Help needed with measuring my room with REW

I just bought the MiniDSP Umik 1 microphone and want to measure my room. The wizard of REW assumes I have the speakers connected to my laptop which I haven’t. I want to create a file to USB but I am not sure which settings I should choose and which volume to choose on my set.
I saw post this post from @Simon-in-Suffolk but need some help with making sure I create a correct file and follow the correct steps.

Can someone assist on this please?

hi - a few months since I did this…

However I think I created the noise file as you have above - save to file - you look to have the correct screen above, although perhaps format to 48khz 24 bit if it is there. Also I would go for white noise random - you could optimise later by putting the limits of your preferred speaker response.
The mount that file on a USB drive or other - plug into your streamer and get your streamer to play that usb file. Probably best to make the file duration a few minutes to make things easier.
That way your streamer is playing the sound file from the USB memory stick you have just created

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Thanks Simon! Should I set channels to “left and right” or create 2 files for measuring each speaker separately?
Also how to I make sure the volume of my amp is set right for the measurement?

I combined left and right … in a real world room (ie compromised) that is going to best in my opinion… it is just that imaging might be slightly distorted at certain frequencies - but I suspect you wouldn’t / couldn’t notice… if you want perfect stereo field reproduction you really need headphones or a fully treated and symmetrical room with a central listening position.

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Following.

I’ve got a UMIK1 / MiniDSP in a drawer gathering dust and often wondered what it’d be like on my setup.

The mic is good - but I wouldn’t use the MiniDSP - it is rather a low/basic quality device - not commensurate to the standard of Naim digital audio electronics.

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Fully agree. That makes a lot of sense.

Should a play the sound on my amp first and then measure the SPL levels and set the volume to a certain value?

the SPL is not critical in my opinion - play comfortably loud and leave it at that

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I was thinking this.

Do you have any other recommendations please in case I decide to investigate further ?

others possibly can better than I. In essence you will be creating FIR filter kernel file with Rew (ie a filter response file for an audio filter that works with ‘taps’ - in hifi/audiophile speak people seem to use the word taps rather a lot) … so you need something that can read and process that. I used Roon, but there are other software solutions that can then feed out into an attached quality DAC.

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I won’t use the MiniDSP device for room correcting. I only bought the mic for measurement reasons. I will use it mainly for speaker placement and measuring the impact of acoustic treatments.

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When I want to take a measurement the “noise method” is greyed out.

the noise method is for creating the source file -
to make your measurement don’t you want to hit start- and press from file… but the actual source will be your streamer playing the file -
sorry not sure I fully follow

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When I want to import the file I created earlier it says it is incorrect. I suspect because the file is noise while the setting for measurement is set at sweep. I can’t click noise though cause it is greyed out.

Maybe I should create a sweep file instead of noise file?

ok - my suggestion was to play the file back from your streamer - or DAC from say a USB memory stick… can you not do that? You will then measure the playback with your microphone.
I can’t remember if you need to let the software think its playing the file as well - but you wouldn’t do anything with the output from that.

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Can’t you connect your laptop to your streamer via bluetooth? Then you could use REW’s built in sweep.

Otherwise there are several places to download pink noise or sweep files online

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Maybe I wasn’t clear but I will summarise in a bit more detail.

  1. I generated the white noise file and saved it to a USB stick
  2. I put this stick already in my streamer and it can play the file so that part is covered.
  3. I start playing this file on my streamer
  4. When I go to measure button in REW I get the screen as shown in post 12.
  5. I want to choose “Noise” as the method since that is the file I created and is playing. However I can’t choose this option.

If I just press start it plays the “Sweep sound” (which I understand I mute on the computer) but REW should measure the Noise sound that is playing through the streamer and not a Sweep sound. So I want to set REW to measure Noise and not measure Sweep.

Hope this clarifies things.

What I did now is:

  1. I generated a Sweep file and saved it to a USB stick (if I want to measure Noise files apparently I need to use the RTA function instead of “measure function”
  2. I put this stick in my streamer
  3. Go to the measure icon in REW (screenshot above), choose from file as playback and pick the generated file
  4. Press start on a muted laptop
  5. Start streaming the file from USB on my naim streamer and let it run
  6. It finished and shows me a graph

Is that the correct procedure @Simon-in-Suffolk ?

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Apparently this is not as accurate as playing from a USB file. Playing from a USB file is not the issue as my streamer perfectly reads the files I created and copied to a USB stick.