Question about calibrating Studio Monitors

[bryced87]

Say I set my master volume on my Audio interface to halfway up. Then I use pink noise and set my monitors so I get an SPL reading of 78db. Now I mark that off with tape on my audio interface. Then say I want to hear back what I'm mixing at a lower or louder volume. How do this? I can't change the volume on my interface because it will mess up the 78db of the SPL reading. Even if I set it back to where I marked it off with tape I could be 1 degree off than I was before right?

[Darryl Ramm]

You turn the master volume down, that is what it is there for. The reason to mark stuff with a tape or pencil etc. is so you can put it back roughly accurate enough. Fancy monitor controls have digital displays to make it easy as well. Your meter is not accurate enough to a few percent anyhow. Your monitor and room is certainly not going to be flat to anything like that, so don't sweat such fine details. And hopefully it is not just the master volume knob you are changing when you calibrate the monitors it's also the volume knobs on any powered monitors etc, you are ideally gain staging everything to sound best.

[bryced87]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

You turn the master volume down, that is what it is there for. The reason to mark stuff with a tape or pencil etc. is so you can put it back roughly accurate enough. Fancy monitor controls have digital displays to make it easy as well. Your meter is not accurate enough to a few percent anyhow. Your monitor and room is certainly not going to be flat to anything like that, so don't sweat such fine details. And hopefully it is not just the master volume knob you are changing when you calibrate the monitors it's also the volume knobs on any powered monitors etc, you are ideally gain staging everything to sound best.

so it's okay if my over SPL volume is not 100 percent always accurate?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by bryced87

so it's okay if my over SPL volume is not 100 percent always accurate?

Why would it not be? For what purpose? You are setting this to help you mix. Your not that accurate....

And it's *never* 100% accurate. How many thousands of dollars have you have invested in a NIST traceable SPL meters?.. and you'll be lucky if the meters are within a percent or two. And then the questions are how flat are your monitors/room across a useful frequency band--and that often becomes really significant issue.

EDIT: BTW it's great that you are worrying about actual SPL, that will help you a lot with volume related things you've run into before on DUC.

[bryced87]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Why would it not be? For what purpose? You are setting this to help you mix. Your not that accurate....

And it's *never* 100% accurate. How many thousands of dollars have you have invested in a NIST traceable SPL meters?.. and you'll be lucky if the meters are within a percent or two. And then the questions are how flat are your monitors/room across a useful frequency band--and that often becomes really significant issue.

EDIT: BTW it's great that you are worrying about actual SPL, that will help you a lot with volume related things you've run into before on DUC.

I was reading that once you set your studio monitors to their correct SPL they must remain 100 percent accurate or your mix gets messed up if the level is 1 degree off

[Darryl Ramm]

No. It's a blatantly silly claim by whoever wrote it. A pencil mark will be fine. And you are not going to mix stuff and listen to it all at any one level, you are going to listen to it at multipel levels... that is going to help you make a better mix.

[bryced87]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

No. It's a blatantly silly claim by whoever wrote it. A pencil mark will be fine. And you are not going to mix stuff and listen to it all at any one level, you are going to listen to it at multipel levels... that is going to help you make a better mix.

That makes sense to me too. Someone ok Reddit still tells me you set your SPL level calibrate your monitors and interface and you never once change the volume ever on your interface and you use the built in master fader in pro tools to control the volume. Well that sounds silly to me for a few reasons.


1. The master fader will clip if you bring it up too much.

2. I work in multiple daws and trying to locate every master fader in its daw is sometimes more time consuming then turning the volume knob up or down on the interface.



I do have one more question. Do some people calibrate to different levels for mixing and mastering?

[Darryl Ramm]

Some people might do anything.

Most people would not. I'm not sure why people would want to.

At this point I think you are other thinking/worrying about too much stuff.

IIRC you've had problems in the past where you did not have a monitoring system capable of putting out enough sound level, including not being able to drive mixes to "sound loud" to you. And maybe a too small/not fully treated room as well. If you are upgrading what you had and making sure it can hit 78/79dB SPL and sound OK doing so then great.

Just get the SPL in the right ballpark, it's not like you have clients coming in to use a high-end facility that absolutely insist on a calibrated system. It's stuff you are doing to get close for your own mixing. And again as I've said, its not just an SPL level that matters, its how well that system is gain-staged and actually performs at that SPL level (not too much distortion/noise), how flat this system is, how large the sweet spot is etc. And hopefully you are going to mix and critically listen and master using headphones, small speakers, iPod/earbuds, etc. whatever you think lots of people will listen to stuff on.

Make sure you understand the full calibration procedure. Use pink noise at -20dbFS and measure with C-weighted slow average on your meter at your exact listening position. Keep playing with gain staging between the monitor controller, and powered monitor volumes. You have to play well mixed/mastered material you are familiar with to critically listen to that as a test while you play with that gain staging, and at a level you will mix at (not -20dbFS). Don't try to set gain staging just with pink noise. Then iterate back to pink noise @ -20dbFS to dial in the exact SPL.

[Wizzoboy]

Try this tutorial.

[bryced87]

Originally Posted by Wizzoboy

Try this tutorial.

For some reason the trim plugin doesn't show up on for me for the master fader track. Also what happens if I use an iPhone app to set my levels?