Room EQ Wizard Releases Beta Version 5.19 Beta 6; Download Available at AV NIRVANA
(Room EQ Wizard)(June 25, 2017) Room EQ Wizard’s (REW) author John Mulcahy recently released yet another update to his powerful acoustic analysis software. The software’s newest version (V5.19 Beta 6), further cleans-up small issues found in the software’s functionality, while enhancing the capabilities and user friendliness of REW as a whole. As always, the only place on the Internet to download this new release is right here on AV NIRVANA. I recently asked Mulcahy to review the changes and additions he’s delivering in V5.19 Beta 6, and the list is lengthy!
To begin, Mulcahy says further work has been done to expand distortion measurement capabilities. One of the complications of measuring distortion (particularly with sweeps) is distinguishing distortion from the noise floor of a measurement. In V5.19 Beta 6, REW measures the noise floor before making sweep or stepped sine measurements, using the data to determine where distortion harmonics are above the noise floor (and genuinely distinguishable as distortion). Where they aren't, there's a new option in the distortion graph controls to mask them. This insures they can't be treated as reflective of actual distortion levels. The noise floor (itself) can also be shown on the distortion plot.
Mulchay says he’s also made a small enhancement to the THD trace. Version 5.19 Beta 5 allowed users to choose the highest harmonic that contributed to the THD figure. Now, the trace name reflects that choice, showing which harmonics are included.
Another change addresses an HDMI connection issue. Mulcahy says some users have had problems with the initial part of a sweep or timing reference signal not being heard when using an HDMI connection to the system. That issue is probably due to a delay introduced by HDMI connection initialization, which causes a lapse in audio data appearing. To counter this problem, REW now starts playing a near-silent signal before the sweep starts (during the period it’s capturing the noise floor) which gives the HDMI input something to lock onto before the actual measurement begins.
Mulcahy says a minor enhancement to EQ features has been implemented to help support the new miniDSP C-DSP 8x12. This particular miniDSP unit has a set of 10 filters, but REW doesn't have an equalizer setting to match. Previously, users had the option of tapping a generic 20 filter for use with miniDSP units, but that required manual elimination of files 11 through 20. Version 5.19 Beta 6 allows REW to only save coefficients for filters that are enabled, automatically disabling filters 11 through 20 and completely removing the need for manual file edits.
Several other tweaks to overall usability and presentation include:
- Right click shortcuts in the overlays graphs have been improved – speed-wise – to be quick and snappy.
- The Nimbus look and feel introduced in the V5.19 Beta 5 software release has been further polished, including corrections to font size presentation, and changes to colors and shading while using the dark color scheme (for improved legibility).
- Version 5.19 Beta 6 corrects a Beta 5 error that kept export distortion data dialog from appearing for measurements made with earlier versions of REW.
- And, finally, clarity values were not automatically being calculated when viewing measurements with RT60 data that had been generated before clarity calculation was added; now they are.
