Unfair YouTube Strike Policy on Copyright Claims

[Josuah]

For fun I've posted a waterfall measurement I made today. I am using the default REW settings and tried to make my axis and SPL match Gene's graphs. These graphs today don't look as good as when I last calibrated—some stuff has moved around in my room recently so I probably have to spend some time on the weekend to recalibrate.

Also, I should clarify that I have two subwoofers, but for positioning purposes it might be better classified as four, since each subwoofer has two drivers in it and the drivers are 4 feet apart, so it really is four point sources.

 

[gene]

For fun I've posted a waterfall measurement I made today. I am using the default REW settings and tried to make my axis and SPL match Gene's graphs. These graphs today don't look as good as when I last calibrated—some stuff has moved around in my room recently so I probably have to spend some time on the weekend to recalibrate.

Also, I should clarify that I have two subwoofers, but for positioning purposes it might be better classified as four, since each subwoofer has two drivers in it and the drivers are 4 feet apart, so it really is four point sources.

View attachment 17783

Hi Joshua, you still need to treat them as 2 subs since the 4ft distance just isn't enough to benefit for better room mode manipulation.

You would definitely benefit from:

• positional EQ (move the seats)
• sub placement experimentation
• mDSP or other EQ system

 

[Josuah]

Hi Joshua, you still need to treat them as 2 subs since the 4ft distance just isn't enough to benefit for better room mode manipulation.

You would definitely benefit from:

• positional EQ (move the seats)
• sub placement experimentation
• mDSP or other EQ system

They're actually treated as 1 sub as far as I'm concerned for measurements and EQ (the 4' difference is vertically). I am unable to move the subs or the listening position though. I am using a DCX2496 with shelf filters and PEQ. The reason I believe things are messed up right now is because I recently moved some of the furniture around a bit, added an analog setup which added furniture, and changed some of the electronics. I might have also accidentally only used one of the subwoofers instead of both of them in last night's measurements, and the crossover was engaged which means the speakers kicked in at a crossover of 60Hz and I originally calibrated with only the subs with respect to the frequency response.

 

[Floyd Toole]

Josuah,
I don't have your software (probably should get it) so I don't know what the "default settings" are. Just looking at the waterfall though suggests that the time resolution is not good. Look at the first several curves moving forward from T=0 - they are almost the same. In reality this cannot happen; sound levels start to fall immediately the signal terminates. There appears also to be a fair amount of detail in the frequency response. It seems that the default settings offer more frequency resolution than is needed and not enough time resolution. So, reduce the frequency resolution by making the time windowing shorter and you should see more detail in the time domain. My guess is that your room is better behaved than this waterfall is showing you.

Use high frequency domain resolution for steady-state frequency response measurements. Then when there is a peak, you will see ringing. If there is no peak, there will be little or no evidence of ringing. The evidence of audibility is more reliably seen and evaluated in the frequency response than in the time response. Counter-intuitive but true. See section 9.2.1, p. 157-159 in my book. It has to do with forward temporal masking - psychoacoustics.

 

[Frans]

That is very kind of you and I really appreciate this post. I do sometimes ponder if it's worth doing what we do b/c it often offends manufacturers or consumers of the products/technologies that we discuss.

Rock on, Gene. The higher you get the more people want to see you fall. Please don't give in to the negativity.

I know that's hard and I don't practise what I preach. I ran a very popular gaming website back in the day and I wrote an article for you the other day. So I know all about the stress these things can create!

 

[WaynePflughaupt]

Josuah,
I don't have your software (probably should get it) so I don't know what the "default settings" are.

The software is Room EQ Wizard, which can be downloaded for free at Home Theater Shack. That plus a $100 custom-calibrated USB mic from Cross Spectrum Labs and people can get reliable, accurate measurements, at a price virtually anyone can afford.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Josuah]

Josuah,
I don't have your software (probably should get it) so I don't know what the "default settings" are. Just looking at the waterfall though suggests that the time resolution is not good.

