RP22 Immersive Audio Design Workshops

In this podcast Walt Zerbe, Sr. Director of Technology and Standards at CEDIA and Host of the CEDIA podcast talks with Owen Maddock, Owner of Cinema Works and Tom Dellicompagni, Director of Dellicompagni about their experience attending an Immersive Audio Design Recommended Practice [RP22] workshop and why everyone should do the same.  The Immersive Audio Design Recommended Practice and the workshop is for everyone.  Whether you just started in business, have ten years in or have been doing immersive audio systems for thirty years, this workshop is for you.

This recommended practice was made through the R10 CEDIA/CTA standards group via the ANSI process which if consensus driven and balanced.  This RP was also publicy peer reviewed before release and included comments form AES, CEDIA, CTA and SMPTE members. This work effort took over three years to complete and over three and a half thousand volunteer hours.

For the first time, the Immersive Audio Design Recommended Practice will be taught in the USA in Chicago.

Podcast Transcript

Walt Zerbe  1:07  
Hello, and welcome to another CD, a podcast. I'm Walt Zerby, Senior Director of Technology and Standards, and your host for the CD podcast. And today, we're doing a special edition podcast, I should put some kind of sound effect in for that. And maybe maybe I will.

Unknown Speaker  0:01  
I am CEDIA, I am CEDIA, I am CEDIA, this is the CEDIA CEDIA podcast,

Owen Maddock  0:06  
looks around the classroom is people who've been in the industry for like less than five years, and more than 20. So people like me definitely returning up, you know. And they've just been kind of same as me kind of absolutely lifers in the home cinema industries with their own companies. And then also new new people, new entrants to the market, like who've come along in the past five years, often with more kind of electrical background, because I think that's a lot of the younger companies are that, which I think is cool, you know, they've kind of lifted the standards in lots of ways, you know, the wiring is neater, the jobs are safer, you know, it's good to have the new blood. Well, that's the thing is that because our trade is very mixed, right? You know, you need to be a bit of an electrician, and a bit of an aesthetic designer and a bit of a acoustics designer, and so on, you just need to get enough out of all these elements. So I found it was new blood, and nothing to prove. Good. And that was and that was the mix that I found. So it's the guys in the middle. I worry about a little bit, the people who were 10 years in, because they weren't there.

Speaker 1  1:23  
And this podcast is to be focused on the immersive audio design recommended practice but in but more in particular, the workshop that has been created to kind of take people through this immersive audio recommended practice and introduce what it is and why you should care. And before I before I get into a little bit more of that I would love to introduce the two people that I have on with me today to help me talk about this. And one is Owen Maddock, he is the owner of cinema works and a a volunteer for CEDIA voluntary on standards and other things. So Oh, and welcome. And thanks for giving us some time today. Hi, well, good to have you. And then we also have Tom delicate bagni. He is a director of Delhi compact D, which is the which is a company I guess do you focus on cinema? Is that kind of all you do? Oh,

Speaker 2  2:24  
no, not not entirely. So cinema is now a big part of what we do. But we're also join us, I suppose only so we've got a big factory floor where we make pretty much anything and everything. residential commercial.

Unknown Speaker  2:41  
Yeah, that's awesome. Tom's

Owen Maddock  2:42  
got good tools.

Speaker 1  2:44  
Yeah, you do. Good. To have a separate? Yeah. So before we hit the record button, we are all geeking out because I Oh, and just got a new toy just converted a tool from one thing into another by getting an attachment that just arrived in Amazon. He's all excited. But we are we're major tool heads,

Speaker 2  3:01  
I have to keep quiet. When people talk about tools. I've got a good collection of tools, wealth. Tools

Speaker 1  3:06  
are great. Well, we're going to definitely get into that. So here's a deal. Why a podcast dedicated to this. So I think everyone, if you've listened to the CD podcast, you know that the immersive audio recommended practice, immersive audio design recommended practice and you know, we go we it's RP 22, we try not to always just say RP 22. So people know what we're talking about. But that was released in September. And you definitely would know that this has been released because we've been talking about it. And now we have a workshop and the workshop goes through a couple things. Just very basic, you know, there's 21 parameters, and in this recommended practice, and the workshop goes through a couple parameters, so people can see how to apply the recommended practice to immersive audio design. And I want you to know that these workshops have been sold out, usually within hours or days from when they were going to be announced where they've been held. So in the in the UK, they've been sold out. India, it was sold out Australia, it was sold out. And the reason for the cast is really for everybody to understand. So well why would I be interested in attending this workshop? You know, let's say I'm a newbie, okay, well, that's a great reason to attend. But let's say I've been doing immersive audio for, you know, 10 years. I already know everything. I don't need to I don't why why would I need to attend that? That's exactly the kind of person that should attend to and this is why I wanted to bring in Owen and Tom because I want to Tom You guys both attended this. Oh, and you've been doing this kind of work for 30 something years. And Tom you've been doing it for six years. So A very different skill levels and I'd like to open it up to either one of you who wants to start up what why did you why did you decide you wanted to take the workshop? Let's just start that right away. And Tom also I should I should point out for you start Tom is also a great new volunteer for CEDIA sitting in on on standards call. So thank you for that as well. Take it away on.

