While, of course, we will have a datasheet very soon, the reality of adequately documenting Anya is proving difficult. In order to understand what an “Anya datasheet” means, we need to review what these documents represent to the market and how they are created.

Long story short: they don’t tell you a lot and may well be misleading.

Even within our own hallways, even with our rigorous S3 process, high-level executives recently had a conversation about positioning the JF213 vs. the JFL210. How could we say that the JFL213, with its lower HF section maximum output, delivered more HF compared to the JFL210? The answer is that the JFL213’s HF section delivers more even broadband response, especially in the top octave but at a slightly lower average level compared to the JFL210′s HF section, which is a little “peakier” and rolls off a little faster through the top octave.

The frequency response charts tell the story pretty clearly; the nominal specifications do not.

This is why datasheets – even S3 datasheets, the best datasheets ever – can be misleading. Distilling a complex system down to a few simple numbers necessarily eliminates any complexity.

And eliminating complexity from a complex thing is inherently misleading.

“But,” replied the audio pro, “that’s why you publish the charts.”

Yes. And because these are S3 charts, they are directly comparable because they used identical methodology to generate the core measurements that underlie them.

There’s also a bigger problem with datasheets – other companies make them, too. And they don’t use the S3 process. Some may try very hard to deliver consistent, accurate data on product performance. Others maybe not so much.

The point is that EAW can only control the accuracy of EAW datasheets, and we do so with great care. So let us briefly explain in simple language what S3 is, what it isn’t and how the S3 process turns measured audio data into visual outputs.

Quest for a Standard

It would be great if every loudspeaker manufacturer used the exact same process to gather data and generate datasheets. If there were a standard that met our need the way S3 does, we would likely support it, assuming we were assured that everybody complied with the standard.

You see already how this is going off the rails. Our industry is far too secretive to support a true standard; standards require transparency. So you, the person who is supposed to compare competitive products and make an informed buying decision, know going in that the datasheets you get from manufacturers are at best a crude tool that helps you separate the wheat from the chaff. You know they won’t help you distinguish the awesome wheat from the rest of the wheat.

“But,” said the acoustical engineer, “that’s why you have ears.”

Savvy audio pros know that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Thus, demos and shoot-outs are the real test of any system’s performance. This is the only true standard in our industry.

At EAW, listening on its own is not good enough; we need a measurement standard if only for ourselves.

We need to know with 100% certainty that the set of measured data we acquire next week will be directly comparable to a set of measured data we acquired several years ago. If they are not directly comparable, our entire approach to loudspeaker design and application falls apart.

That’s why we developed the S3 process for generating data.

S3 is an Internal Standard

For over 15 years, EAW engineers have been using this process:

1. Capture acoustical measurements
2. Combine those measurements with other measurements as in an array
3. Use all those measurements as inputs to computer algorithms
4. Run algorithms to develop signal processor settings that produce a specified acoustic outcome
5. Create the arrays and measure the performance
6. Compare measurements to prediction to confirm the accuracy of both the original measurement and predictive algorithm

A measurement mic and test software showing results that match the Resolution model – at EAW, this is a datasheet.

We learned early on that step 2, combining measured sets, required ultimate consistency across all the data measured. Every measurement had to be identical to every other measurement in order for combined performance to match prediction.

S3 is the protocol – the steps and conditions to meet – that ensures consistency across the entire library of measured data and the S3 datasheets that result from it.

“But,” said the audio pro, “you can make up anything and put it on the datasheet.”

Maybe somebody could make up a datasheet, but it’s not EAW. To a large degree, the S3 process itself determines what the nominal specification turns out to be, and the process errs toward the conservative.

For example, nominal sensitivity largely determines peak output. Peak output is the ultimate number, so manufacturers like to publish a high sensitivity specification. One way to do it is to find the octave or the part of an octave that has the highest sensitivity and use that as the nominal specification for the system.

That can’t happen at EAW. The S3 process sets nominal system sensitivity at the broadband average as indexed against the operating range, which is -10dB. And it’s that way for every S3 datasheet, so EAW users can accurately compare products across the EAW catalog with assurance that the products will deliver the performance they expect.

Our customers know that when they design complex arrays with Resolution and implement with UX Series processing or supported 3^rd party systems, they will get the predicted performance.

