Smaart will only show you the RESULT of your attempts at correcting a particular problem"

So getting a display on the computer is one thing-but is it good data? What do you do with it?

For example: You see a notch in the response on the screen. Do you just put an eq at that point and boost it? Fine-now the notch is gone-problem solved-right?. Now move the mic a foot or two and see what happend to the response. It it stays the same then you are good-but if it didn't-now you have a problem. What you did to "fix" the problem at one place-actually made it WORSE for every other place. Not a good thing.

There are several things that could cause the notch. 1: The notch is naturally within the response of the loudspeaker. Depending on where it is in the passband (within the middle a particular driver or around the crossover region) you may or may not be able to simple apply a little boost to "fill it in". Or not.

2: Is the notch caused by a reflection? Such as a wall bounce or a floor bounce getting into the mic?

There are 3 basic "parts" to the measurement process. 1: Collecting GOOD data. Not as easy as it sounds. 2: DISPLAYING the data to show what you want/need. 3: Figuring out what to DO with the data.

It would be great if you could just hook it up and it tell you what the problem is. But it is not that easy. It takes other skills/knowledge to work WITH the analyizer to come up with something meaningful.

The basic operation is fairly easy. Understanding what it is telling you is quite a different story. Hence the reason for so many bad measurements that are out there.

For what it is worth, I have been to 3 Smaart classes, 2 TEF classes, 20 Synaducon classes ( and various other audio classes)and have iworked with some of the best minds in the business (especially regarding measurements), and I fell I have only begun to scratch the surface in measurements.

Believe me-it is NOT a 3 step process.

But we all continue to learn and improve. And then we die and all that knowledge is gone. That is why some of us try to share with others-so their learning curve is shorter than ours was, and the industry as a whole hopefully gets better.
 
Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

Ditto to what Ivan said.

I'd made hundreds of measurements, most all of them bad for various reasons, when I began making measurements. Then I compounded those bad measurements by incorrectly interpreting the results on screen (like not recognizing a bad measurement) and making wrong decisions based on those. Fortunately, Jamie Anderson convinced me to keep working until I got the "Ah ha!" moment.

I'm still no measurement whiz kid, but I can now tell if I'm looking at something wrong on the screen when I make a measurement. I've learned that getting a pretty picture is secondary to my and the client's perception of audition. I've learned that Smaart and other dual channel FFT analyzers are powerful tools that can do nothing on their own.

Learning to use Smaart, by itself, is no more useful than learning to read the tach in a race car. Sure, you can tell what it says, but that doesn't make you a driver.
 
Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

Tim McCulloch said:
Learning to use Smaart, by itself, is no more useful than learning to read the tach in a race car. Sure, you can tell what it says, but that doesn't make you a driver.
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And making measurements with paying attention to phase can be next to useless. It just depends on what you are trying to measure and WHY!

One of the things that was drilled into me in first TEF class was " WHAT AM I HERE TO DO?". We can make measurements for days on all kinds of different things. But usually we are on a job to do a particular thing-what is it? Determine why a particular area of seats sounds different than the others? Why is it hard to talk on stage? The people in the back/front can't hear. Where is the main freq range of reverb in the room? How loud will a system get before power compression sets in? and so on.

Time is money and now a days we often don't have the luxury of making a pile of measurements, for our own enjoyment. We use those measurements to help define the problem-and possibly other measurements to help define a possible solution.

Sure we can measure all sorts of things regarding something that we consider to be a problem, but if the customer has brought you in to address something else, then that is what needs to be done. They may not care about what you see is a problem. Unless of course the two are related. Such as they say you can't understand the person talking at the podium. But you walk into the room and hear that the HVAC is really loud. Easy enough to measure the NC of the HVAC system. It may be that if the HVAC system was turned off, they could hear the person at the podium talking-just that the HVAC noise was covering him up-or the mic at the podium is in the path of the airflow and is simply amplifiying that 9along with his voice) through the system.

So while they called you in to fix a "problem" with the sound system- the actual fix may be with the HVAC system.

What am I here to do? A question I ask myself ALL the time. It helps to give you focus.
 
Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

Thanks Ivan,
I understand that using Smaart for many of the things that folks like you and Phil do is a major skill set all of its own. I studied electrical engineering in college for 2 years (but didn't get the degree) so I at least understand most of the concepts that are discussed.

The question I am trying to ask is this: Is there a way the average sound company or even DJ can take advantage of some of the things Smaart has to offer and make a noticeable improvement in their system performance? Like a Smaart Lite or something. The only common tool that I can think of in use now is a RTA. A Smaart license and a $100 or less calibrated mic is affordable to anyone who is serious about their sound quality. I mention the DJ aspect because in that community if the average person could drastically improve performance with this tool I believe it would become a trend and obviously there would be a massive need for an affordible ebook on the subject.

We are now in the age of affordable Digital processing that actually sounds good and has some power in the time domain even at the entry level. Can the average user work with Smaart and make a meaningful difference? If so can it be explained in easy to read terms?

This is a market that most likely wouldn't normally hire you or Phil anyway to set up their system unless they grew large enough to have that need. Those of us (like me) that do hire a professional for initial system set up and tuning want to squeeze every bit of goodness out of our rigs and are smart enough to know that the few hundred dollars spent is worth every penny. Even when I do become proficient with Smaart there are certain one time things that it is faster, better, and cheaper to hire a highly skilled professional to do and be done with it. My time has a value to me and the hundreds of hours of measurements and listening required to be proficient at your level can be bought for a travel fee and a few billed hours. It just makes economic sense to me.

Anyway if the book can be written I am in for $50 for the first edition e-signed e-copy to help get the ball rolling. Knowledge is Power! Power to the People!

-Eric
 
Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?

Eric Cagle said:
Anyway if the book can be written I am in for $50 for the first edition e-signed e-copy to help get the ball rolling. Knowledge is Power! Power to the People!

-Eric
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Eric,

I am afraid this e-book is never going to happen, though I admire your moxie in asking. Just as certain classes in college need taught in the laboratory environment, rather than in front of the blackboard, I genuinely feel the same way with measurement. Ultimately an experienced practicioner needs to interact with the students' measurements in the same space, with the same aural impression, to really have a calibrated teaching experience.

That's not a financial decision, because as you articulate, there is subset of the market that's not going to hire me or Ivan on a consistent basis, and it would be tempting to try to derive alternative revenue from that subset. I genuinely think it can't be done well, and I am hesitant to risk my social capital on any topic that isn't a slam-dunk value-add to the reader.

A book on the concepts in measurement, namely frequency and phase, specifically tailored to audio signals and waves, might have its place.
 
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