Room Calibration at Echo Bar Studios (The Moving Mic Method)

Today I’m sitting with two great friends Charles Sprinkle from Kali and Erik Reichers from Echo Bar Recording Studios.

We’re here to talk about room acoustics, this is an important subject that I get asked about at least 10 times day, whether it be in the YouTube comments or directly from emails.

Every room I’ve been in effects the way I hear my speakers. – I have speakers I’ve been using for 25 years now so I know how they sound.

However, I could go to a different studio, bring my speakers and they sound different in that room. Now, not all of us have the time to adjust to those new listening environments. – the reality is every environment affects how we hear our speakers.

Sometimes beginners are encouraged to only use headphones, which of course have their own set of problems. But for me, a speaker in a room is the best real-world way of working.

Let’s talk about the methods we use and have already used in the room we’re in today.

Charles used the moving microphone method for tuning the loudspeakers in the room. To do this you focus on the area where you’re going to be listening and working and move the microphone through that area.

What is cool about this method is the measurements are accurate, repeatable and they’re fast.

When you’re making measurements with a microphone, using a single point will not get you the the spacial average of a volume of space you need. – Using a single point microphone is the right thing to do for setups such as time alignment, checking polarity and checking your room setup.

To do EQ adjustments you will want to get a spacial average. You can do that by taking 216 single point microphone measurements in a volume of space, but that would take quite a bit of time. – A moving microphone allows you to get the same answer much faster.