# REW & UMIK-1 - 1st measurements



## mikewellington (Mar 10, 2013)

Hi. After a failed start a year and a half ago with this I am now in a new studio location and trying to address/correct issues with the new room. I took two measurements with my UMIK-1 through my NS10M studio monitors - one on the left and one on the right. 

It might be a bit premature but I thought I would post them here along with the .mdat file just now to hopefully get put in the right direction of working out where the problem areas are and what other measurement steps to take as well as finding out what sort of acoustic measures it looks like I am going to have to take to create the best mixing environment I can hope to achieve in the new room. 

I have been reading up a bit on http://ethanwiner.com about acoustic foam and building bass traps etc but figured I needed to measure the room first before going any further. I applied the 1/6 octave smoothing. Hopefully my graphs are displayed correctly. Thanks - Mike.

















View attachment NS10 Mixing Position 01 15-Oct 2014.mdat


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## Phillips (Aug 12, 2011)

Please read the following link. I am at work currently, can't download your mdat file.

http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/rew-forum/934-please-read-posting-graph.html


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## mikewellington (Mar 10, 2013)

Phillips said:


> Please read the following link. I am at work currently, can't download your mdat file.
> 
> http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/rew-forum/934-please-read-posting-graph.html




Typical - I had entered the 45dB/105dB range but obviously didn't hit "apply". Here we go:


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## Phillips (Aug 12, 2011)

Ok good, please also a combined measurement of both left and right speaker.


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## mikewellington (Mar 10, 2013)

Phillips said:


> Ok good, please also a combined measurement of both left and right speaker.


Hi. Thanks - here you go. I applied the 1/6 octave smoothing again. I have also included an updated .mdat file including the new measurement using both speakers.









View attachment NS10 Mixing Position 01 Updated 16 Oct 2014.mdat


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## mikewellington (Mar 10, 2013)

mikewellington said:


> Hi. Thanks - here you go. I applied the 1/6 octave smoothing again. I have also included an updated .mdat file including the new measurement using both speakers.
> 
> View attachment 69985
> 
> ...




Stupidly I just realised that I had left a filter on my NS10M from the previous location (using a KRK Ergo) I have now removed and measured again. Apologies if the previous posts wasted anybody's time. All measurements have 1/6 octave smoothing - new .mdat also attached. Thanks. M.

Left & Right:









Left:









Right:









.mdat:

View attachment NS10M - L and R - L - R - Oct 17.mdat


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## mikewellington (Mar 10, 2013)

mikewellington said:


> Stupidly I just realised that I had left a filter on my NS10M from the previous location (using a KRK Ergo) I have now removed and measured again. Apologies if the previous posts wasted anybody's time. All measurements have 1/6 octave smoothing - new .mdat also attached. Thanks. M.
> 
> Left & Right:
> 
> ...



**** Any thought's on my last post? Would really appreciate some feedback on these measurements and hopefully advice on what steps to take. Thanks very much. M.


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

Just for the record, the mic should be at the listening position and pointing at the speaker being measured (or straight ahead if measuring both), and used with a 0° calibration file.

If that’s what we’re seeing in your graphs, it looks like perhaps you didn’t have the mic perfectly centered between the two speakers when you took the L+R measurements. If that’s the case, the resulting comb filtering will account for the drastically-different response above 1 kHz. The left and right separately show very good response. :T

Regards, 
Wayne


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## JohnM (Apr 11, 2006)

There are very sharp resonances at 100 Hz and 137 Hz on both speakers, does the room have any treatment (or furnishings) in it?

Are you sure both speakers are wired with the same polarity?


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## mikewellington (Mar 10, 2013)

JohnM said:


> There are very sharp resonances at 100 Hz and 137 Hz on both speakers, does the room have any treatment (or furnishings) in it?
> 
> Are you sure both speakers are wired with the same polarity?


Hi. Thanks John and Wayne for your replies. No the room does not have any treatment as yet apart from thick curtains hung around the walls. The room itself has solid concrete walls and measures: 515cm long / 333cm wide / 240cm high. The room is carpeted with the door and a window located behind the NS10s (about 1 meter away). 

