Hi, everyone. I've decided to create a single thread, mostly so I can keep all my silly questions confined to a single, easy to ignore, spot.
The trade-off is that the thread's title is pretty unhelpful. Sorry about that.
First off, greetings! Great program, great forum, and pretty good docs. (They actually exist, which is 80% of the battle.) Everyone involved are to be commended.
Okay, here's my story. I'm a computer geek and I have done some live sound and studio recording work in my younger days. I've just purchased (but have not yet received) a nice new sub. I do software QA for a living. So, I should be right smack dab in the middle of REW's target market, and one would think that I'd need very little hand holding. It appears that one would be wrong. :whistling:
Weekend before last, I installed REW on my "TV computer" and started working my way through the "Getting Started" instructions. Things started well, but then got a little inexplicable, so I wasn't actually able to take any measurements. Since the problems all seemed like they might be sound card (or driver) related, I'm in the process of installing REW to my work laptop as well. If that ends up working better, then we can all just pretend that my earlier attempt never happened. Still, out of curiosity, and in the interests of full disclosure, I'll describe the weirdness that I encountered. Perhaps there's an easy and well known fix.
(Again, I don't have my sub yet, and my BFD Pro only just arrived, so I'm just doing proof of concept experiments right now. If I can get to the point where I can do a full range graph of my right front speaker, I'll be happy.)
My TV computer is running Vista Home Premium (SP2, I think). It has motherboard-based Realtek audio. It's a pretty recent mobo. "Realtek HD", maybe?
Here's the short version. The sound card calibration went well, and I ended up with a nice flat response. There was absolutely no indication of feedback, which is surprising given my later experiences.
The "Checking Levels" step also seemed to go as expected. A "-30" setting on my AVR resulted in 73dB of pink noise coming out of my right speaker. (This according to my analog Rat Shack meter.) Since -30 was a nice and easy to remember setting on my AVR, I decided that 73dB was close enough for government work.
I then moved on to the "Calibrating the SPL Reading" step. Not surprisingly, my Rat Shack meter was still (again) hearing about 73dB, so that's what I told REW. Supposedly, I was now ready to take some measurements. (Note that at this point I have not yet hooked up my measurement mic. The only thing that was ever connected to the computer's line-in was the loop-back cable from the line-out, and at this point even that is no longer connected.)
Here's where I get all confused.
I went ahead and hooked up my Behringer mic and mixer, even though the instructions seemed never to mention that this needed to be done. (Did I miss a crucial step, earlier on?) At this point, at least two things seemed "not right".
That's not right, is it? It seems like REW isn't really getting much level from my test mic, and REW's SPL meter seems to be interpreting no input (or output) as "73dB", and the (kinda quiet) mic signal is feeding back into the speaker.
I poked around in every control panel I could find (both Window's and Realtek's), attempting to turn off the "monitoring" of the line-in input. Nothing seemed to make a difference. Muting the line-in made no difference.
I quickly became baffled, then annoyed, and ended my experimentation soon after that. I've installed REW onto a different computer, but in the mean time, have I fallen into a classic newb mistake? Ignoring the feedback weirdness for a moment, it seems like at no point did I set input levels from the mic mixer.
Do I understand the purpose of the following early steps correctly?
First off, greetings! Great program, great forum, and pretty good docs. (They actually exist, which is 80% of the battle.) Everyone involved are to be commended.
Okay, here's my story. I'm a computer geek and I have done some live sound and studio recording work in my younger days. I've just purchased (but have not yet received) a nice new sub. I do software QA for a living. So, I should be right smack dab in the middle of REW's target market, and one would think that I'd need very little hand holding. It appears that one would be wrong. :whistling:
Weekend before last, I installed REW on my "TV computer" and started working my way through the "Getting Started" instructions. Things started well, but then got a little inexplicable, so I wasn't actually able to take any measurements. Since the problems all seemed like they might be sound card (or driver) related, I'm in the process of installing REW to my work laptop as well. If that ends up working better, then we can all just pretend that my earlier attempt never happened. Still, out of curiosity, and in the interests of full disclosure, I'll describe the weirdness that I encountered. Perhaps there's an easy and well known fix.
(Again, I don't have my sub yet, and my BFD Pro only just arrived, so I'm just doing proof of concept experiments right now. If I can get to the point where I can do a full range graph of my right front speaker, I'll be happy.)
My TV computer is running Vista Home Premium (SP2, I think). It has motherboard-based Realtek audio. It's a pretty recent mobo. "Realtek HD", maybe?
Here's the short version. The sound card calibration went well, and I ended up with a nice flat response. There was absolutely no indication of feedback, which is surprising given my later experiences.
The "Checking Levels" step also seemed to go as expected. A "-30" setting on my AVR resulted in 73dB of pink noise coming out of my right speaker. (This according to my analog Rat Shack meter.) Since -30 was a nice and easy to remember setting on my AVR, I decided that 73dB was close enough for government work.
I then moved on to the "Calibrating the SPL Reading" step. Not surprisingly, my Rat Shack meter was still (again) hearing about 73dB, so that's what I told REW. Supposedly, I was now ready to take some measurements. (Note that at this point I have not yet hooked up my measurement mic. The only thing that was ever connected to the computer's line-in was the loop-back cable from the line-out, and at this point even that is no longer connected.)
Here's where I get all confused.
I went ahead and hooked up my Behringer mic and mixer, even though the instructions seemed never to mention that this needed to be done. (Did I miss a crucial step, earlier on?) At this point, at least two things seemed "not right".
- The SPL meter at the top of the REW window was reading "73dB" pretty much all the time. Even when no test tones were being generated, and when the room was dead quiet. Fiddling with the output levels of the mic preamp doesn't seem to make any difference. Turning on the pink noise doesn't cause the SPL meter to react. Nothing did, except...
- If I tapped or blew on the mic, I could hear the sound come out of my right speaker. (Not very loudly, however.) "Yelling" into the mic would absolutely peg the meters on the mic mixer, and would cause the SPL meter in REW to rise above 73dB, briefly.
That's not right, is it? It seems like REW isn't really getting much level from my test mic, and REW's SPL meter seems to be interpreting no input (or output) as "73dB", and the (kinda quiet) mic signal is feeding back into the speaker.
I poked around in every control panel I could find (both Window's and Realtek's), attempting to turn off the "monitoring" of the line-in input. Nothing seemed to make a difference. Muting the line-in made no difference.
I quickly became baffled, then annoyed, and ended my experimentation soon after that. I've installed REW onto a different computer, but in the mean time, have I fallen into a classic newb mistake? Ignoring the feedback weirdness for a moment, it seems like at no point did I set input levels from the mic mixer.
Do I understand the purpose of the following early steps correctly?
- "Calibrating the Soundcard" characterizes both the input and output stages of the sound card, and corrects for any non-linearities.
- "Checking Levels" is just a sanity test to verify that REW is able to output test tones at a usable volume.
- "Calibrating the SPL Reading" is a way to tell REW that, "That sound you are making right now? It's about this loud at my measuring position." (But does not assume that REW is "hearing" that sound yet.)