John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

What is the best way to measure reverb times without an Omnidirectional Mic?

I have an AT4047 / SV cardioid mic.

What programs and/or plugins would be best for this?

I would think Behringer's $40 reference mic would be better than those for this particular task.

I don't have the Behringer mic (I think it's the ECM-8000??) but have heard good things - basically you CAN'T do much with a directional mic, you'll need an inexpensive omni for that.

Also, what size room are you "measuring reverb times" in? And what is the room's purpose? Steve

Thanks, I think I'll pick one of those up first.

Room size is 12'x10'x8'. Primary purpose will be tracking. When I'm done I'll modify it for mixing.

Is there some kind of guide out there for how you go about doing this properly? Where to place the speakers, sound level, program for interpreting results, etc.?

lex wrote:What is the best way to measure reverb times without an Omnidirectional Mic?

I have an AT4047 / SV cardioid mic.

What programs and/or plugins would be best for this?

Take a 57 or 58, take off the grill, stick some electrician's tape on your shirt a couple times to get some of the sticky off, wrap the tape around the capsule all the way up to just short of the diaphragm edge, and you've got a fairly crappy omni you can probably take some rough measurements with as long as you're not overly concerned with frequency response.

'Nuther plan - you need a Sound Level Meter anyway, whether you knew that or not (constant mix SPL's make for constant mix results) - so you could get the RS meter for about $50, it's got an RCA jack on the side, it's omni, and is relatively flat up to about 7-8KhZ - ETF software even has a cal file for it, so for $200 you'd have your omni for most of the useful measurements, a SLM for consistent mixes, and software that will tell you 'way more than you ever wanna know about your environment.

As for setup, there's a couple of threads around here - search on harmon for the least garbage to sort through... Steve

Alright, thanks.