1. Introduction
1.5System Requirements
A computer is required for performing room measurement and analysis. Minimum required computer specifications are: Mac®
800 MHz (or faster) processor • 256 MB RAM •
• Mac OS X 10.5 or later. PC®
1 GHz (or faster) processor • 256 MB RAM •
• VGA with 1024 x 768 resolution (or higher) • Windows XP or Vista.
1.6 Acoustic Environments, Room Correction, and ERGO
1.6.1It’s not your speakers, it’s your room
Most studio monitors are created to be flat and precise, and to be used in listening rooms with optimized dimensions and acoustic treatment. However, most home or budget studios are placed in less than ideal acoustic environments. This means that the actual performance of your monitors is highly dependent on the acoustics of your listening room. In fact, the perception of your mix will change based on where you sit while monitoring and the speaker’s placement.
To put this into perspective, extensive measurements in different rooms show that even when a
In addition, it is obvious that even if the greatest of care is taken over tweaking the system with cables, interconnects, power stabilizers, etc., none of that will never compensate for 10 to 20 dB peaks and dips in the frequency response. It’s clear that the room is the weakest link in the chain. In principle, if you strengthen the weakest link, then the entire chain is improved. In other words, improve the overall quality of your artistic projects using ERGO.
1.6.2Room Correction so far
Today, most room correction is carried out based on a single measurement at the listening position. This is problematic because you are trying to solve problems in a 3 dimensional sound field by taking a 1 dimensional measurement. To accomplish this feat would require extraordinary acoustical skills and luck to reach the right conclusions based on this single measurement – so if this does work for you, you should head out to your local store and buy a lottery ticket immediately! Even taking a number of positions around the listening position and averaging them is not a good solution, as tests have shown that moving the microphone just 10 cm (4 in) relative to the listening position easily results in 20 to 40 dB deviations. So, unless you are a very skilled in acoustics, the chances of making a wrong decision are huge.
Another crucial decision is how to define on the ideal target response – logically, if you don’t know the target, it is impossible to get there. Instead of making measurements at the listening position, some systems measure the way the loudspeaker couples to the room (the acoustic impedance). In addition, such a power response measurement can correct the issues you have “globally” through the room. However, it will never perfectly solve the problems at the listening position.
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