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Cellphone SPL meter


wuzzzer

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I had my wife search for an SPL meter app on her phone and she found one that I used today. I wanted to balance my speakers and sub and when I ran the app it measured my sub lower than my speakers. I bumped the sub output slightly to balance it out and after doing it I listened to some music and it sounds much better. I had adjusted everything by ear before. The meter didn't have a 'weighting' adjustment but it did have a slow/medium/fast adjustment. I put it to slow when I measured.

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Wuzzer, Michael Colter has one on his phone that does way more than a Db meter, it actually shows kind of like a graph from low freq to high constantly moving up and down, individual bars. I don't know what kind of phone he has or what it's called but it was not expensive at all. Send him a message and ask I am sure you would love it.

He showed it to me but I couldn't get it because I am the last person left on earth without a phone.

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According to the web page use the internal ipod microphone with a "grain of salt", they try to generally calibrate the software to what an average iphone microphone responds to. They have upgraded hardware avalaible on their web page which allows you to calibrate an external microphone. But for the $5 spent it's a fun tool to use. I tuned my system with my calibrated SPL meter, then compared that to what I got on the RTA software, so gave me what to aim for in speaker balance.

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The application is called "RTA", an iphone app. I use it and it does provide a useable real time frequency vs db display.

That's what it looks like, very cool, how accurate, I have no clue?

Is there a way to plug in a external mic to a phone ?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Acoustic_weighting_curves_(1).svg

If you are balancing subs with the rest of the system, The best weighting is *no* weighting.

I used to think that "C" weighting was flat ..... but, of course, it would not be called "weighting" if it wasn't "weighting" (I hope).

How do I get "no weighting?" I'd like to see what Audyssey is really doing in my room from the main listening position. I'm considering setting up Room EQ Wizard to find out --- do they have a way to measure without any weighting at all?

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You can see the iphone microphone response, the RTA pro does it best to calibrate the low frequencies, but with reduced signal it can only do so good.

Yes, go to http://www.studiosixdigital.com/iaudiointerface2/, this is the external adapter for a microphone. It is a bit pricey at $400, costing a bit more than what a PC based software and hardware system for a laptop would cost. But you get the functionality of the portability of using your iphone instead of have to lug around a laptop. It is being released this month, I would wait and see if the price comes down in the coming months.

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