Tonmeistertagung 2006

The Tonmeister is the sound engineer that has also musical education. It is the highest professional level you can get in the pro sound field. Since the early 1950ies this event is held in Germany as opportunity for the people of the field to meet and exchange the latest news. Today the event is also an exhibition of sound and studio sound equipment. Especially Video becomes more and more essential in the work of the sound people. My job in professional video brought me to this exhibition. Needles to say that I was more than happy to take a look at the audio stuff, too.

Here I just want to cover subjects that are related to the Hifi aspect.

Such as monitor speakers for example. Designed to be as neutral and exact as possible the sounds of the professionally used monitors differ a lot. Some even found their way through to Hifi magazines, like Geithein oder Klein & Hummel.

One setup I heard was a surround setup of Klein & Hummel 0300 medium sized monitor speakers with, as later turned out, 4 subwoofers. Mr. Zielinski from Sennheiser demonstrated the effect of different surround mike setups for classical recording. A piano part with all the strings was played leading to a sudden attack part of the whole orchestra.

What a dynamic and precise bass, I was taken by surprise. I did not notice the subwoofers on the floor at first, only the moderate sized speakers were visible in the relatively crowded demonstration room. The source of the bass was a special subwoofer arrangement called ARAM, capable of eliminating all disturbing room modes. In a rectangular room there are two ‘normal’ subwoofers in a certain distance to each other at the front wall. The bass produced travel in a wave down the room as a cylindrical wave. the room modes from left to right are eliminated, but from front to back you still have a lot of room modes as a wave. These are compensated with two additional subwoofers at the rear. The rear subwoofers run time aligned to the amount the wave needs to travel down the room and with inverted phase. The result is the same as a ‘missing’ back wall or like the free field. The sound of the lower octaves is extremely well articulated. Very good.

Let’s stay with speakers. The Manger studio monitors were also on demonstration. The sound is very nice with a natural touch. The Manger speaker works very widerange with just a little help in the bass. an amazing product.

And a horn concept from Strauss Audio, Switzerland. Equipped with a TAD 15″ woofer and a 2″ horn driver this speaker was tuned to optimum performance by acoustic engineer Mr. Strauss. Very good job indeed. A very detailed, accurate and holographic sound appeal.