RDL RU-ADL2 Users Manual

SPEED OF SOUND

by Cor Riethof, Technical Director, RDL-Europe

INTRODUCTION
Sound travels very slowly in air compared with the speed of light. Light speed is
almost instantaneous at 299337 km (186000 miles) per second; sound speed in
air crawls along at about 342 meters (1120 feet) per second depending on the
temperature. To be exact 343.59 m/s (1127.29 ft/s) at a temperature of 20
degrees C (68 degrees F) and humidity of 60%. It is the relatively slow speed of
sound which causes audible echoes to bounce back from a flat surface like a
wall, building or mountain. The closer you are to the wall the shorter the echo. As
you move further away the echo time lengthens. If you check echo lengths with
the chart below, remember to double the length shown because the sound has to
travel there and back.

The repeating sound you often hear from multiple speaker public address
systems give an excellent illustration of time delay and the problems it creates for
the sound designer or engineer. It's a common occurrence in railway stations
because there are usually speakers placed in a straight line down the length of a
platform. Other examples include most distributed audio systems in sport arenas,
multi purpose halls and outdoor audio systems.

Even in theaters and churches one might experience problems with audio timing
with the sound of under balcony or other loudspeakers remote from the main
loudspeakers.

A typical situation is a system that uses a main loudspeaker cluster high above
the stage or altar (and in fact almost above the first rows of the audience) that is
set for a reasonably high sound pressure level.

The sound system-designer does not want amplified sound coming back at the
stage or altar, because this will almost certainly cause undesired feed-back. The
result is that the first rows have very bad intelligibility because the direct sound,
especially the high frequencies from the cluster, does not reach the audience
while the direct sound (speech) from the priests or actors is too soft to solve this
problem. Also in this case there is a relatively small but very important timing
problem to make it worse. We like the audience to have the illusion that the
sound arrives directly from the priest or actors and not from above, although
some priests might appreciate that, but probably not if it is their own speech.

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In cases like this it is recommended to fit a horizontal row of small loudspeakers
(maybe about 1.5 meter apart depending on the distance to the first row) in front
of the audience to cover the bad reception from the amplified sound cluster and
to create the illusion of louder direct sound from the actors or priest for visitors in
the front rows.

This introduces the next problem. Timing problems between the direct sound
from the priest or actors, the amplified sound from the cluster and the sound of
the small front speakers will cause bad intelligibility because the ears of the
audience get confused. We can solve this problem by delaying the signal fed to
the small front speakers. In most cases about 15 to a maximum of 35
milliseconds will be enough.

Sometimes, depending on the sound system-design, it is desirable to delay the
main loudspeaker system to synchronize it with the audio source. It may also be
beneficial to delay a part of the main loudspeaker system, to time-align the
loudspeaker combination. This is especially the case if all the speakers used are
not in line. This happens often with the woofers and subwoofers.

After the primary sound from the nearest speaker reaches your ears, the repeats
you hear are the sounds arriving from speakers further away. Hearing multiple
sound sources can result in the message becoming indistinct. The use of audio
delay units in sound systems can contribute to perfect intelligibility.

RDL AUDIO DELAY UNITS
The standard method for improving system synchronization and intelligibility is
with the use of signal time delay units. RDL devices (for example, see RU-ADL2)
use a full bandwidth digital processor, to "hold up" the signal to the secondary
speakers for a fraction of a second until it is in sync with the main source. Mono
and multiple units must be set-up carefully (the chart below might be a big help).

Many other applications are possible and most of them are based on the theory
of Dr. Helmut Haas published in 1946. The so-called Haas effect or precedence
effect, in short:

If two successive sounds are heard as fused, the location of the
total sound is determined largely by the location of the first arriving
sound. This, among other things, stops you getting confused when
a sound comes at you from two speakers or audio sources at once.

STI AND RASTI
Performance indicators now used are called STI and RASTI, which prescribe the
desired intelligibility of announcements; those have replaced the formerly used %
AlCons (Articulation loss of Consonants) method.

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