A New Method Of Calibration. True Target By Magic Beans Audio!

[@markwilson0077]

I have mad respect for @JoeNTell for creating an App that ( by description and function) takes into account the natural output of each speaker and how that individual speaker is affected by the room and then effects filter/parameters to allow the natural sound of the speaker to be represented at the MLP!! ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT! I respect Audyssey but in no way is it comparable to this method employed by Magic Beans. It almost completely reverse engineering the process to realign 'CORRECTLY'. Joe, this game changer will eventually become the standard...Patent this process!!!

[@joentell]

Thank you! To be fair, Audyssey MultEQ-X has been awesome for turning our AVR's into a giant "MiniDSP" filter bank.

[@markwilson0077]

@@joentell I agree completely, as an owner of 3 Marantz and 1 Denon AVR and an avid MultEQ user, I've employed the now 'Magic Beans' method, to coax Audyssey close to the natural lines of the room/ transfer function. Definitely looking forward to streaming the process with the True Target / Magic Beans App in future! Thanks again Joe!

[@joentell]

How does it sound? ​@@markwilson0077

[@markwilson0077]

@@joentell Honestly it sounds incredible! However, it took months of REW, room treatments, and DSP fails.. Your method Works! Looking forward to the True Target App release to get 'here' in an hour vs. Days / weeks/ months of fails. Keep doing your thing Joe, we all win! Will be in my toolkit with Spatial Audio Tool soonest.

[@joentell]

@@markwilson0077 Message me on Instagram or my contact form on my website

[@FURognar]

The Marksman/Archer analogy was perfect. Especially the fact that the microphone shoots perfectly every time, but doesnt account for external factors, where a human brain will make adjustments, even if we are aware of it or not.

[@michaelwyckoff7593]

Have a good Thursday fellas😊

[@PETROL_Ted78]

I am curious what this program would do in my home theatre. But I also think that this way of calibrating is more interesting if you have high end speakers. Or speakers with a sound signature you love (a lot of people buy speakers for the looks or functionality😉). AND if all your spreakers are from the same brand/line. From my experience, If you want that surround "dome" I find it sounds best if all the speakers have the same sound signature. I have 13 Kef T series speakers in my 7.1.6 setup. I know these aren't the best speakers. But my priority was functionality. So for me Audyssey Multieq X is more than enough.. I did follow the measured response on my MLP. So I kept boosting to a minimum. And I also don't EQ all the way up till 20khz. The end result isn't a flat curve at all. But it sounds natural and spaceious. 👌🏻 I now got an "even" soundstage all around me. 👌🏻

[@danielmiller469]

Totally understand what you mean doing it manually with rew spents hours just to get one speaker right 😅

[@Antimonkat]

I mean I had this thought totally on my own without research when I was setting up my stuff, I thought the point of room eq was in fact to try and take the room out of the equastion, and give you the speakers true signature at the mlp. To test how well it did, and I never actually did it, but I thought take a near field measurement of the speaker with no eq, run room eq, in my case multi-eq, take a post eq measurment at the MLP and see how close it got to the original measurement to see how well the process went. Sounds like you're going further, and using the nearfield as the target and then trying to match it at the MLP by removing the room's effects, vs the way other tools do it by trying to match a flat generic "ideal" response, potentially wrecking the characteristics of the speaker you bought and love, or pushing it outside it's designed capability. So essentially, if you like how your speaker sounds and want to preserve its signature in your room, run magic beans, If your speaker has some characteristics you don't like, or your goal is neutral, predictable established response room AND speaker independent, run traditional eq, but that takes the soul out of the sound and tries to make all speakers (and amplifiers for that matter) sound the same?

[@DailyHiFi]

Joe here. I don't agree that it's "wrecking the sound signature" of your speakers. If the speaker designer had access to DSP, they would likely use it. The speaker still has other tonal characteristics such as its off-axis response (directivity) and other characteristics determined by its physical properties. An EQ to flat nearfield doesn't mean every speaker will sound identical. They might have different distortion characteristics, frequency range. Also, targeting a flat response doesn't mean they can actually do it. Many speakers add coloration which is a form of EQ that is applied to everything played out of it. If that's what you like, that's fine. But it's less accurate by definition. Many people do this by simply applying a curtain and correcting only for mid and lower frequencies.

