Decibel Levels

[Newton Hunt]

Hi Ron,

Boy, talk about reinventing the wheel!  I have had Spectra
and it's incarnations about seven years now.  DOes
everything you describe and a bit more.  It is a neat
program and lots of fun to play with.  The advantage to you
is that you wrote the code and can modify it as you wish.  I
learned to program in BASIC and when the IBM PC came along I
was tired of programming, I just wanted to turn it on, do
whatever, turn it off.  WIndows programming is a total
mystery to me and I am too old to learn new trickies.

At low freqs there is system noise inherent in the computer
and especially the sound card.  Not much good below 20 or 30
Hz.

Interesting thing Chris Robinson discovered, some hammers
sound better when reversed.  He tests every set before
boring, tapering, coving and tailing.  He uses a storage
analyzer to compare two hammers if he cannot hear the
difference.  It is amazing that a program can replace a
whole rack of discreet components.

My little laptop does not have a mic built in.  I have a
pair of AKG-D224Es I have been using but I don't trust their
response curves after some 25 years.  Nice thing about
SPectra is you can input the response curves of various
microphones and it will automatically re-adjust the
displayed values to that curve.  

I want to get some of those unmounted mics, the $3 kind, and
glue them to the end of a short miniplug.  No wires type of
thing.

Maybe there is a microphone built into a PCMCIA card.  sigh 
Not likely.

Once you have a sensitivity value for a particular
microphone you could then measure dB values without the
Radio Suck device.

> >Discontent minds require "no".
> 
> Why?

I hate to say I am curious and need knowledge.  shrug

Take care and have a great new year.
-- 
		Newton Hunt
		Highland Park, NJ
		mailto:nhunt@jagat.com