[Hobbsmeerkat]

I just recently picked up a MM-6 calibrated measurement microphone from Dayton audio, and I want to learn how to test and measure my speakers frequency response, (or individual drivers) and how to best use them for future DIY projects.

What are the best practices, and common pitfalls when starting out?
And are there any recommendations for places to find info for both beginners, and resources for more in-depth info once I start getting my bearings?

Thanks!

[Tyson]

Put your mic at 1m from the speaker, at tweeter level. 

Put your speaker in the middle of your room and elevate it so it's exactly midway between your floor and ceiling.

For measuring make sure you use gated measurements.  It will let you get the true response of the speaker without the room reflections affecting what you see.  This will likely cut off the response at around 200hz so you won't see what the bass is doing.

To measure bass, go outside & put the speaker on a tall ladder & measure there.  Or in an anechoic chamber if there's one nearby.

Lastly, don't just measure on axis (directly in front of the speaker).  Make sure to measure off axis as well.  5, 10, 15, 20 degrees should all get individual measurements.  Measuring the vertical response is also useful.

[Hobbsmeerkat]

Thanks Tyson! Will REW work fine software-wise, or are there better options that will work better?

[simoon]

Put your mic at 1m from the speaker, at tweeter level. 

Put your speaker in the middle of your room and elevate it so it's exactly midway between your floor and ceiling.

For measuring make sure you use gated measurements.  It will let you get the true response of the speaker without the room reflections affecting what you see.  This will likely cut off the response at around 200hz so you won't see what the bass is doing.

To measure bass, go outside & put the speaker on a tall ladder & measure there.  Or in an anechoic chamber if there's one nearby.

Lastly, don't just measure on axis (directly in front of the speaker).  Make sure to measure off axis as well.  5, 10, 15, 20 degrees should all get individual measurements.  Measuring the vertical response is also useful.

This was going to be almost my exact recommendation.

Gated measurements are the best for DIY'rs.

Here's a great video from speaker design guru, Danny Richie on speaker measurements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W1W_K2nKx4

[Few]

Thanks Tyson! Will REW work fine software-wise, or are there better options that will work better?

Perhaps this is too late to be useful but I'll respond just in case. REW is a fine choice--certainly worth every penny it costs! It's widely used so there are lots of folks to help out. If you're up for some reading, buy Joseph D'Appolito's book on measuring loudspeakers. For a quick taste, you can read this article he wrote on the subject: https://audioxpress.com/article/testing-loudspeakers-which-measurements-matter-part-1.

A few other thoughts:

• Consider close-mic measurements for a convenient way to make low frequency measurements of the speakers. Just realize that the room will strongly impact your perception of bass so in the end you really have to think of the speaker and room as a system. Close-mic measurements, by design, exclude the room's contribution.
  
• Move the mic a few inches horizontally or vertically before getting hung up on very sharp peaks or dips in response. Interference effects can be extremely position-sensitive, and look worse than they sound.
  
• Be patient when learning to correlate visual representations with perceived sound. Some things that look terrible on a graph are less intrusive than you might think, and vice versa. For example, broad but low amplitude humps or valleys in the magnitude response look benign but will probably bother you more than very narrow dips that look horrible. Time domain graphs are even trickier in this respect. Some folks are fine with speakers whose impulse or step responses look like a dog's lunch because of phase anomalies.
• Perfecting the response on-axis, and ignoring the off-axis response that affects dramatically how the sound is perceived (unless you're listening in the near field), is everyone's first inclination.  Ultimately, that approach leads to frustration.

Few