The room is filled with studio equipment with the desk/NS10s facing long ways, down the rectangular shape of the room. Apart from two synthesizers along the longer right hand side, the rest of the equipment is situated next to the desk and down the longer left hand side including a drum kit enclosed in a make-shift booth in the bottom left hand corner. I figured not having anything in the bottom right hand side would result in significantly different readings between the left and right.

So, I have remeasured again this time pointing the UMIK-1 directly at the individual left and right speaker measurements and centered for both. 1/6 octave smoothing again plus .mdat attached.

Let me know what you think. Cheers! M.

Left:









Right:









Left & Right:









.mdat

View attachment NS10 L - R - LR - Oct 19.mdat


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## jtalden (Mar 12, 2009)

Just a quick follow-up regarding Wayne's comment about the dip at 8k in the measurement of "Both".

Don't worry about that dip. As Wayne indicated, this is definitely caused by the mic being slightly off center. Out of curiosity, I proved that in this case by aligning the IRs of the L and R and then calculating the average. The correct chart of "both" is shown below. This is another a good example of why we recommend measuring one speaker at a time when looking at higher freqs. 









The response looks very good. The dips a 500 and 3k are the result of room reflections. They may improve with acoustic treatments at reflection points.


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## mikewellington (Mar 10, 2013)

jtalden said:


> Just a quick follow-up regarding Wayne's comment about the dip at 8k in the measurement of "Both".
> 
> Don't worry about that dip. As Wayne indicated, this is definitely caused by the mic being slightly off center. Out of curiosity, I proved that in this case by aligning the IRs of the L and R and then calculating the average. The correct chart of "both" is shown below. This is another a good example of why we recommend measuring one speaker at a time when looking at higher freqs.
> 
> ...


Hi there. Thanks very much for taking the time to look at this. So generally the problem areas seem to be the resonances at 100Hz & 137Hz and the dips at 500Hz and 3kHz? Would I be correct in saying that these are primarily the areas I should now look to treat acoustically or should I make more measurements before embarking further on that journey? Also are there any tips on positioning the UMIK-1 dead center when measuring both speakers? 

Thanks again for your help, much appreciated.

M.


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## jtalden (Mar 12, 2009)

Yes, you are correct.

I like to average several measurements around the listening position for use in the EQ filter determination, but good results can be obtained with the single measurement as well. 

Choose a house curve and EQ to that response. Don't get too aggressive in removing the dips as that may cause more issues that it solves. Hmm... since it is a studio maybe you should use a flat house curve? I don't really know as my only experience is with home music/theater situations.


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## mikewellington (Mar 10, 2013)

Hi - I wanted to upload some new measurements after a room reorganization. Looking to get some initial feedback to see if you think I've made any improvements on my previous measurements. I will study more closely as well but would really appreciate some feedback good or bad. Hope I remembered to post correctly. Thanks - M.

Left & Right









Left









Right









.mdat

View attachment NS10 L - R - LR - Dec 23.mdat


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## mikewellington (Mar 10, 2013)

Any thoughts/input on my latest readings above?


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

Hard to do a direct comparison since the new graphs are only scaled to 8.5 kHz, but I think the previous graphs were significantly better.

Regards, 
Wayne


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## mikewellington (Mar 10, 2013)

Wayne A. Pflughaupt said:


> Hard to do a direct comparison since the new graphs are only scaled to 8.5 kHz, but I think the previous graphs were significantly better.
> 
> Regards,
> Wayne


Hi Wayne. Thanks for your feedback. I've tried to do a comparison of both October (Blue) and December (Green). I applied 1/6 octave smoothing. I'm a bit confused how to make the comparison as the December reading appears to be louder but I guess it's the range in db of peaks and troughs I should be looking at? A few pointers of what to look at would be most helpful and perhaps areas that I should be concerned about. I tried to deal with low bass resonance by stacking thick insulation in each corner but that's about it so far.










mdat:

View attachment october december compare average.mdat


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