REW for speaker design

[Jason Schultz]

This one is coming a bit from left field, but here goes. I am planning to use REW with the BFD but can REW also be used to take measurements of loudspeakers during the design phase such as measuring driver response and cross over behaviour.If not is there any other suitable similar programmes for 4$0 out there

Jason

[Anthony]

I have started taking speaker measurements with REW. BoomieMCT has only ever used REW in his designs.

It has all the features you need: variable frequency sweeps, ability to window the measurements (eliminate room effects), spectral decay, etc. the only thing it lacks is the ability to splice together separate measurements -- some people like to use nearfield for the high frequency and then gated for the low frequency and splice them together (rather than one continuous measurement). There's more information on this on the web.

If you are truly adventurous, try Speaker Workshop. Hard to learn and you have to build a small jig and calibrate before the measurements, but it does some neat things as well. It's what I've done most of my stuff on, although I am trying REW more and more now.

[bjs]

REW lacks phase information but certainly does the basic frequency magnitude response pretty well. I use ARTA for the functions that REW lacks.

[Jason Schultz]

Whats ARTA? or do you mean an RTA? when using the REW I suppose it would be possible to see the effects of phase in the FR if you were to try switching polarity or changing the horizontal offset of tweeters (in relation to mids and mid/bassdrivers)
And thanks for the reply. I just noticed in other threads that REW can be run full range.

[Glyptoron]

Hi Jason,

ARTA is available on this site :
http://www.fesb.hr/~mateljan/arta/
It's quite as good as Clio Sotware. When it's used as a free copy, you can't save your measurement files.
Cheers.