Realtime Analyzer

[mattkw80]

On the advice of a local studio owner I know, I bought an Alto RSA 27 Realtime Analyzer.

He bascially told me that he uses this when he is not near speakers or monitors he is familiar with. He suggested I buy one, to learn about EQ and to Visually see what is going on in my mix.

I've got it hooked up off the master buss of my Studio-In-A-Box VS-2000 system.

I turn on some music, and watch the LED's dance all over....

1. What am I watching for ? (He said to make nice smooth hills with the lights)


2. Does anybody else every use these in their studio's?


3. I also bought the companion mic which is supposed to be ultra flat, and I am supposed to use the pink noise generator and mic to 'check my room'. Any idea how I do this ?

 

[mshilarious]

I turn on some music, and watch the LED's dance all over....

1. What am I watching for ? (He said to make nice smooth hills with the lights)

That's not the greatest advice I've ever heard. I use RTAs to confirm suspicions, like if I hear a problem frequency, an RTA can spot the center a little faster than I can. That goes away with practice, so consider the RTA a learning tool more than a mixing tool. A mix could have an RTA that looked exactly like pink noise and still sound like crap.

3. I also bought the companion mic which is supposed to be ultra flat, and I am supposed to use the pink noise generator and mic to 'check my room'. Any idea how I do this ?

That's a good use for an RTA. Play pink noise through your monitors, and record at your mix position (or recording position). Ideally, the recorded signal looks like the pink noise (crank the RTA up to its highest resolution). Of course it won't, but you'll know where your monitors and room fall short. Do NOT EQ your monitors to compensate; treat the room.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

On the advice of a local studio owner I know, I bought an Alto RSA 27 Realtime Analyzer.

*Sigh* If one ever needed smoking gun evidence that it takes only a credit card and not necessarily knowledge or wisdom to be a "studio owner", this has to be it. I'm sorry,matt, I don't want to be mean, but I'm not sure exactly where to start, there are so many things faulty with that advice, IMHO.

First let's start with a 1/3rd octave, 7-segment LED display realtime analyzer. 7-segments. Also a rated frequency response of 40-16kHz. Anemic math on all counts.

Second - and I know there's going to be a handful of others who will vehemently disagree with me on this one - even if you had a better RTA, you can learn EQ and frequencies *much* faster and more intuitively by focusing on your hearing for an hour than by distracting your ears by using your eyes for a season.

It's easy. Just close your door, sit down with some of your favorite music as well as some that you're not so familiar with. Grab the nearest 1/3rd graphic EQ and start playing with the controls one band at a time and pay attention to exactly how that band on the EQ affects what you're listening to. I absolutely guarantee you that you do that for an hour or two, or maybe for a half hour a night for a week, paying attention and actually listening to the character of the sound, and by the end of that week you have the frequencies and their real world sounds so memorized and internalized that you'll wonder why you ever needed an RTA to begin with. Just try doing that with your eyes.

And not long after you get like that, with just a bit more practice, you'll be able to hear what a given monitor sounds like; you be able to recognize "coloration" even if the speaker is playing relatively unfamilar content.

Third - While that RTA might seem servicable finding mid-bass modes in your room and for doing some coarse tuning of your room acoustics, do not expect it to be super accurate. RTAs with calibrated, matching microphones typically cost literally ten to twenty times as much as that Alto. Also note that the Alto has a rated range of 40Hz-16kHz. You can't even check bass response in your room below 40Hz, and the accuracy below 60 Hz is going to be questionable at best. And for work on your mixes, you will be unable to analyze things like LF buildup or HF distortion (which you should be using your ears for anyway)

I have to pull a Simon Cowell on this one .

G.

 

[lpdeluxe]

I have an RTA, and it serves two purposes: it provides a display where I can tell if my sonic treatment is actually dealing with the problems in my room, and it has bouncing lights that fascinate the musicians.

 

[xstatic]

I agree with Glen on a lot of points. I have always wondered why people use the cheap RTA's. RTA's can be a very valuable tool, but when you use them you are relying on them being extremely accurate since often times you are dealing with subtle and detailed issues. What I have always found amusing is how someone could use an RTA with a cheap mic and cheap converters and cheap analog electronics. If the input uses cheap electronics, or if the converters that you are using to feed it are cheap etc.... they may be coloring your sound to a fairly considerable degree. This would mean that even if your RTA was accurate, it would be giving you data based on a sometimes considerabaly different signal (at least for many RTA purposes). As a result, you will make adjustments based on that data, and not on what is really happening.

However, there still can be good uses for RTA's, even if they are not really up to the task of some of the more detailed purposes. I personally have a third monitor in my DAW setup that is dedicated to running the RME Totalyser that comes with all RME cards. It has an RTA, a phase meter, level meters for both peak and RMS levels, and a stereo scope. I don't really rely on it, but it can be very helpful to me. At my studio I often have to do very long sessions. When doing these sessions both your brain and your ears can get fairly fatigued after a while. It is nice to be able to shoot a quick look over at the RTA and see where my sub 80hz and 12k and up sits in the mix. Typical small and even midsized monitors can have a tough time with the sub 80hz stuff, and your ears can tire to the 12k and up stuff very easily. Especially on a long session. Its also nice to be able to quickly solo a couple of tracks and visually look at their phase relationship, or to do a quick test on sources with 2 mics. Its also nice for me to be able to see the stereo image. I don't rely on the visual information to make my decisions, but it can be extremely helpful in making them. The bottom line is that the RTA is a tool that I use, but only to assist my ears in what they tell me. Your purchase may not be a waste of time or money (I would assume being an ALTO that it was very cheap, my Klark Teknik analyser ran about $2000 as a point of reference). Your RTA though will most likely not be able to be used to any great extent for a lot of what you may have been told it was good for. The real lesson here in my opinion is that you may want to be cautious of any advice given to you by this person again

 

[timboZ]

Grab the nearest 1/3rd graphic EQ and start playing with the controls one band at a time and pay attention to exactly how that band on the EQ affects what you're listening to.

I am going to try to find the time over the weekend to do this.
I don't want to do it with plugin EQ's so my dilemma is what EQ will be the best for this.

I have 2 1/3 band EQ's. A DOD SR231QXLR and an ALESIS M-EQ 230.
Which one do you think will be the best for this training exercise.
I also have a Behrin....TUBE ULTRA-Q T1951 4 band parametric EQ.

Thanks