It's suggested to use REW and UMIK at 75 db for room and speaker measurements. It's rather loud for my apartment. Can I test it at a lower volume, 12db down or lower?
Also for the auto tune feature in REW, if I never listen at 75db should I be EQ'ing for 75-80 db? Or should it be more in line with my listening levels?
Thanks,
Shawn
Also for the auto tune feature in REW, if I never listen at 75db should I be EQ'ing for 75-80 db? Or should it be more in line with my listening levels?
Thanks,
Shawn
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Frequency Weightings - A-Weighted, C-Weighted or Z-Weighted
For room measurements, using C or even Z weighting might be closer to what you're after. A weighting dampens quite a bit of the sound.
You most likely get few more decibels "measured" output using C or Z, and it's not based on some "average persons hearing". I'd expect everyone to be able to perceive an almost 30db difference at 63hz, so using A weighting for loudspeaker measurements is a bit pointless IMO.
But anyway, I expect there is no problem measuring at 65db as long as the noise floor is good enough. The benefit of measuring at higher db is that you will get a result less influenced by other sound sources, this is very nice if you're looking for specific behaviour like points of resonance, or just varying degrees of harmonic distortion. I'm sure more experienced forum participants will be able to elaborate further.
For room measurements, using C or even Z weighting might be closer to what you're after. A weighting dampens quite a bit of the sound.
You most likely get few more decibels "measured" output using C or Z, and it's not based on some "average persons hearing". I'd expect everyone to be able to perceive an almost 30db difference at 63hz, so using A weighting for loudspeaker measurements is a bit pointless IMO.
But anyway, I expect there is no problem measuring at 65db as long as the noise floor is good enough. The benefit of measuring at higher db is that you will get a result less influenced by other sound sources, this is very nice if you're looking for specific behaviour like points of resonance, or just varying degrees of harmonic distortion. I'm sure more experienced forum participants will be able to elaborate further.
Yes, no problem to do that.
The measurement level doesn't affect the shape of the response unless it is very low, when noise becomes a factor, or very high, when compression and distortion affect things. The target level for EQ should be around about the middle of the measurement level.
Excellent. Thank you both very much for that information. I'll also look into and learn some more about different weighting.