Owen Maddock  5:23  
Yeah, so Okay, so I mean, the thing is I started out in retail, so it's kind of not a million miles away from I guess what Magnolia do in the States. And the training element there is pretty slim, you know, you get kind of a few days with manufacturers, and they're basically saying buy our stuff. No one really teaches you cinema design, you kind of you copy what others are doing. And you think, Oh, well that went okay. And you do it. You did it again. And, you know, in some ways, I've been doing this for nearly 30 years. And in some ways, I've been doing this for maybe five properly. Because if you just don't consider certain elements in this 21 of them in RP 22. Right, then you're probably not going to do those elements particularly well. So in my mind was blown in my world was totally turned upside down. When I started looking at the variation in just level from, you know, the main hot seat in the middle to all the other guys around the side. And my design stuff changed overnight. And that's just one parameter that we that we look at in the course, it's one of the easiest ones to wrap your head around. And it's one of those ones where once you see it, you can't unsee it. But the thing is we've got another 20 metrics that we need to work to optimize, right. And

Speaker 1  6:36  
here's here's a great thing. So use to me, or to most people listening to probably like well level that's like, the easiest thing there is right? You just you just put your speakers in, and and you hit the auto button on the room correction. And it'll make all the levels be just where you need them to be in and I'm good to go. Right, why? What else? What else is there to be worried about with level? So

Owen Maddock  6:59  
well, you just you just made a cinema for one. And the thing is, that's not how we live. People I mean, on average, I think I think I see this on both sides of the Atlantic because we see all the work right. We're all nosy we're all magpies we're all looking at what somebody

Speaker 1  7:12  
does judge to know what you do, or you judge on that. See your words

Owen Maddock  7:16  
all the time, but actually also the other jobs? Yeah. But and the thing is, most jobs have too many seats in them. Because it's easiest to say yes. You know, it's like you've got a certain amount of space and people are going, how many seats can I fit in here, it's at the village hall mentality. And in a village hall, that's kind of fine, isn't it, because you know, you might not be immersed and taken away to another world, you might just be like, wanting to sort of understand what people are saying. All the way around the edge of that kind of, let's say that, you know, there's nine seats in a room or there's 12 seats in a room that really shouldn't be there. Everyone around the edge is having a poor experience. And you can work that out with math, right? Because as soon as that left around or surround back speaker or whatever it be the one you're too close to. As soon as that happens, you're so too close to it that it just throws you out dominate your whole experience. Yeah, completely. And the problem is, a seasoned integrator may never have thought of that. An end client just going here's what we want. And oh, well on Thanksgiving there, there might be 12 of us. So we'll have 12 seats, please. You're not if you're not thinking about that stuff you can't fix Yeah. It's all that stuff that you don't know that you don't know or that you don't know you're thinking about. So yeah, levels easy for one single seat in the middle. But if you're going to consider everybody else, well, then please consider them. And please show me show me your working. Now I know not to say I will get used to I've been doing this all the time. I've been doing this really recently. But it's just that my rooms have got a lot better, really good.

Speaker 1  8:47  
And also gives you an excuse, let's say I don't know if that's the right word, to have finally, the conversation with the client to say, when they say they want 15 seats, you can say Yeah, well, you know what, I know you want 15 seats. But here's the deal. And then you can you can reference the levels and say I'm going to try to build you a room, we're going to design a room based on a level that you and I are going to decide based on budgetary constraints and everything else, let alone the beautification of the room. This is just the performance side of it. And then you can very, very clearly because RP 22 exists, you can say I'm sorry, I'm going to shorthand is to say RP 22. Instead of continually saying the immersive audio design recommended practice, you can now have the discussion with your customer to say, well, here's why we shouldn't put 15 seats in here. I mean, I can still do it i If you want it, but this is what's gonna happen. So and

Owen Maddock  9:39  
it's one of my favorite bits from the workshop is Peter or Ben, whoever's the instructor that day will actually show you how to do this in a design meeting with a client using pen, paper ruler, basic math and you can just go okay, here's how much too loud that seats gonna be if we put it there. Okay, if we move it over here, here's how much we can correct that and suddenly everything's going to be Much better happens about halfway along day two. Okay? So suddenly it changes your kind of client intake process to do sort of real world on the fly engineering with a client. And it's incredible very

Speaker 2  10:13  
quickly shows guys who who perhaps aren't putting RP 22 into their design work if they're doing any design work at all. It very quickly shows them how much better they can get it for very little input.

Speaker 1  10:33  
Yeah, no, I have not. So Tom, I'm gonna lean more towards him right now. I have not had an opportunity to sit in the workshop yet. And we are going to be having others be able to teach this workshop as well. Especially in the in the U. S area. I have heard and you can confirm this or deny this. I've heard that everyone that has come through the workshop was surprised. So I'm just gonna kind of leave it as a statement.