So in terms of a datasheet for Anya, it’s a little bit silly to publish a nominal specification for a system specifically designed to deliver highly customized performance in a variety of situations, hence the marketing silliness. But you can rest assured that the core measurements for the Anya system are rock-solid accurate and directly comparable to any EAW product created under the S3 process.

Where from Here?

Part 2 of this 3 part series will discuss EAW software development and the evolution of our approach to the art and science of controlling sound in the digital domain. Spoiler alert: the predictions are extraordinarily accurate.

The agent organizes assets and reports to control. Control provides operational parameters. On command, the agent carries out the operation. During the operation, continuous communication ensures that control achieves maximum effect from the agent.

Anya™ is the agent.

What is Anya?

Anya is not a product, not a thing. Or if she is a thing, she is many things.

The module is not Anya, but Anya is the module. Resolution™ software is not Anya, but Anya is Resolution.

Anya is neither the module nor Resolution, but she is both the module and Resolution. Anya is the intelligence that connects these two things and makes them something new.

As we said before, it’s all very Zen.

Anya Knows Who She Is

As soon as you give her power, Anya organizes the modules in all the arrays and presents them to Resolution software as complex but unified entities. Through Anya, each module, each transducer understands its location in relation to all other modules or transducers.

Except by user choice, Resolution only addresses Anya arrays as unified entities. Anya identifies and addresses individual modules. It is, amongst other things, her job.

Anya Can Self-Assess

Each module carries a set of self-diagnostic tools, both electronic and acoustic. Each module logs and reports a fault should one occur. Anya immediately recognizes the electrical impact of a failed transducer, and she reports the occurrence to control. She also develops an adaptive plan to manage the loss and reports to control for permission to execute. Even during a performance.

When not performing, Anya can test the frequency response of each and every transducer in a module in-situ. She does this with the professional test and measurement microphone built into every module.

When we build a module in our Whitinsville factory, we test each transducer, using the module’s microphone, and store the result in that module. At any time and especially when already deployed, Anya can measure any transducer and compare the response not to a generic reference file, but to that specific transducer’s actual, measured response.

Anya Can Find You

With all these modules and all this computing power, it’s no great leap for Anya to find you at any location in the venue using her Find Me™ trilateration feature. Just set a measurement microphone in a given location. (Maybe this microphone you provide yourself…)

Using short burst of sound from three separate modules and Smaart™ test and measurement software, Anya can pinpoint any location within a few inches and plot that point on the venue model in Resolution.

Even if there is no model of the venue, a user can simply walk from point to point and tell Anya, “Start the sound there, and stop the sound here.”

–>End of Transmission<–

Preparatory operations ongoing. Major operations on schedule. Magnitude may obviate deniability. There is no exit strategy.

#rogueprotocol

It’s true. Her name is Anya™, and you are about to fall in love.

Falling in Love

Everything about Anya is designed to make you fall in love with her. She is everything you could possibly want. Smart, beautiful, tough, a little bit dangerous but loyal and a hard worker.

When you work with her – like when you fall in love – you will experience a strange familiarity; you’ll immediately know what to do. But it will also be new and amazing. Like falling in love.

You will fall in love with Anya because she returns your affection by making your world a lot simpler.

What is “Simple”?

On the back of an Anya module, there’s a touch pad. No lights are on. One of the lights is marked “Test”, and it is connected to a button that says “Press”.

1. What do you do?
2. What are the two most likely outcomes?

(3 minutes. Show all work.)

Every single aspect is like this – spectacularly simple and familiar. Anya is amazing, but she’s not baffling. She’s mostly a normal PA, except that she’s not. Her normal components, though, are completely normal.

Normal connectors. Normal transducers and horns, or at least “EAW normal”. And all the components that aren’t normal make sense right away.

On Facebook, where Mr. Rat demonstrated his questionable understanding of the term “secret”,  there’s a pretty good front view our young lady. Amongst the speculation, somebody asked about the rigging, of which there seems to be none.

We responded, “So, yeah…where’s the rigging?” Of course there’s rigging, and it’s super-simple. It works exactly one way. Even though you can’t see it, you’ll know physically that it is engaged every single time you use it.

Or let’s say that it’s that rare occurrence when the test light turns red, and you need to get inside a module. But, oh no, it’s in the middle of a stack. What do you do?

You fix it where it sits, in the middle of the stack.

On and on through the details of operation, Anya is familiar and comfortable and as easy to be with as an old friend. But then suddenly, she surprises you with something new and amazing but also somehow inevitable.