[@Antimonkat]

@@DailyHiFi Yeah I was wondering that too, many people will curtain room eq, but seems like the intent is to run magic beens full range? Anyway I was trying to say Magic beans seems the more likely way to maintain more of a speakers true sound at MLP vs traditional room eq which really doesn't factor the speakers signature into account, ie Magic beans is better/more nuanced, vs trying to make everything fit in the same box. Your comment does raise a question though (and hey thanks for the time) Does magic beans take the near field response and apply a correction curve to it first to try and make it flat and then try to match that flattened response at the MLP with further correction, or is it just trying to make the response at the MLP equal to the base unaltered response nearfield, which is what I intitaly thought? Or maybe give us the option to do either with a toggle, best of both worlds?

[@DailyHiFi]

It corrects NF to flat above the transition region (simplified answer.) Trying to retain the NF response at MLP or the "speaker's sound signature" is not possible. If you think about it, it means removing the effect of the room. First, that will sound very unnatural, and the effect of that EQ would actually be to make the response of that speaker very unlike it's natural character. The best way to keep the natural sound of the speaker is to not apply any EQ to it. @@Antimonkat

[@Antimonkat]

@@DailyHiFi makes sence and fair enough, thanks.

[@vernonnutter1957]

So do you use magic beans before, after or instead of audyssey?

[@joentell]

Before Audyssey and with MultEQ-X. It also works with Dirac and many other systems.

[@vernonnutter1957]

@@joentell thank you for the speedy response

[@Bradimus1]

Is this a little like using the function on YPOA where it EQs all other speakers to sound like my left and right mains?

[@joentell]

Mhmmm, not really. We don't want to make other speakers sound like mains, we want to make them sound more perceptually accurate.

[@trauma50disaster1]

And then isn't there an entire other system related to how speakers near each other interact and change all those waves? So you might have to go to the next level and do Transference and then add the layer of what other speakers are doing to the sound, maybe?

[@joentell]

We have ideas for more advanced techniques in the future. We wanted to make this app as simple as possible to do one thing specifically: give people better target curves to use with their existing calibration systems.

[@wktek48]

Will the price of the app be higher then the multieq app ? Can you use a Denon microphone or is the umik 1 a better option for magic beans?

[@DailyHiFi]

Joe here. The UMIK-1 is the preferred mic for accuracy. We do have an option for the ACM-1, but it's not recommended as a first option. I will announce pricing soon.

[@Unknown-1709]

Will Magic Beans work with Umik and calibration file?

[@joentell]

100%. A UMIK-1 w/ cal file is what we recommend using.

[@JohnSmith-qi6co]

This needs to be explainted better. If the room subtracts 2dB at some particular frequency, we can't use -2 as a target to shoot for.

[@Antimonkat]

Hopefully you don't mind terribly some unsolicited opinion on pricing? Sounds like you are coming from a fair place, just wondering if tiered pricing was on the table. for example, maybe a free trial that just allows 2 speakers, then a basic license that is for 1 preset, 1 avr, 1 layout. Then maybe an advanced license, still for personal use but that maybe gives you 5 or 10 setups for multiple avr's or multiple layouts within an avr. Then finally a Pro license for calibrators and integrators with unlimited setups and commercial use?

[@mikeortiz2139]

Since the original NF sound is what we are trying to get at our MLP, why do we need trace arithmetic between the NF and MLP RTAs? Why can't you just use the NF RTA measurement as your target curve and EQ the MLP RTA? The resulting filter would be the Target Curve, right? I'm going to have to try this.

[@josephfranzen9196]

As a fellow Asian, here’s hoping I get picked for the beta 😂

[@TrueLies23]

Forgive me for commenting before finishing the clip but- Target curve would make more sense to people in terms of picture perhaps. You need a different curve for TV A in room 1, 2, 3 in order for blue/red/green to look the same in each room. We have different projector screens to act as a "target curve" (correction) for the room. Go on, roast my analogy 😂

[@TrueLies23]

In fact you should demonstrate this. If you use the same target curve on 2 different TV's you'll probably get horribly varied results.

