Chat with Dr. Floyd Toole 

Endgame guest! You can't do any better from here on out. 😂

Dr. Toole has had an immeasurable influence on the industry. Dutch & Dutch's speaker design criteria for instance are taken straight from his book. So cool you got him on your podcast, Erin. Please do invite him back on some time!

Well,, this was a surprise. Christmas in the middle of May, 🥰. Erin and Dr. Toole. Thank you sooo much and cheers from a sunny Sweden,, 🍻🙂👍‍‍👍‍‍!!

Folk music is so amazing. I am absolutely obsessed with it. My spectrum of music history is truly everywhere but I stop at folk most often in my late 40’s and early 50’s

Like that new intro. Where sound meets science. Floyd Toole living legend. He has forgotten more about audio than mostly anyone will ever know.

This is fantastic landing Dr. Toole in an interview! He seems to be such a nice person! I hope I am that sharp at his age. “There are no perfect room, no perfect speakers, no perfect recording and no perfect ears!” So we need to be more humble about thinking we know what the best speakers are!

It is really cool to get to hear from the man who literally wrote the book on speakers, testing, and design. I really enjoyed reading the book, and now listening to him discuss the basics and finer points with such ease. 👍👍👍👍

Wow! Erin, what a great validation of what you are doing that Dr Toole would spend time chatting with you! It was fascinating to listen to the two of you. Thanks for all you do!

I can proudly brag I had given that shuffler at Harman a second life when I rewrote it's control program back in 2005-2006.

Congrats! I know you are on cloud nine right now.

Always great to hear an audio giant like Dr. Toole sharing his wisdom. Thanks for doing this interview, Erin.

It's time to have Mr.Toole on again. I enjoyed that immensely!

Dr Floyd Toole is such an inspiration to me, thanks for having him on it was super interesting hour and a half, after klippel, purifi and Karteisan, your interviews are being a wonderful place of knowledge. Geoff Hill and Bjørn Kolbrek would be two very interesting interviews if they would be willing to talk about their feilds, Geoff with the tetrahedral test chambers, and Bjørn with his unparalleled horn knowledge.

I love Dr Toole! I wish I could get an autographed copy of his book.

Returning to this. Man, you are hanging with the good people, Erin!

We could do it and we did it, apologies... Thank you Erin, thank you Dr. Toole. My respect

Geez Erin, you bring out the big guns! Excellent guest and Interview. I learned speakers are like people, we judge them by their Performance, ignore the ones we can't stand, tolerate the ones we listen to and learn to listen to them through the crap!

I couldn’t agree more about the person breaking in as opposed to the equipment.

This was just awsome 👏👏👏👏 best surprise in 2021

This was an insightful conversation. Thanks a lot.

@Erin, Thank you so much for this initiative and it was transcendental to listen to a true Legend! truly appreciate this discussion.

I'm a simple guy, I see Dr. Toole I hit like.

One thing that I thought was interesting was when he said that we here the bumps in response more than the ringing in drivers. I’ve always heard how important spectral decay is in speakers, and especially in rooms. People who give advice on acoustics say that you can’t eq out bass peaks and such because it’s really the spectral decay that makes it sound resonant. Yet, someone with great credibility just cited research that says the opposite. It really shows how maybe confirmation bias has lead people to believe these things. The double blind test doesn’t lie after all. The bookshelves speaker debate is always so interesting as well. I am always so torn between whether towers are actually needed given subwoofer’s existence. So often you hear people say that bookshelves can’t deliver the midbass that towers can and I just see that as bad design. It could also be the crossover design that Dr. Toole mentioned, most receivers have 1st order high pass and 3rd order low pass because they assume the speaker response will be rolling off. I really wish they made that adjustable Like you mentioned the only true advantage I can see is output potential. I’m glad that some of the great minds in audio share the same opinion. Double blind test really are such a great thing because while people can scoff at measurements for not being actual listening, these blind tests are done with such depth that their significance factors are very accurate, and all with subjective data. So the subjectivists can’t dismiss it while being logical at the same time. Yet we still hear people say things like “flat doesn’t sound good”. It’s truly disappointing because there are companies and people that put so much time and effort into making speakers that are objectively good, which translates to subjectively good, only to be dismissed for another well known brand that is just selling with their name. Anyway. Great Video! One of the best or possibly the best yet! Sometimes when people do interviews they get so sidetracked that they don’t actually focus on information, you do a great job balancing these, which makes an hour and a half video easily watchable.

Wow! You got Dr. Toole!

