In the days when digital signal processing (DSP) first stalked the arena, it was the guys at front of house that had all the fun. They would ignore their comm light for long periods of time while staring intently at asymmetrical crossovers on their laptop displays.

But now that DSP is ubquitous, the guys at the other end of the snake are beginning to experience the joys of audio in the digital domain. 

The real beauty of DSP in monitorland is in optimizing wedges and side fills so that little or no equalization is needed to minimize feed back.

You might have a rack full of graphics, but the show will start out with all of them set flat. These units will only be used for on-the-fly feedback reduction or to ”personalize” a mix.

And with DSP, a preset can be designed for each model in your inventory, particularly useful if you have multiple wedge types. So let’s get on to the tweaking part.

Very few monitor cabinets are inherently “flat”. There are compromises made due to factors like box size versus low frequency driver selection, box size versus horn selection, low frequency driver dispersion versus. crossover frequency, etc.

Your favorite microphones also have frequency anomalies, especially in off axis response. Combine the two and things can get quite complicated.

Many of these problems cannot be completely cured, but with some DSP horsepower and modern test equipment, they can be minimized.

The first step is to achieve flat on-axis response from your monitors. I would highly recommend that if you don’t already own (Gold-Line) TEF, (Rational Acoustics) Smaart, or at least a real-time analyzer (RTA) then beg, borrow or steal some audio analysis equipment for this portion of the procedure.

Measured with TEF, a high-frequency device before equalization. (click to enlarge)

At an AES convention a few years ago, an equipment manufacturer that I have a relationship with set up a loudspeaker, an EQ and a pink noise source in their booth. Passersby were invited to try to equalize the pink noise by ear to achieve a flat response from the loudspeaker.

One person was spot on, but most of the results were pretty scary, even though the participants were all audio professionals. We need accuracy of +/-1 or 2 dB to give us a truly flat baseline to work from.

Some may have the ears to accomplish this, but most of us don’t. If you’re using an RTA, be sure to get one that displays in increments as small as 1 dB.

Again with TEF, the data of a high-frequency device after equalization. (click to enlarge)

Measuring the low frequency response of a loudspeaker minus the room’s acoustic contribution is a somewhat tricky proposition. A 40 Hz wavelength is approximately 28 feet long.

In order to measure those frequencies properly with a time windowed measurement system the window has to be long enough to contain at least one full wavelength.

Unfortunately that means that it is long enough to contain room reflections that contaminate the measurement. At higher frequencies this is not a problem because the wavelengths become short enough for the windowing to provide anechoic measurements.

Because real-time analyzers are time blind they include room reflections at all frequencies.

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