[@joentell]

That works. Think of the speaker as the projector and the screen as the room. We have different projectors which inherently need their own individual calibration. We also we need to account for the color of the screen which might be different. Even if you have the same projector on two different screens, you'll need to calibrate the projector differently to get an accurate perceptual picture. To carry the analogy even further in order to explain why a mic and our 2 ears and a brain aren't the same, imagine someone wearing yellow tinted glasses. They've been wearing them all day. If they look at an accurate picture, it will look accurate to them, even though the spectrometer viewed through the same yellow glasses would measure as too yellow. Making a correction to the image so that it accounts for the yellow tint, will be more accurate for the meter, but a person wearing the yellow glasses all day would look at it and say that the colors are incorrect. I've previously stated that reality is our reference. This is an example of that.

[@nonothing9685]

I'm still very confused by how it works but i'm looking forward to seeing how it sounds. I might suggest having some sort of a 7 day trial or something, just to let people try it out, especially if my assumption that this isn't a super budget product is correct. Like dirac gives you a 14 day trial i think.

[@joentell]

It might help to explain which part you're getting caught up on. Maybe it will help me explain it better.

[@nonothing9685]

@@joentell lol it's more on me than your explanation. I watched the podcast live and I was so lost. I think I just missing alot of basic home theatre information. I'm fairly new to the hobby and only heard of the word target curve a few months ago and I have no idea what it means(is target curve different than house curve btw?) Im still trying to figure out what these words mean sometimes and there's just so much bad information online in forums, who knows what's right.

[@JonMoralesLA]

⁠@@joentellJoe…honestly don’t worry too much about people trying to understand this. Think about it…I’ve never heard the Dirac or Audyssey crew go into the weeds with explaining what their apps do. Sonos has you wave around a phone and nobody knows what the hell is going on. We just get that there’s an audible improvement in sound at the end of it. I think you should explain the best you can and not go down rabbit trails with people and their own mental gymnastics. Some people just like to hear themselves talk and elevate themselves in a conversation.

[@joentell]

@@JonMoralesLA I hear you. That's good advice. I only do so because I enjoy explaining and I'm targeting a more enthusiast audience. I also don't think people should just assume auto-calibration is correct. They should have an understanding if it actually is and if so, why it is. I totally get what you're saying though. Just let it be "Magic." 😉

[@michaelwyckoff7593]

E Dizzle😊 great name😊

[@trauma50disaster1]

E.Roc better

[@JonMoralesLA]

No need to understand the sausage factory behind the scenes. Shut up and take my money day one of the release of Magic Beans. 😊

[@joentell]

But, it's a beautiful factory! 😊 Thank you for believing in me and the product! 🙏

[@Bladecutter]

The casual presentation was not very helpful. But after this video I think I am starting to understand. It starts with defining "transfer function.". Yes, ChatGPT defines it as "In audio engineering, a transfer function describes the relationship between the input and output signals of a system. It's often used to analyze how a system, like an audio processor or filter, affects the frequency, amplitude, and phase of a signal. Engineers use transfer functions to understand and manipulate audio signals in various applications, such as equalization, amplification, and filtering." To my understanding, when you measure the near field response you are measuring the _capability_ of the speaker. When you measure at the MLP the "difference" is the room transfer function. You then use the near field measurement and the transfer function to calculate the adjustments needed to maximize the performance of _each individual speaker_ at the MLP. Is that close? Getting your marketing message is critical. Personally, I think that you have a way to go. I've registered for the early beta and wish you great success!

[@joentell]

During that presentation, I wasn't comfortable explaining in as much detail as I am now that the app is close to completion. I am explaining this stuff for us audio nerds here. Marketing is a whole different story. Marketing is more like, "this will make your system sound awesome!" 😂

[@Bladecutter]

@joentell is my understanding close to what's going on?

[@joentell]

@ dannveld That sounds about right to me. And by "maximization" we mean trying to make each speaker as perceptually accurate/neutral as possible given the speaker's directivity and dispersion characteristics. The trick is to not over-correct what is not physically correctable, and not under-correct what is possible to correct. The app makes this process easy, even for people with minimal technical knowledge.

[@Bladecutter]

@joentell Now I'm really excited! 🔥