Assessing room response


I see many folks talking about the radio shack SPL meter. I am a beginner and would like to try and see how my room is responding, what is the best way to start?
solecky

Showing 2 responses by grannyring

I just did this over the last week. Go to the Rives website as mentioned above and get the test CD. Use tracks 32-63 with your Radio Shack sound meter

The CD has 20hz tones up to 20,000 I think. I have a nice sub and many room panals so I wanted to be sure all was right.

I plotted the room's response curve on Rives graph paper downloaded from their site. I used the test CD to better blend my sub, change the placement of some sound panals, move furniture and finally tweek my speaker placement.

After about 5 hours of work (fun) I greatly improved my room's response to very near a flat curve. Bass is flat from 20 -100 hz. I only have three small peaks of less than 3-5 db. throughout the spectrum.

Sound improvement was noticable and well worth the effort.
I did it at 80db also. Yes, the before and after graph difference is a wonderful thing to behold.