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Setting room calibration mic level in HifiberryOS

Joel Fritz

December 20, 2021 15:55

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I've been having fun with room calibration. In the screen where you set the level it advises you to set a level where the indicator just becomes dark blue. When I move the volume slider throughout its range I don't see anything change color. What should I be looking for? I'm using a Behringer calibration mic run through a Scarlett audio interface.

I've tamed my Riva Concert speaker. I got the speaker as a refurb for a quarter of the list price. At list it's a bad deal. At $50 it's a great bedside speaker. As shipped it has an obscene bump in the mid bass that the weak tone control in the app that comes with it can't control. Room correction makes it totally civilized.

I made the mistake of clicking on the request link instead of the new post button yesterday.  Hope this is the right place this time.

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5 comments

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team December 20, 2021 16:11

  Unfortunately I can't say anything about this combination. We tested it only with a few USB measurement microphones and the only one that we have here to test with is the HiFiBerry measurement microphone. I's possible, that your USB sound card has some mixer controls that needs to be set correctly, but HBOS doesn't do anything like this. 
  Therefore, it's possible that this won't work at all with this sound card.

• 0
  
  Joel Fritz December 20, 2021 17:11

  It works fine in the sense that it records the sweep tone and creates a calibration file.  I've done it several times and the results are completely reproducible.  What I was curious was how I can see the optimal volume level on the level setting panel.  At the top there is a horizontal bar graph with two lines:  above a white one and below a blue one that is labeled to  begin at  -73dB.  Below the graph is a volume slider.  I can hear the changes in volume when I move the slider--background noise gets louder.  What I'd like to know is what is the indicator and what color change I should be looking for?  Is the dark blue segment of the bar graph the target range?  As I move the volume slider it shows the level in dB.  Should I be at or below the -73dB level shown on the bar graph or is there something  else that should show up?  I've recorded at different levels and seen different results in the frequency response curve. 

  Thanks

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team December 20, 2021 20:44

  In general: Set the volume as loud as you can. The higher the volume, the better it will work as background noise will be lower. In most settings, volume should be at least 80db. As the sensitivity of your microphone isn't known to HiFiBerryOS, it can't measure the absolute level and therefore can only display the level compared to the maximum.
  
  Short: Set it as loud as you can go without getting problems with your neighbors ;-)

• 0
  
  Joel Fritz December 20, 2021 20:48

  Thanks.  I'll go with that.

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  Gkusiak December 21, 2021 18:39

  Joel Fritz - different results at different levels make complete sense:

  acoustical room nodes will differ based on the amount of input to the room. (that's why HiFiBerry team suggest full volume - to clearly establish where the nodes are on the spectrum and just how terrible they can be)

  they -nodes- are what "calibration"/equalization are meant to tame, but more correctly and appropriately, acoustical treatments should be applied FIRST and then equalization applied for typical/expected volume levels

  Acoustical nodes will also differ based on speaker placement, so once you've "calibrated" things, you've calibrated for that speaker placement, and have to re-do the calibration if you should move the speaker in any significant way, or the mic (reflecting a change in typical/expected listening position...and the nearby nodes around it).