Feedback Exterminator

[Anonymous]

So much new features on the new CQ like AutoFeedback eX but not on the Flagship…..

[Brian]

It’s on the CQ because that series is designed to be as easy as possible to use for the inexperienced user. Things like instrument presets, one knob EQ, automatic gain and automatic feedback eliminator all designed to be very helpful for the inexperienced user, but worthless for an experienced engineer.

Experienced engineers are going to know how to properly ring out their system making such a feature pretty much useless. Also, “automatic” feedback eliminators tend to cause a lot of harm to the overall sound quality in the name of feedback control. I watched the live webinar that Keith hosted today and at one point he showed us the automatic feedback eliminator. Now he didn’t push the audio through to the livestream, but the system created 13 or 14 different filters which were cutting 5db each. They all had a very narrow Q, but with 14 filters being generated, it still affected a tremendous amount of the total spectrum. It seemed really excessive (but again we didn’t hear the audio to know exactly what was feeding back).

[msteel]

As an example of the type of problems automatic algorithms can have, I recently was setting up a Zoom call in a large room. I set up a dedicated “mix minus” aux for the Zoom computer so the other end of the call would only get the signals that it needed. To test the audio to the Zoom computer I sent a 1kHz sine wave from the signal generator. Zoom promptly filtered it out and showed no signal. It probably matched Zoom’s parameters for feedback or background noise when in reality it was the desired signal.

[Author]

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