Speaker 2  11:03  
Yeah, I've only done the ISC workshop. I haven't done the full two day yet with with. Okay. So that's in fact, I am booked to do that in six weeks. I'm having to wait. I keep having to wait because I keep it sells out so quickly here in the UK. Every time I think I'm going to do it by the time I go to book it already fully booked. So yeah, I've managed to get into the workshop in May, but by the by, you know, I've lived and breathed ar 10 standards for some time now. It's so my my backstory into into sort of falling in love with all of this really is, you know, my life started at uni as an engineer as a mechanical engineer, physics. And then I got into my started my business and rolled into cinema. And audio. I've always been into home cinema, always, always always I remember when I was about 13. And we had a living room that had probably Pro Logic 5.1 of some sort back then. And at just that I remember them turning it on. I remember a helicopter coming from behind me to the front of the room. And I was home. I absolutely that was it for me. Somebody injected me with a bug and and I've never walked away from it since. And it just so happened that business wise, I've managed to do a couple of jobs and do some some media type rooms. And I thought, Yes, I need to do this, I really, really need to do this more. And because of that engineering background, I think I went to a lot of dealer teachings as it were. So you know how to best use our products, how to best design this. And there's some great information to be had by that. There's some very much salesmanship that happens in those. And I'm the person will ask why. Why? Because I put that speaker in wall, why am I instantly adding three dB to it sensitivity? Why? And never really got an answer. And then I slowly fell into a group of people who could answer those questions. Who said right? Jump on our 10 Get into RP 22. And it's been a wonderful rabbit hole ever since.

Speaker 1  13:30  
Okay, awesome. I'm excited for you to go through that class. And then I'm going to want to hear your opinion on that as well. I'll go ahead and let you all know that there is a class in the United States. That is happening. And that is going to be in Chicago, and it's going to be April 16 and 17th. Around a CD, a Tech Summit. So that is your first chance. That's the first time that a RB 22 workshop is going to be in the United States. So Tom, I'd love to get your take on it. When you do yours after you're done with it. Just because I'm curious. But oh, and once again, let's go back to you since you have attended the complete class. Do you? Did you recall the makeup of the people that were in your class are these How many do you think were brand new? And how many do you think we're already? I'm gonna just call them seasoned people?

Owen Maddock  14:23  
I think I think it's exactly that. I think it's brand new and seasoned. I think people I was looked looked around the classroom is people who've been in the industry for like less than five years. And more than 20 Cool. So people like me definitely returning up. So shout out to my friend Ian from Ikea home cinema out in Essex or Simon from cinema. I've literally known those guys for 20 years. I used to sell them DVD players back in the day, you know, and they've just been kind of same as me kind of Absolutely. Life is in the home cinema industries with their own companies. And then also new new people, new entrants to the market like who've come along in the past five years. Often with more kind of electrical background, because I think that's a lot of the younger companies are that, which I think is cool. You know, they've kind of lifted the standards in lots of ways. You know, the wiring is neater, the jobs are safer. It's good to have the new blood Well, that's the thing because it because our trade is very mixed, right? You know, you need to be a bit of an electrician, and a bit of an aesthetic designer and a bit of a acoustics designer, and so on. You just need to get enough out of all these elements. So I found it was new blood, and nothing to put Okay. Good. That was and that was the mix that I found. So it's the guys in the middle. I worry about a little bit the people who attend us in. Yeah, that's

Speaker 1  15:39  
really interesting. And that actually makes sense to me. I would well, yeah. as I as I get more and more aged into technology, I have a thirst to learn as much as I can learn and not just technology about anything. And I think you unfortunately have uncovered maybe a true scary thing that the the new folks are, obviously need the education and the older folks who've been around doing it for a while get that okay, education is actually a thing that we need to pursue to do is that middle area that is they think they've arrived. Hey, I've got it looks

Owen Maddock  16:17  
like you have arrived, you've arrived at the station, you call them way to go, you know?

Speaker 1  16:21  
So has everybody in your opinion, when you when you did the class that everybody did the walk? Definitely know that the new people were probably like, what the heck. But the the people that were the 20 plus years people did they find value?

Owen Maddock  16:38  
I think definitely I think I kind of I was unusual in that I knew more of RP 22. I didn't know it all because I don't always turn up my calls. Right. And I wasn't there for the full five years. I was there for like the last two. But I knew kind of the gist of it. And I didn't really get properly stuck until about the morning of day two, because the two day course that we do. And I think people got to different stuck points at different

Speaker 1  17:03  
Oh, when you say because I mean, yeah, stuck, like

Owen Maddock  17:08  
Peters just said something. And I don't actually understand what he means by that. I didn't properly fail to follow him. But for example, I was doing my methodology wrong about calculating the variation. So I was I think I was getting to the right place. But their method was much more elegant, quicker. So for a given seat, you got to work out how badly off surround right might be or how badly off one of the other seats might be. And you seek to minimize that by doing things like keeping people away from walls. And you can work that out in math, right, you can work out what the difference is between my seat with my auntie unit and my main reference seat in the middle of the room. My method for that was totally wrong. Their method is better because it's faster. I think I was probably getting the correct number out at the end of it. But I couldn't swear to it, if that makes sense. But you always get to a stuck point where you're like, Whoa, say that again.

