Cross-Spectrum Microphone Calibration Service - USA

Re: Cross-Spectrum Microphone Calibration Service

Hi all,

Herb here. Sonnie covered most of the bases, but I wanted to stick my head in here and let you know that I am available to answer any questions. I will be here from time to time to check up on things, and I have subscribed to this thread, but it's likely that I may miss questions so feel free to email me or call my cell phone: 617-901-7472. (If I don't answer, *leave a message* and I promise I'll return your call. If you call multiple times and never leave a message, I guarantee I'll never answer it.) Also feel free to post any responses I email to you here for others to read.

I do want to mention that there are lots of things that go into mic cals, so I try to be as transparent as possible with respect to my reference equipment and techniques so you can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses for yourself. The one thing that I have learned from doing this is that when you look at lab to lab or manufacturer to manufacturer everyone seems to do it just a little differently - in fact I've learned how some of the Big Boys do it and it's funny how ghetto some of their methods are. I am on the AES working group SC-04-04 (Working Group on Microphone Measurement and Characterization) which is trying to update an old IEC standard on mic measurements. Hopefully this effort will result in more standardization in free-field microphone calibrations.

If you are interested in the cal service, please drop me an email and I'll give you the shipping address - I don't like to publish the shipping address because I've moved three times since I've started offering the service and my previous shipping addresses have wound up in various corners of the internet resulting in people shipping mics to my old addresses without letting me know. I generally try to turn them around in 48-hours but my normal duties require a lot of travel so I may not always get to it. I will let you know ahead of time if my schedule is tight.

Sonnie mentioned that many users here want 10 Hz to 24kHz cals. I'm happy to do that, but please indicate that you want that frequency range, otherwise I'm going to default to my normal 20 Hz to 20kHz cals.

I do sell pre-calibrated ECM8000, but lately it seems that everyone and their uncle wants one and I'm having a real hard time keeping up with the orders. Again, email or call ahead

Also, if anyone is interested in stepping up to professional measurement microphones (Bruel & Kjaer, GRAS, BSWA, ACO Pacific, Larson-Davis, etc), I have a lot of experience with them (in fact I own B&K, ACO, BSWA and Rionmics) so again feel free to ask.

Good luck all.

Re: Cross-Spectrum Microphone Calibration Service

Okay, it took me a while, but I'm back.

I understand that your calibrations are for a vertical orientation, but I wonder if the calibration is still accurate when measuring near-field (<= 12") or even at close diffuse soundfield distances such as 50". I did some tests of my tweeter in my loudspeakers here, but still used the horizontal orientation.

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Just to be clear - my measurements results give the on-axis mic frequency response; that is, the mic diaphragm is facing the sound source.

Can you comment on taking measurements at a listening position compared to near-field, with respect to mic orientation and a single calibration file.

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Well there's really no simple answer. I skimmed the thread you linked to and for the most part, the exposition there is on the right track. The important thing is that at the higher frequencies, the orientation of the microphone does matter. At the highest frequencies, the wavelength becomes comparable to the size of the microphone and therefore the mic does have an influence on the soundfield. For a 1/2-inch mic, the effects really start around 1 kHz but become noticeable around 2-4 kHz. A 1/4-inch or 3/8-inch mic (like the dbx RTA-M) gives you another octave or so before the effects become noticeable.

You shouldn't see any proximity affects in the high frequencies with condenser mics. You also shouldn't see any proximity effects in the low freqs with condenser mics like the ECM8000 - however the most recent runs of ECM8000 come with a chart that claims there is one, but I haven't observed it (although to be honest, I haven't investigated it all that much.) But since Behringer has never released a freq response curve for the ECM8000 that has agreed with what I and others have measured, I'm not going to put too much stock into it.

Since the response of most measurement mics will depend on the orientation, what to do? Well, if you're trying to measure the freq response of a particular source, measure with the mic pointed at the source (which will minimize the effect of the mic body) and apply your calibration curve to correct the response. If you're doing a room measurement for DRC or other purposes (STC or RT60 measurements) what you really should be using a diffuse field microphone (which pretty much no one does) or you should measure at various locations with a free-field mic at various orientations (as recommended in ASTM E336), and then average the responses together. Of course most of us don't have the time and/or patience to do that, so when I do room measurements, I put the mic in random incidence position (mic facing the source and angled 70-80 degrees with respect to the floor).

Of course the catch is that typically the cal files you have are for one orientation. If you really care that much about it, you can get polar measurements of the mic (which I can measure for additional cost) and apply the specific cal file, or just do some trial and error and see what works for you. As I wrote above, in practice I use random-incidence positioning and apply the cal file I get from my 3rd party cal lab and I've always gotten reasonable results.

If your measuring loudspeaker frequency response, you shouldn't have a diffuse field, you should be gating the results so that you only have the direct sound. If you do that, the cal file should apply no matter the distance (where the distance is limited to how long your gate is of course).

Can you calibrate mics even lower than 10hz? Could you do 5 or even 3hz?