Yeah, I played with the settings a little bit but decided to keep the default settings since I am kind of assuming those are the settings Gene was using too and I thought it would be good to keep his and my graphs comparable.

I'll try to spend time this weekend to do things right, and post the results then. I'm also wondering if it might be better to do the sweep from high to low frequency, instead of low to high. I'll have to try it.

 

[Alex2507]

They look really cool in a studio but there is no WAF in them at all for a living/family room.

Like anything else, it depends on the wife ... and the panel. Pick the right fabric and the right wood? You can make that sh!t look good. Then you gotta pick the right wife. Piece of cake, right?

 

[gene]

Yeah, I played with the settings a little bit but decided to keep the default settings since I am kind of assuming those are the settings Gene was using too and I thought it would be good to keep his and my graphs comparable.

I'll try to spend time this weekend to do things right, and post the results then. I'm also wondering if it might be better to do the sweep from high to low frequency, instead of low to high. I'll have to try it.

I purposely jacked the FR resolution to make my graphs look worse in case any skeptics doubted the results. As Floyd said, the reality is often much better than seen in a waterfall graph.

 

[jinjuku]

Good rant about Youtube...

 

[gene]

This is particularly troublesome:

 

[jinjuku]

Nothing like Drive By DMCA Complaints.

 

[jinjuku]

YT needs to put in a $$ penalty system for Notifiers.

Make it $100 and its refundable if your complaint stands. If it doesn't then you lose you $100.

This allows for $$'s to be spent on real human beings to help sort it out. YT is already acting as the Judge, Jury, and Executioner so they might as well make an effort to do it right.

Oh, and the NEXT time you file a take down notice where your previous one failed? $200, after that $400,800,1600 and so on.

 

[mtrycrafts]

This is particularly troublesome:

View attachment 17792

Now I am wondering if you shouldn't file a copyright infringement against him for posting your stuff.

 

[gene]

YT needs to put in a $$ penalty system for Notifiers.

Make it $100 and its refundable if your complaint stands. If it doesn't then you lose you $100.

This allows for $$'s to be spent on real human beings to help sort it out. YT is already acting as the Judge, Jury, and Executioner so they might as well make an effort to do it right.

Oh, and the NEXT time you file a take down notice where your previous one failed? $200, after that $400,800,1600 and so on.

Agreed. This is a major problem and I plan on doing a YT rant with Hugo about it this week to help bring more awareness. Though, it may also open up the floodgates for haters of our channel to try to file frivolous claims. Hmm.

 

[scattershot]

In era where press releases are pawned off as "reviews", I feel it a civic duty to maintain a level of integrity in journalism that is often lacking today both in politics and the audio press.

That is so true in not just the audio-visual review sphere, but also in journalism nowadays. You are a rare breed Gene, which is why so many of us want to help if we can.

 

[Gys Florian]

Hello,

What's bug me the most about Ethan is his choices about his setup.

What's the point of spending thousands dollars on acoustic treatments where right from the start you're unable to follow basic speaker placement rules?

They are not at ear levels ;-) and even his television seems too high. Seems his eyes are aligned to the bottom of his screen, what a poor setup.

 

[slipperybidness]

Update: 3/18/16:
We are in the process of settling this dispute out of the court system with Ethan Winer of Real Traps. As a show of good faith, we renamed the page title in reference to the real problem at hand, YouTube's Unfair Copyright and Strike Policy. Stay tuned for updates....

All;

I just wanted to let everyone know that Mr. Ethan Winer of Real Traps decided he didn't like the content in one of our videos so he entered a copyright complaint to Youtube to get them to take it down and put a strike against our account. For those that don't know how serious this is, if your channel gets 3 strikes it gets permanently removed from Youtube.

The video in question was called "The Benefits of Using Multiple Subwoofers in Home Theater".

