How to Time Align Your Main to Your Front Fill Using Smaart® Live IR

1. Set relative solo level and EQ for Main and Front-fill at on-axis positions.
2. Find the acoustic crossover point.
3. Set delay.
___
___
___
___
Be friendly
___
I love to geek out about the physics of sound. This channel focuses on the growing opportunity for live sound engineers to improve their confidence and consistency through the understanding of the principles of sound system design and optimization. My goal is to make this channel upfront and honest about my success and failure, so you can learn from both.

I am always open to suggestions and feedback so please comment on this video or contact me through my site.
_______________
Smaart® and the Smaart logo are registered trademarks of Rational Acoustics LLC and are not affiliated with Nathan Lively or Sound Design Live.

[Timetofly]

1 thing i ALWAYS do before anything else is delay my MAIN L/R PA by 6ms before anything else. This gives me room to move forward and backward in time if need be if ever you have to due placement as often happens at a large Festival when it's just go go go, points don't get put in the right place, ground stacks are way forward thanks to shit management by those directing local crews etc etc etc etc . In most cases, I don't have to use that "Buffer" but having it on many an occasion where you cant go back in time, works well enough that no one out front has any idea that you didn't actually bend the laws of physics at all, instead just thought the potential problem through before finding a HUGE problem you can't solve, 2 hours later!

[손상표-hq]

Thank you for the great video.

If the subwoofer is behind the main speaker, should the time alignment of the front fill speaker still be compared to the time of the main speaker? Or
Should the main and front fill speakers time-aligned based on the subwoofer?

[alaskaaudioguy]

If you don’t have smart and need to use front fills what should you do. If you have the math on how much delay is needed love to hear

[bubblegunsmusic]

how did you (first add and then) take off the delay that you had dialed in earlier ?

[RafaelLopez-ssdt]

Hi @Nathan Lively, thank you for the video. I have a question for you. How do you proceed when having maybe 5 stacks of FF? Do you set the same delay to each one? In that case, which stack would be your reference? Or do you set a different delay on each stack? In my experience I’ve met same amount of engineers applying each option...

[amdenis]

LOVE YOUR VIDEOS!!! (not sure about your signature clang in the beginning, but maybe it's just me???)

[_DreaM_world]

Thank you for this information. good to you, author

[rlopezrb]

Very interesting but I have a doubt. Is better to adjust phase electrically or acustically. Can I do it with Holmimpulse? With Smaart phase is a line

[ants]

If this is for a home theater do I adjust the delays in my receiver

[koonkl]

Hi guys, I'm new smart key user.i just have a question regarding car audio time alignment, can you provide the step for the checking time alignment?

[nicholasm]

Is this being measured with a mic(s) only?

[yaminhameed]

Appreciate the videos @Nathan, I was hoping you could clear something for me. @1.33 when you start to find the spatial xover point initially where is ref and measurement delay value locked to, mains or the front fills. I mean the initial 5.33ms you have from the beginning of your video (its probably the latency of your demonstration setup in this case). Or would you turn on the FF and the mains and find the delay and let smaart locate which one is closer?
Second question is would you just work on one side of the PA Eg: Mains Left and FF and just use the values for the right side or work on both L & R separately especially in the case where a mono out is used for the FF?
Thanks

[djhotv]

hi Nathan Lively
about your last video you posted on YouTube, I think that what you have nicely exposed in the last video is correct but, it should also be said that, not in all cases it is possible to obtain a total alignment of time and phase between main and fron fill using this impulse response technique. It can be For example in the case of totally different systems (2w, 3w and 4w) of design and brand. It would be profitable for your followers if you also explain this aspect. Do not you think ?
I'm available for clarifications. 👋✌🏻😊

[cyrix_]

Good video. But we Phase align not time align :-)