Re: Minimal setup for grabbing a room impulse

Hello Fons,
many thanks for that. Would it help, if I used an old macbook for playback? I 
think I could even wire the speaker to that directly.

When I try to get a measurement of the speaker, should I do it with the same 
microphones? They are binaural mics. If I could rig something up in my normal 
recording space, I could use my normal vocal mic, which is mono, but maybe has 
a better range.

Why didn't I mention the macbook? It's too old to properly install anything 
useful on it. I could just playback something on it, just through its built-in 
soundcard.

Best wishes,

Jeanette

Fons Adriaensen, May 4 2026:

> On Mon, May 04, 2026 at 10:56:02PM +0200, Jeanette C. wrote:
>
>> I'm looking for a small setup to grab a room impulse response. I can't take
>> my computer in there and don't have a notebook. I do have a field recorder
>> with extra mics, which are nice enough. I also have a smartphone and a
>> bluetooth speaker. It's not the best, but decent. Can something reasonable
>> be managed with this? I seem to remember that a sinesweep doesn't require
>> the best in speaker technology.
>
> Depends on what you want to use the IR for. If it's just a
> room effect (rather than a high quality reverb) then almost
> anything goes.
>
> But whatever you use, what you get is the combined response
> of the speaker, room, and microphone. If the mics are OK
> then the speaker will be the weakest element in the chain.
> The solution then is to measure the speaker in a room that
> is either anechoic or big enough to allow the removal of
> everything except the direct sound. The inverse FR of this
> measurement is then used to correct the room measurement.
>
> Also take into account that smartphones do all sorts of
> 'enhancement' processing on both mics and speaker feeds.
> Disable everything you can, if you can at all...
>
> Ciao,
>
> -- 
> FA
>
>

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