In the video we talked about how using multi-sub + EQ could cut down on your need for using LF bass traps. We showed an image of a room loaded with bass traps from an article we published back in 2005 by Mr. Winer himself.

http://www.audioholics.com/room-acoustics/bass-traps-not-just-for-fisherman

Per our own copyright, any article/video/image posted on Audioholics is property of Audioholics. Ethan knew this when he authored the article nearly 11 years ago.

see: http://www.audioholics.com/groups/admin/reprints

Here is a screen shot of video where we briefly referenced the image:

View attachment 17760

and if you try to access the actual video on Youtube now, it's broken:

View attachment 17759

This video has been online for over 7 months with > 15k views and lots of comments all of which are now subject to being lost. In addition, we now have the following restrictions placed upon our account for 6 months:

1. 15 min video time limit for new published videos
   
2. Unable to upload unpublished/unlisted videos
3. Unable to use Video editing manager

Practice What you Preach?
Incidentally, Mr. Winer has violated copyright of our own website using an image of a layout diagram of my room (without my permission) in his latest article:

http://ethanwiner.com/early_reflections.htm

He has also used at least 4 images from Sound and Vision Magazine to disparage Dr. Floyd Toole's personal home theater. Again, because he disagrees with Dr. Toole's viewpoints on acoustics, specifically the importance of early reflections in small room acoustics for sound reproduction.

See original source: http://www.soundandvision.com/content/advice-audio-insider#2DagBzWBgcwxaIi8.97

If you go to his recent Youtube video on his personal home theater tour:

You will note he potentially violated Wilson Audio Copyrighted image at time index 30 sec and Soundair.com at time index 36 sec.

I'm in the process of contacting all parties that Mr. Winer has potentially committed copyright violations of and contacting Google to issue a DMCA takedown of our personal copyrighted materials. Normally, I wouldn't waste time on such matters, but Mr. Winer is seeking to do damages to our business simply because he doesn't share our viewpoints. As a result, this has forced my hand to take this matter more seriously.

In addition to this copyright stuff, Ethan has posted several threads at AVS Forum to discredit our work and Dr. Floyd Toole on acoustics (specifically early reflections) and multi-sub.

Here is one of several examples: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/91-audio-theory-setup-chat/2204833-early-reflections-not-beneficial-article-ethan-winer.html

It's one thing to have disagreements with people on the subject of audio, but another to actually cause damages through frivolous legal actions simply because you don't like what the other person said.

Keep this in mind when doing business with Mr. Winer and Real Traps.

Well, you showed good faith by renaming the thread. Please tell us that Mr Winer also had an action showing good faith?

At this point, from the info that we have seen, nobody here as much faith in him.

 

[gene]

Well, you showed good faith by renaming the thread. Please tell us that Mr Winer also had an action showing good faith?

At this point, from the info that we have seen, nobody here as much faith in him.

No, now he is asking me to take the article off the homepage before he submits the retractions. I told him this isn't the Kobayashi Maru and he needs to live up to our agreement. This is also why I have a lawyer drafting up a mutual NDA to avoid further "misunderstandings". This whole process has sucked a lot of time, energy and now finances out of me and I just want it to end as smoothly and quickly as possible. Hopefully he comes to his senses so we can both move on with our lives.

 

[slipperybidness]

No, now he is asking me to take the article off the homepage before he submits the retractions. I told him this isn't the Kobayashi Maru and he needs to live up to our agreement. This is also why I have a lawyer drafting up a mutual NDA to avoid further "misunderstandings". This whole process has sucked a lot of time, energy and now finances out of me and I just want it to end as smoothly and quickly as possible. Hopefully he comes to his senses so we can both move on with our lives.

Yeah, that isn't reassuring in the slightest. It looks pretty clear cut that he either must retract his DMCA complaints with YT or he must get a lawyer to keep them rolling.

You have no reason to take him at his word at this point, just setting yourself up for more frustration and problems.