Grug’s Guide to Sound « Petrus Theron

High temperature/time: crow heather

A collection of ideas about sound collected by grug sound engineers

grug sound engineers are not very smart, but grug sound engineers have listened to country music and techno for years and learned a few things, although most people are still confused

grug sound engineer tries to collect the learning content into small, understandable and interesting pages, suitable not only for you, the young grug, but also for him, because as grug sound engineer gets older he forgets important things like which article Is the cable red or white and which speaker is vibrating?

The voice was as deep as a bear’s den and would have swallowed up young Gollum if he had allowed it. It’s too late for the old Guru, but the young Guru can save himself. After many months of listening to music, dancing around the fire, and learning from Old Guru’s mistakes

The eternal enemy: noise

grug The top predators of sound engineers are noise and distortion

Noise is bad
Distortion is bad

distortion Very Broken, injured speakers and ears

If given a choice between Distortion and a T-Rex, Grug would choose the T-Rex, unless dancing by the fire – then Grug doesn’t care about noise, if it’s loud, but loud noises don’t matter to young Grug Bad ears

Noise is a worse enemy than bears

Once a bear enters a den, it is difficult to get the bear to leave
So it’s best to avoid noise through a good signal chain

grug studies signal processing and learns to find and eliminate noise and distortion

High fidelity means faithful reproduction, low noise, and low distortion

Old Grug was so fond of Faithful’s voice that Grug even named the company Faith Acoustics

signal chain

The young grug signal chain looks like streamer -> DAC -> amplifier -> speakers -> room. The room and speakers are at the end of the signal chain. Sometimes it’s better to think backwards

1. Room like a cave
   • The flat cave walls echo like a valley. The echo is bad. Young Princess calls it reverb
   • Sound treatments such as carpets and curtains in Gru’s cave to reduce reverberation
   • Wisely grunt always orient speakers towards the length of the cave to reduce reverberation
2. speaker Convert electrical energy into sound energy
   • Speakers have drivers – the drivers are just magnets attached to the cone
   • The magnet moves as the current rises or falls, pushing the cone back and forth.
   • Moving the cone makes a sound that hits Gugu’s ears. Make Gollum feel good, especially when dancing by the fire in the moonlight
   • grugs install drivers in speaker cabinets to make the sound louder – young grugs call this a resonance chamber
3. amplifier or “amp” to add bison intensity to the input signal, making the speaker roar like the king of the jungle
   • Sometimes there is an amplifier inside the speaker. Guru calls the speaker positivebecause the amplifier has built-in
   • Most speakers Passive – Requires amplifier
   • Most passive hi-fi speakers – require amplifier
4. digital to analog converter or digital to analog converter Decodes the digital signals of ones and zeros into a smooth analog signal, like a bald head’s hairline, so the amplifier can make the smooth signal louder
   • young grug already has DACs in TVs, phones, laptops and bluetooth speakers, but they’re not very good
   • A good external DAC costs a fraction of the price of a wolfskin, but lets you close your eyes while the grug dances in the fire
5. streamer Download digital music from youth trash networks like Spotify, TIDAL or YouTube
   • Streaming media sends the digital signal to the DAC, converting the ones and zeros into a smooth analog signal
   • Sometimes streamers have internal DACs, usually not good

grug is not like vinyl records because vinyl records are noisy. Other Gurus wanted to start a religious war against the Gurus, calling this heresy

Now the grug discusses each component so that the young grug can buy good sounds for the cave. Young grunge neighbors will love the grunge as it brings great sound to the quiet valley!

speaker

Easily make grug speakers sound good at low volume in one place

grug It’s hard to get speakers to sound good anywhere at high volumes

Speakers are generally not very good

Good speakers usually don’t sound very loud

Good loudspeakers cost a lot of wolf skins – Gu Gu’s wife is not happy

Rule of thumb: Young grugs cost twice as much wolfskin on speakers as amps, but amps are so cheap now that grugs cost 10 times as much wolfskin on speakers as amps

