OP
- Thread Starter
- #21
Yeah, while I suppose I need to read the books quoted above to avoid repeating any common knowledge or mistakes, it seems that there isn’t a fully understood single best way to calibrate to a small room where small changes (like a solid chair present vs a more acoustically transparent one, vs none at all, vs occupied and unoccupied) might have a large impact on the result.The OP asked about a 'relatively near field' arrangement, whatever that is in his case. The chair and body will still surely have an impact wherever the sounds come from. In fact one thing not mentioned is the type of chair. Leather chairs can reflect for example. My chair is a cloth covered type.
The main point still stands - be consistent with your measurement set up using them as a guide, not an exact solution.
But I don’t know exactly what I’m talking about because I don’t know the deep technical details of these measurements and whether they’re able to ignore reflections from nearby surfaces somehow, as I think (?) @watchnerd is implying.
If these measurements will give the same results no matter what reflective surfaces may be near, as long as the mic is pointed at the speaker (e.g. even if the mic is in a acoustically reflective box open on one end, vs in a perfect anechoic chamber), then that’s really cool but completely opposite of how I had thought in-room measurements worked.
If on the other hand reflections do influence the room measurements, then e.g. a tall leather chair would almost certainly influence the measurements, right? (Fortunately my chair is mostly a breathable mesh fabric, so I don’t think this will be a big issue for me, but the topic in general is interesting.)