Speaker 1  18:01  
Okay, and the classes are purposely kept on the smaller side, because you so you can have that opportunity to ask the questions. But more importantly, you have paper as you said, and a pencil and a desk space. Because you're not just listening to a lecture and you're not watching PowerPoint karaoke, you're actually doing something. So Tom, this is for you. Oh, and I'd like you to kind of lay out or what was day one? What did you do on day one? And then what was the goal on day two?

Owen Maddock  18:36  
Cool. So now testing my memory because I went up in January. And of course I'm familiar with most of This Just In generals don't remember, but we kind of we went through the document and kind of here's what it's about. And here are most of the sort of the metrics that we're aiming to shoot for. And of course, the fact that we divide systems up into four different performance levels, right. So you know, level one is going to be easier to achieve, it's probably going to be probably going to have fewer speakers probably going to have kind of lower budgets associated and less tight in all the metrics. And level four is genuinely stated the state of the art with an opposites in between

Unknown Speaker  19:12  
bring money, they say,

Owen Maddock  19:14  
Yeah, bring money. Yeah, absolutely. Thing is bring money and bring design. And whereas level one is a lot of the, you know, some of these things are really easy wins. You know, if you start turning your speakers into people, and you start kind of just messing about with the seating layout, that doesn't really cost you anything, it's just going to be better at the end of it, whereas the level four stuff. Yeah, that's gonna cost you a lot. You know, and depending, so that was kind of overview and going through the various concepts and the underpinning ideas and that made sense, and we didn't really do as much kind of math and working out with real rooms until date. Yeah, okay. So then Pizza Pizza starts laminating these big pieces of a4 and we're going to kind of move around chairs and speakers and stuff and then do some workings out to make sure things in good So yeah, that's more of what happens on on data that gets that gets more interesting. And you're split up into little groups that you're kind of can argue with each other. Yeah. And you're meant to kind of make some sense. So here's,

Speaker 1  20:12  
here's something else I want to. So I want to dispel myth. And we've been kind of on this myth thing for a while lately. And one of the one of the mess is that if I'm doing level, I'll make up a mess. If I'm doing level one, I, if I do kind of basic systems, I don't need RP 22, or I don't need the RP 22. workshop, I would venture to say that level one is probably the thing I want to make sure everybody actually does know how to do, right? Because then two, three and four are just derivatives based on that. Right?

Owen Maddock  20:45  
So if you're doing level four, then your name might be Keith, or pizza, or Ben or Sam, right? You know, some of these kinds of massive big hitters who are getting these kinds of really very expensive top end cinema rooms. Honestly, I think those guys mostly know what they're doing. Or Tony, or you know, so it's more actually that Yeah, exactly. It's more actually, that the people at my most of my stuff that read level one or two, and yeah, and suddenly quite different to everybody else. So we

Unknown Speaker  21:16  
wanted to hit the 97%. Go ahead. Yeah.

Speaker 2  21:19  
level one. Level two is bread and butter for pretty much I would think 97.5% of cinema installers. It's what we're going to be doing month in month out. And I don't care. Yeah,

Owen Maddock  21:32  
I like to be doing I want to go higher, and turning away work at that. But I don't like it.

Speaker 2  21:36  
And it's not about being wham bam. Thank you, ma'am. It's about implementing a very good design. So I've seen as we all have, and we're all very nosy each other's Instagrams. And it's great to keep an eye on and get some ideas to look see what other people are doing. But you know, I've seen it where people are like, Oh, this level three room, blah, blah, blah. And then I see a projector hanging in the room off the ceiling. And it's like, no, it's not. No, it's not

Owen Maddock  22:03  
you. And you know, that one's stood. RP

Speaker 2  22:07  
22. straight off the bat. Because a level one room my demo room is level one. And it outperforms most rooms I've ever been into.

Speaker 1  22:22  
Simple, yeah. And Tommy, you will be referring to noise floor requirements, right? I mean, right things hanging from the ceiling is

Speaker 2  22:28  
like such a basic thing. And then everybody's putting the noise, you know, you might put a lot of effort in, I'm going to double board, we're going to put some Masks, we're going to do this, we're going to double double wall it. And we're going to do this, that and the other and a concrete box and sit on springs. And then you put 40 db of noise in the room with the projector. And it's like, Yeah, you were so close. You were so close. Getting

Owen Maddock  22:54  
your dynamics actually on paper, but then your dynamic range is destroyed, because you can't hear the quiet bits turned out louder. Yeah, that's where you're

Speaker 1  23:01  
writing the volume control. Or one of the other really common mistakes we've talked about a lot is over dampening the room, you know, you put 100 mil stuff all the way around the room, and then it's just a dead box. And that also doesn't help you it hurts you. So

Owen Maddock  23:17  
Oh, we did when Tom came down to my demo room, we had a day of kind of playing and measuring and calibrating and stuff. And all we did was take away. It wasn't 12 mil but it wasn't, you know, super, super thick. It was more like 50. And we just put a lot of it in the skip and everything got better.

Speaker 2  23:32  
So and actually did say any one of his things that you can do. It's all there is to do nothing.

