Tuning your loudspeaker system to your venue's acoustics is similar to tuning your instrument. What happens when somebody plays an instrument which is not in tune? your almighty ears spring up and halt your internal processing and you either feel uncomfortable or you know something isn't right. Similarly, if you sit in a venue and if what you're listening reaches your ears in different 'tonal flavours' you know that either the loudspeakers were made with many compromises or the venue's acoustics aren't responding well to the loudspeakers or as is always the case, the engineer is given those glares & stares. Therefore, to overcome these acoustical problems, tuning the loudspeakers to the venue can be a way out; in other words equalizing your system. In the past, different ways of tuning were carried out; walking around the venue while someone speaks into a microphone and the engineer at the desk fine tunes the system. When the CD came into existence, engineers would use a particular CD of their choice which they felt had a good representation of frequencies and therefore could balance out the system. Today we have software like SIA Smaartlive, which is an audio measurement software that does the job efficiently.

The tools you need are:

In the case of the Recital hall@wisma ICOM, we have the Klark Teknik DN 60 spectrum analyzer, which also generates pink noise and we normally use any large diaphragm, condenser microphone with preferably an omni-directional pattern, which can be used as a reference microphone to analyze the room response (although a specific reference microphone is always a preferred choice, for example the DPA 4004 reference microphone is a nice example). A reference CD is used to ultimately balance out the room response; a CD of your choice can be used, one which you've been listening to long enough to know how it should sound on any system.

KLARK TEKNIK DN 60 RTA

KLARK TEKNIK DN360 -31-BAND GRAPHIC EQUALIZER