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In Reply to: RE: programs for testing speaker response posted by floydandrews on May 24, 2016 at 19:06:59
If your speakers are built, then you've fixed a couple of the variables - what the drivers are, the raw response they'll have, and their physical location relative to each other. The remaining work is to design filters that make the drivers work together in the best way possible. This is typically what determines a lot of how good a speaker will be. If you use the best components in the world but design bad filters for the drivers, it will still sound like crap.
I'm not saying you have to measure outside, but I've found it much easier to get good results if I design the filters for the drivers in an environment where I don't see the effect of the room and then tweak the response of the total system in the room without having to worry about whether I've got the crossover right or not.
Parking lots are usually my go-to places, like school parking lots on the weekend. I'll do a ground plane measurement where you place the mic on the ground to eliminate reflections up to a fairly high frequency. I typically use a laptop and a UPS to power my measurement system and amp. If you get a decent sized one it will go for a couple of hours. You definitely want to have your process down cold before you go do that though. You also want to be aware of what the noise floor is - take a measurement without any of the drivers playing and compare it to what you get when you measure the drivers.
Follow Ups:
This makes sense to me. I can access the roof of our building, and we live in a relatively quiet neighborhood. The speakers are in 2 boxes, woofer and fullrange, so shouldn't be too hard to haul them up and back. Thank you for weighing in. We have some very knowledgeable folks on this board (you being one of them) and I always appreciate their willingness to share and teach.
Happy to help.
The roof is a bit different situation, but potentially better. What I would try is positioning your speaker at the corner of the roof pointing away from the building and put the mic on a boom of some sort out into the air. If there's nothing flat behind the speaker, you should mostly eliminate reflections that way. You would get a reflection from the ground, but if you're high enough up, you could gate that out and get good LF resolution.
THIS is ONE of the reasons why audiophile-land hasn't changed in 45 years. I feel like I'm reading an article from 1972!!
I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but if you're saying that people not measuring the speakers they're building is like being back in the 70's, I suppose I'd agree although I'd say it's like any time before ~2000. Of course the difference now is that it's fairly straight forward to get a good measurement program, a decent mic and sound card, and start learning how to incorporate measurements into building speakers if one is inclined to put in the effort.
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