Thank your Erin and Dr. Toole. Dr. Toole, I appreciated the discussion of Dr, Toole's initial based headphone localization research and extensions to loudspeakers! and extensions to Psychoacoustics, and A,B, C, D product evaluations, speaker/user "breakin", and randomized, speaker selection, and your subsequent employment by Harmon. I'm soo sorry to hear about the loss of your wife and the wonderful story of your new wife! Bless You! I really appreciate Erin's QandA and Dr. Toole's responses. I have a PhD in Mathematical Sciences with a topic in Acoustics. But more importantly, I learned much from my dad, an audiophile years ago. I'm returning to the hobby for my personal enjoyment upon retirement.

That was fantastic, and perhaps a good indicator of how nerdy I am with this stuff as I was literally on the edge of my seat for some of Dr. Toole's responses. That bit about vertical dispersion not being as important because we hear in the horizontal plane was really interesting, especially because treating ceilings with absorption tends to have a REALLY big effect every time I've done it. I'm not really sure how to reconcile those two things.

Useful and interesting. Thanks for this. Kudos for focusing on the topic, what is important why. I think your audio enlightenment project is something quite unique. Here I sit and gain an increased understanding of the importance of objective data for my experience of music from my system. What I do not see a shred of is trench digging. Interesting to see that Floyd Toole appears so open and professionally curious. Many of his most zealous disciples have much to learn here. In his concluding point, we probably have a lot to take with us, all of us.

Amazing interview, had me hooked until the end. Great interview style Erin, keep up the great work!

Thank you a lot Erin for such a pleasant talk with such an illustrious guest, chapeau!

It is so fascinating for a man who listened for a living uses hearing attenuation to fully enjoy live music! I am a guitarist and electric guitar enthusiast and would love to know what brand of ear “plugs” he uses. Most of all, what a pleasant man. I am Canadian also🙂

Perhaps the most educating (and interesting as well as entertaining) video about audio in RU-vid that I encountered. Thanks!

So glad he brought up musician earplugs! You don't have to have muffled sound with earplugs!

Thanks for providing this awesome interview👍👍.

Its the main man himself. Nice!

Amazing. Epic guest Erin!

Fantastic interview!!

This is awesome!

Nice job you guys. I enjoyed this very much.

Thanks Erin for the video, and thanks Dr Toole! SUBSCRIED.

Thanks, great interview

What an amazing interview!

Great discussion with a very cool guy. Well done by both of you.

Thanks to both of you!

Thanks for this interview Erin. As a recent subscriber I'm still going through your past videos and this one was a gem. 😉

Read a lot of his work before i picked up my speakers. He's an icon in the industry. I own the Infinity Interlude IL50s and have had them 18 years and my purchase was based on the fact that he was involved in the development of the Prelude and Intermezzo lines. I have never regretted that decision.

thank you Erin for a brilliantly conducted interview, and for making such a large amount of useful info intelligible to laymen like myself. simply awesome! already looking forward to part 2!!!

Yes musicians hearing plugs are the way to go! They are fabulous and protect your ears!

The greatest line in the entire discussion: “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand…well, you are a rocket scientist.” I very much enjoyed the discussion and it went by too quickly.

I’m glad he has to read his own book because I definitely have to rewatch some of my old videos to answer a question for someone who asks lol

I can’t believe I’d missed out on this gem until now. Awesome video. We’re you nervous to interview Dr. Toole? It must have been amazing and nerve wracking to do a video with one of your heroes.

I remember being a high fi enthusiast in high school in the late 70's and early 80's getting this stuff from the NRC by inter library loan. I could never figure out what that "complex frequency variable" was for a long time. Went back to school later and became an engineer.

Dr. Floyd toole such a legand and genius man.

This was truly very informative... Thanks Erin for this great video.

Go Floyd-San!

One thing is that a lot of times it can be difficult to detect hearing loss with musicians if they have advanced ear training.

Arguably, and reportedly, breaking in a midrange element only affects some % of spider and surrounding elasticity over the first fifteen minutes or less - in addition, this affecting the sound in either direction, while manufacturing process Q-capability might cover more than those % within std part population for starters. Yeah, we need Dr. Toole in a branch as devious as the HiFi!

Awesome interview, so much throuth in what Floyd said. I met Floyd's co-worker from NRC in 90s at my friends garage - Claude Fortier, he runs State of Art Acoustics in Ottawa. Claude also designed speakers for John Ötvös, the Waveform Mach. One time he showed up one day with his Turbo charged Acura Type R, 'very slightly' customized for track in Callaboge. Holly ... , this guy is like walking acoustic/electronics section of NRC, way too technical for me to talk to. It would cool to throw pair of my 2ways in the state of constant redesign process in the car, bring them to Floyd ask for his opinion. I have tinnitus in my left ear which increases with loudness, so partially I have rely on others opinion when critically judging the sound.

