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WaveForming delivers a solution to the most challenging aspect of home cinema sound: eliminating the room modes that make accurate low-frequency reproduction on a large area difficult, if not impossible.
The product of more than 7 years of Trinnov extensive research, WaveForming combines a new algorithm and new home theater design guidelines.
It effectively reduces the low-frequency problems inherent to small rooms: the muddy sound produced by long reverberation times and the large variation heard among multiple seats.
WaveForming resolves these challenges to produce unprecedented impact, clarity and level of detail in the bass.
“In small rooms, which by definition includes even large Home Theaters, it is very difficult to get even bass response across all seats. This problem is caused by Room Modes, also called Standing Waves. Moreover, in small rooms, bass energy dissipates much more slowly than midrange and high frequencies, obscuring detail and dynamic contrast that would otherwise come alive.“
WaveFormingTM requires the use of multiple subwoofers on both the front and back walls of the room. The number of subwoofers, and their specific locations are determined by room dimensions and the desired bandwidth coverage. But you can start from as few as 4 subwoofers with two in the front and two in the back of the room in the conventional corner locations.
Trinnov makes available detailed Subwoofer placement guidelines for WaveForming that define the number and placement of subwoofers required to get the best out of Waveforming.
WaveForming combines four major innovations at the heart of Trinnov’s expertise and 3D acoustic field measurement and processing.
We take advantage of our deep understanding of 3D acoustics and wave propagation.
This very advanced patent-pending technology requires intensive calculation and computing but results in a very soft set of acoustic filters to deliver a very natural sound, free of artifacts.
During calibration, each subwoofer is measured at multiple points in the listening area to map the 3D acoustic soundfield with close to 100% accuracy.
With 9 to 25 measurements points to sample the extended listening area, we create a reliable representation of the 3D acoustic field in the room.
Uses the 3D measurement map to remove long decay times and other unwanted aspecfs of the original 3D response while retaining desirable traits.
This step is also used to achieve decay uniformity across the listening area.
Uses multiple subwoofers to create a single coherent wavefront, steering the bass towards the listening area while minimizing unwanted reflections from the side walls, floor, and ceiling.
With 3D WaveFront Synthesis, we precisely control the coverage of the audience and the radiation to the room walls, avoiding problems before they have a chance to occur.
The key to WaveForming.
Creates 3D acoustic optimization filters with dual optimization:
Historically, the time domain aspect of bass performance has been ignored in favor of focusing on frequency response only.
By addressing the time domain, WaveForming can effectively eliminate room modes and achieves a dramatic reduction in the reverberation time at low frequencies.
Bass is profoundly transformed, with unprecedented clarity, impact, and definition.
Equally dramatic, WaveForming enables extreme consistency of both frequency and amplitude across the entire listening area.
The seat-to-seat variation that has been inevitable in small rooms disappears.
This greatly exceeds the new CEDIA RP22 Level 4 requirement by potentially qualifying every seat, not just two primary ones.
Integrators will find a major benefit of WaveForming in its ability to have predictable and repetable results. WaveForming is not just an algorithm.
It is a holistic approach that involves design guidelines, proper installation, acoustic measurement, and optimization of the ultimate solution.
Running the WaveForming algorithms requires a minimum of 4 subwoofers and will provide improved results on a vast majority of systems.
But the level of performance is directly correlated to the subwoofer placement, with different approaches possible.
WaveForming relies on specific subwoofer placements to achieve maximum performance but tolerates and adapts to a wide range of subwoofer layouts.
This placement requires subwoofers to be placed at specific points on the front and rear walls, with different elevations, as dictated by the laws of physics.
This enables WaveForming to ensure an optimal plane wave and optimal room mode cancellation.
This is the ultimate and uncompromised approach to achieve the best performance with WaveForming.
Whether it is due to room constraints, collision with loudspeakers or lack of output processing channels, the second-best implementation of WaveForming consists of a reduced number of subwoofers on each wall. Fortunately, the sophistication of the WaveForming algorithm adapts to these changes to deliver still-exceptionnal results.
If budget or space requires few subwoofers, it is important to know that it is better to reduce the number of subwoofers on the rear wall rather than the front wall.
A more practical implementation of WaveForming is possible by simply respecting the recommended horizontal distribution of subwoofers but placing them all on the floor.
This still achieves great control of the decay time but provides less seat-to-seat consistency and vertical room mode control.
WaveForming works with the laws of physics to form an optimal first wavefront. Unfortunately, the same laws prevent the formation of an optimally-controlled wavefront when using conventional placement of the subwoofers in the 4 corners of the room.
With minor adjustment, we strongly recommend to reposition the subwoofer towards the center of the room both in front and in the back of the room, thereby creating a line array of subwoofers.
WaveForming guidelines are also integrated in the Cinema Designer to help home theater professionals to help with the full design of a home theater.