Calibrating Your Audio With an SPL Meter

[SPIDERone]

Thank you!
Last question -- I have 3 subwoofers. 2 Front L/R and 1 Rear center. How would I calibrate the levels with this? Would I calibrate them one-by-one to 63DB (when the speakers are 60DB?), It seems like that might give me much more than I'm wanting/needing. Would I calibrate it with them all "on" until it reaches 63 DB? (the problem there is, what do I set each level at?)

Since I only have 1 SW Volume on the receiver, I'd need to control each sub beyond that by using the gain. I'm not sure if I should match the gain on each (ie: 50%) or how to tell which should be at 50% and which should be at 30% (for example).

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by SPIDERone

Thank you!
Last question -- I have 3 subwoofers. 2 Front L/R and 1 Rear center. How would I calibrate the levels with this? Would I calibrate them one-by-one to 63DB (when the speakers are 60DB?), It seems like that might give me much more than I'm wanting/needing. Would I calibrate it with them all "on" until it reaches 63 DB? (the problem there is, what do I set each level at?)

Since I only have 1 SW Volume on the receiver, I'd need to control each sub beyond that by using the gain. I'm not sure if I should match the gain on each (ie: 50%) or how to tell which should be at 50% and which should be at 30% (for example).

If they are all identical subwoofers, start off with the same gain setting on each knob.

Since all your subs are using the same AVR pre-out, I would start keeping that trim at about -5 to -8.

Then you want to level match them. The COMBINED SPL will need to be 63dB in your case. So you want to set each one of them, one at a time (while turning off the other 2) to be likely somewhere around 58 or 59dB each. They should hopefully sum up to your target of 63dB once they are all playing.

Ideally you have them placed/located in locations where they gain levels are close enough to each other where you don' tneed to make drastic changes to one of the subs (for example, one being 3/4 to max, the other being 1/4 from min.).

[SPIDERone]

Originally Posted by pbz06

If they are all identical subwoofers, start off with the same gain setting on each knob.

Since all your subs are using the same AVR pre-out, I would start keeping that trim at about -5 to -8.

Then you want to level match them. The COMBINED SPL will need to be 63dB in your case. So you want to set each one of them, one at a time (while turning off the other 2) to be likely somewhere around 58 or 59dB each. They should hopefully sum up to your target of 63dB once they are all playing.

Ideally you have them placed/located in locations where they gain levels are close enough to each other where you don' tneed to make drastic changes to one of the subs (for example, one being 3/4 to max, the other being 1/4 from min.).

Excellent, thank you for all of the help!

SPL came in, but it's a digital one -- has a C level and SLOW, which is great, but it seems to jump around a lot. Testing the tones, it will jump from 68 to 68.7 to 68.3 to 69.1 to 69.5 to 68.4, etc..
This makes it a little harder to lock it in to a specific number. Any suggestions/tips (if you use a digital SPL?)

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by SPIDERone

Excellent, thank you for all of the help!

SPL came in, but it's a digital one -- has a C level and SLOW, which is great, but it seems to jump around a lot. Testing the tones, it will jump from 68 to 68.7 to 68.3 to 69.1 to 69.5 to 68.4, etc..
This makes it a little harder to lock it in to a specific number. Any suggestions/tips (if you use a digital SPL?)

That's the way it is because frequencies aren't all perfectly flat at the exact same dB. Pink noise is a burst of all the frequencies at the same time. You sort of have to just try to manually see which number is shows more/longer than the rest. The fluctuations should be within .5-1dB ish.

[SPIDERone]

Originally Posted by pbz06

That's the way it is because frequencies aren't all perfectly flat at the exact same dB. Pink noise is a burst of all the frequencies at the same time. You sort of have to just try to manually see which number is shows more/longer than the rest. The fluctuations should be within .5-1dB ish.

Perfect, and one last question (I hope!)

All 3 subs are the same (400w). I see some suggesting to "gain match" (IE: set all to 50% on each sub, which might mean 70db, 85db and 79db in the listening position) and others saying to level match (ie: all are 80db at the listening position, which might make them 30% gain, 50% gain and 35% gain). Any thoughts on that?