Listen carefully to the young coo, the speaker has important characteristics:

• Rated power Measured in Watts
  • Decide what size amplifier to buy
  • Most amp specs from manufacturers are very misleading for grug
  • Gruger only trusts objective measurements from Brain Old Gruger audio science review
• Nominal impedance Measure grug in ohms like Buddha did
  • Typically 8 ohms, 6 ohms or 4 ohms.
  • Impedance is important because it is safe for the amplifier
  • Most speakers are 8 ohms; car speakers are 4 ohms
  • Nominal average, like grug iq, but in reality the impedance varies with frequency:
    • Low frequency whale noise consumes more current (low impedance)
    • High frequency bird noise consumes less current (high impedance)
  • The current is limited. Amplifier power supplies always run out of current eventually, like Greg trying to rest after chasing his wife through the savanna
• Sensitivity just means efficiencymeasured in decibels (dB)
  • Sensitivity refers to the loudness produced by 1 watt of electricity to the ear
  • More sensitivity is better, so amps don’t try as hard as grug sells amps for caves
  • Low-sensitivity speakers (low efficiency) require larger amplifiers to produce loud roars
  • Average speaker sensitivity 83dB
  • Bookshelf speakers typically have a sensitivity of 89dB
  • For every 6dB reduction in speaker sensitivity, the amplifier’s working intensity will double to achieve the same loudness, that is, an 83dB speaker requires twice the power of an 89dB speaker to achieve the same loudness.
  • Professional Cavern Club Speakers Very Efficient @ 100dB Sensitivity
• frequency response depends on driver
  • The big driver makes the low frequencies sound like a bison. woofer
  • The small driver makes the high frequencies sound birdlike. tweeter
  • Many drivers together cover all frequencies – that’s why grug speakers have 2 or 3 drivers
  • It’s difficult to get the drivers to not overlap, so one band is too loud. grug spent many months studying crossover circuits
  • young grug can hear sounds up to 20kHz
  • Old grug can only hear 16kHz
  • Most speakers respond around 50Hz–18kHz
  • If the amp only goes down to 70Hz, the little guy needs a subwoofer to make cave thunder like a herd of bison.
• dispersion angle Means how wide the speaker will make the sound in the cave, so fumbling to buy a big or small sofa

loudspeaker

• Rated power It means how much power the amplifier sends to the speaker
  • Rule of thumb: grugs want the amplifier to be twice as powerful as the speakers so the amplifier can relax like a sloth instead of working hard like a grug dad in the mines
  • Power output depends on speaker impedance
  • The amplifier produces peak power in short bursts
  • amplifier enables continuous power reduction
• Number of channels It means how many speakers did young grug buy?
  • Stereo means two channels, so two speakers
  • 5.1 surround sound refers to 5 speakers and 1 subwoofer
  • Surround sound is only good when the wife is watching a movie. More speakers create more echoes in the cave
  • Grid thinks the wolfskin would be better spent on fewer, better speakers
  • 2x40W means the amplifier has two channels and sends 40W of power to each speaker
• you Average signal-to-noise ratio and distortion ratio, in dB
  • High SINAD means less noise, just like high SINAD
  • Nice budget amp, love it Foss Audio V3 With 88dB SINAD
  • Very good amplifiers have ~100dB SINAD, but they are more expensive than grug wife
• total harmonic distortion Average total harmonic distortion. it measures distortion
  • Too much distortion is not good. Grid hate twist
  • 0.003% THD Good
  • 0.0001% THD Very good
  • 1% Total Harmonic Distortion Defective
  • 5%THD is unbearable
  • Distortion always increases with loudness
  • Maximum amplifier power rating is usually reported as 1% THD
  • When the amplifier works hard, there’s more distortion – that’s why grug wants amplifiers to relax like a brontosaurus
• Total harmonic distortion + noise means Total harmonic distortion + noisethe same as THD, but the measurement contains noise

digital to analog converter

Young Gruger streams digital music from the Internet. A DAC converts digital signals into analog signals so that the amplifier can produce sound. DAC representative digital to analog converter. also known as sound interface

