Setting your Levels the Old School Way

Matthew J Poes

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One of the neat parts about this job has been recent opportunities to meet and talk with historical greats in the home theater world. One such meeting was a 90 minute phone conversation with Peter Tribeman, a true luminary in home theater. For those who don't know, Peter is (in his words) a serial founder of home theater manufacturers. Having founded or managed legendary brands such as NAD America, Atlantic Technology, Proton, and Outlaw Audio, we've all felt his influence in one way or another. While this 90 minute conversation ran the gamut of topics, I think the most interesting was our discussion of how to setup a home theater. As an old school guy who has been setting up home theaters longer than most of us can even imagine, his method relies on the way we all used to do it. Mostly by ear, and I imagine he is really good at it. He was most intrigued by my knowledge of REW and use of programs like REW to setup and optimize a home theater. He commented that one of the perpetual problems he finds with home theaters is that people have set the surrounds and center by ear and turned them up far too loud to compensate for problems in the gear (or likely personal taste). I too have tweaked a system or two with this problem, and admittedly, in my younger years, had done the same thing.

This got me to thinking just how much things have changed. I had my first 5.1 surround system in the Dolby Surround (matrix/non-discrete) and VHS tape days. I was in high school and had it setup in my bedroom. I remember saving up some money so I could buy a radio shack SPL meter. I wanted the greatest precision I could get so I bought the digital model. Little did I know how inaccurate that thing was, but of course, it was reliable and that's all that matters for level setting. I would use the built in pink noise generator or a stereophile test disc I had purchased to set levels, through the receiver. That was, for me, a major step up from setting levels by ear, and was probably my first step into my current precision approach using REW.

Of course since then things have changed so much. In the beginning there were no built in tone generators and no average person could afford an SPL meter. Then Radio Shack introduced affordable SPL meters and receivers began to include these pink noise generators. By the early 2000's automatic setup became common place. Now we have very sophisticated automated setup systems, auto room correction systems, you name it. And of course...our wonderful free REW software which, when mated to a fairly inexpensive microphone, allows a level of setup previously requiring a highly paid professional. Yet in the end, is there anything so wrong with Peter's method? People tweak the levels to taste all the time suggesting absolute accuracy isn't so important. There was something humbling and nostalgic to hearing Peter describe his approach. I still occasionally setup surround systems by ear, and every time I do it, I'm reminded of those days of my high school bedroom home theater.

How about you guys.
 

Tony V.

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As my first intrest in audio was through my church I was involved in every aspect of it including front of house and studio (our church had a television show in the mid 70s through the mid 80s) and we did a huge Christmas production every year with a 40peice orchestra and 200 voice choir standing in a tree so it was a lot of work. Back then all we could do was use our ears to set levels and EQ so I got really good at finding frequencies to eliminate feedback and balance the mix.

Growing up before soround was available for home my first receiver I owned personally was a Carver receiver 6250. It had a mode called "sonic hologram" where It did something with the phase between speakers and made it sound like the sound was coming from around the room. Worked quite well given it was still only using two speakers. And I still to this day regret selling it.

Moving forward a couple years to around 1990 I picked up a Yamaha 300u soround processor with Dolby prologic and that was my first true soround setup. It had pre outs for main channels only and powered only the centre and surround channels with 40watts each. I continued to power the mains with my Carver and bought a Yamaha stereo digital EQ that had built in pink noise and had a mic and did its own auto eq. (Yes it was ground breaking at at the time)

Anyhow, setting levels by ear is something that has come naturally to me. Even today I adjust my levels after auto eq has done its thing to my liking and cross reference with my SPL meter and I can usually be almost right on.
 
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Matthew J Poes

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As my first intrest in audio was through my church I was involved in every aspect of it including front of house and studio (our church had a television show in the mid 70s through the mid 80s) and we did a huge Christmas production every year with a 40peice orchestra and 200 voice choir standing in a tree so it was a lot of work. Back then all we could do was use our ears to set levels and EQ so I got really good at finding frequencies to eliminate feedback and balance the mix.

Growing up before soround was available for home my first receiver I owned personally was a Carver receiver 6250. It had a mode called "sonic hologram" where It did something with the phase between speakers and made it sound like the sound was coming from around the room. Worked quite well given it was still only using two speakers. And I still to this day regret selling it.

Moving forward a couple years to around 1990 I picked up a Yamaha 300u soround processor with Dolby prologic and that was my first true soround setup. It had pre outs for main channels only and powered only the centre and surround channels with 40watts each. I continued to power the mains with my Carver and bought a Yamaha stereo digital EQ that had built in pink noise and had a mic and did its own auto eq. (Yes it was ground breaking at at the time)

Anyhow, setting levels by ear is something that has come naturally to me. Even today I adjust my levels after auto eq has done its thing to my liking and cross reference with my SPL meter and I can usually be almost right on.

That had to be a great experience. I've done very little front of house work and would not be good at it. However after so many years of doing this I too have gotten pretty good at leveling things out by ear. I really didn't believe that was possible when I was younger, but I've been pretty close when I double checked my ear.
 

Prof.

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I'm from the old school myself.. I also use my ears for my final settings..
I use MCACC and DSpeaker Antimode 8033 to initially tune my audio system..They both do a fairly good job, but to my ears it sounds a bit off.!
Some times it's a lack of presence in the centre speaker or a bit of a weakness in the L&R channels..
A few manual tweaks here and there and a repeated listening of soundtracks in a specific movie until my ears are happy with what I'm hearing..
That's my recipe for tuning my audio..:)
 

Asere

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I use XT32 and then later an SPL meter at the MLP to make sure it is where it needs to be.
 
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