[LAU] Room acoustic sound analysis

Hello LAU,

While I have not been active on this list in a long time, I have been
watching from the side stage and it's nice to see the string of various
information and experience still flowing thru the LAU community.

I'll get to my questions as they relate to the subject title in a sec
but firstly, a little back ground on some significant changes I have
going on and how they may relate to the furthering of open source audio...

I have left the corporate grind and world of regular income for purposes
of pursuing my all time passion. I have not a pot to piss in nor a
window to pitch it out of in terms of capitol and am largely doing it on
faith! My core products are fretted instrument and amplifier / music
related electronics repair, recording and demos, small PA system rentals
and also working as a musician for hire, primarily doing my solo thing.
In another post I will speak to my dilemma of being unhappy using Sonar
8 on Windows Vista and looking for some possible encouragement to
consider going totally open source!

 I have rented a large warehouse type space (2600'sq) in the Nth Cali
foothills and within there are several spaces dedicated to the various
products I alluded to. The main room that we do live music in is a good
size, approx. 30'w x 40'l with 17' ceilings. It's predominantly drywall
and stud construction and also with a 17'x10' metal roll up door. It has
a concrete floor with industrial carpet covering it. I have just
described something of an acoustical nightmare, likely only topped by an
aircraft hangar with corrugated iron walls and roof! :) We have been
doing some live stuff thru a PA in this room and it's a sure fire way to
reveal how the room reacts. The room produces some high freq (2k - 5k)
boosts as well as some 150 to 400hz bumps. While I have implemented some
baffles to reduce live high freq bounce, these only serve to deaden the
room and not change tonal characteristics. How I go about changing the
mechanics of the room will be dictated largely by economics but in order
to assess this, I'm looking to to some spectrum analysis.

Has anyone set up a laptop and microphone and open source apps and
performed this to some success? I need a tone generation source as well
as an analysis tool. It needs some bias adjustment for mic and sound
card inherent response I should think. That said, it does not need to be
a perfect tool. If I can get some form of reliable, self referenced
measurement, that would give me something more than the guess work I am
currently using from my head and my ears.

TIA for your input and ideas.

Russell
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Received on Mon Sep 14 04:15:02 2009