Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

B

Ben Gingerich

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Oct 19, 2012
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Warner Robins Ga
Are these still the only players? I'm starting to do a number of installs and would like to have my own modeling/acoustic software .
What are the benefits of ease over ulysses? Is everyone just letting the manufacturer do their designs.

Ben
*I have used ease before.
 
Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

Ben Gingerich said:
Are these still the only players? I'm starting to do a number of installs and would like to have my own modeling/acoustic software .
What are the benefits of ease over ulysses? Is everyone just letting the manufacturer do their designs.

Ben
*I have used ease before.
Click to expand...
The general issue with modeling programs is getting data to put into them.

And then what about the quality of the data and how much it has been "modified" (yes it happens).

There are various programs from some manufacturers-but often they can only use the manufacturers data.

It also depends on what you "expect" out of the model. Is this just direct coverage-or are you looking for acoustical prediction and auralizations?

What model loudspeakers are you planning out looking at? That could be a guide.

I never got the idea of how to build a model in Ulysses. I never spent a lot of time with it, but the idea of building it they way it is in EASE just seemed to make more sense to me.

Basically you build it like you would a house-put up walls-make sure they connect etc. The idea of Ulysses (from what I can tell) is that you take a lump of clay and shape it by removing parts. I could be wrong on this.

Having the manufacturers look over your design ideas is always a good idea. They may have ideas or thoughts or approaches that you may not have thought of.
 
Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

95% of the time I'm looking for direct coverage area/speaker placement. 4% of the time pretty pictures for the customer and 1% of the time acoustic simulations.
I have noticed in the past that different manufactures use junk numbers. The first "big design" (in my mind) I did 8+ years ago when a new line/J array came out and I put it in ease and it looked really good, the owner of the company I worked for was able to get a full demo, brought in lifts and everything, the sls920s the owner of my company had used for years for his rental system he spec'ed out, they did not look near as good on the design so he brought them as well, I may or may not have let my 18year old big mouth talk about how much better my new array was going to be than his point and shoot stuff, let's just say that I pushed brooms cases and tool boxes and sat behind a bunch of 6chan powered mixers for another year after that.

However its still good to have the placement and ball park numbers when your doing a design again that's 95% of what I need.
The next install I'm doing is just a 2cab install and I have the budget to do it right so I was able to use DDT to give the customer pretty pictures.
 
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Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

Ben Gingerich said:
95% of the time I'm looking for direct coverage area/speaker placement. 4% of the time pretty pictures for the customer and 1% of the time acoustic simulations.
I have noticed in the past that different manufactures use junk numbers. The first "big design" (in my mind) I did 8+ years ago when a new line/J array came out and I put it in ease and it looked really good, the owner of the company I worked for was able to get a full demo, brought in lifts and everything, the sls920s the owner of my company had used for years for his rental system he spec'ed out, they did not look near as good on the design so he brought them as well, I may or may not have let my 18year old big mouth talk about how much better my new array was going to be than his point and shoot stuff, let's just say that I pushed brooms cases and tool boxes and sat behind a bunch of 6chan powered mixers for another year after that.

However its still good to have the placement and ball park numbers when your doing a design again that's 95% of what I need.
The next install I'm doing is just a 2cab install and I have the budget to do it right so I was able to use DDT to give the customer pretty pictures.
Click to expand...
One of the issues with any prediction program is how much smoothing is being used-not just in the prediction-but also in the data for the product.

There are a number of products that "have" 1/3rd oct 5° data-so so it seems. Yet when the data was actually collected-it was 1 oct 10° ACTUAL measurements-and then the "other data points" were not measured-but simply numbers that were in between the measured numbers. So the actual performance is not what is shown on the data.

And then there is the data that has been changed to make the models look better.

As with anything-you have to look a bit deeper to get the real story.

As with anything there are good "stories" and bad "stories" but how true they are is a different story.
 
Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

EASE takes some legwork and thus I only use on large projects, however mostly to impress the consultant or client anyway.

Wouldn't go through all the effort for a 2-box system there are other programs that are more user friendly and faster to punch things out.
 
Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

What types of projects and systems do you get involved in and what is your role in them? What experience do you have with any of the prediction programs or how they work in general? Do you also provide acoustical consulting services? What type of information and/or predictions do you want to address?

