Re: What (audio related) ebook do you want written?
The problem with Smaart (or any other measurement platform) is not so much "how to use it" (that is described in the user manuals), but rather what to do with the data. More on that later.
Think of it as learning to play a guitar. It is one thing to show how to finger a chord. But if the guitar isn't tuned properly, it will not sound good (bad data in a measurement platform).
So first you have to understand the basic tuning of the strings.
There is a lot more to "making music" than just chord charts. Chord relationships, tempo and on and on.
Anyway-back to measurement. I heard Sam Berkhow (developer of Smaart) say in one class I took " If you gather the data properly (the first step to overcome), then Smaart will accurately show you the results. It will not tell you what to DO with the data. That is up to your understanding of the various pieces of data (impulse response-amplitude response-phase response etd) as to what the actual problem might be and YOU have to determine howot go about achieving a good result. Smaart will only show you the RESULT of your attempts at correcting a particular problem"
So getting a display on the computer is one thing-but is it good data? What do you do with it?
For example: You see a notch in the response on the screen. Do you just put an eq at that point and boost it? Fine-now the notch is gone-problem solved-right?. Now move the mic a foot or two and see what happend to the response. It it stays the same then you are good-but if it didn't-now you have a problem. What you did to "fix" the problem at one place-actually made it WORSE for every other place. Not a good thing.
There are several things that could cause the notch. 1: The notch is naturally within the response of the loudspeaker. Depending on where it is in the passband (within the middle a particular driver or around the crossover region) you may or may not be able to simple apply a little boost to "fill it in". Or not.
2: Is the notch caused by a reflection? Such as a wall bounce or a floor bounce getting into the mic?
There are 3 basic "parts" to the measurement process. 1: Collecting GOOD data. Not as easy as it sounds. 2: DISPLAYING the data to show what you want/need. 3: Figuring out what to DO with the data.
It would be great if you could just hook it up and it tell you what the problem is. But it is not that easy. It takes other skills/knowledge to work WITH the analyizer to come up with something meaningful.
The basic operation is fairly easy. Understanding what it is telling you is quite a different story. Hence the reason for so many bad measurements that are out there.
For what it is worth, I have been to 3 Smaart classes, 2 TEF classes, 20 Synaducon classes ( and various other audio classes)and have iworked with some of the best minds in the business (especially regarding measurements), and I fell I have only begun to scratch the surface in measurements.
Believe me-it is NOT a 3 step process.
But we all continue to learn and improve. And then we die and all that knowledge is gone. That is why some of us try to share with others-so their learning curve is shorter than ours was, and the industry as a whole hopefully gets better.
