Ring out a wedge in the Ring-Out Simulator

The Ring-Out Simulator is the live-sound game. Each round sets up a stage: a vocal mic, a wedge at some distance and angle, a number of open mics and a room. Then it pushes the gain until the loop from the wedge back into the mic starts to feed back. A near-pure tone rises over the music and keeps rising on its own. Your job is the one you do at every soundcheck: hear the pitch, find it on the EQ and cut just enough there to stop it.

How the feedback works

• The simulator works out the loop gain at every frequency. It takes in the mic's polar pattern (omni, cardioid or supercardioid) and its angle to the wedge, the distance (6 dB hotter for every halving), the number of open mics (3 dB hotter for every doubling), the mic and wedge response and the room.
• Feedback starts at the frequency where the loop gain first reaches 0 dB with the round trip in phase. That is seldom a graphic-EQ centre. It often sits between two bands.
• Most rings sit between 200 Hz and 5 kHz, like a real vocal mic in front of a wedge.
• The tone runs through your EQ, so a cut in the right place is heard at once. When your cut pulls the loop gain there below 0 dB, the ring dies away: quickly after a clear cut, slowly if you are only just under.
• The line under the round counter describes the stage, for example "Cardioid mic · wedge 1.2 m at 180° · 2 open mics · theatre". A hotter setup (omni, wedge close, more open mics) makes the ring build faster and need a deeper cut.

Unlocking it

The simulator sits under Games on the dashboard and unlocks at 150 correct answers across the training modules. Until then its card shows how many you still need.

Before you start

• Set a moderate volume. The music plays at a moderate level. The feedback tone builds over a few seconds and is capped well below full scale (two tones share the same cap).
• It works on headphones or speakers. On a phone speaker the lowest rings are hard to hear, so headphones help.

Playing a round

1. Open Ring-Out Simulator from the dashboard, read the start card and press Start. The music starts.
2. Listen. A tone creeps up over the music. Find its pitch.
3. Cut there. On the graphic EQ, pull down the band nearest that pitch. If the ring sits between two bands, one band takes only about half of its cut there. Cut both neighbours, or cut the nearer one deeper.
4. The round is won when the ring has died away. It is lost if the tone howls at full level for 3 seconds, or when time runs out.
5. After each round you see where it rang (for example "It rang at 1.18 kHz, between the 1k and 1.25k bands."), how much you cut there, how much it needed and a short note on your technique. Press Next round when you are ready. Each round starts with a flat EQ.

There are 10 rounds. The summary shows your total, how many feedbacks you killed, your average cut at the ring and how many were clean ring-outs.

The three levels

The level follows the difficulty you picked on the dashboard.

A round with two tones gets 6 seconds more. The screen never shows the answer during a round. The level meter shows only how loud the ringing is, not where.

Notch filter mode

At Intermediate and Advanced the start card lets you choose a notch filter instead of the graphic EQ. You get two notches, each with a frequency (100 Hz–10 kHz), a depth (down to −15 dB) and a width (Q) from 1 to 16. Tap the band strip to move the active notch to that band, then fine-tune with ◀ ▶ (a 24th of an octave per step) or the slider. A Q of about 6–10 takes the ring and leaves the voice. Leave the notch you don't need at 0 dB.

On a phone

Under 600 px wide, the 31 faders become a grid of 31 band buttons in four rows, from low to high. Tap a band to pick it, then cut with −1 dB / +1 dB or the slider. ◀ ▶ step to the next band down or up. Notch mode works the same way at every width.

Scoring

Each round is scored out of 100:

• 40 for killing it.
• Up to 30 for speed: the share of the round's time you had left.
• Up to 15 for depth: full marks while your cut at the ring is no more than 4.5 dB past what it needed. Each dB beyond that costs 3.
• Up to 15 for precision. On the graphic EQ only the one or two bands either side of the ring should move: every other band cut by 1 dB or more costs 6, and this can take away more than 15. With notches, a Q below 4 costs points, and a notch cut away from the ring costs 6.
• −15 if any band or notch sits at −12 dB or deeper. That is "cut until it stops" gone too far.

A kill scores at least 10 points. A lost round scores 0. Every kill counts as a correct answer toward unlocks, and the points feed the Ring-Out mastery bar.

Leaving mid-game

The ← back arrow, opening anything else, or switching to another tab or app stops the sound at once. The round you left does not count. After a tab switch a Paused card offers Resume, and that round starts again on a fresh stage.

Tips

• Listen for the pitch first. Hum it back, then look for it on the EQ.
• Cut until it stops, then stop cutting: 3–6 dB is typical.
• When the ring sits between two bands, taking both down a little costs the voice less than pulling one band to the floor.
• A hot stage (omni mic, wedge close, many open mics) needs more cut. On a real stage, moving the wedge or the mic may be the better fix.