Speaker 1  23:42  
Gotta love Floyd. Yeah. Yeah, he also he also commented on and was part of the creation of the immersive audio recommended practice. So yeah, so this is basically what we're trying to establish here is why should I go? So what what what, what else do you think this has done for you? So Oh, and you talked about? You went through some technical bits, you first of all, let's talk. Let's talk a little bit more about that. So people that are listening are like, Okay, you had a piece of paper, and you're trying to play speakers. But they may not be thinking about some of the data that the you needed to have that you worked with on the speaker. Like for instance, if you're talking about 10 or 12 seats, coverage, if the speaker was going to actually cover 10 or 12 seats and then you're also talking about of course efficiency, amplifier power and loss of loss of acoustic energy over distance so Oh, and what what kind of stuff that you do too. Did you have a selection of speakers and you needed to select your did you need to say okay, I'm gonna go with this speaker, and this is why I'm gonna go with the speaker for the Yeah,

Owen Maddock  24:54  
a bit. I mean, data is a big issue because a 90% of mics, don't give What we actually need to do this? And it's certain No, I know it's in hand, it's gonna happen and two people are playing ball. So that's good, right? And that means there's an opportunity for others to do the right thing. We have

Speaker 1  25:10  
a lot right now they're stepping up. Yep. Oh, yeah,

Owen Maddock  25:13  
sure, sure. But it just in terms of what's available, published today, I would say this, I'm not going to name anyone particularly, but there's, you know, a tiny handful of makers that are doing everything that we asked for. So either we'll assume we've got good data, or we're going to have to get bids, you know, we're gonna have to get bits in terms of the way that the dispersion works. Actually, I want to, I want to come up with a slightly different way in terms of especially that whole seat to seat thing, because I'm going to just put the mask down for a second. Because everyone's had this, right. We've all we've all been to a restaurant, right, we've all been to a busy restaurant. And sometimes they give you that table that's got a speaker right near it. And you know what it's like, because overall, if you walk the floor, you know that that that restaurants covered in nice ambient music, you know, Frank Sinatra, whatever it be, everything's kind of lovely. But yeah, this table, there's a speaker, just by my right ear, and oh, my god, I can't hear anything else. So I mean, usually when I go for dinner, I want to hear what people are saying, right? Usually. And I can't, because there's this bloody speaker in the way and it's just really, really distracting. And that's what poor seat to seat consistency is. Like, if you start putting seats right up by speakers, of course, you're not going to be immersed in what the other five 712 20 speakers are doing. Because every time that does something, you just jump out of your chair a little bit. So that's the kind of, we've all had it. Experience. And and bad cinema rooms are like that, too. Where there's too many seats where every time that speaker does something, you jump out of your chair, you're the opposite of Australia.

Speaker 2  26:47  
And I think I think a really interesting point on on that is is is when an install is putting those seats in and unknowingly creating that experience at that bad seat. Now, there's going to be the time when you know we might have 10 seats in a room because the customer has an event happens four times a year needs to seek 10 people, there might only be four really good seats. It's a household of four. So the room is designed around that four with a known six bad seats. I have absolutely no issue with having six bad seats in a room when you know they're going to be good put the system into book stereo or whatever you're putting those sequels from the beginning knowing and the customer knowing they're going to be slightly subpar compared to the four seats where him Mister missus and two kids are sat watching enjoying great level seats. And then you've got the other six for the drunk uncle seats as we call them in the UK. But that's the difference. And that's what RPE 22 For me, gives you gives you the knowledge and the ability to to design with your customer and say, when Mr. Customer says and they always want too many seats, don't they? That's always pretty much the first battle. We always have, what 33 seats in this eight foot by 10 foot room? No, it's not going to happen. Is it? But right? You know, but well, okay, if we do that, it's just going to be awful. But I have this event six times a year. Ah, right. Okay, well, we'll put so many seats in these will be the seats that you guys use. And these will be the seats that you use on those occasions

Owen Maddock  28:36  
designed for and you can you can make a button for it. You can you can change the audio based on the fact that all systems are in all seats reduced, you can do that very avoid designing

Speaker 2  28:45  
for that. And that's that's the key thing. Yeah, we're not just putting 16 speakers in a room, and 10 seats and expecting all 10 seats to be absolutely amazing. And for me, that's what

Owen Maddock  29:00  
I'm thinking about judging now, there was a cinema by somebody. And lots of elements of it were amazing. And some of the kinds of non technical elements were amazing. They obviously spent a lot of money on stuff, you know, the way it looked especially. But it was three rows. And there's no way that space should ever have been allowed to be three rows. And this was not a cheap thing. This was over 200,000 us you know, this was super, super, quite expensive, both in terms of cinema system and the other stuff I can't even guess. And I just got my protractor out of my pencil and started measuring some stuff. And I'm like, well, two of these roads don't work. You know, the front ones too close to the pictures. So so immersive has to be overwhelming and you can't see what's what and the other one's kind of so far back that it's kind of a bit like watching TV. So I know 22 doesn't talk about that. That's that's video stuff. But the video stuff didn't work. The audio stuff didn't work. And you're like, wow, you've just taken the price of a house. throwing it away. That's why I think people need to get on this course. Because we can't have that for our customers. That's not good. I'd like

