Radio Shack Sould Level Meter - Analog Meter

Sorry for the wrong part number. I am still not sure which one to buy. My local Radio Shack has both the old and the new. I am not familiar with SMD to tell whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. Also until Rives tests the new one, we will not know whether it has the same calibration. Rives site says buy the new 4050. When I sent them a message of which one to buy to Rives, since I have access to both, they told me the older model 2050. Needless to say, I am very confused.

SMD stands for Surface Mount Device. It's a way to package ICs that are being used in the SPL meter so that they consume less space on the PC board. Also, there are machines that are used to mount these ICs & solder them (i.e. it is automated) hence the lower cost. SMDs were done mostly from a manufacturing cost stand-point.
Functionally, the SMD parts are identical (& many times better) in functionality.

Per Rives' response, perf. from either SPL meter is identical within the limits of their measurable tolerances. So, in practise, both SPL meters are identical!

My conclusion: buy the latest analog SPL meter & use the same SPL correction factor disk from Rives to account for the low & high roll-offs.

Hope that this helps.

I have the old 2050 style myself, and will be ordering the Rives test CD this week. I think it will be a great investment and provide far more accurate and predictable results then the noise generators built-in to my equipment and the other test disks I have (Avia, Stereophile, XLO/Sheffield Labs).

We'll see.....
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Sorry for the confusion between the call and the site. On the site we show and link to the new model as the old model is "no longer available" according to Radio Shack. We know that there are still 2050s in about 400 stores across the country. We know the reliability and the precise curves measured on quite a few units over a different period of time. I suspect the performance is identical with the new model--but we have not yet done the same extensive testing as of yet.