• you means Signal-to-noise ratio and distortion ratiomeasured in dB
  • Good DAC has 116dB SINAD
  • The SINAD of a bad DAC is about 88dB
• Total harmonic distortion + noise Average Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise, same as THD but includes noise in the measurement
  • 0.000146% THD+N for DAC
• dynamic range Too complicated to explain to an old guy who spent years drinking ice wine on the plains
  • 19-22 bits good dynamic range

streamer

Many young people use Bluetooth on their phones to send sound to a loudspeaker. This drains the little one’s phone battery and the sound stops when the little one goes outside and spins the T-Rex burger. Bluetooth is noisy. Better to use WiFi streaming like the old grug

Streaming downloads music from young grug WiFi and sends the digital signal to the DAC. Streaming with remote and applied equalizer

Best grug streamer by Wireless MHowever, the big-brained grug lacks wolf skin. If the grug likes to hunt for a week without eating, you can try Raspberry Pi + VolumeIO

young grug Consider several aspects of streaming media:

• Supported streaming services For young Gugu:
  • Spotify
  • tidal
  • apple music
  • There
  • ETC.
• Built-in DAC for streaming media Usually not so good:
  • WiiM Mini is cheap but requires a good external DAC and does not include a remote
  • WiiM Pro Great for streaming but requires external DAC SMSL SU-1Does not include remote control
  • WiiM Pro Plus good, DAC good – almost as good as SU-1, comes with remote
  • WiiM Ultra has a good DAC and screen, but it costs a lot of money, so it’s only for rich old guys, and comes with a remote control
• Gain control with remote control This way when Gugu’s neighbor complains, Gugu can sit on the sofa and lower the volume.
• Equalizer (EQ) Make the frequency as flat as Guru’s forehead
  • Gugu’s wife is happy when the cave isn’t busy
• room modeling Use your phone to sense the echoes in the cave and apply an automatic equalizer
  • Room modeling is as aggressive as a badger, but useful for finding resonant frequencies
  • WiiM Pro, WiiM Pro Plus and WiiM Ultra feature room modeling
• Air play Useful for Magic Fruit Shaman – one ecosystem for multiple devices
• Bluetooth Convenient but never good, avoid the old grid

Recommended by Laoguge WiiM Pro Streaming and SMSLSU-1 DAC
But if young people only buy a device for small caves, buy a good WiiM Pro Plus with built-in DAC

System recommendation

old grug recommends the best budget enthusiast systems for December 2024:

Total cost: R9,490.00 Wolfskin.

The grug will even give a discount to broken young grugs if you spend a lot of wolf skins

Old grug recommends young grug to buy second-hand luxury speakers. The speaker market is like the market for lemons, with high use value.

If the young Gollum is a good hunter, an older Gollum like the KEF LS50 Meta speakers will cost you a lot of wolf skin

Old guys also like the B&W 606 and 607 speakers

Zoom in early

grug knows one thing to be true: every part of the signal chain adds noise

Every amplified part also amplifies noise

Now remember: which part to zoom in on?
Both the amplifier and the preamplifier in the DAC have amplification functions

grug now tests young grug brains:

• Should young people turn down the volume on their streaming media and turn up the volume on their amplifiers?
• Or should the young grug set the streaming volume to high and the amplifier volume to low?

Lao Gugu learned to amplify early: set the streamer to high and the amplifier to low

Why? When grug amplifies later, grug amplifies the most noise.

Consider: When the signal is quiet, amplify it loud, amplify hiss – a lot of noise

That’s why it’s best to amplify early and reduce the noise so the amplifier isn’t working so hard and relaxing like a sloth on a warm day

This learning also applies to Bluetooth speakers: young people are best to turn up the volume of their mobile phones and turn down the volume of their speakers, so that the amplifier can relax

Young people are very smart now. If the young princess smiles, princess Trading wolf skins For high fidelity caves. Might make grug’s wife sad, but make grug happy