As a Consultant I tend to get involved in larger, more complex systems as well as also often providing acoustical consulting for those projects so programs such as EASE or CATTAcoustic make sense for me, but they may be more than what is required for smaller, simpler applications or quick initial studies. Manufacturer specific software can be useful but I find it rarely allows you to look at things if three dimensions or to consider the effects of the acoustical environment. For example, I may use a manufacturer's array software to develop a preliminary array concept but then import that information into EASE to look at the results in more detail in the actual predicted environment, then going back and forth to tweak the results.
 
Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

Ivan, i have taken some time this weekend and looked at some spec's/graphs and now every time i look at one i'm going to be asking myself how much smoothing and where are the points of smoothing/averaging, thanks for making my life much tougher...

Brad, most of what I have been doing is church and bar installs, the short story is that a local audio guy is retiring from the business and trying to give me his long term customers before he completly gets out, most of these are installs that have been done in the mid-late 90's that need updated. I have only run into a situation 1 time in the last year that i really needed to provide acoustical treatment and i had that taken care of by a manufacture, so thats not on the top of my priority but would be nice.

The things i'm really looking for is to be able to provide coverage graphs/images for customers, and to look at the best places to put a clusters/delay clusters when needed. Reading CLF data is a must. The higher end installs there's not much of a problem with, its when I have a budget install where you need to redeploy or add to a current system, that is where i get the hang ups at.
 
Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

Ben Gingerich said:
Ivan, i have taken some time this weekend and looked at some spec's/graphs and now every time i look at one i'm going to be asking myself how much smoothing and where are the points of smoothing/averaging, thanks for making my life much tougher...

Brad, most of what I have been doing is church and bar installs, the short story is that a local audio guy is retiring from the business and trying to give me his long term customers before he completly gets out, most of these are installs that have been done in the mid-late 90's that need updated. I have only run into a situation 1 time in the last year that i really needed to provide acoustical treatment and i had that taken care of by a manufacture, so thats not on the top of my priority but would be nice.

The things i'm really looking for is to be able to provide coverage graphs/images for customers, and to look at the best places to put a clusters/delay clusters when needed. Reading CLF data is a must. The higher end installs there's not much of a problem with, its when I have a budget install where you need to redeploy or add to a current system, that is where i get the hang ups at.
Click to expand...
Unless you have modeling data for the existing speakers-then it makes it hard to do an accurate (or semi accurate) model. So you are left to your best judgement.

One area that gets overlooked is using "cluster data" and putting it into a model. I know of cases that you can download the "cluster data" for a number of boxes and put it into the model.

This seems like a really good idea-until you find out that some manufacturers are "cooking the data" of the cluster. Try building the same cluster out of individual boxes and see if it is even close to the "cluster data". If it is not-then you need to be careful about using the cluster data. And then sometimes even the individual cabinet data is modified to "model better".

There are VERY VERY few cases of cluster data in which the actual cluster was measured. That of course is the best way.

Sometimes you have to look a bit closer to get the real story.

The simple answer is easy-but the real answer is a bit more complicated.
 
Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

Ivan Beaver said:
Unless you have modeling data for the existing speakers-then it makes it hard to do an accurate (or semi accurate) model. So you are left to your best judgement.

One area that gets overlooked is using "cluster data" and putting it into a model. I know of cases that you can download the "cluster data" for a number of boxes and put it into the model.

This seems like a really good idea-until you find out that some manufacturers are "cooking the data" of the cluster. Try building the same cluster out of individual boxes and see if it is even close to the "cluster data". If it is not-then you need to be careful about using the cluster data. And then sometimes even the individual cabinet data is modified to "model better".

There are VERY VERY few cases of cluster data in which the actual cluster was measured. That of course is the best way.

RSometimes you have to look a bit closer to get the real story.

The simple answer is easy-but the real answer is a bit more complicated.
Click to expand...

So than it comes to this question, is there much value in using prediction software anymore?
 
Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

Ben Gingerich said:
So than it comes to this question, is there much value in using prediction software anymore?
Click to expand...

It all depends on the data-where it came from-how much you trust it-how it was gathered and so forth.

Not an easy question to answer or get answered.

You could start with asking the manufacturer directly a couple of questions and hope they tell the truth-or if the person you are asking even knows the truth or is simply "repeating the company line".

To what resolution was the data measured? degrees and octaves

Were the "clusters" in the data actually measured as a cluster or was a cluster "put together" in the model?

