SPL Meters
Whether or not you enjoy the hi fi sound or its volume coming from a set of loudspeakers is a matter of your own choice, but when you are an inveterate and hard to please audio connoisseur of music, you do, sometimes, find faults with the quality of the sound and want to tweak it to a technically accurate level. If you are a do-it-yourselfer, you want a tool to monitor and adjust the sound to your level of satisfaction.
Radio Shack SPL Meter
Though high precision instruments are available in the market for this type of job, but they are too huge, complicated and expensive for a common audiophile. Radio Shack has introduced a digital sound pressure level meter for the common man. It costs only $60 or so and it can clarify many of the myths and mysteries that surround the speaker’s sound quality and volumes. This meter, for example, will unravel the hype about the deep bass frequencies and the real stuff, or, what exactly is the truth about the ‘loud’ music.
Some of the other features of the Radio Shack SPL meter are:
1. It has a built-in microphone to measure the level of sound pressure emanating from a musical instrument, a stereo system or a hungry wolf.
2. It is equipped with an adjustable sensitivity range from 50 to 126 dB.
3. Its 3-digit display shows both the average and the peak level of sound pressure.
4. You get a visual representation of the sound measured by the 21-bar analog bargraph.
5. It can also measure and display the integrated averaging over a span of time and also records the maximum peak.
6. You can choose between the weighted A and C measurements and fast or slow barograph response.
7. It can be easily fixed with a tripod for convenient standing measurements.
8. Its analog line output can connect it with a stereo system or a personal computer.
It has a CAL input for accurate lab calibration. It is encased in a small bag for easy mobility. It is easy to operate. All that you need to know is that the dB is a unit of sound pressure like the watt is for electric power and that A weighting measures the ear response, while the B weight age measures the whole range of response from 32 to 10,000 Hz.
