Radio Shack SPL meter (analog)

 

New member
Username: Cooldudejz

Post Number: 1
Registered: Aug-04
i am 15 years old and i love home audio i refently purchased this spl meter to help tune my home theater system, my only problem is i dont know how to use it. my receiver, yamaha HTr-5760, has the YPAO thing which automatically calibrates thing for me, but i decided to do it the old fashion way. i could not figure out how to use it for the life of me. i would like a reply from someone who has used it. i need exact directions on how to use it. this is what i have done so far.

-Connected to tripod at listening position.
-bought a pink noise CD

what volume should my RECEIVER be at when i use it?
what should i set the DB to?
where should i aim it?
What am i trying to balance and how?
 

Unregistered guest
you have to adjust each channel so that sound hits you at the same DB coming from each speaker. if you want to truly flatten the room, you are using the wrong thing. you should have a spectrum analyzer (such as the rane ra-30), not an SPL meter. that is what YPAO does. chances are, if you placed your speakers correctly, you won't notice much of a difference. You are using Yamaha (which is faily inexpensive, and not really up to the lines of denon and such), so it is obvious you do not truly have audiophile-quality sound to begin with. If you just want it to sound good, YPAO should work for you. it will save you a lot of trouble and about the 100 bucks it will cost to rent the analyzer.
 

Anonymous
 
brian,
sorry to see that surfg has sent you such a rude and discouraging reply. if surfg really wanted to flatten his room, he would just build a new room and use 10 acoustic design engineers to help him because he obviously didn't even know how to answer your question. while on a cost to effectiveness ratio for your purposes the YPAO should be fine, i can understand your interest in trying to make your system sound better. after all, curiousity is something that leads a 15 year old like you to be more interested in how things really work so that you can make things even better for all of us! here is something that i found on the net that might help you: http://www.audiophilia.com/hardware/spl.htm
 

Cookie_Monster
Unregistered guest
I agree with Anony...
I use the exact same device, but my Marantz has a +- decibel setting for each channel. I use the built in tone generator and set each channel one at a time to the same decibel reading. Of course, then I end up boosting the sub anyway because I like the beefed up bass.
 

carl3po
Unregistered guest
check out the SVS FAQ on http://www.svsubwoofers.com/faq.htm#meter. It offers some useful suggestions on using the radio shack SPL meter, including what the sound pressure values should be in DB using specific audio test DVDS. I believe this site assumes you're using C-weighting and slow response on the meter.
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