[highfigh]

I was wondering how people set up their speakers when they do response tests, using RTA software.

I have seen people write about leaving them in their normal positions, putting them in a place without much reverberation, on a sheet of plywood and laying on their side, on a large expanse of hard surface.

Also, from what distance(s) are they measured?

Do we have any consensus on this?

 

[tuxedocivic]

Depends what you're trying to learn. Most people need in room measurements for bass eq and General awareness.

 

[Jay1]

I was wondering how people set up their speakers when they do response tests, using RTA software.

I have seen people write about leaving them in their normal positions, putting them in a place without much reverberation, on a sheet of plywood and laying on their side, on a large expanse of hard surface.

Also, from what distance(s) are they measured?

Do we have any consensus on this?

The outdoors on the ground stuff is called ground-plane measurements. It is much harder to do for most people due to the amount of space needed, and the low noise environment required.

Indoors would require near-field/far-field blended measurements. You still want the speaker pulled out into the middle of a room with minimal reflections in order to get your far-field gate as low as possible. The gated far-field measurements remove the room reflections, which also removes low frequency info. A near-field measurement is very close to the driver which removes the room, but it makes info above several hundred hz inaccurate. There's free software available to blend the measurements.

For far-field you should measure at twice the baffle width(minimum) in order to include baffle effects in the measurement. For near-field it is dependent on driver size, 0.10 times the effective radiating radius of the driver (that's actual woofer cone not frame OD). The upper limit of the measurement would be 4311/radiating diameter (inches).

 

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Depends what you're trying to learn. Most people need in room measurements for bass eq and General awareness.

+1. Outdoor measurements are useful when you need to create a half-space anechoic chart and don't happen to have an anechoic chamber handy. In-room is used to find the best speaker locations, identify and fix room response issues and EQ the system.