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Sonnie mentioned that a bunch of people here where interested in getting down below 10 Hz. I have put together a pressure field jig and I can get down to 5 Hz, but that's as low as I can go. Below that, you start getting into regions where ambient air pressures have an effect. If I want to get much below 5 Hz, I either need to invest in an electrostatic actuator or build an air-tight pressure chamber, either of which would be a substantial investment on my part and since mic measurements are a tiny part of what I do, it's not worth it at this point. However I may get lucky on eBay, so stay tuned.

Re: Cross-Spectrum Microphone Calibration Service

Dennis H said:

Thanks, Herb. To keep things simple, could we start with the response of a plain old electret capsule with no extra circuits? Most software takes 2-channel measurements these days so the response of the preamp gets subtracted out.

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Just to make sure we're all on the same page: when I talk about the capsule, I'm refering to the "tip" of the microphone that has the microphone diaphragm, blackplate, isolator and electrical terminals(and grill if applicable). When I talk about the pre-amp, I'm not referring to the phantom power supply or the sound-card interface, I'm talking about the electronics that convert the varying charge into an output voltage and steps up the voltage. In the parlance of my reference equipment, this is the mic capsule, and this/this is the pre-amp. In mics like the dbx RTA-M or ECM8000, the unit contains both the mic and the preamp (which gets plugged into another pre-amp to provide phantom power and bump up the output more).

A condenser mic can go down to DC, in which case you could use it measure atmospheric pressure. In practice, the rear of the diaphragm is usually vented to prevent the diaphragm from breaking during sudden pressure changes or exposure to very high SPLs. This vent creates a low-frequency roll-off which limits the low-frequency performance of the microphone. The vent hole and the volume of air behind the diaphragm is a small resonant chamber; the size of these parameters determine the roll-off, so you need to know those parameters to predict the roll-off of any particular microphone.

The theoretical roll-off on the high frequencies for condenser mics (normal incidence) is 12 dB per octave if you only consider an undamped system. However, at mid-audio frequencies (8-13kHz depending on a variety of factors including diaphragm diameter) there is a resonance that manufacturers try to damp out though adjusting the vent sizes, grill design, diaphragm tension and diaphragm mass. This damping can change the slope of the high-frequency roll-off depending on the proximity of the resonance to the high-frequency limit of the mic. So if you want to use a number for the high-frequency rolloff, use 12dB/octave but it's going to be a wild guess at best.

We also have to account for the performance of the pre-amp response. Manufacturers may try to use the electronics to tweak the frequency response of the capsule, which may also have an effect on the rolloff.

HTH.

Re: Cross-Spectrum Microphone Calibration Service

bxxk said:

Hi Herb,

I've built some mics before, including an ambisonic tetrahedral mic, and used a B&K reference mic to manage the calibration. But I would not mind my own for my home DRC work... I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering what you would recommend in various price ranges for a cheap or inexpensive reference mic.

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It's kind of a broad question that's difficult to answer, but I'll try.

In the same (rough) price range as the ECM8000 I've measured the Nady CM 100 and the dbx RTA-M. The Nady is flatter to 20 kHz although I didn't look much lower. The RTA-M rolls off a bit above 20 Hz.

If you're willing to spend a couple of hundred dollars, the Josephson and Earthworks lines are great mics for the price, but pricewise are geared for the serious enthusiast. The Beyerdynamic MM 1 has a great reputation and can sometimes be found for under $200, but I've never personally handled one. There's the APEX220 which falls into the ECM8000 price range and may or may not be a rebadged RTA-M.

One microphone that I really like is the Radio Shack lapel microphone. They're cheap, but they are amazingly flat up to 20 kHz and much more consistent from unit to unit. The downside is that the noise floor is pretty high (around 60 dBA IIRC) which limits its use for low SPL testing. You also have to find a way to mount it such that the mounting doesn't muddy up the signal. Caveat: it's been several years since I last measured one so it's entirely possible that there has been a revision and the mic is now.

Re: Cross-Spectrum Microphone Calibration Service

Dennis H said:

Thanks, Herb. I guess I'll have to take your word for that. Just curious, how could you ever use a condenser mic to design a crossover if it's introducing excess-phase errors?

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About all you can do is trust in your cross-over design theory. That said most pro measurement mics are designed to have a relatively flat phase response up to 15-20 kHz, but that doesn't help you with an ECM8000 unfortunately.

Over the past week I made another attempt to get phase data for my measurement mics with no success. In the case of BSWA, in what I ca only guess is a language-barrier problem, no matter how many times I ask for "phase response" and "phase data" for the MP201, they keep sending me frequency response curves.

Seems like all the measurement and crossover programs assume the cal file is minimum phase and experience shows they work pretty well.

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I'll have to try and dig it up, but when I first started doing microphone measurements, I used to give phase results generated by the Hilbert transform. When I learned that condenser mics weren't minimum phase devices, I found a generic freq and phase response curve for a measurement mic. I scanned in the frequency response, ran the Hilbert alogorthim on the data and compared the resulting phase response to the measured curve - and they weren't the same. that little exercise scared me straight.