onebadmonte

Okay, lets take a look at the software. It's called SPL Lab Viewer, and well, it does just that. It allows you to see what the LCD bass meter is reading on your computer monitor. In addition to seeing the numeric measurement you also get to see a graphical representation of the measurement in the form of a continuously adjusting bar graph. Lets get started by loading up the software. Pop the CD into your disk drive and open to see the contents of the disk. It should look like this. Click on the SPL Lab Viewer folder and drag it to a convenient location on you computer. I put it on my desktop. That's it, software loaded. In addition to loading the software you'll need to plug in the LCD Bass meter, via the USB cable, into you PC. Once you do a driver will automatically will down load to you PC for the LCD Bass Meter to work with your PC. Now we can take a look at SPL Viewer. Open the SPL Lab Viewer folder and double click the SPL-viewer application. You should get this. Please note the Utilities button and the Play/Stop button. Lets get started to measure. Power up the LCD Bass Meter with either a pair of AA batteries or the supplied cigarette lighter power cable. Connect the pressure sensor to the Meter with the supplied mini jack cable. Position the sensor. Now let's connect the meter to the PC. The USB Tx LED on your meter should blink a few times, it is establishing communication with your PC. With SPL Veiwer open, click on the utilities button. The utilities menu will open and a device will be available to select. It will look something like this. Click apply. Then press the play/stop button. You are officially measuring. Pop in the SPL Labs CD in to your player and select the appropriate tracks to take some measurements. Congratulations. Stay tuned for more. Thanks for looking

By now everyone must be wondering how are the instructions? Hehe, I know, I know, who cares, you all want vids. I'll get to it I promise. Let me go over the instructions first, this is very important. Firstly, that way everyone will know that I know what I'm doing. Secondly, everyone who buys one will have some thing to refer to because it didn't come with any! Wonk, wonk, wonk. I contacted SPL-Labs about this. Their response, it's a new product and they are still working on translating an instruction manual. Not to worry they gave me the DL on how it works and what the buttons do. So here we go. FUNCTIONS Let's take a look at the user interface. The blue buttons have two functions. The primary function is described above the button, the secondary is described below the button. To get the show started press the red power button. As previously mentioned this button has a detent so it'll click when you press it. The read LED next to the button will turn on. This is the startup menu. After a second or two the unit is ready to measure. The screen looks like this. Let's take a closer look at the blue button functions now. I'll start on the with the primary functions. Peak Hold - This function is normally off. Press the Peak Hold button to change to Peak Hold measurements. What this means is that the meter will register the highest db reading and at what frequency this was accomplished at. Press it again to exit Peak Hold measuring and return to continuous measuring. This is what the screen looks like measuring in Peak Hold. Note the M next to the P. PH Reset - Press this button during Peak Hold measuring to clear the previous measurement and generate an new measurement. Light - Press once to turn on the LCD display back lighting. It's of the electroluminescent variety. Press again to turn it off. Calibration - Let's get into calibration. I know this is considered taboo, but let me tell you, this is pretty straight forward. Most likely you'll never use this, but then again never say never. Lets get started. Press the calibration button. This will bring up the calibration menu. It looks like this. The default is 0. The K stands for constant, but all you math gurus already knew that. What's going to happen is this K value is going to be added or subtracted to the actual measurement. Here's how you adjust the K value, or more commonly know as calibrating the meter? Once in the calibration menu the blue button's secondary functions are active. Now we can calibrate / adjust the K value. To do this press the + (Peak Hold) or - (Light) buttons. The meter can be calibrated plus or minus 10db in 0.1 increments. This is what an adjusted calibration menu looks like. To store the calibration in memory press the Save (Calibration) button. You will get a "Saved" prompt. Then the meter will return to the measurement screen. Note: Turning off the meter does not reset the calibration. Removing the batteries does not reset the calibration. The calibration has to be reset manually through the calibration menu. The "Saved" prompt. I would like everyone to notice once the meter has been calibrated there will be a period, or dot if you prefer, next to the P. Like this: To exit the calibration menu with out saving press the Exit (PH Reset) button. So far so good. Next will be software installation. Stay tuned

I feel prompted to let everyone know, because of post like this one, that I am not a part of SPL-Labs nor profiting from the group buy in the for sale section. I am here to give a review of a product that has generated a buzz for those looking to step up their car audio experience. I did my due diligence and bought one with my own dime. Rest assured this will be impartial. If it works and is accurate cool. If it sucks, well I guess I out the cash till I find a sucker on e-gay. Just kidding, I wouldn't do that. Now that I got that off my chest, lets move on and continue with the review.

Getting there.

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This a continuation of my subjective / observational review of the included items. Nothing about performance yet, I just want to give you and idea of what it's like to hold this in your hands. Any who, lets continue. THE SENSOR The sensor is straight forward. It's just like the Term-Lab sensor, with a different plug. It's in a non-serviceable plastic enclosure. The suction cups are okay, but they don't have a release tab. Think fingerprints on windshield when you try to get it off. The mini jack connector is of good quality, and it's hold is pretty good. With the sensor on the windshield if you tug on the mini jack cable you're probably going to unplug the cable before you get the suction cups to release. THE LCD METER It's a good size. It reminds me of holding on of the old school brick cell phones from the 80's, just not as heavy. It has an integrated kickstand with good detents. The kickstand will stay closed until you open it with a generous tug. It also have an eyelet for hanging. Pretty cool. The buttons are large and equally spaced. The power button clicks and hold at a different height to distinguish on from off. There is also a red LED next to it indicating power on if you choose not to verify button height. All the other buttons are standard push buttons, no detents, no clicking, like the letter buttons on a keyboard. The layout of the plugs of the cables is good. Mini jack and power up top, USB on the side, makes sense. There are also some bright white LEDs to indicate when the meter is sending or recieving info via USB. Did I mention they are bright. Here is what I felt was most important. The meter is solid, when I shook it there were no rattles. Also, no funny smells. Laugh, but this is very important. I'll continue with a functionality run down. Stay tuned.

