# Visual Ears



## hjones4841 (Jan 21, 2009)

Does anyone remember the Visual Ears software? Has anyone compared its predictions of speaker/room interface to actual measurements? I bought a copy several years ago to play with, but did not have measurement equipment to compare predicted vs. actual.


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## PKinetics (Apr 22, 2009)

*I remember Sitting Duck Software!!!*

I had not thought of that software in ages! The company was "Sitting Duck Software", right?

I used "Visual Ears" as well as its DOS based predecessor, "Listening Room", as a tool in the design of rectangular Mastering Rooms and Control Rooms. The modeled placement results correlated very well to as built in most cases.

Like most, if not all mode prediction software, the data derived will show modal effects as being worse than they are as built because:

(1) The calculations assume infinite stiffness for all boundaries. Real construction rarely approaches this except in the case of concrete or concrete block walls, floor and ceiling.

(2) The mitigating effects of things in the room (furniture, humans, etc.) is not considered in the calculations.

The best reasonably priced software of this type that I have has experience with is "Room Optimizer" by Peter D'Antonio and Trevor Cox, sold by RPG (big surprise). :bigsmile: The interface is a touch hard to figure out, but the modeling options and output are excellent. If you are building a room from scratch, the companion software "Room Sizer" is also a very useful tool.

In honor of Sitting Duck Software, I present a Detail Drawing of an acoustical "Duck Penetration". :heehee: (Sorry, but I just couldn't resist!)


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## hjones4841 (Jan 21, 2009)

*Re: I remember Sitting Duck Software!!!*

:bigsmile: Gotta love the illustration :bigsmile:

Don't remember the software company but I am sure you are correct. I still have a copy of it and the user manual. Doubt that it will run on Vista, tho. I did a few speaker positionings with it, but did not know what to do about room acoustics back then, other than live with them, and was kinda locked in with speaker positions anyway.


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## Kal Rubinson (Aug 3, 2006)

A modern program for predicting speaker setup and other issues is CARA.
http://www.cara.de/ENU/index.html

Kal


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