[Gordon Currie]

1. Analog and digital meters have completely different response characteristics. It is pretty hard to go back and forth between and not worth the trouble in my opinion.

When using digital audio software, I (and most audio engineers) don’t edit to the meter, but to the waveform.

2. Your four rooms couldn’t be more different in their response (and thus in the way they each color the playback). Near fields do not eliminate the room, they only lessen it’s effect. But if the room is truly skewed in response (or wildly different than another) it’s not going to matter much.

If you want the audio in each room to match better, I would recommend:

a) room treatment (Auralex etc – not cheap foam). You probably need some bass trapping judging by the sizes of rooms.

b) consistent listening location – sweet spot should be in the same location relative to the nearfiled speakers.

c) level matching – every system should be calibrated so that you get the same sound level in the sweet spot for a given “master volume” setting. For instance if you have a master mixer level of 0 dB in one room giving (with a white noise signal) 75 dBa on a Radio Shack sound meter, then ALL of the other systems should give the same level at that same 0 setting on their mixer.

It really helps to have the same mixer and power amps in every room.

Having the same speakers in every room is only the first step. You need to level match (and try to always mix at the same levels) and finally try to match the room’s different responses by acoustical treatment.

-Gordon Currie