This is a continuation of my review. PACKAGING Score: A From the pictures, the item came in a plain jane box. The items were secured in place with foam. All the important metering equipment was double wrapped in bubble wrap. There were no loose items in the package. Nothing rattled when I shook the box. Very nice. Here I'm going to get into a "what it feels like" / observational / subjective review of the included items. CABLES All the cables included with the device were of good quality. They all had adequate molded in strain releife. The audio cable that connected the sensor to the meter was a name brand, DAXX is what I made the brand out to be. It was a fancier cable with the tip being gold plated and the housing was chrome. The overall length measured 45" I found this to be a bit amusing as all the cable had printing in English. The included USB cable is you standard issue cable. I looked and felt durable, but time will only tell. the overall length is 10ft. Also included in this kit was a 12v power cable that plugs into a standard cigarette lighter socket. It had a serviceable fuse and integrated LED that would light up when plugged in. A nice feature to have if you don't know if your cigarette lighter socket is working or not. CD The included disk is a CD. It contains the SPL-Viewer software and some music/test tone tracks. The CD is professionally silk screened. It looks nice and professional. No CD-R with a sticker on it. Here is a break down of the music tracks. Tracks 1-8 are of various hip hop songs Tracks 9-19 are of sweeps recorded at 0 Db Track 20-80 are of test tones. The track number = test tone frequency. All are at 0 Db. Track 81 is pink noise, 5 minutes worth.

It's lunch time. I've got a semi outline of a review here. I hit the major points and if there are any questions I'll address them as best I can. COMMUNICATIONS Score: A First and foremost it was all in English. All communications was conducted via e-mail through the contact info on the SPL-Labs website. All replies were as prompt as can be given the time difference, I'm in Texas, SPL-Labs is in Russia. All my questions were answered professionally and completely. I was given additional information about the products offered. Most importantly all the information given was straight forward. Here's a little about me to put things in perspective. When dealing with something that has my interest my patients is limitless. I'm pretty thorough, I read the fine print and take my time reading instruction manuals. I have no problems with language barriers. I deal with rough English all the time. With that said, they get an A for communications. SHIPPING Score: A This one is a little tricky for me. When I finally decided what I was going to get, SPL-Labs shut down for a brief holiday. I can't really hold this against them. They did let me know ahead of time what the deadline would be for placing an order. They held they're end of the bargain so I had to wait. When SPL-Labs re-opened I was contacted promptly and notified when my item would ship. I was given a follow up notification of actual shipment and given a tracking number. I opted for the EMS Postal service. This is like some sort of International Priority/Express mail. The tracking number service is excellent and done through the US Postal website. I saw when it got to the Russian post office, when I left Russia, when it entered customs, when it left customs, when it arrived at my local post office, and when the first delivery attempt was made. Good stuff.

Opps. Forgot one more pic. Hehe. Complete Kit. Carry on.

Here is a link to the review CLICK HERE

A few more pics. The included CD The bass meter in all it's glory A little side profile view. The kickstand is out ready for action A rear view shot for the fellas who prefer the rear. The magic box. This is where the magic happens More to come. Stay tuned.

Here it is. I'll start of with a few pics of exactly what I got. Plain jane. Good to see you foam The first signs for something promising Cables! Yay, for bubble wrap.

Is this the "make it louder" meter? Clicky over here I've noticed in other threads you mention using a dmm with this meter. Instead of using a dmm why dont you use the software that comes with it. This seems like a very affordable option with many features.

NICE! PM sent.

Late to the party?

Here is a quick video I found on youtube. This is a side by side comparison of the Term-Lab and the USB Bass meter from SPL labs. Any thoughts?

Welcome. A-men on your avatar.

I'm waiting on it to come in. The item shipped on the 21st. I don't know how much of a role the Icelandic volcano is going to play on the transit time. For now I patiently await the post man.

LOL! Hell, that's good enough for me. I'm down.

Do you think it's kosher if we post up there? I mean, to set up shop with a lot of people and grill and all that? I don't know, I'm just going off of what we did last year. To be honest I checked the Hays County Civic Center Calender and they have an event happening that weekend. I don't know of any alternatives of where we can go an do this with out disrupting the rest of the planet. Anybody know of a park out in the sticks? We need location ideas ASAP.

I'm thinking we can meet at the corner of Thorpe Ln and Springwood, in San Marcos around 11:00am. Sorry I don't have an exact address. You can mapquest from your address to Thorpe Ln in San Marcos Tx and get good directions. After everyone gets a quick intro and we all shake hands we can move on the open field next to the Hays County Civic Center 1249 Civic Center Loop, San Marcos, TX 78666. There we can play our stereos and grill. Chime in if this doesn't work for any of you planning on coming out.

Bummer, it would have been nice to have met you in person. If things do come through, come down and join us.

Sweet, we're on.

Aaagghhhh! My mexican wrestler mask has been removed. I must leave the arena quickly hide in shame now. Thanks for the heads up.

I'll take care of all that. If you can bring some bottled water that'd be great.