Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions best SPL meter

Snob.

Take your 3D glasses off. Its a bluish grey square.

Right catbrat, you'd likely pay someone to do your posting for you!

thanks for all the replies. My comment about the "best" really meant best for the type of money the RS Analog cost. I'm just kinda interested in monitoring the SPL of my speakers for optimum output. I did the MCACC, but the more I read, it seems out of whack. For example, on the Hsu site for my subwoof, it states to have the AVR set at 0db for that channel and use the sub's volume to control output. The SC-55 set the sub channel at -11.5db. I know it's all about "what sounds good to you", but how do you know what will sound good or better or worse if you don't have a baseline to work from. It seems a SPL can help level things out across the image, which I guess the MCACC is really doing. It's an SPL of sorts. BTW, the Hsu came with a test disk that is pretty good. It even has various white and pink noises. If anyone wants a copy, drop me a PM and I'll see what I can do.

Turn the gain knob on the back of your subwoofer up and re-run MCACC. That will raise the subwoofer pre-out level on the avr after MCACC is ran again.. Continue to do this until it reads a value between -3 to 0.

I want to properly "tune" my system once I get the room done, but I too was wondering about SPL meters as well as how important they are compared to MCACC (which I've used in the past) or Audyssey... I know that MCACC and Audyssey are doing a lot of different things than a SPL meter, but you know what I mean...

Is anyone here still using Room EQ Wizard to tune their system? I don't remember anyone ever saying they tried the 5 release. I still haven't used it myself, but I plan to dabble when I finally get my system in the basement.

BlueJays, if I increase the gain as you call it (I'm assuming you mean volume), that will make the sub louder. Won't that lower the db gain on the AVR because I could over power the other speakers? -11db is less loud than 0 db, right? Every 3db loss is half the power, at least in log math.

Sorry. Yeah, turn the gain/volume down on the sub. That will in turn raise the subwoofer pre-out level on the receiver and MCACC will continue to give you a closer reading approaching 0. Really, the numbers are arbitrary but what one thing you want to avoid is running the subwoofer pre-out at either extreme or "hot" like at a +4 and beyond.

Mark, the "best" for the RS type of money is the RS, i.e., the digital model. It's what I use for comparing sound levels at various points during listening to music and has a clear advantage over the analog model(when available)in measuring max sound levels both short term and long term. I don't use the meter for calibrating levels, since there's no good reason to believe that the RS SPL meter is more accurate than those used in Audyssey, MCACC, YPAO, etc.

Don't follow the "out of whack" comment. As was said above, the low setting on the sub channel indicates that the level control on the back of the sub should be set lower for the auto-calibration. Any of these auto-calibration systems should, if anything, be more accurate than a manual calibration which has the added element of human error.