Has there been any manipulation of the measured data? THAT is the TOUGH hard question that will be hard to get an honest answer to.

Of course you can also do it the CORRECT way. Build a system in a model. Install the system as per the model. Then do a lot of measurements and VERIFY the results.

Compare the prediction to the actual measured results and see how well they compare. If they don't then try to figure out why-and ask the manufacturer why they don't.

But who has the time or budget for that------------------------------------

There is real value in the prediction software-if the data entered is good. And even if the data has been "fudged"-it is still better (faster-more accurate-easier) than trying to do it with pen and paper.

Of course part of the whole "process" is knowing the products used and getting a feel for how they "react" in a real room.

By knowing the product-it is much easier to put together a design that works.

Very rarely do I change products in a design because of what the model shows me. But rather I use the model to get aiming angles-locations etc. That and having products that actually do what the specs say they do (ESPECIALLY in the coverage angle department) makes a real difference.

It is very important to look at a wide range of freq -NOT just a single freq-to get an idea of what the overall system coverage is.
 
Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

Ivan Beaver said:
There is real value in the prediction software-if the data entered is good. And even if the data has been "fudged"-it is still better (faster-more accurate-easier) than trying to do it with pen and paper.
Click to expand...

So is there a DDT type software out there that will read CLF thats not $2000?
If there is not I feel like the investment into ease is worth it, but building a business from the ground up cost's way more than I could have thought... (just bought Smaart 4 months ago)
 
Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

If you are not doing that much with acoustics and concerned primarily with direct coverage then EASE Jr may be a good option for you, you can see how the EASE versions compare at Compare Versions - EASE - Enhanced Acoustic Simulator for Engineers. I believe EASE Jr. is around $850, so a smaller initial investment and you can upgrade it later to full EASE (although for a greater total cost than initialy purchasing EASE).
 
Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

There are a few other modeling programs out there. Each has it's quirks. Bose Modeler Modeler Sound System Software - Bose Professional Systems - Product overview is quite possibly the best IMO. It does everything EASE does, but uses CLF data. If you can get a copy (Bose is very protective) they do give it out for free I believe. Although I think there are two varieties, one that only allows for their product in the model and an "unlocked" version that allows any CLF data.

Another recent addition to the open CLF data platform is DDA from Duran Audio/AXYS Axys® by Duran Audio BV - Digital Directivity Analysis. It also does many things, not just coverage, but also clarity, RT, STI, etc. My experience is that it's a little more difficult to generate the model, but that may be because I've used EASE for so long, I think in that way.

So, both Bose Modeler and DDA are two FREE programs that are EASE alternatives. Other modeling programs out there are CATT Acoustic CATT-Acoustic / The FIReverb Suite (Free Demo available) and ODEON Acoustics Simulation Software | Odeon (very expensive).

If you're only using Danley speakers, their DDT 2D and 3D software is probably, by far, the easiest software to generate direct sound only models. Danley Digital Tools | Danley Sound Labs, Inc.
 
Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

Aaron Johnson said:
If you're only using Danley speakers, their DDT 2D and 3D software is probably, by far, the easiest software to generate direct sound only models. Danley Digital Tools | Danley Sound Labs, Inc.
Click to expand...
It is still 6 months or so off-but there will be a new version of DDT that is planned to be released at INFOCOMM that is a huge step forward and different in prediction software-that nobody is doing (that I am aware of). It is planned to push right up against the edge of acoustic prediction(ie reflections) and maybe take one step into that area.

NO- we not go into exactly what is going to be offered-but lets say it is just as easy as the current DDT-with some serious serious new aspects that are super cool.

Come back in 6 months------------- ;)
 
Re: Ease Vs Ulysses vs anything else

Ivan Beaver said:
It is still 6 months or so off-but there will be a new version of DDT that is planned to be released at INFOCOMM that is a huge step forward and different in prediction software-that nobody is doing (that I am aware of). It is planned to push right up against the edge of acoustic prediction(ie reflections) and maybe take one step into that area.

NO- we not go into exactly what is going to be offered-but lets say it is just as easy as the current DDT-with some serious serious new aspects that are super cool.

Come back in 6 months------------- ;)
Click to expand...

So is there going to be another shootout soon so that I can come snoop around and see what I can find? :)
 
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