Speaker 1  30:06  
to think there's another reason. Well, there's a lot of reasons. But another main reason. So we've focused on the design side of this right and delivering, which is our goal artistic intent. But the other side of this is actually delivering something that's a metric, like most people would would have differentiated their systems between Well, this is my, you know, good, better best. And they get more expensive as you go up. And so what's the difference between them from an experiential standpoint? It's hard to say. But now that we have defined levels, that really helps the integrator because you can say, even conveying it to the customer, you can say, Look, I'm going to, I'm going to design for you a level one room or a level two room or a level three room. What's that mean? Well, that means I'm going to be doing this. And you're going to have this kind of an experience. And you can clearly differentiate now the differences between these three different levels. So you can, so I just wanted to get your comment on that for a minute that you're actually we've got metrics, we have something that's tangible, it helps the integrator in knowing what they're going to deliver and the customer know what they are purchasing is that I use that to your advantage. I went on top

Speaker 2  31:23  
of every job I've been to so far. Literally, it's so it's completely changed the way I now do business full stop. There is no bill of materials like it used to be four or five years ago for me, yay. Here's the price. Yeah, basically, it's I almost have 21 metrics of what I'm going to produce for them, and a price at the bottom. Now, it's not quite as simple as that. There's, there's a lot that goes into that as a lot of explanation that's needed with the customer direct for that. And I think also to flip this on its side a little bit, you know, we all go to jobs where we've got to tender against other contractors or the other cinema guys. And the day that the customer turns around to me and says, right, we want to level to cinema room and here, I am going to cry on the spot with joy. I cannot wait for that day. That will make me incredibly happy. You might

Unknown Speaker  32:22  
be waiting for that day for a while.

Speaker 2  32:25  
Now, I do you know what I had somebody asked me for a level two room eight weeks ago.

Owen Maddock  32:33  
Nice. There have been a lot of end consumers downloading the thing.

Speaker 1  32:36  
That's fantastic. That's been I've been working on the forums with this, by the way, and so is everybody else.

Speaker 2  32:41  
So I'm on Facebook, a couple of Facebook forums, which are predominantly us guys. Pretty much every time I answer is the CEDIA RP 22. Link. Get your info from here. Love you. That's

Speaker 1  32:56  
all right. So we talked about the sales side, we talked about the business side. And so far we've kind of concentrated on and I know this, we've done this because this is one of the main things or tenants of the workshop. But there is there are a bunch of other reasons why you should attend a workshop and why you should get your nose and RP 22. Because how loudspeakers play is just one part of it. Right? Bass distribution, huge right knowing where to put low frequency drivers and how many as as Owen pointed out, trying to get a good experience at all seats, right, not at just the money seat. But some of the other things. I'll just we have this thing called the wheel, the audio wheel in in the immersive recommended practice. And there are three main tenants of that. We'll just just to let people know how deep this thing goes spatial resolution tambor and dynamics. And some of the things we talked about, you know, if you're using speakers that are voiced differently, or even different branded speakers in your system, that's problem. Even for level one, if if something flies and Tom, as you said the helicopter and it goes from one one part of the room to the other part it goes that you just ruined it, because it should go up evenly. All Waycross

Owen Maddock  34:13  
Oh, hand Yes. Not just even if you use the same speakers. And this is super common. This is especially super common if you have as it's becoming much more prevalent these days. If you're having front wide channels, you look at 95% of jobs, those channels are flat to the wall, right? They're not turned around towards anyone in the audience. Whatever is hitting you at the listen at the listening area, that's a completely different speaker to what your center speaker is doing, even if they're identical, because, of course the response of a speaker is good in the middle bit. Any speaker you can say wide dispersion and that just means it's good in the middle bit and a little bit further off to the sides. Or if it's narrow dispersion, it's good in the middle bit and that's about it. You put these right front wides off on the side had walls and you're not turning around. That's a completely different speaker, the Tambra that you will get from your front wide channels will be off, unless you pull that round to an angle as you like, like me and him do in our rooms and nobody else does, it seems other than at the top top end.

Speaker 1  35:14  
And you know what, some people would just pretend that all these speakers were light sources like flashlights, yes, it'd be a super easy way to know what's going where and how you're being covered.

Speaker 2  35:27  
That's basically what almost every speaker is, and I don't care what's in their marketing spiel. They are all spotlights.

Speaker 1  35:36  
They absolutely are. They're just ones we can't see. We can do different Baymax specificness, right. Yep. So we have different receptors for those frequencies, eyes versus ears. Yeah.

Owen Maddock  35:46  
Both our rooms make a feature out of this, where we've kind of put little triangular, triangular pods in to show you that we're turning the speakers around. And then when it comes to real jobs, I tend not to, you know, I tend to sort of hide the whole thing between a flat surface, but behind that each speaker is angled correctly,

Speaker 1  36:01  
I just had a great idea. And it makes such a big dad expense to your demo rooms. What if you did put light sources on or near every speaker at the angle of coverage that that speaker actually does? And then you can show visually a customer? How they all hit the seating area. Yeah, that's cool. And then maybe you could do a level one, level two. And you could show the difference between the lights on for level one and the lights on for level two. Oof, what do you think?

