"Someone is wrong on the Internet" - Barefaced Audio vid on audio engineering

fretmeister · July 2023

Made in response to a vid that KDH did, apparently very wrongly.

pt22 · July 2023

Skip to 4:40 to avoid the faff.

digitalscream · July 2023

pt22 said:

Skip to 4:40 to avoid the faff.

Oh, c'mon. "The faff" is exactly why we watch his videos - he's like that science teacher we all had in school who'd go off on a tangent with only the slightest provocation, in a good way

fretmeister · July 2023

digitalscream said:

pt22 said:

Skip to 4:40 to avoid the faff.

Oh, c'mon. "The faff" is exactly why we watch his videos - he's like that science teacher we all had in school who'd go off on a tangent with only the slightest provocation, in a good way

Exactly. He's a proper mad scientist.

IIRC one of the reasons Barefaced came to be was at some point in arguments on Basschat he got fed up with the responses to him trying to educate the masses and the usual responses of "if you know better, you fucking build it then..."

As Ferruccio Lamborghini said - the best motivation is spite!

digitalscream · July 2023

fretmeister said:

digitalscream said:

pt22 said:

Skip to 4:40 to avoid the faff.

Oh, c'mon. "The faff" is exactly why we watch his videos - he's like that science teacher we all had in school who'd go off on a tangent with only the slightest provocation, in a good way

Exactly. He's a proper mad scientist.

IIRC one of the reasons Barefaced came to be was at some point in arguments on Basschat he got fed up with the responses to him trying to educate the masses and the usual responses of "if you know better, you fucking build it then..."

As Ferruccio Lamborghini said - the best motivation is spite!

And, honestly...you wouldn't blame him for getting pissed off with forums in general after that. Instead, he donated a guitar cab here for raffle!

stylesforfree · July 2023

What is meant by "port"?

Grangousier · July 2023

It's the left-hand side if you're looking towards the prow. Or the strong wine that arrives from the right if you're at a meal with posh people.

dindude · July 2023

That’s exactly who I want making my audio gear, and KDH is exactly who I don’t want making my YouTube videos.

digitalscream · July 2023

dindude said:

That’s exactly who I want making my audio gear, and KDH is exactly who I don’t want making my YouTube videos.

Precisely. If the folk making my guitar gear aren't obsessive to the point of excited nerdiness about it, then I've failed in my product research.

BillDL · July 2023

stylesforfree said:

What is meant by "port"?

I'll assume you are serious and perhaps all the graphs and gobbledegook in the video was a bit technical. Speakers are mounted in a hole in a piece of wood (or maybe plastic in a Hi-Fi speaker) that fits into or onto the front of a combo amp or speaker cabinet. The "baffle". If you removed the baffle with the speaker still mounted in it, the sound would be really skinny and very quiet. The air being pushed forwards and backwards by the speaker cone just goes into the room and all gets cancelled out. Imagine warm air and cold air, or concentrated juice squirted into a tumbler of water, swirling around mixing. The cabinet sides prevent this from happening by preventing the sound waves from going freely around the sides of the baffle.

In a completely closed speaker enclosure the backward movement of the speaker is damped by the air in the enclosed space and the cone excursion (distance it can move) is limited. You will hear the guy in the video refer to "air spring" at 11:18 and onwards. Hi-Fi speakers and bass amplifiers/speaker cabinets have used ports for a long time, but there haven't been a lot of guitar cabinets with ports. A port is just a hole in the baffle alongside the speaker. It may have a tube through it that extends into the enclosed cabinet and may even have a square or rectangular tube that goes in a zig-zag shape. By calculating the natural resonant frequency of the speaker and the volume of air in the enclosed speaker cabinet it is possible to make a port of the right diameter where the backward movement of the speaker forces air out through the port and this can be "tuned" so that it gives supporting bass frequencies to the air that is being pushed out the front by the forward movement of the speaker cone.

If you have ever accidentally reversed the wires on one speaker of two Hi-Fi speakers and play something with a pronounced beat you will feel them pushing air forward at opposite times. The sound will be crap in the room. The same would be true if the port is poorly designed. The air being pushed out the port and out the front by the speaker's forward travel will be like a push-pull pump and rather than supporting the speaker cone's sound pressure.

Wazmeister · July 2023

An interesting thread and video… so, TDLR, is the solution to move a mic closer to the port ?

(asking for a friend)

PolarityMan · July 2023

So he launched into a long explanation of constructive versusdestructive interference but I missed (or got bored before he got to) what was the bit that he was actually contentind? Ie/ what did KDH say?

Musicman20 · July 2023

KDH just likes to pick people/companies apart for drama. It's fairly embarrassing.

The guy can play but my god his band are awful.

octatonic · July 2023

Wazmeister said:

An interesting thread and video… so, TDLR, is the solution to move a mic closer to the port ?

(asking for a friend)

You could, but what is the advantage?

I didn't watch the full KDH video- did he talk about mic positioning at all?
It looks like he just stuck it close to the centre.
It sounds pretty bad, even accounting for youtube compression.

Moving a single mic closer to the port would enhance the bass because moving to the edge of the cone does this anyway.
I use room mics on open back cabs and that is generally a better approach, although you have to account for phase.

Using the cheapest ported cab possible is also a bit of a fool's errand.
Mesa do some that sound pretty good but I don't see the point of ported cabs though. The Mesa ones were smaller but man they were heavy.

There is a reason that many engineers use an SM57 and a Royer 121 together (SM57 gives you bite, 121 gives you body).

Alex (from Barefaced) knows his stuff but there is so much misinformation handed out in the form of *education* by barely informed youtubers that it would be a full time job to refute just a small amount of it.

roberty · July 2023

That was fairly dull but I do like to see KDH being handed his arse

Ossyrocks · July 2023

I love the guy ^, and I also love his cabs, I have two Barefaced cabs and they are just fab.

DefaultM · July 2023

roberty said:

That was fairly dull but I do like to see KDH being handed his arse

I didn't realise that one had made its way on to youtube from youjizz.

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"Someone is wrong on the Internet" - Barefaced Audio vid on audio engineering

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