And who knew THIS was possible:

TrueRTA Quick Sweep WITH Sound Card Calibration

yes, no doubt - but you probably need to use it in a lot of different locations, right? I probably will only use this in my home and MAYBE another guy's house. hardly worth $100 for 2 uses!

for YOUR purpose it would be well worth the money, IMO, but not mine (and very likely not for MOST people reading this thread!)

Beagle,
You are correct, but bare in mind that I rarely suggest someone buy something.

I am frequently vocal about what I'd avoid buying. Its also sometimes obvious that I personally budget for expensive gear... but I'm not often seen recommending that others buy something.

When I selected TrueRTA for my needs I went to the trouble of spending 3 days demoing everything I cold find. True RTA has several price points and you can upgrade when you wish. I personally found it to be an honest value.

The $99 version seemed to work as well as the fancy gui $4,000 RTAs I looked into and it certainly outperforms a hardware RTA at many many times the cost.

I heartily recommend that one experience at least the free download version so as to provide an opportunity to see how it works... especially the actual calibration routines that provide for better consistency in your measurements.

best regards,
mike

Ok - I've finished 1/2 of my bass traps, so I'm not quite ready to install everything and run the "AFTER" test. but here's my BEFORE test:



so if I'm reading it correctly, it looks like I need some absorption between 100Hz and 500Hz, but mostly at about 110Hz to 130Hz.

Increasing the block size yields this:



which shows higher activity at 50Hz and below.

but if I increase the SPEED, regardless of the block size, I see a lot of "fluttering" activity below 500Hz - mainly in the 100Hz and below area and most of the fluttering is 3dB-6dB in variation.

Ok - now here's the real question. I said I haven't finished building ALL of the traps I plan to put in my room, but I have finished FOUR of them. they are 2'x4'x6" with 2" 703 covered in burlap. I see a difference in the test before and after putting these 4 traps in, but it seems to have INCREASED in areas.

My room is strange - it's actually a formal dining room. I have one large 6' wide opening at the back of the room, the width is approximately 10' and the length is approximately 14' and it's 8' tall (with a vaulted ceiling and a skylight).

I have 3 of them in front of me (behind the speakers) and one in the rear of the room. I know it is probably more optimal to put more in the rear of the room, but it's also more difficult because of the large opening. the other 3 units will be going in the rear of the room. I didn't expect dramatic improvement with only these 4 units and the way they're positioned, but I did expect SOME.

with the settings back to the original, here's the test with the 4 units in the room:



and here's the original before the 4 traps:



it's actually INCREASED between 200-300Hz and there's now a spike at the 3kHz. what have I done wrong?

You haven't moved the traps around enough... just keep moving them and observing.

Your results are predictable... by settling the nulls the "apparent" bass has become more defined and measurable.

And PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE start running the SPAN at a higher res so you can actually see what's going on down in the lows.

best,
mike

ORIGINAL: bitflipper

Beagle's right, Mark. Use the condenser. It'll have a much flatter response than the 57 and although it's also cardioid it's pattern is not as narrow as the 57. Condensers also tend to have smoother off-axis response than dynamics, which is important in this scenario.

Thanks!

ORIGINAL: mike_mccue

You haven't moved the traps around enough... just keep moving them and observing.

Your results are predictable... by settling the nulls the "apparent" bass has become more defined and measurable.

And PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE start running the SPAN at a higher res so you can actually see what's going on down in the lows.

best,
mike

Oh - ok. I'll move them around and keep running tests (after I've finished the other traps, actually). I've set the block size to maximum, now and left it there.

Dave King - I did change it, but I didn't think that mattered according to what bit said earlier.


I'll post some more when I find a good fit of moving them around, but I think if that's the case I'll wait until I get them all done since moving 4 around will be a different scenerio than moving 7 around.

Ok, here is my analysis after room treatment. How does it look? I used 4" of Owen's 705 for corner bass traps and 2" 703 on the walls for reflections.

Yeh, if you can get it down to about a 6db variance, you're doing as well as most professionally-treated rooms.

My first impressions on using the room now, I get bass in the listening position. I never had bass before, I would have to sit against the back wall to hear any. I also hear highs that I never heard. I wonder what effect the room rolling off over 10k will have on me though.

When I installed my room treatment, I didn't notice much difference in the low freqs specifically, but I did notice that everything sounded much more focused.

ORIGINAL: bitflipper

I wonder what effect the room rolling off over 10k will have on me though.

That's the downside of all that absorption. Two things you have to be careful of after you've added a lot of absorption: overcompensating the high frequencies over 10KHz, and using too much reverb in your mixes.

Yeah, the room is essentially dead now. I'll have to really watch the reverb.

No idea. Do you have "Peak Hold" set to "Infinite"?

You could do a screen capture.  Alt+Prc Scr and paste into image editor.