REW Beta Release Changes in REW V5.20 beta 7

John Mulcahy

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Measure dialog

I've redesigned the Measure dialog for this version, with options to enter the measurement name and notes on the dialog and a few options for appending a date, time or number to the measurement name. Broadly speaking, things that may be changed often are on the left of the dialog, things that are changed less often on the right. There is a live display of the input level on the measurement input at the bottom of the dialog.

measdialog.jpg

Hopefully the layout is now more logical. The new design provides better support for measuring using file playback. It also provides the ability to change the sample rate from the Measure dialog.

There are a couple of changes relating to timing in the new design. The "Wait for timing ref" option has been removed, if the acoustic timing reference is being used REW will always wait for the timing ref signal. An option has been added to apply a timing offset measurements made with a timing reference. The offset can be set manually or automatically from the figure calculated by Estimate IR Delay. It would typically be used after an initial measurement has been made and the desired offset for subsequent measurements determined from that. A warning is shown if the timing reference signal level is low, if the level is too low timing will not be accurate, the timing reference may not be detected or the measurement sweep may be incorrectly identified as the timing reference.

As before, to quickly start a measurement use <Ctrl>+M to bring up the dialog and press the space bar.

Making measurements help


Scope tool

Another new item in this release is an oscilloscope tool, with 2 input channels (the measurement and reference inputs) and a math channel (sum, difference, product or ratio of the inputs). It operates in pretty much the same way as a hardware scope, with basic trigger options (rising or falling edge with adjustable hysteresis). There are settings menus (the gear icons) but the trigger position, level, hysteresis and channel offsets can all be adjusted by clicking and dragging on their symbols on the screen (the mousewheel adjusts trigger hysteresis when the trigger level symbol is selected). The mousewheel can be used to change the timebase when the mouse cursor is in the display area and a stopped trace can be moved by clicking and dragging on the display or clicking and dragging on the highlighted portion of the input buffer view below the display.

scope.jpg

Scope help


Signal Generator

There have been a few updates for the signal generator. White random noise has been added to the noise options and the order of the high pass and low pass filters for the custom filtered noise can now be configured from 2nd to 8th order (12 to 48 dB/octave). The generator now also remembers the states of the custom filtered noise check boxes for the next startup. There is an option to specify the toneburst duration in ms rather than cycles. Finally, the level control shows the peak level as well as RMS.


RTA

There are a few minor tweaks for the RTA. 0% has been added as an option for the RTA max overlap to allow no overlap when beneficial (such as when measuring with rectangular windows). There is also a separate max overlap control for stepped sine measurements, lower overlap increases the noise reduction from averaging. A volts per sqrt(Hz) Y axis option has been added to display the amplitude spectral density, useful for noise measurements. The width of the RTA control buttons has also been reduced so it is useable at widths down to 800 pixels.


Other updates include:

  • Added a "Set t=0 at cursor" control to the impulse overlay graph, which applies to all the measurements selected when it is used
  • Added an equaliser setting for the miniDSP C-DSP 8x12 with 10 filters at 192 kHz sample rate
  • The RT60 calculation has been made much faster
  • Loading measurement files has been made faster
  • Multiple sample rates can be selected when exporting filter impulse responses
  • A dB axis is not shown on the Overlay Measured or All Impedance graphs when only impedance measurements are loaded
  • Installers for all OS types now have an option to choose how much memory to allocate to REW when it runs, max 1.5 GB on 32-bit versions. Best going for the max value as long as the computer has at least 4 GB RAM.
  • The gradient panel background image is drawn even wider than before in another attempt to remove duff columns of pixels at RHS of window on macOS


Bug fixes in this release:

  • macOS windows that were maximised then iconified before exit would open with zero size on the next startup
  • The generator dBV offset was incorrect when the option for full scale sine is 0 dBFS was not selected
  • Periodic noise crest factor optimisation was not operating correctly so the crest factor could be higher than the 6 dB target
  • ASIO outputs did not stop correctly with ASIO buffer sizes of 8192 samples or larger
  • Text in the new version notification was too light to read when using the dark background option
  • The signal generator output was present on both the measurement and timing ref outputs for all signal types when the timing ref mode was loopback, should only be the case for measurement sweeps

Quite a few changes all in all. If anything isn't behaving as expected let me know here.
 

Breeman

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Jan 9, 2019
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151
HI John,

Thanks a million for an update. I have just installed it and I picked up the following issue; the wording on the toggle fields in the EQ tab is very faint when using the dark background. Here is the screenshot.
  • Snap2.png
    .
 

John Mulcahy

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Have you restarted since changing the background? The panel backgrounds should be darker, but some colours don't update until REW is restarted.
 

Breeman

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Hi John,

I am playing around with the Overlays screen and I'm noticing an odd behavior whereby if I select one averaged graph of the two that I have displayed for smoothing, smoothing will be applied to both graphs even though only a single graph can be chosen in the drop down menu.

Here is my scenario; I loaded a previously saved .mdat file of 16 individual measurements. I then averaged the responses of all 16 by using the "Average the Response" button. I subsequently noticed that one of the 16 measurement had a different response that the rest and removed it and averaged the responses again to see if the removed measurement would have any affect on the "new" average response. I invoked the Overlays screen so I could study the cumulative effect of applying smoothing to each of the two averaged responses separately however I couldn't as the smoothing is applied to both graphs simultaneously. I have uploaded a screenshot of the two averaged responses for your reference.
 