I sure wished Andrew Jones popped in for a 3 way chat!🤪🤔😬😉😇 Great talk as it is.😉🤗

It would be extremely interesting to see an ETC (Energy Time Curve) of these reflection levels that they use to generate these early reflection and room response curves. For acoustically treated rooms, like a control room or mastering studios, this will obviously be very different than an average living room.

Science wins - Dr. Toole

Well I didn't know this was available, there goes a hour and a half!😉🤔🤫😇

That's what I did as well, on my Revel Studio2's. I used a MiniDSP 2x4 HD with a 48dB high-pass filter set to 30Hz. Without it i got audible port noise. 😊

Another one out of the ball park, well done Erin. But...should have titled it "Dr Toole talks Bose new high end speaker wires". Would have 1.3m + views and the knuckleheads might learn something.

52:36 Best advice for any reviewer interested in meaningful listening comparisons.

Wow, Dr. Floyd Toole!!! Some precious hints about where to spend the money to squeeze the best performance. If only you could then bring Dr. Edgard Choueiri to talk about crosstalk cancellation and 3D audio... I see that measuring speaker performance is in your high concerns. I bet sooner or latter curiosity about xtc will flourish in your thoughts. :-)

The double blind test. The standard for subjective evaluation. Why does that sound so familiar? Oh yeah! “Science in the service of art” I remember hearing that from the Doctor.

Extremely interesting and educational. Thank you both!

I am about 20 minutes in and will definitely continue watching the entire video but wanted to make a note about your audio Erin. If possible could you try to not use a gate next time and just use noise reduction instead?

Where is the paper/chapter where the psychoacoustic perception of loudness is discussed? More specifically, where the differences in SPL perception change with frequency. I'd like to eyeball that. Thanks!

Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm using Infinity P363 tower speakers for all 7 channels (DTS Neo:X 5.3.2 with front wides) crossed over at 100 Hz to 3 Infinity PS212 subwoofers

Curious if any of the guys at Harman know any of the guys at Genelec... Seems like either Genelec took the research and ran with it, or independently found the same things with whatever research they do!

Very happy that I found your channel thank you for this interview much respect to the both of you. I was wondering if you or Dr. Toole have any spinorama data or opinions on omnidirectional speakers?

Thing about sound comparison is that it does seem super Relative. Like colors. The challenge is having space between the start / stop points. The sounds really need to touch each other. No space between. Memory and bias kicks in too strongly otherwise. The song would have to stay constant to per speaker switch so also challenging. But also timberal change seems to require a couple seconds of brain scrambling for adjustment so it sounds phasey for a moment. But this is my internetedcation hack experience - does anyone feel strongly otherwise ?

It also seems that the angle of dispersion is greater [wider] for the horizontal than the vertical. So the horizontal is top priority to treat than the ceilings. Would you and Dr. Toole agree?

@ Dr. Toole - regarding the Tone Controls - you may enjoy RME ADI-2 DAC which has just about everything you may want for headphone listening and 2-channel speakers - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fDadqF2wMXw.html It even has Bass & Treble controls on the remote + adjustable frequency settings ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-enZD40j-kjI.html ). Thank you for all your work, interview and great to hear that life goes on as it should!

Can someone share a timestamp of where I can get an intro of Dr Floyd?

I listen to pipe organ music, and a subwoofer is a must have. I know you can’t hear it but if you don’t feel it, it doesn’t sound right.

If I understand correctly, a resonance shows up as a peak in all of the frequency response curves, off-axis as well as on-axis. And apparently it is the energy bump (rather than the ringing itself) that we perceive. So, what happens to the audibility of a resonance if we remove the frequency response peaking via EQ? To what extent can we reasonably expect to "fix" resonances with EQ?

The biggest get you can get!!

audio level in this podcast is( as very common) not right.

Erin, what software do you use for the room prediction frequency response curves?

Dr Toole shits on people who don't do abx blind testing when reviewing speakers. This is basically all the reviewers on RU-vid. I 100% agree with Dr Toole. What people don't understand is placebo is very powerful and even more poweful when coming listening to speakers that can be worth thousands. Always question your senses, its got us this far in science.

On the topics of compression, I remember Andrew Jones in a interview talking about how voice coils on tweeters are heating up in seconds and a few minutes on woofers. So like Dr. Toole said, I don't think extendeding out that thermal compression test to long time periods would be of much benefit. Link to that section of the interview - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tjgd-v31k_I.html

Wow ! What a treat :) Thanks Erin and Dr Toole. In a small room I find that having a separate subwoofer and bookshelf speakers is preferable to floor-standing speakers. With a separate sub it allows you to place it in a position that gives the most neutral sound in the lower frequencies for the listening position. With just floor-standing speakers you don't have that option.

Gosh...turn that NR down, Erin! 😆