The Cinema Designer (TCD) 2.0 Updates Expands Original Vision, Features and Functionality

Back to the hands of its original creator and home cinema designer Guy Singleton, The Cinema Designer application 2.0 introduces renewed features and functionality, now allowing designers to add acoustic treatment and predict room modes. The new 3D models of any cinema environment offer accurate models of where nulls and room modes will occur. The application is also expanding on acoustic treatment placement tools, and adding features specific content creation spaces and production studios.

Swedish digital audio pioneer Dirac announced the debut of Dirac Live Active Room Treatment, the latest in its family of award-winning Dirac Live features designed to address bass resonance and room decay time to produce a cleaner, tighter bass experience than ever before possible. Dirac Live Active Room Treatment will debut in all StormAudio AVRs through a Spring 2023 firmware update.

The August 2022 issue of audioXpress, Acoustics Focus, gives a unique overview of market trends in acoustical products, with great articles on Acoustic Diffusion, Distributed Subwoofers for Room Modes, and Reverberation Control and Measurement. Michel Nieuwenhuizen proposes an improved microphone preamp for condenser microphones, Aren van Waarde builds a minimalist preamp using only discrete transistors, and Ethan Winer shares circuits for VCA and VCF analog synthesizer modules.

TransAudio Group announced the new Subwoofer Pros Studio Sub 10, an ultra-compact 12" x 14" x 11.5" subwoofer with low distortion, an even frequency response, and an adjustable HF cutoff to work seamlessly with any size nearfield monitor. According to the Las Vegas company, the sealed and self-powered Studio Sub 10 produces high-fidelity bass reproduction down to 16Hz, and it is small enough to place anywhere in the control room in singles or multiples for different output volume and/or room mode taming.

This article examines the problem of subwoofer placement in odd-shaped rooms, exploring corner locations of subwoofers and some pros and cons of single-woofer versus dual-woofer systems for a given placement within a listening room. In the article, the author extends the analysis and actually generates the “room contribution” curves for a non-rectangular room. This article was originally published in audioXpress, September 2002.