[Jerry Steiger]

"Chris Hornbeck" wrote in message
...

You're going to read much more useful and generally more positive
comments than my current one, so please forgive me if I jump into
the cold water with some of the "gotcha's":

Your "gotcha's" are much appreciated! Sorry to be so slow to respond. Life
seems to be a little complicated right now.

First, just as a matter of good old Science, you'll need *something*
to act as a reference, if you really want to investigate.

Could be a reference speaker, or could be a reference mic, but neither
is cheap - and worse, neither is a "primary" reference. Without a
reference, everything you measure is only relative to ... something
else. Does that make sense?

Yes, but we don't need NIST traceable accuracy. I figure that a reasonably
good nearfield monitor and condensor mike like we've got are close enough.
We just want to know that one setup is really significantly better than
another.

Second, if your box is dead enough, you don't care about dimensions.
If it isn't dead enough, you don't care about its results.

I thought about that after I hit the send button. (Well, actually quite a
while after, while riding my bike to work the next morning.) I'm still
nervous about how much energy the sound absorbing pads are going to remove,
especially near the lower end of the sprectrum. The 4" Bass Buster pads
claim a Sound Transmission Loss using the ASTM E90 Test of .97 at 125Hz,
1.37 at 250Hz, 1.23 at 500Hz, 1.05 at 1KHz, 1.00 at 2KHz, 1.01 at 4KHz and
an NRC of 1.15, but I don't really know what that means for me.

Third and lastest, above 300 Hz, measurements today are usually done
in a live room with a time window.

We don't have a quiet room where I can get good data. I assume that the idea
would be to run multiple tests to reduce the S/N, but it seems like it would
be easier and quicker for me to build a relatively inexpensive chamber to
limit the effects of the outside environment.

Fourth and post-mortem, it's voice range, so why do you care? Arf!

Because voices are important! I don't get your point.

Thanks again,

Jerry Steiger