Like that module with the test light that turns green and makes you smile. (The correct answer to question 2, by the way.) That module wasn’t plugged into anything.

–>End of Transmission<–

We’ll dribble out more tantalizing double talk as the days and weeks go by. Until then, it’s Spring and love is in the air.

#rogueprotocol

It’s no secret that EAW has a secret or that EAW has had a secret for quite a long time. I hate to disappoint you, but it’s still a secret.

EAW Admits to Product Development

For the better part of three years, EAW Engineering has been working on a very “EAW” kind of idea. And by “EAW”, I mean crazy. It’s the kind of idea that sensible companies discard immediately as an impractical R&D nightmare.

But if you’re reading this blog post, you already know that impractical R&D nightmares are the very life blood of EAW. EAW President Jeff Rocha is himself an engineer, as is LOUD Technologies CEO Mark Graham. How could we _not_ do it, right?

Thanks to fantastic support from Mark and the new team at LOUD, we have been able to complete this impractical R&D nightmare to stunning result.

So, yes, it’s all true. We have made a very interesting machine.

Further Confession: It Makes Sound

This one you probably guessed already from Dave Rat’s post on Facebook. The machine we made is a big PA, depending on how you define big.

One of them is not particularly large, but it can be dangerously powerful if [redacted]. When you build them into arrays, they get magnificently powerful, stunningly powerful, frighteningly powerful. Intended applications reach the largest known sound reinforcement requirements. It gets big – plenty big.

But it doesn’t have to be big. It scales down fabulously to rooms as small as The Pit, our iconic test facility. We’ve hung two in The Pit, and the result sounds stellar. But we could hang the same two in a medium-sized house of worship and the result would also sound stellar. Or they could cover a fairly large section of stadium seating. It really doesn’t matter. This machine does what any of us would when put in a new or unfamiliar situation. It adapts.

Without a tremendous amount of effort on the part of the user, our new machine will deliver shockingly consistent coverage over whatever area needs coverage.  You just put it there and tell it what to do. And it does it.

How does it do this? With magic, obviously.

About the Datasheet

Already on Facebook, fans are asking about product data, like a datasheet. That’s actually a tough one. The problem is that the concept “datasheet” does not apply to this machine.

There is no datasheet. There can never be a datasheet. It’s all very Zen.

The basic idea of nominal product specifications is that a loudspeaker system is a thing that you plug in and turn on, and it makes the sound that it makes. The datasheet tells you if it’s good or bad, loud or really loud, wide or narrow, these many watts, this many frequencies. You know…a loudspeaker.

This is not that. This something other than else. And it will take a bit of explaining.

—>End of Transmission<—

That’s pretty much the news for this week: EAW made a big PA with magic in it.

We’ll share more in the coming weeks as we learn more about our new machine while we and our friends at Rat Sound put it through its paces in his shop.

As a small extra – yes, you read that correctly. We need to learn more about this crazy beast, a lot more. Until now, we’ve only had a handful to work with. Now that we’ve built a fair number of them, we can test them at Rat Sound’s sizable facility while they’re away at some big rock show.

Sorry that this was not the big announcement you might have hoped for. For our part, we’d like to think of it as the beginning of a conversation – a long conversation.

More soon. But not too soon.

#rogueprotocol

But this still wasn’t South by Southwest.

South by… For Real

The real SXSW events started on Day Three with a massive party thrown by local arts and entertainment website Do512. Four bands, mostly new folk acts, played the main stage with DJ Kidslyce covering the changeovers.

The photo at left can’t express the degree to which everybody everywhere was having a wild-good time. The line stretched around the block for hours and still had 20 people at midnight. And when those Avalon subs got to thumpin’…well, you know what can happen.

Day Four Preview

Tonight’s party, thrown by interactive marketers MRY, features only two DJs on the main stage, so we brought the CLUB.three’s out to use as DJ monitors. We stacked each on an LA400 as we did at Neumos for Decibel Festival.

The stage crew fronted the DJ stand with LED lights, which should look great in action. But here’s the kicker:

THERE’S AN AERIALIST!

That’s certainly an uncommon addition to a concert. But, hey, it’s South by…

More soon, and these next photos should really be something other than else!