Owen Maddock  36:32  
I mean, maybe, Tom, I really like the way mine is at the moment in

Speaker 1  36:38  
statics because if you got stuff behind you know, we

Speaker 2  36:43  
ceiling for this. This smacks pixel OLED on the ceiling.

Speaker 1  36:47  
Absolutely. But how cool would that be? It could be like, Hey, this is exactly the same as sound, this is what's going to happen when you sit in my room,

Speaker 2  36:55  
my cinema rooms getting a makeover in this year at some point. Know how good LED tape now on I thought is gonna cost them. The other

Owen Maddock  37:07  
one. The other one we've been wanting to do for a while now is the idea of having our speakers actually on kind of actuators. So we can take the tone away, and actually make it worse, and then go okay, here's what you could have one. And then you ship and here's what we want to do. And suddenly everything gets a lot better.

Unknown Speaker  37:25  
That could be absolutely,

Owen Maddock  37:28  
totally, but fairly, the thing is, for the cost of doing that I'll probably upgrade the subs, ya know? And just create a better experience that probably is a good a better answer, baby. Yeah,

Speaker 1  37:40  
absolutely. I just wanted to go around the outside of the wheel as well. So people that are still like I don't know if I should care about you know, reading this document or taking the workshop. Some of the other things that we really care about which we started off with you dado and as audience coverage, dialogue, clarity, Tom, that was you know, part of that noise floor conversation of the projector hanging in the room is going to crush your it's going to negatively affect your dialogue, clarity, tonal balance, sound isolation, so you're not bothering and we care about that levels, two, three, and four, you know, sound going out of the room and to the rest of the house. Base impact, dynamic range, we talked about the projector crushed. Oh, and you pointed out that if you put the projector in the room, it's going to impact your, your dynamic range. localization accuracy, that's a big difference between levels 123 and four because we get higher resolution, more channels as we go up. Sound movement and immersion in development. So I'm telling you this is a pretty complete document for a phase one document I do say phase one, because we will be updating it because we have to you had to start somewhere else you never get done. You got to put the kibosh on feature or you get feature creep. But there's also a lot of things we weren't ready to tackle yet. Like what do you do with giant emissive screens? Not you know, that aren't two piece projection away. Run away right now. But in the future, it is tricky. It's the big

Owen Maddock  39:09  
fun engineering challenge of

Speaker 1  39:11  
manufacturers is what we're going to do and everything working on that one right now. And yeah, a year or two from now we're going to have, we're going to add a section to this document to say okay, and here's here's some things you can do now. We are having a lot of fun with bass these days. There's a lot of new things happening with with bass and but we're not ready to talk about it yet. Yeah, so what have I missed? I just you know, the goal here is I want to get butts and seats because this this will just elevate that. My goal here is just to let everybody know this is going to elevate your company, this is going to elevate what you deliver, this is going to you're going to have a thrilled customer that knows what they're buying. I want to encourage people to say okay, I don't know it all because none of us know at all. I

Speaker 2  39:57  
think that the one of the best thing is an integrator can do who who may have a demo facility to do the course. Look through RP 22, and try and implement some of the less expensive items of that in their room. With Open Eyes, get rid of the noise floor from the room, ie throw the projector outside of it. Point your speakers at your main RSP. I think just those three little things will make you maybe I was gonna say those, those three things are really easy to do without a lot of effort. Yeah, and without a lot of destruction to the room, even if it's just temporary. See what that does to your to the whole feeling of the room? Because then you're going to be like, get me that works. Oh, my God. So what's this? If I understand what a roommate is? And why is it that I used to put my subwoofer on my seats, and then crawl around the room, you know, once you understand that, once you understand what you're actually doing that and the physics behind that, when you don't have to do that anymore, you can pretty much do that with a pen and paper, maybe even with some software. But for me, it sort of started quite small with some of the easiest stuff. And then the rabbit hole goes, and that where it takes you just gets you to some, you know for very little effort, some amazing performing rooms with the kit that you're probably already using. And we're not saying here that RP 22 means you've got to use $20,000 speakers, probably quite the opposite. Oh, you're going to find that from your $800. Speaker, you're going to get a far better performing room by implementing RP 20 with a kick that you already know.

