I made line graphs with REW for the first time. Can I get a sanity check and/or some guidance on speaker choice or EQ settings for the room?

[Jprime84]

Lurked here for a bit and have used the vast knowledge and resources here on some recent purchases (although thats not what I have attempted to test here). Taking a stab at some first hand learning, and hoping someone can help shed light on what I have so far.

Setup

• Home Office - large rug, curtains, bookshelves
• Near-field speaker setup - at my desk
• A/B comparing a Sony SS-B1000 (L) that I have had forever and my Edifier R1280T (R)
• Realtek onboard (calibrated in REW) controller line out to Schiit Magni 3
  • R straight to Edifier
  • L to Schiit Gjallarhorn and then Sony
• Tested one at a time
• Cheap DSLR foot mounted Microphone to line in (not calibrated, and FAR from sufficient for precision I know. I tried to estimate rough calibration based on typical office room levels I read online. Looking to learn the basics before investing more) tripod mounted

In both cases, I aimed the microphone at the tweeter height and positioned it roughly in my seating position. After checking levels following REWs guidance, I took a measurement at -12.80 dBV sweeps at 96kHz sampling. I did 8 repetitions at 512k length. Flat EQ, and the charts below are straight out of REW (I barely understand what I am looking at, and there are more charts that it gives me but lets start here)

Here is the Sony (updated with mic filter disabled) (Note, possibly corrected data in my reply farther down)

Here is the Edifier (updated with mic filter disabled)

Here are my asks

• Is this "data" even high-level useful to compare the two?
• What do you see in this data between the two speakers?
• How do I convert this data into EQ settings for each speaker?
• What non crappy speaker would you recommend with the Gjallarhorn as a near field casual listening setup at my desk?

Thanks all


Edit: realized the mic (Saramonic SR-M3) had a low filter enabled on it so I retested with that disabled

 

[staticV3]

Hi @Jprime84! Welcome to ASR.

It looks like something went wrong with the measurements.

A normal in-room response should show about 5dB drop from 100Hz to 20kHz. Yours drop by like 30dB.

What non crappy speaker would you recommend with the Gjallarhorn as a near field casual listening setup at my desk?

The Neumi Silk 4 looks nice: https://www.erinsaudiocorner.com/loudspeakers/neumi_silk4/

 

[kemmler3D]

Cheap DSLR foot mounted Microphone to line in

I think this might be problematic. As @staticV3 noted, the response drops way more than is expected for the setup you described. Do the speakers sound super muffled to you? Because that's what the graphs seem to show.

It's a lot easier to do this type of thing with a mic that is designed for the job. I've successfully used Behringer ECM8000 and UMIK-1. With the ECM you'll need an interface, with the UMIK it's USB plug and play.

 

[Daverz]

Either your mic does not have a flat response -- is there reason to expect it to? -- or you are accidently using your computer's built-in mic, a mistake I've made several times myself.

 

[Jprime84]

Either your mic does not have a flat response -- is there reason to expect it to? -- or you are accidently using your computer's built-in mic, a mistake I've made several times myself.

Desktop PC so no built in mic. I can totally believe that the mic in question is just not suitable to the job.

Hi @Jprime84! Welcome to ASR.

It looks like something went wrong with the measurements.

A normal in-room response should show about 5dB drop from 100Hz to 20kHz. Yours drop by like 30dB.


The Neumi Silk 4 looks nice: https://www.erinsaudiocorner.com/loudspeakers/neumi_silk4/

Would the Dayton Audio EMM-6 work? I am assuming the mic is doing something. I had it silent as I could for the sweeps and mic on a tripod. Could it be that the mic itself is poorer at picking up the higher range? It does have a +10db gain boost switch on it, but I had it off.

I think this might be problematic. As @staticV3 noted, the response drops way more than is expected for the setup you described. Do the speakers sound super muffled to you? Because that's what the graphs seem to show.

It's a lot easier to do this type of thing with a mic that is designed for the job. I've successfully used Behringer ECM8000 and UMIK-1. With the ECM you'll need an interface, with the UMIK it's USB plug and play.

Speakers aren't muffled at all. If anything the Sonys biggest issue is being overly tinny. The sweeps themselves sounded presumably normal "ooooooouuuuuueeeewhip!" The "check levels" step passed at like 83db. If my diy calibration was super off could that cause this?

 

[Jprime84]

Hi @Jprime84! Welcome to ASR.

It looks like something went wrong with the measurements.

A normal in-room response should show about 5dB drop from 100Hz to 20kHz. Yours drop by like 30dB.


The Neumi Silk 4 looks nice: https://www.erinsaudiocorner.com/loudspeakers/neumi_silk4/

So I tried another few runs on the Sony SS-B1000 with the mic filter toggled the other way on the device. I did like 6 measurements and had it average them. Seems flatter?

Edit: replaced image because I still had my headphones EQ set - oops!

 

[kemmler3D]

This looks a lot more plausible / flatter for sure.

A few points to consider here:

It sounds like your speakers are in two different spots (you mentioned L for one and R for the other) - this certainly affects the measurements. If you want to compare two speakers, they need to be at the exact same spot, so does the mic.

Because you are recording in-room, you may want to try using gated measurements to get a better view of the high frequencies. Long story short this eliminates reflections (sound bouncing off walls) from the measurement to some extent.

With speakers, EQ is mostly used to correct low frequencies... as far as that goes it looks like you have peaks at 95hz and 150hz (maybe around 280 too) that you could pull back with EQ.

To your questions in the original posting... the amp only has 10-15 watts so I hope you really don't want to listen super loud. At 1m you can get something like 100-103dB from the Edifier DBR62 which is a go-to bookshelf recommendation around here... but that's at full power. If you have big peaks or bass-heavy music and you want to turn it up, I'd expect clipping and general running-out-of-power problems.

 

[HarmonicTHD]

So I tried another few runs on the Sony SS-B1000 with the mic filter toggled the other way on the device. I did like 6 measurements and had it average them. Seems flatter?

View attachment 331056

Edit: replaced image because I still had my headphones EQ set - oops!

I‘d get a UMIK1. You are wasting your time as you will never really know if the deviation comes from the speaker / room or the actual mic. And therefore will not really know to what to adjust. It’s ok to familiarize yourself with REW but not to EQ.

Near field with half way decent speakers (I haven’t looked up yours) should result in quite a flat curve. BTW: apply some smoothing to your results with REW. For example PSY.

Many cheap mics roll off considerably with high frequency.