Postby Scott Buwalda » May 20th, 2008, 2:25 pm
I have spoken with Dinelle. We have already lined out a potential skeleton for a new SQS.
Day #1 will be this year's Day #2 course load. This time, we finish it up. The Day #1 course has now officially been retired in Trinidad, because there has been ~50 people that have successful took the Day #1 course. Last weekend's Day #2 was only about 1/3 done before we broke for Bill Pleasant's music CD, and for lunch, and represents where we need to pick up for the next time. So this last time's Day #2 course becomes Day #1 for the next event. Here's what's being proposed:
Day #1: Advanced SQS (using this year's Day #2 material, and finishing it up proper this time). 8 hour seminar with catered food, hand-outs, and music CD's. Free gear too.
Day #2: Full-day application. This will include a morning listening and tuning tutorial (how to listen and how to tune). Everyone will be given a tuning spreadsheet, and a "call-out" list of orders to tuning, including a laminated sheet with check boxes and notes columns (kind of like an SQ score sheet, but check-box driven). I will basically teach you how to set-up a car, and how to tune a car from start to finish. I will "modify" the near-field sound system with several items, and we will work through, one at a time, the problems we hear, and how to correct them. I'd like to see how close we come to unity (all of us recognizing the same problem areas in the near-field system). Once we've talked about the results of the exercise, I will incorporate our changes, and we'll listen to the changes we asked for to see if the changes were valid, and further, to see if there are any other changes needed.
Once complete at the near-field audio system, we will then all evaluate the newly-installed BMW's system (the system that was installed on Sunday). Everyone will use the tools we have handed out to evaluate the BMW (preferably without comparing notes). An RTA will be running with a microphone in the car running in "medium" speed to assist hearing spectral aberrations. This will be done in three to five-minute intervals...get in, listen, pick out the most glaring problems, use the tools we have given you, and get out, so the next person can begin. We'll then re-convene back to our seats and discuss what we heard...we'll compare who heard what, and discuss how the things we heard can be resolved. We'll then have lunch.
Immediately after lunch, Bill, Dinelle, and crew will offer some timeless installation advice for about an hour while I tune the BMW (the installation advice will include decoupling techniques, circle jigging, round-overs, proper fiber glassing techniques, acoustic damping and acoustic absorption, speaker locations and order of step, step response, zero delay plane, etc.). I will limit myself to one hour and fifteen minutes of tuning the BMW, and will seek the assistance (a tuning buddy) for this section. I'll then invite everyone back to listen to the BMW again to witness the differences.
Everyone will once again get a 3 to 5-minute audition. If there are any remaining issues after my tune, or if issues were not quite resolved, it'll be your responsibility to make note of these and then present your results back in the classroom format. NOTE: I might PURPOSELY leave one or two things unchanged, or purposely make two or three new problems in the car for you to figure out. We'll see if you're using your eyes or your ears. In fact, I will do my best to use the psychoacoustic power of persuasion to convince you of things that truly do not exist, or convince you that a problem area has been rectified, and it will be up to you to gather and evaluate what this data is and successfully call me out on it. We'll give prizes to the people that find the three to five flaws that I purposely left in the system. When everyone's done, we'll compare notes to see what everyone heard (this will be a fantastic exercise by the way, because we'll all hear things slightly differently). I will then reveal in a step-by-step manner what I did to tune the car, and then reveal what I left alone, or what I changed to make the system worse. We'll then demonstrate back at the car what each adjustment did, why that adjustment was done, and the new result. If there are remaining issues that were identified during the second review of the group after my tuning, as well as the newly-introduced issues, we will attempt to fix these at this time. We might even try to do a before and after ABX comparison.
By the end of the day, everyone will have been involved with learning how to listen, learning on how to be repeatable and objective in your listening, and will have provided input on how to tune a near-field audio system and the BMW audio system using software and techniques learned in the Summit. We'll learn how important power of persuasion psychoacoustics really issue, and how to over come it. We'll learn objective listening as the most important tenet of the exercise. We'll then wrap everything up with a recap of the theories presented, and how the theories were put into practice. There will also be free equipment give-aways as well, like Day #1, for early registration, and for Q&A.
What do you guys think?
How does late September through October look?
Scott
Last edited by
Scott Buwalda on May 20th, 2008, 2:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Day 2 is here 
great 2 days guys. Dinelle really came good. Value for $$. Infomation like mad!
