Who calibrates their monitors?

[Monkey Allen]

I've had M-Audio BX5's for over 2 years, and I like them...but just the other day I was reading a thread in the Presonus forum about calibrating your monitors.

I have a Firebox soundcard and the advice is to crank its MAIN LEVEL to 5 o'clock. This is fully cranked and = unity/ 0db apparently.

Then they say to play something in your sequencer and slowly turn up the volume controls on your monitor until the perceived volume is at its peak for the room/ your listening environment.

Once you reach that maximum/ threshold point where any further upping of the monitor volume controls would make the sound unbearable, you stop. The advice is to then use the MAIN LEVEL on the Firebox to control the overall volume.

I never knew this before. I used to have the main level at about 9 or 10 o'clock and the monitors at about 12 o'clock.

With this calibration method that I just cottoned onto, my monitors only go to 7 o'clock (basically one notch up from zero) before the volume is just too damn loud for the room. It's fcking loud as is at 7 o'clock.

I haven't noticed much discussion on this board about this topic...so tell me what you know....

thanks

 

[mixsit]

Sounds like they are just saying the sound card is at optimum there and lowering the amp gain from that point means less chance of 'oops blown speakers, and amp noise reduced to the minimum. I suppose that assumes the two are at the same nominal levels (-10/+4 whatever).
One trick is to kind of have a handle on where 80-85db sound pressure is in your room -but that's more of a mix volume issue rather than a gain thing.

 

[Monkey Allen]

Here's some useful stuff regarding this topic:

This is a how to calibrate your monitors site, including pink noise samples for you to play as you get levels right:

http://abluesky.com/asp/catalogue/catalogue.asp?linkid=143

This is some theory on the matter:

http://www.digido.com/bob-katz/level-practices-part-1.html

http://www.digido.com/bob-katz/level-practices-part-2-includes-the-k-system.html