Do calibration files for measuring Mic's matter?

[Geert]

Question is, how long does a mic hold its calibration? I suspect that electret types may need periodic calibration, where with a dynamic type, you might get away with a longer cal interval.

My Behringer ECM8000 is almost 30 years old. It's been used all that time at music festivals (often outdoors) and in clubs. It has seen the worst conditions you can imagine. Nevertheless it's still accurate (I also have a calibrated iSEMcon microphone to compare with).

 

[egellings]

My question about a calibrated mic is what if it's sent for calibration and is found to be out of spec? You can't do much but replace the mic, since there are no internal adjustments to allow for calibration. You can't calibrate a mic; you just measure it and say "out of luck" if it fails the measurements. I have a voltmeter that I send out for cal once a year, and it has memory to hold cal constants. The cal company tweaks those constants in memory to bring an errant meter back into spec. Hit 'store' or, on an older meter I have, adjust trim pots and it's a done deal. That's my idea of calibration.

 

[egellings]

Cal files are good for mics if you can implement the corrections into the system using the mic.

 

[Geert]

My question about a calibrated mic is what if it's sent for calibration and is found to be out of spec?

You receive an updated calibration file. Even REW can use calibration files.

 

[Chromatischism]

Check out the REW betas here. There have been a massive amount of changes since version 5.19. The betas have always been stable for me too.

It's almost comical that it's only called 5.20 after all the changes.

 

[Pegwill]

Hi
With your meter being recalibrated, you may need to validate the previous results. For instance, you may have told a customer that his installation is safe based of the results from the meter when in fact once reviewed the results are now brought into question because the meter has gone out of calibration.

Yes, validating the results against another microphone obviously reduces the chances of a calibration error. I guess with a microphone the only replaceable part affecting calibration is the capsule providing of course that the cable terminations are all ok and the switch if any is working correctly.

So perhaps in the strictest terms if there is nothing to adjust the calibration with eg. no pot to adjust, therefore it is really a check to ensure it follows the design characteristics, those that do pass the quality control check, those that don’t are rejected.

Regards

William

 

[Pegwill]

Here is an interesting thread from YouTube regarding the UMIk-1

Regards

William