Owen Maddock  41:52  
Because this is all about emotional response. Right? And I mean, we've sort of been through the journey a bit, and we kind of understand RP 22. Quite well, perfectly No, but quite well now. And we both build rooms at the same time and the emotional impact that those rooms are delivering revenue relative to other stuff at the same money and more is staggeringly better. Yeah, that's why you should get all these calls. If you run a demo space, it's a no brainer if you install home cinemas for people. And if your name isn't Tony, or Keith, or Ben or Peter or itself, then you need to get on this because you'll just be better. And then in your given state in your given area. So Wow. That's a that's a new experience compared to your competitor. And then, you know, we're both quite early, and I only put my room together sort of year and a half ago. But yeah, I know how good it is. Everyone tells me. And that wasn't true before. Yeah, the

Speaker 1  42:43  
goal is suspension of disbelief. If someone goes to watch something, and then they forget that, oh, I'm watching an image and I'm listening to sound and they are lost in the moment of the artistic intent. Go jumped on. That's exactly what our goal is. And our job as professionals is to deliver that I mean, we are we are we should be a cut above we should be delivering exceptional experiences. And as you said, Tom, it doesn't necessarily cost money, or exorbitant amount of money. I mean, if you put, you could have a level three room with not a lot of money, but it's going to be small room, it's gonna have like two seats in it. But if you want a level three room that's got you know, eight seats. That's a whole nother debt. Yeah, you're gonna throw, it's gonna be a lot larger room. So it doesn't necessarily mean that you know, the, it's all about scaling everything to the space, and to the design goals. And knowing how to do that. Absolutely. All right, any other last comments, I don't want to I don't want to beat a dead horse. But I just, I want people to be able to be open minded because that's that's the tagline of the podcast, right? Always keep an open mind. And there is we just have this is such great work done by amazing people in the industry. And it's free as far as the recommended practice goes. And then being able to do a physical workshop with your peers, a you're going to meet people, you're going to start new relationships, but you're going to walk away everyone I've talked to has walked away with wow, I am so glad I have met one person that thought it was best,

Speaker 2  44:26  
I think I think get yourself to the two day training course and and stick with it. Get through it to the point of understanding what you're doing. And I think you'll have that beer after the first night. And then you'll get home on the second night and it'll all start to sink in and you'll be like

Speaker 1  44:47  
wow, wait, did you say fear or beer? Yeah, beer.

Speaker 2  44:53  
says no fear here. I just think genuine You start applying some physics to these rooms with with stuff that, as I've said earlier, it's just an absolute game changer. Because you're finally designing you're becoming a professional.

Speaker 1  45:13  
Here here. Oh, one any last minute thoughts? I mean, anything I've missed guys.

Owen Maddock  45:20  
No, just you just need to get on this. Honestly, if you think you're serious about home cinema and you're not on this, you're not. Yeah,

Speaker 1  45:27  
so you're putting a line in the sand. You know, if you're serious, you need to do it, or you're not serious.

Owen Maddock  45:35  
I've never been upset. And it will be so much fun when you first start applying these, certainly these easy wins, you just feel so much better about the world because that film is hitting harder that beginning piece of your favorite film that you know, inside out and backwards, you're like, holy shit, that's better.

Speaker 1  45:53  
And everything flows from there. You know what else though? Tom? Or oh, and I'll say this too. But what's even cooler is you're getting a better understanding of how things work. I mean, they're still trying to figure out how human hearing works. And what we're talking about, like Dr. Floyd tool, and all these people are still on a quest to figure out what is good sound and how we hear. So those guys they do that for, I mean, they've devoted their entire lives to the psycho acoustic side of it in the engineering side of it. And here we are installing all this stuff trying to deliver this. It is a lifelong journey to understand really understand how sound works in the room. And so it's fascinating to boot. So I think this is worth it just from a I'd love to understand as much as I can know about

Speaker 2  46:40  
Yes, because we're not we've spoke very much about reducing the noise in this in this last sort of 45 minutes. But we're also controlling it in that room as well. And that's, that's a lifelong passion mistakes. Oh,

Speaker 1  46:56  
wow. there and all that you're like, oh, man, that's, that's complicated.

Speaker 2  47:00  
Yeah, like properly complicated. I'm designing a media room, a demo Media Room at the moment, and I've come up with a real asset. I'm really proud of it. But I can't say anything just yet. But I'm trying to do the physics to it. And it's just my tiny little mind.

Speaker 1  47:20  
Yeah, it's great stuff. All right. Well, Owen. And Tom, I want to thank you very much for giving me some time to to talk about this subject, and to hopefully coerce some folks to give it a go. Absolute pleasure. Brilliant. Thanks. Well, yeah. Any other advice you guys have any other last minute, one

Speaker 2  47:40  
step at a time. Understand the bit you've started before you move on to the next bit, because once you truly understand the neck, suddenly you realize it all ties together. So understand that bit. You've started with

Speaker 1  47:52  
easy ones, then I'll add one, you will make friends, you will meet people that you didn't know, and our communities very cool, and that we all support one another. And that will also help you to grow your apps.

Speaker 2  48:06  
You know what I couldn't do this without my little circle of friends that I've I've sort of been invited into 100% I couldn't No way no help. Yeah, because we're all pushing each other. Mostly they're pushing me in the right direction.

Speaker 1  48:19  
All right. Well, again, thank you very much for being on the podcast. Everybody. The first one in the United States, again, is going to be at the Chicago Tech Summit. That is in on April 16 and 17th. So I invite you to please sign up, it's filling up it's going to fill up fast. So get on there and get signed up. And we will have another podcast in a couple of weeks. And as always, I will ask you to please keep an open mind. For more information on CEDIA visit cedia.org.