Assessing room response

Jusr remember, if you like the sound, it doesn't make any difference what other's think.

Are you asking how to use the equipment, or what equipment to get? Equipment wise, a Radio Shack analog or digital meter, a Stereophile test disc with 1/3 octave test ones using pink noise (which I prefer over pure frequency tones), a conversion list of low frequencies in the RS meter - the actual frequencies at 20hz are much higher than recorded but by 100 hz the RS meter is fairly correct) and if your going to play with speaker set up, some graphpaper so you can chart the FR from tests in a graphic way, and see from this how different speaker and listening positions change as you move things about. If you have any questions about its actual use, just ask.

I you have a PC try Room EQ Wizard with your Rat Shack meter.

There is a free program called Audacity which can generate all kinds of test tones and noises (white, pink, brown). You can play back those test tones directly from Audacity or export them and burn them on CD. I use it with a RS meter to adjust the sub of my Vandy 5. They work very well.

I just did this over the last week. Go to the Rives website as mentioned above and get the test CD. Use tracks 32-63 with your Radio Shack sound meter

The CD has 20hz tones up to 20,000 I think. I have a nice sub and many room panals so I wanted to be sure all was right.

I plotted the room's response curve on Rives graph paper downloaded from their site. I used the test CD to better blend my sub, change the placement of some sound panals, move furniture and finally tweek my speaker placement.

After about 5 hours of work (fun) I greatly improved my room's response to very near a flat curve. Bass is flat from 20 -100 hz. I only have three small peaks of less than 3-5 db. throughout the spectrum.

Sound improvement was noticable and well worth the effort.