[scarecrowbob]

It's fun stuff to mess with, but one difficulty is that you can't really affect time-domain issues by modifying output frequencies.

That is, there are likely both issues induced by the phase response of the speakers themselves as well as issues introduced by reflections in the room which will cause uneven frequency responses in these measurements. These issues are inherent in speaker systems and acoustic spaces.

If you have a really resonant frequency in a room, notching that frequency can help, but then you're compromising that signal; a more typical solution is to address reflectivity in the space.

And I hate to be a snob about mics, but yee, I do not like that specific mic-- of the many dozens of mics I have used it's memorably bad. And you don't need an expensive mic to do these measurements; there are a lot of ~$60 omni-directional measurement mics that work fine, as their low/mid frequency response is good enough for these tasks.

So all in all: hooray for folks experimenting... once you start playing with frequency modification, start investigating phase response and modal reflections in rooms, as they are super interesting.

Like, if you want to hear something really neat, put on a recording of a 120hz sine in a very reflective room, and you can walk around and hear the nulls and additions. And then you can find different frequencies and start to come to terms with the complexity there. Quite a fun exercise.

[bob1029]

> It's fun stuff to mess with, but one difficulty is that you can't really affect time-domain issues by modifying output frequencies.

PEQ can take you a surprising distance. Many perceivable issues can be substantially reduced by attenuating signal at problematic resonant frequencies. At no point ever (IMO) should PEQ be used to boost the level of any frequency to make it more audible.

FIR filters are where you can fix time-domain issues. The only problem is that, depending on the amount of filtering required, you may add quite a bit of latency to the signal. IIR filters (e.g. for your crossovers and such) are typically much lower latency approach. IIRC FIR filtering will also allow for you to correct for phase issues.

At the end of the day, the room and its treatments are the most important part of the equation. The number of LFE radiators and their positions are probably #2. Everything else you can easily fix in software.

[BizarroLand]

I feel like that is why the article writer said it got them 80% of the way.

Pareto's principle indicates that the biggest 20% of work will provide 80% of the expected results, whereas to get the last 20% of expected results will require 80% of the work.

Doing a basic room EQ with the equipment you have on hand would mean that the spot you EQ'ed from would have a listening experience calibrated to the quality of the microphone at that location (but with a margin for error since they were not using any heuristic other than "make line as flat as possible in a single pass")

That's ~20% of the work in making a pristine audio environment but with close to 80% of the end results. Room correction, reverb baffling, bass traps, better speakers, fancier receivers with complex auto balancing algorithms all could definitely improve the end result but will take far more time and effort (and money) to achieve any noticeable improvement.

[m463]

> And I hate to be a snob about mics

I wonder if you just need a mic with a calibration file?

this one is less than $25:

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00ADR2B84

and you can use the serial number to download a specific calibration file

[scarecrowbob]

I have a Dayton Audio EMM-6 that I own and had in mind. It's not Earthworks, but it's good nuff and I like an XLR out for my purposes.

[atoav]

In the end a mic is just a converter of air movement to electricity fluctuations. The hard part in measurement mics is that they don't show any characteristic that deviates from the expectation both in the time and frequency domain.

Calibration files can help you in the frequency domain (provided that mic is stable over it's lifetime), but the time domain is a different beast as in: if we play a square click how well can the mic reproduce the square and/or what kind of artifacts are added by it.

In the end the question is, how important calibration is for your purpose. If you are a hobbyist, I would even say, you don't really need it more than once. If you mix/master productions that have high budgets maybe spending a little bit more on making sure everything works makes more sense.

If you are the hobbyist, maybe renting is a good option?

[scarecrowbob]

Yeah, for a one-off look at the room, then all this stuff is all overkill, IMO.

However, it's still fun to geek around with acoustics.

I mix stuff that other people listen to, and I operate sound systems in a variety of locations. My interest in this is mostly professional, though I think that it's easy to get a long way in that business without a lot of specific exploration, so really it boils down to being a fun and kind of nerdy hobby.

To your point about mics, Rational Acoustics, maker of the popular Smaart analysis program, have advised users that high-end mics might not be the most important element in a measuring system.

This is because most of the useful elements of acoustic treatment happen at lower frequencies, where the cheapo omni capsules work just fine, and these elements are not generally creating lower-frequency artifacts.

[m463]

Can't you determine the time domain dynamically?