Room correction without Sonarworks?

[Erik DuijsParticipant]

Interesting stuff, Arthur!
It's a bit disconcerting how much difference the different mics make, although in mids they seem more similar. Are the other mics you used directional or omnidirectional? When I did the test, I set my own mic to omni thinking it would be less coloured that way.
But I probably need to get myself an MM1 to do this properly 🙂

Looking at your EQ settings, it seems that EQ has a bit of a low resolution in the lower end (in terms of number of bands) and I suspect one often needs to have some pretty precise cuts there to fix acoustic issues there?
Curve-EQ seems slightly better there, but maybe also not precise enough, although it did make a pretty drastic and specific cut in the low end exactly where I expected.

[Erik DuijsParticipant]

I just did a test again after finding out that CurveEQ can actually go up to 60 points (doh!), which seemed to improve things (screenshot attached).
Again I relaxed the EQ in the top-highs because it would go nuts there (actually causing distortion when putting it on the master).
It still seems to do a lot of rolling off at the bottom-end; not sure if that's really right because my speakers don't seem to be that bass heavy there. Maybe there was some rumble in the mic-recording or something, so maybe I'll try to compensate there a bit.

Still, I think it works quite well all things considered. Sonarworks will probably do a better job, but as a simple free DYI solution it's better than nothing I suppose. At least in my room it seemed to have correctly identified a clear problem area around 130Hz, and everything does seem more clear.

Maybe I'll do some more testing with other reference sounds (maybe pink noise, or a sweeping sine wave, or actual music).

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Erik Duijs.

[Arthur LabusModerator]

Good points Erik. I really appreciate our efforts here !

"The MM-1 is an omnidirectional measurement microphone with a 1/4" wide, polarised condenser capsule." (thomann.de)
However frequency range is from 20 Hz to 18 kHz

SC-300: Supercardioid, 40 Hz - 18 kHz
SC-400: supercardioid, 20 Hz - 20 kHz
MB-55: supercardioid, 20 Hz - 12 kHz

My EQ ist customizable 😉 I just used the default setting, which is set to response of human ear. But i can sett the frequencies as i need, so i will check the options.
Still need to make some other tests and check how it sounds. But it was busy weekend 😀

[Arthur LabusModerator]

Great timing 😀 Funny 20 minutes with Sonarworks review
https://youtu.be/Bh7GJvJmy1w

[Erik DuijsParticipant]

Heh, yeah I saw that video too. That guy often has pretty interesting content.

Interesting to see that it's a bit more involved than what we've been doing (measuring at different positions), but I think the basic principle is more or less the same.
Also interesting to see that they don't use white noise but sine sweeps to calibrate.

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Erik Duijs.

[Arthur LabusModerator]

Well, different positions is over my skills LOL
However, as we said, i will try some other noises.
Sadly, no really have "right time" now 😉

[Erik DuijsParticipant]

Same here 🙂 But to be continued when the time is right 🙂

[AnthonyParticipant]

I saw a clip on YouTube showing how to setup Sonarworks for your monitors. I didnt realize that you have to actually measure 37 different places in your listening space. This is the video I saw..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh7GJvJmy1w

I have Sonarworks reference 4 but I cant use it at the moment because I have one of those USB MiniDSP measurement mics which Sonarworks does not support. I will have to buy one of theirs before we can calibrate our room. I just found out it's $69 Euro so I guess it wont break the bank.

[Erik DuijsParticipant]

Hey Anthony,

I saw that video some time ago too. Quite interesting to see all the steps to go through, and I think that guy made great points putting the whole idea and value of 'room correction EQ' in proper perspective.
What I tried is obviously quite simplistic in comparison to Sonarworks, so the results are probably not nearly as precise. But it did point out some very obvious problems in my problematic room.

However in the end I don't use my mickey-mouse room EQ effort; I just worked a bit more on turning some knobs on my speakers (turn up the tweeter a bit, turn down the woofer a bit) and adding one EQ band to fix one obvious problem in the low-end.

Anyway, it seemed my white-noise calibrated EQ also added some issues of its own that made it hard to really trust:
1. The matched EQ did a LOT of VERY heavy EQ-ing, suggesting the biggest problem is still my room.
2. As a result the phase rotating at all these bands seemed to change things outside of the frequency response; not sure if I can trust my ears when checking phase issues between tracks that way (?).
3. The linear phase option of the EQ added some side effects of its own that I didn't like.
4. It's just overall a strange sound to hear out of the speakers in my (quite problematic) room. And my speakers aren't bad.

What I really need to do is fix issues in my listening environment first before thinking of of room correction EQ. For the moment I still mostly depend on headphones, with my speakers as a 2nd option to hear things in another context.
I still very much believe in the idea of proper room correction EQ such as SonarWorks, but only after having a decent sounding listening room to begin with.

Erik

[AnthonyParticipant]

Hi Erik

I agree with what your saying about the order of fixing the room before correction EQ.

If you can justify the expense to do some general add on internal absorption and diffusion it will be a great improvement.

I think I remember Warren saying that some very famous studios have poor sounding control rooms but manage to put out great music.

Is fixing the internal acoustics on the to do list?

[Erik DuijsParticipant]

Hey Anthony,

Improving the acoustics is on the to-do list and I already have a bit done.
But I don't think I can ever 'fix' it:
I'm working in my living room, which is a large(-ish) open weird shaped space with a marble floor and stucco on the walls, I don't have a spare room and I'm renting the place so I can't do anything drastic. So you can imagine my options are kind of limited.

Erik

[Simon BrownParticipant]

Sounds like freestanding panels and thick rugs are the way to go.

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