RHA

Old enough to know better... but to young to resist! ;-)

Thanks Mitch, What can I say... you da man! ;-) I know you like to use Audiolense DRC, but if I remember right, it is not Mac compatible. Darn! I would like to be able to correct for multiple listening positions. To my knowledge REW doesn't do that. Do you know if REW will EQ in the time domain... if that would help? Speaker placement is VERY limited for me, as is listening position,... a few inches in all directions. This novice is still reading everything I can find; trying to get my head around the various measurements, parameters for those measurements, and what each measurement can tell you. Have you come across a simple primer for this info? The hardware is all ordered. The calibrated mic is on back order... patience, patience! Now it looks like I'll need a digital laser measurer also. Better to do it right the first time as I see it! I appreciate your time and effort to do these posts for our benefit. Thanks and Cheers, Rod

I've recently come across this... not exactly what you're looking at for playback, but designed for room measurement with parametric EQ which could possibly be loaded into your player of choice. Good luck, Rod

MH confirms I'll need a DB-25 to XLR adaptor to use the mic in of the LIO-8. When I get to the stage of constructing my EQ within MIO I hope you can share your experience. Thanks! Cheers, Rod

Thanks Mitch. I had not been active on CA for a while when I joined this thread and I wasn't familiar with your blog. I have now read it in its entirety (as well as your posts to other threads) and want to say kudos to you for all your hard work/time and the benefit it has for us neophytes. Very much appreciated!! In the past couple days I've spent a lot of time doing reading/research. I confirmed with Metric Halo that a DB25 to XLR adaptor cable will be needed. I have used Redco before and will be contacting them for a new adaptor. I thought I had finalized my choice of mic but have delayed after further research. Initially I thought the Dayton EMM-6 would be the best choice because of their individual mic calibration. Then I noticed that the Behringer ECM8000 had a lower freq. extension and might be a better fit for my speakers, which the manual says FR is from 16 Hz - 45 kHz +/- 2dB. Checking with Behringer, the ECM8000s are not individually calibrated and the website cross-spectrum.com, which does individual mic calibration (for about $30 more than the going online price) shows a graph with multiple overlaid FR curves that show the FR tracings all over the place. I can appreciate that the better the linearity and calibration of the mic leads to better results within the REW software... but how important is it? Many folks use RadioShack SPL meters with good results. Is it worth the extra $30 to have the mic individually calibrated? Then the question of how to enter that info into REW? It seems the calibration data can come in different formats... FDR, .CSV, Excel spreadsheets, or perhaps just a graph on paper. How does that data get into REW? I hope not manually!! Which brings me to the mic cable... are the ultra low noise cables needed or recommended? To much info and not enough understanding! Lastly, I find that I prefer the sound/soundstage when the tops of my speaker panels (Infinity Beta) are tipped forward. The speakers in the vertical position raise my ideal listening height and shrink the sound stage. I can imagine this creates havoc with the time domain. Can REW correct time domain problems or do I need something like Audiolense? Thanks again for all the guidance/info... I'm slow but I'll get there! Cheers, Rod

Thanks for the perfect reply... sorry for the slow response (been out of town). The Dayton mic looks like a perfect fit, especially since it covers the full frequency spectrum and is individually calibrated. Question... the LIO-8 uses the DB25 connector for the mic inputs. I have had a DB25 to RCA cable made to accommodate my turntable feed. The LIO-8 has phantom power but with my existing set up I would have to use a XLR/RCA adaptor to connect to the mic input. Would this disable the phantom power? Do I have to have a special DB25 to XLR cable made? I need a long mic cable to do the measurements so what's the best approach? Perhaps Bob Stern could chime in since it seems like he's done the same thing with the same equipment. I use an iMac Intel Core2 duo as the dedicated music server (with attached NAS [Drobo] via USB). The iMac is always attached to the LIO-8 (via firewire) but wondered if playing test tones and taking measurements at the same time would be possible? The measurement response would be traveling in opposite directions on the same firewire simultaneously? To do the initial SPL calibration I'm assuming that I can use the pink noise test tone on the computer, output (via firewire) through the LIO-8 to the speakers, at the same time as I record the measurements via the LIO-8 to REW on the same computer?? Sorry I can't explain my confusion better. Kinda seems like sending water both directions thru the same hose. The REW software looks like it will work perfectly. Have also been reading about Fuzzmeasure and IK Multimedia ARC... any familiarity with these? Pros/cons? I wish there was a "audio measurement for dummys" book. I've been reading online and following links but it's all so new. I'm slow but I'll get there. Cheers and thanks for all your help. Rod

I have an unusual listening room with 20' ceilings in the central area and open/attached dining and entry areas plus a loft. I would like to analyze my listening area and make corrections via the LIO8 which I use as a ADC/DAC. I am totally new to this and would like guidance on hardware/software needed and methodologies to do it. I'm just a hobbyist so would like to keep costs reasonable... free is good. I looked at the XTZ room analyzer as reviewed in Stereophile but it's Windows only and I'd like to stay in the Mac family. Any guidance, links, personal experience is welcome. Thanks, Rod

