Rat Shack SPL meter: Analog or Digital?

Rives,
Can I use your CD with digital meter?

It is not calibrated for the digital meter. We found a fair amount of difference between the digital meter and the analog. The digital is actually closer to linear than the analog, but it was less consistent from various units--it's also harder to use. Our tracks would give you better results than a flat response, but they are not precise for the digital unit. I would recommend getting the analog version.

When I was demoing audio gear, I considered buying one of these to allow me to do a more fair comparison -- apparently it is very hard to set gear to identical volumes, and the louder gear sounds better.

I was told elsewhere, though, that the accuracy of the meters is not good enough to help in this project (I think it's +/-2db?). Is that the opinion here also?

Thanks,

Eric

Eric, the meter is very reproducible, and you would likely be setting levels with a calibrated pink noise, rather than individual test tones. For you what you propose I think the meter would be very well suited, except in the case of comparing an electrostatic with a dynamic speaker. The dispersion patterns of these two are very different and I would question whether or not it's really the same volume. At the moment, I can't really conceive of an alternate method.

The digital version actually has a bar-graph analog display that is just as good as a moving pointer. And the numeric readout sure makes it easier to log results as you vary the speaker setup etc. The digital/analog issue is just about readout convenience...actual performance characteristic of the devices (including any deficiencies) is identical.