SPL Meters

What is an SPL meter? An SPL meter is a sound pressure level meter. By using an SPL meter, a sound technician can determine what the overall sound level is at a point in a room. People who study the effects of noise pollution in the workplace use SPL DB meters to determine what the general level of sound it by measuring the pressure, which is a result of the combination of lots of aggregate sounds in an area. Sound engineering using SPL meter technology allows people to quickly find the spots in a room where harmful sound can congregate because of bad acoustics, or the part of a room that tends to be the most "dead" to sound. The engineers who know how to use SPL meters for these purposes have jobs making sure that music studios and other kinds of recording studios are in the best acoustical shape possible.

The other kind of person who uses an SPL meter is a hobbyist trying to get the best sound possible from his home entertainment system. A Radio Shack SPL meter is a perfectly good way to get started in the world of measuring sound levels. Just by setting front of the house with SPL meters and then going and taking a walk you can start to study the sounds around you and get a sense of which ones are louder than others and by exactly how much. While this can be fun, the way in which people use sound pressure meters to determine whether their home stereo equipment in their home entertainment theater is set up correctly is this: Generally a test disc such as the one from Avia is dropped into the DVD player and run.

The disc contains a number of test patterns and sound tests. Listening to one of the sound tests which may be something like a sweep of the channels or a pink noise test, you should be able to chart the strength of the sound to some extent around the room by walking around with the SPL meters and seeing what the SPL meters give you as a reading depending on where you are.

By trying the above technique with SPL meters you can find the best spots in the room to get the clearest sound from your speakers. You can also see if there are any sound problems with parts of your home. or wherever you are checking the speaker levels, that are not acoustically correct. I wish you luck setting up great audio with a sound pressure level meter.