DIY acoustics testing, part 2

Acoustics are huge part of achieving a high quality end result in music production, and the cost of tools to improve the acoustics of your home studio have dropped significantly in recent years.

In this series, we’re going through all of the basics of how to run acoustic tests in a DIY setting.

Here’s the basics of what hardware you’ll need to test the acoustics of your production room, DIY style.

The calibrated omnidirectional acoustics measurement microphone

This is the UMIK-1 by MiniDSP.  It’s a $79 omnidirectional reference mic that comes individually calibrated from the factory.

No complicated software calibration steps necessary.  This is a USB powered mic that works great, and is pretty much plug and play into your computer.

It will also integrate automatically with Room EQ Wizard, our free acoustics testing software.

Additional gear for testing

You’ll also need:

• a mic stand

• a low-noise, clean speaker of some kind.  A large Roland keyboard speaker works great.  I wouldn’t use a guitar amp for this.  They put out noise and hum, and that can throw your measurements off.

• a cable to connect your computer’s headphone output to your speaker.

Next time, we’ll start getting this hardware talking to our free, open-source acoustics testing software.