Monitors, room, SPL meter

  • Thread starter Thread starter CoolCat
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CoolCat

CoolCat

Well-known member
Test:
RP8 and Paradigm 3se and RAM 6.5" Studio Ref. labeled.
ACTIVE vs HIFI vs PASSIVE.

Tone CD & Radio Shack SPL meter.
Room: Wall behind speakers 3 mid traps and both corners Basstrap (703type).
Speakers all ~1.5ft away from wall.
Rest of room pretty poor, acoustically.
All in all the 3 speakers were matched in all aspects that were possible to me.

RadioCrap meter un-trustable?....some say yes, no freq response.
but it sure captured it when i turned the treble knob.
(so seems to capture freq ok with my test in my room).
Did notice in the Low, 20hz to no sound level the meter picks up House/Noise.

Room?:
Its like changing mic's and not hearing a change...until you buy a pre-amp. then you can tell the difference between the mics.
So Speakers=Mics and Room=PreAmp...is my guess analogy.

personal taste & choices:
Paradigms sound nice and are paid for. Hi-End HiFi.
Ram's are little hard to listen to but aren't FLAT monitors supposed to sound
mid-edgy because the mids' haven't been scooped out?
RAMS have a Studio Ref label and are paid for.
***Both passives thru a new/1996 TASSCAM PA150Watt Studio Amp/ Adcom Pre.

KRK RP8's new-$..but a great deal on End of month Demo's at $175ea.($350pair). Hard to return and sound very nice too, but are they needed?
If all is equal and I can sell my old stuff the KRK's could be justified.

Maybe it's time to move back to the sound and wall forum and give the speakers a rest...with a poor room I could have Genelecs and maybe no sound change???
 

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COOLCAT said:
Test:
RadioCrap meter un-trustable?....some say yes, no freq response.
but it sure captured it when i turned the treble knob.
(so seems to capture freq ok with my test in my room).

Maybe it's time to move back to the sound and wall forum and give the speakers a rest...with a poor room I could have Genelecs and maybe no sound change???
Click to expand...
As far as the RatShack SPL meter, the complaint against this unit is that it doesn't measure all frequencies equally, although it certainly captures them just fine. This means that you would be equalizing the room to the curve of the meter, not truly to "flat."

A workaround solution to this would be to get the Rives Audio Test CD ($19.99 at MusicDirect), which has two series of test tones, one of which has been "compensated" to make up for the inaccuracies of that particular meter.

FWIW, it sounds like you've part of your room (your monitor area, I assume) close to being flat, although maybe the rest of the room still needs work. So, you should be able to do meaningful comparisons of monitors and such.

Lots of luck, man. I'm working on trying to improve the acoustics of my recording room, too, and it's a real pain in the ass. Lots of stuff to study and lots of work to make it sound good.

Brad
 
Cool page, Stephen! I've never seen the corrections spelled out in black and white like that. (I'll have to give you a "rep point" for that post, man.)

Looking at those numbers makes me think, "Jesus, this thing really IS crappy."
:p :D

Well, as long as I remember to use the right test tones with it, I guess everything will be O.K.

Brad
 
Another very interesting web page. Thanks again, man! :)

Who knows, I might even try that mod. I've been trying to fearlessly jump into doing some of my own basic mods to electronic gear that I own.

Brad
 
SPL meters

Stephen C said:
Cool , here's a link to a correction page for the Radio Shack SPL Meter
http://members.tripod.com/~terryctheater/shivaphotoalbum/page11.html
Click to expand...

that is a great input. does this apply to the Digital Meter too?
thats what i used.

+/- 1 or 2 is nominal, the low freq looks worse. but on my data
the <10%? unless I'm missing something. .5 off 80? isn't much is it.

I'm going to make another TONE CD with more freq's, that will take
out some of the choppy-graph, higher resolution.
 
CC,

> I'm going to make another TONE CD with more freq's, that will take out some of the choppy-graph, higher resolution. <

For low frequencies you need to measure at 1 Hz intervals. Otherwise you'll never see the true extent of the peaks and nulls. Here's a page on my company's site that has a set of LF tones you can download:

http://www.realtraps.com/test-cd.htm

Also read the text because it explains the pros and cons of testing a room with tones, and why those correction charts for the RS meter are not that useful.

--Ethan
 
rooms and monitors

Thanks Ethan.
I was just reading an article in the June 1995 EM magazine...
i noticed the author was you!! thought the name looked familiar.
 
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