I've had a glitch in iTunes that I hope someone can guide me through. I recently transferred my iTunes library to a larger 8 TB Drobo storage HD. The transfer was made following the directions in iTunes help and all seemed to go well. I continued recording LPs and adding album art for over a week. Yesterday when I started to record again I noticed that the Recently Added playlist was empty and most of the files that I recently recorded were missing from the iTunes data base. The recently recorded LPs are safe within the Drobo along with the added album art, but they do not show within iTunes data base. The iTunes preferences are pointed to the new Drobo and do not seem to have a problem locating previously recorded albums. I did not change any settings with iTunes preferences. Now I notice that there are two iTunes folders. One under Music, and one under 'my name'/Music/iTunes. The iTunes located under "Music" has folders for Album Artwork, iTunes Music, Mobile Applications, Previous iTunes libraries, plus additional Mobile Applications and Previous iTunes Libraries within the Previous Libraries folder. The iTunes folder located under 'my name'/Music also contains folders for Album Artwork, iTunes Music, Mobile Applications, and Previous iTunes Libraries (which also contains additional folders for Album Artwork, Mobile Applications and Previous iTunes Libraries. In ITunes preferences the iTunes Media folder location is: /Volumes/DroboFW/iTunesFW. Very confusing. The 'Keep iTunes Media folder organized', and 'Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library' are both checked in the Advanced preferences screen. I don't know if this is a normal duplication or an error that occurred during the transfer of my whole library to the new Drobo and is misdirecting iTunes from recognizing the recently recorded music. I don't know if I should delete some files or which ones to delete without screwing things up further. I ran "Consolidate files" but did not run "Reorganize files" on the Drobo. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Rod

I have decided to bite the bullet and get the additional storage for the Drobo and transfer the entire iTunes library to the new Drobo. I prefer to keep my library in one location. Anyone interested in a 4 TB Drobo? Complete with music. Akapod, thanks for the link. It was a good refresher. Concerning adding my vinyl rips to iTunes... after recording and editing in Audacity I open iTunes and use the import command. All my vinyl rips are 24/96 AIFF. Works great. Thanks for your feedback. Cheers,

I seem to be blessed in this life with an abundance of ignorance and confusion. A few years back I bought a 1st generation Drobo with 4 x 1TB drives for music storage. My music library included a few hundred CDs and I planned to record my LP collection (4000+) at 24/96 AIFF so I knew I needed a lot of storage. My plan was to add a Droboshare and another Drobo when my storage reached capacity. Well my Drobo is now at 85% capacity so I bought a 2nd generation Drobo and Droboshare on eBay thinking somehow I could daisychain them together and maintain 1 library... NOT! I knew from reading here and on other forums that mixing drives in differently formatted Drobos can cause you do lose all your data so I called Drobo support for help doing the set up. (The 1st Drobo is formatted for 4 TB storage and the 2nd Drobo is formatted for 8 TB storage). It seems that I can't get there from here. Support explained the Droboshare does not link the two Drobos into one combined storage device (as I thought I understood), it simply allows you to access two separate storage devices wirelessly over a network. Duh! Damn! I can't connect the two Drobos / Droboshare directly to my computer via USB as before, I have to connect the two Drobos / Droboshare via ethernet cable to my router (Airport Extreme located in a different area of the house) and then access it wirelessly from my music server (Intel iMac) which will see it as two separate drives. Support explained I could connect two Drobos directly to the computer via two separate USB connections but again it would be seen as two separate drives. It's possible I may have misunderstood some of the above but I asked using a couple different scenarios and it always came back to the same place... You can't get there from here. Can a single iTunes database be spread across two storage devices and still act as a single library? Can iTunes do that? Would iTunes be able to locate a music selection which might be in either of two storage areas? If I have to access data wirelessly from the Airport Extreme will that affect performance/ sound quality? Wants vs. needs: Ultimately I would like to maintain one iTunes library that could be seen as a single database on two storage devices. Being technically challenged, I'm not sure if there might be some "work arounds", AppleScripts (I'm clueless) or some other method for doing what I'm wanting to do. Perhaps I need to go in a totally different direction with a totally different storage solution. Ugh! From your experience what are my options and your recommendations? I can't imagine trying to remember which album is on which drive and how to point iTunes to the correct place. Dumb! I should mention that being technically challenged I chose the Drobo for its for non technical ease of use and data safety and have been totally satisfied with it's performance. I would prefer to stay within the Drobo domain if possible. Thanks for any suggestions, options, work arounds, ideas you may have. Cheers, Rod

I also am getting a clicking/spitting sound during playback using the ULN-2. I noticed in a previous post there might have been a problem with the LIO-8. I have tried every combo in preferences from all off to all on. No change, still clicking/spitting. If I change to built-in output it plays fine through the built in iMac speakers. In fact it sound GREAT. It does not show CPU overs unless i select the force upsampling. I only have 1gb of memory and cannot change the max memory allocated (or else I don't know how to do it). Any suggestions?

Hi HP, I've been doing this for some time now. As stated before everything makes a difference... I recommend to use the best you can afford. Everyone will have a different opinion of what is "best". I believe the Apogee Rosetta 200 (ADC/DAC) that I was using will meet your requirements but it uses a firewire connection to computer, not USB, and you would need a RIAA phono stage. I have finished my recording and would like to find a nice home for the Rosetta. There are many reviews online such as: http://www.recordproduction.com/Apogee-Rosetta-200.htmI If you are interested you can contact me at: [email protected]. While I have limited experience with all the hardware/software combos out there I'll be happy to share my experience if you have further questions. It can be great fun reliving those goldie oldies. Good luck with your project. Rod

I recently came across this software that does what I think you're wanting to do. Sounds interesting. Has anyone used this? Cheers, Rod http://www.hometheatershack.com/roomeq/

I'll do that. Cheers!