[morganc]

Hey guys,
    I have a very live room with hardwood floors, lots of windows and reflective surfaces and I'm ok with not having perfection, but I have a great rig, have optimized equipment and now realize the weak link is my room.  Here's my question:  what's the best way to measure my room that is the easiest, cheapest, and doesn't require an EE degree ?  And if any of you have a mic to sale or that you could own me I'd be grateful.  Storage space is limited and I'm so over buying items that I only need to use for a minute.  Also happy to pay for a mic rental from one of you as well.
    And after I measure the room, how do I determine what type of treatments are needed? I'm running OB with the Spatial X-5's and soon will be adding in a GR Research Dual Servo Sub as my room opens into the downstairs and needs a bit more bass reinforcement.
   Thanks,
Morgan

[FullRangeMan]

Test equips are expensive, there are general rules, the final test device are your ears.

[Audiosaurusrex]

Hey guys,
    I have a very live room with hardwood floors, lots of windows and reflective surfaces and I'm ok with not having perfection, but I have a great rig, have optimized equipment and now realize the weak link is my room.  Here's my question:  what's the best way to measure my room that is the easiest, cheapest, and doesn't require an EE degree ?  And if any of you have a mic to sale or that you could own me I'd be grateful.  Storage space is limited and I'm so over buying items that I only need to use for a minute.  Also happy to pay for a mic rental from one of you as well.
    And after I measure the room, how do I determine what type of treatments are needed? I'm running OB with the Spatial X-5's and soon will be adding in a GR Research Dual Servo Sub as my room opens into the downstairs and needs a bit more bass reinforcement.
   Thanks,
Morgan

Hi Morgan
I have the M3’s and did extensive absorption and diffusion to get the room sounding good. 8-  4” 24x36 and 4- 2” diffusion panels. Along with some curtains and furniture really made a huge difference. I can actually hear the difference in the room. Just so much less live sounding and the Spatial’s needed it. I also have hardwood floors and went with the Isoacoustic Gaia’s as footers. Also what helped for diffusion on the windows was wooden shutters which were already there. I really think you can do this without actually measuring the room.
Your ears will tell you.

[VinceT]

Great question, following

[dB Cooper]

Pictures would be helpful in developing a plan of attack. As member JLM likes to say, the elephant usually IS the room.  There are professionals that will do it but they are expensive and usually their advice involves lots of expensive solutions. There are ways to make big differences that don't involve huge cash outlays- acoustic wallpaper. rugs, and more.

[richidoo]

Dayton OmniMic is very useful and a great value at $300.  Comes with a good USB mic and software, it is very easy to use. It uses special signal buried in the pre-recorded test signals so that wire connection between test computer and stereo system is not used. You just play the test tracks from your music library and the software recognizes the timing and can deduce any temporal distortion. Other systems like REW generate live test signal on the test computer which must be wired to stereo and signal flow debugged. It's not hard but it's an additional layer of complexity. On some older brands of software this closed loop method was extremely difficult to get working. The developer of OmniMic is Bill Waslo, an accomplished audio engineer.

[WGH]

I have run tests using REW, made nice looking graphs but have no idea what to do with the info. Bass traps? Diffusion? Acoustic panels? Skyline diffuser?

Trial and error solutions will work or you can talk to professionals who have experience and done this before. GIK Acoustics has free advise and a calculator.
Including the measurements from the Dayton Audio OmniMic V2 would result in an amazing (albeit expensive) sounding room.

https://www.gikacoustics.com/

[morganc]

I assumed that Gik uses or needs measuremeants to make their recommendations.  I'll just give them a call then. 

[Lkdog]

Here is something that is worth trying and reasonbaly inexpensive.
The RIVES Audio TEST CD and a Radio Shack SPL meter. The sound meter is like 25$ on Ebay.
https://www.musicdirect.com/equipment/rives-audio-test-cd-2-requires-spl-meter

I used this before to get some info on my room issues before.

[JLM]

Yes the room is the most neglected "component" in most audio systems and unfortunately many don't fully appreciate the fact.  Congratulations for "getting it".  Most way over invest in gear for the given room to the point of being a sad joke.  For them headphones probably make more sense, even with their limitations. 

Dirac is an even easier room measurement/correction software/microphone package than REW which is free.  If running everything through your computer it's easy to install/use.  It provides a graph that you can make adjustments to.  Otherwise you need to add hardware, something like miniDSP.  But any corrections can make a mess.  Recommend reading Floyd Toole's "Sound Reproduction" 3rd edition as the consummate primer for audiophiles to learn how loudspeaker/subwoofers behave in-room.  Toole invented spinorama anechoic chamber loudspeaker measuring, which is the recognized best way to predict performance.  He also lead the development of double blind comparative listening using panels of trained listeners to confirm performance.  Frankly any other assessments are highly biased and way under informed.   

So after you've got a good pair of loudspeakers the next step is to find the "right" room, something not small and of a decent shape (not square).  Again read Toole.  The room should be well insulated to reduce sound transmission (to reduce background noise in and objectionable sound out).  Then Toole would point your towards use of multiple subwoofers, one per corner or midway along each wall to even out inherent in-room bass peaks/dips (which can easily be +/- 20 dB!).  In this method full range loudspeakers are a disadvantage, which goes along with common knowledge that bass and mid/treble frequencies have different ideal room locations from which to generate signals from.  Too bad that loudspeaker designers don't know more about room acoustics.

His next recommended step might involve the use of some bass traps (absorbers) if needed.  GIK (here at Audio Circle) provides some of most effective based on Owens Corning 703 high density fiberglass.  Always shop for absorbing materials by the test data, never by intuition or appearances.  Finally, and only as icing on the cake, apply room correction as a tweak not to transform the sound.  I've gone through all this ("ideal" room design, multiple subwoofers, treatments, correction) and found that excessive correction makes the sound worse. 

Many well respected authorities recommend no correction/treatment above the transition frequency where sound propagation changes from bass waves into mid/treble rays (roughly 300 Hz in most rooms) as it can change the character of your chosen loudspeakers.  In my case I correct up to 210 Hz.

By the way, free to download smartphone sound pressure level apps are available to test your room/ear, but calibrated microphones are best.  GIK can give generic advice without acoustic room measurements.

[ric]

I don't know, my guess is to talk to the source--Clayton (IF you can). If anyone can make educated comments he can. Clap your hands, rugs, heavy window treatment--doesn't sound like boomy bass is a problem. Good luck!