REW Tips

[Sonnie]

REW Tips

This thread is the official REW [Room EQ Wizard] Tips thread with tips provided by users.

This thread will be locked, but if you have a tip that you would like to share, post it here and I will be notified and consider it for inclusion to this thread. We reserve the right to edit any tip that is provided.

As always, the best source of information about REW is the REW HELP FILE.

[Sonnie]

House Curve examples and how to load them into REW...

To understand what a house curve is, and why you might want one, there are two excellent threads on the subject here and here.

Below are some examples to load into REW.

Which house curve you use is totally up to you... you might try different house curves in different presets on the BFD, playing back your favorite bass scenes over and over for the various house curves and determining which one you like best.

The house curve is easily created in Notepad and saved to a folder on your hard drive as a text file.

Here's an example of what one house curve would look like in Notepad:
The file simply says that the house curve will begin at 80Hz and that +8dB will be added to the normal REW target curve by 30Hz.



You can save it and name it whatever you wish. I have them named house.txt, house2.txt, house3.txt... etc.

Once you have saved the file you load it in REW by first selecting the Settings button in REW and then select the House Curve tab. It is then as simple as browsing to the location in your computer where you saved your file.

REW House Curve.jpg


Here is a typical target line in REW with no house curve applied:



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The following is a house curve suggested by brucek:

Text file:
30 8.0
80 0.0



If you don't like the humped nature of the line drawn between 80Hz and 30Hz (for example), you may check the Logarithmic extrapolation checkbox and the line will become much straighter. The longer the line, the more noticable it becomes.

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This is one suggested by Ayreonaut:

Text file:
31.5 0
36 -1.25
40 -2.5
45 -3.75
50 -5
56 -6.25
63 -7.5
71 -8.75
80 -10
89 -11.25
100 -12.5
111 -13.75
125 -15
142.5 -16.25
160 -17.5



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Here's another:

Text file:
30 5.0
100 0.0



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Here's one more:

Text file:
30 10.0
100 0.0



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If you have a suggested house curve that you would like added, please post them here.

[Sonnie]

Correction Value Files (*.cal) and REW

All microphones are not created equal. Unless you are willing to spend several hundred dollars on a high quality mic, you will not have a flat frequency response measurement from your mic. Nearly all inexpensive mics need correction values applied to them to get the frequency response to flat.

For example, most of us using the BFD will simply use the mic in our Radio Shack SPL Meter. That mic is generally down 27db at 10hz. In other words, when you take a measurement of the frequency response of your sub, you will need to add 27db to the reading at 10hz. For more information on the RS Correction Values see this thread.

Correction values for meters and microphones are input into the REW program via a calibration file that is simply a file that lists in text format, the frequency and correction vales in dB. It has a .cal extension, but can be read with Notepad. This is a text file built usually in Notepad and saved with the .cal extension.

Once you have acquired the *.cal file you are going to use, you will load it into REW as follows:
Simply click the Settings icon button in REW and select the Mic/Meter tab and browse to where the cal file is located in your computer.


REW meter cal file.jpg


Below are two examples of *.cal files loaded into REW. The difference between the black and blue lines is the amount of correction that will be applied to the measured response.

(for RS SPL Meter):



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(for Behringer ECM8000):