Any way to broadcast different frequency tones? (1 Viewer)

[mark alan]

I am just curious if any of the calibration discs have an option to send out tones to your speakers at different frequencies. Everybody talks about holes in their sound, but how the heck do you know if you are reproducing the entire audible range?

Of course, if I don't hear a certain frequency, I guess it could be my ears. I haven't figured a way to upgrade them yet.

 

[BenG]

There are a few free tone generator programs available online, where you just type in the "hz" and it plays it back as either a square wave, sawtooth, pink noise, etc.
This would require you to have your home theater hooked up to your computer's audio output. Always a good thing to have anyway, if you have any mp3
Do a search for "tone generator" in your favorite search engine.

 

[mark alan]

Thanks for the suggestion.

I downloaded a tone generator and recorded a series of 1 minute wav files at frequencies from 20-20,000 hz. I then burned them to a cd. The results were interesting, and a little disappointing. No usable sound at 20 hz, and relatively poor reproduction at 30 hz. Good response from the subwoofer at 40-100 hz. The amazing thing was how the sound varied as I moved around the room, with different loud areas in different parts of the room at different frequencies.

My surrounds did a nice job, with good sound as low as 90 hz. I have the JBL SCS150I package, so the surrounds are very small. I couldn't hear the 20,000 hz tone, but thats probably my ears more than my speakers.

I don't know if this was of any use to me, but it was interesting, so I thought that I would share it with you guys.

Now I am going to have to get the RS sound meter so I can really play with this.

Considering my speaker package was relatively low cost, I was pleased with response. Any suggestions on how I can use this disc to improve my system sound?

BTY, this forum is addictive

 

[Frank Carter]

I bought the test cd from www.stryke.com. I hadn't found this forum at the time otherwise I would have just used a tone generator

 

[Alex F.]

Stereophile Magazine once produced a series of very useful audio test CDs, at least two of which offered test tones, among other diagnostic tests. Possibly the CDs are still listed and sold on their website (stereophile.com).