Software

How about a new permanent topic of acoustic design software and monitor control room software? Rick

There is no reliable software for simulating rooms. Way to complex, it's not something simple like the climate! :mrgreen:

Is CARA 2.2 of any use to somebody who wants to improve acoustics of his home environment with little practical treatments? Thanks. -- Mario Petrinovich

I would like to know how is your opinion about CARA too, I could use it for a project in the next month

its an interesting program. I use for that purpose - where someone wants to just position their speakers and furniture without putting up treatments. and it works OK for that purpose. it takes some time to learn the CAD part and making sure you have the room construction captured correctly and the speaker specifications are also correct. like any simulation, its not 100% so you'll still want to measure and adjust but it can be a decent starting point unless the room acoustics are really bad or placement options are very limited - in which case you're going to have to treat the room anyways.

CARA uses a prediction method that makes it practical useless. Eric Desart has made an mathematical analysis of the program and asked questions at the CARA forum, but didn't get answers AFAIK. Pretty pics, for the rest a waste of time. :D

Thanks for your oppinions. At Rives Audio they say that this is "The best room simulation software available.". Maybe there isn't anything better than this. It isn't expensive, and I hope that I could calculate basic things, like RT, so that I don't have to search through the web for such calculators, :? . Actually, this program should be pretty ok for such purpose, if not much better (and handy) than web Excel calculators. I presume that there isn't any better program, near this price range, for light acoustical purposes? -- Mario Petrinovich

what abt: There are also more modern and sophisticated analysis tools such as TEF and the ETF and Smaart programs.>> rr

CARA is a modeling tool and therefore only simulates the room and speaker characteristics and make approximations on speaker and listener positions - again - not something you'd typically use for anything other than a starting place for setting up a living room. fwiw - i have used it a few times for living/office/bed rooms and the speaker placements "seemed" better than just plopping them in the corners... ymmv) the RPG room sizer is a modeling tool and uses some different methods to model the expected charactistics of the room. I've used the demo and it seems to yield some nice info regarding the potential room character and based on that you could then plan treatments for the space... http://www.rpginc.com/products/roomsizer/index.htm another tool that is reasonably priced is the RPG room optimizer software. I haven't used it but a number of talented people endorse it. its more a measurement tool than a modeling tool. http://www.rpginc.com/products/roomoptimizer/index.htm ETF and TEF are measurement tools which (usually) means the results will be based on the actual characteristics of the space.

gullfo wrote:

CARA is a modeling tool and therefore only simulates the room and speaker characteristics and make approximations on speaker and listener positions - again - not something you'd typically use for anything other than a starting place for setting up a living room. fwiw - i have used it a few times for living/office/bed rooms and the speaker placements "seemed" better than just plopping them in the corners... ymmv) the RPG room sizer is a modeling tool and uses some different methods to model the expected charactistics of the room. I've used the demo and it seems to yield some nice info regarding the potential room character and based on that you could then plan treatments for the space... http://www.rpginc.com/products/roomsizer/index.htm another tool that is reasonably priced is the RPG room optimizer software. I haven't used it but a number of talented people endorse it. its more a measurement tool than a modeling tool. http://www.rpginc.com/products/roomoptimizer/index.htm ETF and TEF are measurement tools which (usually) means the results will be based on the actual characteristics of the space.

Thanks for all the info. -- Mario Petrinovich