Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Radio Shack SPL meter

Pointing up around ear level is correct. So when the test tones play on each speaker you don't have to reorient the SPL. Just keep it in front of your face pointing up at one place as you go through all test tones on all speakers. Thats how I calibrated all my speakers including my sub. The AVIA disk also has a good subwoofer tone that tests the low frequency by cycling down the Hz. This can actually test how low your sub can really go. This test also if your mains are crossovered to your sub correctly. I never realized I had a dip in sound level around 65Hz when I had my receiver crossovered at 60Hz, so I raised the crossover of my receiver to 80Hz and the tone blanded nicely from my mains to my sub. At pink noise levels I set all my speakers to 75Hz including my sub so that all will be playing at the same loudness level. DTS and DD sounds fantastic when calibrated like this. The sub now is not too loud or too soft.

Saturn

ps: my mains actually image better when I set it to small and crossovered to 80Hz. The mid range, stage and clarity dramitically improved. All speakers are diffrent though. My old Monitor Audio Silver S6 (configuration and sounds like a M60) sounded better when you set it to Large and set the crossover to 40 - 60Hz

The mic on the RS meter is "omnidirectional," meaning that when it is pointed up toward the ceiling, it will sense sounds coming from all 360-degree horizontal directions most uniformly. That is exactly what you want when calibrating your speakers.

I just tried it again. My SPL must be calibrated incorrectly or something. I had the pink noise on the speakers cranked up and I got no reading on the SPL. I set it to 60 for the range and yelled right near it and that is the only time I even got it to move...up to about -6, which would be 54db...according to the manual that came with it background music registers at 60db, so something doesn't seem quite right. I'm going to the mall later anyway, so unless I get a post back letting me know there is something stupid I'm doing wrong, I'm going to try to exchange it.

Alright...I'm feeling better now. Exchanged it, the new one is working great! As seems to be normal, my sub was configured way too high. A little more suprising, the other speakers were off by a bit as well. I ended up with:

L=+5, C= +7, R= +9 Surr R= +5, Surr L= +4

I'm suprised the right is so much more then the left to get the same DB level. It is somewhat in a corner, perhaps that is why.

Thanks for the help is getting this setup.

Well call me crazy zarak but your system then should sound equal if you took 4 units off of each speaker, no?

L=+1
C=+3
R=+5
Surr R=+1
Surr L=0

Or, how about the following settings, which is normalized to zero average?

L=-1
C=+1
R=+3
Surr R=-1
Surr L=-2

I think it is actually important to have the correction value of each channel as close to zero as possible, since that will ensure the best possible dynamic range and S/N of the receiver.