Room measurement on the Mac

ianfreefall · Post by **ianfreefall** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 2:37 am

I know that room measurement is a bit of a waste of time... just get on and damp the room (12 x 16 x 9ft)... and I've bought myself 40 sheets of 2" 64kg/m3 and I'm just waiting to have the timber cut... but.... I was wondering about using software to tune the room better once I've got the basics up (moving panels around, fiddling with the sub etc).

EFT's cool, but it's PC only, and I don't have one of those in the house (I think they're barred from crossing the threshold (grin).

I'm buying a new interface, and I saw one company's selling Metric Halo ULN-2+DSP with a full version of SpectraFoo included for a decent deal. SpectraFoo sounds like quite a complete package - does it do the same thing? Is it what I'm looking for?

The present room is rented - I envisage having to redo the callibration several times in the next few years... is this an investment worth making? Are there other options for Mac users?

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 9:04 am

Not a Mac user, but my (dis-owned :=) son is - from what I've seen, Spectrafoo is pretty complete. Another possible option (might be cheaper, depending on how much you're saving on your deal) would be to get a copy of Virtual PC (google it, not sure if Microsoft still owns it or not) - prodigal sun runs anything and everything PC on a G4 using Virtual PC, no problems. I even saw a review of some PC Multitracking software a few years ago and they ran it on a Mac with VPC. If it'll work for that...

Steve

jonessy · Post by **jonessy** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 10:36 pm

You might want to take into consideration that SpectraFoo is just a sophisticated RTA software.

Unlike ETF, it does not allow excitation based measurements and analyses, such as TDS, MLS or sweeps.
These are crucial when trying to objectively measure a room's frequency response, rather than tuning a sound system (for which an RTA is sufficient).

dknightd · Post by **dknightd** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 2:59 am

I've found two:

FuzzMeasure
http://www.supermegaultragroovy.com/pro ... zzMeasure/
(free trial, $125 to purchase)

RoomWizard
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/john.mulca ... index.html
(free java app)

Haven't played with either much since I don't have a mic yet.
I'm hoping the mic in a radio shack spl meter will be good enough. ..

If you try either one let us know what you think.

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 6:32 am

The mic in a RS meter is OK for up to midrange use, but not for highs; even my $350 Extech (B&K costs too much for my budget) isn't wonderful up there. Here's a comparison; note that even the other B&K isn't so great in some ranges -

http://www.digital-recordings.com/audiocd/radio.html

HTH... Steve