Speaker sound quality question

[Oscar]

Shorting rings, Xmax, underhung design make for a better sounding speaker to me.

All of those items point towards ► low distortion performance

[jtrosky]

So far all of my tuning has been done via pink noise (EQ'ing each speaker via pink noise). Is there any benefit to doing sweeps now instead? Will they show me anything that can help me tune things any better at this point?

[Jdunk54nl]

There are a few benefits to sweeps with the biggest being able to see the phase of each speaker via a sweep. I also like sweeps because as it goes through the frequency, you can hear if any frequency is louder or quieter than the others. That way as the graph shows up, you can see if you actually heard that issue or if it is a mic issue that really can't be heard.


If you took enough averages, the FR graph for sweeps vs noise should be nearly identical shapes. The noise will be at a lower level though. I do like noise because it gets a very nice spatial average by being able to sweep the microphone around your head continuously. I also find noise to be quicker.

[Oscar]

So far all of my tuning has been done via pink noise (EQ'ing each speaker via pink noise). Is there any benefit to doing sweeps now instead? Will they show me anything that can help me tune things any better at this point?

I generally regard sweeps as being the better alternative, but that is just IMO. Always remember, you can't tune out distortion, even if you have a ruler flat frequency response curve, distortion is always hiding "underneath" the fundamental, or in the case of pink noise, underneath the noise.

[Holmz]

^Impressive^

Is that the Dayton Omnimic?
i could not find a lot about it... I assume it is windows based?

[GEM592]

Changing the shape of a sine wave changes, necessarily, the frequency spectrum of that signal. For example, a sine wave of a certain period corresponds to exactly one frequency, while a square wave of the same period is composed of that frequency and harmonics. Any other differently shaped wave of a given period contains components with different frequencies.

[GEM592]

DSP, tuning, front end setup, install, are never the ultimate bottleneck in any system. It always comes down to the speakers

[Oscar]

^Impressive^

Is that the Dayton Omnimic?
i could not find a lot about it... I assume it is windows based?

Yes. A cheap, but invaluable tool. You can DSP to death, but if the speakers suck, they suck.

DSP, tuning, front end setup, install, are never the ultimate bottleneck in any system. It always comes down to the speakers

Completely agree. Or cheap crossovers if they are part of the install.

[jtrosky]

I generally regard sweeps as being the better alternative, but that is just IMO. Always remember, you can't tune out distortion, even if you have a ruler flat frequency response curve, distortion is always hiding "underneath" the fundamental, or in the case of pink noise, underneath the noise.

Is the OmniMic needed to use that software or will that software work with other USB MICs like the UMIK1, etc? That software looks kind of cool - but not sure if it only works with the OmniMIC or not (or if you can even purchase it without purchasing the OmniMIC).

[Oscar]

The software allows you to select the mic calibration file, so I suspect that you might be able to use other mic's.