In this article, Mike Thornton shows how to download, install and set up the free Room EQ Wizard software in conjunction with a UMIK-1 USB measurement mic from miniDSP for $79, ready to be able to analyse your speakers and room, to be able to EQ your monitoring chain.

Although this article is focused on setting up the EQ for the Avid/DAD SPQ card used in the DA AX 32, Avid MTRX and Avid MTRX Studio, everything we share in this article is transferable to analysing speakers in rooms for any system.

How To Set Up The DAD/Avid SPQ Card UsIng The Free Room EQ Wizard

In our introduction article, How To Set Up The DAD/Avid SPQ Card UsIng The Free Room EQ Wizard, we looked at what the SPQ card can do and learned that the key difference between the optional card that can be fitted in the DAD AX32 or the Avid MTRX compared to the built-in card in the Avid MTRX Studio is the MTRX Studio version has fewer filters and reduced delay for time alignment. That said with 16 channels and even with 16 filters per channel, you won’t run out of filters, which means you can configure up to a 9.1.6 system, with 16 filters on every channel and be OK.

The challenge with any version of an SPQ card is that unlike systems such as Sonarworks, Dirac-Live/miniDSP, JBL Intonato, Trinnov, or Genelec’s GLM the process on the SPQ card is not automatic.

The SPQ card requires that you use a 3rd party application and then somehow translating those measurements manually to create a corresponding EQ curve using the DADman software.

We looked at a range of options and chose to focus on the free application Room EQ Wizard, which together with a UMIK-1 USB measurement mic from miniDSP for $79 provides a cost-effective solution and is the one we are going to use to provide what we believe is the first guide to measuring and setting up an SPQ card.

I was fortunate that I already own a UMIK-1 USB mic from when I bought my miniDSP Dirac Live 5.1 system. But as I explained in my article on the MTRX Studio I chose to replace my HD Omni/ Dirac Live system with the Avid MTRX Studio, as part of my Dolby Atmos Upgrade.

If you don’t own a UMIK-1 USB mic then you could use a low-cost measurement mic like the Behringer ECM8000 but you will need an audio interface with a mic input with phantom power and even then it won’t be calibrated so my advice is to get the miniDSP USB mic, which costs $79 and then make sure that you download and install the calibration files and you are good to go.

How To Set Up Room EQ Wizard To EQ Your Monitoring System Tutorial

In this free video tutorial, Mike Thornton shows how to download, install and setup the free Room EQ Wizard software in conjunction with a UMIK-1 USB measurement mic from miniDSP, ready to be able to analyse your speakers and room, to be able to EQ your monitoring chain.

Download And Install Room EQ Wizard (REW)

The first thing to do is to download the free Room EQ Wizard software. When you search for REW, you will be taken to the main home page Room EQ Wizard. However, what you may miss in the small print is that the last update here is V5.19, last revised on 29th August 2018. However, all is not lost the next sentence explains that beta versions are now available from AR Nirvana and help is available in their dedicated REW Support Forum.

I strongly recommend this is where you go to get the latest version, which at the time of writing is V5.20 RC12.

You will have to register with AR Nirvana before you can download the software, but once your membership has been approved then you will be able to download the appropriate version for your computer platform including macOS, Windows 32-bit, Windows 64-bit, or Linux.

Before you start to install Room EQ Wizard, I recommend that you have the UMIK-1 USB mic plugged into your computer and that you have downloaded the calibration files. This is because the installer is able to recognise the USB mic and then will ask for the calibration file.

You get the calibration files from the UMIK-1 USB mic page on the miniDSP website. The mic has a label near the bottom and that is what you enter into the appropriate boxes on the page.

You will get 2 different files. One is for when you point the mic at the sound source and the other is when the sound source is at 90 degs to the axis of the microphone. I chose to use the 90 deg file so I did not need to keep pointing the mic at each of the speakers when it came to the measurement stage.

Now you have the appropriate installer, the mic and the calibration files you are ready to set up and install Room EQ Wizard.

Install Room EQ Wizard (REW)

When you install the software, as well as the usual windows about where to install the software, agree to the license, REW will ask you how much memory to allocate to the app, just to be safe I went with one up from the default of 1GB and went for 1.5GB.

Next, if the USB mic is connected the installer will ask if you want to use it for measurements, click yes. Then you will be asked for the calibration file. Navigate your way to where the calibration files you downloaded earlier are and select the one you want to use, I recommend using the 90 deg file. Once it is loaded then you can click on the close button on the Calibration data window and you are ready to get started.

Setting Preferences In REW

Once you are done with the installation process you will get a blank window, with a toolbar of icons across the top. Click on the Preferences icon and the Room EQ Wizard Preferences window will open on the Soundcard tab…

You will see that the Input side is already set to use the UMIK-1 USB measurement mic because I had it plugged in before I started the installation process. on macOS systems, the output side defaults to the default device as set in the Sound tab of the macOS System Preferences.

This works for me as I chose to run REW on my laptop rather than trying to run it on my studio computer and figure out how to route the audio around my monitoring. In fact, I have an audio cable from my laptop into an analogue input of my MTRX Studio. I created a simple Dolby Atmos test session and through that, I am able to route the audio from my laptop into each speaker output, one by one with hard routing, and not using any panning.

Whilst we are in REW Preferences, the Cal Files tab is where you can add the Calibration files if you didn’t have the USB measurement mic plugged in or the calibration files ready when you installed Room EQ Wizard.

Once you have set up the software, microphone and routing, the next stage is setting a reference level for the measurements. Note that you will need to repeat this for each individual speaker in your particular system.

Set Reference Level

The first thing we need to do is set up a reference level. This is not necessarily the reference level for your system but should be close to it so you are checking the speaker at the optimum sound pressure level. For my system I chose 78dBSPL.

To do this we need to click on the SPL Meter button to open the SPL Meter and the Generator so that we can generator PInk noise at the same level for the measurements.

Select the Pink Random noise and select the Speaker Cal option. Leve the output set to the default of -12dBFS and press the play button. 

Now adjust the level going to the speaker, which may be a volume control on the front of an amp or the level control on the rear of an active speaker, until the SPL Meter hits your target level within 1dB. 

Once that is done, you can hit the stop button and close the SPL Meter and Generator windows. Now we are ready to undertake the measurements.

Now we are ready to analyse the speakers and how they interact with the room they are in to determine the issues that can be resolved using EQ. Go to the article How To Analyse Your Room And Speakers Using Room EQ Wizard to learn how to do this.