Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Proper Subwoofer level settings using SPL meter??

Had a fire, so I'm in the process of rebuilding my HT.

One of the things I did when I set up my original system was to grab an SPL meter from work and use it to set levels.

One thing I noticed after I was done was that my subwoofer seemed really loud compared to the rest of the sound levels, and I tried to match SPL reading for it to the other speakers. Since my meter monitors from 1000 hz at the "center" freq.,,, this didn't seem like the right thing to do.. since the sub was crossed out at ~80. I "ear tuned" the sub and lived with it... but is there a better way to accomplish sub level setting with a meter?? From the specs I read on the RS models,, they are built the same way as the one I used from work.

The other option I considered was recommending that we needed a freq. specific meter at work,, but they're about $3500 or so,,, didn't think that recommendation would go over well with my boss, so dropped that one.... *grin*

Help,, I should be to the point of installing in fairly near future,,, once I've got a house again anyway.

Thanks

When you use the RadioShack type of sound meter, it is very important to set the weighting curve to "C," which is the flattest curve available in inexpensive SPL meters. If you use the "A" or "B" curve, the sensitivity of the meter will be rolled off very significantly in bass frequencies, resulting in a marked over-calibration of the subwoofer (the meter thinks the sub level is too low).

With regard to the frequency spectrum analyzer, if you have a laptop Windows PC with a decent sound card, a real-time analyzer softwere (such as TrueRTA at $100) and a measurement mic/preamp (such as Behringer ECM8000, about $100-$150 with preamp) will make a precision spectrum analyzer at a fraction of cost for a stand-alone intrument.

Thanks for the info on which scale to use,, as an EH&S guy,, I'm only worried about the A-scale... Didn't even think to consider the weighting.... Now I DO have to get a new meter....