Sweet Room

[Soniclife]

Where did you guys buy this UMIK-1 microphone? 

I bought mine from the minidsp site.

[PeterS]

I have an old version of XTZ Room Analyzer that came in handy to measure room modes. XTZ found one at 38 Hz and proposed 1 correction. I applied that in Sweet Room; repeated the measurement and found another small one at a lower frequency which I also corrected in Sweet Room. After that XTZ didn't find any room modes anymore.

Then I played the last Katie Melua live album which has a repetitive low frequency tone that made the album unplayable over my speakers. Listening through an HD800 headset, which doesn't have a great bass response, is the only way I could listen to it. No more so now. Sweet Room made the album completely enjoyable!!

N.B. I also have SAM for my loudspeakers but I hear no difference with or without SAM.

[markush]

That is great to hear? How does bass performance compare to your used perception on other songs?

[tategoi]

Where did you guys buy this UMIK-1 microphone? 

I bought mine from the minidsp site.

Thanks. Ordered. Arriving tomorrow.

[Ron McKernan]

Success Story Part 2

After I successfully installed firmware 13.2.0 - DOS 2.2.6 (see the corresponding thread), I went to Sweet Room. In my listening room there are horrible room nodes that I had managed well with Dirac so far. But only for streams and not for my record player.

So I unpacked my old XTZ equipment (software plus soundcard plus microphone) and measured my room: Three massive room nodes at 46, 71 and 86 Hz. The gain at 46 Hz was measured with -24dB. This could not really be true? Anyway, I entered the corresponding values in the Sweet Room text file, but in the "Alternate" version I halved the gains. Listening. Actually I need the -24 dB to avoid the cruel booming, -12dB was not enough. I reduced the gains a little bit and set Altenate completely to "0", finally the comparison with Dirac should follow.

I have to say that I only let Dirac Live work on frequencies below 250 Hz. So I looked for a bass-heavy piece and switched between Dirac - Sweet Room - no intervention. As always, no intervention was cruel, but Dirac and Sweet Room had the same effect: the booming was gone, the overall influence on the sound quality was small.

Dirac can do much more than to suppress room nodes, but I didn't try that any further. For my purpose, Sweet Room is really a good solution. Finally, vinyl without the whole room booming!

[PeppaPig]

Do you mind to show some detail how you do this?

Like what you measured in the software for a frequency and what you entered into the text file for that frequency, and the Q value. I am still don’t quite get how to do it. Do you mind to do a step by step detial?

[Soniclife]

Do you mind to show some detail how you do this?

Like what you measured in the software for a frequency and what you entered into the text file for that frequency, and the Q value. I am still don’t quite get how to do it. Do you mind to do a step by step detial?

Do you have a calibrated mic, and some software to analyse your room?  Without these you are reduced to guessing, and few people could do this, I expect some seasoned pro sound guys could have a crack, but the rest of us no chance. 

The default mic recommendation these days is the minidsp UMIK-1, and the normal software is REW, which is free.  REW has quite the learning curve, there a lot of guides on the net, and the idiots guides felt very advanced to me when I first started, however if you keep at it you really learn things about sound, and how you react to it, it's a massive education in HIFI.

[Soniclife]

I have a windows PowerShell script that takes the left and right text filters from REW and produces the EQ.txt file required, it needs a bit more testing before I make it public.

If someone else who is familiar with windows scripts want's to test it, PM me and I'll share it.

[Soniclife]

I recommend the moving mic method for correction, I find it simpler, quicker, and more trustworthy than multiple sweeps, it's illustrated in the following video.  The end of the video is about applying then in a minidsp, that's not relevant to us.

The settings you need to use in REW are skimmed over in the video, they are detailed at the following link.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum...elp.12641/

[Ron McKernan]

Do you mind to show some detail how you do this?

Like what you measured in the software for a frequency and what you entered into the text file for that frequency, and the Q value. I am still don’t quite get how to do it. Do you mind to do a step by step detial?

Here you see a screen shot (sorry, I do not know how to shrink the picture) of my xtz measurement result. I just transferred the values (f, Q, G) from the table on the right hand side to the Sweet Room text file (same for left and right speaker). Actually I lowered the first Gain-value somewhat (to -20dB), since it seemed to me a bit too extreme. Unfortunately there is no easy way to experiment with different values, but this setup works for me quite well. If I get some leisure time I will probably test some alternative settings.

BTW: "alternative setting". In the text file you can use the "alternative" lines for a second setting. With your remote device you can than switch between these two settings. However, in this case you do not have the opportunity to switch Sweet Room off. To do this, you have to leave the "alternative settings" as they are (all zero). (But maybe someone knows better?)

I bought my XTZ equipment some years ago, but I just checked that it is still available in their store (https://www.xtzsound.eu/store). It costs € 195 and contains the Room Analyzer Pro 2 software, a calibrated microphone, USB microphone amplifier (external soundcacrd) , all neccessary cables (long enough), a microphone stand and it comes in a nice aluminum transport case. I do not know how XTZ Room Analyzer compares against REW, but since I was familiar with XTZ, I just used this.