RTA/Spectrum Analyzers

[oddeoowphil38]

Good morninh fellow members. I have a question for you. Are there any inexpensive hand held Real Time Analyzers for home theater use? I do not have a pda or cell phone so they stuff out there for them is of no use to me. That is, I do not want to have to go get a pda/cell phone just for that purpose. Radio Shack had there digital spl meter and that along with the Rives Audio cd would be of some help. But, what I am looking for is a small hand held rta with a decent graphical display or at least one that I can download to my desk top computer. Another thing is that I do not own a lap top either and my computer is in the back bedroom. Therefore, I can not use my computers microphone as a source point per se. Surely, there has to be a hand held rta out there that can offer me a decent frequency response graph that is relatively inexpensive. It does not even have to be in full color just displaying a measured response curve. Maybe there is one that can take measurements and then download on my desktop for analysis. Anybody here know of any? I just dont want to give much money for one.Thank you once again for your time. Have a great day.
Phil

[anamorphic96]

http://www.ivie.com/

The RT-60 will set you back a 1000 but works very well and you get an I PAQ to boot.

Not exactly cheap but I thought I would throw the option out.

[oddeoowphil38]

LOL yeah right anamorphic. Wish I had that kind of money. Heck for that I can buy a pda say for $200 and buy the software for it for less than $75-80 dollars. But, I dont even have that much to spend.......lol let alone $1000. I dont need anything that nice just looking to get a response curve with measurements taken in my living room. Mabe move things around a bit and see how much better it gets. I may even have to go with an eq if the graph has large peeks and dips.........who knows. Surely there is a hand held meter out there for less than a couple hundred bucks. Or some other means that will more or less give me the same thing. The radio shack meter is ok but is not very accurate. I need something a little more precise.

[anamorphic96]

Try this. The Rives CD compensates for the differences in the Radio Shack SPL meter and only costs 20 bucks.

http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/setup/loudspeakers/subwoofercalibration.php

[oddeoowphil38]

Yeah I am aware of that new cd but it still does not really offer me what I am looking for. It looks like I may have to invest into a pda and buy some software and then I can use my desktop to create a frequency response curve of my living room. Hopefully, I can smooth things out enough to where I will not need an eq. I prefer to keep things simple and keep the # of components to minimal. That way, things seem to always work better for me w/o further complicating things such as picking up more noise and/or distortion. Besides, a pda would be kinda cool to have.........lol.

[oddeoowphil38]

Hey people I may have found an inexpensive way to obtain a hand held rta. Dell has the Axim x38 for $199. This pda comes with a built in mic for recording and can be found at dell4me.com. Then, at 4 pockets.com you can purchase Pocket RTA 1.0 for $29.95 that will along with the dell pda allow you to take various measurements of your home sound system. Wow!!! This would be very helpful. You can even download the info on your pc if you get the version for desktops, laptops , and etc. That way, you will be able to get larger graphs and can print them out if you like. If your pc is in your living room then you can actually do all of this via your sound card w/o the dell pda. Unforunately, my pc is in my bedroom and a long ways from my living room. Anyways, I hope this helps.
Phil

[anamorphic96]

Actually it does offer the same thing. You just have to plot the graph yourself and note where the peaks are. Its the same just done manually. If its not what your looking for please explain how it does not serve your purpose. It measures each frequecies output for the entire audio range. Why dont you see if anyone has a graph made that you can use. The RTA is automated thats it.

One other thing is the mic in the dell unit will be primarily for voice recording and misc info. I would not trust its accuracy in regards to being a real time analyzer or spl meter. Hey my computer at home has a mic and I would never even consider using it to measure my room. I would look for a mic designed for this type of purpose and use that instead of cheap pc mic.

[oddeoowphil38]

Anamorphic you are right. I just read a little more about the new Rives cd2 and there has been some adjustments made beause of the inaccuracy of the radio Shack meter. Also, Rives provides a chart to plot thee measurements on for free. The cd2 cost $21 and the Radio Shack meter is $39.99 for the non-digital version or $49.99 for the digital. Therefore, this is a much less expensive way for me to get the measurements I wanted. Besides, it should be fun as well as a little bit time consuming. Thanks for the info.
Phil

[kfalls]

Years ago you could buy equalizers with RTA, built in pink noise generators and calibrated mics. The one I had was the BSR-3000 stereo, 10-band and cost less than $150. You might try looking at Audio-Control's line of equalizers. They have a good line of audio and Home Theater processor/equalizers and may still have what you're looking for at reasonable money. I definitely wouldn't use PDA, cell phone, or computer with built-in mic for calibration. I'm not sure about cells, but telephones are limited to a 3K bandwidth, so why bother. A CD and sound meter is your best bet if you want good calibration. Of course, as stated earlier you need to either use a CD compensated for the errors in the Radio Shack meter or do the math yourself.

[mixadude]

Good morninh fellow members. I have a question for you. Are there any inexpensive hand held Real Time Analyzers for home theater use? I do not have a pda or cell phone so they stuff out there for them is of no use to me. That is, I do not want to have to go get a pda/cell phone just for that purpose. Radio Shack had there digital spl meter and that along with the Rives Audio cd would be of some help. But, what I am looking for is a small hand held rta with a decent graphical display or at least one that I can download to my desk top computer. Another thing is that I do not own a lap top either and my computer is in the back bedroom. Therefore, I can not use my computers microphone as a source point per se. Surely, there has to be a hand held rta out there that can offer me a decent frequency response graph that is relatively inexpensive. It does not even have to be in full color just displaying a measured response curve. Maybe there is one that can take measurements and then download on my desktop for analysis. Anybody here know of any? I just dont want to give much money for one.Thank you once again for your time. Have a great day.
PhilNo, not that I know of.

You have a great day, too. :D

[mixadude]

BTW, I use Smaart Live (http://www.siasoft.com/) but it's bux and hardware lika good microphone and hi-Q computer audio interface ;) but then I do audio for a living for like 30 years :eek: