> Technologies > Gunness Focusing

Gunness Focusing delivers performance comparable to premium direct radiating studio monitors, but at much greater output levels. First deployed in the NT Series, Gunness Focusing is now available - via the UX8800 digital processor - for an ever-increasing number of conventional EAW loudspeakers.

Not only do large production companies benefit from Gunness Focusing, but so too do owner/operators who don’t have the clientele to warrant purchasing line arrays or other larger format systems. Many of these companies might very well have smaller EAW point-source systems in their inventory that can be easily outfitted with significantly upgraded audio performance without spending a huge investment. Whatever the case, the result is the same level of quality that one would expect from an entirely new system!

Specifically, Gunness Focusing eliminates the traditional characteristics of “honk” and “splashiness” that can plague horn-loaded loudspeaker designs. The honk of a horn is normally heard in the lower frequencies of its band pass, while splashiness is usually heard at the highest frequencies and obscures the fine detail in instruments, such as cymbals.

Likewise, cone drivers have inherent resonances in their upper frequency range that result in “muddiness” in the middle of the vocal range. These HF and LF behaviors combine to produce a sonic signature commonly referred to as “coloration.”

UNDERSTANDING DSP
The primary tool available for dealing with loudspeaker anomalies is digital signal processing. However, it’s generally assumed that certain loudspeaker problems cannot be corrected using DSP, or that the correction would mean unacceptable compromises in other key performance areas. But the EAW engineering team recognized that the key is understanding the trade-offs of traditional DSP implementation.

Armed with that knowledge, the team’s first step was development of a proprietary, software-based, spectrograph for acoustical analysis. This spectrograph, along with other analysis tools, was used to investigate the unprocessed responses of HF and LF subsystems in various directions and at various levels.

The analysis allowed various performance anomalies to be isolated from each other. In this way, those anomalies that were linear, time invariant, spatially consistent, and therefore correctable, could be distinguished from anomalies without those characteristics, and which were therefore not correctable.

RADICAL STEPS
The next step was to apply appropriate DSP to the correctable anomalies. Another analysis was performed on the standard, universally used DSP algorithms. This test proved that these standard algorithms simply did not produce filters with response shapes, temporal behaviors, or resolutions with anywhere near the required precisions or accuracies necessary to correct those anomalies to which they were being applied.

To solve this dilemma, the team undertook development of custom (and rather radical) DSP algorithms specifically engineered to provide the required filters for correcting loudspeaker anomalies. The resulting filters had to possess the required precision and accuracy in both the frequency and time domain. At the same time, any uncorrectable anomalies would have to be ignored by the filters.

PROLIFERATION
This advanced processing, now called Gunness Focusing, cannot be applied “as is” to just any loudspeaker, let alone be something that even the most astute of users can set up. The anomalies and resonance problems it cures are very specific to each loudspeaker design. Thus, the internal physical details must be known, the anomalies must be carefully analyzed, and appropriate filters must be custom designed by EAW Engineers.

After a phenomenal debut in the NT Series, Gunness Focusing is now proliferating. EAW is regularly developing and releasing optimally tailored, finely tuned filter sets – easily uploaded to the UX8800 processor - for existing and coming EAW products appropriate for every configuration and application.