Using Rives Audio Disc

[Beegowl]

Using a cheap Sony CD player and a cheap Toshiba DVD player through a Yamaha RX-V596 Receiver with the Rives Audio Test disc to set up my new Tannoy speakers and subwoofer. It's amazing how different configurations in the room affect the SPL. My question to those whose expertise extends beyond my years of piddling with audio equipment is this. The SPL meter indicates a change in intensity as I watch it, it's also audible. Could this be the player(s) not faithfully reproducing the tone? I have never noticed this when I play the test tone pink noise from the Yamaha receiver, but I sure notice it with the test tones from the disc through either the DVD player or the CD player. Does this mean I need a more expensive CD/DVD player to faithfully reproduce the tones?

Thanks for any insight.

 

[plhart]

There's nothing wrong with your DVD player. The pink noise built into the receiver is broadband and therefore measures fairly accurately on the meter. The pink noise on the test CD is narrow band, that is, much more frequency specific so you can hear the difference because you're moving your head and getting info from two separate positions (you two ears which are blocked by your head) at the same time. The meter's mic "hears" with only one ear and it doesn't know that it's reading much narrower band info. All it knows is that it's trying to average the sound it hears over a much broader frequency range.

The deal with the Rives disc is that that it actually has to boost the frequencies as they go lower so that the Radio Shack meter, which has C weighting can "hear" these frequencies as being level. That is, C weighting starts to chop off the low frequencies it wants to "average" so the Rives disc boosts the frequencies back up to compensate.

 

[Beegowl]

Thanks

Thanks for your reply. Trying to set up speakers in a small room (11 X 13) that is also our home theater room is difficult. Because I have much better speakers than I have ever had in the house before, I wanted to set them up right. They sound so much better than my small Boston Acoustic satellites that I really don't care right now. So, I'll just keep reading the forum and the articles on the website to pick up tips and set them up later, when I've tired of enjoying the big difference in audio quality.