Even though the first part of South by Southwest – the Interactive Conference – doesn’t start until Friday, the first wave of EAW staff and our associated partners are already onsite at The Belmont. The first order of business is to strike the existing PA so we can fly the temporary KF740 rig supplied by our long-standing partner Gemini Light, Sound & Video from Dallas. (Photo at left: Gemini’s Chad Cain cables the stage right array.)

Our regional factory representative firm Aldridge Marketing pitched in with some NTS250 powered subwoofer systems they had in their inventory as well as a wicked cool matrix to help us manage signal flow amongst the three separate PAs we’ll have set up.

Local riggers Shur-Rig have supplied new, safety-rated rigging points to set the main arrays as far to the corners of the stage as possible, opening up sightlines for the large numbers of video cameras that will record and potentially televise some of these events.

Austin-based Big House Sound, who installed the existing PA and have worked with the venue for years also sent a crew to assist. We sent so much gear from Whitinsville that Big House needed to send one of their trucks to handle the overflow.

Today’s schedule couldn’t be tighter. Doors for tonight’s non-SXSW event here at The Belmont is 5:30pm with sound checks starting at 3.

Hey, what am I doing writing? I should go do some work! More soon.

Sky Solutions used a range of EAW KF Series line array systems to make sure this concert sounded great. Main left/right arrays comprised KF760s over KF761s to cover the nearfield. KF761s provided side fill and front fill coverage.

They hung KF730s as delay systems to reach the back of the 25,000 capacity arena. To fill out the bottom end, Sky Solutions brought in several BH760 and SB2001 subwoofers.

In an interview with Ognjen Amidzic immediately after the show in Belgrade Arena, Jennifer Lopez shared that her performance in Belgrade was one of the three best from the 75 total concerts she had so far. 

We send a big “thank you” to Sky Solutions for providing the inside info and great concert photos.

Unlike last year, we will have four SUB.two hybrid subwoofer systems to power the dance floor. And, unlike last year, the Delano will run programming for the entire WMC event. Keep any eye on DJ Magazine for more info on their events.

South by Southwest

Before we can get to the Delano, however, we will spend the better part of two weeks in Austin, TX, where we’ll bring a KF740 systems and a separate Avalon by EAW system to The Belmont for their South by Southwest events.

The Belmont is a “buy-out” venue, meaning that client organizations book the venue for one or more days to produce their concerts. One client that has already announced their line up is The Warner Sound. They will be showcasing acts like Alt+J, The Joy Formidable, Tegan & Sara and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.

The KF740 system will hang in a covered, outdoor stage that will host alternative bands. On a nearby patio, easily as large as the outdoor space, we’ll bring a full-on Avalon by EAW system, including four SUB.two hybrid subwoofer systems. This rig will power the electronica and DJ sets, which have grown to become an important part of SXSW.

The SXSW lists all the events at the Belmont, but this local Austin website called Do512 is all over the events as well.

If you’re in Austin for South by or in Miami for WMC, we hope you’ll make it to these venues and say “hello”.

The key benefit for our long-suffering web community is that the platform on which we’ve built the site allows core EAW staff to continuously and instantly update any page at any time from any Internet –connected computer. Thus, users will notice that product pages reflect the most recent revisions, such as the QX “i” revisions.

Users should expect frequent and continuous changes and additions to the content. Indeed, important parts of the Application, Support and Technology sections remain in development. Check back frequently to see what’s new. We will announce important additions here on the Front Row blog.

Other Changes

As we transitioned to the new site, we deactivated both the blog and the discussion forums. As you can see, the blog returned after about a week. The discussion forums, however, will remain deactivated until we complete work on the _NEW_ discussion forums.

Now that we have launched the main site, our web development resources are working on the new discussion forums that will be connected to this blog. Users will login to accounts that will allow them to comment here on Front Row and also engage with other users in the forums. Long term, we hope to develop a robust environment, where users can create and interact with content about their own and others applications of EAW loudspeaker systems.

Our goal is to complete development of the discussion forums and launch them in 6 to 8 weeks. Until then, please check back here and on the main website for lots and lots of awesome new content direct from the Whitinsville factory.

Event Cost: FREE

EAW Marketing Director John Speck will lead a workshop session in which participants load in a band, bring signal to the mixing console, run sound check, set monitors levels and mix a brief set. Introductory material – PhDs not required.

Registration for this event by clicking this link: Sign Up.

For more information or if you have any questions, please email booking@as220.org