In this article, Mike Thornton shows how to use the free Room EQ Wizard software to analyse your speakers and room and then be able to EQ your monitoring chain.

Ever since DAD released the SPQ card for their AX32 and then with the version for the Avid MTRX and now with the smaller version built into the MTRX Studio, users need to be able to analyse their speakers and room, and somehow transfer the results onto the SPQ card using the DADman software.

If you want an overview of the process showing how this can be achieved using the free Room EQ Wizard software, a low-cost USB measurement mic, and most importantly, how to transfer the measurements to the SPQ card then check out our article How To Set Up The DAD/Avid SPQ Card UsIng The Free Room EQ Wizard.

If you want a detailed tutorial on how to download, install and set up the free Room EQ Wizard, which together with a UMIK-1 USB measurement mic from miniDSP then check out our article How To Set Up Room EQ Wizard To EQ Your Monitoring System.

In this article, we will show you how to use the free Room EQ Wizard software to analyse your speakers and room and then be able to EQ your monitoring chain.

How To Analyse Your Room And Speakers Using Room EQ Wizard

In this free video tutorial, Mike Thornton shows you how to use the free Room EQ Wizard software to analyse your speakers and room ready to be able to create EQ Filter settings and transfer them onto the SPQ card using the DADman software.

Taking Measurements

Click on the Measure button and the Make A Measurement window will open. If you are wondering why this window doesn’t look like what you have, the design of this window has changed from v5.19 to V5.20. 

If you haven’t got v5.20 then I recommend that you stop, go to the appropriate article on Production Expert and find out how to get the latest version, install and set it up and then come back to this video.

Where To Place the Measurement Microphone

Before we go any further I want to talk about where the measurement microphone should go. You need to take a series of measurements each one with the mic in a slightly different place. Once we have completed the measurements we will produce an average of them all and it is that curve that we will use to set up the EQ filters.

Place your chair where you would normally sit and set the microphone where your left ear would be. This is position 1. Because of room nodes and also path differences due to reflections, it is important to take a series of measurements around the listening position. I chose to take 7 measurements for each speaker, at slightly different positions around my listening position, some slightly higher others slightly lower, some closer and some further away. You can do more measurements and you should determine the exact positions for the microphone before you start measuring properly so that you are consistent. 

Label The Tests And Finish The Set Up

The first thing we want to do is to name the set of tests, in this case, Front Centre as that is the speaker I am measuring. Click on the Add number and get by clicking here that the first number is 1.

Further down set the range of the sweep test to start at 10Hz and finish at 20kHz.

For everything else, the default settings should be OK. Then to double-check all is well click on the Check Levels buttons and you should get a blast of pink noise for 3 seconds, the key thing here is to check that REW reports the level is OK, the actual numbers are less important.

Start The Measurements

Click on the Start button and REW will generate a Sweep tone sequence. The blip of a higher frequency, before the main sweep, is a timing signal so that REW can synchronise the generator and measuring sides for an accurate measurement.

Once the sweep has finished you will get the main window with the results of the first sweep. Don’t worry if it looks something like this, all will become clearer later on.

Click the Measure button again to open the measurement page, move the microphone to the next position and click the start button. Notice that the measurement name increments up a number so that you can identify which measurement is which so it is worth being consistent and following the same sequence of microphone positions.

The great thing is that you can then use these measurement files to look at all kinds of things, there should be no need to repeat the measurement process.

You may notice that I have chosen not to analyse the sub. This is because all my speakers are full range, I only use my sub as an LFE channel and feel that there is little point in eqing it. I will, of course, calibrate it later.

Repeat for each of your measuring positions until you have built up a set of measurements.

Create An Average Response

Once you have a full set of measurements for one speaker, click on the Average The Responses button here and you will see that we get one more trace which is the average of all the readings you have made for that speaker, in my case Front Centre.

Uncheck the individual measurements until you are left with just the average trace.

Now from the File menu select Save All Measurements and label the file with the appropriate speaker.

You may well be able to remove that set of measurements and start again, but to be safe I chose to close Room EQ Wizard and then reopen it as a blank page and repeat the process. Either way, you end up with a set of REW measurement files, one for each speaker.

What’s Next?

The next stage is to learn how to create EQ Filter settings and transfer them to the DAD/Avid SPQ card then please check out our article How To Set The EQ Filters And Transfer Them To An Avid/DAD SPQ Card.