UMIK-1 and REW outdoor ground plane setup

Have a listen and try things... The downward tilt in the highs could be useful, but there's a good chance that it is not needed because most listeners will not be in the sweet spot, but scattered around where the highs allready start to soften... So leaving it a bit hot on axis could be better for most listeners.

Try to measure where the ears will be, and measure in various positions to understand how it sounds around.

Make it sound how you like it best for your choice of music... Just verify that it sounds cool beside measuring good....

Cool thanks again Jo bg. Ah yeh that makes sense with the highs and off axis. I will have another play around, and yeh of course has to actually sound good not just look good on a graph.

Ahh nice cheers JohnnyB! Thats really good to know, i wouldnt of had a clue by ear how they normally set it so needed something like that to give me a rough idea. Cheers man.

Edited by Jack1991 - 06 September 2022 at 7:49pm

cobrasneverdie wrote:

There is some software that can import rew eq data, it can be exported and loaded into peace eq i believe. This should make it a bit easier to try different curves and see how different targets sound without entering everything manually.

VituixCAD is what you want for that:
https://kimmosaunisto.net/

There's even a guide for making measurements with REW:
https://kimmosaunisto.net/Software/VituixCAD/VituixCAD_Measurement_REW.pdf

Unfortunately, it comes with this warning near the top:

Note! Single channel measurement systems such as USB microphones with latency variations by default are not recommended for speaker engineering due to timing and phase variations and normalizations. REW should not be used with single channel connection or mode for far field measurements because timing is normalized by the program. Single channel connection and mode is acceptable for near field measurements only.

Proper dual-channel FFT measurements with loopback are the only way to keep a timing reference, giving you the absolute and relative acoustic centre distance offsets - and acoustic phase response - in the measured impulse response.

You can enable the 'acoustic timing reference' function in REW to try and work around this, but the phase data isn't 'true'. To me, the money you'd spend ona UMIK-1 is almost always better spent on even a cheap XLR mic and a phantom-capable USB interface.

There are currently perfectly serviceable XLR measurement microphone options for <£50 from brands such as Behringer, Red5, SubZero, and Omnitronic, all using the same capsules. If you can stretch to £65, the SonarWorks XREF20 variant even comes with a per-mic frequency calibration curve.

For the interface, you just need one XLR input with phantom power and a 1/4" TRS jack input for the loopback. That gives you budget options such as the M-Audio M-Track Solo for just £37 at Thomann https://www.thomann.de/gb/m_audio_m_track_solo.htm or the Behringer UMC202HD at ~£50. The UMC202HD has some distortion issues when the outputs or inputs are maxed out, but that will not be a problem for most home or DIY measurement use cases. There's a comprehensive review with measurements of this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YquAMkHJYjA

Plenty other options in the <£65 bracket if you want higher sample rate capability:
https://www.thomann.de/gb/swissonic_ua_2x2.htm
https://www.thomann.de/gb/presonus_audiobox_ione.htm
https://www.thomann.de/gb/mackie_onyx_artist_1.2.htm

But if you can stretch again, the Steinberg UR12 or Focusrite Scarlett Solo are a cut above and still come under £100 each.

Add a 15-metre XLR cable and a 1-metre TRS balanced 1/4" jack, plus whatever output adapter you need to get signal to your amp - job done.

Edited by toastyghost - 07 October 2022 at 9:44am