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keantoken

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Some odds things...

The monitor in the speaker measurement page needs offset removal otherwise the displayed level is wrong. I can make the level drop by pushing on the speaker cone.

It won't accept input from the right channel of my ADC. I am on Linux, no other program has this problem.
 
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John Mulcahy

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The monitor in the speaker measurement page needs offset removal otherwise the displayed level is wrong. I can make the level drop by pushing on the speaker cone.
If you have DC offset on your inputs use the High Pass option under Input Options in the soundcard preferences.

It won't accept input from the right channel of my ADC. I am on Linux, no other program has this problem.
Difficult to understand that one. Generally the java inputs are stereo, so hard to have one channel working and not the other. Audio on Linux seems not entirely straightforward though, based on other posts over the years. If you use the option to generate a debug file (on the soundcard preferences) and attach it here I can see if anything stands out, can't say I'm especially optimistic though.
 

John Mulcahy

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I am playing around with the Overlays screen and I'm noticing an odd behavior whereby if I select one averaged graph of the two that I have displayed for smoothing, smoothing will be applied to both graphs even though only a single graph can be chosen in the drop down menu.
That single graph selection is only for the offset control. Smoothing is applied to all traces that are selected in the legend when "Apply to selected" is pressed.
 

keantoken

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The first debug file is right after starting REW, whereupon sound does not work, except for a short burst after clicking "finish" after do a level check.

The second debug file is after changing the output device to Default and then back to Pulseaudio Mixer (which was the original setting). Then I change the output channel to right, then back to left. This always seems to get it working.

3rd is after doing a sound check after changing the input source to right channel to verify it does not work in all dialogs. There might be no difference in this file.

4th debug file is after flipping to Default and then back to Pulseaudio Mixer for the input source. This time for some inexplicable reason, instead of L and R for the input, it displays numbers as channels.

Whenever I export a debug file, the volume for the selected input and output is reset to zero, which is confusing. Maybe it does that in case the debug queries cause weird noises?
 

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John Mulcahy

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The debug file generation reads control settings but doesn't alter them, odd that they should change.

Have you tried the ALSA mixer? The "pulseaudio units" on the pulseaudio volume controls might be causing an issue, Javasound volume controls are generally 0 - 1 rather than 0 - 65536.
 

keantoken

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Does REW need to query the applicable volume range?

ALSA cannot be used at the same time as Pulseaudio, and attempting to do so tends to expose bugs so I would advise against it. Pulseaudio replaces the ALSA mixer and accesses the soundcards directly using ALSA as a backend.
 

John Mulcahy

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REW uses the driver's reported getMinimum() and getMaximum() values when setting volume controls, so there shouldn't be an issue as long as the driver correctly reports its control ranges. Can just uncheck the boxes on the soundcard preferences that allow REW to alter volume controls though.
 

keantoken

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With the high pass filter box checked, I can still lower the monitor output by pushing on the speaker cone. Maybe it's not working?
 

dch53

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Measure dialog

I've redesigned the Measure dialog for this version, with options to enter the measurement name and notes on the dialog and a few options for appending a date

Hi John. Any change you could internationalise the date please?
 

John Mulcahy

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With the high pass filter box checked, I can still lower the monitor output by pushing on the speaker cone. Maybe it's not working?
Works as expected for me, it is a 2 Hz high pass. Have a look at the scope signals, perhaps, and capture some images of what you mean by lowering the monitor output.
hp.png
 

Breeman

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Hi John,

I noticed that when "Saving a graph as an image" is used to capture the graph under EQ Tab, it exports or saves the image with text for the smoothing option chosen. This is not the case when capturing the graph from the main screen for instance. It would be great if a user can have an option to disable this.
test4.jpg
 

John Mulcahy

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It appears on any graph that can have smoothing applied. I think I'll remove it though, any smoothing applied is shown in the trace legend anyway which can be included if desired.
 

Breeman

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Thanks John, that would be great:). Perhaps make it a option in the View Tab of the Program preferences. It does not show though on the captures taken from the main screen as shown below.
test5.jpg
 

John Mulcahy

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Overlay graphs don't show it anyway as the individual measurements may have different smoothing.
 

Breeman

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Hi John,
Would you also consider adding an ability to edit graph colors in the EQ Tab of the program? I think it would make it easier to describe the different graphs in cases where they have to be captured and presented elsewhere. Sometimes the original and predicted graphs share the same color like in the screenshot below. We already have this feature in the main window of the program so I thought it could be ideal to also have it in the EQ section of the program.
Snap6.jpg

Snap7.jpg
 

AustinJerry

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Jun 5, 2017
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Minor bug/annoyance. If you open the Measurement screen before you have your output device connected, you will get "the Soundcard did not provide any input data" error (as expected). However, if you click OK to dismiss the error message, it doesn't go away and you are stuck. The only recourse is to either hook up the output device (which may not be convenient), or use Task Manager to kill the REW instance.
 
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