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This is a cautionary tale about the risk of drawing wrong conclusions when being unable to — self‑check — one's own data interpretation. Whereby turning analyzer usage into a video game. And treating the on‑screen data as gospel with blind faith. To paraphrase Jamie Anderson:


"Calling it (the hardware and/or software) analyzer is a misnomer,
the operator is the analyzer."

— Jamie Anderson —
President and founding member of Rational Acoustics


White noise is a random signal having equal intensity at all frequencies. And refers to a — statistical model — for signals, as opposed to any specific signal. In discrete time, white noise is a signal whose samples are regarded as a sequence of — serially uncorrelated — random variables with zero mean and finite variance. Where — any — zero‑mean distribution of values (without DC component) is possible.

This article explores reasons for considering frequency shading — as opposed to gain shading — to optimize the tonal uniformity of line arrays.

"I envy people that spend their carreers in studios or post‑production facilities.
Because there will never be enough air between them and their studio monitors
for air absorption to become a problem."

— Merlijn van Veen —

Beamwidth plots for dense to sparse linesFigure 1This may come as a shock — coming from the author of the Subwoofer Array Designer — but over the years I have grown an increasing dislike for horizontal subwoofer arrays.

The only thing they really have got going for them, is their left‑to‑right spatial uniformity — provided — they do not fall victim to one honest mistake.

Foot room or Headroom?Figure 1Our industry is notorious for its ambivalence regarding consensus on definitions, and the definition of headroom is no exception. A recent Facebook poll revealed a 20/80 divide between the two most common definitions.

Headroom's ambiguity may stem from a paradigm shift in audio technology. And the solution could be straightforward. Where simply adopting a new term might end the status quo.