# Sound card will not calibrate



## Giraffe1300 (Mar 22, 2015)

Good afternoon,
Having downloaded the latest version last night I cannot get the sound card to calibrate. I've read the help file and checked threads and made the following adjustments:
sample rate to 44hz
increased the buffer to 128
made sure the levels are within 4db
but as soon as I click next there's an increase in the input volume followed by a big drop off (out) at the high end and I keep getting this message:

The sound card measurement varies by 59db between 20hz and 20kHz, this is much higher than in should be, the measurement may not be valid........

The measurement graph looks an absolute mess

Help please, what am I missing (go easy I'm a nooobie at this)

It's an Acer laptop with a realtek sound card, 3.5mm jack from headphones to speaker jacks.

Thank you
G.


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

Giraffe1300 said:


> It's an Acer laptop with a realtek sound card, 3.5mm jack from headphones to speaker jacks.


First, welcome to the Forum!

Not sure what you’re doing there, headphone output to speaker jacks? Those are both outputs. The loopback is supposed to be between the output and line input. :huh:

Regards,
Wayne


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## Giraffe1300 (Mar 22, 2015)

Thank you and DOH! great first post:duh:

Headphone to mic input.

G


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

Nope, line input not mic input. Hopefully your sound card can switch the input from mic to line.

Regards,
Wayne


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## Giraffe1300 (Mar 22, 2015)

Wayne, tried that and variations on drivers







but same result :-(. What else can I try? G.


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

What kind of cable are you using? Specifically, what connectors on each end?

Regards,
Wayne


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## Giraffe1300 (Mar 22, 2015)

QED 2m 3.5mm to 3.5mm stereo cable. G


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

Sounds like the right cable, and if you got the same results when you switched from headphone out to speaker jacks to the line in, then it’s not a cabling issue. Try posting a graph of your results, that can be telling.

Regards, 
Wayne


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## Giraffe1300 (Mar 22, 2015)

Yep, same result unfortunately. This is what it looks like: sweep at -20db, flatness +11.7Db to -42.9db.








Thanks for your help Wayne.

G.


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

That’s a graph of an in-room measurement. Did you have the mic plugged in during the calibration? What mic are you using anyway?

Regards, 
Wayne


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## Giraffe1300 (Mar 22, 2015)

This is trying to calibrate the sound card. The lead goes from the speaker line out to the mic line in as per your earlier recommendation. There's no sound from the laptop speakers and I've disabled the in built mic.

G.


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

Then it must be a setting with the sound card or operating systems’s recording/playback settings. If there is a monitor (i.e. that would let you hear the incoming signal as it is coming in) it needs to be turned off.

Regards,
Wayne


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

Also, we typically don’t find people using internal sound cards unless they’re using USB mics. Perhaps this is why, the configurations of internal sound cards can by “iffy” and possibly unable to be set up properly for REW use (e.g. the internal monitor I mentioned). 

There’s plenty of information in the Help files and elsewhere on this site (e.g. the REW Sound Card Database sticky thread) for a good number of hardware options that are proven to work with REW. It’s when people opt instead to forge their own path that they run into complications. 

That said, ultimately you might be able to simply forgo the sound card calibration. Even the ones that aren’t that great should be reasonably flat out to at least 10 kHz and down to about 30 Hz. Depending on your particular intentions for using REW, that might be good enough. :T

Regards,
Wayne


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## JohnM (Apr 11, 2006)

Worth attaching the .mdat file for your soundcard measurement for us to take a look at. Make sure that there aren't any audio effects active on the soundcard, you can check for them on the Enhancements tab of the Windows properties for the soundcard output.


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## Giraffe1300 (Mar 22, 2015)

Thank you, I'll investigate further. I was thinking that if it was okay I'd go with a USB mic. One thing I was looking forward to checking was how well I'd set up my sub..
G


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## Giraffe1300 (Mar 22, 2015)

Just a thought (having tried all variations in system settings), could there be a compatability issue with my Acer Aspire 5738 running Window Vista Home Premium 32bit with REW 5.1? G


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## JohnM (Apr 11, 2006)

Not very likely, no. Still worth posting an mdat file for us to look at, and screenshots of the Windows properties for your audio input and output.


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## Giraffe1300 (Mar 22, 2015)

John, here's the mdat file - default out and line in. I've tried all combinations and the results are almost the same. Set up picture to follow shortly. G.


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## JohnM (Apr 11, 2006)

There is an acoustic effect being applied to that signal (the type of thing that gets labelled 'Jazz club' and the like). If you click on Speakers and then Properties on the Windows Sound playback tab look for a tab called Enhancements and turn off all effects. There may also be some sound effects control amongst the icons in your system tray, bottom right of the screen.


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## Giraffe1300 (Mar 22, 2015)

John I've looked through all the tabs and settings and can't find any Eq being applied. G


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## JohnM (Apr 11, 2006)

Perhaps there is some application that was installed with the soundcard? I can't think of any other way to generate the response you are getting.


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## Giraffe1300 (Mar 22, 2015)

John, success! I decided to apply Eq, ran the calibration again and got a better result; I then took Eq off and got this result. Strange but much better. G


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