Frequency response testing methodology

[brianpowers27]

I just got the WT3 and the ECM8000 and I am ready to test! I found the room eq wizard sofware and this looks promising!

How do most people go about testing the raw frequency response of both woofers and tweeters? Are these tests done at close proximity...free space ...etc...

[Wolf]

I just got the WT3 and the ECM8000 and I am ready to test! I found the room eq wizard sofware and this looks promising!

How do most people go about testing the raw frequency response of both woofers and tweeters? Are these tests done at close proximity...free space ...etc...

The Behr does not work with the WT3 to test FR.

You need a whole other rig for testing FR. amp, mic pre with phantom power, full duplex soundcard, and a software program which isn't always free.
Later,
Wolf

[philiparcario]

I do my testing old school . i have a few bass mechanik cds a good sound meter and i play the cd's and measure with 3 distances .5 meter 1 meter and where i would sit in the room to listen . i measure with 3 settings on the amp i use for that test. in my computer room i measure with my furman sp20a amp at volume level 3, 6 and 10. i measure each speaker alone and the two playing together. the tone testers on my cd's give me about 30 freq . I would suggest 1 driver at a time at 3 distances if you use a mic. and use 3 sets of watts. low med high. this means 9 graphs for freq.

[brianpowers27]

I apologize for the confusion my wording may have caused. I have a m-audio firewire solo to function both as my sound card and my phantom power.

How do you feel confident that the room response doesn't become a big part of the measurements? Also, how do you measure off axis response accurately?

[dthomas]

I just got the WT3 and the ECM8000 and I am ready to test! I found the room eq wizard sofware and this looks promising!

How do most people go about testing the raw frequency response of both woofers and tweeters? Are these tests done at close proximity...free space ...etc...


Try the ARTA software... you can download it for free. The free version performs all the tests that the full version does it just won't allow you to save your data. You can use any screen capture freeware to do this then use spl trace to convert your measurements to .frd files.

Also the guy who wrote the software is very prompt about answering any questions you have. I like to test driver at 1M and speakers systems at about 2 to 3M. It also has a lot of nice features such as quasi-free space measurements in room which will add the calcuated low frequency response to your gate in room measurement. Learning curve is not very steep on this software in my opinion. I found it very intuitive.

http://www.fesb.hr/~mateljan/arta/

[wg_ski]

You either 1) measure your response in room, taking into account what the room does, 2) try to gate the room out (by measuring a short interval with little or no reflections), or 3) measure outside with the only reflections being the nearest building and the ground. I do (3). I measure outside at 2 meters with the mic at listening level with fiberglass batting on the ground between the cab and the mic. I also gate out anything beyond about 25 millseconds, which takes care of anything bouncing off the house. Software: Speaker Workshop. It took the better part of a year to get it working right, mostly user error.