Calibration Mic Calibration?

[andreh]

I just read the sticky about mic calibration, and it appears that the technique involves comparing our sample mic's response against that of a reference mic.

My question is: how is the reference mic calibrated? No mic has perfectly flat frequency response. Maybe it's considerd "close enough," or is there some other approach used that's more scientific?


Andre

[andreh]

Here are the specs for the mic that Kim Girardin apparently uses for his calibration readings. According to this chart, it's either the 7016 or the 7017 (if it's a 1/4 model as is stated in the Mic Calibration sticky):

http://www.acopacific.com/chart.html

Here's a chart of "typical" frequency responses for these mic's:

http://www.acopacific.com/micdetal.html

As you can see, they're pretty flat; the 7017 is a ruler past 20k, while the 7016 might have the smallest bump (<2dB) ~13k and then a similarly small drop ~18k.

I still wonder, though, if any compensation is made for the unique response of Kim's actual mic. If it's even close to these typical reponses then compensation is probably not necessary, but inquiring minds want to know...


Andre

[Sonnie]

We are somewhat at the mercy of Kim's mic being accurate enough to satisfy us, more particularly in the lower 10-200Hz range.

[andreh]

Sonnie wrote:

We are somewhat at the mercy of Kim's mic being accurate enough to satisfy us, more particularly in the lower 10-200Hz range.

I'm sure Kim does a great job of providng very accurate results...it's just my analytical side that's curious about the mic's calibration.

I'm not just calibarting my sub, though, so the higher frequencies are of interest to me as well.


Andre