EASE 4.3 User’s Guide & Tutorial

You can also look at the room from any icon of the Listeners Seats by clicking on the Look from Listener Seat icon and then selecting one of the Listener Seats from the selection window that opens.

Notice that in all these views you can also manipulate (turn and rotate) the view to look at different parts of the room.

Using the Walker

No tour of an actual room would be complete without walking around the room and EASE allows you to do just that with the Walker. All you need to do is click on the Walker icon

If the Walker window is obscuring the graphics, use your mouse to move it. Notice that a small x, y, z icon has been added to the room graphic. It shows you the location of the Walker. You can change the location, by changing the coordinate information in the dialog window or by using the mouse cursor to grab the x, y, z icon and physically move it.

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Chapter 2: Overview

If you decide to physically move it, you first will have change the operating mode of the Mouse. Use key command “p” to switch to the Pick mode or the Mouse pull down menu. Then you will be able to grab the x, y, z icon and move it to any location you want.

Note that if you were going step by step through the Tutorial, the Walker was probably placed at the insertion point of the Main loudspeaker, the last location selected in the Eyes program. You may have to Zoom In on the Main loudspeaker to see it as the icon is quite small. A way to avoid this is to use the cursor to Pick the spot where you want to insert the Walker. The Walker will automatically open at that spot.

The arrow buttons in the Walker control panel above and below the Go To button (the pointing finger icon) allow you to move up and down. The other 4 buttons allow you to move to the right or left and forward or backward in the room; use the scroll bar on the bottom of the screen to turn your head and the right scroll bar to look up or down.

To view the room from the Walker location, click on the Eye icon. It toggles between the Walker (Orthographic and Perspective) viewpoints. If all you see is a blank wall, it's probably because your head is turned and you are looking at the rear of the room instead of the front. Use the bottom scroll bar to turn your head until you can see the front of the room. Take a walk around, you'll enjoy it.

Note: Even if you do not have EARS, you can also initiate a direct sound auralization by clicking on the Ear icon. This is true for both EASE and EASE JR. If you have EASE, you can also activate the Acoustical Probe from the Walker control menu by clicking on the Microphone icon. EASE users can by pressing the Lightning symbol button, also initiate a Ray Tracing Impact study at the Walker location. For users having AURA, the Aura button opens AURA for a monaural Impulse response study at the Walker position.

Electro-Acoustic Calculations (Room Mapping)

The last stop on our quick overview of EASE will be the Electro-Acoustic Simulation or Mapping portion of the program. EASE and EASE JR offer two basic methods of displaying (mapping) the electro-acoustic performance of the model and its loudspeaker system; Area Mapping and Room Mapping.

Room Mapping is accessible from either the Eyes rendering module or from the Main window by selecting Room Mapping from the Calculations pull down menu. Since we are already in the Eyes module, we’ll start there. The bottom row of Tool Bars in the Eyes window provide direct access to the mapping functions. First, use your mouse and the cursor to find the Direct SPL button and then click on it. This will initiate the mapping routine by bringing up the following setup window.

All EASE simulations are based upon a number of setup parameters. For example, the program needs to know what loudspeakers will be used and at what frequency the simulation should be run. The Mapping setup window and the two that follow take you step by step through the points that need to be considered. We’ll review all of the setup parameters in detail later on in this tutorial. For now, since we are just taking a quick tour we’ll accept most of the default settings.

The only change we need to make in this window is to select the Loudspeakers we want to use. Clicking on the Lspk button will bring up a selection menu. Select Main and OK. We’ll use only the Main loudspeaker in our example. If we wanted to use all the loudspeakers, right clicking on OK in the selection window would have selected all of them.

Note that All Mappings is checked. When All Mappings is turned on, the program will gather all the information it needs to map all measures at all frequencies. When Single is checked, information for only the selected measure at the chosen frequency is gathered. It takes only slightly longer for All Mappings than for a Single map, so most users automatically use All Mappings all the time.

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EASE 4.3 User’s Guide & Tutorial

Now press Next to open the second (Items) setup window.

The Items setup window is where the room elements that will be used in the simulation are selected.

For our first simulation we want to map on all the Audience Areas, so no changes are necessary in this window. All we need to do is to make sure On Areas is checked in the Mapping section and all the Audience Areas are selected under Audience Areas In Use. Pressing the Audience Area button will bring up a listing of all the Audience Areas included in the model. All you need to do is to select all of them if they aren’t already selected.

Note: If you turned Off the Audience Areas in the previous room rendering exercise, you will need to go to the Items pull down menu and turn them back On. EASE will not map on Audience Areas that are turned Off.

Press Next to advance to the Noise setup window, which allows you to set the noise levels used in the intelligibility simulations. For now, accept the default settings. We’ll cover this EASE feature in detail in the Room Investigations section of this manual.

Press Next to advance to the Calculation setup window where the nature of the simulation is defined. Note that you have the opportunity to map either with or without Shadowing and with either a Sinus (single frequency) signal or in third octave bands.

Make sure Map With Shadows is selected. We want to see how much of the main floor Audience Areas under the balcony is shadowed from the Main Speaker by the balcony.

We’ll stick with the other settings for now. Click on OK to start the simulation.

When the simulation is complete the program will map the results on the Audience Areas and open a View Calculation window. Note that the View Calculation window blocks the main screen making it impossible to see the Audience Areas.

Minimize it by clicking on the Minimize Icon in the left corner of the View Calculation window and then use your Mouse to drag it to a location which allows you to see the mapping.

We’ll come back to the purpose of the Calculation window when we get to the Room Investigations section of the manual.

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Chapter 2: Overview

As you can see, the results of the simulation have been “mapped” on the Audience Areas. The black section at the rear of the under balcony area defines the area being shadowed from the main cluster by the balcony. The jagged front edge of this area is a sign we maybe should have used a higher resolution in this simulation. When “Patches” are used, EASE scans the area patch by patch and had difficulty calculating these patches since part of the patch was being shadowed and part wasn’t.

Now, let’s look at the Intelligibility. Since we used All Mappings, all we have to do is go to minimized Calculations window and use the drop down arrow to change Direct SPL to Articulation Loss (Alcons) and then press the bright colored Render Map icon. The Alcons map will appear almost instantly; all EASE had to do was to render the map, it had already done the calculations.

Notice the shadowed area under the balcony is red while everything else is light green. In Alcons, light green is good while red indicates the program was unable to calculate the articulation loss because of the shadow.

Now let’s try mapping on the Room surfaces. First, go to the menu bar, select Items and turn off the Audience Areas. Then press the Waste Basket icon in the View Calculation window to waste the existing calculation file and start a new calculation by pressing on the Direct SPL icon. leave the first setup window unchanged. In the second one, turn off On Areas and check On Faces. Next go to the Faces In Use section, press the Faces button and select all the Faces. Note that you have the option of choosing only a few of the Faces if that is what you want. OK the setup and run the simulation.

Notice that the black area at the rear of the under balcony area has disappeared and now there is one at the front of the balcony. The floor at the rear of the under balcony area is not shadowed, even though the ears of anyone seated there would be. In a similar fashion, listeners seated in the front row of the balcony would not be shadowed by the face of the balcony even though the floor under them would be.

Use the scroll bars and other viewing tools to turn and rotate the room. Note the hot spot on the ceiling directly over the cluster.

Note that EASE JR users will only be able to map Direct SPL in Room Mapping. EASE users can map all the other simulations in Room Mapping, but EASE JR users can’t.

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